heartworms (iv)

​november always feels like it’s ending, so my worm heart warmed to a cinder in only its second week: as i drove home from toronto, and king princess sang.

​the trees were just part of the dark, i didn’t know i was lost yet, and king princess sang,

“[Outro]
And if you think it's love, it is
And if you think it's trust, it is
And if you think it's love, it is
And if you think it's trust, it is
And if you think it's love, it is
And if you think it's trust, it is
And if you think it's love, it is
And if you think it's trust, it is
And if you think it's love, it is
And if you think it's trust, it is
And if you think it's love, it is
And if you think it's trust, it is (Yeah)”

​and her voice became younger me, forgiving me, (inadvertently) introducing an equation. 

and if you think it's love, it is
and if you think it's trust, it is

and if you think X=X, it is. 

​the law of identity (X always equals X, even if X changes, which kp’s repetitions over time guarantee) fitted for values determined via changing perception. changing perception as mathematical law. 

this is a case for instantaneous momentum. X=X=what you think X is=what X is now-now?-now, even as the song ends. aka if time slices coexist, so do intertime truths (even if they directly contradict). aka as i traverse the song, as my thoughts about love/trust/self inevitably change, i float, still, on the little timestamp circle. through.

​at stake here is the authority of now-feeling vs. science’s notion of truth accrued via replicability — the latter of which we need sometimes, of course! of course we need. but does that framework work for tasting out love/trust/self? doesn’t the nature of being a person mean irretrievable shifts underneath this ruse of the so-called same self? 

​once, in the middle of setting out a claim, the poet ivanna baranova looked up at the cigarette smoke sky, to say, “—wait, gut check— yes.” (it was mesmerizing. she did not double-check).

​i think of a pole, constructing a tent out of fabric. i think of heart stints, propping up instantaneously collapsible tunnels of flesh. i think of that night, held up by my headlights. that i pushed in with light, as it swooped in behind. 


this month’s HW is written (so fondly and reverently) after TC Tolbert, whose Word Problems poems have clicked my brain back into variables, my Leah Reeder, because anytime i think about math i’m reminded of her brilliance, and Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life. x=x was Jude’s favourite.