CW: self harm, reference to school shootings, and the detention camps at the border

parasitoids have goals too

Thought about self-harm while eating

my partner out, arepas at the club, 

a snack before bed, scrambled eggs

on toast on tostada on a layer of aguacate, 

tomatoes from the garden, cucumbers,

pan dulce, mango, cheerios with orange juice - 

Am I the only one who does that?

this is to say my bodymind is hungry

and itches for feeling, even amidst pleasure,

sensations electric, tangy, tongue tied on a hand full

of sweets. And every time I ask myself

about the blue flowers in the back of my 

mind, the curtains drawn up over memory,

how to compost the bouquet, the girl-self, 

snake adorned, the fungal mind leading

ants to the mother, on slaughter

lane, I take a turn - the brain fog like

cotton in the mouth. I take two sips 

of an inconsequential thing and feel my

body slip away just like that. 

Just like that my body inconsequential.

A thing. A snake. A bouquet. A bed.

I stop asking myself if I’m the only one.

Doesn’t matter either way. The river runs

In four directions: source, sea, sink, swim.

community care

i do not know how to stop death. 

wasn’t taught how in school - although teachers these days are told to throw themselves in front of it and children reminded to hide and to run from it, reminded that if their shoes are too colorful they may draw attention from it. 

i don’t know how to stop death - but would offer my body, my bank account, my broke-down car, my job, anything, would offer it gladly, for the opportunity to learn. any deal with the devil would do. sabes quien puede enseñarme? does the jellyfish, cycling immortal through youth and elder, know how to stop the police bullet, know how to take back time, cure sickness, keep the electricity running, look beyond disaster? what lessons do the deep sea bacteria have on surviving fascism, does the lobster? blue and expansive, shedding skin after skin after skin - 

how do we learn? i barely know what it means to stay alive. i take daily probiotics (if i can remember), hope to make this house a home for bacteria deemed “worthy”, deemed “good”, to culture a biome of health, to perpetuate life. 

my sexual preference is the living; my gender - mostly human; my fetish - thriving/abolition: seeds sprouting in untainted soil, wind in the grass, cross-pollination, clean water, birdsong & the echo of earthworms digging, beetles diving mazes through leaves, land back, reparations upon reparations, both the calm after the storm and the storm itself, the dragonfly on the hunt, the planarian (flatworm) splitting in two again and again, duplicitous, multiplicitous, the chatter of mycelium sharing sugar water with a forest as small as one tree or as big as thousands. my kink - the sound of the state breaking apart, the whoosh of every prison vanishing, the music of people unharmed unharmed unharmed free of harm, dancing silently or as loud as possible. swimming in joy and grief, basking in emotion, the ring of the both/and, the I love yous, the smack of eating good food, of kissing, of fucking in love, lust, affection, anything but indifference. 

have been dreaming in anger, in color, with mantis shrimp eyes, full spectrum. legs upon legs. dreaming of copepods, angels microscopic, spoonsforhands spoonsforfeet, synchronized swimming in our drinking water, stirring the soup of apocalypse. ameobas bursting in the roiling boil, in the purification process. i hope greg abbott the oppressor of your choice drowns in the stew, or dies of thirst in a cage built to hold children escaping climate catastrophe.

how many spoons do we need to dish out the end of capitalism, the end of colonialism? 

pooling enough spoons until the ground stops bleeding oil, until the veins of the earth are replenished with clean water, with revolution, with migration and movement - 

with music music music.

hand feeding one another an orchestra of slurps: mouths full, bellies full.