j/j hastain


from female he and correlational femme

In the sopping song that curls downward from the surface, I remember when, by the bed, that white dove flew hard into me through the open window and struck. My heart. Really did hit right there. That rough tuft of feathers, so forcible. How some of the feathers got into my mouth. How the feathers going into my mouth then made an interior irretrievable sound that felt much like how it now feels to be below, in forms of “ah” and “oh” and have no sound come out of me.

How after the bird, there was that mark there. Like a birthmark but after birth. The mark was a mark I could never remove. A mark that no one else but you could see. I knew that I had been pricked by an opaque beak and that that would forever make me leak.

Leak which is not the same as outward projections of sound.




When we open a next drawer large versions fall face up into my open palms. Like that bird’s tussock so immediate and omission-less.

I meditate as we traverse. As we consider if we yet feel like we belong.

Will we make ourselves belong here?

Belonging having to do with: “in this space I am found” or “in this space I am still waiting to be found.”

j/j hastain is the author of several cross genre books including long past the presence of common (Say it with Stones Press) and forthcoming libertine monk (Scrambler Press).
 
 
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