Permanently Liminal (letter to my desk)

Dear Desk,

I miss you. It's been three months since the tornado that got us evacuated. We hoped to be back in after a month, but complications are still keeping us out. We're staying back at the house, your first home with me. The rooms we once called ours are now unrecognizable. The first has lost its dinosaur walls and has become a storage room full of Grandmama's old stuff. The other is a complete mess. Insulation lies on the floor among my father's tools. The far wall was ripped out due to a leaky pipe. The ledge I used to keep odd knickknacks on is gone. Only the cement of the foundation is still there.

Living here without you is strange. At night I find myself writing on the dining table because I'm not sure where else to go. I'm using that old rickety corner desk I used to keep my computer on. It's alright, but the spacing's all off. The shelves above me and those CD tray sides make me feel enclosed. I miss your smooth oak surface, stained from years of hot tea, and the open space around and above me when I sit in your chair. I've felt so enclosed and trapped lately, stuck artistically and spiritually. I could really use that sense of freedom and possibility you give me. 

Here, this desk has to serve for every purpose. My work space and my play space are muddied together, confined to this little corner in the basement. It's all jumbled together. So much that I find it difficult to do any work here at all. I find myself hunting down cafés because I've always worked at cafés when I'm alone. But I've become nocturnal and so cafés are closed for most of my days. 

 

For a time in university, I was a part of a small writing group with some friends of mine that we had named the Permanently Liminal. I had never given the name much thought. I found that it sounded interesting and that was all the thought I gave to it, but now that I find myself looking back at how my life has been in the recent years, I wonder if it was more of an accurate prediction than simply interesting. I'm always in a state of change, of moving from one place to another. I haven't lived in the same place for more than a couple years at a time, and more often than not, it's far shorter than that. I return home after a year living in Sherbrooke proper, only to have myself displaced by a tornado just as I was starting to get settled. And this place is a transitional place. We are here until we can move back into our apartment. 

 

I had so many plans for writing this year, specifically right before the tornado hit. I had intended on finishing editing my main novel, and had a schedule planned out for how I could do that. A few pages a day, excluding November, and it could be done by now. That came to an end when the tornado hit, only a few chapters later. 

 

I never thought of myself as one who requires schedule and routine, and yet, I find myself creating and following routines when it comes to work. Every November, April, and July, for NaNo, I write at a certain time each day, usually after dark between 10 pm and 2 am. But maybe it's less about routine this time as it is about space. I designate areas for work and for play usually, but without that ability, I find myself floating between the two in a liminal state, and as long as I'm here, I don't think that will change...

I hope you're doing well. I want to come home. I've been away for too long.

Sincerely, Kuna Zero

Dear Internet Stranger (poem)

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I don't often write little blurbs before my poems when posting them, but this poem is something special to me. As long time readers might know, I have had an interest in obsession for years now. I've written a number of short essays on the matter as well.  This poem, while inspired by songs not necessarily borne of obsession, stems from the strange obscenity that is online obsession. Sometimes we like to think we know people well because of how they share online, like someone we have some deep personal relationship with them. Well, unsurprisingly strangers talking to a camera are still strangers. Anyhow, enjoy this poem written from the perspective of the obsessed.

Songs that inspired this piece: "Bad Ideas" and "Crush" by Tessa Violet

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I was drawn to you the moment I saw you,

just a still image on a screen,

but I felt there was more to it

so I clicked and here I am.

Tempted first by your beauty

and then enticed by your melodic voice,

I find myself drowning in a crush

on you, a girl I've never met.

I know I'm a little bit intense,

but if you could see what I see

you would understand why:

who sees an angel and does not rejoice?

But I'm not trying to be with you,

just, I don't know,

this is a bad idea,

and I can't get enough.

I had a dream last night.

Enveloped in its thick haze,

all I could see was you,

white smoke lightly dusting your body.

And I pretend you aren't on my mind

while scrolling through your posts

thinking how I could be your crush,

how you're all I want and more.

I just have to know what you and I feel like,

to have my hands stitched in yours,

run my fingertips on your collarbones,

kiss you standing up

in the doorway after our first date,

coffee that crumbles space and time:

we'll be there for hours

but it'll feel like seconds.

This bad idea, I know where it leads,

to a silence that will teach me hate:

how could you just ignore me like that?

how could you betray me like this?

Internet stranger, we could have been so happy.

We're destined for each other, I've decided,

me, a stranger who tried to woo you online.

Isn't it obvious we belong together?

-Zero

The Christmas Parade (poem)

A parade marches by:
flashing lights and loud music,
cheering and children,
and I sit in a quiet café.

I guess age has made me cold,
cut me off from the wonder of childhood:
what is this parade for?
Christmas, but why the parade?

A father asks his son:
"why are you playing that game?"
His son shrugs and continues,
"I don't know, it's fun."

What use is miserable productivity
if you can't have fun sometimes?
Work yourself to the bone
so you're easier to bury.

-Zero

If I'm being honest (poem)

 Inspired by dodie's "If I'm being honest"

I thought I had it all figured out

when I was only fifteen.

I just had to find the right girl.

She was out there somewhere.

She would love me unconditionally

and our love would shape our world.

Our first meeting would be a thundercrash

and our first kiss would be a parade.

I thought then I would love myself,

and my world of grey returned to light.

Holding my breath for her, I choked,

and desperation clasped around my neck.

Could you love this?

A grey so desperate, it's suffocating,

empty promises of a future of light

from a talking shadow.

Do you think they planned to fall,

those past loves of mine?

If I'm being honest,

I think I tripped them.

Deep in my grey pit,

I hoped we would fly out,

but that hope had a cost,

because no love gives humans wings.

There was only one way out:

painfully scale the rocky walls.

I was waiting for a hero to save me,

but no one could carry that burden.

If I'm being honest,

I thought I had it all figured out:

chained to a cave wall

I lectured on the world I had never seen.

-Zero

Floating (poem)

Floating through ash

amidst the sparkling snow.

A void opens up

all falls into it

until I float through darkness.

No solace.

No silence.

Only constant ringing.

Static and screaming.

Dancing to pretend there's music.

Time falls away

as life loses its gravity.

An hour and a week the same,

what is death

when life is oblivion?

Dreaming of silence,

of wintry woods welcoming

the wanderer who breathes,

who feels the cold on his skin,

instead of the numbness of the void.

There is no time

for reasonable escape,

only a thread left now:

pull myself back into the flame,

or float through the void forever.

-Zero

Searching for warmth (poem)

An unsettling familiarity:

when did Christmas become creepy?

Snow-covered grounds and colorful lights,

a cafe's warmth in the cold.

But instead of sanctuary,

it feels like a trap,

a place where time loops:

sit here and fall into the past.

Relive last year's isolation,

a season of family spent alone

watching a crow perch on a rusty cross

abandoned in an empty parking lot.

Clinging to a cup of tea

in a cold, dark apartment

because it's the only warmth I had,

otherwise I'd have frozen.

She hands me a cold mug of water

on the last night we'd share.

The cold is a promise,

and the warmth is a maybe.

-Zero

a plead from the devourer (poem)

Constantly devouring what I can,

all these notes and ideas,

this incessant hunger drives me on,

but to what end?

Theories about stories I don't know,

the same song over and over again,

looking for something in her face

or the voices filling the silence.

Where does it end?

What could grow from this?

You can eat plastic,

but you can't digest it.

If you know, tell me:

am I learning nonsense

or is this hunger helpful,

more than bored devouring?

-Zero

erasure (poem)

Horror in fiction is isolated:

a ghost haunts a house,

a demon possesses a child,

a serial killer prowls a small town.

Horror in reality is everywhere:

a woman leaves her drink alone at the bar,

climate change and careless people,

a president deciding you don't exist.

Definitions of gender rigid and fixed

while the content of gender morphs:

do you have a penis or a vagina?

Nothing else seems to matter.

“You are making it up,”

obviously you would choose this fate,

to be different than what they forced you to be

because erasure and abuse is what you want.

Who wants to feel comfortable in their skin,

to understand the world as more than binary,

the beauty of the spectrum beyond duality,

the freedom of finally being themselves?

Horror in reality is watching

as someone tries to delete you

while millions stand and watch,

supporting a madman with screams and silence.

Reality is scarier than fiction:

books can be closed and movies stopped,

but you can't pause reality

to stop a madman from trying to erase you.

-Zero

don't build hope on something broken (poem)

I think of you sometimes,

of how incredible you seemed to me,

of all the times you lied,

and how you taught me insecurity.

One moment we were perfect,

the next you're a ghost I'm hunting.

Our relationship was Schrödinger's cat:

both alive and dead at the same time.

You would seek me out,

make plans so we could meet,

only to disappear the night of,

with me wondering if you even liked me.

You were a tornado that tore through my life,

changing everything in one intense moment,

only to dissipate in thin air,

with every strong gust leaving me hopeful.

And disappointed.

But I'm to blame too, aren't I?

For building hope on something broken:

fire could never support four walls and a roof,

and we were just two little flames.

How frightening was I?

Wielding love in my mouth and eyes:

the romantic promises forever

when the reasonable considers the present.

Had I opened up Schrödinger's box,

I would find the cat dead inside

with my fingers wrapped around its neck.

No wonder you were afraid.

-Zero

burned out (poem)

inspired by: dodie - burned out

It was the look in her dark eyes,

a sadness so deep it's unfathomable,

a regret for wanting more than ordinary:

she waited, smiling for this?

Recognition is an ever-growing weight:

the unknown are left unseen,

but our burning stars are watched,

both in admiration and criticism.

The music once sang of freedom,

and poetry learns to love anonymity.

Anything less than perfect isn't enough:

shine like the sun, or burn out.

But we're just human,

this is an ultimatum we can't win,

yet we wanted something more:

we waited, smiling for this?

Our sanctuary becomes a prison,

a church with bars on the windows

and armed guards at the doors:

what once saved us now entraps us.

It's that look in her dark eyes,

that same unfathomable sadness,

that regret for hopes and dreams,

that makes us wish we could do more.

-Zero

Go find yourself (poem)

It's time to go,

time to say goodbye.

How long can you stay here?

You're not a tree after all.

Our lives are defined by movement,

defined by the changes we experience:

our first crush,

our first big move.

We can learn a lot about ourselves

by how we react to the unfamiliar:

are we frogs jumping from hot water,

or do we make a home in it?

We host infinite cosmos within us,

so vast we barely know it,

and the unfamiliar is a blank canvas

our stardust paints us a portrait on.

So leave this home behind

with its familiar faces and streets,

and find the shine of your cosmos

like you've wanted to for so long.

-Zero

Autumn's Chill (poem)

The chill is back in the air,

that crisp breath that takes me,

forces me into old memories:

every year back to school.

I don't want to miss it,

to learn to live in nostalgia:

a sad oak remembering its first leaves

and the solemn autumn that took them.

I am at home in the chill

after all those recesses outside,

all those long walks after school

to friends who said they understood.

And just like a dog who sits

when their owner reaches for the treats,

I remember my school days

when summer reaches for winter.

-Zero

6/10 (poem)

So many feel like a 6/10,

just barely a pass,

just barely getting by.

One face among a million,

one blade of grass in a field,

one drop of water in the ocean.

Ordinary.

But we define ordinary,

often with ourselves as evidence,

even though our ordinary

may be another's extraordinary.

To ourselves, a flickering candle,

to another, a tempest of flame.

Someone has to be wrong,

right?

Maybe it's wrong to rate

ourselves and others.

Maybe no scale can describe us -

there's just too much.

There are too many stars in the sky to understand,

too many worlds to know,

and galaxies that could never simply be 6/10.

-Zero

Dreaming of more (poem)

Sometimes I feel this life will never fit,

or rather that I will never fit in it.

No matter how I change the characters,

it never gets to how I imagined.

I'm taunted by thoughts of what could be:

there's always room for improvement, right?

Dreaming of the future can go two ways:

dreaming of a life that can come to pass,

and dreaming of a fantasy world that can never be.

The dreamer has to learn the difference,

and I wonder if I can tell them apart,

choose a path forward that leads somewhere.

I think I feel this life will never fit

because I'm suffering from lingering fantasies:

ever after filled with breath-taking beauty

instead of the mediocrity of reality,

a life I would come to destroy.

I'm so sick of living in fantasy.

-Zero

The Cycle of Time (poem)

Time moves in a cycle,

just as summer comes and goes,

returning and departing every year.

When one thing ends, another begins,

and when something begins, another ends.

We like to think time is a straight line

so we can leave our past behind us,

but as time cycles back, as summer returns,

our memories, our past, returns us to them,

prisoners of our own actions.

But time moves forward still,

a wheel rolling down an unending hill,

and we are but one point on the wheel of time,

spinning round and round year by year,

making our way around a moving circle.

As the endless wheel churns,

all things find themselves forgotten.

The memories we sought to escape slowly fade,

slower than our pained hearts would rather,

but time teaches us to heal in the cycle.

Our first summer after will be difficult,

memories cruelly reminding us of how things were.

Our second summer will be better,

odd reminders of a time long past.

And so the wheel churns,

until all is forgotten.

-Zero