scatterbrain.

I have never been able to understand people with consistent lives – people who, for example, grow up in a liberal Catholic household and stay that way; or who in junior high school are already laying down a record on which to run for president one day. Imagine having no discarded personalities, no vestigial selves, no visible ruptures with yourself, no gulf of self-forgetfulness, nothing that requires explanation, no alien version of yourself that requires humor and accommodation. What kind of life is that?

I’m sorry about the years spent in the wrong state. And I’m sorry about the highway and the day you realized the moon wasn’t following you back home. And I’m sorry about the dark, how it happened so fast. The silence found us eventually. By the time our dreams came true, they weren’t our dreams anymore. We each had our own, bigger ones that kept you us up at night. It broke the world’s heart, all our wandering. All the days we spent separately, in love. Plane crash poem. Bird-on-doorstep poem. An ending like this goes on forever. I’m sorry for being a part of your lonely. I just wanted somewhere I could stay.

One of the best guides to how to be self-loving is to give ourselves the love we are often dreaming about receiving from others.

Oh, body, be held now by whom you love. Whole years will be spent, underneath these impossible stars, when dirt’s the only animal who will sleep with you & touch you with its mouth.