hey you guys, i just wanted to put out there that the finiteness of man is truly our worst and our best. i was talking to my husband yesterday about how i don’t really miss him in the same way that i used to and i think that is because i always know he is coming back or that he will be at home when i get back, that there will always be that - until there won’t, one day, and how crushing is that going to be?

anyway, i was dwelling on that, and these big things that we grapple with, everyone else is also going through them. there is so much to hold, and everyone has to hold it.

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i signed in here for the first time in a long time. it’s kinda interesting to reappear somewhere. hi! i’m a lot different than the last time i was here. i wonder if i’ll start writing poems again - lately i’ve been making a lot of music and not much else. i released an album in a band last year, actually!

it’s kinda weird how this is like talking to an old friend i haven’t heard from in a long time, or writing a letter to a small god or something. i hope you’re well? i hope you’ve been doing the things you want to be doing? i think i have. which is a good feeling.

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yo! i still have feelings! and once in a while i even have the time to make visual art about them outside of a band practice rehearsal studio context!!! please do not exclude me! please do not leave me alone! i am so afraid!

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Take notes on your phone on the way back from your parents’ house.
I settle for this. I’m rusty.
I’m building back up in a long slow arc:
a catcher’s mitt, scuffed and dusty, a beanpole
left out to hang.

My brown socks have holes.
Mom notices. Not in a nice way.
Watching the same shows on the same days,
conference after conference I see her stay in bed
and I come and I go. I get a long train -
one I’ve gotten used to, and I feel my innards flake off like paint.

I’m in it now. I’ve done it now.
I bite my tongue raw. I apologise,
though I don’t know what for.
I watch my tone.

There is nothing in me.
Not self-made, but taken care of just the same.

When you give and you give
and you give and there is nothing in you,
you are a host in a home where you haven’t felt at home in years.
You pour four glasses of water.

The same stuff in new walls straining to fit like an overgrown plant

and despite that
I cannot believe for the life of me 
that anything is ever going to feel any different.

a mother’s love | ishani jasmin

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I know that you’ve not been feeling yourself;
that you are wearied and wary. You wake up
on the wrong side of the bed.
I know you worry about who you’re doing proud
and if you’re doing the proud enough.
About who you are 
and who you are becoming
and who you are going to be all at once.

Would it then be enough
for me to tell you that you are blisteringly kind?
That every day around you is a blessing?
Would it be enough to say that I care -
and that my care doesn’t come easy?
Would it be enough to say that you’ve earned it,
completed it,
walked in a line from A to Z and back again
just because you could
and I am just so fortunate that you picked me up along the way?

I don’t think it would.

But if you can rest at all,
rest assured that you’re good.

an ode to a friend | ishani jasmin

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i am starting the artist’s way again. i wonder if it will help with any of this. maybe it will at least help me put words onto a page again in a way that feels like it matters and doesn’t just feel like fog. at present i’m very sick of myself and ready to step out of here - watching my calendar fill almost helplessly, fearing and revelling in alone time at the same time. sick of being busy, sick of not being busy.

sick of only being good when it’s convenient and malleable, when it soothes. so afraid of making waves. afraid of bringing things out. this feels very bitter, but i am alone for the first time in a long time and i think it is fine to be bitter sometimes. 

i suppose this is my way of saying ‘my therapist keeps eyeing me because i feel like too much of a burden to speak up but i also feel hard done by.’ he is right though!

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have been quietly thinking quite a bit about how love is a habit. not really sure how to pull my thoughts into words these days, though.

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the only way out is through - a very short shortlist of thoughts i have about the past year, and me trying to wrangle my poor seething brain for even a moment to do something when nothing is coming in

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I think it is absolutely nuts
that I should be moved by anything at all.

See someone selling books on the roadside
and be moved.

Feel a warm, wriggling, alive person next to me in the morning
and be moved.

Find a moment to sing in a crowd of people singing
and be moved.

another year ends | ishani jasmin

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This is the small
of the world’s back. It is a time
after a time, after a time,
hand meandering beyond slow hand.

Everything is fuzz. Wake up
or don’t. Wake up at 7, 8, 9am,
we are all at loose ends.

Coffee at a friend’s house
where we both space out
thinking about the news.
Reconvene hours later to watch a shitty movie
and not talk anymore.

Burning a candle to make the room smell,
to find comfort and memory in something at all.

I am next up on the waiting list,
but I have forgotten what to say
when I am seen. Perhaps forgotten
how to even be seen. Wearing
the same pair of jeans for months in a row,

taking great solace in Levi’s advice
never to wash your jeans. When you don’t know what you mean,
what is there left to say?

a crowded meander | ishani jasmin

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i know i haven’t really been here lately. 

this is a space for feelings and i feel like i have so few right now - maybe forever? - hopefully not forever. i am on a constant autopilot, and also, trying to not judge myself for that, because it is a perfectly normal reaction to things, so between all the autopilot and all the not judging, i am barely feeling at all!

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i made some comics towards the beginning of all this, back when my hair was not overgrown. i have since realised i am probably not going to keep a watercolour diary of everything that is happening, so i feel happy enough to just post these now.

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I started the fight.

I always do, I think. I haven’t been in a lot of relationships, and I haven’t been in a lot of fights, but something I can say with certainty is that when you know how the other person fights, you truly know each other. Weak spots. Volition to hurt. How to make up. If you make up.

I said that for dramatic tension; we always make up. It sometimes astounds me that we do. I can be so sharp-tongued, and I often even mean to be — I want to hurt in the moment, and it lingers with me after. It always feels like my fault, so I settle into that feeling, even though you make it sound like a shared blame. You have a habit of smoothing out creases that way, making things seem more even than they are. It makes me wish you’d let me wallow, even for a moment.

We don’t argue often, but when we do, it feels like it’s often — twice in a week with acres between. Quakes in an otherwise straight line. You look so miserable afterwards, bottom lip trembling, face flushed, and I am cold, stony, and unreachable looking at you until I am not anymore. It’s seldom that I’ve not been carried away on my high horse. When it happens, I am guilty of forgetting that you care.

These things stay the same, in a sense. You miss dinner thinking about it, and when I urge you to eat, you aren’t even hungry, and it’s because I started the fight. I vow to be better. And for a time, I am. Some things stay better, but I always find a different way to be tightly wound.

To be honest, I’m surprised you’re not tired of it.

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YOU CHANGED, BUD - a sombre meditation on losing the oldest friend you had through no fault of your own; just one of you moved and the other one kept trying to keep up, and it resulted in you having a painful confrontation in which they were a total asshole because they were so focused on their new life, they couldn’t even be bothered to say goodbye kindly or respectfully

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QUARANTEEN ANGST - a zine about being inside and feeling the pressure to be productive, or do something, or be something, but also, go to sleep! oh my god!!!

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