You don’t feel the need for language to be strangled like I do. You let it be poetry, fall as it will. When words come out of your mouth it feels like dancing. I wouldn’t let mine loose like that. My feet were fettered as your body moved and tried to pull me in. Sometimes I feel like I’m benching myself. You have a way of filling up empty dancefloors. Everything is a dancefloor. You have a way of passing out literal roses to a bar full of strangers. You know how to laugh with strangers.
Sometimes I feel like a stranger who wants to know you. Sometimes I feel like no one in particular. You make me feel like someone in particular while still managing to acknowledge how stupidly microscopic we are. “Life’s like two seconds,” you said, as we walked onto that beach that spilled out of the dunes. It all felt like an illustration of your point. I’ve never felt so small and so specific at the same time, like we were pebbles on the moon.
“When words come out of your mouth it feels like dancing. I wouldn’t let mine loose like that.“
That same beach had purple patches of sand, crushed up garnet, apparently. When you saw the purple, you screamed and ran to it while I, becoming an onlooker, watched as you dropped to your knees and began to run your hands through it. What is there to be embarrassed about, really? I don’t know, but sometimes I laugh when everything else is paralyzed. You were rejoicing in the purple. You wanted to put some in your hair for later. There is no room for embarrassment in any of your pockets. They are heavy with sand and shells and stones.
Stace Brandt is a queer/lesbian writer, artist, and musician based in the Boston area. She is a Sagittarius sun, Leo rising, and Cancer moon, which probably explains a lot. Along with creative pursuits in words and sounds, Stace is the assistant director and curator of an artist-run, contemporary art gallery in Boston called VERY.