∞ : hello, goodbye, some news

Dear friends of the direct address, friends of this form I’ve come and gone from.

I have exciting news to share! I’ve started something new! But more on that later.

This is a short dispatch, probably my last for the next long while, probably ever if I am being honest. I’ve been reminiscing about the newsletter and how much love and tenderness it brought into my life in 2022. Mostly because I’ve been realizing that my hiatus is more of a departure and that the idea of returning to that form feels untenable to me. But this is not a goodbye letter, more a meet me somewhere else, out there again someday letter. 

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

Rumi

Maybe it also feels important to say thank you. Thank you to all of you for being here with me, in this form, for listening, for reading and for allowing me to enter your inboxes, month and month again. God knows we all already receive enough emails. So to carve out this space, for me and with you. I am grateful, for every word you’ve allowed to touch you, for every letter we’ve shared.

I can’t stop
my gratitude, which includes, dear reader,
you, for staying here with me,
for moving your lips just so as I speak.

ROSS GAY, “CATALOGUE OF UNABASHED GRATITUDE”

What is the relationship between the writer and the reader? I’ve been thinking about this especially lately, with a few new projects in my hands (a new poetry collection in the works probably for 2026, a novel, a short story project, a budding epic series) and the recent risky career move of deciding, that’s it, that’s all, I must truly become a writer. I must actually dedicate myself to this craft as career, whether capitalism allows for it or not, whether I succeed or not. I must try. I must try — that’s how a lot of things start, don’t they? That’s how these letters began, that’s how poems begin. I digress. I am trying to say I am focused on you, reader, friend. I am trying to understand what it means to write into a void I call both myself and you. I am trying to understand what it means to write at all.

The relationship between reader and writer is reciprocal in a way. We co-create each other.

Ruth ozeki

Finally, my newness. I’d like to share an eager announcement and some indulgent news of my latest venture, Poet Talk — a poetry podcast I’ve started with my friend Jody Chan. Our first episode, Poet Talk About Beginnings, just released this Wednesday and it would mean a lot to me if you gave it a listen, review or follow. I’ve truly never worked so hard on anything in my life and I’m pretty proud of it already.

What else do I have to say? Once you start saying goodbye, why is it so hard to stop? Grief, oh grief, my grief again. A line in a poem I wrote last year (that will be coming out in like a field later this summer): “There is nothing I could touch that would not turn to grief.” That’s okay though. That means there was love here. There always will be.

…poets are in the profession of transforming grief to light.

Sandra Cisneros, A house of her own

Please stay in touch via email, Instagram, Twitter, snail mail, whatever. And thank you, again. Every day.

…what do you think
this singing and shuddering is,
what this screaming and reaching and dancing
and crying is, other than loving
what every second goes away?
Goodbye, I mean to say.
And thank you. Every day.

Ross gay, “Catalogue of unabashed gratitude”