Regaining My Thunder

Half of what I say is meaningless; but I say it so that the other half may reach you.

We often want it so badly that we ruin it before it begins. Overthinking. Fantasizing. Imagining. Expecting. Worrying. Doubting. Just let it naturally evolve.

I wonder why we always deny love. I remember in middle school, if you were accused of the crime of loving, you screamed denials constantly and stopped ever even looking at the boy you were accused of liking. The boys could destroy each other by yodeling, “An-drew lo-oves Jen-nie,” and both Andrew and Jennie would flinch and blush. Love is this great thing that most songs and books and poems and lives are all about. So the minute we actually think there might be love around, we start laughing and pretending and hiding from it.

Sometimes it was hard to express how much you loved someone. You said the words, but you could never quite capture the depth of it. You could never quite hold someone tightly enough.

I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures.

I love you—I do—but I am afraid of making that love too important. Because you’re always going to leave me. We can’t deny it. You’re always going to leave.

Look, I want to love this world / as though it’s the last chance I’m ever going to get / to be alive / and know it.

Even as I hold you I think of you as someone gone far, far away. Even as I hold you I am letting go.

I don’t write poetry anymore and nothing can hurt me. I don’t write poetry anymore and every river is bleeding towards a home. All I really want is a man to put his hands in my mouth. All I really want is two stones or a sleeping dog or a dead horse. I take long walks from one street corner to another. There are so many little things that make up a life. I look my strangers in the eyes. I am almost always imagining some kind of violence. I cheated this Ramadan. I’ve cheated every Ramadan. I don’t write poetry anymore so I don’t have to think about my mother. I haven’t kissed anyone in months. I’m not as good as I hoped I’d be. Yesterday I noticed my front tooth is rotting.