Heteropessimism
you promised me heartbreaking works of staggering genius.
you told me everything was illuminated.
you promised me freedom, purity, and corrections.
you promised no more virgin suicides, no more marriage plots, no more rules of attraction.
we’d be on the road, in the post office,
eating ham on rye.
we’d measure time in fight clubs, lullabies, white noise, and
by the evening redness in the west.
you promised me
only revolutions, inherent vice, infinite jest.
you told me
they would know our velocity,
that we’d feel it all,
extremely loud
and incredibly close.
To all the friends I made in my twenties
Sometimes–albeit rarely–but especially when one is young, Revelry is the verso face of misery and Terror.
–Jordy Rosenberg, Confessions of the Fox
sing to me of candy-colored years–
all those stumblings are sepia now.
I want to write. I want to call.
I scroll instead.
how many likes does it take to say
I see you;
I need you
to see me
like you used to
but not like that, like now,
like you’d see me
if you saw me now.
have we grown or just kept going?
I was all sad-girl stammer,
shy and shambolic, phony, frenetic,
sultry shutterbug,
camera shy (except when alone).
gruff and untethered now
I float
more like a leaf than a balloon
those ties somehow impossible to fully sever.
here I am in the Texas sun,
there you are in
Utah. New Orleans. Chicago.
New York. Portland. Minneapolis
that fabled bay I’ll never deserve
but you just TOOK.
first thoughts aren’t always best thoughts,
but revisions
aren’t always improvements.
moments come unconnected.
pearls don’t stay on the string
but scatter
like pool balls at the break.
we disperse
like stars or planets after the big bang
throws us all into orbit
but gravity–
cheesy as this metaphor is–
holds us in place
keeps space in between but
moves us in relation to each other.
Laura K. Wallace, AKA Lola or Wally, is a bookseller/recovering academic in Austin. this is their first poetry publication. insta and twitter: @lolaleviathan https://tinyletter.com/feelingofgaze