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Announcement: Moved Xismosa Xit
Hello subscribers specifically! I moved my Xismosa Xit blog posts to a website all their own at xismosaxit.com! I will be using this site to post prose and poetry, and I hope you subscribe at my new site as well 💜
The Ants Were Here First
The ants were here first
The spiders were her first
The flies, unfortunately, where here first
The mosquitos can go to hell
The trees were here first
(The sharks before them)
The wisdom of their roots slowly breaking up concrete that “civilization” tried to restrain them
Believing, in such a short time (in only 80 generations), that we could corral nature
Our whims, our beliefs, our values were stronger than roots breaking concrete
We who do not even remember, not even around to do so, the movement of land, breaking apart before even the roots existed
Allergies
I used to decorate my apartment with dahlias, chrysanthemums, daisies, carnations, roses, Queen Victorias, sunflowers, and lavender. He is allergic to flowers. He came into my life and he is not his allergies. He moved in with me, and he colored in the places that could not be filled by dying plants in old vases. He made me origami ones, let me paint the walls whatever crazy colors, and got me mugs with all different kinds on them.
I still missed them. I missed cutting the stems so they bloomed in vases, changing their water every day, their faces always bright when I walked in.
His face used to light up like that. Now we have entered the monotony of living together, of choosing each other every day.
One day, I didn’t choose him. I chose the dying blooms that stayed bright for a few days, always unique and always replaceable.
I cheated on him for a day. I told him I was visiting my grandmother and drove two hours in the opposite direction.
The superbloom was yellow and orange and green and shallow. The California poppies were so small I had to lean down in the field. I couldn’t lay down or I’d come home all itchy myself. He’d ask me if I’d rolled around in hay. “Even worse,” I’d have to tell him, “pollen!”
And he would jump out of bed and strip the sheets and strip our clothes and throw me in the shower and join me and push me up against the wall and I’d never regret bringing home pollen until he was teary-eyed for the next month.
“You’re trying to kill me” he would say.
“If I was, I wouldn’t have told you.”
I just wanted excitement. I just wanted to get in trouble. I wanted him to get mad at me for legitimate things that are my fault, not for things I could only do so much about. For not taking off my shoes right away when I come in, for not washing the dishes the way he does, for not pausing before I spoke, for being honest without tact, for forgetting what I said in passing. Instead, laying down in the superbloom is completely my fault, and I would know completely that I was in the wrong.
Love Is
Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast
Love can be labeled
Love cannot be quantified
Love is platonic
romantic
sexual
familial
physical
emotional
spiritual
communal
Love is care
Love does not pertain to time
nor cares about distance
nor dimensions
Love is not clear
Love is a fluid
ever changing but there
Love is a gas
filling up as much space as it can
Love is a plasma
unfathomable
Love is a solid
A scaffolding of support
Love hurts
Love is scary
Grief is love
“What if grief if not love persevering?”
Love is connection
Even if only for a moment
Love is connection
even after it’s severed
Love is connection
walking each other home
wanting to spend as many moments with friends before sleep overtakes you
Love is choice
Love is respecting boundaries.
Love is making boundaries
trying to keep people in your life.
accepting that love can be conditional
Love is respect
Love is communication of what respect means
Love is communication
Even when you are afraid
Love is honesty
even when it hurts
Speaking directly with tact and care
Love is knowledge
Love is learning
Love is listening
Love is letting others make their own choices
even if the choice is to leave you behind
Love is letting go
not holding hostage.
Love is trying
Love is trying to do better.
(Love is checking yourself before you wreck yourself.)
Love is emotional management
Love is trying not to go off like a bomb
Love is not hiding yourself
Love is the mortifying or deal of being known
Love is wanting to be known
Love is wanting to know
Love is acceptance
Love is feeling safe
Love is not walking on eggshells.
Love is making sure they feel safe.
Love is providing safe harbor.
Love is keeping one another
Love is not worrying about how long they will be in your life
Love is the point
Connection is the point
Nothing matters
So what matters to you?
Love is for others.
Love is for yourself.
Love is finding the balance
So you are not drowning
In others or yourself
Taking time for yourself
So you can be with others
Love is accepting that sometimes balance is not possible
And recognizing how long you can handle that
Without losing yourself
Love is resistance
of capitalism who calls on you to only love profit
Love is resistance by building community
Love is keeping others safe too
Even if you don’t know them well
Love is believing others will take care of you to their capacity
Love is taking care of yourself
Resetting yourself
so you don’t burn out
Love is resisting a system that is trying to burn your out
Love is forgiving yourself when you do burn out
Love is defending others
Love is believing yourself
Love is hurting others temporarily so they are happier in the long run of life
“Life is too short and love is too long”
Love is long
Love is bigger than your body
Love is more than you can imagine
Love is your ancestors who prayed for you
who thought of you without knowing your name
nor you theirs
Love is your descendants you pray for
you strive to do better for
who you think of without knowing their names nor them yours
Love is infinite
attention is not
Love hurts
Love heals
Love sucks
Love is desperate
Infatuation is desperation and dislikes boundaries
Love is kindness turning others beautiful
Love is kindness
Love is not letting lust take control over care
Love is permission
Love is enthusiastic consent
Love is wanting to eat them
Love is wanting to feed them
Love is wanting to provide a roof over their head
Love is wanting your cells to integrate to share pieces of each other
Love is wanting your atoms to touch
to get past the illusion of touch
Love is napping together
Love is cuddling
platonically or otherwise.
Love is laughing together
Love is crying together
Love is going on little adventures
even if it’s only to the grocery store.
Love is wanting to be together
even if it’s only talking in a parking lot until 2 AM
Love is making friends at 4 AM.
Love is inside jokes
And excited to make new ones with new friends
Love is choice
Love is friendship
is inclusive
is including them even if you don’t think they’ll come
Love is not blood-based
Love is chosen family
even if it excludes blood relatives
Love is caring about others more than the values that call on you to hate them
Love is considering you might be wrong.
Love is being open
Love is not religious
Love can be spiritual
Love is connection
Love is chemical
Love is not caring that it’s chemical
Love is not only chemical.
Love is bonding
Love is healing
Love is sharing
Love is knowing when to say no
Love is not bleeding yourself dry
nor asking the same of others
Love is not resentment.
Love isn’t holding grudges
As satisfying as they might feel
Love is forgiveness
Especially so you do not hold the hurt anymore
trying not to give them power to hold that corner of your heart
Love is what you can forgive
Love is what you can give
Love might be writing a poem about love and not knowing how to order it
recognizing the irony of trying to explain love in a two-dimensional medium
knowing it is a work that will always be incomplete
But still wanting to do justice to a friend asking “What is love?”
Graveyard Poetry
Written at the William Blake exhibit at the Getty Museum on December 2, 2023.
Graveyard Poetry
In the middle of a museum
surrounded by the works of long dead creatives
leaving behind etchings we cannot touch
And brushstrokes we cannot get too close to
Having colored their own line work
Affecting far into a future they could not even imagine
Graveyard Poetry
to sit with death
and laugh
and cry
at the absurdity
of anything else besides the surface of this earth
What does it matter to me
to learn about the center of the planet
If the people are not being fed
cut off from the fruits of their labor
what does graveyard poetry give me
except a space to lament my hardships
before I too am relegated to feed the trees that will never know my name
of the fungi that do not care what I did in life but only know that I did it
indiscriminately eating through my flesh
until it is unrecognizable to my lack of eyes
Seven generations down do not know who I am
except maybe an inkling of my love for them
compounded together with the love of fellow ancestors that I did not even know
and converge in them
Scabbing (7 of 366)
I keep picking at our story, letting it scab over only to open it fresh again, thousands of blood cells coursing to the top for each moment together. Every time its scab over again, it’s for a little longer, and a little more skin is formed, and the wound gets smaller. It’ll scar, new light brown pink cells showing off, proud to have beaten my impulses. I doubt you have a matching one. You started dating someone else before we stopped. You penciled me a letter so I could be as easily erased from your life. I’ll burn it someday.
Cleaning Day (6/366)
It’s just dishes. It’s just floors. It’s just dusting. It’s just laundry. It’s just vacuuming. It’s just mopping. It’s just switching laundry. It’s just picking up. It’s just cleaning the desk. It’s just mail. It’s just folding. It’s just dishes. It’s just wiping down the bathrooms. It’s just cleaning tubs. It’s just making knee pads from towels. It’s just vinegar and short shoulders straining. It’s just scrubbing toilets. It’s just picking up. It’s just sitting down. It’s just watching shows you don’t even like. It’s just dishes, again. It’s just Saturday. It’s just your only day off. It’s just work tomorrow.
Colochos de Flores 