Pale Winter Mornings

Loving someone is easier in theory. She has known this a long time but still comes upon it occasionally as if unaware. She hadn’t thought, when she saved the eggshells from their first night together, that what came after would be what it was. She hadn’t pictured so much tiredness, so much bickering and scrapping, or the many little nicks and insincerities that amount to a normal sort of life. Even so, the truth of what she hoped for remains, safe in the sink of Jude’s shoulders, in the way they kiss her, the easy manner in which they carry her to bed. It is, after all, enough to have this and be happy, if only in the fleeting moments that all other thought recede. It is, after all, enough to be thrown down and forgiven, enough to pull Jude down on top of her and kiss their neck and tell them she loves them, that she’d hate it if they ever were to leave. It’s hard enough to live, she sometimes feels, without also having to think about it. Hard enough, amidst panic and boredom and drastically shortened horizons, to simply treat a person nicely, put your hands into their hair until they shiver, until they push their face into your chest. She had wondered, before now, whether thinking about God is part of this. Wondered whether endlessly circling the same topics, harping hopelessly and uncertain on God and on silence and deep, drowning lack have simply functioned as ways to keep her unhappy, keep her tight in the grip of an answer she can’t help but seek. Perhaps, after all, God is simply a poached egg and a yolk cooked just as it should be. Perhaps God is being fisted by the person you love most in the world, being taken apart one finger at a time until the whole of you is fucked out and pulled like a cord strung tight, white-eyed and waiting for crescendo. Perhaps God is all of that and kissing afterwards, kissing most of all, sore-mouthed and messy, half asleep and trying to remember if you locked the door and if you need to set your phone alarm for seven. Perhaps God is all of that and an apology.

executive dysfunction is so fucking weird i need to like persuade myself into doing things

“The wise person esteems everyone, for he recognizes the good in each, and he realizes how hard it is to do things well.”