#lookaimi

we all want our deaths to mean something, however small, to someone to anyone. but the universe is so vast, our lives are not even dust. the sheer scale of what surrounds us is sometimes beyond what we can even comprehend. sometimes, if you try to understand it all you go mad. then death follows. 

no one remembers the death of mad men. 

-excerpt from The Novel WIP

Loneliness makes for a constant companion, my fingers tangled with their — wishing for a shift in the stars, an end to this companionship and the arrival of

A thing that does not have a name when it takes root in my mind. I dream of the open highways and the twisting trees that grow wild alongside. I dream of driving down those roads with

The static of broken radio stations punctuating the silences between us.

there are two ways to tell this story:

perhaps her grief is echoed by your anger 
or her anger now haunts your grief. either way
they come from worlds never made, the ones 
that extinguished under their own weight 
before ever understanding light. pin every loss

like a white flag around your still-breathing body
as if this will keep old language from spilling out, 
as if this will keep your voice from turning to
a resonance as blurred as your face in the mirror
these days. if recognition comes from creation 

you’ll always be a minute or a generation behind 
and it won’t make a difference. slip sideways into 
another body in the crowd, another ghost to wear 
like a memory that never happened and never will. 
if you call this mourning, it’s a kind that comes 

six feet to the left instead of underground. still 
found wanting against the weight of all that came
before, but now you can lie your way out of here,
truth turned frail as spidersilk in your throat. 
this light illuminates all the stories she told, 

forever looking on in silence.

—q.l. | for day #17 of @avolitorial’snapowrimo prompts

all of winter’s children learned early on
to feel fondest of the icefields that raised them
when they’re halfway through the thaw,

slick surfaces already broken but still holding 
their shifting weight aloft, the capillary action 
of cold circling up soft limbs like icicles 

slackened into vines. this is to say: affection 
as water halfway turned to mist, never quite
sustainable, never without the glass-glaze 

of possession. the clouds are still frost-webbed 
with the breath-sharp scent of the season,
still uncertain whether it’s allowed to end,

but all the air trapped underneath the ice 
knows it was promised freedom long ago. 
it just never asked if that meant disappearing.

—q.l. | for day #11 of @avolitorial’snapowrimo prompts

so: another portal-fantasy. another / anywhere-but-here, tripping over nothing / in the doorway. balance regained / only to look up in universes / tilted ninety degrees to the side, / the kind where the skies are made / of white jaws sheared wide, teeth planted / tight in the dirt. every skeleton / grown from monster to mansion. say / you want to stay here, / and it’ll mean you can’t. / but if you look a little closer / at the mirror before you / maybe the painted ocean at the back of the room / will spill from its frame, sea-glass / staining the floorboards, / the seafoam-blood of little lost merfolk / tugging you away again. or: if you / touch it just right, / a crack in a wall / can draw you in, mistlike. miss / the bottom step on the staircase / and you’ll land no time later / in some time unknown, on the mushroom-bed / of a faery underland. tell me / the story again. i promise / i remember / how to listen. there’s a reason why / our version of i love you / always sounded more / like run away with me.

—q.l.

in dreamscapes time turns snake-tongue sinuous,
its own end slipped neatly down a narrow throat.
there, you’re stretching small hands into the air 

again, far back enough any single flaw in the weaving
would’ve been unravelled. but it’s just wishful thinking
to believe it was ever so simple, isn’t it? winter’s end

will come as a mist-skinned dragon, skyscraper roofs
crawling from the fade of its body. all the right words 
discarded for the wrong language, all the right faces 

drawn over the wrong bodies. the hands taking yours 
are tipped with claws. the mirrors will stay cold 
long past the first buds of birdsong. they understand

the sunlight will only warm whatever it can touch.
if i remind you this is a dream, will you say something 
meant to be believed? will you wait for the cherry trees

to bloom again? i swear i never wanted anyone to cry 
because of me. i don’t know
                                             if you can say the same.

—q.l.

someone somewhere is singing of love found in dreams
instead of under the sun. love as a honey-sweet smile
you’d only recognize if you went back to sleep. maybe
somewhere else, the moon skims a featherweight palm

over the snow, leaves a shadow-shape to say it’s sorry,
to tell you this could’ve been a better story if you hadn’t
looked so closely, but if you like, you can mourn the sunset 

for lack of anything better to blame. keep your hands 
folded together, tucked into pockets as if they’re endless 
as fog, running fingertips over old paper until it plumes
into fragments joined only by dust. memory breathes 
in shades of lavender, colours that know what they hold 
can never be said out loud. and maybe by morning

you can fall asleep again, but these woods still won’t be
large enough to get lost in. you’ll always be coiled up 
at the back of your throat.

—q.l.

5:10 PM & i’m folding another sunset under my tongue,
its hues bleached out by the cold into cotton-cloud pale.
& it goes like this every year, coming back to this frost 
to watch ice braid itself clear into my hair, & every year
this season is a little less cold than memory tells me, 
but the air is still taut with it. still springing away 
from every breath that wants to draw it in. here, 
the stars whisper flicker-faint, only showing their faces 

if you strain your sight beyond the city’s ice-spire heights, 
their frozen illumination. when you learn to worry enough 
about forgetting how we hold on to warmth, instinct 
guards against that loss with fierceness. but i know

i talk too much about forest fires for someone 
who’s never witnessed a conflagration. so this time, 
instead, i’ll tell you about the ice-storms that used to 
come between snowfalls. how the force of their winds 
snapped branches as easy as icicles, twisted woodlands 
into crystal-palace halls that glittered even in the dark. 

& the moon has slipped now beneath the curving night, 
but its sickle-beam weaving still holds the velvet coat
of the sky together. every white stitch saying just wait 
a little longer, reminding me i still want to tell you 
about never understanding how to trace the gleam 
of constellations. & how i want to try again. & about 

those rarest of winter sunrises, the ones that drip 
peach-juice vivid: the horizon offering its dawnbloom
over & over, like a glimpse of all the love-letters ever 
written to light. i still want to climb up to see the sky 
made a saltshaker, every ice-white star plummeting 
to earth in flaring promise. & love pooling in the melt 
of each landing, warm enough to draw all the world 
into growing again.

—q.l. | for @femmelovely​ <3

LATER, I’LL SMASH MY PHONE SCREEN & WE’LL ALMOST MISS OUR TRAIN

but for now we go grocery shopping & manage not to get lost
on a day so hot the mirages curl off the street & halo us all
in smoky light. when we get back i finish half a box of cereal
in one sitting & all anyone says is well, guess we should
get more of that. i plait tiny braids in brown-black hair. slip
tiny flowers into them. fingers trace the line of a double rainbow
as it loops through the clouds: this was meant to happen,
don’t you see? disney music plays on repeat in the furnace-heat
of an airless room & we have movie nights with all of us
tucked onto the same sagging futon, sweat-slick vinyl sucking
at bare skin. would you walk away from someone you loved
if it meant you both could live forever? & maybe my old answer
would have been yes. but now love is two a.m. texts saying
i can see your lights on, go to sleep. two p.m. texts saying come over,
we’re all napping together. sitting cross-legged on a desk
because there’s no space anywhere else & what’s your deepest
darkest secret? love is how i don’t even think of not answering.
how we go grocery shopping with a wheeled suitcase so that
no one’s arms get too tired. on the way i pick so many wildflowers
i start making you hold them for me. there’s a picnic table outside
the store & there i weave daisies & maidenstears into long chains
before we head inside, crowned the royal court of the frozen-food aisle
in a city we only freshly named home. for now our faces are all
still kissed by firelight. i was a little bit scared of you at first but now
i don’t even remember why. love is holding hands on the subway
so we don’t get separated. sharing plates in chinatown. sharing
clothes that fit inexplicably. sharing clothes that don’t fit at all.
buying postcards for the people who couldn’t come along. buying
double, because what a small cost for a little more joy. we find a garden
where the asters are thick with bumblebees & in the half-light
everything looks as soft as they do. love is look at you, you’re
golden. a sunshine-smile, hands framing the world, the moment
cast rich as maple by summer-heavy air. losing track of money owed
by accident. losing track on purpose. there’s something ageless
about this gold-blushed way of living. how i know all this will dim
as it recedes into memory, but never quite fade completely.
the night before we left, the curfew lifted for the only time
all month, but we all stayed right here & called it home
until the last moment it was ours.

—q.l. | originally published here

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