MayaxCarina. Canon? Out and about. Calm. Casual intimacy. Soft. Really whatever else you want to add to that. I’ll take any crumb you offer from your nice brain. (Mighty one of the few real humans that is an adult and writes characters like real adult people) have a good night! Or whatever it is where you are in the world
You are very kind! I didn't always write with an understanding of real adult reactions and feelings, but thankfully I grew into an adult myself and that's made things a lot easier.
We're rocking canon-compliant with this one, with a dash of Big Feelings to go with all the soft and safe. Hopefully you're pleased with the outcome!
~~~
Liam had fallen asleep in the stroller before they’d even rounded the block, fresh air and the noises of their new neighbourhood lulling him into a much-needed calm. He sighs as they pass the sign and the newly-sprouting cherry blossom trees on their way into the park.
They’re all still adjusting to the new house. To the new commutes to work and the continuous unpacking of boxes and the proximity of new neighbours who wave across driveways as they arrive home each night.
It’s quaint, to find themselves fully submersed in the suburban life. To see kids riding their bikes along the sidewalk and hear dogs barking in nearby backyards.
Maya can only dream of what’s ahead: trick-or-treaters at Halloween and Christmas lights strung up at the holidays, Easter egg hunts in the backyard and fireworks on the 4th of July. There’s a whole community around them now, just waiting to be discovered.
Families with kids that Liam will grow up with, if they’re given the chance to adopt him.
The thought causes a familiar pang in her chest, the tug of a want so deep and so desperate it makes her gasp for breath in the middle of the night.
She instinctively reaches for Carina’s hand, lacing their fingers together to ground herself back into reality. They are together, now – all three of them. Liam is safe and happy and sleeping. In an hour, he will snuffle as he always does before he begins to cry, and his nose will scrunch the same as always when he accepts a bottle.
And Carina will smile that soft, loving smile that she reserves specifically for their son.
“We should plant some flowers in the yard,” Carina suggests, looking up at the burgeoning blooms on the trees overhead.
“Okay,” Maya agrees immediately, already picturing a sea of colour spread across the garden beds situated against the back fence. They’ll have to take a trip to the garden center – get some soil and some bulbs and maybe a few hanging planters for the front porch, too.
“Bambina,” Carina laughs, dragging her back into the present with a gentle tug on their joined hands. She’s getting even better at that, lately, recognizing when Maya’s fallen down a hole in her own thoughts.
It’s just another chapter of their relationship, Maya knows. The story they’d started building years ago, boxes spread about their shared apartment, conversations happening without any words at all. Carina can read the drift of her eyes, can spot the racing thoughts from a mile away.
“I love you,” Maya whispers, suddenly at a loss for anything else to say. It doesn’t feel like quite enough to explain the feelings swirling in her chest, but it makes Carina smile just the same.
“I love you, too,” Carina promises, leaning forward for a gentle kiss.
And somehow, that’s enough, too. The now, for a second, is plenty.
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Listed: Lake Mary
An avid outdoorsperson, Chaz Prymek releases his musical output under the name Lake Mary in honor of the eponymous reservoir in Big Cottonwood Canyon, located in his birth state of Utah. Being somewhat of a nomad, he has called many American states home, and currently resides in Missouri. Over the course of his travels, Prymek has collected friends and collaborators, such that Lake Mary evolved from a solo undertaking into a loose collective of like-minded souls. On Slow Grass, he enlisted a trio of his closest musical companions to honor the life of his recently departed dog, Favorite. In a recent review, Bryon Hayes commented that the record was “[a] graceful and endearing suite, it is a testament to the bond between human and dog, a rumination on the life of a loved one.” For this edition of Listed, Prymek explores the songs and poems that inspire him to reflect on life, love, and loss.
Airport People “From Morning no. 1”
from nine mornings by airport people
There is a quiet revolution happening of more and more people putting sincerity into music again, I know it's always been there, in the way that everything has always been everything, but it seems like either it's becoming easier to find, or maybe I'm softening as I age, or sincerity is in, either way... You can hear the heart of Leon in this album, it feels so sincere to me and found me at the perfect time. I didn't know I needed this album so I could do a lot of healing work, it made space for me to grow into the changes that were happening in my life at the time, it quickly became one of my all time favorite and deeply important records. I got to play with them over this summer and I swear to you the whole room turned shades of violet and yellows and red, like the sun was rising right inside that venue.
Quelle Chris “Ain't Always Living”
DEATHFAME by Quelle Chris
This song stayed on in my car for months this summer. It made its way into my world at just the right time. Learning to love yourself and develop self-worth is an epic journey, especially under capitalism. With what little time we have between work and sleep, we try our best to love and accept love, it doesn't always stick though. We all go through so much in our home lives, we fall in love, we make new friends, we end relationships, we die, our friends die, lose jobs, we protest, we make art we want to share with the world, we plant gardens, we build communities, we cook for our friends and families, we sing songs, we dance, we exhaust ourselves trying to be alive outside work. This song became a constant reminder to look around at what and who is in my life, and to cherish that while it's here.
Ben Seretan “Light Leaks”
Ben Seretan by Ben Seretan
Ben has made so much music since this came out. All of it is mind blowing and life affirming. However, this song has got me through so many big transitions in my life, over and over. I've learned time and time again from Ben's music, that the heart has to break to let the light in. That's what this song can do, break your heart and put it back together again. This track is a part of me now.
I got to sing this song with him at a show in Brooklyn and sobbed the whole time.
Vera Jean “New Sleep”
Door 1995 by Louise DeCramer
Sometimes you meet someone once who sticks with you forever. They make their way into your heart quickly and softly, and they make a home there. Sometimes you don't even notice until it's already happened. It's not anyone's purposeful doing, it's not anyone's fault or intent. It's just one of those things. Vera Jean (Louise) has done just that. These albums have soundtracked many long drives back from the farm or swimming holes, the car is silent and grinning with exhaustion...
There is a different kind of way joy hits when you've lost.
Maya Weeks “Tethers”
Tethers by Maya Weeks
This album took me back to when I lived on the north coast. It feels like the walk to the coast, over shrubs and between conifers and pillows of fog, revealing a cold, wild and welcoming ocean. Exploring tide pools, poking at urchins, skipping rocks and harvesting kelp and mussels for dinner. It floored me when I first heard it, still does.
Ross Gay & Bon Iver “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude”
Dilate Your Heart by Ross Gay
I haven't listened to this without weeping.
What I Didn’t Know Before by Ada Limón
was how horses simply give birth to other
horses. Not a baby by any means, not
a creature of liminal spaces, but already
a four-legged beast hellbent on walking,
scrambling after the mother. A horse gives way
to another horse and then suddenly there are
two horses, just like that. That’s how I loved you.
You, off the long train from Red Bank carrying
a coffee as big as your arm, a bag with two
computers swinging in it unwieldily at your
side. I remember we broke into laughter
when we saw each other. What was between
us wasn’t a fragile thing to be coddled, cooed
over. It came out fully formed, ready to run.
____________
This poem has been read back and forth between myself and some friends as a way to say I'm thinking of you or taking you with me.
Reconocimiento // Acknowledgement by Alejandra Pizarnik
Tu haces el silencio de las lilas que aletean
en mi tragedia del viento en el corazón.
Tu hiciste de mi vida un cuento para niños
en donde naufragios y muertes
son pretextos de ceremonias adorables
//
You made the silence of the lilacs fluttering
in the tragedy of wind that is in my heart.
You turned my life into a children's tale
where shipwrecks and death
are an excuse for a beloved ceremonies.
____________
When I read this once, it clicked and this book opened up to me. I read this poem aloud to Emma in the park the other day and it silenced us both. I could write many records about what this paints in my head.
People by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
No people are uninteresting.
Their fate is like the chronicle of planets.
Nothing in them is not particular,
and planet is dissimilar from planet.
And if a man lived in obscurity
making his friends in that obscurity
obscurity is not uninteresting.
To each his world is private,
and in that world one excellent minute.
And in that world one tragic minute.
These are private.
In any man who dies there dies with him
his first snow and kiss and fight.
It goes with him.
There are left books and bridges
and painted canvas and machinery.
Whose fate is to survive.
But what has gone is also not nothing:
by the rule of the game something has gone.
Not people die but worlds die in them.
Whom we knew as faulty, the earth’s creatures
Of whom, essentially, what did we know?
Brother of a brother? Friend of friends?
Lover of lover?
We who knew our fathers
in everything, in nothing.
They perish. They cannot be brought back.
The secret worlds are not regenerated.
And every time again and again
I make my lament against destruction.
____________
I have been thinking about this poem for years. You can think you know most things about somebody, until their funeral. As you watch people you've never met come and say how much this same person meant to them, stories you've never heard, then sharing making friends because you have lived on two sides of the same world. You can start to see one world fade and a new one begin in the light still shining from this person's universe that was and is much bigger than you ever expected.
Mary Oliver— Dog Songs
“You may not agree, you may not care, but
if you are holding this book you should know that of all the sights I love in this world,
and there are plenty,
very near the top of the list is this one:
dogs without leashes.”
_______________
This book is so special to me. I would read this aloud to my pup for years before she passed away.
Thank ya'll for having me.
I hope someone can find something in here to resonate with.
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April 29, 2023: June, Alex Dimitrov
June
Alex Dimitrov
There will never be more of summer
than there is now. Walking alone
through Union Square I am carrying flowers
and the first rosé to a party where I’m expected.
It’s Sunday and the trains run on time
but today death feels so far, it’s impossible
to go underground. I would like to say
something to everyone I see (an entire
city) but I’m unsure what it is yet.
Each time I leave my apartment
there’s at least one person crying,
reading, or shouting after a stranger
anywhere along my commute.
It’s possible to be happy alone,
I say out loud and to no one
so it’s obvious, and now here
in the middle of this poem.
Rarely have I felt more charmed
than on Ninth Street, watching a woman
stop in the middle of the sidewalk
to pull up her hair like it’s
an emergency—and it is.
People do know they’re alive.
They hardly know what to do with themselves.
I almost want to invite her with me
but I’ve passed and yes it’d be crazy
like trying to be a poet, trying to be anyone here.
How do you continue to love New York,
my friend who left for California asks me.
It’s awful in the summer and winter,
and spring and fall last maybe two weeks.
This is true. It’s all true, of course,
like my preference for difficult men
which I had until recently
because at last, for one summer
the only difficulty I’m willing to imagine
is walking through this first humid day
with my hands full, not at all peaceful
but entirely possible and real.
--
(June is my birthday month and also the best month. Sorry, I don’t make the rules.)
More like this:
» Steps, Frank O'Hara
» After Work, Richard Jones
» Dolores Park, Keetje Kuipers
» Awaking in New York, Maya Angelou
» A Step Away From Them, Frank O'Hara
Today in:
2022: Poem to My Child, If Ever You Shall Be, Ross Gay
2021: Choi Jeong Min, Franny Choi
2020: Earl, Louis Jenkins
2019: Kul, Fatimah Asghar
2018: My Life Was the Size of My Life, Jane Hirshfield
2017: I Would Ask You To Reconsider The Idea That Things Are As Bad As They’ve Ever Been, Hanif Abdurraqib
2016: Tired, Langston Hughes
2015: Democracy, Langston Hughes
2014: Postscript, Seamus Heaney
2013: The Ghost of Frank O’Hara, John Yohe
2012: All Objects Reveal Something About the Body, Catie Rosemurgy
2011: Prayer, Marie Howe
2010: The Talker, Chelsea Rathburn
2009: There Are Many Theories About What Happened, John Gallagher
2008: bon bon il est un pays, Samuel Beckett
2007: Root root root for the home team, Bob Hicok
2006: Fever 103°, Sylvia Plath
2005: King Lear Considers What He’s Wrought, Melissa Kirsch
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