Confluences

Abstract

This collection of poems, essays, and fictional stories is meant to mirror a confluence of rivers, made navigable by threads—or currents—that weave through and redirect my life.

Some of my life’s water (so far) has been brackish. Some of it is clear. To use a bit more concretion, as they say, the currents (and undercurrents) presented here include: a history of family and stepfamily; addiction and mental illness as they are passed down from woman to woman; the judgment of ex-partners and friends; self-doubt, sabotage, and redemption; weather and natural disasters; and, of course, places lived.

In my time writing, I sought to bring myself as close as possible to the margins between these parts of myself. I am interested, and have always been interested, in the space where the air is thinner, in which expectation is fluid or halts altogether. In a laundromat, for instance.

Circling all of this is a sense of wanting to be somewhere, or having affection for something, and finding no discernable reason for it. I am intrigued by the invisible remnants, vibes, and vestiges left behind when the people once occupying a space have gone away. I want to know what material is used in the painting over of said space, or whether it can even be painted over at all. I want to know what came before.

Throughout the writing of this thesis, I have tried to find and push the button, so to speak, that reveals the past in the present moment. I’ve learned that the meeting of many undercurrents occurs simultaneously, often with disregard to space and time. Here there is a sense of everywhere-and-nowhere-ness, of the liminal—often mundane—place we inhabit and come away from, transformed.