A is for affect, apocalypse, anxiety, arctic, alchemy, air, antibiotics, aleph.

A for Aleph,

A for A N T I B I O T I C S,

Nothing short of God,
Nothing less than infinity,

sort of ultimate being,
ultimate everything,
ultimate beyond,

of

every

little

thing

under the sun

and everything and
every being

under and above everywhere,

and also

A for

Ancient Greek emotion,

I’m feeling acedia, you said at some point, not long before our end.

A for affect and apocalypse and acedia and anxiety and the arctic and alchemy and AMR
and antibiotics.

Seven types,
Seven sins.

Pride
Penicillins
Greed
Cephalosporins
Lust
Fluoroquinolones
Envy
Macrolides
Gluttony
Sulfonamides
Wrath
Tetracyclines
Envy
Sloth
Aminoglycosides

Five generations of cephalosporins,
five generations of faith.
Five generations of easy illnesses,
tolerable bacteria, manageable fungus, pretty easy viruses,
five generations of finding comfort
in my bed.

Antibiotics used to work on us.
Us, most humans I mean,

When you died of once a common UTI
we burned all your clothes,
a kind of a ritual murder under an apple tree.
More than an understanding of a personal end.

The end of
common surgeries,
and easy childbirths,
and hip-replacements,
and chemotherapy,
and safe sex.

What used to be just an occasional annoyance after occasional sex,
a burning sensation,
now was a dreaded illness that could develop into life-threatening sepsis

or worse.

For you, for me it was the worse.

The worse was when
I held your too light now body,
damp cloth on your forehead.
Your feverish eyes on me still,
affect in them still,
love in them still,
our past lust still in them,
Tiredness, that’s new,
giving up breathing through your mouth,
now blue,
that’s new too.
Bad teeth, rotten smell seeping through your lips,
and yet
I kiss you still,
for all my life
I was waiting to hold you,
Alive of all my life of you,
Grateful of this moment of which
I am privileged and terrified to share,

you.

There and there I say
as you transition into
the realm of elsewhere,
the land of beyond,
an understanding
of the Aleph,
and all else
that is

under that pine tree

while our sun was unhurried in its setting.

B for Breath
and beating hearts and veins and rhythms.

B for butterflies and the beauty of being born,

B for blood in our veins, blood in our belly, between our legs,
the flow of life within.

The importance of a new life breathing and cocoons exploding and caterpillars crawling, and babies being born and blood being celebrated and birth being worshiped and bites being exchanged.

For to breath is to live and to breath you in is life.
Biting breathing you is booming blooming us,

if only for a day.

Blood in a birth pool,
To be born is to begin dying,
every little cell decaying.

This morning a butterfly died,
the last one under a glass dome.

We lifted the dome up,
all our hands joined like a prayer.

The prayer of B:

Bite my tongue,
bite my everything

off.

Blood boundaries and the loss or grief. The last one died.
Extinct days or lost times and systems or lives not to be
recovered.

B is for breathing boundaries
Breathing boundaries of closeness
And breathing blood boundaries.

B is for breathing you in here
and you there.

You there to,

breath me in,
breath me into you,
inhale me into you,
a mix of oxygen and pheromones.

Take my scent within, hold it there,
let it expand your lungs,
your emotions,
your magic.

Let it enter your blood stream,
everywhere in your body,
let it expand your blood vessels,
my scent.

Let it hover,
keep it forever,

exhale nothing out but the memory of others.

Carbon Dioxide
The Waste Gas.

Let it go and breath me into your blood.

B is for beating breathing,

B for breath me in

breath me in breath me into you inhale me take my scent within hold it within let it expand your lungs let it enter your emotions your magic let it enter your blood stream let it enter everywhere in your body expand your blood vessels my scent let it hover keep it beating forever,

exhale nothing,

but

the memory of others.

C is for care, cum, children and camp craft. C is for currency, catapults, cows, and compasses. C is for crystals and charcoal. C is for climate change and for communities and creepy cults. C is for baby coyotes and cockroaches big or small, and caves.

C

C is for care
and care time home loneliness and cum time and children being born time.

C is for camp craft time and catapult time and temporary climate time, goddamn cows time
and compass learning time and crystal time and importance of charcoal time.

C is for the trauma of broken community or lack of one.

C for you to get a community who cares and currency care and more to care.
Get yourself some cult time or coyote time or trickster teacher time,
absence of cockroach under between everywhere tiles time.

C is for currency,

and currency is

my faceless nude pictures on your phone.

Your nudes on my cloud.
Your everything on my cloud.
You on my laptop and
hardcore hard drive.

Currency is to buy flights for

escape purposes,
lover purposes,
fucking purposes,
loving purposes,
moving on purposes,
getting over purposes,
flying away from you purposes,
it’s gonna be alright purposes,
getting away away purposes,

those times are over purposes,

You away, looking for your people in lonely bar nights,
near whitewashed winter walls,
rooftop terraces in fancy little boutique hotels.
You far away before camp-craft learning time,
far from cash as a currency time.

Currency is to make you want to touch yourself in
one of your many brand-new cars boats cocktail parties holidays.

Currency is not to care,
to be entertaining
exciting,
loving,
fleeting
fleeing.

Or.

Currency is camp craft time. To know how to make fire, build shelter, know plants, purify water, take cover, get warm, listen to the wind, know your snow time.

Or,

currency is to walk unafraid in abandoned villages,
to care for one another near zombie apocalypses,
pandemics or water wars.

Or,

currency is not to care about your legs in other beds,
bare and skinny and naked,

or

currency is honesty or devotion or denial.

And, finally and finally currency is to embrace

or to embark

in due time.

D is for death and decay. Dogs, daddies, darknessa, and dirt. D is for distraction and death again and again, in this life or that.

D for death

and D for decay and darkness and dirt.

But mainly

D is for death.

D and your body in my mind,
your face same as often and alive.

In my flawed memory we are
breathing winter,
your presence still a beam behind your eyes.

And death, leaking leaping towards me now,
leaping leaking towards some light and
into the light you’ve shown me.

Now, and some long time ago, I failed to see beyond it.

At the office door, the ominous oven at the background, the clinical light so familiar from all institutions, I wonder if you are you still smiling now.

I wonder where your body really is.

For your body is the closest I can get to you now.
It is probably still here with us, in this building.
As long as I remain standing here, on this stone floor, under these ruthless lights,
I will be with you. Our bodies, breathing or not, share this space together.

Your name and your oven time is written neatly with black ink. The crematorium worker with blond hair and a white lab coat reads it to me out loud. She speaks your name, as if you were still alive. Like I had an appointment with you. Like I came to see you at work, pick you up for lunch. She tells me the time and date when we are supposed to say our final goodbyes.

The following day on my final date with you, our time written next to your name. This is when we will sing songs, or hymns, I’m not quite sure what we are doing here since this place is not you. You were not religious, but I don’t think you would care. This is for us, the living us. We will dress in black, do the thing living people do. Say the things we are supposed to say. Bring the flowers we are expected to bring. Feel the feelings we will not say out loud.

I stand here and I’m too early. I stand here and D is for death.

You are on time, the lab-coated woman says, but one day too early. She flips through her papers, looks at me. I cannot read her eyes, but I still stand here, still in the same space with you and whoever else is here, bodies dead and alive and in-between. I was too late and now I’m too early. Its foggy and cold and beautiful, the perfect weather for a day like this.

The thoughts come, irrational, irrelevant thoughts and questions.
Has the crematorium worker already pushed you into the flames?
Will the fire caress you and consume you until there is nothing left but ashes?

It is not a tactile memory, but something I read, how ashes are not fine like sand, soft and falling through your fingers. There are chunks of bones, bigger bits that did not burn, pieces of you. Charred, chalky, grey or white. I wonder how you look like, when somebody who didn’t know or love you pushes you into the oven.

Will they look at your face?
Do they know your age?
Do they know how you died?
Did they read it somewhere?
Can they see it on your body?
Are you broken?
Are you physically broken?

Is your face beautiful and calm and do you look like you are resting, like some dead people do.

Or will they just do their thing, no emotions?
Operate the oven
push you in
close the door
lock the door
push buttons and wait.

Where do you come out from?
How long does it take?
And what do they feel?
Are you just another dead body to them?
How does it work?

I dare not google anything. I dare not ask the person who found you that morning. I dare not ask the crematorium worker who would know, who would not have emotional ties to you, who would probably tell me out of courtesy or pity. Who might know the strangeness of grief.

You were a pine, she said. We were both pines. She said and showed me the last picture of the living you, looking up to the sky, in the woods standing amongst pine trees holding a dog on a leash. You look happy and I look away. Later she told me that she left dinner on the table for you. She made spaghetti with tomato sauce for you, told you to eat it but in the morning, it was still there.

I hold my breath for as long as I can, try to imagine if I’m anywhere close to how it feels.
I need to imagine further, I would need to hold my breath for longer, but I cannot, and I don’t want to, so I gasp for air and I breath and breath and suck the air inside me. I open my mouth and take it all in, deep and thankful. I think how you went beyond. You went beyond the impossibility of not breathing. You went beyond oxygen,

You went beyond breath.

Your mother said that we should know that you didn’t want to hurt anyone. That you didn’t do it to hurt us. Your friends think it was impulsive. Maybe, but jumping in front of a train is impulsive. Taking too many pills is impulsive. Finding a rope and fixing it somewhere in the furniture, fixing it around your neck needs planning. But then maybe, just maybe you didn’t really mean it. I wonder, did you think about it, one last time. Before you took that step. Did you regret it, did you panic, did it hurt, those last moments of your life? Were you thinking or were you in too much pain to think?

There is nobody I can ask, there is nobody I dare to ask. I try to get inside your mind, I try to get in there, I try to walk with you those last moments, imagine how you cannot sleep, how you get up and look at her sleeping next to you. I wonder if you understand how it will be for her when she wakes up. Are you wearing socks? How does the floor feel on your feet? Are you thinking about these things, the last things your body feels? Do you touch the walls and furniture when you walk to the bathroom? I sometimes do it, to be alive, to be here. I touch things, soft bodies or hard structures. I close my eyes and feel the walls, the cold stone, the warm wood, the side of a lover, head of my child. I run my fingers on them so I know I’m still here, so I’m grounded, so I will stay and not float away.

I don’t think you really touch the walls or think about the furniture or try not to float.
You probably are already somewhere else, beyond the walls and stones and wood and warmth of this world. You have already left us before you left us.

D is for death and tomorrow I will come back same time, on time.

E is for east and E is for extinction and eggs and elders and eclipses and emptiness and east. E is for east east east.

East,

East!

Yelled the elders. Me in my trainers, in my knitted dress, in my glittery top in my wet knickers me in my pink cap me in my sports bra me running in summer streets sun streets, me running away from them.

East east,

Easteasteasteast they say, stopped at every corner, waving their hands, east we run so goddamn east always east always away from them. Me in my trainers, too small or too big, me in my sunglasses, me in my oversize jacket, me me me in my cap in my hat me in my stolen-from-a-laundry-line clothes me in my drunken post-vaccine state me running east with all the rest of them,

East.

Elders decided to stay behind to hold them as long as they could. Elders with their wise hands, saggy skin. Smell of decay and wisdom, elders with their bend backs backyard camping chairs Kool-aid Budweisers. Elders will hold them back tanned skin fragile bones too much fate elders in their elements.

You do not want to see your elders in terror.

We run with strangers, whole goddamn city in some creepy ultramarathon, away from them east east east my heart boom boom boom oh my breath it hurts now but we run boom boom boom now I’m wearing muddy boots, don’t want to think whose, I pulled them out from someone’s feet while looking for food, oh how I longed for strawberries olives charred fish, oh I’m so hungry but back to boots, not my size but oh so warm. Old jeans, some hoodie, who knows what else when we run no time to stop to eat or drink. You run away from them, stop again and then,

All sound fades.

Then,

I see you.

I elevate from the ground; I see clouds and strawberries and you kissing me. I see. I remember us dancing in that club, to that song. But now I’m flying levitating oh and I’m only dancing and there is no them and there is no East and no elders. I’m just dancing I’m just surrounded by you.

But,
I see you, you stand on the street, surrounded by them.
You are frozen in fear or defeat.
It was not supposed to be you,
Just the elders.

It was not supposed to be you, or any of us,
but there you stand and look around,
You look at them and you stand.

And then I see it: you are not scared,
you are not frozen in fear, you are elevated away from all this.
You look directly into my eyes, you look directly at me, absent and elsewhere.

You look at me within your time-frozen body.

You look at me and I need you to run.
You look at me and I run.
I run towards you,
grab you,
past you.

I call your name.
I run, you stay,
I dance, you still,
I kiss, you shun,
I touch, you evade.
I shout, your silence.
you dream,
you still,
I East.

F is for fire, food and fear. F for force, and fish and feathers. F for forest, fungi, and foraging. F for fortuneteller, F for fleeing and friends and F for freedom.

F is for freedom feeling evoked by wild woods or lonely trees, laughing alone or with old friends perhaps.

F is for forest, and in this forest I arrive alone.

I drove away from the city and to drive is to feel free: drive fast, drive slowly, be on the way and be the way. I like the feeling of between point A and point B.

I like to move, to be on a move,
I like to listen to the radio too loud and drive too fast,
I like to feel freedom and I like the
freedom feeling that makes me free from you
and free from the memory of your many kisses,
soft lips and our past forest trips.

At night I arrive to the country and the next morning I go foraging.
I won’t get lost in here, but you might.

To know your plants is key in foraging and to address your hunger before being too weak to gather food is key to survival in here.

And water.

Water is key in everything. In these woods, you need water before food because your digestion needs water. You shouldn’t eat dry foods without water being available.

Foraged plants taste strong first, but don’t be alarmed. You might be used to tasteless salads of a Tesco, Asda, Lidl, or some other shop. You are now tasting the vitamins; you are tasting the iron and all the good stuff.

Unless,

you gathered your plants next to the road, then you might taste the dog-piss or the trash juice from cars or trucks. So don’t.

And also, do not:

Eat plants with milky sap.
Red or brightly colored plans.
Any mature or wilting plants.
Plants with tiny barbs on their leaves.

There are exceptions though.
There are always exceptions.

You were an exception and I’m thinking of you when alone or when I’m with other people. I’m thinking how your kisses taste like peaches or almonds.

Here is the thing though, with plants you need to do an edibility test. If you crush up a little bit of your plant and it smells like almonds or peaches, it’s not edible. Don’t eat it, don’t kiss it, don’t lick it, don’t anything it.

Also avoid old and avoid slimy, those might be toxic. And avoid irritating things, like if you squeeze the plant juice on a sensitive part of your skin: inside your wrist or elbow joint and it gets irritated, don’t eat it. Don’t waste your time on irritable things.

When you finally decide on tasting a plant you are not familiar with, put a tiny little portion of the plant inside your lower lip and chew a little, but don’t swallow. Then move the plant under your tongue and wait a bit, maybe a minute or two. If you feel unpleasant sensations like burning, spit it out and don’t eat it. After all these steps tear a little bit of your plant and, if possible, wait for around eight hours to see if you get unwell from it. If you are fine, you can eat it.

You won’t survive on plants only. You also need proteins, and you need fats, and you need vitamins and minerals and carbohydrates. But if you need to survive for a week or two, just worry about calories. You need food for energy, physical and mental, you need food for recovering from illness and you need food for repairing injury and you need food for warmth. You might need to give up an ideology or two and you might need to hunt and kill and fish. You might need to.

Late into my morning, I pick up some good plants for calories: cattail for the entire plant and burdock for its roots mainly. Roots and flowers and nuts are good for energy and leaves for medicinal value.

I spend this evening making a fire and reading in my tent. For supper, I fry a fish and eat it all alone. I feel alone without my friends but cannot relate to being lonely for I have friends and I have friends and to have friends is to be strong. To survive for friends and because of friends. To survive heartbreaks and to survive deaths of others and lives and losses. To survive loneliness and strange days, all-consuming mornings, and sad-girl moments with night-tears. To survive on your plants and roots and nuts and game alone is not thriving but existing perhaps.

To survive to thrive to exist to be

with your friends,

is to live is to love,

and to live sometimes is to be high on that freedom feeling.

G is for guide, guns, G.P.S., games and gems, glaciers and grief.

G is for grief.

Standing at the bow of your tall boat, facing a bright blue glacier ice from afar, I’m leaning against you, under layers and layers of merino wool and down jackets and waterproof wear, somewhere underneath, our skins touching.

I look at this vivid creature and yet, somehow it makes me sad.
Sad and longing for something, melancholic perhaps and anxious at once.

So G is for glaciers and the grief they release and I receive.

Glacier grief for an ancient being quietly melting quietly retreating away from us. Ancient grief for its sublimity and a personal grief for dead humans or polar-bears or other mortals.

So there she is, tall and ambivalent and all shades of blue.
So there it is, let G be for grief and the dimming lights of the arctic nights.

Later that evening, standing on a small island looking at her and looking at you, in our silence we miss its calving, and, in its silence, it misses us. A huge piece of ice falls off into the sea. We see feel hear the swell and I see feel hear you. Standing next to you and your gun, I turn to you, and learn. I learn that one should not direct their ship too close to the melting glacier. No closer than the height of the wall of its ice reflecting on the arctic sea water.

Tall ship, icebreaker, sailboat, row-boat, Zodiac. Navigation from stars and swells and winds and navigation from G.P.S and navigation from sailor apps. You stand on our sea ice and I stand next to you and your gun, and I learn. I learn that your gun is here to protect us from polar bears. I learn that first you use a flare gun, or maybe a drone. I learn this in practice, and I learn. I learn that the very last resort is to shoot the bear. I learn that for you to become a guide on this no man nomad land of white vastness and glacier grief and white-outs, for you to guide me into you and into the melting glacier, you must learn to use a rifle and you must learn the language of snow and ice. I wonder, how does a person from your sunny land learn to read ice and the many words for snow in this barren land of ours.

I teach you ice, you teach me how to become a good shot.
I teach you to divide you weight on the snow,
You teach me how to load a gun
I teach you how to step on fragile sea ice,
You teach me to sense the bullets
I teach you to feel snow too deep for your weight,
You teach me to aim too far for my eyes
I teach you to listen to the talking ice,
You teach me to lean back to embrace the impact,
I teach you to watch a snowflake dance.
You teach me to fire a shot,
You teach me,
and yet,

It was an accident, they say, and it was. An accident with the gun supposed to protect us.
It was an accident, and it could have been prevented but it wasn’t.

It was an accident and when you finally let go, and I hold you there as I held you in our many lives before, I cry a little, but not as much as I cried in our other pasts.

I cry a little

and then,

you are gone.

And then,

at some point after the shock,

grief.

You are gone and I float in this reality or another. I’m holding onto something, anything, everything. I’m holding onto memories of us on the edge of glacier whiteness or blueness, and I’m holding onto waking to up you still holding me. I’m trying to let go of the memory of your death. Eyes saying goodbye when mouths don’t work, and pharynges are paralysed, and words don’t come easy.

I walk.

Elevated legs,

I walk.

My mind next to your dead bed.

I keep on walking and,

regrets, always regrets and unsaid things, dizzy heads and panic attacks

I google instructions on how to talk to our children about grief, how to deal with grief.

You deny the reality.
To heal, one needs time, to adapt to that new reality.
Instructions how to heal, to accept, to hold but let go.

Stages of grief, grief for bodies of water and waterbodies, grief for forests and lost cities and burned paintings and dead grandpas and sick stepdads and bombed buildings. Grief for the cruelty of war and grief for raised seawater levels and lost oxygen and grief for obliviousness and grief for not caring. Grief for lost girls and heartless boys and retreating glaciers. Grief for illiteracy and grief for things simplified. Grief for dictatorships and grief for our planet, homes on fire, melting and charring and burning.

So G,

G is for grief and not much else.

H is for hooks and hope and horns and home. Hearts and herbs and holding and more holding and holidays. H is for home is where you are.

You are my holiday rhythm I tell you for

I haven’t seen you in years and I imagine you in our past with the past rhythm and it’s slow but not as slow as here high up north where all the rhythms are but faint pulses.

Boom boom boom we use to be,
against fences and
against each other
and against live music
in a venue here or there.

Boom boom boom
we used to be and,

you beat a different rhythm,

your body, your energy

intense.

H is for hope and holding
and how to holiday in this burning world of ours.

H is for holidays and

Alleycats (Meow!)
Yogapants (Meow!)
Hot mamas (Meow!)
Failed Daddies and limp children,
Quivering dogs and trebling babies,
H is for holidays

in Greece.

Wearing masks on flights,
soon sun tanning under burnings skies
Water still so blue, skin still desires so,

The holiday homes that became havens and the holiday homes that became
too dark to bear. The friends that flourish and the friends that vanish,
the ones who become and the ones who never come again. The ones who ignore and the ones who shout, ignorant or fearless or beautiful.

Alleycats (Meow!)
Yogapants (Meow!)
Hot mamas (Meow!)
Failed Daddies and limp children,
Shaking dogs and trebling babies,

Holidays in Greece,

The virus, the end, the slowness, the arrivals and departures, drinking and singing and swimming, some pictures and some BeReal, some guilt and some reasons, some protests and some anger, some ends and some excuses and some validations. Some funerals and some diseases, some failed lungs and some nightmares, some recoveries and some forever gones. Some friends, some lovers. Some enemies, some divisions, some empathy, some explosions, some disasters, some distances, some insta closenesses, some voyeurism, some shocks, some numbness, some fires. Some thirsts and some forever –tattoos, some sister birthdays and some garden fires, some old longing to be with friends. Some dystopias, some off-grids, some surreal lives, some Lonely Planet travel guides. Some cancellations, some re-bookings. Some plans for holidays at the at the end of our times.

She says, forget the holidays, she says,

but still, some tanning lotions, some Ouzo with ice, some German tourists, some luggage, some live-music, some fresh fish, some livelyhoods, some global pandemics, some bikinis, some sunny pools, some Moussaka, some free nuts with red wine, some friends, some retsina, some old and new, some righteousness, some melancholy, some ex-lovers, some gentle winds, some forgotten holidays, some grown-up feels, some summer hats, some instastories, some old churchs, some extreme weathers, some rage for spoiled holidays.

The old world-order, the burning down, no longer looking back, no way of going back.

That night, at the last beach party, six visible planets in the sky, ‘Mars is red’ I say to a new lover, ‘Are we tripping? she asks, and we laugh. ‘I need to get closer to the music’, I say. ‘That is Jupiter’ says a friend, pointing at the sky. We Google them, is this real, we need to know. Something is happening tonight, right now, right very now some divine smallness and deep understanding, something great and something nothing, something life-altering and meaningless, planetary event perhaps, oceans swelling and dogs crying and babies shivering and daddies restless in their sleep, our realities changing. We feel, we just know without understanding. So small, so very small we make our ways through dancing bodies towards the music, closer and always closer to the source and

I say,

Alleycats

And you say Meow!

And I say
Yogapants

And you say Meow!

And I say
Hot mamas

And you say Meow!

I is for I, islands, illusion, isolation

I

for

In that bunker, we are like invisible island universes,
sitting next to each other after The Great Isolation,
holding each other like we were the last ones left.

Now I wonder if our connection was a mere illusion.

During our time underneath, we were slowly courting.
Both of us married with children in the life above.

When we slept in those pest infected bunk beds,
you were holding my hand.

You holding me.

You were stroking the small of my back.
You were stroking me until I fell asleep.

You were on top.
You were on top of me,
the most literal sense, emotional, spiritual.

I believe we lost the sense of time, as well as sense of our past selves. For when you reside deep below in the darkness, in the company of worms, lice, bedbugs and rats, you leave a big part of yourself above. All the fanciness gone. Abundance. Beauty. Excitement. Laughter. Gone. Restaurants, gyms, offices, taxes, receptions, gone. We were left with tolerance, resilience, fear, disconnection, hunger. We were left with nothing but each other’s touch to look forward to.

When The Great Isolation began, we had a business meeting in an airport lounge.
I was wearing a white blouse and a black pencil skirt with heels and you were
wearing a plain black dress. We were waiting for our respective flights, drinking Riesling and discussing our possible partnership.

The siren went on whilst we were finishing our drinks. I remember the confusion in your eyes, the last gulp you took, not quite elegant anymore. We were then ushered into the shuttle bus first, for we were business-class frequents fliers. We were important, we were here for a reason.

At first, we were counting days, then weeks, then months and then, eventually we stopped
entirely. Counting rations, bites, lice instead.

For a week or two, we kept our professional selves, intact, important, layered. Ultimately, we let go of that too, becoming just human, becoming our bodies again. Bodies with flaws, hopes and needs.

We were together below because we had been together above when everything started. There was no attraction really, not a sense of a tingle or desire at the beginning. Yet we are slowly courting, being physical without being physical, falling in love regardless, still, because of forced physical proximity fast becoming charged intimacy. Not long after your fever broke, we had sex for the first time.

A bodily need, charged intimacy, spiritual connection, circumstances.
At first, I did not enjoy the scent of your sweat or breath,
Something old, something sweet and milky,
Infection on its way out.

But then, after so long in isolation,
there were so very few of us left,

and

I could not seek nor find you
who would,
find a tingle within me,
explore lips or tongues,
teeth,
touch silky skin of a lower belly,
bite a little too hard on my neck
count hours to see each other,
smell the desire air,
fresh air,
expectations in the air,
home cooking air,
morning coffee air,
you in my bed air.
I no longer
smell anything but rot,
dirt, sweat and salt thirst,

and I,

get lost by the ocean.

I,

settle for your milky breath and sweaty fever skin, finding some comfort
within you.

And when the day finally arrives to go out above,

me, you, and someone else,

we emerge from the bunker, holding hands, consoling one another,

looking at the brave new world with milky breaths

feverish skins,

rotten teeth,

with maggots and bedbugs and rats and swamp-creatures,
mud snakes and mud cakes
and expired antibiotics and mouldy jam jars,

and then we leave,

let our imagination run wild and fresh,

after isolation and circumstantial love.

J is for joy, jabs and jaguars, jungle, and July. July in places for you and me, junglues and jaguars.

J is for joy when there seems to be none, and hot July days with summer friends and feverish cabins in the middle of sailing season, and mosquito nets and cute little monkeys here and there. J is for jungles and how to survive in one.

You and I had come here by accident or coincidence and got lost by faith or on purpose perhaps. We separated from the group to steal some time alone, to hold hands and look at the night creatures and to build makeshift rafts for fun.

J is for finding bright blue spiders and unpassable vegetation and hostile jaguars and cunning snakes and daring insects.

J is for jungles of the world soon to be gone and the vivid sounds of a hot July sky night. J is for get every jab you can and avoid blood-sucking vampire bats in South America or intimidating feral dogs guarding remote communities.

When we realised we were lost, we discussed what to do and how much knowledge and skills we had between being alive and being dead. We discussed jungle fevers and malaria, dehydration and heatstroke, infected cuts and insect bites, failed equipment and camouflaged scorpions. We separated; I stayed still and waited for you, and you went to look for others.

We had jungle boots and hammocks, we had water filters and medical kits, clean socks and cotton underwear, we had a compass and insect repellent and anti-fungal foot powder and we had a machete and a knife and string and we had each other and always each other.

We had an adventure holiday and a guided guarded expedition on and off the land that was not ours to explore. We had a lack of knowledge, a profound disconnection from the being of the forest, we were intruders and invasive species.

After a day or two, we were still alive because we were well prepared. You, somewhere wandering and me waiting for you. In our respective places we tended minor cuts and nasty blisters immediately, preventing infection in the humid condition. We had pre-washed our clothes in an insect repellent before our trip. We had learned our area, its plants, monsoons, animals, seasons and terrain. We both should have stayed still but you travelled during daylight, thinking of the village we had passed with the group. You avoided dense vegetation and read from the stars, travelled on higher ground and did not cross swamps or rivers.

At some point you were back and we looked for the village near riverbanks and tried to build a raft for survival this time. But we feared the alligators or jaguars, crocodiles or hippos, piranhas and all, and did not go into the water. We did not camp near river, or under trees in fear of falling tree branches and snakes. We found good campsites and cleared the undergrowth with sticks, staying off the ground. Food was not a problem and we feasted with papayas, almonds, bananas, wild fig and fish. We filtered our drinking water to remove the sediment and purified it with our water filter or by boiling it. We stayed hydrated and hopeful.

We had done all this, but yet this was not our spirit land and our ancestors spoke elsewhere, in other planes or spaces: prairies, cityscapes or snow lands.

After a week or two, mistaking our own tracks for traces of a rescue team, you look at me and ask whether to still walk in circles or to stay still. You ask and when I see you, damp, moist and hear your exhausted lungs, I decide to stay still to preserve energy. You sit next to me in your sweaty T-shirt and we wait. We wait and I see you, and J is for jungle and lungs of the world, breathing, a love letter to being. J is a shadow dancer in the woods, wetness of a forest. J is for jungles and jaguars and July in places for you and me.

I stay warm next to your human body heat, next to your bones and flesh and heartbeat and next to you in a small hammock bed. Gone are the days I’m not next to you, gone are the days without you. As we stay still and present for a rescue team or slow death, I swear I will never wait for anyone ever again. You are here and I’m here with you. I am silently in my mind and my mind wraps itself within your soft jungle sleep.

K is for kill and kindness and kerosine. Kill and kindness and kerosine. K is for kill and some kindness and some kerosine but mainly K is for kill.

Stars told us nothing,
waves and winds and other signs silent,
woods did not talk to us,
shadows did not guide us.

The fight broke over the last Global Positioning System in store – GPS
It was five of us, first reasoning politely, then one of us lurking closer to the device and someone else noticing that, pushing through. And then we were all on it, grabbing it from each other, punching and scratching and very quickly I pulled out a knife.

This then led to a girl I have never seen before pulling out a gun. It was an old gun from a museum. Everything halted and we froze. Guns were rare these days, they had been the first to go after things got wild. I hadn’t seen one in ages and I wasn’t even sure if it was working but I sure as hell was not going to find out. She apologised but her hand was steady and eyes cold. I backed away and left the store.

I had gone for the GPS because nearly all the paper maps were burned or damaged but also because I knew nothing about navigation. I did not know how to use a compass; I did not know how to read nature. Stars told me nothing, waves and winds and other markers were silent. Woods did not talk to me. Sun was warm and made me happy, but it did not tell me the time of the day. Growing shadows indicated nothing but time to go for dinner or clubbing.

Pretty much all the books were gone around here, so guidebooks were rare. Guiding now for smarter, faster minds, I guess. Initially I had been too slow, too much in denial to get my shit together fast enough. I kept going, with others like me, as if nothing was happening. I was living in a city, I did not need to know nature, navigation, food sourcing, first aid.

I had my house, my car and my phone. Whatever I needed was contained withing, pretty much. If I did not know something, I googled it. I knew my way around the city and when in doubt, I used maps on my phone. If I got sick, I went to the hospital. If I was bored, I scrolled through Instagram or something. That’s how I eventually figured out what was going on. Slow, but not too late. My survival, pretty much, was due to my great social skills, reading the room, so to speak, rather than knowing any actual survival skills. I had found some people I got along with and we were surviving together. Surviving though, not really living.

So I left the store empty handed, went back to my people.
We decided to head down to another store, more remote this time.
We really wanted a GPS as we needed to leave the mansion in the outskirts of the city.
Things were getting too dangerous and there was too much violence.
But as I said before, we were city kids and not at home beyond the highways for

stars told us nothing,
waves and winds and other markers silent,
woods did not talk to us,
shadows did not guide us.

Gas had gone bad pretty fast too, so some of us used horses.
Knives were plenty, and for those who managed to source working guns,
gunpowder was relatively easy to make.

You just needed,

Potassium nitrate, made from manure soil, wood ash, straw and a lot of horse urine.

Charcoal, any charcoal really.

And elemental sulphur from Texas, Louisiana or elsewhere in the world.

You grind all the ingredients into a very fine powder,
Remember to grind separately,
Then measure the components very carefully,

You want
74,8%
You want
13,13%
And you want
11,9%

Mix,
and Boom.

We did not use guns, but kindness. We talked and smiled and cackled, and we had horses.
Horses are now valued above everything and everyone. They were for transport and escape, gunpowder and protection, currency and companion. And if worse comes to worst, food.

We mounted our horses, some of us with confidence and posture,
Some of us just hoping to cling onto the saddle or mane.
We started heading to that other store somewhere south.
Someone knew the way, someone had been there before in their previous life.
Nothing better to do, a lazy gaze towards some abandoned cars along the highway,
a sip of warm water under the burning midday sun,

midday perhaps,

for stars told us nothing,
waves and winds and other markers silent,
woods did not talk to us,
shadows did not guide us.

L is for love, lies, lava, loss and lungs. L is for living beings who love.

I woke up next to you when I wanted to wake up next to someone else entirely.

You held me through long winter nights, and you held me through endless summer months. You held me through autumn leaves, and you held me in empty dog parks. You held me in fog, and you held me through thunderstorms and rain. You held me through the slow collapse of everything I knew and you held me regardless; we both knew I was desiring to be held by someone else entirely.

So L is for loss and love and lies.
L is for losing the one you love and
L is for lying for the other one. L is staying alive through and through.
L is for the living us, faulty beings settled for second best.
L is for love poetry and love poverty and lying to your face,
lying for survival and for waking up next to you.

Lying is one of the most complex activities of an intelligent being.
Lying is an act of love and lying is an act of betrayal.
I am lying for your unconditional love,
and I am lying for my unhealed heart.

I am lying to keep our bones moving and bellies fed.
I am lying for the shantytown shelter and half-abandoned swimming pools.
I am lying when our lungs are filled with once-illegal smoke,
and I am lying when tending the community garden.

The art of lying was to save your life and mine.
For we needed one another to survive in this new world,
abandoned by most love and most life.

We are crossing borders avoiding roadblocks, joining groups and leaving groups, joining neighbours and keeping lovers and saving children and uprooting families and justifying actions and caring for loved ones, we look for a space and place and finally find it in the mountains. Half abandoned; half occupied. With some chicken and garden and nice people who believe our lies which we also began to believe.

And somehow, we settle. In the land of the hot midday sun and smoky days devoid of clarity or reason. We settle into the routine of watering and the routine of tending, the routine of teaching children and the routine of healing and the routine of each other.

Our responsibility is to be the lie coaches. For children need to learn to lie, and the art of lying is essential to save their lives and loves. Children have to learn to lie and most people have difficulty recognizing lies. But not us, we are the masters of lies and love. So we teach. We teach that a heightened activity in the prefrontal cortex relates to the decision making whether we lie or not. When children lie, they have mastered something: essential cognitive skills for survival. Children love to make up stuff, but they tell their first intentional lies only about the age of four or five. Before these first lies, they must develop the ability to understand social rituals and unwritten rules, and to comprehend what happens when these rules are disobeyed: you steal a chicken and tell the truth about it, you will be punished. Or, you lie that your friend stole a chicken, then you might get away with it. You also need to be able to imagine what the other human is thinking and feeling. If someone might have seen you steal the chicken, they might not believe your lie. But if you are certain that you were not seen, you will get away. Young children have trouble forming credible lies, but we train them and they become masters. The key is to lie well, to believe your lie to be the truth. You need to change the lie into your truth. Essentially, you need not to lie but to distort reality for your benefit. Your mind becomes reality, your words become the truth.

Years later, when I finally lay down next to you on our unmade bed, I realise that I no longer lie to myself about you. I believe my love to be true and I believe you and I believe us. I lay down next to you and we look into each other’s eyes. Within that clarity, in an attempt to be real and to purify our bedroom air, your eyes darken as you list the circumstances of your lies, the circumstances for survival or love, in detail.

And I look at you, my eyes dark, when I speak my lie moments. I lied to love you, only to learn to love you. I soul lied, the deepest depth of lies penetrating the purest stuff of the heart. I lied soul-level stuff, I lied to continue you and me. But now I hold you, and I hold your lies to be true, I hold the air and our heavy space, and our love and the weight of all of you I hold.

And so, L is for lying and love and loss.
The art of lying to keep you from the truth of me,
and the art of lying to keep you close to me.

M for mother marble milk moon, and M is for mud memorial migration . M is for meat and milk and moonshine.

Mother,

marble pearl,

of all moons and all moods.

Oh mother, we say and we drink

moonshine.

That evening, we sat on a tree trunk near our campfire, on a sunny day. Oh birds chirping oh short shorts and t-shirts tents in a circle and not a worry in the world. In our white t-shirts and angel hair we made moonshine and we drank it all oh.

Oh,

The leader says when she leads us onto our mattresses, one by one, laying down now with moonshine and blurry heads and probably some disassociations and the heavy weight of knowledge on each of us. Each little angel hair head spinning from moonshine.

We twist twirl in a circle when they say:

I now connect you with Mother of all,
I now connect you with moonmilk,

mudshine, I connect you with,

Mother of all Moons.

The moon enters and

and we chant:

MOONSHINE

moon moon moon

milk

mud

mudshine

moonmilk

moon milk,

oh

Oh Mother of all Moons,

MOOSHINE.

And they say:

Children children, my dearest children, remember

To let go memorials of loved ones,
migration (complete),
the dead red meat I provide you with,
the nutrition, the iron in your blood,
Your strong lanky bodies,
Your biceps, resilient little minds.
Your militant ways,
my moonmilk within.

Remember how things are, very bad, elsewhere. No food, no shelter, no water, no

M O O N S H I NE.

Children children my children, remember Mother of all Moons I channel through me, through my body or mind uniting with you all we are all connected. We are all together, here, safe here now my children.

I will hold you when you cry under moonshine, I will
hold you till the endtimes through the endtimes,

To find a family of choosing,
not by blood,
but by choice.

Don’t stay alone for
I’ll pat your heads, I’ll hush you to sleep,

Always I, and

Hush now

Hush hush
now,

Now, now.

N is for nourishment, nurture, neon lights, nutrition, nature, navigation

N for nourishment or nurture,
nature of things,

N for

I still don’t know your name,

and N for

nothing more to say.

When I talk to you on the phone you ask for instructions on nutrition or nurture for your dog. I look at the sea, and the ocean and the pool and the hot tub and think of how to miss you, or what to tell you. For what do you know about nourishment, or nurture or nutrition?

You know about neon lights, pretty girl crushes, being witty or smart or ahead. You know wanting and needing and clubbing, about hovering and covering, about little lies and about nothing more to say.

But I will try to tell you about nourishment,

nutrition.

I will tell you how to nurture, for

I have a lot to tell.

I will tell you about nourishment,

nutrition.

I will tell you how to nurture.

It goes like this:

When she is hungry, cook for her.

Cook with love and light. For starters, a salad with bell peppers, feta cheese, cucumbers, fresh tomatoes, thinly sliced red onions, some oregano and some olive oil. Then, something filling and tasty and fat. Maybe quesadillas with lots of cheese, melted, and black beans and rice and hot sauce and sour cream. Watch her eat, with love. You eat too, to give her company. But let her eat the last quesadilla with the most melted cheese. Bring her little napkins to clean her fingers from grease and let her decide on the dessert.

Nourishment is as much of a place than of a taste. A memory of a person or a situation, a taste or a little desire. A smoky Chilean taverna in a cold winter day. Smell of hot red pepper in Hungarian mountains. A Greek garden salad in a whitewashed summer village. Baklava dripping honey in a 24-hour London off-licence. Yaiza blanco seco in a volcano land. A homemade hummus sandwich on a drive home, a Dunkin’ Donut coffee on an early morning road trip, a grilled cheese with your latest crush and last cash.

Nourishment is not to eat fast to eat fast food without memories, to cook alone for oneself. To make a sandwich with a day-old bread, to order from a menu of a hundred different dishes, to pay for a dry muffin on an airplane, to eat with too much caring for how you look, to say no to olive oil, or to little salt, to leave too much food on your plate.

Nutrition is those things of value, cooked with love or care or dedication. To eat fresh and eat enough and eat good things. Green and fair and fare and loved and not grown with violence or death. To give your body enough and give your body right and often and plenty. But not through taking from other bodies, taking other bodies.

And finally, to nurture is to give your offerings, to offer little pieces of your wisdom, learned things, yours or someone else’s, over some long drunken dinner. The details of a life, or two lives. Like not to walk on the edge of lava, not to betray your friends, not to go with a stranger but sometimes go with a stranger. Not to swim in the wild ocean but to swim in the wilderness and ocean. To bring to life, to create life, to make one wonder about a beating life. To make one wonder life, a wonder life. To nurture is to love truly, unconditionally, with certain purity and pureness of intention, to lack jealously or envy or at least to fight them, to live with the heaviness of new sadness.

And you knew about neon lights, pretty girl crushes, being witty or smart or ahead. You knew so much wanting and needing and clubbing, about protein bars or chocolate bars or day old fast food, re-heated. You knew about hovering and covering, about sad little lies and French fries.

And I did try to tell you about nourishment and nutrition.

I did tell you how to nurture,
and I had a lot to tell.

I told you and

I told

you,

I did tell you how to nurture.

O is for oblivion and O is for ocean. O is for ovaries and orgasms and organs and old souls. O is for oxygen.

O is my desire for oblivion and how to reach it.

We are all old souls, you said with an eye smile when we explored some abandoned building, a spray-painted construction site or a train carriage. We are all old souls with young or old bodies, hidden hybrid body parts or organs donated or not.

I laugh and feel so much, not a worry in the world.
We hang out amongst monstrous buildings by the ocean,
not a worry in the world.

We hang out and
your long hair in the ocean wind,
not a worry in the world.

We hang out in the evenings, night-times, city light times.
Amongst many classless windows and fences and graffiti.
For the first time, I think about O for orgasms and oceans and
ovaries and old sounds and oxygen.

Breathing

and

you are all of it for me.

Orgasms and many windows within concrete buildings,
orgasms and many caressing waves away from city lights and
many oceans and ocean lights and a flow of oxygen everywhere
when you touch. You touched often and a lot, by the many window
openings of our building.

And when all this was over and all of us was over, I was reaching for
oblivion. Like our monster building with many distortions and openings
and exits and balconies with a free fall to death, I was reaching for cold
stillness and carelessness, quietness and nothingness.

All I wanted was to be there, still and still, from sunset to sunrise.
All I wanted was to learn the being of being. You evoked emotion, strong and
Painful and thrilling and therefore I thrive for oblivion.

The difference between us is that you replace expired emotion with fresh emotion, you fill the space of boredom with someone else, someone new. You orgasm in different beds with a different level of absence and human touch. In that bedroom space I am just a void, just a voice already familiar to you. And I, I fill the space-time of us with desire to be with you, here and now.

Yet even though I’m persistent and even though I’m stubborn and smart and funny and I sing well, and even though I’m foolish enough to try over and over again, you are slippery like a sea cucumber or a slimy fish of the ocean. You won’t stay present for you need fresh emotion. Like a little energy vampire, on and off you suck and suckle and play. Your pores oozing emotion, oozing hurt souls and oozing damage and pain you cause. A flow of darkness masqueraded within your sweetness. Your scent other people’s pain, and selfish acts masked as care or attention. And I should have known this already on my way to nothingness or emotionlessness.

To reach oblivion, you first need the trauma of falling in love. You need hope and light and hours of being the subject of attention, and hours of laughter and soul connection or body sensation. And then some unrequited love and weeks or years of dreaming and crushing and being ignored or being not quite there. From all these you will learn to regulate your emotions. To think that this is not so bad, this is not so hurtful. This is not real pain, this too shall pass. And there and there, somehow you are on your way.

Oblivion is learned over time when enough hurt is experienced. I was slowly hurt when I got to know you. You are first time around, I’m sure, not an old soul but a never been here before soul. You do not know how this works. You do not know how any of this works, but I do.

The first time I feel all the emotion, I sit with it. I feel it. I feel so much, I feel all the worry of the world and more. I feel feelings like buildings or place memories of sweet summer cottages with wooden stoves and flower gardens, and I feel summer saunas and Italian villas and fireplaces in pine forests and road trip motels and all of it I feel.

The second time when you hurt me, I feel not much but a mild pain, like a lukewarm Amstel on a hot summer day. The third time and all the times thereafter I tell myself that I am not pain. I tell myself and somehow within that, I believe it. I believe it and slowly, I reach carelessness, or stillness, or just being, like our big concrete apartment block standing by the ocean, not a worry in the world.

And when I finally walk away from you,

O is for the vastness of the ocean and O is for

Oblivion.

P is for planets, private planes, plastic bags and potassium chlorate. P is for plants and Petri dishes and poison. P is for prayer and past phenomena and power.

Sometimes when I look at you in the hospice bed, planets are aligning
and thoughts are rotating, and principals of kindness are failing.

I bought my ticket to Mars,
there my body will wait in deep frozen state.
you say and I smiled.

When thinking about survival and our waning planet, you need to think about power. Who has the power? We should have the power. What do we do with the power? We should do something. And what is that something? Something radical and something beautiful? Something with care and empathy and something with learning and listening?

You have private planes, private places, private islands and bits and pieces of land and property. Every time I looked you up on socials, you were in a different city, different club, different smile, different plan. In your hospice bed, you are still power and you are still poison.

I bought my ticket to Mars,
there my body will wait in deep, frozen state.
you say and I smiled.

Did you know that there are plastic bags of piss,
shit and vomit on the moon? I ask.
Leftovers from landings and standings.
You laugh and sharp white teeth glow.

Your glow is poison,
And your presence rotten
And your aura muddy.

Words and plans and stories of this planet or that.
I need to learn how to use your power for my benefit.
I need to learn to divert the poison of
your words into a flow of goodness within me.

So, I stir my drink and think about
potassium chlorate and sugar.
I think about my chemistry degree
and my student loan. I think about my job in the hospice.
And I think about you and how to use your power.

I think about potassium chlorate because
it is a transparent and colourless powder.
Because it is used in explosives, matches and bleaches.
Because it is an oxidizing agent.
Because it’s lethal.

Because sometimes a poison needs to be stopped,
and because sometimes prayers are not enough,
And because sometimes past ghosts won’t leave with exorcism or hypnotism.

If you meet a person of power,
you need to take that power by all means,
noble or not.
Take it away from them and use it for the greater good.

Abolish power from those who do not listen to the waves with you,
caress your nightmares away, love your dogs or learn from the woods
or glaciers or wind-beaten cityscapes. Abolish power from those who
do not learn or live through empathy or giving, taking care.

And in your process
You might fail in usurpation.
You might fail in understanding.
But if you succeed,
And when you do, the real work begins.

So I stir my drink and think about
potassium chlorate and sugar.
I think about my chemistry degree
and my student loan.

And when you are gone to Mars or to eternity,
I think about us and how to use our power wisely.

Q is for questions.

You start with describing a place, a space.
You will have questions and you will
do the best you can with those.

I have a lot of questions, you might say.
I have a lot of answers, I might say.

I think the questions might be about us doing nothing, doing little, doing next to nothing,
Doing and failing. I don’t really have real answers, I don’t have real reasons, I have some guesses which I will now share with you.

I think it might be about denial, this feeling of the reality of the world not happening to you. This feeling of the reality of us fading or failing. Like when you experience something like a car crash, or a fight or a sudden affirmation of love, or the moment of birthing a new soul into this world. I think it’s about that, those short moments of disassociation, wonder, terror or denial stretching into overlong overdue months and years and decades of not doing enough.

The answer to your questions is about perception,
The answer is about understanding human souls as island universes,
About feeling how we are all connected,
About our intertwined ecosystems and
queering ecologies
About many ongoing apocalypses
About only transformations and
information at the edge of your perception.

The answer to your question is
Diving into submerged places at the edge of the sea
About finding a way forward, somehow.
About embracing harsh accusations
About inhabiting uninhabitable areas

All there really is, is transformation and
Embracing the change.

And yet it might be about being comfortable, being exhausted, feeling powerless, feeling fearless. It might be about the comfort of a soul home, the comfort of things being the way they have always been. The need not to change anything in you or your habits. The power to have it all in your hands. The power of not caring.

The numbness or depression of caring too much
and being able to do too little.

The answer might be about our crises being the most terrifying
crises imaginable. Disappearing nature is disappearing culture.
Disappearing culture is lost stories written for you and about you,
Narratives, sentences, words and sounds silenced.

Like this:

I think it might be about
not seeing, or seeing too well

I think it might be about
Feverish dreams when we are spooning

I think it might be about
Floating in this reality or another

I think it might be about
Wildness, not wilderness

About deciding on a meaning or
What is meaningful

I think it might be about
Already imagining my life without you in it

I think it might be about
Not filling the silence with words

It might be about normal circumstances,
Or that in normal circumstances I would have left.

It might be about going far,
To question everything,
I thought I knew.

To loosen a broken heart
Into wildness wilderness

It might be about a lack of horizon,
Blurriness or dust without a clarity for
Foreground, or background

It might be about working hard with
Horses or sheep or anything

It might be about,

all my waking hours
I would have slept deeply
Under stars like nowhere else

Exhausted from work
Aching from bruising real hard

I would have smelled the sagebush
And there would have been no reason to
Smudging indoors in my tiny apartment

It might have been about
nothing left but humbleness meaninglessness steadiness of a life.

It might be about
working my heartache away,
indifference of the land healing through
remoteness

It might be about
ranch work is physical, tactile, real and
you are no longer physical, tactile, real.

I think it might be about
remembering that in normal circumstances
I would have left.

R is for rot and ropes and ritual songs and R is for resilience and roots and rhythm. R is for riots and resistance. R is for roadkill and rage and religion and relics.

You asked what I missed from the old worlds, and
I answered that from the old worlds,
I missed rituals.

You probably thought of Christmases or Easters or weddings or Hanukkahs or funerals or fasts. Graduations, hen parties tarot readings quinceañeras engagement speeches baby showers funerals Sunday family dinners housewarmings.

But,

I was thinking of ropes and pain,
And your devout commitment and
worshipping eyes
and little deaths and
spanking and biting and resilience,
whips and fences and riots.

I was thinking of ropes and
you choking me,
ritual songs of resilience and roots.
Ginger roots turmeric or valerian,
Resistance that led to many things and
resistance that failed other things.

I was thinking of me on your lap and our
rhythm in riots and roots or resilience.
I was thinking of
the rhythm of spanking and
the rhythm of biting
and the rhythm of choking.

You asked what I missed from the old worlds,
and

I answered that from the old worlds
I missed rituals, roadkill burials.

You probably thought of Christmases or Easters or weddings or Hanukkahs or funerals or fasts. Graduations, hen parties tarot readings quinceañeras engagement speeches baby showers funerals Sunday family dinners housewarmings.

I was thinking of resilience and roots and rhythm and riots and resistance and roadkill and rage. Religions and ruins. I was thinking of relics found under sea water and sea water rise under arctic snow melt and I was thinking of ancient cities amongst whale songs under swimming waters, sail ships sailor boots.

You asked what I missed from the old worlds,
and

I answered that from the old worlds
I missed rituals, roadkill burials.

Rituals of us tight on top of each other,
tearing tearing choking choking
spanking spanking biting biting
being being
together.

S is for snakes and stars and spells, serpents, skin skinning, stars and soil and sex and shelter. S is for silence, softness, slings, sleep and snow. Stones, souls, seeds and storms.

S for for things of beauty, snow melting on your skin, little spells for everyday and some stars on night skies and nightsides. Stones so warm from southern suns, softness of sleep on your face and stone souls and sinking islands and self-seasons.

When I walk on this surface of stones and lava sand and little rocks and little creatures not from my planet, I think of survival: how to live a good life, not just to survive. To survive is to eat and sleep and breath, to be painless, to be at ease, belly full. When I walk on this surface or that, my black boots touch the lava sand and I remember my naked toes that touched my home sand on my own surface.

I remember, and a lonely tear amongst my face tattoos.

Back home, there were sinking island nations and souls made of stone, not a friendly stone but a toxic stone, radioactive, or war loving or evil expanded stone souls of slowly decaying elderly men. S is for many things epic and beautiful. S is for sleep in a dream land, or a softness of a new lover’s skin, a spontaneous sleepover at old friend’s home, flock of tiny beautiful souls-seeds and little kernels we tend with kindly fingers and loving smiles.

But back home, there were also sinking islands nations and shelling of other nations and there were souls of pure evil, or oblivion or selfishness too gruelling to comprehend.

And I, and we, had to survive when we should have been thriving. And I, we, had to leave the snow place, the love place, the dream place next to a friend or a child or a lover, the fast-growing seed place, the in-awe space. Our home of softness and skins and sex and souls, seeds of silence, parties and laughter. We left to be, but not to bloom.

Here I walk on this surface of stones and lava sand and little rocks and little creatures not from my planet and I think about survival:

How to stay alive, how to guide you into a good life?

How to sustain will to survive.

Water, Fire, Shelter. Food.

Signaling, navigation, weather, medicine, tracking.

But what is a fire without friends around it? To fry a marshmallow or to sing songs. Tired or little drunk or after a night swim in the sea. What is a lonely, dying fire, alone or afraid. What is surviving a fire from a shelling if others do not? What is campfire without loving arms around you, secret touches with thighs or knees brushing against each other? What is the smell of burning firewood without songs? What is a long-awaited kindle if you don’t touch fingers other than yours. And what is water, if not to swim or laugh or to gaze at the sea or to drink from a secret forest well, eyes closed and snow dreams in your mind, and what is a shelter if not build with friends and laughter and what is medicine if not healing body and soul. What is it to read a weather in this planet of no winds or a hundred burning suns on our faces. What is there to survive if survival was shared with none of my kind.

When I walk on this surface of stones and lava sand and little rocks and little creatures not from my planet, I think of survival: how to live a good life, not just to survive. When I walk on this surface or that, my black boots touch the lava sand and I remember my naked toes that touched my home sand on my own surface. I remember, and a lonely tear amongst my face tattoos.

Back home, there were sinking islands nations and there was shelling of other nations and there were souls of pure evil, or oblivion or selfishness too gruelling to comprehend. Back home there were also friendly rainbow snakes or star constellations to tell creation stories from, there were love spells and meditations and guidelines for manifestations. There were curling serpents and reindeer skinning lessons and wild horse roundups and sheep rodeos and there were so many bright stars shining through my soul-people. There was black soil with high fertility and moisture and minerals. With humus, ammonia, and phosphorus. Black soil that we called the food basket of the world. There was soil sex with humankind and other kind and with moist and slippery bodies and easiness and lazy weekend mornings or rushed workdays, exploring one another for too long. There was shelter that we called home, there were people we called home, there were places and houses and beaches and mountains that we called home. There was silence never this profound or lifeless and there was softness of the earth, or your sleepy morning body. There were slings our children learned and dreams to unravel, there was snow and sleep and stones with souls and souls made with stones, soft sleeps and nights under storms.

Now when I walk on this surface of stones and lava sand and little rocks and little creatures not from my planet, I think of survival: how to live a good life, not just to survive. When I walk on this surface or that, my black boots touch the lava sand and I remember my naked toes that touched my home sand on my own surface. I remember, and a lonely tear amongst my face tattoos.

T

To come home to somebody,

To turn you on, to pour your

coffee into a cup.

You are the one I woke up to,

You are the only morning sun

our children need to feel on them

restful little faces.

And when the sirens start near the camp,

We race, and the sun behind us,

Your trust, touch,

behind us.

(children):
To come home to somebody.
To hold on to something.
To come home to somebody.
To keep holding on to somebody.

T
Tsunami
T
Trust
T
Touch
T

Tingle when I secretly touch you.
Tingle to become a feeling.

T
To cut a tongue off.
To make a soup to nourish little bodies,
To give life is to take life.

Listen,
To give life is to take life.

T, to touch you in secret, to feel a tingle in secret, to tell a secret feeling.
Just a sense.

I often think, come the end of the worlds, with whom would I run with?
And where.
With the one who has true skills?
(children: to skin, to gather, to build, to hunt, to break in, to cook, to hide)

Or, the one with courage and stamina?
The one with resources?
The one with authority?
The one with places, spaces to go to?

The one to come home to,

Or,

The Tingle when I secretly touch you,

To become a feeling,

On your skin.

T
Tingle when watching you,
Tingle when talking about you,

Talking you into reality,
Touching, our bodies,
Your soft round belly,
Touching,
Your Tongue,
Touching
Your tongue still warm and slimy and slippery
from the before-time of your death,
I hold on to your tongue,
To kiss or
To cut off,
To feed for my children.

For to give life is to give death.

I often think, come the end of the worlds, with whom would I run?
With the one who has true skills
to skin, to gather, to build, to hunt, to break in, to cook, to hide.

Or, the one with courage and stamina?
The one with resources?
The one with authority?
The one with places, spaces to go?

The one to come home to,

Or,

The Tingle when I secretly touch you,

To become the feeling
on your skin.

U is for universe and just that.

When someone becomes your universe, it might be dangerous or not,
You might struggle when your universe collapses or expands,
or fits into just one song.

This is the most beautiful song,

I say

still strangers to each other we sit in my old car you smoke all my cigarettes

you tilt your head slightly you look into me say nothing into me listen to the most beautiful song of that moment of us my hair in wind when we move my hair still under burning fingers hiding in there you are by my side you are holding my hand you are stroking my breast you are holding all of me we have all the time in the world we have all the songs in the world,

and I want to tell you now,

the song goes like this:

Into my arms, oh Lord
Into my arms, oh Lord

And

I said oh, and

we sang and,

oh,

I asked if you

believed in an interventionist God, if you
believed in the existence of angels,

If,

I was

Not to touch a hair on your head
Leave you as you are

If

it would be possible to

Direct you into my arms
Guide you into my arms

and you,

still there in our new car now no strangers no fingers in my hair no hand on my breast no hand on my hand no holding me holding you no words come easy no song come easy uneasy fiddling flickering car radio meaningless stations meaningless songs you forgot the beauty of old cars too many cigarettes slow time stroking hair wind in hair you forgot the song you forgot to direct me into your arms you forgot to touch you forgot to look you forgot I forgot my voice forgot to forgive forgot to love forgot old cars cigarette smokes wind in road trip hair desert dust in eyes need to stop for a gas-station pee need to buy La Crox and cigarettes forgot the hot nights in car forgot to drive recklessly forgot to listen carefully

some words

come easy

some words,

overlook time

forgot the feel of your hair, dark roots and then some light all around your face forgot your fingers your warmth your touch forgot each and every one of your muscles forgot your smile forgot your eyes forgot your scent forgot everything but your voice until

your voice was gone too,

until

the most beautiful song in the world

until

that was gone too

into other cars.

V is for venom, virus and voice. V is your voice and violence. V is for virtue and vibration. V is for vault and this or that venom.

There are many kinds of venoms you should know about.

Venom of words, sentences, songs,

Venom of manipulative conversations.

Venom of behaviours,

venom of absence,

venom of soft human tongues or

sharp, rotten fangs.

You spit poison,

You say and,

I receive venom,

Through my ears, my skin, my bones, my lungs,

Through my eyes, my fingertips, my heart, my skin.

I receive venom through my tolerance,

through fear or love.

Venom leaking through your enlarged skin pores, venom vibrations and venom through your darkened eyes and venom released by your brain, heart, or other organ. Venom of words and venom of tongues. Snake or human or other dark creatures.

For this kind of venom,

I advise you to leave:

Do not engage.

Do not tolerate.

Do not let it seep through you.

Do not listen or

do not get attracted to.

Do not, in any circumstances

fall in love.

You might need to have a protection spell, purification ritual or runaway plan.

For other kinds of venoms,

let them talk to you.

Let them be your beauty or possibility.

Snake venom and speech venom, violence of words and violence of tongues. From 3600 or so species of snakes, 600 are venomous and 200 dangerous for humans. From 7.7 billion people, I can tell you many and many more are venomous and dangerous for humans like you or me.

If you want snake-venom-free places, go to Antarctica, Greenland, Iceland, Ireland, New Zealand or the Canary Islands. If you want human-venom-free places, go for a place of intuition and careful love. Go away from flattery, entitlement, superiority, lack of empathy, disrespect of boundaries, little ways to control, need for a praise and constant acknowledgement, a desire for always being right.

If you want to learn about beauty and the possibilities of venom,

let it talk to you about healing.

Let it talk on a cellular level, let it talk in its secret language, though a complex mix of enzymes, proteins, peptides and nucleotides. Let it talk through toxins and compounds that interfere with processes of tumours or cancer cell invasions. Let it talk through its anticancer capabilities of C-type lectins and L-amino acid oxidase, disintegrants or snake venom metalloproteinases. Let it talk through milking and purification and studies and labs and abilities. Let it talk through its stability of medicinal capability and let it talk through venom-derived medicines. Captopril for hypertension, tirofiban to keep your blood flowing, or eptifibatide for your heart.

Let it talk through an Indian rat snake, saw-scaled viper, pygmy rattlesnake or a Brazilian pit viper. Let it talk through 600 species of venomous snakes and let it talk through the 3000 which are not. Let it talk through islands with no snakes and islands with only snakes. Let it talk through its medicine.

Many snake-venom toxins have anticancer activity in breast, cervical and other cancer cell lines. Snake venom components, such as PLA2 enzyme, are effective at killing other bad stuff too, such as blood cancer cells. Snake venom contains several neurotoxic, cardiotoxic, and cytotoxic enzymes. These proteins inflict death to their prey, humans and animals, yet they also treat your cancer, arthritis or thrombosis. These proteins destroy human tissue, and these proteins kill cancer cells. Venoms are designed to be stable in terrible conditions. And they are evolved to attack the very exact prey in the snakes’ diet. Venoms have also evolved to kill the snakes’ enemies. The toxins bind to specific creatures’ receptors to paralyze or kill.

So if you are ready and want to let venom talk to you through medicine, you only have to do a few things: find and catch the snake, extract its venom, study the toxins inside it and learn the effects on humans.

For this kind of venom,

I advise you to stay.

Engage and tolerate,

study, listen and learn.

Let it seep through you and talk to you.

Be attracted to it, and

Maybe even fall in love with it.

W is for warmth, wasps and war, worms and weeds. W is for water and wilderness and wildness. W is for wombs, waves, weather and witches.

I sat in a lukewarm sauna, alone at first.

The landscape is past spring, past everything we know. It is bright with color now, vivid with new meanings, new freshness, new you. This is what I used to do in late summer nights all alone, in my old country, when the party is finally over and the intoxicated people have passed out. This is the dusk time, when every single sauna in the country has cooled down yet the charred wood still gives out some mild heat. I creep there alone and very drunk, I afterparty creep there alone with myself, my clothes on because up here the summer nights are still cold and light and infested with too many mosquitos and wasps.

I sit alone until you come in to join me.
I think about our past, when you first joined me on the weather station tour.

And then,

You join me when
I sit in milky bath water, arms getting goose pumps already.
You join me when
I watch the worms doing their job.
You join me when
I watch the weed doing its job.
You join me when
I watch the wasp

doing

its immaculate job of building a grey nest under the ceiling of the sauna.
Like a little, fragile chandelier, made out of pulp of my firewood, I look
at the furious creature circling around its home.

Oh, the wasp, is it not the cruelest of creatures?

Wasps and the evolution of ruthless survival.

Later that evening, I witness the brutality of a parasitic birth.
A poor caterpillar there, its belly towards the evening sky, little body
squirming slowly in its unhurried death.

The way they do it is to prey and abduct their victim.
Drag them into their house.
Seal the door of their little chamber: no exit, no entrance.
And then, in your sealed little space, you witness your own death by a feasting offspring,
for your soft belly becomes the nest, as well as the meal.

Just like viruses, wasps can’t reproduce without a host. Wasps evolved into this, for they need unwilling creatures to breed. They place their egg on a soft underbelly of a cockroach or a spider or a caterpillar. The egg soon hatches, building a tunnel within the paralyzed host. The baby wasp then eats all the soft parts of the body, a slow and painful death I imagine, and cocoons itself inside the remains of the creature.

So W for wasp, then.

The hornet wasp
The cockroach wasp,
The caterpillar wasp.

W for wasp and
W for worms
W for weed.

You come, sit next to me on a summer night.
You come, sit next to me in my parked car.
You come, sit next to me under wasps.
You come, sit next to me in wilderness.
You come, sit next to me next to me.
You come next to me in life and hover closer and further
You come next to me in extreme weather, in storms and light rain
You come next to me in heat.
You come, next to me weather station witch
You come next to me in water and life

You come next to me in all and all of it.

X is for XXX

And xxx is you on me on me on you,

x
is
you ripping my cream coloured tights,
is your strong hand on my neck,
holding me down to my bed.

X is your leg making space between mine
X is your fingers everywhere,
uncomfortable,
invading,
just being.

x

Is my hand buried in sand,
Is your heavy stone around my finger,
Is my middle finger up towards your car,
frozen at red light.

X

is your murder ballads
on my playlist
your careful fingers
lifting my skirt
too short, and

X

Is

undressing, bending me on tables

X

is

explicit nature or,
fullness that happens when you are fully focused on me.

x is ripping things apart
x is ripping me apart
x is you asking more fingernails
digging deeper into some flesh.

X is peach tights
and soft merino wool tights
40 denier supermarket tights
And common cotton tights.

X

is wondering when a thing becomes a thing,
and when some other thing becomes too much.

X is to wonder
how do you know
if not by intuition

When peculiarity becomes overpowering or when danger becomes
arousing or when violence escapes its sexy boundaries?

And how do you know,

About surviving the edge between
kindness and viciousness,
tenderness and ruthlessness
softness and mildness,

X is

how do you navigate the space between you and me?

X is when

I met you after our long break and

I saw you aura.

Its muddy and sap green and neon yellow.

I have never seen one before, although I have tried several times. I did not try to see you for I did not want to pry on all your colours. I tried to keep myself closed and safe and instead everything was somehow open around you. As if years never happened. Days with your absence did not take place. Silent dulltime never happened.

And when I looked closer, it was
Light green, hovering

Then light, just bright light, not hovering as much and
after that just a little rim of pink.

Then, I dare not to look further.

X is

The apples you gave me,
X is
The apples left to rot in their basket.
X is
The apple pie I made.

And the pie gone bad and the milk and butter smell like rotten breath.
I eat it anyway, ignoring and gagging. I eat you anyway, ignoring and gagging.

X is
Don’t send me pictures of you in other beds,
skinny legs bare and naked and never seen sun,

X is
You took me into the forest to track the wolf, side by side
X

is you took me against a tree.

X

How to sleep next to you when intimacy of sleep is
more difficult than intimacy of touch?

X is what to take with and
How to take within and what is left from you and I?

X is
nature taking over my bedroom and
us living with wolves and coyotes and
birds and spiders.

X is something sinister and something sweet,

And after X
Little sweaty feet and kneecaps with scabs
And a faint smell of pee and some flowers.

After X there is love and mud and many different ways of knowing.
After X you have to embody senses in
Order to access things too complex to put into words.

And after x there is
A little pull on my sleeve,
A little tuck somewhere,

And after X there is
a sliver of sun on your face,
resting on a couch

And after X you are
placing your head on the narrow ray of winter sun.
placing your head on a pillow.

Placing your head under muddy river delta water.
placing your head on a pillow.

After X
placing your head resting my head on your chest and

After X I’m finally kissing your scent gone.

Y is for youth and you. The future for the young and the future for our youth, But all in all, at the end, Y is always for you.

You change your voice, softer,
and youth.

I look at the old hut, our decayed safe space. Looking at how I left things many years ago,
Everything was the same as a decade ago. Even the pile of matches.

Years ago, your soft skin inside many layers of wool or feathers.
Solar storms gave us time and the old hut gave us space.
Planes were falling, shooting stars, navigation systems confused,
aurora lights and dark polar nights.

We knew how to stay warm next to naked human body heat,
Next to your warm body heat, next to your bones and flesh and heartbeat,
and next to you in a narrow bed.

We were young and only needed little.
And when we ran out of that little, you decided it was time for you
To go back and live a life in the village.

Those last days, you made your voice softer.
I listen to your back when you stand away from me,
Facing towards endless snow or remains of life.

Youth, and our little hut in the middle of nowhere.
I see through you now as I saw through you then.
I got hurt then and I get hurt now.

I remembered how your letters kept me alive when
I was alone in this cabin with few comforts and much isolation.

You didn’t come back for years but
with your letters came young seeds which
I put into the deep frost to wait.

A seedbank and a wordbank.

In my pocket since then
Flax seeds,
Pumpkin seeds,
Sunflower seeds and poppy seeds.
Lotus seeds and chia seeds.
Watermelon seeds and papaya seeds.
Wildflower seeds and fennel seeds,
Hemp seeds and human seeds.
Love seeds and wildflower seeds.

In my pocket then, all your letters.
Amongst solar storms,
Your words in my mouth.

Your young letters were cryptic and strange,

like

blood dripping from my mouth onto bare breasts.
Blood in the white snow,
Blood from nose, mouth or ears
Dipping little finger in blood,
licking it off from your finger.
Tongue touching blood.

Snow tattoo on your skin,
Seal tears in a bottle,
Catching fish or fighting polar bears
And frostbite.

Period pads from moss and
Kissing cold stone walls after too many months in isolation.
Drinking alone and counting too few matches.

Snowangel on sand
Snowangel on soil
Snowangel on escaped oil.

Dancing in snow forest
Songs for falling in love
And your silver wolf hair.

Precious metals under our snow
Everything is new new and I have done this before.
Everything is as old as time itself,
everything is a constant change.

In a loop that returns to you,
Returns me to you,
Forever searching and always returning.
To make a baby, to make a loop of life.
To begin to fade from being born,

And so on.

The things you wrote, and I read in my candlelight
When the solar storm had taken our electricity.
It was a strong geomagnetic storm that caused
Navigation issues, problems with satellites,
And beautiful northern lights.

Your solar aura and warmth and freedom arrived through and within your letters.
The expectation, the kindness, the familiarity, the kindred soul or a spirit.

And after everything was over, I wrote it all down.
I wrote it down and put my muck boots on,
I put them on and walked back to my people.

Z is for zombies

I sat down in front of the TV and our dog sleeps on a pillow next to you. You were bitten a few hours ago. We were going for a walk with the dog in the woods and it just happened. A creature in the forest, hiding under a space blanket. We thought it was a hermit or a joke or somebody shooting a movie. And although we had heard about the rumours, we laughed them off. Rumours that sounded like a TV show: The Walking Dead or Z-Nation or Resident Evil or I-Zombie.

In the forest we throw the stick to the dog, and we laugh and laugh when all of a sudden this thing creeps on us and everything is so fast, it is on you and you bleed and we open the trunk and I take your baseball bat and hit him hard and then help you up. We don’t look back, but we hear it getting up. We have a fast car, and we face forward. At dusk we stop in a village, and we sit silent. Your eyes blood red already and I put the stopwatch on. 48 to 24 hours, nobody quite knows yet.

We have 48 to 24 hours and I turn to kiss you, your lips change colour with the TV screen and your hair sweaty from fever. You pull me closer when we watch the news or a cartoon. I go out to buy cigarettes although I don’t even smoke.

I look at you, blood pouring from mouth or eyes. I look at you and sit down on a sofa to write a list based on what we know. The list goes like this:

– Cut the bitten body part off if you can
– It came somewhere from the Arctic
– Stray dogs can be eaten in an emergency
– Only piercing the brain kills
– Everybody dies at the end
– To hide your scent, smear yourself with zombie guts
– Be quiet and hide
– Melting permafrost and failed scientific experiments
– Humans are the worst enemy of humans
– Cryptic notes can be left in old cars
– Babies are still being born
– Gasoline goes bad eventually
– Dog food can be eaten

I sat down next to you in a hospital room, you are drowsy dazed horny next to me.
I sit next to your fever. How high I ask, over 40C you say and how many hours I ask, maybe just a few you say without looking at me. I sit next to you I sit next to you till you change slowly slow. I turn to kiss you, your lips under dark hood and sweaty forehead and a hint of hospital fruit cocktail and a hint of rotten flesh and a hint of you. I sit down next to when they come and chain you to the bed. I sit down next to you until they forcefully drag me away. Last kiss last minute last time I beg but they look at me, shake their heads, sad adult eyes. It will be any minute now they say, you have to go they say and escort me to another room. I want to see I say, I need to see I say and they let me stay.

Mum pull me closer I say and she does. Pull me closer when we watch my lover’s body twist and turn, their bones cracking, limbs upside down and bones popping out of their joints and eyeballs hanging and mum hold me and your neck cracks and mum hold me when your knees twist too much inwards and your spine cracks backwords and mum hold me when you turn towards me and roar. You smell us, behind the safety class. You crash against glass, spit and blood from your mouth, the rotting smell of your flesh. The doctors nod, mum nods, mum holds and holds me tighter, and we turn away walk away.

I hold my mum’s hand as we walk. Sometimes I learn a lot. I learn things I should unlearn and I see things I should not have seen. We pass a room, full of steam, hands on the glass and mum walks faster. Morbid curiosity takes over me, I slow down fascinated, looking at the rotting flesh, gruelling distorted bodies, hanging skin and broken bones. I slow down and I stop and she holds me tight but does not pull me away. I’m quiet and I don’t look away. I am quiet and I look into decay and I look into soul future and rotting flesh, tortured minds.

And when I’m finally ready to leave, we walk out the hospital doors and I have never felt this free. The air is crispy and I’m floating away from it all, high on the freedom feeling of failing structures and unruly civilizations. High on the fading street lights, high on life burning so intensely before fading for good.