As distracting as a condom, and as necessary

In the flip of a switch, my mom became pregnant with me

and yet I never realized it was that easy

even when I started to have sex.

A condom is distracting

and in fact, it’s often easier to pretend the thing

doesn’t exist,

doesn’t need to.

Sex is a simple thing,

and even though I was never one to worry over it excessively

I didn’t think it would be as easy

as I eventually discovered it was.

I still don’t know how to put on a condom

and I suppose it’s luck that has never required me to learn.

But I’m stuck on this declaration:

“a condom is distracting”

Struggling to overcome the suffocating strength of

natural instinct to pull closer and grip tighter

I never imagined that sometimes your body

could be telling you something that is so definitely wrong

that you don’t want to do what it tells you

that you must fight if you want to be free.

My own thoughts feel broken when we pull apart

to be quickly distracted,

and sometimes I’d rather take the risk

if only to keep my mind enticingly fluid

for just a few moments longer.

But I suppose I should never forget that

in the blink of an eye I was created

and only because my parents are human

and spontaneously chose to

entertain the feeling of the moment.

Cinn

I’ve always been a fan of the ocean. Not to be cliché, but in exactly the way that you think. I am in awe of how simply large it is, how it is constantly moving, bringing itself in and out in a rhythm as easy as breathing. I love its color, even though I’ve never been in a part of the ocean that allows me to see my own feet touching the bottom. It’s green, dark blue, and white, and that’s always been just fine.

I’ve never been in ocean water higher than my head. And though I’m not a risk taker, I’ve always wondered how it would feel if I were to let it sweep me away, let myself float out on a raft and just guess whether the tides would eventually return me.

A few weeks ago I went to the beach with my dog. He’s always loved to swim, to get himself soaking wet just to feel what it’s like. And after fifteen years of living, he still understands water when he sees it: he knows the purpose is to walk right in and let it sweep you, let it consume you.

I’ve never felt more exhilarated and nervous in my life. My dog is fifteen, older than most of the dogs I’ve ever known, and yet he still trots right into the ocean, acknowledging it, and yet not truly recognizing the power the ocean possesses to take him. Every minute I was afraid he would be swept away from me, that I would run in after him, and yet fail to release him from the grip of the tides. That we would have to leave the beach and admit defeat. That once and for all, Cinnamon would be gone.

But he trotted with such energy that I couldn’t bear to take him out of the water. I splashed at his face timidly, and when he noticed he gave a happy snap with his teeth. He sent a passing glance to me when he could afford to tear his eyes away from the ocean.

My dog and I, the two of us, I believe are kindred spirits. We both like to be outside, and together we have grown through life at an alarmingly fast rate. We’ve lived and loved together. My mom, she’s his master, the one he will always follow no matter how far she goes. My other dog, he’s my child, the one who will always need me somewhere close.

But Cinnamon and I? We’re each other’s best friends.

I think we both can admire the power of the ocean. The two of us, we’ve never hesitated to walk right in, to smile at the waves and relish in the water that lingers on our tongues. We’ve both wondered how far out we could go before we would be forced to turn around.

And we both know that one day we will walk into the ocean, and we will not look back.

Untitled 1

When I went to my first real poetry reading, my mom and I sat in the back row. It was in the small upstairs room of a tiny store in Hamden, and we were sitting on folding chairs. Our jackets were too heavy to be sitting on the chairs alone. They tipped weakly when we stood up.

The first people who read their pieces were decent, and I felt uneasy. Uneasy in the way that I felt both better than everyone around me, but also unsure that I was justified to feel that way.

I have gotten these butterfly feelings before, but it’s only sometimes, in moments of unbelievable clarity, that I can identify the exact reason for them. I think the most important times when I get these feelings are when I feel that someone truly, and irrevocable just gets it. You meet someone, you know, and just get the intrinsic understanding that they get it.

James Arthur was that way. He read his poem, the Land of Nod, and I felt with every muscle in my body, with shivers running down my spine and through my arms, that he just understood. he knew what I was feeling, and he told us all about it.

I don’t know how to write here. But lately I’ve been getting these intense feelings, and they make me feel like I want to cry, but I’m not sure about what. But these feelings, they’re just so overwhelming, so intense to think about.

There isn’t one person on this earth who understands everything in exactly the way I do. There isn’t someone who can talk to me about my dad, and about my writing, and about my feelings. But there’s just a couple people, and they give me these moments of clarity. They give me these moments of feeling like I am right. Like there is a way to live this life in exactly the way I’ve always imagined. There are people on this earth who get a high from words, from melodies, from feelings. There are other people, living on this earth right now, who feel true tears, and true joy, from some of the same things I do.

There’s been a lot that’s happened lately that I haven’t really been ready to start trying to write about. Maybe it’s because I don’t want to try, I don’t know. But God, I’ve missed this feeling. It is so exhausting sometimes to be talking to someone and to feel as if youre talking to yourself.

But to hear a piece of music and to feel it physically, to imagine another person just understanding that, I mean it honestly makes me feel unbelievable.

a lot of people want to get to know me

but so many people just don’t know how.

or they get caught up on things that are fun and cool to talk about but just don’t scratch the surface

sometimes I forget too that there is more beneath this surface

but these feelings, god, these feelings sometimes that

remind me of what it felt like when the world fell together for the first time

I have these moments of clarity where I feel like

I know why I’m here

I know what I want to do

I know what it’s like to just feel

they are so unpredictable

but so powerful.

and so hard to explain

Harrison

When I was working at my first job, as a lifeguard at a health and fitness club’s pool, I met a boy named Harrison something. He had red hair that technically made him a ginger, but he usually wore it long enough that it seemed almost brown and he had the type of preppy boy street credibility that allowed us all to forgive him and remember his attractiveness, if in the most self-centered, approval-seeking way. He was only a few years older than me, but might as well have been light years. I was in high school. He attended my future college, although neither of us knew that right away.

Who’s to say what enlightened me to the fact that in some part of him he found me to be physically attractive, all I remember is becoming quickly aware of it and falling pathetically fast into another emotional endeavor—one I was entirely ill-equipped to address. I remember seeing his name next to mine on the work schedule and unsuccessfully pushing down the leaps of my stomach to my throat. I unknowingly seeked attention, he was someone to give it.

Of course nothing happened between he and I outside of my imagination. my mind was young and wild enough then to tell elaborate stories over and over again and produce the same perky thrill each time; the only nag at the back of my mind pushing me to feel unsatisfied with these thrills was my desire for what I had never had. And that desire, unfortunately, only grew as time wore on.

But the summer before I entered my senior year of high school, I took a two week-long trip with my dad to Germany to visit relatives. Most of them spoke only German, and none of them were even close to me in age. I spent two weeks in a blur of food I loved and food I politely hated, becoming well-accustomed to the fact that in other countries there is such a thing as “sparkling” water, and that often to cool them on a hot day Germans desire to crack open water that is somehow unnecessarily (in my opinion then) carbonated.

There are two instances in which I remember perceiving a powerful connection between myself and someone I presumed was my own age (or close to it). One happened when my dad and I went to a park in Munich and observed a few teenaged/twenty-something boys (and a few girls I was unabashedly jealous of) surfing a wave as it emerged ad infinitum from underneath a stone bridge. I wrote a piece about it then, about the disgustingly addictive glance I shared with one of these said surfers. And the other important moment from that trip I recall as the reflective moments I spent thinking about Harrison while walking along a vineyard.

It being decades ago in the sped-up timing of adolescent growing, I can’t recall exactly the fantasy I allowed myself with Harrison. Surely it was innocent enough; probably had something to do with a picnic or a shared shift where he did something romantic like ask me out. But regardless, I remember feeling such a positive connection as I walked in the worn-in path of the vineyard’s dirt road. I didn’t pay attention to the grapes or the trees as they were so much as I paid attention to the way Harrison might visualize me walking among them. I couldn’t seem to separate myself from the thought of the two of us together, and in my mind’s eye I only saw what desire pushed forth for me. My dad, who never has been good at understanding moments of reflection as they occur to other people, only walked forward without me, speaking quick and light German to my grandmother’s youngest brother, Clemens. They faced forward with almost no knowledge of me as I struggled to pull myself back to Earth at the clear expense of my own wishes.

I’ve no idea what has happened to Harrison now; he’s since graduated and our time at Loyola had always been a sort of pseudo-friendly demon anyway. I think I bought a boxed cake with the intention of baking it for his birthday once, but realized quickly what an impulse buy it had been.

I do have to think though, that if we were to see each other now we wouldn’t entirely be strangers. We never shared anything between the two of us, not really, but he did know and have valuably new faith in me at a time in my life during which I hadn’t yet realized how to measure my own worth.

dancing with a stranger

One of my favorite nights in Cape Town is tinged with a feeling of both total fulfillment and a bit of inadequacy. It’s an interesting feeling, and one that became all too familiar towards the end of my trip.

Who’s to say which one of them it was that had upset me first that night, all I remember is that neither of them, the two boys in my love triangle, had decided that night to choose me. And, in the spirit of someone who is fully understanding of the fate she set for herself, I chose this time not to let it ruin my night. We decided to go to one of my favorite bars anyway, and I was content to leave the madness out of sight and continue participating in what had propelled my love triangle together in the first place.

Armed with a vision of myself fed purely by the positive reinforcement of my own confidence, I began by dancing alone. I and everyone I was friends with were used to it by now—when Emily drinks, she likes to dance for hours on end. You know it’s not a bad night when she’s dancing. And there I was, dressed in who knows what, but dancing nonetheless, knowing that one of my love triangle participants was watching for one out of every thirty seconds, and knowing that although he didn’t choose me for reasons I had come to peace with, he would certainly have chosen me in another time, another place.

It wasn’t long before I picked out whom I perceived to be the best dancer in the place (besides me). And, again, armed with an air of confidence, I slid blithely next to him, allowing room for him to see and desire to dance with me.

Of course he did. And when we started to dance together, the two of us perfect strangers, it was, for lack of a non-cliché, electrifying. I couldn’t tell you what any of the music was, but I can tell you that this guy, this young guy who couldn’t have been more than five years apart from me in age, that he and I got along like we had been dance partners for years. He certainly had expectations that I did not, but in the absence of any other responsibilities, I let go and we danced together.

I know how many people were watching us. And I couldn’t say for certain what they were thinking but I can say that in those moments I had the confidence of someone who sees the way people are watching her and who basks in it. I think my dance partner and I, though I never got his name and never saw him again, fell in love a little that night.

When we all left the bar, I chased him down because I had finally felt an urge to kiss him the way he wanted to kiss me. We walked across the street together, my friends halfheartedly trying to flag me down (I had built up a reputation for myself anyway). We shared a not so important, not so long, not so meaningful kiss. It was tinged with a feeling of the night being over anyhow. “Remember my number” I said on pulling away. He didn’t.

I ran across the street and my friend was making herself throw up between the curb and an empty (I think) waiting taxicab. We went home and I wasn’t surprised to hear from one of his friends later on Facebook that he wanted to reach out to me. I never responded