Author: lanadanzeisen@gmail.com

• I Release Us

  

  I Release Us

  Sometimes you have to say:

  I don’t know you anymore,

  And I don’t want to get to know you any longer.

  We have reached the end of the road

  And once it was good—

  Was it ever really good?—

  But now it is torn in places we can both see.

  And we are each torn in places the other cannot see

  And for that reason we must stop looking.

  Wherever I look I will not find you.

  I release you, I release myself, I release us,

  Whatever us was,

  The blind platonic love of it all.

  We were meant to live on the same road,

  But we weren’t meant to pave one together,

  And that is okay.

  I will pave my own,

  But I hope you find peace with yours.

  I will allow good wishes in lieu of goodbye embraces—

  The door is closed enough for us to not touch

  But a crack allows parting and passing words.

  Neither of them I need, now.

  But I will always leave room for potential goodness.

• Here the Words End

  

  Here the Words End

  I don’t know how to let it be,

  How to let sleeping dogs lie,

  To let biting dogs bite,

  Let the wound close,

  The words end—

  The words are not ending for me.

  Because I wish I would have said more when I had the chance,

  I wish I would have seen the times I didn’t speak as the only opportunity to before the door would close,

  But she did not speak either,

  Until, for her, it was too late for me to.

  I never run out of the words to ask myself why a friend would excuse herself from the behavior she condemns in others,

  Why a friend would not understand that one can love another even when they are apart,

  That one can find herself on a different road and not think of it as driving away but as taking a detour,

  And that detours are not personal attacks.

  And when these words come to me time and time again,

  I think that maybe we just have different ideas of what a friendship should be:

  For me, it is something you can always come back to even when life pulls you in different directions, and it is as if no time has passed as you fill in the gaps;

  For her, it is something that needs constant kindling, for when the embers turn cool she does not trust that they will light again, and without trust there is no more want of fire—something self-fulfilling.

  The problem is that the fire never died inside me,

  That I still think of her when I think of the future,

  That I still love everything about her that I always loved,

  Even though she decided to be part of my past,

  Even though she decided that I did not love her enough.

  And it’s not that it wasn’t enough,

  But it wasn’t how she wanted it.

  I wasn’t how she wanted me to be,

  And for that I will always be sorry,

  Sorry that I disappointed her,

  But I think I will always be angry,

  Angry that my others friends accept me as the friend I am,

  But she couldn’t, she who I loved like a sister.

  But how can I choose her either,

  She who has different ideals of friendship and sisterhood?

  It is not even worth asking—

  I’m not able to choose someone who has removed herself as a choice.

  We watch each other from afar,

  One broken heart to another,

  Except I cannot see hers so I speak only for myself—

  The part of myself that grew from her is shattered—

  I no longer want to look in that mirror—

  But I do anyway because I miss looking at her.

  I’m tired of the way fragments of her haunt me,

  When I need to sleep and need to move on from it.

  But part of me is still on her couch, so sure that she meant it when she painted a picture of our lives intertwined in the distance.

  She may have lost sight of me for a while,

  But I never lost sight of it.

  Maybe I should have said so.

  Maybe

  Maybe

  Maybe the dogs are different breeds

  Maybe they’re dead and reborn anew and apart

  Maybe they’re not biting any longer

  Maybe the wounds healed but we will never forget them

  Maybe the words are allowed to end

  Here the words end.

• Foxheart

  

  Foxheart

  I took him for some kind of

  God

  ichorousambrosialmedicine

  I drank him like he was

  IcarusAmbroseMedici

  Other names which would probably suit

  Him, Greco-spirited, quick-footed

  Achilles with two perfectly indestructible heels.

  I took the next for some kind of

  FallenAngel

  divinelygiftedhobgoblin

  Divine&Hobbes

  Major in queerness&minor in philosophy

  &maybe I’m Calvin

  &I’m the queer one

  &I’m the queer one

  For missing it.

  Blissful

  domesticity&

  ignorance&

  Whatever happened to the

  Fox

  Redheartunderwhitechest

  Richardthelionheart[wikipediapage]

  foxheart

  foxheart

  Foxheart finds the holes and lives in them

  Makes the dirt clean and the grass yellow

  The color of happy faces

  And liver disease

  And eats the carrion til the bones are clean too

  White as purity

  Fairy rings circling errors on the pages of grassland

  Red on green

  Redheartunderstainedgreenchest

  Not stained

  paintedgreen

  paintedgreen

  Painted.

  This is a beautiful thing, this place

  These rolling changing hills

  Of us

  GodsAngelsDevilsFoxes

  Unlikely equals

  Licking the same wetness

  Dew-blood-rain-stream

  Does my blood reign king

  Over my many limbs

  Or do they

  Or do they get on me&

  get me&

  do they get me or get me&

  they don’t get me but they get me&

  I start to get them despite not getting them&

  it’s alright because it’s exactly what my foxheart needs&

  now the holes are just holes&

  the bones are white as a kitten’s cream.

  Moondrinking&mallowroot&marshcubmaw.

• Welcome to my blog!

  Welcome to my blog!

  January 31, 2025

  I’ve had many iterations of a blog, first on Squarespace and then, when that got too expensive, on GoDaddy. Now that the latter is now even more expensive than the former, I have opted for WordPress web hosting, and boy has it been a learning curve. I am delighted to be paying about a quarter of what I was before, but I had no idea how difficult it would be to design a WP website since I am used to website builders rather than web hosts.

  My web hosting plan, by the way, is the “Business” one by Hostinger. If anyone else is thinking of switching to this particular service, feel free to contact me. It’s much easier to figure out when you have a human being on hand who has gone through the process already.

  Anyway, back to the topic of blogging. When I switched from Squarespace to GoDaddy’s website builder in 2023, I made the decision to migrate all of the poems I had previously posted, as well as building a new “Photography” page featuring most of my work. This time around, I’ve decided to do things differently.

  I am not going to put in all the time – AGAIN – into posting the same dozens upon dozens of poems. Instead, I’m going to post what feels right, whether that be a new poem, an old poem I’ve posted before, or an old poem I’ve decided to re-work. As far as my photography goes, I’m going to post one of my original photos with every poem. This feels more intentional than me dumping a bunch of photos on a dedicated dumping page.

  Sound good? Good.