From This Unapologetic Body

(I first posted this in Feb 2011 on Sonya Renee's brilliant The Body is Not An Apology page. Fascinating how we can turn back to our own words for perspective...)

The sexy I work so hard to own

will never be reflected in your neon eyes

Not in the teetering balance of your morse code

when you switch fractions from morning

to night and back again

I know how to trick you into believing I’m less

Into retrieving different calculations

based on time of day and your attitude

But I’ve never been the type of woman

to get caught up in the mathematics

In relating equations and numbers

to anything worth valuing

I find words a more distinctive gift for this

So, I’ll write to you-

Dear Lousy Worthless Number On My Scale,

Stop pretending you are my compass

Don't mistake time I've spent with you for empathy.

You have exposed me, torn me open for so many instances

I've stopped counting the scars.

So stop trying to make a fool of my insides

Stop being the judge I weigh above all others

Stop smiling at me while I'm naked

or changing your mind too quickly.

I have spent years in the swell of this body

This exposed ocean of sleeve-wearing heart

and too-thin skin. This heaving muscle

of a chest and curved outer layer.

So make peace with me. See me.

Judge me on my words

and not my formulas.

My Prayer for the Bulldozers

May the sun-stained anchor of your body
find peace in the dusk

Engines idled and blades lowered

may you turn gnarled wings back into yourself

as a cease fire from the dust storm

as a pressed crane offering of hope that
somewhere there is purpose in your golden wings.

We have watched you caterpillar yourself
innocently yellow across this land

But I see the razed houses in your irises

the shaken tears of civilians on your cheeks.

I know your drivers will say

“we were just doing what we were told”

when foaming mouth roaring into the city you
snapped bloodlines, displaced humans

from necessary shelter.

I know a woman whose house
was wiped away by your blades.

Two days later, she was handed an invoice

for the parts, time, labor
for the very maize monster

that made her a homeless statistic.

How do we explain what you’ve turned into?

How you have become annihilator instead of farmer?

You were meant for so much more than excavation,

than intimidation or destruction.

You have the tools to till this land,

make it ripe for blooming

To move dirt into hungry mouth craters,

Build hills from which we can once again
feel the breeze or watch our children grow.

So my prayer for you is this

The time is now to end the demolition

Stop tractoring yourself over any hopes of peace

Come down from your cockpit and join

us at the table

Learn to use your words.

Breakfast

I woke up with the fiction of your lips still
cementing the roof of my mouth
Upstairs, the neighbors are skipping morning
around the espresso machine
I play asleep to the bacon breaking sounds of the skillet
But up above they are heavy like daybreak and your
pin needled arm is preferring my side of the bed
So I’ll be content with an arm cloaked morning to
watch the sun split over your resting temples
To have a gently heaving body remind me of the blood
floating through my own, that warmth, that vulnerable.

Your sleep is tying a knot in my geriatric knee
It’s the good kind of pain that

reminds me breakfast is soon

So I will dedicate this moment to the eggs we will crack,
the way we will wrestle the upstairs neighbors
with our tea kettle and kitchen karaoke
“Baby” will be the safest love song for sleepover friends
so we will find it on the radio immediately
Make microphones out of yolk dripping spatula
And blow out our shattered lungs before
the coffee is even cool enough

When the circuits of your body finally snap
I will secure the prospect of morning meal and
feel comfort in your sleep smelling voice,
how it still sounds like everything that came before it.
I don’t have a name for this move yet
but I know that coffee stained stomachs and doorways
can make for more constraint and sorry
than I tend to build my mornings from
and dawn will stop serving breakfast soon.

So I will boil water for French pressed conversation
Will suggest eating in bed like couples would
but blame it on the roommates
I will call this move “insurance”
Risk losing my entire Sunday to the well-perfected omelet
To your breath on my hand over crosswords
To the clanking sound of perfect pans being excavated
Or to the caffeine jolt of your body when
we finally leave the stove alone for awhile.

April Inspires

NaPoWriMo has begun! I will not be writing a poem everyday this year, but rather writing when I feel inspired. I want this April to be a challenge in a unique way so instead of doing the daily thing, I am charging myself with the task of writing about the things that scare me the most. It is not intended to be sad, scary or heartbreaking (some of the things that scare me are actually really beautiful... like being pregnant!) but rather to get a little more personal than I usually do in my writing. To scare myself with honesty perhaps (and hopefully get something good out of it). So, here goes

VERTIGO I

Equilibrium is a daydream

I woke from years ago.

Mistook the sky for ground and

learned to walk under water

They don’t know about my dizzy.

About this whirling ocean I call breathing,

hurricane eye of a girl.

Negotiating commutes for carousel rides

Horizon obstacle course days

that leave me crawling

just to keep the skin from bursting open.

Too often, I’ve gotten a glimpse of this world

as it begins to unravel

Smoked this singed wire sparkplug of a brain

just hoping to suck the balance out.

But I don’t know life without this tilting

This sky without fire.

My sky bleeds like new tattoos

I am freshly inked and floating

Spinning three long years

hoping for a small glimpse of texture

For the fabric that once kissed

my cheek to sleep at night and

reminded me how beautiful

the world was when

it just stood still.

DC

I am riding your black veins at midnight
Through the deflated artery of bicycle skeletons
And empty PBR boxes.
Barback lovers spilling out under lampposts
and blending into dawn as we coast
the mystery slick road that leads us home.

In the morning, we will find ghost stories
at the bottom of our Mimosas
And decide if it’s a good day for the museums.
But inevitably end up, like we always do,
At the drum circle in Malcolm X
Sunday paper prostrate and never enough
blanket space for all the
people who want to be close to us

These beats beckon in
children and picnicking couples
Acroyogaists and Hula Hoopers
And that one middle aged woman who
wraps a Sari around her belt
and calls herself Africa
Never misses a beat.

My city,
She dances with her heart on fire
She is barista eye candy and local celebrities
Lunch on a government per diem and
dinner on half priced appetizers
She is liberation dance parties and
Connect 4 games over a shot and a Natty Bo
She is more than Barack and Michele.

DC is Busboys on a Sunday or The Fridge on a Tuesday
Or Bloom Bars any day of the week
She is Ben’s Chili Bowl on Inauguration weekend.
The rotating bike lanes and Circulator Route
She is house parties where we forget our day jobs
And day jobs that make us care about living.

Living here feels fleeting enough to want to stay awhile
Enough to feel like someone, some of the time
Feels like everyone is in their 20’s and exceptional
and east coast educated and
all. about. the. journey.

Oh, my beautifully fragmented city
You are the S9 showing up at just the right time
And all those folks who still don’t know where the 43 goes
You are morning runs with the
trash trucks and homeless patio clingers
You are ubiquitous party attendees
and anything I read on BYT

When predictability sets in
You show me that newness can be
uncovered, even at home
That lucky is just the beginning of
what I feel for you, for this.

For the stages I can call home and spokes that get me there
For expanding friends into close-to-heart dwellers
For always having something to celebrate
and someone to do it with

You have made me a solid
You have reshaped my stubborn bends
And made me something worth gifting.

Tonight, I am biking down your moonlight
Grateful for the cool enough weather and
pulsing beat of my tired chest
Reminding me that this is how you
bring oxygen back to my heart.

Why He Comes Back Every Year

The blue sky sleeps beside me at night in a

puddle of blankets. The kettle howls on the stove like a

frantic child answering a question in History class. Daylight

escapes faster than fireflies in the summer. Hold on.


He is growing out his beard again and it reminds me of

unfinished poems. There is a frail peacefulness

in this Sunday afternoon- I hold it in my palms careful like

white holds the yolk; one puncture away from chaos.


We sit with hands clasped and thank god for feeding

all the world’s children. Through the window, I wonder

what it would feel like to see the sky fall for the

very first time. I am still the little girl

mimicking snow flakes for ways to navigate gravity.

When He Left

When he left my arm was still sleeping
This premature bed we shared was stirring early
and there was something about this morning that
felt like “you should probably go now.”

He woke up somewhere between
headache and slumber
and snuck out through the path of Sunday sunlight
warming my hardwood like an exit sign.

When he left I reset the alarm for the afternoon.
Thankful that our back door locks from the inside,
grateful that I made it to the bathroom before my
roommates caught the seat up like a question mark.
Stared at that spot on the wall that
knows my eyes too well
and went through my number in my head.
It’s creeping closer to 15 these days.

But I always say it’s 8.
8 is a decent person’s number.
8 is a figure left flat on its side to feel infinity
drip into the morning sunlight, tingle on my spine
knowing next I’ll feel that pit in my stomach
but for now I deserve the warmth of my blanket-
the reminder of how nice my naked body
feels underneath it.

Even though what’s to come is the emptiness of
where he barely was to begin with,
even though my comeback for “you deserve more”
will always be “I know.
So tell me where to fucking find that”
So I fuck. Because that’s fun.
And productive in a way that feels much better than
wanting, waiting.

When he left my lips were numb from
menthol and kissing and the scratches
on my back were proof of last night’s
inertia now scabbing over.

These sometimes lover scars-
I hold them close like heirlooms.
Tell myself that these are what life’s
pleasant wounds are made of,
these are the stories we control creating.

When he left, we didn’t give this night
more weight than it deserved
And so we didn’t exchange numbers
And so we didn’t lean on formalities or goodbyes
And so he didn’t put on his underwear
And so I didn’t worry about getting in touch to return it.

I just hoped he would keep this between us
Because in our lit hurricane of a windstorm
In our need for something refined and raw
We still were.

It was still respectful
It was still between two good human beings
It was still comfortable and mysterious enough
to make it exciting.

And maybe while the momentum of our night
was wearing off into sleep
I held him a little longer than I should have,
dreamt about the brunch we would
linger over in the morning
and kissed him as he drifted off to sleep.

And maybe I’m not really the kind of person that’s okay
with silent slipped out goodbyes.
They linger pungently on my morning
like orange juice after teeth brushing-
hang awkwardly over the air of my afternoon.

And maybe I could have lived with knowing
where you were about to go
A kiss on the forehead or a purposeful nudge to
wake me just long enough to see you leaving.
A sign that would somehow spell out a goodbye,
even though we both know you were
never coming back.

Goodnight

Even though I am alone
I still remove my bra like a
shy sixth grader at summer camp,
afraid of an errant nipple exposed to fellow bunkmates.
I arch back and under my shirt to remove the hook
before pulling the straps down and out each arm like a
straight jacket escape in dress rehearsal.
I reach up the front of my shirt and
pull it down in one dramatic swoop,
feeling the weightlessness of breath in my exhale.
Stretch my shoulders back just to
remind myself what skin feels like.

I never like brushing my teeth.

About once a week, I don’t do it on purpose.
I will be out and the night will be winding down
and I will think “I’m not going to brush tonight.”
I am the fucking boss.

The clothes for sleeping are tucked behind my pillow
and change weekly with the sheets.
Lately they include socks which are inevitably
kicked off in the night
but feel so amazing in those moments before slumber,
when I rub my feet together and up my leg
to the beat of to-do lists and a day replayed.

I have rituals to calm my brain.
Sometimes I have a little conversation with god.
Sometimes I masturbate.
But I always think about the things I am grateful for-
the things that propelled me into
happiness or thought or uncomfortable feelings
or fullness or awareness in my waking moments.

Then I lean over
Rearrange the pillows so they arch
in that memorized way
Curl up my body into a ball with my blankets
or a partner
or the bear gifted to me at birth.

My lungs grow fat with that last vocal sigh-
I am ready to leave the world behind for a few hours.

Anddddd.... we're back!

Holy shyt. I can't believe nearly two months have gone by since I last updated. I can't really find the right excuses for this, although my favorite blogger has fallen into the same pattern so it must be something in the water.

What is new with me you ask?

* Tara B, Gowri K, Jonathan B-T and I heard the musical stylings of Niggy Tardust (aka, Saul Williams) and got to afterparty with the fella at Liv. One should never stay up that late on a Sunday night, but it was well worth it (despite "afropunk" maybe being my least preferred musical genre ever).

* I attended J Street conference for both professional and personal reasons, despite the great poet debacle. Though I was at a wedding for their revenge performance at Busboys and Poets, I heard it was great. As far as J Street goes, though it was not as provacative as I would have liked, I think there may just be hope for a voice of peace, hope and coexistence in the American lobby. Salaam.

* I had the best performance of my life at Spit Dat two weeks ago. In the craziness of getting ready for J Street, it seemed fitting to perform a piece that touched on my feelings about Israel. Dwayne B remarked to the crowd that the first couple of stanzas could easily be about DC. Word.

And coming up:

* I will be leading my FIRST EVER POETRY WORKSHOP at my house on November 11th at 7pm. Would love to see your beautiful faces.

* On November 12th, mothertongue turns 11! We are having a FREE show at the Black Cat at 9pm (come at 8 to drink with me). Support women and local artists!

Thanks for not giving up on reading this (and for not let me give up on writing it)!
New stuff to come soon!

New Sh*t!

My brother and I are working on a new project. 10 weeks. 10 topics. We each write and maybe they'll be a chapbook down the line. For the first week our topic was "The End of the Summer."

Right before your leaves turned orange
I thought about the peach I ate last August.
That lone fruit you handed to me right before
our summer expired-
it tasted like an apology.
Like every note spoken between us
What you gave me then was edible,
disposable like seasons.
It couldn’t stay around longer than my lips would let it
But I let it.

And now summer is molding into another Fall
Reminding me how, in a second, rain can thin
out the humidity in this city.
How the convexity of air between every sapling kiss
can stale my lungs again.
You left in a sand storm
boots up like a hero
Asking me one last time what god meant to me
and I told you she lives in this limbo
This time when the next season seems
like nothing but possible.

The sun is creeping behind the clouds earlier these days
Makes it easier to sink into my bed without your
memory hanging in the daylight
Dusk reminding me of secrets passed
between open mouth breaths
Intentional
Piercing
Cold like this makes it impossible to remember warmth
The memory of your season is out of my grasp again.

Like teeth on a too ripe peach
My brain is sinking into mush
Puddling into something that used to be whole

This is what the end of summer brings each time you leave
We are seasons too brief for memory
And the candid shots of coasts
we used to dream about together

Just two orange Polaroids,
disposable as the wind.

Come Support Me at 11th Hour Slam. Busboys on 14th. Fri 9/11. 11pm.

I will be competing in the slam this Friday Sept 11th at 11pm (but to actually get in, you have to get there at 10) at Busboys & Poets on 14th and V. Have I practiced yet? No. Have I memorized any of the pieces I'm doing? Heck nah. This is why I need your love and support to sway the judges. I'm making it my goal to get on the National's team this year and every point counts! Only $5!

More info: http://www.busboysandpoets.com/events.php

I wear my sunglasses under the chuppah

It was a sunny southern wedding ceremony for my dear friends Jamie and Steve who got married this weekend on a farm outside Chapel Hill, NC. They asked me to write and recite a poem for them at their ceremony as a modern and progressive translation of the Sheva Brachot (Seven Blessings) that are traditionally recited at Jewish weddings. Heres at it:

Today nature’s hand is creeping 

up from the earth like a golden flower
Reminding us how much richer the soil is today-
the mountains inching a little closer to the sky.

The kisses of wind to skin remind us 

what alive feels like today
Let the silence of earth be the pause 

needed to reflect on the blessings of our years
Let the shadow of clouds drifting blue behind us
allow the collapse of sky to drip into our lungs.

Breathe
The earth is inflating with our wholeness today
The genuine human spirit that we are lucky
enough to hold in our palm
Clutch it with your heart
but allow your hands to be forever open-
to welcome, to love, to accept.

Let us find comfort in the one who inspires us today
Holding ourselves up to a mirror that reflects 

consciousness of the world’s fusions and fissures,
awareness of the creation that comes from within
that makes life tangible, attainable, possible.

It is with each new phase in our lives that we sing back,
listening for the echo of our soul to
reverberate in our ribcages.
Reminding us of what has been
Reminding us that true completion of each moment
is necessary for flight
Necessary for finding true tranquility in the peace 

of life’s connections

It is the beauty of life’s connections that unify us today
Each somehow touched by this blending of souls
Whether it is she, a smile stretched like a canvass, wide-eyed and never failing in finding life’s highest altitudes
Or he, patient, tender, a world behind those kind eyes
It is by them that we truly see 

the wonder of cycles repeating
Of waves crashing at the right second
to bring us to this moment.

It is with singing that we are reminded of the lightness
of voices lifting into air
Unifying creatures into community
into harmony
Into the hope that if we follow your footprints
Living each day with fullness, awareness and giving
We too can find the kind of love that sustains

that nourishes
And that brings us true and gratifying peace.

Notes on the Other Side of Silence

One.
Someday you’ll wake up and realize
you haven’t been sleeping
Her morning breath whispered in my ear half asleep
half a bottle of wine still sloshing in my eardrums
Last night we ate guacamole out of a tortilla boat
and talked about other coasts
I said I’ve been afraid of flying lately
Afraid of the sky sucking me back up
into where I came from
And she says that’s completely ridiculous Sarah-
You come from the earth dammit
And I believe her
This is the only thing that’s made sense to me in 93 days.

Two.
When I try to see into tomorrow
the only postcard I get back is a wall
So he asks me to tell him what my bricks are made of
I don’t know I say
he says TRY
and I say I don’t know
and he says TRY
and I say one
is for the visionary that lives under the bridge in my lungs
Two is for the day I wake up inflated with your prologue
Three is for the voiceless, broken, can’t make sense
of why this is important
Four is for the fear that the bricks are always present
and that God is not inside these clouds
Five is the clouds, beating chaos into my mornings
Six is that broken girls don’t make good lovers
Seven is that I will never fly again, never love the sky again
never hold the hand and feel that I
deserve that warmth again,
I fear that I may never look at my reflection
in the mirror or the clouds or your eyeball
and know that is me again.
I feel that I may never feel like me again.

And it’s funny, really, his silence
Im waiting for him to pull me close, closer and whisper
“Baby, Lets deconstruct this Babylon together”

Three.
The bombshell in front of me at the Post Office
is wearing Seven Jeans
For Man-fucking-kind I think
Her painted toes remind me how pathetic I am, I think
She puts her padded manila envelope on the desk
smothered in hearts and kisses
And asks them how quickly a first class package
can arrive in Iraq

Nobody really has all their shit together.

FREE mothertongue show 8/19 @ Black Cat @ 8PM

It's August, it's hot and mothertongue is going recession friendly for their summer show. Come support DC's women's spoken word group at the Black Cat on Wednesday August 19th at 8pm. The show is FREE, Jenny C. Lares is featuring, there is an open mic open to all and donations ($5 suggested) benefit WIN (Women's Information Network).

For more information on the show, check out the facebook invite.

What happens when you ask your waiter for a prompt

Gowri K and I met for a long overdue Sunday afternoon at Tryst today. With no inspiration of our own brewing,  we asked our waiter for a jumping off point. Turns out, he had almost died on his drive to Adam's Morgan from Virginia. So here goes "I almost died." Also much thanks to the wonderful bartenders we sat next to who bought us shots of Blue Curacao (?). Random but tasty.

I almost died this morning

Twice

The first time I got lost in the soundtrack of your 

breath as we slept. 

You whispering in my ear with each

dip in your dreaming. 

I forgot what my breath tasted like. 

Forgot that the nutrition of your touch, your limbs

Felt essential as hearts beating, breaking. 

I wanted to forget about that rhythm and try 

your lungs instead 

But morning reminded me of time, rhythms. 

I knew we'd eventually rise to burnt toast and crosswords

And the moment on the stoop when I want to grab you 

and run away to under the covers. 

See I almost died today.

Twice.

I arose and went back to sleep.

But in those moments before consciousness

before the day's hissing latte machine or somber music,

with your breath playing that hymnal in my ear,

briefly before daylight stole you away

I lived. 

Like A Wave

Like a wave, when they came, they came like a wave

Like the ocean floor rolling sunken treasures

over their skin and in and out of their

salted fingernails

They came like winter

Too soon to get used to cold current

ripping through icicle lungs

They came like a wave

Two by two and in every variety

There were miracles then

Etched in the sand and coral-

the stories of floating fisherman boots

and lost caverns.

They came like the blazing sun on beaches

Fading everything in the path of its glow

They came like a wave

I hope you glow like that

They came like a wave

Don't forget their candle flickered underwater

and warned us of trespassers

Of bottom-feeders looking for some oxygen.

I pray for the wave to roll over your tentacles

and give you peace

The sky cannot haunt you here.

They came like a wave

With tides like lullabies

to rock them back to slumber.

When they came

They floated to shore with the afternoon

Slept naked on the beach with sand and starfish

When they came, they came like a wave.

A New Poem!

To be sampled this Thursday at Spit Dat (1351 U Street- Capoira Center- 8pm). Written for final performance of Capturing Fire 2 the week of August 22.

God or Something Like Her

I don’t pretend to be close to God
But there are certain times when prayers rock me golden
Like yellow beats
Move me like trees swaying in the DC fall
as the branches bare themselves

I am naked
in these moments
Exposed to the most of my soul
And the breath of my skin
heavy with goose bumps and weakness.

“Is God in there?”
I ask in this seconds before sleep comes
When the harmony of voices has sped out of my universe
And I’m left wondering if that was a religious experience

or just a poor man’s version of soul

I toss in sleep
With nightmares of gravity
And the clouds hanging above my slumber
haunt me like grey ghosts.

I wake to the applause of my insides
slow like necessity
I don’t know how to keep this fresh
How to take the down tempo beats blasting
And have them bring me to a higher being

Like lost cities or childhood
I am just trying to bring me back to civilized.
To God or something like her.

Rock me with your lyrics
Dream me into infinity 1000 times over
If I wasn’t so afraid of death I would have done this by now

Sink into the reservoir of blues, greens, spirituality
Beautiful like rain pounding the humid city

on an August day

Like renewal
Like understanding real and not distance
Like lifelong strangers asking if you need a hug

No bitch, I need a voice
I am mute with hallucinogens
Can you stomach that?
Your prayers can’t make my blood thicker or richer
But it can make me feel whole again
like orange peels or the West Coast
Like long drives or phone calls that end with I Love Yous

Something about this feels real
Like love, ache, breaking, body

I move with the beats, rhythm
Feel the spirit of the music in my veins, bones
I am just working on understanding the lyrics.

Gowri K and Sarah L feature at Sparkle! Wed 9pm!

Gowri K and I will be featuring (performing 4-5 poems each) at Sparkle, a queer-friendly reading for all, at Busboys and Poets on 5th and K at 9pm on Wednesday July 22 at 9pm.

Hosted by Danielle E. Come enjoy/support/ listen/ read on the open mic. $3 gets you in.

Come support us in both of our first features!
More info.

Exquisite Corpse II

Another corpse, courtesy of Evan C.
There is a beat in the
back of my neck
That tells my limbs when to dance
Tells my eyes when to glance
And guides my legs as they leap.
I want to learn to skip again
Float like my child brain and
Bones remember how to fly
And lips recall the lie
That held our bodies down
Pinned down like necessity
Before our muscles told us to move more
After we layed and splayed and run our bodies sore
Before, before, before
We were ever born.

Lately

Lately
I read the emergency procedures as I
ride the red line to Dupont
Pluck heroes from the crowd and sit closest to them
Breath anxiety in and out of my lungs while

Talya is coming out of her coma in Mumbai
They say she looks like Natalie Portman’s shaved head now
and that reminds me of Seattle

But I’m back in DC
Worried about voltage
About the inertia running a river like lava under our seats
I pound music in my temples to occupy the space there as

Talya’s temples
brain
crack
skull
fracture
As Eastern antidotes ease her into coma
And I hope she doesn’t sleep long enough
For her parents to
have two special needs kids now.

I don’t know how to breathe in the world anymore
Lately the heaviness of humidity is an elephant in my lungs
And there is injustice and lost souls and
zombies inhabiting grown men’s bodies and
celebrity corpses
fucking
everywhere

And I breathe

Wonder about the people I will keep closest
If they will really only stab me in the front
Or if they come up cold like carcasses from the gravel
I worry about what I can’t see in my periphery

And I think I need to have sex.
Emergency sex
Saturday afternoon with no roommates or formalities sex
And I can’t sleep.

My eyelashes flutter to the beat of a broken commute
And the burial shrouds that crowd the space
where their breath used to be
Lately I’m thinking about the screech of metal
Taking folks to heaven instead of home.
I’m dreaming of Talya’s post week long nap and
Sleep filled eyes waking to hospital lights
bright with confusion
As her shaky hands touch the cracked cactus
where her foot long curls used to be

Lately
We are all trains bound and gagged for glory
On tracks tangled and demented by time
We are all just surviving this
All just bracing for impact
It’s up to no one to tell us how to breathe right again
So we exist on empty lungs and diesel filled skulls
Convinced we are headed to purgatory or worse
Convinced that we can learn to breathe underwater
Convinced our ignition is lit by burning emotion
And not funeral pyres.

And we breathe.

Because lately in our bones
that’s the only thing we all seem to know
for certain how to do.