a grammar

Buy a stethoscope and listen carefully to your heartbeat. If you are young, it should sound like this:

An interesting thing about growing older

is being able to see precisely how the mundane, tiny, seemingly inconsequential flaws of a person’s youth

may butterfly-effect and snowball and very gradually, though no great or particularly consequential fault of that person’s own,

turn said person into the kind of ruined, compromised, contemptible mid-lifer you used to look at and wonder:

Once upon a week two bunnyrabbits wandered into a middleschool dance and commenced to nibbling at the crudite on the chaperone table

On their one side stood a number of boys murmuring softly and once-in-a-while flicking one another in the ol’ nads

MWAHAHAHAHA

wait

I meant

1.

How do I love thee?

Like literally how exactly

In what way am I managing to do it

What makes me capable of it

What techniques am I employing

Literally how

2.

Lower your expectations

Lower than that

Lower

Good god are you kidding me

Way way lower

Keep going

So much lower

Extremely lower

It’s like you’re not even listening to me

Lower

Lower damnit

Okay

But so how are you feeling about our relationship

3.

I always pretended to be someone different when you were around

Someone I thought you might like in a better or different way than me

With the interesting result that after all that time

You don’t actually know “me,” not really much for real

And of course I don’t really know “you” either

Given I was evidently wrong about what you might like

So if we were to run into each other

It’d be great if we just said

Who the fuck are you

4.

I keep having this dream where

I describe my dreams to people

And they’re like wow that is fascinating

Tell us more

Tell us more

Is there any way we can maybe support your lifestyle and tend to all of your daily needs

So you can just dream all the time

And tell us about it

And so obviously that’s why you can’t blame me for waking up

1. Knowing dreams are dreams doesn’t change anything

2. A hex is a hex is a hex

3. There’s so much more blood in your body than you probably ever thought

4. You should know by age 13 that people you admire because they Do Not Give a Fuck explicitly Do Not Give a Fuck about your admiration or feelings or overall existence

5. Rhyming dictionaries do not have the word “cameltoe” in them

6. You can not-do anything if you just sit there and don’t move and not-act your little heart out hard enough

I just wanted to share with you this one simple trick that will make your life demonstrably happier, 100% guaranteed:

Make a list of the things you want most

The things you want most passionately, the ones that really wring your guts and dizzy your blood

The ones where the wanting might be profitably compared to a thing that is undergoing some variety of combustion

Yes, those