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to feel alive again, stand outside on a cold night, wind blowing harshly and a slight rain picking up. sometimes you can spice it up by laying down in the middle of the road. to feel alive again, lay on the floor of your room at nighttime with a lamp on and music playing from your phone beside you. close your eyes and imagine you can feel the music pulsing through you. to feel alive again, stay home alone and dance through the house. blast your music from your phone and dress up in the most flamboyant clothes you can find. to feel alive again, take a shower or bath at night in the dark and the silence. make your phone’s flashlight or some candles the only source of light if you need one. all of these things will have you feeling dead if you’re not careful, but the line between the two has always been a thin one i tend to dance upon.

A poem in conversation with The Milkmaid by Johannes Vermeer I’ve come back from the farm with what will become today’s meal. I’ve milked the cows, and harvested a pumpkin, and gathered some potatoes. My husband is off at work; Lord only knows if that’s what he’s actually doing. The children are off at school. I am home pouring the milk in a pot to be boiled. Soon, I will skin the potatoes and cut them and the pumpkin. Soon, I will make tonight’s dinner, and everyone will come back. This is my only time alone, and yet, I am doing things to serve everyone else.

a few steps behind my house and i am near immersed in nature. i can hear everything. crickets are chirping their song even in the light of day. the stream next to the path is bubbling at a steady pace. leaves crunch underfoot as i step on pools of them, many heart-shaped, nature’s love letter. the wind is weaving its way through tree branch and tree leaf and tall grass. overheard there's the occasional bird call and flapping of birdwing as they fly. the ambience of nearby highway makes the whole place feel haunted. perhaps i’m the last person alive on earth, listening as the ruined landscape sings foreboding songs of the tragedies that have befallen it.

when we were younger, art was never about skill or talent or beauty, though a case could be made that it was inherently beautiful because it was our gifts to each other. when we were younger, it was never about having to be good, though a case could be made that it was inherently good because it was made by you. we drew because we couldn’t buy stuff and we still wanted to be able to say “i love you” and “i thought of you” and we did it in the most intimate way. we created something entirely new because we were filled to bursting with love. kids are able to make uninhibited by an inner critic or the inherent fatigue that comes with growing up. we were able to make just because we wanted to. i miss when drawing was our love language.

Halfway into November, and leaves are dusting the ground. Nature is working with a palette of yellows and browns and the occasional reds and greens. This, I think, is what autumn looks like. I look back at pictures from the summer. Everything was so green, back then, so vivid and lively. In two months, I’d forgotten just how bright this place could be. Change happens so incrementally, so slowly, you blink and time has passed you by. My child, once a baby, used to fit comfortably in the crooks of my arms. I couldn’t even try to cradle him now. He sits in my lap, and he talks to me about space, about shipwrecks. He knows more than I do on those topics. Where has time gone? I meet coworkers’ children, and friends’ children, and I say “I knew you when you were this small. Do you remember?” and logically, I know they don’t, and I know they’ve heard that line a million times, but how else do I express that I know kids grow up without you, and time passes when you’re not looking and I’m

i don’t know where i’m from. i’ve long since forgotten my origin story, my memory erasing itself every few years, a fresh start wherever i am in life. so i guess really where i’m from could be anywhere i want it to be. i could be an alien coming from another planet another civilisation. i could be a changeling exchanged at birth by the fae, human-adjacent. those are the childhoods i’d entertain anyway, the pasts i’d marvel at, wondering if they were my own. it would certainly explain why i’ve never really felt like i quite belonged anywhere.

My shame is locked in my retainer case, in a box shoved under my bed, in the deep dark corners of my heart, in the recesses of my head. I keep it on the toppest shelf, in the bottom drawer of a chest, I dare not let anybody see, even the ones who know me best. For if I do, I know for sure they’ll surely shy away. They’ll say I have disgusted them and our friendship will decay. So I have no wants, I have no flaws, I have no guilty pleasures. There’s nothing to me but what they see, which is to say only treasures. I’m the perfect friend, the perfect person, and I live only for others. I need no help and no support; I’m the best you could discover.

i wake at 3 in the morning to hear the gentle banging of bongos. i have done so every night this week. it is still dark out, still quiet but for the drumming, slow and steady. i lay there and listen in the darkness to this mysterious musician. 15 minutes in and overcome with curiosity, i get up and decide i must see who is serenading the night, but when i open the door and stare out into the living room, no one is there and the drumming has stopped. tomorrow then.

CW: discussions of body a poem in conversation with Question by May Swenson Body my prison, the vessel I did not ask for, I wish not for death just reprieve of that which plagues me. I wonder what it would feel like to be untethered, free for a day without worrying about what it asks of me. It always asks too much and never asks plainly, just talks in tongues and riddles and expects me to understand a language I never learned. If I never got tired or hungry or thirsty again, if I never had to cater to skin and bones, if I never had to waste time doing things I did not wish to do in a society that values time as if it were gold or diamonds, imagine the person I would be. Oh, how shapeless, how formless, how ethereal a ghost or a soul.