Cluster

Restless Flying / in conversation with “TRANS IS AGAINST NOSTALGIA” by Taylor Johnson / Kalvin Marquis

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Untitled. Fused silk. Photograph by Kevin Ryan.
Courtesy of the Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Foundation.

Everyday I build the little boat,
my body boat, hold for the unique one,
the formless soul, the blue fire
that coaxes my being into being.
— Taylor Johnson, “TRANS IS AGAINST NOSTALGIA”

Friend,

I’m doing it.                                 I’m building the boat.

Took a while, but I build.                                                                                      With my therapist,

I start.
I turn my eye inside               catalogue the damage

                                                            Summer.soft soil.summer.soft flesh.summer.soft fists.

diligent taxonomist.

                   car.leave.car.you sure?.car. how do you know?.car.demons inside-.car

Which is a new species of laceration?

                                                            LEARN.ignant.toosweet.toosoft.toomuch.               boy.

How does one classify trauma                           if they all return
to your body? to your voice? to your refusal to?

Friend,                     I’ll confess to you:                 initially, I was obsessed

with finding an inciting incident                     a spark of moment to burn
all the cities down

and call that my healing.
A reason to arrive                                 finally.

But there are too many cities.
And I keep remembering.

Friend,                      does the remembering get easier?

          Nonetheless          we move. Cause fuck else can we do?

I gather two of each I need:

two hands,  two lungs
two friends for emotional support, two friends to smoke me out
cleave/clamber, spit/swallow

I give myself over to phenomenology
instead of possession.

I say           “I am a person experiencing hurt.”
I say           “It is not my hurt”
One day my chest will know the difference.

Futurity is a language my tongue still
fumbles. For now, I settle
on learning the lexicon of Dawning.

Because friend,                      everyday I build, I get it.
I get seeing devastation behind you and having no verbage for it but                         home.
I get the temptation to look back, borrow the language of yesterday.
I get how easy it is to spill into salt.

Still          I move.

      I leave/I arrive

Because friend,

One thing I do believe:
.                                                       the sunlight       fractured by

        prism                    shattering into rainbow

  (a promise)        stealing into my bedroom                     each morning

is a form of transubstantiation      I can have faith in.
.                                                                         Faith in perpetual arrival.

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This is part of the cluster Restless Flying. Read the other posts here.

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