NEW | Poetry | M.V. Riasanovsky

Painting by Vincent Van Gogh, via Wikimedia Commons

CW: description of a suicide

 

resemblings

 

5:27PM

i start to feel emotional

so i think did i take my meds this morning

numbness as homeostasis or as antithetical

i can’t decide what meaning my body should make of itself

 

200? - 20??

he does things to my body that i don’t often give a name

i am unable to give him a name here, either

 

12-18

𖡎 texts me ☏i just realized i never replied to your message ahh i was just not in a

headspace to reply and was like i’ll text them tomorrow; then tomorrow passed far

too many times☏

 

winter

we are trying not to drift apart

—which is sadder than if it were simply happening—

 

back then

tomorrow passed far too many times

the taste of my tears on the cold tiles      the kitchen floor where he threw me

 

18XX

my greatgreatgreatgreat/??grandfather slits his own throat with a knife

the death certificate —                              :::melancholia—

 

 

some day

there are glittering flowers in warm breezes

there is softness, or a gentle kind of remembering

 

 march2018

i stop hormone replacement therapy because

i start to resemble my father                                    among other reasons

 

tomorrow(/s)

i tell myself it is important to have these

i collect them with my eyes closed

i pick them like glittery flowers and put them somewhere safe to dry—

 

 

when the dust settles

when i become something altogether different

entirely

when my grandfather’s father dies overseas

in bloodshed unrequited

when that becomes the ancestral path

when i am the ghost consuming itself

the machination of melancholia

presently manifest

a new form of bloodshed

 

?iguessihaveleftalreadyorwillsometimeorrrr      ?

my hands are cold so i drive a little faster

it never makes me warmer

just more like i am a real thing in a real body

where the breathing is in perpetual motion

so i can give myself new names at the cusp of immortality

on the brink of other worlds

train tracks

that's the thing about families and funerals

churches of strangers and the like

we're driving home and i look at you and i say

look at how bright the moon is and look at

how much i love you and we both laugh

because it is silly and also because it is true

the stars are bright above this home

i think about the funerals i have been to

the ones i won't go to

but we're driving home and there is a bright moon

about the religion i grew up in and the one you didn't

we lived in a little apartment in buffalo new york

the snow moved by the lake effect from toronto to us

about the people who have died and how we quantify their stories

in the quilt the shoes the lists

about how it will always bother me when people call new york city

new york like there isn't a whole state above the island of manhattan

or that it wasn't upstate it was western new york

when we go to the grocery store i push the cart most of the time

you carry the bags

is there a different train station we can kiss at

i want to crush a penny

i want to feel more alive each day than the day before

about my bodies disagreement

within the procedural generation

without the catacombs

where are we going to put all of these bodies

where will i kiss you with the pennies if there are no more train stations

or goldfish or fairy lights

i am remembering that there are unopened handcreams and

thank you cards

about the first time my father called me bitch and my

mother said nothing

about when i learned to surround myself with toys as guardians

here is the thing to remember about me

if nothing else i am earnest and oriented towards a future

where the snow in buffalo is not lethal

or maybe my trauma doesn't define me so much

about the plastic water bottles or my radioactive ancestral homes

your favourite animal is an opossum mine is a beluga whale

they will never swim together i will see to it but i will

be grateful for the opportunity to accept this award

cohesion, coherence, cogent, continuity, etc. etc. etc.

look what do you want me to say?

i can tell you my secrets or we can just get through this together

are you listening?

are you listening?

are you????????????????????????????????????????????????????

chronology is boring why not just eat spider webs and then remember every bad and good thing that has ever happened

look the moon is so bright tonight that's all that really matters

she is breathing into my lungs for me

about listening to breathing lungs of moons and pennies

 

 

ugly

 

i could always take more lexapro

you kept your secret vhs stash at my house

growing up because you weren’t allowed

to watch things deemed sinful which is

funny because my house was not any

 

better really but at least we had the trees

we would tie your dog angel’s leash to our scooter and

have her pull us around your cul-de-sac which is an

annoying word it’s ugly also cul-de-sacs are often ugly

but you also had the trees at least we had them loving

it has been a long time and i am still wondering

what i could possibly take to settle the grime to

unleash the memories like balloons or lanterns

 

into a sky that will do a much better job of

caressing them it was never my intention to

keep these things forever but they are lining

my nerve endings the myelin sheath of trauma

something i never wanted to be responsible

for i could always take more lexapro or keep

 

listening to the white noise gratitude

sounds or promise myself anoth

day another day another

day that’s all anot

day another

day ano