tenderness is a virtue

There is more to me than my worst nights. Even in the darkness, I preserve my light.

(One time I knocked the lamp on my night stand down by accident. As the broken glass scattered all over the floor I didn’t bother to tiptoe to the door to get the broom.  I just did what I always do. I spread out on my bed. Eyes closed. Shutters down. No light coming from the nightstand.)

There is more to me than my worst days. To never forget this is the reason I pray.

(I sometimes wonder if there is some symbolic meaning in how I didn’t care about the broken glass between the piles of dirty clothes and empty cornflake boxes. How I just didn’t care when I walked through my room with bare feet.)

I am more than the cycle that keeps on repeating. I am more than the voices I am tired of fleeing.

(After two weeks, I finally got the broom and cleaned up my entire room.)

I am more than my demons I am tired of fighting I will keep the flame burning, I will keep on writing.

(I sometimes wonder if it is luck or poetry that I never cut my feet once.)

There is more to me than my worst nights. Even in the darkness, I preserve my light. There is more to me than my worst days. To never forget this is the reason I pray.

how do I know which path to take if I don’t know which point I am in time and space? my fingers run across the map like roaring rivers run like eartquakes, run like shivers

how do I know where my path will end if I am the compass in my hand? spinning and spinning until all lines are blurred spinning and spinning until there is no meaning in my words

I don’t know which decision to make or if the path I choose will be a mistake I am only left with maps for non-geographical places where straight lines fold in time and space and my life is drawn out in front of me and I? I? will I learn how to read?

people always look down on us academics for only knowing about things from books (and essays from magazines no one can afford) real knowledge, they say, comes from real experience I am a linguist, so I know a lot about words. I know, that Christmas is a noun that you pronounce  /ˈkrɪsməs/ and I know that love can either be pronounced /lʌv/ or /lʊv/, depending on where you are from but they say, that’s not all that is to it

I wish this season would have taught me the real meaning of both would have taught me the meaning of the reflections of fairy lights in the eyes of someone you love would have taught me about sharing a meal with someone you care about instead, I learned a new word I only read a few times in a book without ever thinking about it, without really caring about its meaning metastasis. I could think about this word and I could tell you that it’s a noun composed of: 4 vowels 4 fricatives 2 plosives and I could tell you that it’s pronounced /meˈtæstəsɪs/ and I could read you its definition from a medical dictionary “metastasis: the spread of cancer cells from the place where they first formed to another part of the body.”

“family dinners” taste in my mouth like the name long dead to me but not to them and every time they drop the name-bomb their a-bomb it keeps ringing in me like the church bells that later gathers from the neighbourhood all the faces and all the whispers and all the looks that are question marks at me and exclamation marks between the silent dots when I meet them between Luke 2:17 and John 18:8 what a beautiful mass it was mother says afterward and means why do you hate it so much why do you hate us so much why can’t you act normal please be normal again like the beautiful daughter you were please you are my beautiful daughter don’t you forget that exclamation mark questions mark and then it’s more silent dots and more John 18:8, all of them and more of the ringing in me for the name you keep calling and it smashes in me like the plate I threw at dad and then it’s feeling sorry for making mom cry and being such a bad son and a worse daughter but then there’s you and you keep asking me if I am ok because your heater is broken  and it’s cold outside