There Are No Villians

what matters most is how well you walk through the fire.

Aries: I know you have only ever seen life in shades of dull gray while everyone else talked about the beautiful neon of colors. Some people find their magic a little sooner is all, doesn’t mean you won’t see the fireworks light up too. Just be patient. Taurus: You’re different now. But not in a bad way, in a way that would make your mother proud if you told her all the horrors you’d been through. You can finally stand up off your bloody knees and dance. The time for praying is over, you’ve won the god damn war. Gemini:  You are so much more than the value they’ve put on you. You are worth more than the scars and the stares and the stupidity. You are worth more god damn it. Cancer:  Drink Water. Get some sleep. Let yourself reset. Do not go jumping off bridges or burning them down at 2 am. Because those choices made in a rash of emotion never did anything good. Leo: Learn to listen. Learn to be comfortable with silence. Do not let the silence make you smaller instead learn to grow in the places others give room. Flourish in quiet. Virgo: Grow up. A relit cigarette will never taste the same and going back to old flames is only ever going to get you burned. So stop. Stop letting yourself get burned. Libra:  Forgive yourself. Because it is not your fault for the choices and actions everyone else has made. Because everyone else in this god awful situation has. Scorpio: You are not just a bundle of mistakes and broken bones. You are more then the damage that has been done to you. You are wanted and loved and cherished. Remember that. Sagittarius:  Bury the bones. They deserve to be the skeletons because they were the ones who commuted the sins against you. You’re not wrong here. Remember that. Capricorn :  Do not be scared to restart. Preset the reset button and enjoy it. Do not be scared when you have to make new friends. Create a new life. In the end, it’ll be worth it. Aquarius :  Let go. Let go of all the anger and hatred you’re still clinging to because it’s all you’ve got left of them. It’s going to be hell but the relief of finally letting go of the glass shard memories will be worth it. Pisces:Go outside. Do something you’ve never done before. Change some small thing in your routine. This monotonous pattern you’ve set yourself in is going to kill you.

You are shaking fists & trembling teeth. I know: You did not mean to be cruel. That does not mean you were kind.

Hunger is the first and last word. When all words in California slide into the sea, hunger will be the last to fall. Should they all plunge out of the sky in flames, hunger burns the brightest.

the courage to love like a wound that never heals.

it doesn’t feel like a time to write when all my muses are begging for their lives.

The truth is this: My love for you is the only empire I will ever build. When it falls, as all empires do, my career in empire building will be over. I will retreat to an island. I will dabble in the vacation-hut industry. I will skulk about the private libraries and public parks. I will fold the clean clothes. I will wash the dishes. I will never again dream of having the whole world.

When the plane went down in San Francisco, I thought of my friend M. He’s obsessed with plane crashes. He memorizes the wrecked metal details,      the clear cool skies cut by black scars of smoke. Once, while driving, he told me about all the crashes: The one in blue Kentucky, in yellow Iowa. It was almost a year before I learned his brother was a pilot. I can’t help it, I love the way men love.

…But who were you kidding? You took him in with no grand dreams of salvation, but only to ease the guilt of never having tried…“

It never ends, the bruise of being–

This isn’t a poem. This is two a.m. in the backseat of your car, picking my heart out of the upholstery. It’s a trick of the light: shapes in the darkness. It’s the monster under your bed that followed you into your twenties. This is what your lungs look like after a lifetime of smoking. This is cigarettes through a stoma. This is what you do with the Lonely when it pats you on the back and holds your hair– when the hangover has nothing to do with the alcohol. You make room for it. Lonely crawls in bed with you and you pull back the covers. What else are you supposed to do? Nobody told me Lonely was this ugly. Nobody told me Lonely looked like me. Nobody told me Lonely and I would get good and cozy. That days can feel like months can feel like steam. I’m writing a letter to my teenaged self:Stay away from this one and that one and this one. Trust me, it’ll be easier that way. How many years have I carried my heart like a coin purse? Handed it out like loose change? Heart in a sandwich bag– school science project– how many licks to the center of a tragic backstory? I didn’t wallow in it; I made friends with the Lonely. I walked it out to the water. I held its hand when it tried to drown me. I painted on the bravest face I know. I survived heartache by the handful— so, no. Hard as you tried to hurt me, you’re not special. You’re the flavor of the week and trust me— I’ve had better. This isn’t a poem, this is digging you out of my bones with a carving knife. I don’t know much about love, but it’s not supposed to hurt. It’s not supposed to hurt.

First, quit picking old wounds and going for walks in the aches and pains you already made it through– you call it healing, but it sounds like a good way to take a haunting home with you. LONELY is a no-vacancies sign for an empty room on the backside of your chest, and there will never be enough people to love that empty out of you. Love will not save you. You will save you.   Remember, no matter how much you need a voice at the other end of the line who only wants to take care of you, it is a felony to call 911 just because you need someone to talk to. You cannot shrink to radio static, to heavy breath on a telephone. Your aching does not end in an ambulance.   Now, breathe. Yes, I know you’ve heard this one before. Do it anyway. Got ribs like the wrong side of a fistfight, yeah? That’s from the hyperventilating. Your lungs just survived a car crash inside of your body. Be gentle with them, please.   Find the pocket of your heartbeat where you keep forgiveness. We will try again tomorrow– I know you’ve got a bone to pick with tomorrow, but it’s coming anyway. Listen, in a few hours our little world will turn herself right-side-up again, and you will forget about all the ways this lonely night sang you watered down blues and your hands will start to make sense again.   You think you’ve seen every ugly corner of this whole rotten world, but listen: there are an infinite number of things we don’t know and, statistically speaking, at least half of them are probably very, very beautiful.

So, this is my latest attempt at self-recovery, and I’m looking for a good way to describe the emptiness. Listen, some days my heart is the canary in the coal mine, Some days my heart is the coal mine, I pick fights with the bird And choke the chirp out of the chatter But there’s always something chirping, There’s always a leak somewhere. Listen, some days my heart is the anchor of the shipwreck and Some days my heart is the shipwreck, But this always ends in a drowning, This always ends in remembering So, some days my heart is the car crash at 175 BPM, Some days my heart is the passenger, Making stick shifts out of the wreckage Because I’m always trying to drive in reverse. Listen, please. Some days my heart is the addict in a church And some days my heart is the church. Either way, Someone is always planting another crucifix. Listen, I’m sorry for the chirping, I’m sorry for drowning the bird And resuscitating the bird just to kill the bird again, I’m sorry that it’s still beating its wings, That this always ends in beating But listen. Some days my heart is the sinking metaphors, And some days my heart is the buoy, The poetry, The forming. On those days I’m learning how to love again. Okay?