Muse.

week of oct 7th: retell a story/moment/memory from your own life in a way you don't usually look at it

He raises a hand, doesn't strike but thinks about it. Is it revulsion he feels when his daughter flinches, is it contempt? Is it fear? If he looks into her eyes enough, does he see his own father mirrored back? No, she's just fucking stupid. He wouldnt do it. If you never hit a dog, it never learns to cower. Is she dumber than a dog? The wallpaper is peeling, right there, above the fridge. Someone should do something about it.

week of sept 16th: think & write about a space you've never inhabited-- something you've watched from afar (in awe, fear, envy, etc), but never engaged in

Flex. Stretch. A flash of skin between shirt and belt. Hey man, how's it going, what's up, sling an arm around his shoulders, fake-wrestle and break apart with a grin that makes the space between my ribs ache. Do I want to have you or be you? Wait, fuck, that's a cliché, try something about blurring the lines between envy and desire, something about jeans and dirt and stubble and your big, stupid hands. You don't deserve the way your t-shirt fits you.
How casually you embody the essence of what I want.

week of jul 1st think about the absence of something and how the shape it once filled & now leaves affects things. is it good? sad? bittersweet? write about it.

like mending a hole over and over, it gets larger with time and you're running out of thread. you try to unravel it but it just breaks. is this it? run your fingers on the frayed edges of this metaphor before it gets away from you. something about circling the drain.

okay, fine, not that, but not not that either. you've been cutting off parts of yourself to see if they'll fill it—they won't, you'll learn eventually, but you'll keep trying. maybe when you'll done there won't be enough of you left to feel the loss.

week of may 13th write about evolution and devolution. how do we unravel & re-ravel? think about what histories our bodies & communities & species & worlds are made of.

a crack. the rib snaps. i remake myself in my own image, eden in my bedroom and the snake in the mirror. i'd wash my hands but the blood keeps coming and it's not like i've got anywhere to be. he smiles at me, me, the other one, wide and soft and real. i lean forward for a kiss—it's gonna hurt later, but what doesn't?

week of may 6th consider ‘trace elements’-- barely noticeable things and what they change. think butterfly effect! are their effects expected & small or disproportionate? is a ‘trace element’ an extra bit of DNA? is it some milk in a loaf of bread?

the bus swerves, i trip into someone's space and they apologize without meeting my eyes. I know you, i want to say, don't you remember? we were stars together, millenia ago. we were fish swimming upstream and the bears that caught them and the leaves and the trees and the leaves, again. how much of me is there that isn't you? i see the shape of their hands without looking and know they would fit perfectly against mine.

i'm never quite sure where i end and the world begins.

week of apr 29thwrite about or use asymmetry in your writing. what is the intrigue in imbalance? maybe work with different-sized stanzas or long, long sentences followed by short ones, or think about how no two bodies are the same, nor two halves of the same body, or how the feeling of a painting shifts with where the objects sit.

she pushes, i pull, and did our arms use to be the same length? i remember fitting like a glove in the space between her lungs, but i must have shrunk in the wash the way i hang off a rib like forgotten laundry. i want so badly to fall. it's not that she grew out of me, it's me that stayed small, and now i have to crane my neck to have a conversation, hi, how was your day, pass the salt, do you remember when we were the only thing in the world that mattered? she says jump. how high hasn't felt real in a while. i don't think i'm gonna stick the landing.