Love, Andi

💕

“Don’t be surprised if you can’t find yourself in someone else’s poetry, because you are only in mine.”

“are you still happening there, in your body?”

“I am realizing people hurt in different ways. No pain looks the same. They don’t laugh at the same jokes. They stop tending to the garden. Leave all the lights off. Pick at their fingernails. I try not to focus on what their hurt looks like so much anymore, but what still remains the same; their perfume, their favorite colors and hiding places, and what it means to feel better. Getting out of bed. A good, warm lunch at the diner. Curling their hair or doing the dishes. Regardless of what sadness looks like, wearing their body like old clothes, I watch the way they come back to themselves, every time. Granting what time they need for themselves. Undressing the loneliness. Filling the absence. How gorgeous it is to watch someone be well.”

“Cultivate silence. Silence is essential in order to hear your own voice. Especially nowadays when we often have the television on, the radio on, or music playing all day long, it is essential to find some silence to listen to your own voice. Your own voice is the only thing your poetry needs.”

I have done terrible things by being alive. I have built a wonder of terror with my life.

When you choose to be a poet, when you choose to spill like this, bleed like this, cry like this, your pain becomes an exhibit. A place for people to walk through and then leave when they are ready. No one ever asks a museum if it’s okay.

even the hand of a compass must knock back and forth before deciding upon a direction.

I will stay gentle no matter what I endure, I am so much more.