Ashley Roach

And becoming extremely tender to myself

It’s funny

How hard I’ve become to protect myself

From myself

Now all I see is myself

everywhere I look

The mirror

& My mother, my god

What was I trying to say

There’s a thing about longing

I’ve always identified with

The feeling that I’m already losing

                                                                                                             Lose something, babe

I’ve got nothing

to prove [1]

Neoliberal Power Femme[2], take me away with you!

Is it easier up there? Where

Lucid dreams like electricity, the current flies through me

And in my fantasies, I rise above it

And way up there, I actually love it [3]

Where you float above violence and fear and death.

Where your money helps individual girls

and women who weep for your benevolence.[4]

Where you are crowned and we are crowned

in our likelihood of forgoing and/or wanting

to marry the boy on the football team.[5]

The comfort of a solipsism where war is only ever a metaphor for love.

The solipsism of American whiteness.  Yes, poverty, yes, streethome, yes

but did you hear my heart was broken?

It’s no stretch to say I can go down the hallway of myself forever. It’s not without value.

The thing I want most

And can almost touch

The feeling of always reaching back

Of love forever looping forward and backward

Into grief

And how long it takes to unwind the various endings

The homelands imagined and ignored

And otherwise exiled

Once filled with the future we envisioned

            (doghair on wooden floors, a meadowy backyard, purple painted porch and opine)

Now flooded with the past

Remember when I pulled up and said Get in the car?[6]

Violent in all the ordinary ways

Back when we were living for the hope of it all[7]

Capitalism & Solipsism / I feel bad a lot of the time except for when I’m with my son and then the worst I can feel is bored and guilty about feeling bored mostly it is outsized joy that feels like a heartattack and I still can’t stop looking for the perfect matte nude liquid lipstick

I’m a millennial. Of course I daydream about starting an upcycled embroidered t-shirt side hustle.

I’m a millennial. Of course I take interesting books from Little Free Libraries.

I’m a millennial. Of course I have a fraught and unfulfilling relationship with sex, sexuality, and marriage.

I’m a millennial. Of course I process my emotions by integrating TikTok memes and wondering if I have undiagnosed ADHD.

I’m a white woman. Of course I fantasize about taking over a local bookstore and making it beautiful.

Sam Kriss wrote: “It strikes me as very obvious that something similar is happening with the Taylor Swift fans: that they are, in a sense, female incels; that their manic love for and obsession with this woman is also screening an equally intense lack of desire. Taylor Swift is just the name that has been given to a certain blankness in the world.” [8]

Both my anxiety and my solipsism (the same thing??) say I exist but can’t say for sure why or that anything else does exist outside of my own mind. At least that is how I’m reading the Wikipedia article about solipsism, which is a philosophical concept, which always boggles my brain. How I want to talk about reality; how there’s no proof of it except if it were mine, i would bend it to my will, and i wouldn’t allow the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza or the Democratic Republic of Congo but the sad part is everyone would probably look more like me, ie short, femmey, confused, white, and sad. We would mope the planet together and try hard to decide what we want.

D says it makes sense that in late state capitalism, we have to take medications to regulate our unhealthy and unmanageable surroundings. Toxicity at all levels.

If I forget to take a daily Effexor, say, because I got super stoned and sat in the bathtub reading the same paragraph over and over and therefore forgot to take a nightly pill before going to bed, I spend all day the next day nauseous, fuzzy-feeling around the mouth, and feeling Unreal, like in The Waste Land.

Like the realization in college that everything is connected. And bigger than you will ever know or imagine. Cue the Unreality of Conspiratorial Connections. Does Taylor Swift’s bellybutton exist? Does her humanity? Does her sexuality? Does mine?

A girl on TikTok claimed that the thing that tied womanhood together was that we are always just a little nauseous. I think about that a lot.

I’ve felt crushable lately / not in the velvet ways / not in candy hearts / mostly just a green wet and meat crush / My ribs closing in on themselves / hands lighting up with tensions spark & flame / carpal tunnel sounds so lovely when described like / have you ever had a migraine aura shimmer? / like that but in the bones / it’s true I’ve been losing weight / have you ever slowly crushed your own heart? / in the romantic sense / combined with tobacco / lightly applied / and insecurity and insecurity / and your usual goddamn drive and ignorance, well / the flesh just slides right off

When I’m restless I can’t focus even on the things I most want to do like type whatever feels good in this document, or read one of the seven tabs I have saved in the READING group tab that acts as a graveyard to the think pieces and articles I finding interesting enough to open but not to read. I skate on the surface of information like water striders on the slow parts of the river in summer evenings even then I’m crammed up inside my own mind I can’t even relax so today I look at Twitter for far too long bc the constant renewal of image words links clips of mostly Taylor Swift jackknifes my need for gratification but not really enough I think when I was little we called them skimmers it’s just that Twitter itself is pretty damn shallow and the images don’t go far enough and before you know it I’m knee deep in a masterdoc about alleged lyrical allusions to queerness in Taylor Swift’s back catalog and wowwwwwwwwwwwwww

Is she??

Aren’t I?

We’re all in therapy and sometimes I’m so raw for days after that I feel like an actual skin rash. As much as I try, I can’t read anyone’s mind, not D’s, not W’s, not our therapist’s, not my drunk brother’s, not my own barely, and certainly not Austin’s, my insurance claims adjuster, who I have heard is Not My Friend, but who is my only contact with any authority since F and I were t-boned at an affluent churchy corner after montessori school pick up and I sat speechless on the grass waiting for something to make sense and over time it has come to feel like no one cared about me as much as they cared about themselves being Helpers as I was at that moment Helpless and I guess that is what I mean by solipsism because at that moment  I made irrational choices and upset my lover because I didn’t know what to do and sent her a picture of my totalled car with no further information and I should have been more present but I wasn’t and I couldn’t and by crying and falling asleep instead of calling her for support or to thank her for the unasked-for support and I guess what I said was true: I was too wrapped up in my own shit at the time to “see” her.

The last thing I remember was looking in my rearview mirror at F and asking him about cookies, then the loudest bangpop and the airbags and the screaming and the sidewise flailing and the sliding library books and the shaking……

I don’t know how to say I thought she’d be kinder to me, more understanding, and this makes me feel relentlessly, unforgivably selfish.

It gets lonely

Crying in the parking lane

The night I heard that S died

Weird but fucking beautiful[9]

on the radio so loud

And thinking about grief

And how it only applies to you

When it applies to you

And then there is no return

to before grief and also

All the grief becomes related

Interlocking and heartbreaking love,

and calamitous waves

of hurt[10]

It all starts to make sense

And that’s the hardest

and most beautiful part.

And the moment it makes sense

it also disappears completely.

Heartbreaking, calamitous waves.

Lately I’ve been thinking about childhood

I’ve always avoided it

In fact, I can barely remember it

I borrowed a photo album from my mother

My big eyes gleaming from under a pile

of stuffed animals from the 70s

The light of pure pleasure

Just like my own son’s

To live for the hope of it all[11]

Life is emotionally abusive[12]

I’ve been shaken lately

Truly stirred up

There have been many Moments of Truth

Is this a State of Grace

I have needed

For years I’ve been thinking about my own confused and confusing relationship with queerness and visibility. As a white woman, I blend in easily in Target and in parking lots full of Hondas and in my own car accident, where I sat stupefied with my son in my arms as I watched a tow truck load my beloved red Honda hatchback onto its rig and drive it away while Helpers tell me Accidents Happen All the Time.

As a queer woman, I feel invisible. Except for the Perfect Times, those rare and few, when I am with D and she loves me and we are together, king of my heart, body & soul,[13] but those days I guess may be over.

It’s important to me to Flag Like Crazy because of my invisibility. I want my students to See Me. I also want to Be Seen. I wonder if it is enough, in the pursuit of my own self, to be Seen by Some. I realize this isn’t up to me. Septum piercing. Taylor Swift tattoo. Writing letters addressed to the fire.[14] Doubly pierced ears. Bleached curls sprouting from my temple like a blaze of white gold in the silvering dishwater tangle. Both tame enough to pass and visible enough to be seen. By some.

Betwixt, between, contained, trapped, enveloped.

I was just thinking about how I didn’t listen to music

For years

Just gorging on the news

And feeling sad and important about it

And it was a right thing not to live in ignorance

And I was younger then

And had a lot to learn

about being a person

in a hard world

I was filled with unplaceable longing

which eventually was replaced

with unplaceable sadness

and resentment

which looks like envy

and is.

The thing is, it feels good

Essential, actually,

to connect with the part of me

that listened to the radio

at all hours of the night

with books and pens and diaries.

That dreams in the minor key,

pale and freckled with hair

that couldn’t be tamed at the temples.

How quickly I learned to protect

my dreamy self, hold that longing

close and dear.

            Dear Reader

            Burn all the files, desert all your past lives[15]

I grew up on country music

and Christian pop

and as I learned to form and adapt

As I formed and adapted

I rejected my various embarrassments

The invisible inside for the visible outside

That which obscures

The love song for the longing

The Christ for the longing

The long term for the longing

The midterm for the longing

Keep myself hidden

How I used to practice witchcraft,

gather stones, never knowing what they bring,[16]

ceremonying private hopes

for a vampire lover

for a secret ring

for a book that would never end

to be the main character in anyone’s story

but the one I existed in,

my own awkward suburban walks

through the mall

seeking small tokens of the mythologies

of neighbors

and girls

by stealing glittery lip glosses

and time traveling histories

I made up

and believed

with my whole self.

Like so many things, I am against it but inside it.

Whiteness. Capitalism. Athleisure.

I can’t be against Taylor because I need her.

And realizing that means coming to terms with some things.

Like childhood was more important than I want it to be

and is inescapable as language.

Like growing up lonely leaves one

feeling lonely forever

and the loneliness is a friend.

Pack your dolls and a sweater

We'll move to [------] forever[17]

What I’m telling you about is time.

Here’s the thing. We all die anyway.

You can’t control the outcome. Why do I have to keep writing it to remember it.

I spend a lot of time in a classroom teaching students how to create and control the outcomes of database searches. What it looks like is mastery. What it sounds like is CHANGE YOUR KEYWORDS CHANGE YOUR LIFE. Read forever and learn. Learn from what you do. Learn from what you see. Keep learning. AUTHORITY IS CONTROLLED AND CONTEXTUAL. SEARCH IS STRATEGIC EXPLORATION.[18]

How many times this year have I cried in a car listening to Taylor Swift

How many times have I cried in a car

How many times have I cried in a bathtub

How many times have I cried in bed listening

How many times have I cried

How many times

Don’t read the last page[19]

Those Windermere peaks look like the perfect place to cry[20]

I once hiked a short distance

to a creek in the Sierra Nevadas

I was there for a poetry workshop

nursing a broken heart

A man I had an emotional affair with

It was my affair, not his

There was one prize I’d cheat to win[21]

I cried like my arm was missing

I cried like my lungs were gone

I cried and begged the trees

and begged the water

to bring me my lover

That’s my man[22]

All it did was bring me a poetry

Grief’s only reward is art

Writing letters addressed to the fire[23]

When I was a young college student

Unaware of my own youth

I once desired needed was actually so bored without

How I confusing how strange how violent I asked

Because I wanted to walk in the door and be perceived:

Trouble trouble trouble[24]

I don’t know how to say I thought you’d be happier to see me

I want [her] midnights[25]

Begging for you to take my hand[26]

We are alone with our changing minds[27]

Sometimes I am so frustrated

that a 20something girl knew me so well

When I didn’t even know myself

Now all we know

is don’t let go[28]

Hungover unable to reach my insurance adjuster

or read anyone’s mind

to you I can admit

that I’m just too soft for all of it.[29]

I need to start protecting myself better.

Better salt circles Better mirrorballs

Still on that trapeze[30]

I think but

wasn’t the path of this poem

to try to become extremely tender?

I’ve never been a natural

all I do is try try try.[31]

[1] “You’re Losing Me,” from Midnights

[2] Stefanescu, Alina (@aliner). 2024. “Taylor Swift is the neoliberal empowerment femme this moment cultivates. Her OMG litanies enable adults to “bond” in the stadium of our overlapping complicities. Because her lyrics are empty, and because she performs a sweet void, we can project depth and complexity on show." Twitter/X, Feb 24, 2024, 5:17pm.

[3] “I Hate It Here,” from The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology

[4] Eric Smialek, “Who Needs to Calm Down? Taylor Swift and Rainbow Capitalism.” Contemporary Music Review, 40 no. 1 (2021): 99–119, doi:10.1080/07494467.2021.1956270.

[5] “Fifteen,” from Fearless

[6] “August,” from Folklore

[7] “August”

[8] Sam Kriss, “Taylor Swift does not exist,” Numb at the Lodge, November 28, 2023, https://samkriss.substack.com/p/taylor-swift-does-not-exist

[9] “Snow on the Beach,” from Midnights

[10] “The Lakes,” from Folklore

[11] “August”

[12] “Snow on the Beach”

[13] “King of My Heart,” from Reputation

[14] “evermore,” from evermore

[15] “Dear Reader,” from Midnights

[16] “My Tears Ricochet,” from Folklore

[17] “seven,” from Folklore

[18] ACRL Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education, https://www.ala.org/sites/default/files/acrl/content/issues/infolit/framework1.pdf

[19] “New Year’s Day,” from Reputation

[20] “The Lakes”

[21] “Willow,” from evermore

[22] “Willow”

[23] “evermore”

[24] “I Knew You Were Trouble,” from Red

[25] “New Year’s Day”

[26] “Willow”

[27] “State of Grace,” from Red

[28] “State of Grace”

[29] “Sweet Nothing,” from Midnights

[30] “Mirrorball,” from Folklore

[31] “Mirrorball,” from Folklore