let me see.

let me see. a recollection

by: kyler raymond russell by: kyler raymond russell

k.r

to the roommate for staying to the superstar for crying in my car to the frog lady for proving page 87 wrong to the counselor for giving me words to the jokester for choosing me to the musician for helping me dream to the grey vibes for the 20% to the garbage man for listening to the red balloon for the flying lessons to the protector for the cups of coffee to the californian for saying “me too� to the senior for 9/27/16 to the soul mate for helping me laugh to you for reading along thank you.

let me see. a recollection

k.r

my name is kyler raymond. i am a photographer and a poet but more than either of those, i am human. this book is a recollection, a prayerful and potent recalling to mind of my experiences over the past few years. it’s a commitment to remembering the bad times as well as the good, because one doesn’t exist without the other. i am learning that being real brings healing, that vulnerability fortifies us to be strong enough to take on our demons for another day. letting ourselves be seen is crucial to our very nature and if we hide our pain and our fears and our doubts inside, they begin to overtake us. these pages are a refusal to hide who i am, for all my strengths and my weaknesses, and an encouragement to you, to take that first step out of the shadows and into the sun. the monster in the closet is only as scary as the walk to the light switch. don’t give him more power than he deserves. please don’t hide. let me see.

recollect: (verb) 1. to recall to mind; recover knowledge of by memory; remember.

2. to absorb (oneself) in spiritual meditation, especially during prayer.

where it all began.

what’s love got to do with it, tina?

everything.

when my mother was 20, she married her high school sweetheart by age 21, she had given birth to me. when i was 1, i was given a diagnosis of nerve damage in my right leg and told that i would likely never walk, run, or jump by 2, i was walking and running and jumping when i was 3 i became an older brother at 4 we became children of a single mother by 5 i had a new dad and a new home in a new state 6 came with my first bout of anxiety-induced vomiting 7 was the first time i referred to my new dad as “dad” 8 i was bullied by 9 i had a new last name, and a new sister when i was 10 i finally broke out of my quiet shell at 11 i discovered loneliness for the first time 12 i started a new school and said my first curse word 13 i made a best friend 14 he left 15 i started counseling and i went on anxiety medication 16 i made new friends but by 17 they had left again and i upped the dosage 18 was the calm before the storm and 19 was the darkest season of my life but it came with a turning point one that i’ve yet to go back on 20 i found hope and true relationship 21 i wrote this book i write this to give you a history, a chronology, because our stories are very important i thought you should know part of mine because the rest of these pages won’t make as much sense without it.

transparency: i was scared vulnerability: i am scared we need more of the latter

i fell in love with the ocean and ever since, the puddles i used to step in haven’t been enough sometimes i stand and stare into those puddles of murky brown, oil stained water and i see my marred reflection looking back up at me a strange vision into another me a could have been, would have been in that street-side prison of liquid glass so thirsty for acceptance he settled for sewage rather than waiting for the true depths of love a sad self that dries up as soon as the day turns to night leaving nothing but cigarette butts and a pothole in the decrepit asphalt now i step over that other self and move on thankful for those trips to the ocean my parents took me on when i was little how they always told me there was something better out there and the only water i would get wouldn’t be found in the cracks in a broken street but rather in the never ending tides of an unswimmable emerald sea how even when i didn’t like to get in the water they never stopped bringing me back because they knew that one day i’d step in, feel the cool currents take my weight and just float now i oftentimes find myself in a landlocked state but i can close my eyes and see those breaking waves with more than enough blue depths to lift me off my feet so when i’m surrounded by murky black puddles or misplace a step and find myself filthy caught ankle deep i’ll know i can always find my way back to the ocean and submerge myself once again

when i was little i was told boys don’t cry so when i cried i thought i must not be a boy since when was feeling human reserved for one gender

i went to a roof today to clear my head and all i saw was a city i’ve never loved full of people i’ve never known in buildings i’ve never entered and i considered for a second how freeing that fall would feel the wind in my face kissing all my worries away before this city embraced me one last time but this city won’t be the one that kills me the stain of my body won’t be on this pavement what a waste if i can only die once i want it to be to a place that i love somewhere that already has my heart and soul where my feet ached from colliding with that solid earth over and over again where my hands reeked of iron and sweat where my eyes were full to bursting of all the familiar sights and sounds and smells so that nothing else would make sense since i’ve already given all of my self to that city than to let it take my body too this city won’t be the one that kills me i promise you that. in this city i’m alone i’m no one i’m foreign and if i am to die by the push and pull of urban life it’ll damn well be to a city where my body would shake the streets, just how the streets shook me i went to a roof today to clear my head and i got back down

i steep myself in sarcasm like tea because i fear you won’t want to drink plain water

i told a friend i was lonely tonight she told me to try a dating app i told her she was missng the point

lying in my new bed in my new room in my new house in my new building in my new neighbourhood in my new city in my new province in my new country in my new continent thinking what the hell do i have to do to get away from all this new and back to something old?

what a roller coaster ups and downs and twists and falls heart dropped and throat clenched that sickeningly shaky feeling in your stomach that they always say feels like butterflies but that is a bold faced lie it’s more like a hummingbird trying to mate with a house cat flighty and aggressive and confused i’m learning that this life isn’t about searching for peace nor happiness nor comfort but rather learning how to experience all those things amidst their opposites

one thing i know for sure is as long as i’m alive i will never stop changing and you will never start

you were the sun i was the moon i spent my days playing a game of cat and mouse across the sky just trying to catch up to you to tell you i love you hoping you’d love me too around and around i went relentless, persistent, stupid chasing what i knew could never work i wasn’t right for you and neither you for me but now i’m trapped in the circle i’m spinning

and i’ll spend the rest of my life pursuing what i’ll never have too desperate for your love to stop my endless race i’ll never catch up but i’ll never not try and i just want to believe some day we’ll be together in the same sky you were my sun but what used to radiate life is now just blinding my sight it’s dark and scary and i wish it would all stop spinning just for a second so i could catch if not you, my breath

i want to smell roses and not forget the dirt or the thorns that make them beautiful

Geronimo you said and that was all it took to make me jump head over heels in a perfect dive straight into the oceans deep chasing after that sound, that beat, that feeling Geronimo i said and i jumped thinking you’d be there to catch me before i hit the bottom Geronimo you said and it was the most beautiful sound i’d ever heard it consumed me i let it consume me i still hear your echo in every word i speak your name resounds in my head like a baby’s first giggle a siren and a saint all in one Geronimo i said as i went overboard just to get closer to the sound Geronimo you kept saying and the waves knocked me over as i tried to swim back i’m trying to swim back but i fear i’ve swam too far too close to your melodies to escape Geronimo i said and i jumped but you won’t be there to catch me

when i was little i was afraid of the dark, funny how i’m so quick to run to it now

true passion isn’t sexual, it’s sacrificial

i turned to the drink but the bottle soon emptied i turned to love on a screen but after the climax came regret i turned to other people but they forgot to call how long until i turn to you and realize you will never run out

anxiety: i keep trying to hold you in my hands instead of letting you hold me in yours

i cling to the melodrama because it’s easier to believe you are evil than it is to admit you are indifferent

change the bare floor where the carpet once sprawled was cold beneath his naked toes dusty from the year of unswept accumulation it was the end, if he was feeling cynical as he so often was in the morning he might say it was merely a new beginning, but this poem is not of the daylight this poem is about locked doors and whispers liquor dark like the night sky his sweat soaked pillow case and an empty room that once held laughter this poem is of the mourning that comes with moving on you see, he was learning in that dark, drafty room that he didn’t hate change no, rather he hated the lack of control he was all for change as long as he was the one doing the changing but tonight in that bare room full of memories like shadows he felt very very out of control goodnight.

of place. i’m on a layover in a city that i love only able to peer at the skyline through the panels of glass clear prisons keeping me away from the place where i left my heart i’ll be gone in an hour off to a new place to see new faces but i’ll still be thinking about this city and all the memories it’s left with me imagining what i would have done with a few more hours to spend so for now i’ll enjoy the view looking at my heart through little panes of glass i’m beginning to realize you can fall in love with a city as well as a person

home (for now).

you can live your whole life dragging your shadow along the ground behind you letting it follow you wherever you go or you can draw attention to it bring it into the spotlight and watch it disappear everyone has a shadow but not everyone is chained to it

the night air replenishes my barren lungs and though it’s frigid, reminds me i’m alive there’s a peace in the dark i feel it with every breath that shrieks down my throat a peace that says you are new a chill that reminds me of the warmth i feel deep down because i wouldn’t feel anything if i didn’t feel both sometimes it’s in the middle of a cold, black night that i feel the closest to the sun i can reside in the biting air the wind that tastes like a paper cut and caresses like a broken heart because it’s in the bittersweet reproach of a winter night that i shrink into my coat hunch over and carry on shuffling quicker to a place of safety and warmth the freeze embraces me with the memory of a past love distant and bruised but raw and beautiful in its emotion it could eat me alive but i won’t let it

how strange it is to feel the oceans moving in my soul to hear the gentle waves crash and sense the billowing currents sprawling beneath how peculiar humanity is an unexplainable vastness encased in a mortality too sudden to grasp

i love the little moments spent with dear friends more than any grand adventure i don’t need plane tickets or passports money or mischief or parties or plans i cherish the comfortable silences i crave the quiet walks at midnight where you speculate about your futures or the days spent sitting in the same room listening to the same song and for just a second your hearts and desires are one aligned by the melody that collects your discordant thoughts and writes a symphony i love telling and hearing the same stories watching them grow bigger and more embellished before our eyes, realizing these are the grandiose tales we’ll tell to each other’s kids one day on joint-family vacations and backyard cookouts i’m over rebellious, i’m over noncommittal, i’m over shallow, insecure, egocentric i want vulnerable and i want real i want to bare my soul and hear the echoes of something greater resound i want a life full of colour, full of old sounds in new places and the contentment that comes from knowing i’ll never be alone. i want quality over quantity and i want to find my quiet amidst all the noise a place to call home and a place to be known

that summer night when the bus broke down on my way home and we pulled into the parking lot of a run down steakhouse in Small Town, Kentucky to wait on the mechanic and bum wifi from the curb bees and fears alike prodding at our patience passengers mingling finding camaraderie amidst the confusion the heat and light waning with our hopes of a speedy return proving misery really does love company or at least misery loves complaining the sweet lady who offered to buy me food cause i looked young or sad or poor sitting there on the curb and it meant more than she realized but i swatted her away like the bees that were attracted to my shirt not wanting to be bothered the balding bus driver who always told the same jokes just for the couple of laughs he could siphon off of people was scrambling around with notebooks and phone calls knowing this was above his pay grade and slowly, sadly, unsurprisingly the cliques began to form black men in wife beaters cracking jokes by the mechanic’s truck old white ladies crossing arms and squinting at the apparent lack of concern for this ungodly situation teenagers texting or tweeting or otherwise scrolling on their phones in communal seclusion all the while those damn bees kept tapping me telling me to look around forcing me to look up so i took out my phone and started writing this

but now the bus is fixed and we’re making our way back on cautiously grateful for whatever sense of security we can cling to however false it may be everyone agrees that air conditioning is good and that a few hours late isn’t the end of the world small talk bubbles up again sticky and southern like the heat from outside the old lady who offered me food is telling me how the moon is probably hollow because she saw it on tv and she can’t shut her phone off when it starts dictating her most recent Google search the man with the church bracelet is calling his wife saying he won’t make it home for dinner the women with hair as vibrant as their souls are cackling at a joke they keep repeating we all chuckle some, spirits are high, our hope is growing with each passing mile we settle into a content, familial silence and i marvel at the phenomenon of relationship and wish i would’ve taken that lady up on her offer for food the journey home commences once again.

8.1.2016

(please don’t) leave me alone.

we listen to these songs to soothe our aching bones to let the voice of another speak the things we’re too scared to say ourselves we find power in the words and the melodies arranging for us the chaotic parts of life into chords and sentences and stanzas the music takes us to a place where the world is resolute a song can’t be sung until after it is written the music can be raw and it can be real but it can’t be unresolved and i believe that’s the power of music to see our past through someone else’s retrospect to give us hope that the hardest parts of our lives can still be used to make something beautiful to make us beautiful the notes might not make sense right now but i promise they’ll make chords some day please don’t stop singing

i’m losing faith in coincidence too many little nothing’s turn into a big something and life is too intricate to be random everything has a purpose everything has a reason whether you know it or not every moment is important

i come from the land where comfort is king where the pursuit of the familiar is a divine venture, homogeneity is a goal, and ignorance is something to be proud of a land where we couldn’t quit building our white picket fences and now they’ve become barb-wired walls constructed so high they keep everything unpleasant out of sight we build these suburban shrines to the gods of safety and status and worship at their weekly pedicured feet hoping for nothing more than a life of ease and a smooth flight but what if this pursuit of happiness that our forefathers indoctrinated into our dreams this ravenous race to find rest what if it’s not worth it? what happens when we complete this quest for complacency and we find that it’s not enough that actually these walls kept all the beauty out and that only planting one crop in our gardens left the soil barren and overworked and our lives devoid of colour what if these monochromatic oases from the trying parts of life are actually prison cells we’ve locked ourselves into and thrown away our own keys what if the things we guard ourselves against are the only things that could set us free because i don’t know about you but these padded white walls are driving me insane

a bird in the nest doesn’t experience fear

you were born to fly

bourbon and sleepless dreams on the night the lake flooded bar hopping around the town until we settled on our favourite place sat down in a corner booth and watched the bartenders shake out all that liquid courage to the crowd of 40-somethings below i sat across from her and she asked me what my rose and thorn were for the year i didn’t know how to say that they were both you on the night the lake flooded my heart flooded with it overflowing into my lungs and my brain until the water was so deep i couldn’t breathe and i couldn’t think and though i was drowning you never knew i sat on that 2 person couch invisible but for my shaky breath and sad smile staring at the middle aged men with their haughty wives and wondered what it would take to get to that point and how i don’t know if i’ll ever want to or if i’ll ever get to sleepy eyes and quiet thoughts slowly drooping towards irrelevance in a crowd of people i still feel alone

you stare at her she stares back and i watch as my very presence seeps into the faded leather of that 2 person couch sat 3 wide maybe it’s the bourbon or maybe it’s my racing mind running out of energy but all i wish to do is sleep and maybe one day wake up to air i can actually inhale and feelings i can actually feel without them taking over but there has to be a point, right? a purpose to all the late nights and the bourbon on the couch to the feeling alone the bitter moments i can never put words to i feel too deep in my bones to not believe there’s a reason for it all and i think i’ll spend my whole life searching for what that is chasing feelings like daydreams looking for the truths that can wake me up my heart isn’t in mint condition it’s ruptured and torn and shaky and fickle yet through all that it hasn’t stopped beating and so i think i’ll keep on even if i feel as out of place as those pink sunglasses she wore on her head that night when the lake flooded and my heart went with it

talking to myself hypocrite. you two brained two faced pancake flip flopping around to whichever side makes you feel the warmest you pursue love like a drug happiness, however fickle, you let it consume you don’t you know it will never be enough? look cool, stay distant, love her, hate him, buy things, eat sweets indulge, purge, indulge, purge you are as weighted as a paper napkin on a park bench in october what’s to keep you from blowing yourself away with every new and novel gust that strikes your fancy grow a backbone or staple your feet to the floor anything to stop your insufferable wishy washy compulsions from stealing your heart and stretching it so far it rips in two 6.27.16

may i never stop growing towards the light

you said your heart breaks so easily these days and i want nothing more than to pick those pieces up put them back together again and tell you you’re okay but the funny thing about a broken heart is i don’t think it can be fixed by another broken person so i’ll listen to you sing your sad songs in the shower and pray a little prayer that someone more whole than i will come along and mend you

quit stifling your feelings feel them feel them deep in your bones let them permeate your whole being until you’re pulsating with the electric energy of being alive let your anger burn through your palms into everything you touch let your sadness pour its way out of your face and soak your clothing through to your skin let your happiness beam out of your teeth shining so bright that even the stars grow jealous you were made to feel you were made to experience every facet of this beautifully broken existence and the more you try to fight that the more you fight against your very being you are a galaxy of beauty swirling around in a human shell and what an amazing enigma that is to be so vast yet so small and to experience so much in such a short amount of time your emotions are a reminder of just how alive you are

we drove through the night leaving our worries and the town behind us we drove slow it would be well into the morning by the time we arrived any ways drop everything and flee to the beach you said break free from the hold of the city loose our tethers and fly through the darkness letting our headlights and the music be our guides we wore all black to match the night air laughter creating stars within your shiny silver galaxy of a car lullabies from you singing under your breath your black hair as unruly as my spirit caught up in restless adolescence we started to get tired so we cranked the music up daring our eyes to close playing russian roulette with the clock glaringly bright from below my drooping eyelids your melodies and the road lulling me to sleep

my heart is a typewriter and it’s spitting out poems just for you oh if not for this fickle machine click click clicking away i wouldn’t last another minute its soft tapping tells me there is hope its gentle pressure reminds me i have more to give more to live i don’t believe it most of the time but then i read the poetry it’s typing and i’m convinced for a split second that maybe there is a chance the page isn’t finished i take it one word at a time or sometimes just one letter if i focus on the whole line i get scared because who can predict where that line will go but a word, i can deal with a word one word’s not too bad and there are so many pretty ones out there prism and lavender and nostalgia and soda pop i have lots of words that my heart keeps clicking out and i hope one day i’ll get to share them with you and hear what words your heart has typed out over the years for me and know all this damn clicking wasn’t one big waste of time

i wonder if anyone will buy me flowers

before they’re placing them on my coffin

tapas and tears at dusk on the night when the whole world got married i sat across the table from you as you spilled your heart and i ate it up i love the way your eyes sparkle when you finally let the light shine through a thousand liquid galaxies are contained in those swimming pool eyes and i live for the moments when they come pouring out

i oftentimes think about the millions of me’s that will never be how all the little choices i make daily change who i am and who i’m becoming and how if i’d gone back and done something this way instead of that way said no instead of yes ran slightly later or arrived slightly earlier just how different my entire life could have looked i think about if i would like the other me’s or if i would even recognize them then i think about all of the me’s that are to come and how the choices i make today shape the path my life goes down tomorrow how each decision seals off a potential me, cuts him out of history, forever there’s a lot of trust involved in this whole thing called life to believe that the path i’m on is headed in the right direction and that the trail behind me leaves nothing unresolved that i am exactly where i need to be in this moment that all those other me’s would’ve been wrong; i am the exact version of myself i need to be right now i think about how this moment is important because it’s already over and a new instant is starting a new me is created and every second of every day i have been given the capacity to start anew to leave the old behind and to continue on down this path of mine that no one except myself gets to follow to do things only i can do i think about how many times my journey intersects with others’ whether it be for a lifetime or a passing glance and i wonder how many paths have changed forever because they ran into mine how many lives were radically altered due to a seemingly random encounter

i think of this life as one big web of intricate stories and people and places all marvelously independent yet intimately connected to each other i don’t believe in coincidence there are too many paths in this life of too many people for me to believe that there could exist random movements outside of at least one of them i might never know why the little intricacies of this life take place, but what seems like a minute detail on my path could be the biggest curve in the road for someone else’s the least significant bump in my walk could, unbeknownst to me, catalyze the grandest trek for somebody else i think about how often i see things working out for my good, for your good, for their good i see the silver linings in the clouds and i know that sometimes the prettiest meadow is on the other side of the darkest forest, if only you just keep walking forward i think retrospection is a pretty useful tool i can look back at the life i’ve lived thus far, those 20-odd years and already i can see countless ways certain things, certain people, certain conversations transformed who i became and it gives me hope that in the next 80-odd years i hope to live, that there will be even more of those moments of reinvention more curves in my path that lead me into new, exciting places and make me into new, exciting me’s and it instills a strange sense of peace to know that i don’t have to know where i’m heading all i have to do is keep walking

i hope that when they cut me open i bleed red letters

let me see.