A Year in Two Minutes

My dad died. 
My sister visited and kept visiting. 

An avalanche of panic.
I found poems under grief.

I tried introducing myself to San Francisco as this artist who gets shit done.
For the first time ever, I discovered I was the most normal person in the room.

My nephew decided he hated me. His way of mourning.
When I asked him why, he said it was my hair or socks or my laugh.
Then he turned four and liked me again. We can hug now.

I wrote myself into a squeezed pinball and created so much muchness
That after December's final performances, I overdosed on activity
And puked three times that night.

You took me on one last road trip,
Down to San Fran where I'd just been,
To San Diego where I never'd been,
Up to Vegas, the first place you took me out of town
For our 2011 birthdays, when I was sure I hated Vegas.
I don't love Vegas still but I'm not good at hating anymore.

I cried a lot during sex. 
When you asked what was wrong, I blamed it on my dad.
But then your skin hurt my fingertips.

I got my first tarot reading.
Before that, I was unsure about our state of connection,
Then she said, "Inability to communicate,"
And squeezed my heart on a bench in the salty coast air
Of our school building's 6th floor zen sanctuary. 
I knew we were in trouble.

I wore a mask. You pulled it off. We tried to work it out for a week.
Every time we talked, the wall between us widened.
We saw inevitable.

My family looked at me with worried eyes.
They wondered, does this begin new spiraling?

I made several plays. And books of poems. And visual, audio, performance art.
I recreated me. And found my skin worth getting to know. 

The walk out from BART to class.