Anna Kohlweis

Heart Drift

the ten-year-old girl in my drawing workshop looks at me from across the table, paint brush in hand. blue paint drips from the bristles down onto the paper. she furrows her brow as she looks at my head. "have you ever had brown hair?" she asks. "sure", i say. "brown is my natural hair color." she wants proof. i look for a photo on my phone from when i last had brown hair. she sits down next to me, shoulder to shoulder, and moves her face close to the screen. "that's not you." she says. "of course it is" i reply. she shakes her head. "this is a different woman. she looks nothing like you." i don't know what to say. it is one of my favorite photos of myself. when i come back from the workshop, i give myself a buzzcut on a sunday morning. this is an unrelated action.
the world is so unspeakably cruel i am temporarily unsure whether i am allowed to think about myself. i briefly forget who i am or that i exist. a friend sends me a message to say hello, and it shoots me back into my shell. here i am.

when hard summer rain falls, the young man from across the street stands by the open window wearing nothing but underpants, letting the wind blow the rain into his face. his curls move in tiny waves. i call him poseidon.
my skin is hungry. i open the window and hope for a rainstorm. somebody is always yelling in this neighborhood.
i move the cursor over my collection of file folders that contain music works in progress. albums, singles, remixes. every single one is a door into a house, and every house is different. the light, the temperature, the smells, the sounds. some of them feel unfamiliar; i still bump into the doorframes at night when i get up and don't switch on the light. some of them have architectural elements i personally would not have chosen, but that i have come to enjoy. some are just paper sheds. some of them have secrets in the basement. some have other people in them. they are not always present, but the house is also their house, and i find the imprints of their bodies on the couch cushions, the smell of coffee lingering in the air. sometimes they leave the front door unlocked, and i appreciate their trust. some of the houses need more windows to open in case of rain. some already have rain on the inside.

friday, i dye all the clothes i don't wear enough blue. maybe they will flatter me once they become water.

Theft

While you speak
I tie my shoe laces
maybe you notice
the extra knots for safety

how urgently I need to climb down
the spiral staircase of your chest
into your damp, dark, mold-ridden base
meant to say:
With my Swiss army knife
i need to go
where you grow your heart fungi
puffball
bitter oyster
death cap
morel
and when you look the other way
I cut a few of them
scarf them down raw
until my throat tightens.

Five Six Seven Eight

Every minuscule movement
of each of my many arms and legs
an imperfect stumble-foxtrot-cha-cha-cha
and therefore as imperfectly perfect as possible
the most breathtakingly beautiful bouquet
is one of red I-am-heres and if-you-needs and poppies
placed upon my chest of gasps and drawers
long before I am small and dead.

I do not want to be held
in reverence
just dip me
again and again
until I have drunk
all the water
in the baptismal font
and we can tap dance
on the marble bottom
to finally wake up god
and maybe
the goddess in me.

Let me be good
let me be good at this
let me open my mouth to let the butterflies out
their wings all soggy and soaked in spit and acid
improvised pirouettes to the pointe of exhaustion
flapping straight into your eyeballs.

I would advise you to keep your mouth open this time
let's go against what we were taught
arrhythmic, haphazard, unsound
welcome to the show
this is what love feels like, too, excuse me, I slipped
I am cracked open until further notice
stick a fork in me, twist, shake, I’m done.

Salt (Paris, 2022)

the closet door is wide open. i stare at the carefully folded pants in my drawer, choosing a pair for the day. i vaguely remember not to wear the ones with the small black and white pattern, but cannot remember why. i put them on, despite. later, i realize that the inseam of my right leg has a palm-sized tear, revealing flesh and a perfectly placed single long dark hair, confidently rooted in and growing out of a perfectly round birthmark. i remember what it feels like to look out an airplane window and see the clouds part to reveal a wind turbine. it's comforting to know that something out there is keeping busy while i live on the floor, trying to shape my body into something more enticing than the self.

we forget how to be, on occasion, and the feeling is already with us in the first seconds after sleep. or, we forget how to believe in a world that still produces pants with no elastic in the waistband, as most of us deserve tenderness and should not be required to give so much and get no give in return. i have demands. i have built myself a country within, but i only belong there marginally more than i belong to the one i live in. i have deliberately unbelonged myself, i have transformed the present into a haunted house i have too many free tickets to. rolls and rolls of them come out of my ears and nose.

most truths reveal themselves in states of loose association, and so, "all good songs are naked and hungry" falls out of my fingers one day in conversation, and only for a split second it is joke, before it becomes unshakable fact. somewhere, there will be nights that smell like freshly opened doors and shared sleep. the odds are in everyone’s favor.
i lie down to rehearse.