out of here, out of here, the words i sang at the end when strumming to my own feelings, but never gave much weight to.

cat power finds me again, later in the season than before, and eight years later, and sings about how there's always something better, because you know there always is, and she's right, but i'm not sad for once, and maybe not sad not for the first time, but in some way that hits but not heavy.

i can tell.

the boys i would've given anything to be loved by are still around, older, but i wouldn't give anything to be loved anymore. i wouldn't've given anything for a while now. not that love's not worth it, but i don't feel like i have to give anything for something that is free when it's free.
sometimes i find that i have love to give, and it surprises me, but sometimes i think it's just the particular day when i've made peace with things.

i test my stories and questions and see what sticks. sometimes i find fish, and sometimes i find something that makes me feel something.

it's almost my birthday. i want to tell future selves, that things will be okay, that all things will be ok, and that nothing is as serious or dire or as singular and as only as you feel it is. feelings are such liars and so fickle, but yeah, when that wave of good feeling hits, yeah, it's a feeling, and you are riding on it like i am. happiness happens in strange moments, but sometimes you can see it happening, and you just edge it on.

not all days will be clear like this, but that is ok. you get through everything even if you don't believe you will. you were never a believer anyway, so belief's got nothing to do with what happens.

how to learn to read

I was waiting, and waiting.

It was the speed of Hemingway lunching late, while the protagonist was waiting for a thing that no longer required waiting.

Tables go unwaited when the cafe is empty and the evening nears close, closing whenever the owner deems it time to close shop, to retire upstairs for the quiet evening cup of tea.


When you're young, you think, one day, I will be.
I will grow into this ideal, where happiness arises, and everyday is satisfied. There might be a career. There might be art-on-the-side. There will be friends, and a more-or-less permanent-partner. It's this hazy, fictive suburbia-soul, even in our cities. Apartments. Cats. Fish in a bowl, or in tanks. Coffee mugs, & espresso machines. Vitamins, with food, because taken alone, it will give you nausea & that nagging headache.

My last fish died, three years ago, this silver moon of a fish, with its lovely billows, & thread of pink & blue, and I wept, because I could not keep it alive, despite the PH-perfect tank, & the filter, & the food. I did right by the fish, and it died anyway, new, young, & beautiful.


Moo-moo died when I was seven, so I learned to read, prolifically. She was the only person who knew my tongue.

My parents were never around most days; my mother was away, dealing with a family crisis, & took my little brother with her. My father worked 'til late.
There was school, where dark-haired Asiatic children who looked a little like me, didn't speak my language, & nor did the others, the jewish kids or the italians or the spanish.

When my mother called, I'd make up stories about playtime. I didn't want her to know that it was loneliest part of my day, where all the other kids had their groups. I said so-and-so was my friend, and so-and-so & I played house, and so-and-so & I raced cars. I did not say that I fiddled idly with the unloved toy-space of the day, and that I thought that playtime would never end.

Moo-moo would pick me up after school, which was the best part of the day. And then we'd go on adventures. She'd wander the neighborhood with me, and when I was tired, we'd sit on a bench, and I'd eat my snack. And then we'd go home, and she'd peel her snap-peas & make dinner, and I'd watch, and she would read me stories from her newest comic-collection.