7.24.08

You cried like nothing I’d ever seen before
Salt crusted around your irritated tear ducts
I watched your vision blur,
but the prismatic blue spheres behind your swollen eyelids
could not project your own fish eyed view over mine
You were born with confused and shifted organs, an anomaly
I walked forwards as you stumbled backwards over your own confused feet
You swallowed your thoughts and let them sink into your stomach
I left my brain in my head and my heart in my chest
and captured pointed syllables in a net
In my make-believe world,
you were an infant without your favorite toy
In your make-believe world,
there were no infants and the sky was tinted red

When your organs grew tired of tripping over themselves
and aligned to heal the scrapes and bruises,
we danced behind blue velvet
On your toes you were blissful
But parting curtains pursed your lips together and glued them shut
And your limbs grew sore and once again forgot their worth

Reclined in polished wood and nails you glowed, artificial
In yesterday’s skin you were a bruised vegetable
Poised carefully on silk you became ripe,
painted over like icing on a wedding cake
Like never before, you were surrounded by flowers
to capture the salt dripping onto your chest,
this time not your own
This last time the waterfalls were not your own

I held my breath and tried to grasp the air between my fingertips
The wind could not be caught and pushed back into you
Continuous air expelled from living mouths,
travelled in and out and in and out of living lungs
Your make-believe world was a candle that had flickered and gone out
In my make-believe world I was tired,
gasping for breaths through empty space once inhabited
The air tasted impossibly different

Berghuis v. Thompkins

Today the Supreme Court ruled that a criminal suspect must specifically invoke the right against self-incrimination in order to be legally protected by the 5th Amendment.

This means that if you are in a sticky situation with a member of law enforcement, you can't just stay silent and expect to have any rights. You need to actually state out loud your intention to remain silent. How ironic.

Just another technicality to allow police officers to more effectively arrest people who don't understand the law and the extent of their own rights.

Guerilla Knitting

Some days are just bad days from the start. Everything is all wrong and the world seems plain and ugly.

On these days, I knit.

And then I attach my knitting to inanimate objects in public places so that maybe, just maybe,

someone else having a terrible day will have something to smile about.

Here are some things that I have knitted around campus:

This is a lamp post that is more than half covered in knitting.

This is a bike shed with a little bit of knitting on it.

This is another lamp post.

Gopher-ing around.

I took this photo of a gopher:

It's not the best quality, but I'm very proud of it. I spent a long time getting acquainted with that gopher in order to take this picture.

Looking Back

You were late.

I cursed you under my breath.

We drove to a field,

the stars were obscured by clouds but you pretended.

You stared upwards,

commenting on star patterns only you could see.

You looked stupid.

You talked about the state of things,

your words dripped out of your mouth

attached to wet strings and I,

I pretended not to care, pretended not to be

staring at your Picasso features.

Your skin was handsome but you didn't match.

I imagined at some point

a spider must have poisoned you.

Your insides were that of a doomed insect,

melting and swirling and indistinguishable.

You reached.

Your hands were ice and your fingers,

your fingers detached and

wandered across my body.

I tried not to flinch.

You made the ground feel like glass,

we touched on broken beer bottles.

You tasted like sawdust.

It wasn't love.