p a r t i s a n
I make myself coffee at half past three in the afternoon, and pour in sugar and pieces of melted chocolate, stirred in with a knife. It’s the choice, I think, the freedom to do things because you’re the only one narrating.
My afternoons often contain some longing for morning. I let myself confuse the two, like the steam is smoke in my eye.
The choice is this, that at half past three, I have the whole day ahead of me, and in my head the hours stretch out so I can appreciate the already gone. I double booked myself all week and I will wind up pulling out on people I imagine I could love, if given half the chance. But can we love freely if we fall in love with sunrises and it’s already the afternoon?
Last night I did for free what I’d love to do forever, and imagined myself again a part of some collective with a vision. I have some ideas, you know, and sometimes I miss the village and knowing where the best water taps are.
Maybe it’s because I’ve spent the last decade always in love with one thing or another, and now it’s gone and I sleep soundly, thickly. I wake bleary, like sleep is something I can just fall into. I lick the bottom of my coffee cup and feel like the whole of something worth my own protection. And just like that, there’s a lifetime ahead.
I think I’ll always love mornings more when they bleed a little into my afternoon.
Loved From Afar
I have always been a person
who is loved from afar.
Like something to be admired
from behind a sheet of glass
never to be fully known or understood.
I'm starting to wonder
if the real me is too much.
Because it feels like any time
someone gets close
they aren't as impressed with me
than when I was at arm's length
Until When
I am not going to write for a while.
I waited a couple of weeks to actually type that sentence because I did not yet know if I was on a brief vacation hiatus or a Guns n Roses Chinese Democracy is coming soon! hiatus. Having no sense of a timeline, no desire to draw a timeline even in sand, it is time for me to say it. Writing has ceased to bring me joy. I have been writing for the wrong reasons, and I need time away to love it again.
At this time last year, I had great expectations for my writing. A literary journal of note had longlisted one of my short stories for a prize. An author of greater note had praised my work. I had finished my novel and gotten an agent to represent the novel, which was sent to acquisition editors at whichever publishing houses you’re likely name without googling.
You can probably guess this, but neither that short story (nor a couple others since) nor the novel have garnered any offers. My agent and I have parted. A small press has requested a partial manuscript of the novel, and there are a couple other presses I will query, but the odds do not look like they did twelve months ago. In other words, I’ve been on a losing streak, which should not matter. I’d like for it not to matter. When I began writing a novel, I did not have an expectation that it would get published; I mostly wanted to see if I could write a novel. I think I was prepared for failure and a return to the drawing board, but I was not prepared for almost.
I started thinking of my writing in terms of a nascent career, which is to say, I lost sight of why I wrote to begin with.
Two weeks ago, I had a plan to draft chapter 13 of novel number two. I entered my favorite local coffee shop, but seeing bodies occupying every table, I lost my will to write. I mentally listed the different locations where I could write, the playlists or the beverages or the reading that might ready me to write—and I realized that if I had to try so desperately hard to make myself want to write, I was doing it all wrong. Thus began my hiatus of undetermined length.
The thing is, by any reasonable measure, I have attained my goals as a writer. When I joined Prose four years ago and wrote for the first time in years, my dream was to get a piece of my writing accepted for publication. After a whole lot of work and a whole lot of encouragement from my fellow Prosers, some still here and some departed, I gave it a shot—and I succeeded. I succeeded several times over, not with any big name mags, but with half a dozen short stories and nearly as many poems. Thanks to the fluke that is the alphabet, my contributor’s bio has appeared on the same page as a former Poet Laureate of the United States.
If you’re a longtime Prose user, you might remember a Random House/Prose essay contest that George Saunders judged. When he selected my essay, and I sent him 25 pages of that thus-far unwanted novel as the prize, I hoped I might get a paragraph response with some general thoughts and maybe a piece of encouragement. Instead, I received three full pages of enthusiastic notes. At the top of his email, the man who wrote Lincoln in the Bardo told me, “You’re a wonderful writer. Your prose is crisp and fast and convincing.” I will never forget how it felt to read those words.
I will feel that way about my writing again. I will love writing again. I once wrote in a Prose challenge that creative writing “feeds not only on my technical skills or logical analysis, but on my capability to express to someone else how I think and feel, with the center squarely on the ‘I,’” and that fiction is “an output of the core, internal self.” I will find that self again. I have written 28,000 words of that second novel, and I will finish it. Two weeks into my hiatus, I can say that and believe it, which is progress.
You will probably see me less for a while. I am not disappearing; I’ll pop in to read some posts now and again. If I get any good news about my submissions still floating out there in the ether, I’ll let you know in a post of my own. I’m not yet ready for next steps, but somehow, someday, that first novel of mine will see the light of day. Sooner than that, I’ll write something. I’ll probably post it here. I might feel an irresistible itch and resume writing this weekend; I might not write for a year, or longer. I do not know when it will be because I will not rush and I will not write until I can do so with joy and for its own sake, but I will write.
Keep writing, friends.
Ryan
THE LORD LIVES
You who intentionally leaves the presence of God, who wanders looking for Him where He is not, who are confused and hurting and feeling the lost and overwhelming sadness of a child who has lost their Father.
Your confusion is justifiable but so unnecessary I have been and often am there alongside you. Do not forget, He is there for you, He has been where He is since the beginning of everything.
Every moment is a crossroads, every choice has the potential to be worship. He made you, after all.
Thank God for Jesus Christ. Praise God for his love. Praise God for the Bible.
John 17:25-26.
Synesthesia
breathing the turquoise like lavender,
and sipping the blue summer.
bitter cold clouds glide and morph lava lather,
floating whispers cut by sweet pineapple sunshine.
soon, a moment, now
rhythms ripple the sky like skipping stones
we jump the music like puddles
splashing in the frequencies.
cobalt bass rumbles the earth hungry,
pumps the air with springing spirals
pushing and pulling the senses,
reverberating through cells.
heavy mud humming, stomping
echoes through our atoms dizzy;
balancing tuned body to innate electricity
the fizz of circulating lemonade energy.
we jump the music like puddles
splashing in the frequencies.
strawberry melodies spilling ribbons,
dolphin leaps of the spaces inbetween beats,
lines of colours overlapping,
colliding, mixing, merging, blending
in with the forest.
washing over souls the life fire sparkles
like a clear water cleansing harmonies,
sound waves crashing against inertia.
phosphorescent glow of re-charged love
for the world, for being, animation
flowing through burnt smoky ashes
of sapphire charcoal skies;
dimmed radiation of chlorophyll emerald days.
the smell of salt, dry bark, fluffy carbon mists,
trembling lights softening the eyes'
grip on outlines, loosening lies.
watching the cycles of patterns
tumbling colours through a mill rotating,
and the silence of listening
when the music comes to an end.
he’s golden
he’s golden like six pm april evenings
where the sun crests over the hill and
peers between the trees and bathes everything
ethereal and yellow and warm. his hair is
curled and tightly spun and it’s always so, so
messy and it makes me feel a little silly to think
about it. when he turns his head i catch a
glimpse of silver and, man, if my breath
doesn’t catch in my lungs. his eyes are
so pretty in the way that i can’t
remember what color they are, but i just
know that my memory of them saw them as
beautiful—i know in the way that i’d know
my mom’s voice anywhere, in the way i’d know
my best friend’s humor, in the way i’d know if i was
making my chocolate chip cookies right or not.
he’s golden like six pm april evenings and yellow
sundresses and worn yellow linoleum and
he reminds me of the earth like the way the
sun filters through the trees or the way the
fading daylight pierces through the windows and
passes through the ivy and ferns. he’s golden golden
golden and i think that i’ll always associate this
with him.
he’s tousled and messy and so, so, imperfect—
he’s tried so hard, had to work so far, and
he’s come so far, he’s grown so much, he’s
overcome it all, and he’s so, so sweet, and the
way he thinks makes sense. they say he’s weird,
they say he’s odd, but, man, if i don’t feel like
we connect so right. he’s imperfect and
he might be odd but i quite like him this way and
i feel it wouldn’t be the same if he was any
different.
he’s golden, he’s silver, the sight or thought of
him makes the breath in my lungs catch,
he’s so pretty and he’s so beautiful and i wouldn’t
change him for anything, he makes sense to me
and everything clicks and he’s golden golden
golden. he doesn’t like me and i like him and i’ll
never get beyond this point because
it’s just eight short weeks before we part for
good and i couldn’t take it if it all made sense
before it blew up in our faces. but he’s
golden, like six pm april evenings where
the sun comes rushing through the windows and
breaks through the ivy and ferns to bathe
everything in its path warm and yellow and
ethereal. he’s golden. he’s like that
and i’m just a girl, caught in the golden
sunbeams and caught with my mouth
wide open in awe, staring up
at it all bathed warm and yellow and ethereal—he’s
golden, golden, golden.
i hope no one ever makes
him feel like he’s not.
Feelings? I have none.
Hey, you're not going to like what I have to say. But I need to tell you anyways.
So. Do you remember our first date? When we got lunch, then boba tea, then walked around the pond in the park?
When we sat on the metal park bench; it was so hot but we stayed for the better part of an hour. One of my legs was strewn across your lap, and one of your hands found a home where my hair meets my collarbone. You told me, "This is my new favorite place, with my new favorite person, in my new favorite moment." It wasn't the most poetic, but I had wanted to hear you say it again and again.
However. When our lips met, the spark dissipated within me. I know that sounds awful and wrong. But please understand, I did like you. I did.
Until your tongue was in my mouth. Instead of the world shrinking away, leaving us in our own bubble, the outside came crashing into the moment.
I could feel the breeze on my lower back, the bench was so hot and burning my thighs, the sun was in my eyes, your hand on the side of my face felt comical, the sounds of the cars in the distance over powered the birdsong, and the glares of the passersby filled my middle with embarrassment.
Listen I know that one bad kiss isn't the right reason to drop someone. You're right. But please listen.
I'm sorry that I didn't tell you sooner, and that I've led you on for weeks now. I wanted to give us another chance. And I did. We walked random streets, exploring little shops, like a couple that had known each other forever, but only you were allowed to choose which ones we entered. We had study dates, with a comfortable silence between us that you kept trying to fill. We went to a hidden away spot that you had found years ago, and hadn't brought anyone to before. But you didn't bring me there to show me the place, or because it had any emotional value like you had led me to believe. No, you brought me there just to make out without interruption.
Every time we meet up, I'm counting up the minutes until it's socially acceptable for me to leave. I'm sorry that the words you tell me that should sound sweet and heartfelt just hit my ear wrong.
I'm sorry that I let you believe there could be something more between us.
You see, I told you that you wouldn't want to hear this. No, I'm not saying that I'm too good for you. I'm not saying that I hate you. No, there is no other guy. No, I didn't go after you for the thrill of the chase.
Please stop trying to convince me that I can force myself to feel that for you.
blood -> feeling -> self -> being -> ending
you are born in blood
and cry for something unnamed
yearning for soft love
your emotions are
too big for your body, and
you want to catch up
but young adulthood
brings loneliness in u-hauls
and loved ones fading
is this life? just change
and love and loss and feeling
so much you might die?
and then death arrives
so gently, and carries you
back to your old room
Imagine having cancer,
and someone gave you a pill
and it looked really hard to swallow
but you trusted the person
so you took it and you were cured
and He gave you a bunch more pills
and every time you see someone dying
you tried to give them one,
but they accused you of shoving it down their throat
and walked away from you with a deeper willingness
to just die
The Young Man
This is a true story. It was related to me by my grandmother, my Omi, before her dementia set in. I honestly, truly, believe this could be made into a film.
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On October 21st, 1952, Omi's 20th birthday, it was time for her to leave her family and country. She was to leave the Netherlands and reunite with her fiancee in Canada. He had gone on ahead 2 years prior. He was a hardworking man, and had served in Indonesia in the Dutch Navy before going to Canada. During his time in service, he wrote Omi 360 letters.
Omi could not pack very many belongings. She had to decide what to do with the letters, and did not want her younger sisters to read them - so, she burned them.
Omi's mother, sister, and aunt said goodbye to her at the train station. Her dad and father-in-law-to-be went with her on the train to Rotterdam. Once there, they got permission to come aboard for a visit, since Omi's father had been a customs officer. They toured the ship, and the time came to say goodbye.
Omi, now age 92, told me, "I can still see my dad standing there. It was the last time I saw him."
From Rotterdam, the ship sailed to France. Upon leaving Le Havre, the weather became very stormy. Omi shared a hut with seven other woman and a baby; his little steel crib would slide from side to side in the cabin, moved by the swaying of the ship upon the ocean.
Staying in the cabin was lonely; several of the other women were standoffish. They were traveling with family, and did not talk to other people. She had no one her age to talk to in her living space, so she spent time touring the ship.
Her wanderings led her to meet a young gentleman with a story similar to hers; he was sailing to Canada as well, to meet his own fiancée. Omi and the young man had something in common, and it made her feel safer and less alone. They spent most of the trip in each other's company, talking about Canada - what would it be like? How would the landscape look? How would life be different there? They would have to study English. Dutch was not the common language in Canada.
After 12 days of sailing, the ship reached Canada. Omi's plan was to take the train from Halifax to Union Station in Toronto; the young man was also going to Toronto, and asked: why do we not travel together? We can keep each other company a little longer.
Omi agreed.
The train was very old. There were no blankets, and passengers had to sleep on wooden benches. Pillows could be rented for $0.25 a night.
Omi did not like the Canadian scenery; the weather was very dreary. But the trip was a lot more pleasant in the young man's company.
He lent Omi his coat to use as a blanket. She was shy to sleep next to a man she did not know, but he turned his back to her and faced the wall so she would feel more comfortable. She turned her back to his and they slept like that for the 2 nights it took to arrive.
At 6:00 a.m. on the 3rd day, they arrived in Toronto and disembarked. The young man waited with Omi at the station for her fiancée.
Omi's fiancée arrived with a cane. He had been in a motorcycle accident, and was still recovering. Along with him was his brother, who had just gotten off work at a mechanic shop, and was covered in grime and oil.
The young man was hesitant to leave Omi when he saw this. He was concerned for her safety. She reassured him that she would be fine, and, eventually, he left.
Omi and her fiancée were married a week later.
Life in Canada was a hard adjustment. Omi did not speak much English, and her husband did not either. They had not been together for 2 years, and it took time to grow used to each other again. He found work at a factory doing manual labor, and Omi busied herself with housework. It was not long before she discovered she was pregnant.
A year passed.
Things were easier now then at the beginning. Omi was a happy mother, doting on her little boy. Her husband was learning conversational English from his workplace, and Omi was doing the same in her bible study at the church they had recently become members of.
On a warm Saturday morning, Omi was serving pancakes to her husband, and spoon feeding applesauce to her little boy, when there was a knock at the front door of the house.
She went to open it. Standing in the doorway was the young man from the ship.
He had not married his own fiancée. They had gone their separate ways.
He had used the passenger listing information from the ship to track down Omi's whereabouts.
He wondered if maybe - just maybe - if she had not gotten married either.
He wondered if she would be with him.
When Omi told me this story, she could not give all the details of the interaction; she could not bring herself to say everything.
She told me, however, that after saying goodbye and closing the door, she stared at that door for a long time.
Then, slowly, she went back to the kitchen, where her little boy and her husband - my Opi - were waiting.
She never saw the young man again. One year, while cleaning, she threw away her own copy of the passenger listing, not thinking about how time changes things, not thinking how one day, she might want to look at it again.
That is her biggest regret.
She does not even remember his name.