flying to the West

last day in Thailand...I don't want to go home, I want to sweat forever here with dirty bare feet, matted curly hair and freckles connecting.
What was I looking for?
Why was is terrible?


We fly to Phuket from Chiang Mai, to Korea, to Seattle.

My heart is hotter here, in the East.
my fingers look different now.
My eyes are wider and the asthma has melted away
my bones are calm, I am going home

a pink girl in Thailand

Pink must be a color that attracts and targets little girls world wide.
Shopping in the upper level of a stuffy department / swap meet type store today in Trang I had a trail of little girls following me around.

Everyone seems very excited by my pink tattoos. They move their hand up and down making the poking motion with wide eyes, asking me "is it a tattoo?"
I nod yes and rub my skin real hard showing that it does not rub off and make a face in pain answering "yes, it is a tattoo, it hurt".
I bought a pink splatter paint shirt at that store for a friend, but as soon as I returned to the cozy B and B type hotel we are staying at I instantly put it on, it felt so good having my over exposed shoulders covered.

In Seattle my body never sees the sun. It sees lots of stage lights and photographers flashes but sun, no way. My Irish, Scottish, Dutch, French, Spanish, German & Canadian skin is pastie-olive, with a thin film of freckles and only one colorless mole, right above my lip like a cartoon character beauty mark.
My skin collects more freckles with the sun and I collect tattoos, pink, purple, maroon and red ones, usually when I travel, places I have lived.
I have seen beautiful all black tattoos on the dark naked backs of Thai men here. Their skin is like melted chocolate toffee swirl. The women are thin and powerful, the children are so beautiful I want to take them home in woven baskets and feed them peeps and attach pastel bows to them. So cute like baby animals on Easter, waaaaaay cuter than Jesus, so much cuter than chicks.

I smile at everyone and they all smile back. I love the people here, the town we are in is small and we are the only Americans. Today on top of a mountain we walked slowly around the Chinese Temple. Inside the air was thick with incense, waxy amber walls seemed to drip in the heat, and statues loaded up with garlands and beads filled the Temple that architecturally looked like a warehouse meets a commissary.  Quin Yin and other Goddesses I did not know posed grandly next to large silver industrial sized sinks and huge floor drains. The children inside the sweaty Temple fallowed me around.
Outside a few men "asked" to take pictures of me. I "said" yes and posed with them. When the tuk-tuk putted off they kissed their hands and blew kisses at me.

Later at a little basket shop we bought drinking water. A big monsoon type downpour began as we left the Buddhist Temple. By the time the three of us pulled up soaking wet we were dying of thirst still, covered in rain and sweat now. The women who worked at the shop where very interested in me, despite my soggy appearance. Two girls introduced themselves to me, they were both 18 years old and dressed like professional airline attendants.
I seemed so much younger than them in my drippy pink hair, see-though pink baby-doll dress and pink flip flops. 
I feel very young here. I feel so old here.

Thailand, Trang, night time.

feeling the body with this much sweat
like sitting in a hot pool, perfectly still you cannot feel the water
not dry not wet
 a liquid body made up of liquid and heat
on the bus from Puket to trang I looked at my hands for a long time
imagining how lifeless hands look
like a strangers once the soul leaves
it seems your soul fills out the shape you are
your hand acts like you.

Outside this internet cafe the waterfall drips over the stone carving of a naked goddess. 

my body moves thorugh this city like a white lady, my hips sway too much, my hair grows too long, my skin is very white.

My pink dress is soaked through, lizards are crawling franticly all over the ceiling, iced coffee is turning my heart into a crazy bird in a small cage.
It is Sunday and a lesbain was spotted in the shoe store.

Thailand: take my sandpaper feelings

It is spring in seattle and my skin is crawling, I am always freezing all over.
Tomorrow I leave for Thailand.
I am going to bury myself in the sand and stay there.
I am going to stare at the sun and cry.
What to do with this body? It carries heavy sandbags of sadness inside it, I try and untie them and drop them off the side of the bridge
I wanna hear them splash and sink into the water below.

fish can eat those things.

It always goes like this-
 from EVERYTHINGeverything Everything
to
just me,
 with all these ridiculously heavy bags
6 months is a long time like this
one year is a long time
27 years is a long time
being in a body
am I still fresh? Will I get tastier or spoil?
It's strange that this flesh is alive, it wont just rot, it's living and existing on its own, regardless of my thoughts about humanness, being inside a body, feeling more like a terrible dream with three million confusing characters,  made up of stories, none having bodies...
it will still grow, age, be a body in all sorts of body like ways

and inside I can feel like a sheet of paper
crumbled and blowing along a fence

just wind and dust paper sounds.

I will bury my body in the sand
I will close my eyes and turn to paper

rewind*repeat

repetition makes me feel safe.
put it on a loop
knit me into the length of it
keep it going
I feel myself growing older
my face is new everyday
I have no idea what I look like
keep doing it
one day it will feel real
one day this life will be un-hooked from the whirling machines
and just
run on momentum
stop peddling as it coasts downhill
air
and fast tears
 skin and hair
a person on a loop
a strangers face on a body
a body with a whirling heart machine
spinning
no matter what it keeps going
the fast tears and same song keep coming
the loop is always
the loop is for realz

river and raft

Every night I crawl in like its a secret page turning

Every day I dream of being under the covers. It's warm quiet pink soft empty of need- it asks nothing of me but to remain horizontal, it is very dark, non verbal.

How did this manic life end up in this slow thick dream river?

It's collecting debris alongside the tree roots and I am spotting lost rings, favorite pens, used silverware, battered linens woven in the mossy roots, crusted to the massive trunk.

Navigating this part of the river life is like trying to stay on top of a beach ball pushed underwater.

I am being tossed off as it pops up and flies away. I swim against the wind to get at it again. 

All my muscles are burning and my fishnets are collecting pebbles and doll furniture in the saggy feet.

I am trying to catch my breath in putty water land. Mist clings to my eyelashes and fly away hairs, each drop is grey with an ice cube world waiting

my limbs hang like poured cement into a girl shaped body cast. Each wrist, each ankle have baby floaties squeezed onto them. They are electric orange and the white flesh bulges out like raw dough.

But this will prevent the body from dying. This side affect is very normal. 

This is how it feels now. The body bread rising. Injected with blood thickeners like cornstarch water blood pushing against the skin, sculpted by the ripples, dented by the domestic debris.

This is the shape you have to exist in, a hundred barn animal sounds ring out as the arrow swirls around, the popcorn vacuum has condensed and moves like a space helmet down the river.

Every morning I wake up, out of the pages folded softly over my shipwrecked body, step out of my bed and into this cluttered river.

choking in the water, band-aides flapping open like  mini flags, audible breathing and treading water.

An all day episode of trying.

Every night  I escape to the mirage. Soft, dark, quiet, non verbal, a page slowly turning me in.

The Pastor said we struggle

Lets forget Easter ever happened
never call her again

ache

sleep in so late you miss therapy, the gym, lunch, working, morning heartache.
Lets pretend your okay with the silence
she leaves on her bike

clunks to the sidewalk
panties showing
lace dress and choking-this is pastel painful

her bike and your bike are not locked together


she never calls again

months


night after night

In yoga class all the tears fall upside down
run over your forehead and into your ears
your scalp is salty
Lets forget the feeling of tears working their way down your
upside down face
crawling rivers
exhale

Silence,
but inside it is terrible: the insulation is exposed
it's pink like cotton candy and sharp
the floor is just cold cement with a small spider moving in the corner
it has all capsized- it is really terrible in here.


Okay: crawl under the couch
in the dark shadow slit
and sleep

dream of anything but her

little egg