she flies with her own wings

Ama Codjoe, from "The Bluest Nude" [ID'd]

today i was driving to this park where i walk goblin sometimes. nick called me from california. he stopped at starbucks the same time i did, except i live in massachusetts, so we are technically ordering 3 hours apart from each other. we both order the same drink, just to say we split it. it is a tuesday, and i almost cried.

the crossing guard is in all green. neon green, like a sour lime. head to toe. neon green shoes and neon green leggings and a big neon green shirt. neon green glasses and a hat. i guess the crossing vest is more yellow than green, but i'm colorblind, so be nice.

the car in front of me pulls to a stop. a woman jumps out from behind the wheel. for a second, i am worried about the man and if he is safe. sometimes people are mean. (this is an understatement. i live in boston. masshole drivers are actually all running from a felony conviction. i know this because i am one.)

but the woman is in a beautiful pink outfit, like the inside of a seashell. a bathtub pink. her hair is pink too. pink nails and pink pants and a pink blouse and pink jacket. she is laughing, and does a little spin for him. he laughs and spins too, his hands over his head in a round imitation of a ballerina. (i am a ballerina. it does not offend me. i like that his arms become a little heart frame overhead. how cute!)

it is a quick moment, and the woman is back in her car, and i see the driver on the other side of the road laughing, and then i am moving again. i wave at the crossing guard, who is still smiling. he waves back. i tell nick i love people.

today i am wearing a monochrome outfit. just for fun. sometimes you need to do stuff like that, you know? to remind yourself the world is so big. someone out there already loves you. i know this because i am one.

i love when words fit right. seize was always supposed to be that word, and so was jester. tuesday isn't quite right but thursday should be thursday, that's a good word for it. daisy has the perfect shape to it, almost like you're laughing when you say it; and tulip is correct most of the time. while keynote is fun to say, it's super wrong - i think they have to change the label for that one. but fox is spot-on.

most words are just, like, good enough, even if what they are describing is lovely. the night sky is a fine term for it but it isn't perfect the way november is the correct term for that month.

it's not just in english because in spanish the phrase eso si que es is correct, it should be that. sometimes other languages are also better than the english words, like how blue is sloped too far downwards but azul is perfect and hangs in the air like glitter. while butterfly is sweet, i think probably papillion is more correct, although for some butterflies féileacán is much better. year is fine but bliain is better. sometimes multiple languages got it right though, like how jueves and Πέμπτη are also the right names for thursday. maybe we as a species are just really good at naming thursdays.

and if we were really bored and had a moment and a picnic to split we could all sit down for a moment and sort out all the words that exist and find all the perfect words in every language. i would show you that while i like the word tree (it makes you smile to say it), i think arbor is correct. you could teach me from your language what words fit the right way, and that would be very exciting (exciting is not correct, it's just fine).

i think probably this is what was happening at the tower of babel, before the languages all got shifted across the world and smudged by the hand of god. by the way, hand isn't quite right, but i do like that the word god is only 3 letters, and that it is shaped like it is reflecting into itself, and that it kind of makes your mouth move into an echoing chapel when you cluck it. but the word god could also fit really well with a coathanger, and i can't explain that. i think donut has (weirdly) the same shape as a toothbrush, but we really got bagel right and i am really grateful for that.

grateful is close, but not like thunder. hopefully one day i am going to figure out how to shape the way i love my friends into a little ceramic (ceramic is very good, almost perfect) pot and when they hold it they can feel the weight of my care for them. they can put a plant in there. maybe a daisy.

Grateful makes sense. A grate is something you put over a gap to stop things from falling. It is a sense of trying to hold something as it would ordinarily fall.

I think of this a lot with the names of animals. Frog is perfect, as is cheetah and grackle. Some animals are perfectly right only in the plural—wolves and mice for instance. The sharp surliness of wasp, the mellow and open-ended fuzziness of bee, and who could deny the intrinsic bugness of bug?

Fish is right when you see one cold and dead on your plate or next to a tidepool, but has nothing to say for the animals glinting and alive. Skunk is just right. Hawk is close enough, but eagle is missing something. Those things certainly are chickens, but pigeons aren't that at all. We should call them doves again. I can't disagree with quail, pheasant or duck, and plover is absolutely splendid.

With plants sometimes they do not have a real name to themselves, just a name that compares it to something else. Sometimes the scientific name feels like the true name, and sometimes I can't find any true name at all.

Tulip poplar is neither a tulip nor a poplar, but Liriodendron tulipifera seems to capture it. American sycamore's name isn't sycamore, but Platanus occidentalis is just as blatantly wrong.

Sometimes I think there should be different words for a tree and the wood that comes from it, like we have different words for cattle and beef, or pigs and pork.

The correct name for Bradford pears is Callery pear, but I can't stop calling them Bradford pears, because Bradford is much closer to the tree itself than Callery.

I like the word Kudzu. I did a univocal poem in my poetry class, which is one where you use only one vowel throughout the whole poem. It became a project that stretched well beyond the bounds of the class; I compiled huge lists of words based on the vowels they included. Do you know how few multi-syllabic words there are in English that have U as their only vowel? Murmur, susurrus, upchuck, humus, mucus, unfurl, fungus, upthrust, uncut, sunburn, cumulus, tumult, unjust, usurp, suburb, lustful, unhurt, fulcrum, dumbstruck, sulfur. My list doesn't have kudzu yet. I didn't think enough about plants back then.

Kate Cayley, from "Lent"

the black saint & the sinner lady & the dead & the truth, morgan parker // the truth the dead know, anne sexton.

What’s wrong with me!! From my insta

ancient greek word of the day: ἁλιγενής (haligenēs), sea-born, of Aphrodite

jenny zhang, in an interview with thora siemsen

Lindsey Drager, The Archive of Alternate Endings

my heart fell out while i was on a walk through the forest and it got covered in pine needles and then an osprey picked it up but she dropped it in the sea and the fish ate a hole straight through it before it was washed ashore and when i found it again chamomiles were growing in the cavity. i put it back inside of me and now the world seems stranger and more beautiful than ever

Bone, Yrsa Daley-Ward

literally emo over this autocorrect . like it’s right… there’s no need for “orpheus loves eurydice” as a statement. the evidence is already there: orpheus and eurydice

to create is to love, to hope

[motto, bertolt brecht || free, florence and the machine || interview, andrew garfield || unknown || poets society 1989, dir. peter weir || road to hell (reprise), hadestown]

—  Eileen Myles, The Importance of Being Iceland

Mary Oliver (from In Blackwater Woods)

Vladimir Nabokov, Letters to Véra