HELLO

Here you will find an informal collection of poems I've written over the past years.

MY GOD

to preface, i am not religious. at least i am not currently religious.
i used to believe, believe in many things:
people, friendship, love, the world;
ghosts, aliens, god, gravity, climate change, and the rotation of
the earth around its own axis, the earth orbiting the sun, you
and me orbiting each other never crossing paths.
i still firmly believe in some of these things,
in some others, not so much.
i used to be, not think or believe, god.
the world to play with and work for at my very own fingertips.
i probably wasn't a very benevolent god - or a very malevolent
one, for that matter.
perhaps a quite neutral god.
a god washed free and clean of all real responsibility.
for some people it might be blasphemous to consider myself a
god as a fleshy squishy and fragile human being.
i don't understand why a god has to be immortal
or omnipresent or kind or evil or anything at all.
i don't believe in a god at all.
but i used to pray to one, to pray away the things i saw that
nobody else saw, to pray away the things i felt that nobody else
felt, to pray away the things i was that nobody else was.
i was haunted by visions that were not mine,
by sensations that could not have been true,
by emotions that tore me apart which were not for me to possess.
my god was not cruel but she was simply indifferent.
indifferent to my suffering and prayers.
and so i shed my old belief system that caused me so much confusion and pain.
while my extraordinary experiences did not vanish, i have grown a thicker skin,
one unblemished by the belief in an entity that could save me.
how can i stop believing when believing in things such as people, friendship, love, the world, has saved me?
how can i stop believing when *everyone believing in me* has saved me?

and so i will continue to believe
as i will believe in you.

TO FIFI IN CAT HEAVEN

The door was left a bit ajar when you drifted off to sleep and ultimately your silent forever sleep. Fifi had always been a silly name for a fat little senior calico cat. My mom called you a lucky cat because of your three differently colored patches of fur. I think we were particularly lucky to have you in our lives. I don’t remember what the weather was that day. I wrapped you around one of your favorite blankets when I left the room, not a single tear having flowed within and without me. My sister was crying like there was no tomorrow, although she tried her best to look strong in front of me. I said “see you soon again, I love you” before we left you on that table, paws white from your blood stopping to circulate in your small body. You were so very thin then. Mom believed you stayed alive for me until I came back from my semester abroad in Lithuania. You held on for that long, just to see me again one last time, and so was I. I believe mom might have been onto something just this once.