<aside> 🤳🏽 Texting Myself is an ongoing series of performance pieces of my unedited phone notes. My aim is to resist the sometimes overly pious inclination of poetry readings, to practice taking myself less seriously, and unlearn the instinct of perfectionism. It is always semi-improvisational, and mega-embarrassing. Each group of notes is only performed in this format once.

</aside>

October 21, 2023

• My trainer tells me that if I’m going to keep telling my story, I should put the free weights down, I’ve just been standing there, arms hanging at my sides, 20 pounds each in my grip. I’m stubborn. Have single focus. So much that I forget to invite you to my room because your hands feel good where they are, testing the allowance under my hem. I forget “better.” I am swallowed up in the now.
• I DON’T REGRET KISSING TWO OF MY UBER DRIVERS IN TWO YEARS, BUT STILL? AT WHAT COST?
• If poetry is an act of attention and devotion, poetry is also prayer. I poem to you.
• Seeing your gym crush at the gym when they’re no longer just your crush but also someone you’re going on dates with: it still hits.
• Wave in mirror. The back of a bee. Fully upside down to take in the details.
• My ex (hi Steph) has two of my childhood nightmares on her mantle. This is not a metaphor. Chessie Normile says “you could just write things down as they are, just as you see them. That you could try that. It’s also not a metaphor when I tell you that’d I’d entirely forgotten she got these in the divorce until she sent me a picture of them on Friday the 13th. There are many, many reasons she makes my life a good story. This is one.
• A dream of a dream of a dream of a dream of a dream  of a dream of a dream of a dream of a nightmare of a dream of a kiss of a slight of hand of a linger of a stone fruit golden god cross my heart and hope to dream of a dream of a dream of a dream of a
• “I even went and did some work on the van so it would be a safe little chariot for us.”
• The church choir is at it again. Practicing with the windows open. I can’t make out the words, so it could make anything holy. Doing my dishes. Following my Roomba around so it doesn’t try to eat any cords. Thinking of you.
• In my defense, I wanted. I wanted so much it made me bigger than my body, I Mary Poppins bagged, I outsized myself.
• Is this a race allegory (about a clown performance, lol)
• I accidentally tip the KJ with a one dollar bill that has a bag of ketamine stuck in it’s fold. I go back to ask for it.
• A man on the streetcar said he loved my tattoos. That they reminded him of a movie. A scary movie.
• Date ideas section of my tinder bio:
  • three-course mall foodcourt meal
  • warm beverage + neighborhood stroll using the right/left game
  • we start walking from either side of the Great Wall, meet in the middle, smooch, then never speak again.
• SPEAKING OF WHICH