rebuilt
If I'm one inch she's two,
If I'm two feet she's ten,
casting shadows unending,
aweshaking and faultbreaking.
She shattered me,
and let me rebuild myself
into someone I love,
beautiful and proud.
7:09
I am good at waiting,
and watching and thinking and listening,
but now minutes are hours and a day is too long for me to bear.
7:09
7:09
7:09
staring at the sun
Sometimes the sun is hard to look at, because it reminds us of how much light we have lost. How tired and afraid and embarrassed we are. It illuminates our flaws, the parts of ourselves that must be seen to be fixed but hurt nonetheless.
We wonder "How did you get so bright?", "How is it with the same hydrogen and helium molecules that sit inert in me, you have the force of a thousand flames?", and we are mortified that despite all that potential we are just us. Crying, wanting, needing, us. Feeling alone in the crowds and overwhelmed simply looking in a mirror. You are so full of love and we are so full of loneliness.
mushrooms
Did I tell you about the mushrooms? About how far away I was and yet how close everything felt. How overwhelming the world, as it crowded me into a corner. Yelling and screaming and banging. Grating and scraping on top of me. I could not look away. I could not close my ears. I wanted to yell louder than everything. I wanted to stand so the grass would stop touching all I was but nausea held me down, pressing every inch of me into a thousand blades. Each one unbearable, driving me mad. To close to close to close. I could not move, I could not think, I could barely breathe. LEAVE ME ALONE. Let me be alone. Let there be nothing. Please.
the sea
How do you explain the sea?
It's not a thousand puddles,
it cannot be skipped across with wet toes and dry hair.
You must swim,
immersed in its endless expanse.
Salt and spit, seaweed and sunshine.
It could swallow you whole,
and peacefully,
you would drown.
pressed
There’s dread in my belly, pressed and squeezed,
covered in layers of :how to waste time now:,
and bound by moments of being with :you:.
There are other moments alone on my floor
,with hands are too raw to make music and my feeds stale,
when my fingers explore my seams,
tracing the cracks and threadbare patches that have come with age.
Sometimes when I’m strong I let a little out,
laying in horror at noon,
the Sun ablaze and no shadows to hide in.
I’m laid bare with
all I have not done
all I may not do
all I am
I still wonder,
Will I die wanting?
Or will I fight enough to die tired?
then and now
How tall was the tree that I fell from,
to be this broken,
in so many ways?
How hard was the impact,
that it could split my life,
into then and now?
everything is loud
Everything is loud right now. You are gone and a heart of this place left with you. The passion that pushed us to what we are. Even the city is yelling "come back and stay here", because what is a body without a heart?
It's a machine. And who gives a fuck about a machine? Wandering across its map made of bytes and bits. Terminals and buses and entirely predictable output. Driven not by dreams but by current. Volts and Watts and nothing I care about.
I used to be machine, or a human who thought I was machine, hoping and wishing for anything. An anything that you showed me how to capture. Your voice raised, pleading for me to see, for us to see. Love them. Love it. There. Is. Beauty.
And now I'll have to remind myself. Push this place alone for awhile, as I know you have for so long. Holding a weight far heavier than the world on your shoulders. Everyone you love pulling you to your knees. And all you can see is yourself. Sleeping, crying, failing. I have folded under that weight, and no one saw me. And I am so sorry that after all of that, I did not see you.
the waitress
What is it to travel through this life unheard, as a meteor without observation? It is space and sorrow and infinity. It is an existence as point known only to itself. Hurtling and hard. Begging to be seen and needing to be heard. A cold stone, inert and predictable and plain.
I have spent years this way, as have most of us. In the kind of sorrow only loneliness can breed. A hardness forged by what feels like many forevers spent in absolute zero. But you pulled me in. Gentle gravity altering my trajectory week over week. By seeing me you let me see myself. And over time I reentered the atmosphere, consumed in all the radiant fire that requires. Burning and feeling and hurting and yelling. Uncomfortable and beautiful. Turning again from rock to human, where I can live instead of exist. Where I can love instead of hide.
You have done that for so many people. Bringing them back from the stars. Keeping them from drifting into forever with your gravity. I hope they remind you of that. So you can see that some days the sunrise is made of the burning of countless meteors. Meteors that you pulled back in. Passion and pain and human again. Shining bright because they know you are watching.
sober
I miss drinking because I think truer then. It's an easy way to fly, an easy way to fall. I can drown with certainty, see the bottom clearly, and remember how high I am after. I can glow and shine and tingle with conviction the world is right, that I am beautiful.
It makes me want to move, to do, to write, to be out there in the beyond. Loose and as comfortable in the world as I wish I always was.
I can love right away with a heart open and raw. I can be furious. Burning alive to ashes on the wind. Gone and here and singularly everywhere. I can focus so much on myself I become everything. I am all there is. Rushing and halting and breathing. Steaming with life.
It is the most beautiful crutch I have ever had. Unlocking me one sip at a time. A fire in my throat powering the furnace in my heart.