the september roundup
everywhere i’ve cried so far in europe, part one
- the aquitaine museum, looking at the basilica relief of the lascaux horses
2. in a smoke shop in bilbao, struggling to speak spanish and the man at the counter looking at me with contempt
3. the bench outside the hostel i’ve been staying in, the night blurry and the cobblestone unforgiving, me on my knees and you across the world and the body sobbing, because the thing i’d wanted i wasn’t going to get after all
4. at a park in edinburgh, on the phone with haley and completely overwhelmed and without any sense of what i was going to do with myself, ten thousand miles away only to realize i didn’t understand my own reasons for leaving
5. making tea this morning, the tears leaving me involuntarily, angelina by pinegrove stuck in my head, the world as wet as a wound
6. looking at picasso’s guernica, the whole room full, the blocks of color all telling me the same thing
7. looking at goya’s black paintings, he-goat or witch’s sabbath in particular, the weight of it all too heavy for anyone to carry
8. a sculpture titled tradition, of an old woman and two boys climbing on her, the way children do, their little bodies like all the other little bodies, their spines curved in the same question mark every life asks of its elders
9. when in valencia i realized i’d left my wall adaptor in the barcelona hostel, and i had no one to ask for help, and i didn’t know what to even search into maps to find a place where i could buy a new one, since the corner stores only had water and snacks and maybe beer, and the pharmacies were for prescriptions only, and i didn’t understand where i was supposed to go for any of the things i normally got at gas stations or walgreens or cvs, my americanness so thorough and deafening, my stupidity like a wall i could not see beyond
10. the museum of natural history in london — the room of rocks & minerals, unable to believe we live somewhere that just offers itself up like that — gorges and depths and hidden secret places, caverns and banquet halls of humus, the whole earth etched in stone, the whole earth existing only for itself, like a plum on a table that ripened long before you knew to pick it: a bounty of beauty and crystal and geometry, tears hardening into salt, into fossil, into twenty-four karat
11. thinking of cyrus in the valencian suburbs, 2 am
12. thinking of cyrus in the northern english countryside, 10 pm
13. thinking of cyrus on the streets in budapest, 3 pm, chimney cake in one hand and fist in another, no one to even joke about my broken heart with
14. the house of terror, hungary, the whole wall built out of portraits of the dead
15. the aquitaine museum again, the room after the original relief, a basket woven into ether to siphon the salt from the ocean, ten thousand years old and counting
16. valencia, knee deep in sangria, the whole of barrio del carmen a carnival: the whole street bright, the whole night dazzling, laughter echoing like christmas lights. everything i wanted on the other side of the velvet rope.
17. bilbao, three bulls dead, the australians ignoring me, the tap water and the kitchen failing to materialize into anything that might pass as salvation
18. bordeaux, the end of a failed date, the crying coming not from the fact of the failure itself but from the fact i was on a date with anyone to begin with
19. the top bunk of bed four, room 209, budapest, oktogon square, so loudly and for so long the girl in the bunk across the room interrupted to ask me if i was okay
20. madrid, arguing with one of the irish boys, emma crying next to me, o. behind me watching
21. madrid, outside on the steps, the irish boy abandoned, emma still arguing with him and o. gone by the time i came back inside
22. o., touching me, skin like cashmere, our bodies, like a hole, we’d happily fallen into
23. bayonne, france, thinking that i could have been happy, maybe
24. paris, the metro entrance closed, my bag heavier than i wanted, the entirety of my life crumbling before me
25. madrid, el centro, eyes welling at the corsets, perfectly preserved, perfectly unbearable, older than anyone’s sense of time
26. valencia, again, the first week a blur, the first week brutal; those days spent struggling to make sense of everything, struggling to understand something that, fundamentally, could not be made sense of; tapas and transit and the feeling of paint spilling over, no borders or edges, the frame long gone
27. edinburgh, gratitude, skylight, flashes of hope; the moment before it all went wrong again, the moment i thought maybe i could be someone i liked
28. here, now, forever
do i learn to keep a list of laughter? do you read this and wish i was okay? do i write this and wish for you to read this and wish that?
do i build a grave of memory, do i have purpose in this life, can i take the hatred in my heart and turn it into fire, can i find the clay i promised to sculpt myself from, do i let it all go, do i let it all die, the body and the myth of the body included?
i wake up every day and wonder what i’m doing. i wake up every day and wonder why i’m here.
what do i miss most about home?
i miss singing. i miss my bathtub.
i miss the cats and your hands and my little drug stash, the comfort of knowing, the comfort of comforts, the comfort of the hand outstretched toward something, noticeable, in the distance.
i almost got arrested in london. i took the wrong train from manchester. i missed the right train to manchester.
someone asked if they could kiss me last night and i said no, said why, said can’t you see i am dying here and you are just asking if you can wash yourself in all the blood i’m losing?
lost blood. too much or not enough, i don’t know.
thank god for octobers.
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