being is the bridge

✴

art-themed natal chart readings (jan 2026)

To my 30-year-old self

“I lean to you, numb as a fossil. Tell me I’m here.” 
— Sylvia Plath

It is with contained and hysterical fear
that I call for you.
Half of me does not expect 
to have you secure —
for presently I feel I am losing you.
My hands are not real,
nor my body,
nor the world that frightens and suffocates me.

	      I’m here in your crevices, viscous
		            In your repeated wounds, vicious inheritance
Drying to a powder on your lips. Don’t go
			                Looking for me. I have already happened.
	      Neither of us is ahead of nor behind the other:
		          There, outside your window, I am 
			                A speck of pollen
				                      Laden with fruit.

This is why you might be dead
or trembling in a sterile room —
it began here, and my poem is a reminder.

	      There were
Other ways death needed me. You were frightened 
		            We would emerge unlived. Your fear 
        Bullied me round the hours, your dreams 
				                        Exhausted me to tears.
Sometimes, I dreaded this promise I’d made 
To a dying girl.
	      Outliving you, I have been heavy with everything
			                    You didn’t get to do.

But when the hot, painful grip subsides
I sit here quietly
and life becomes tangible,
I become real and stop flickering.

        One body goes
Slack against the other, congealing light & time
		              Into something akin to devotion. These
	      Words. I know you read them in another life.

            

✴

Manifesto

I, continua and vessel,
slippery fish
descaled against the stones.

This ghoul looks good
in the flesh.
Lives with gusto.

This possession knows pleasure.
Use it for love.
Use it to commit one more
              
act of forgery: live a small life
in a large world.
Know that a god is not needed

for prayer. That as a variation
on we
I am communal.