Articles

I woke today tasting salt, and there is still an ocean for me—to find or cross, as all is passage and mourning, the naming of things that one day will be no more.

I am an open grave.

The hunt has been unsuccessful, as even / the dogs know.

The pointing instinct has always been controversial.

I think of my chest like the inside of a grand piano, each key triggering an invisible response in the instrument’s body, releasing some build of pressure within an anatomy of hammers and strings. I think about writing. It’s always a gamble to live life without writing everything down in real time—the fear of what will be forgotten haunted by anxiety over what’s already been lost. A train of inkblots surfaces behind my eyes and disappears just as quickly, like music. I try to resist reaching for metaphors, attaching any images or words that would put distance between myself and the moment as it’s happening. I try not to feel like a failure.

Sometimes he is back in our house in Anaheim, / sometimes with his family in Taiwan.

Drawing from the source directly is the practice that I call art.

I’m not even dressed before the pope
asks me for a lifelong yes.