the cupid notes

getting close to people strategies

first time getting close to people walkthrough

I THINK LOVE IS SOMETHING

THAT HAPPENS TO OTHER PEOPLE

like winning the lottery / or finding God in your sock drawer.

I think love is something

that happens to other people—nebulous,

distant, an invention of the movies; I think love

is like death / as in,

it happens to everyone but you

until it happens / to you,

and then where else could you be

but in love? Where else could you be but in

the belly of the beast, / that oozing cavern

where people go in fairy tales? I think

love

is a creation. I think maybe you shape it

with your hands, I think maybe you find it

stuck in your molars, I think maybe it comes to you

when you’re in the shower, your face tilted

towards the water while your mind melts somewhere

else, I think maybe

we’ve all been naming it

wrong.

You know that love? That falling-to-your-knees love?

That where’d-the-water-go love? That

hold-me-close-I’ll-never-leave-I-know-your-favorite

-coffee-creamer love? That what-we-talk-about-when-we-

talk-about-love love? You ever felt that? I mean,

really felt any of that? / Yeah, tell me again

how you feel it. Yeah, tell me again / how it fills

the chest, fills the head, fills the

lungs. Tell me

again

what it means to find God in your sock drawers. Tell me

again.

— Joy Harjo, from “The First Day Without a Mother”, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems

— Margarita Karapanou, tr. by Karen Emmerich, Rien ne va plus

— Stephen Dunn, from “The Waiting”, The Insistence of Beauty: Poems

(…) this patina of slightly bruised longing, this shimmer of I think I knew you when we were children, this look of I’ve loved you ever since you were born and probably longer than that

— Paul Hostovsky, from “Everyone was Beautiful”, Dear Truth

(…) it’s starting again, the longing that begins, and begins, and begins.

— Kim Addonizio, from “Onset”, published in “Tell Me”

— Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost

— Robert Hass, from “Meditation at Lagunitas”

Why was I calling you, wishing for you, why was I longing and thirsting for you with every curve of my soul and even with my ribs?

— Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

You were sick, so sick, with your wound of thwarted longing; you wanted the power to change the illusions you live in.