MINIMAL-ish.

There is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft. When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife’s right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. There is no act more wretched than stealing.

RECOMMENDATIONS: Being a part of as many unsatisfying relationships as possible. Finding different ways to be alone. Melted cheese. Most dogs. Organizing your life around things that probably won’t work out. Fucking up over and over but in new and interesting ways. Sharing everything you can remember about yourself. Viewing all emotions as equal. Seeing everyone as an attempt. Feeling confused by the phrase Be yourself. Assuming everyone has been mistreated at various points in their life. Letting it all hit you.

I told her I’m sorry I’m the thing you like. She touched my ears and poured me coffee. We walked over to my bed and sat on it. She told me I have a lot of beauty marks. I said I never call them that because it’s conceited and inaccurate. Calling them birthmarks is more appropriate because they are permanent and blameless. She said, “There are so many on your arms.” This morning is, I think, the last snow of the season. Saturday is going to be sunny and almost sixty degrees. She and I made a lot of plans. They include: walking outside, buying a plant, going to Ikea, going to the Prospect Park with my brother’s dog, cutting my hair, baking a pie, listening to Slowdive and watching a movie. But it happens in every friendship, and in relationships it’s even worse, that first moment where you feel it, that there’s no curiosity anymore, no feelings to share or things to do, and the park bench beneath your bodies becomes especially hard, and one of you looks at the other with eyes that are all apologies. It’s never like how you thought it would be for as long as you thought it would. Everyday, satisfied or not, is comprised of opportunities missed. My forehead, marked permanently by attempts at conveying sincerity, and the way that, as a kid, I learned more complex and vulnerable ways of describing how I felt, while coming to understand that quicker and simpler descriptions are considered more polite, that these descriptions of things, real or not, don’t lead me anywhere, like the vaguest of allegories, how one thing can be compared to the identification of the thing itself, how so much that matters ceases to upon any graduation, like deepening into oneself, falling asleep at night and not being able to remember what you did that day, how getting older transforms from an accomplishment to a hushed source of guilt, how the memories you have are always wasted. But you can write a whole book. You can call it anything you want. You can print it out and stare at it. You can avoid anyone you want to. And on TV you swear you heard the President say that headaches are the growing pains of our emotions. But by the time you read this I will be someone older and newer. I will be ultimate. I will be somewhere else. Beginning to blend with TV-colored walls. Things can only get worse. A loving kind of silence. You, having left, then returned. Me, having stayed, then stayed. Mathematics and old movies. The deaths of centuries inside you. A hug that only comes apart. A book you want to pull together. A story that dies in your hands. Apologies and thanks. It’ll be a new year again soon.