in my mother is the sensitivity to my own misery i’ve lost, the ability to earnestly express it. she sleeps better now and is relieved to not wake up every morning with agonizing anxiety. it’s so sad to see the old me in her, to know what i’ve inherited and abandoned still lives in her or to realize i’ve lost a relationship to myself that was central to my identity for so long. i’m relieved to be less affected by misery but the absence of emotional purity is daunting 

route map

A blind man once thought, all the places your body goes,
birthing to death, make one long three-dimensional
trace on the surface of earth, if observed from the
skies by a god, who could recognize that unique
shape, just like we see a square; and would know it was
you not the billions of other unique human
traces, whose shapes explain everything each one has
been.

But I’m disappointed. The route that my body took
holds no surprises. I’ll need to see just where the
I in my head went, from when I first looked up from
inside a cradle, incredibly far back, to
now where I’m lying in bed, and then so on and –

I don’t mean the scenes they would just be a blur. I mean
high in the sky looking down to see what broken
ludicrous pretzel the I-line would make, and then
recognize, instantly, what that shape was all along.

primalclay

a firingsquad
is on
yr box of matches,
like the pull of water
in all stones
&the twotonedpowder
you took home
from the canyons;
you drew sigils
of grief
on a lakebed,
& the engine of time,
a trapdoor&
a fire-escape;
a ticketcheck
that threw you
in the shadows ----

I wish I never had to sleep

every day a rejection i hope i find new ways to be naive

i honestly didn’t want to use these, they’re too good

a piece for my niece

DEC–1 2025

Adoration

.

Wake up

with a living angel

Sounds like

bells are ringing

You, still asleep

like a cat

Long waves

hair onyx blades

In morning rays

and I cry

When I see you

this way

Not sad at all

just overwhelmed

Your peace

my relief

Whispering adorations

as my heart soars

I am always

yours

.

there is no future, only the onslaught of time. unaccountable, vacuous, amorphous time, towards which she is expected to move. forward. ahead. and somehow bypassing the present. the present redeeming itself through the grace of oblivion. how could she justify it. without the visibility of the present.

she says to herself she could displace real time. she says to herself she could display it before and become its voyeur. she says to herself that death would never come, could not possibly. she knowing too that there was no displacing death, there was no overcoming without the actual dying.

she says to herself if she were able to write she could continue to live. says to herself if she would write without ceasing. to herself if by writing she could abolish real time. she would live. if she could display it before her and become its voyeur. — theresa hak kyung cha, dictée

OMAHA

hemorrhage what i cant say

a brains ways a way

sorry i must well well well

does the invention also be

what i need from it

a swear word sewn into tongue

like a child is only a child

for now for what its worth

she spends shespends on the the the

spend more maybe it works out

maybe i cant move this body

how hell is other people

oh hell is my heavens direction

an excuse for going that way

or something that makes sense

like only something can make a sound

im crying walking home 3am

theres maybe anything happening

something that doesn’t want

to be seen

scatters into shadows

“a self-absorbed fool tumbles down the path of least resistance—«anyone but me! i’m not it, you can’t make me!»—he cries out to the world with each riffle. despite the distance he travels, he ends up right back where he started uphill, looking down at the barren meadow through a green lens. his mailbox was packed with letters from loved ones expressing their profoundest concerns when he strayed from home to embark on his journey. it left him quite unimpressed. for where he stands now lies the freedom to shed secular dread. no more missed calls or unanswered messages, in those he’s too often addressed as child or imbecile. no more guessing what jacket suits best. he’ll walk and talk and get pink-eye just the way he wants to. but he’d only ever taken up impractical pastimes before in his waste of alacrity. he wouldn’t know what to make of this. in the end it’s desire for a lack of desire, not immolation or even twisted vengeance on others. such a trim perfect naught he could be.”

—s.k.

sinkhole

yellowred
furnace, sure
and the eyes
were just painted-on,
you used a metalcan
like the ritual of spring
&broke all my doubledoors;
the risk of
prisms bored you,
&i thought about it
all night ----

And sometimes, when a person gets hurt, they see the world through the lenses of their pain, and it makes everything so much darker than it ought to be…

let miserable be