8 F Y R E ' B I R D 8

echo memory :: june 19, 2018 :  i am sitting here, in the mountains and i can smell the alfalfa near me. it is not growing. it is tied up, in a bundle. this bundle is for my use. it is for the practice of archery. i have yet to transport it to the forest for this purpose. the smell of it is nice. it lingers. it reminds me of fall, which reminds me of my childhood, which reminds me of my birthday. as i was transporting it, it shed many pieces of itself and they ended up collecting along the edge where the wall meets my deck. i liked this. i hope it liked it. i kept them there. for the lingering scent, but also for the sight, of something beautiful. of a chaotic, kind of beauty that i feel happens the most in the fall, when things are letting go and finding themselves strewn about everywhere, in a surrender to death, to change, to transition, to life.   the rain is trickling, the rhythms of it can be heard against the trees and the rooftop. playing with each other. the...

cooing, soft night air.   i conjure this around me.   i let my bones settle, because often in the city, they are on fire. they are running with electric tires, the nervous systems in me cars. streets and cars, hard metal that comes from somewhere, far away. distant booms, high pitched sounds. i wonder about how we can manipulate our environment with sound, and how there might be sound warfare, and how there is also: sound healing.   because so often in the city my breasts never settle. my bones have a hard time not rotting and becoming the earth, because we must return to the earth, we must return to the earth, we must become Them, we must become Her, be eaten by our chthonic desires, come home to Her, come home to Them, sparkling and dark, moonlit :earth. my bones remember. my bones remember, decay and how to become the earth again.   in winter, i smell death. death is everywhere. i feel like i let parts of my garden (genitals) die out this winte...

when i came out to my cis-het boyfriend as genderfluid, he asked me what that meant. when i explained it to him, he said: “that’s weird”.   we were driving in the car. he was driving. he quickly looked over at me afterwards, as my face, space, and whole being was impacted by the weight of his statement. horror, pain, and grief erupting through my eyes. tears beginning to rush.   needless to say, i broke up with him. it took me awhile, but that moment taught me who i wanted close to me as i transitioned (and who i didn’t want close to me). it taught me self-care, boundaries, and respect. it tacught me to see how ingrained self-erasure had become for me as a non-binary person, and how low my sense of self-worth was as a result of it. it taught me how deep the pain of many years and lifetimes and generations of erasure feels. i was crying for days after that incident. i didn’t know what was happening to me. enormous grief portals opened in my body. i didn’t have lan...