i love the versatile potato

How far have you walked for men who’ve never held your feet in their laps? How often have you bartered with bone, only to sell yourself short? Why do you find the unavailable so alluring? Where did it begin? What went wrong? And who made you feel so worthless? If they wanted you, wouldn’t they have chosen you? All this time, you were begging for love silently, thinking they couldn’t hear you, but they smelt it on you, you must have known that they could taste the desperate on your skin?

Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all. Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last but feelings come and go.

And remember. Just how precious and amazing your existence in this world is.

We are lovers who do not know how to be friends. We are friends who do not know how to be platonic. We are the piles of unmailed letters that linger in your desk drawers, addressed with my name, dated two years ago. We are postcards with Wish you were here! written in bad cursive large enough to excuse the lack of a real sentiment. We are bouquets of fresh cut flowers already wilting, because we don’t know each other well enough to buy something that will last. We are the feeling before a kiss, anticipation of creation, of sparks or fireworks or gunshots aimed straight for the heart. We are the unopened text messages, the unread Facebook notifications, the unanswered voicemails, the ever-present What if?s that keep the world up at night. We are the magicians that have forgotten the code of never telling the audience that we are mortal just like them. We are priests who have learned to pray to the wrong god asking for the wrong thing. We are lovers who do not know how to love. We are friends who do not know how not to love.

Feelings come and feelings go. There is no need to fear them and no need to crave them. Let them come, and then let them go. No feeling is your permanent reality, no matter how intense it is.