Rachel Mennies

The Naomi Letters

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  • Matilde Merinohas quoted3 years ago
    But Naomi, last night I slept.

    I disappeared from my body and returned only when I was ready.
  • Crystal Vega-Huertahas quoted3 years ago
    How do I look away now that I have seen you?
  • Crystal Vega-Huertahas quoted3 years ago
    The problem with certainty lives in its instability: how this afternoon I sliced open a peach at its seam, finding it gone to mush.

    I licked each wet wrist before I threw the peach in the garbage.

    Yesterday it would have been delicious—the day before, inedible.

    What I’m trying to say, Naomi, is you found me at the exact right time.
  • Crystal Vega-Huertahas quoted3 years ago
    What warm silence I have found here alone in the morning.

    Olds calls it the stillness of the quiet / skirts of the dark, on the ground.

    I reach for the light cautiously—a gift rising at my cold door.

    A new lover who learns the dawn air as she reaches.

    But Naomi, last night I slept.

    I disappeared from my body and returned only when I was ready.

    Have you brought me this impossible peace?

    If you have, you mustn’t tell me—or else you mustn’t leave me—
  • Crystal Vega-Huertahas quoted3 years ago
    Where my friend awakens, there is no snow.

    Can you imagine it?

    She must step into her grief in a world full of sun.
  • Crystal Vega-Huertahas quoted3 years ago
    What if it’s my desire that lengthens the night?

    How the letters I write you cool once they leave my hands.

    How the world holds itself so still in the frost, waiting.
  • Crystal Vega-Huertahas quoted3 years ago
    Tonight the bed bends with unwritten texts.

    Tonight I imagine offering you rested hands. Accountable hands.

    I strip myself of spirit and stand before you.

    My pulse collects wet in my clavicles and I cannot help

    but touch there first, the hollow thrum of bone,

    before the animal hand reaches for your face—
  • Crystal Vega-Huertahas quoted3 years ago
    When I imagine touching you I rename myself: animal.

    A body whose body wants your body, bereft of the rest.

    (It is false, Naomi, this separation.

    But what if I can only touch you through the lie?)
  • Crystal Vega-Huertahas quoted3 years ago
    I stopped desiring delicate things when I ceased, at last, to wish myself delicate.

    I used to walk in circles for hours to make my hips the width of a male shadow.

    I’d apply red lipstick, then call my reflection beautiful—

    I still couldn’t lift the mirror into my arms.

    I’m trying to believe my body needs no repair
  • Crystal Vega-Huertahas quoted3 years ago
    If nobody has died, why do I grieve?

    How do I dress the body I will not meet? How do I dress the body I cannot love?
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