poems and desire
Two weeks ago, I was given a series of poems by a lover.
Four days later, I was broken up with by the same person.
As I processed this switch up, I felt surprisingly…relieved. Maybe it was because I felt like I was in an episode of Girls, because this blog post is at least a voice…of a generation. Or maybe it was because these poems were a boastful projection of themselves instead of an embrace of my personhood.
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I’m currently lying in bed at my parents home, on the brink of possible sepsis or a brain infection as my doctor panically told me this morning. The deliriousness that comes from illness is pretty inspiring, and basically I’m such a warrior. This is a story for you and me, because I get involved in situations so I can write about it on my blog.
This year, I’ve fallen into a series of lovers. I attract and am attracted to intense people who are difficult to navigate. My curiosity brings me here. We are lost in our worlds while trying to measure the fields of our differences. I have held people I almost got to know, intertwined with kind hearts and walked on tightropes that could have pulled me into darkness. I am one step closer to practicing abstinence for real.
Sitting on my bedroom floor, I was handed a packet of paper that compared me to ice…as an erotic body…broken…was I getting manic pixie dream-girled in real time? These were not love poems. At least this time, I walked away with documentation, a blog and margins I could annotate in. I mean, listen. Maybe I was that alluring. But these words were written delusions…and maybe I was just desired.
To be desired feels like a dark temptation…illusions of flattery, a desperate shadow to reach towards something, anything to attach to. As Lauren Berlant once profoundly explained, desire is a cloud of possibility from the gap between a specific reality and the needs projected onto it. To preserve and destroy what isn’t broken.
Desire is a projection from the outside, yet makes you feel like it comes from within you. Therefore, desire is a shaky anchor.
Love is an embracing dream where desire is reciprocated. In an ideal world, desire will lead to love, making sense of enduring desire. We’ve felt it, wanting, ruminating, fantasizing. We become convinced when we feel possession of our fantasies, it’ll ease the destabilizing effects of desire. As a young Asian woman, being an object of desire are only amplified cautionary tales. Masculinity is constantly threatened by the fragility of their linkage, and these feelings of possession inevitably expose themselves, whether you are caught in the crossfire or not.
My new year's resolution is to be more honest. An honest piece of art happens when we tell stories about ourselves. After all, what you value, notice, or criticize in others are often projections of what we think we lack or aspire to be. This all manifests in different ways, whether it is saviorism revealed in poetry or blog posts full of contradictions. We tell stories, narratives to soothe our insecurities.
When you look really closely, we expose ourselves to each other all the time. I am seduced by this reason, locating this point of helplessness in our craft. Our deepest desires are so beautiful and ugly. I hope I keep finding them, and I hope I keep showing them. Poems and blogs, the truths of it all.
^*^%<3eek
