You call me your dog,
your *****, your fool,
hurling words like stones
to shatter my heart.

I wag my tail anyway,
smiling through trembling lips,
fetching scraps of kindness
from the shadow of your hands.

You call me useless,
a beast beyond learning,
but I only want to please you—
to sit, to stay, to love.

Even as you turn away,
your voice cracking the whip,
I crawl through every wound,
bearing the weight of your name
like a leash around my soul.

For to be your dog
is still to be near you,
and I, the fool,
would bleed to feel you call me mine.

Rivers and Oceans
Are filled with wonderful beings
we are left awestruck
Lawless trawlers and haulers
wallets plastic and dollars.

Even when
The world seems down
Your dog
Will always jump up
To greet you at the door
Happy to see see you
And loving you unconditionally

And currently
That is the biggest comfort
In the world

It’s hard to meet someone serious at college. Everyone’s busy,
self-centeredly grinding away at their dreams. So much so that
people tell you to not even try (especially as a freshman).

I was mostly at ease with myself—as a freshman. I had an
excellent skincare routine—it was downright luxuriant, and it
kept me going, through that romantically baren and lonely year.

But we humans hope—we buy lotto tickets to dream on—though we know the awful math. We Gen Z’s seem to have our own unique brand of loneliness, born of covid and Internet-age experience.

My romantic expectations, sophomore year, were low—ok, unmeasurable.

Looking around was depressing. There were socially awkward STEM majors, jocks, frat men (sure the world’s laid-out just for them) and ‘CSOM Bros" (business majors more interested in parlaying my Grandmère’s money than me) and the elusive, emotionally reserved, ‘regular guys.’

But the unexpected can happen. We all know how crowded campus coffee shops are—the students move in and out in tides as noisy as the real, salty ocean. And then there you were, a rumpled, 25-year-old doctoral student—from another world—asking to share my table.

The loudest thing in that room was your sense of stillness. You seemed to be a new and distinct species, and as we talked, you seemed to somehow smooth my anxious edges. After a few meets, the thought, ‘I really like this guy,’ seemed to have its own gravity.

We somehow managed to thread the ‘too busy to care’ dynamic, and as time went by, you helped me channel my absurd, fiery, pastel-painted, first-love, early-twenty girlhood heat into something longer lasting, deep and authentic. Congratulations! It’s been two years.

Separating now, would be like removing the salt from the sea.
.
.
Songs for this:
Playing House by Kudu
So Much Mine by The Story
After Last Night by The Revlons

I don't want to go to sleep.
Tomorrow whets its work day claws,
my chore doubling faults reach ankle deep–
I am a ****** up, tongue-tied government sheep;
in capital letters
MY MOUTH DRIFTS TO SLEEP
as we were taught to be silent
in those capitalist dreams.
as we were taught
not to
speak

© fey (17/01/25)

an existential question so deep,
it can be answered only by
enumerating a million tiny
words:

in the quiet crackling of a spine & unsticking page noise of an opening of a brand new book, a first of firsts, a thrill for free in any bookstore that is yours now, uniquely and forever

in the upward stroking of a smooth
cheek, by your smallest finger, upon
a newborn’s face, your youngest child’s
newborn, and a rare moment of unadulterated love tinged by
immortality

the smile you retrieve when scratching
that old beloved pet’s face, in the exact
spot only you two know and a long time ago
discovered


patrolling the Promenade, espying an
elderly couple so bundled against the
city’s Arctic cold freeze, that movement nearly impossible, nonetheless holding gloved hands in a manner and a moment describable only as inseparable

letting someone jump in front of you,
at the supermarket or the bank, when
they have only one item to purchase, and you, a dozen or so, but the most important item you really really urgent need you have is to prove to yourself that it is possible to buy more time
for a human

crossing with an elegant eldery woman
across the wilds of First Ave., who insists
she needs no help (ha!), but doing it anyway
by complimenting her candy striped cane,
and being rewarded with a “stop that, or
I’ll be forced to take you
home!”

searching endlessly for  red kidney beans in olive oil in a health store that has no less than 19 varieties of everything, and an immigrant teenager employee tskes you across a cityscape of aisles, turns, niches and alcoves  to the exact spot and item, and you
smile and weep because the beam of their smile at your pleasure lights up two souls
simultaneously

next, herbed flavored tofu?

making a bank teller laugh (a near impossibility) when depositing a very large
check, and when asked if there is anything
else you need, informing that you would like to withdraw half immediately but only if they have a sufficient quantity of extra large size single dollar bills!

a group of privileged upper east side college seniors eating out at a wonderful Italian neighborhood restaurant, talking loudly about their recent travels abroad, and how crazy it is that one cannot get a cappuccino in Italy(!) except at breakfast
(oh, the in-justice)

here I stop, because not a lot, of my reasons
to be brought forth are concluded, but only because  you have started
to feel an urgent need to p-
repare/start your own list, immediately if not sooner to ascertain precisely your own anwer to:
Where
are you
being?

5:48am
NYC
Shabbat, January 18, 2025
18 Tevet, 5785