Claudine

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.

“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.”

“1.I am as fragile as a poached egg. 2.I know how to break. I do not know how to stop. 3.My vagina is a glass jar. If I let you smash, all the lightening bugs would escape. 4.I am the rainbow bright dragon sleeping in the lions den. 5.I do not hoard gold. I do not eat men. I have met Daniel. My dreams are not my own. 6.I am vain. My actions are not. 7.I am horrible at remembering names. It’s my worst quality. Makes me feel like a bitch. 8.I hope these cracked lips is not herpes but just the heat of our exchange. 9.He and I broke up because we saw God differently. We ended because he did not see me for who I really am. 10.I’ll text you. 11.The sun and me, we are tight. 12.I can’t drive but I know the loyalty of a backseat and I would follow you anywhere 13.I learned how to smell like sex. 14.I guard my hands not my heart. 15. But this pen makes me a slut. 16.I did not skip 15 but that year was a mess. 17.I forgive like two front teeth biting into an apple 18.I think I was most beautiful when I was at his mercy 19.I am uglier now. 20.Despite its predictability, I am infatuated with the epic. 21.I cry when I kill spiders… I am still learning to love.”

“Dear Ex Lover I promise I’ll stop chasing your memory in my dreams. I’ll stop bringing your name up over cups of coffee, muffins, and loneliness. I will marry a man and I will lay my heart on his chest like red roses on Mahogany caskets and I’ll have his daughter and she’ll have eyes reminding me that God still believes in second chances. and if she ever decided to love a woman, I will love bravery down her spine. I will be reminded of all the times that we loved, like there were expiration dates tattooed on our inner thighs. If she ever comes home with eyelids like cracking Levis and bruised kneecaps and a heart filled with question marks I will hold her like my mother never held me. I will clasp her face in my palms like the new testament on judgement day. I’ll tell her that love is the passion that allows you to do the right thing, and that no woman can play coaster to a half empty heart. And if she ever feels as if she is alone, as if she is a hand-me-down pulled out of the depths of mummy’s closet I’ll remember your name and I’ll mumble it under my breath. and if she asks me what I said; I’ll tell her I know what it’s like to drag a woman out of a cold war and then being too worn to clean up the battlefield that it has made of you. I’ll tell her that your heartbeat sounded like gun shells tripping over battered cement. I’ll tell her that i know what it’s like just to want someone to remember you and that some women are as foul as expired men in produce isles and that apologies are like oxygen masks on a hijacked plane. Forgive yourself before you EVER forgive the person sitting next to you. I’ll tell her to never regret loving in permanent ink, and that scars only give you stretch marks, something to gossip about and that hearts and stop signs are fraternal twins, lost in open roads and hollow chests. And if my daughter’s mirror ever looks unfamiliar and she’s too embarrassed and proud to run into mummy’s arms I’ll pray, that she has friends with hearts filled with thousands of fireflies who are not too cold to pray with her, who will tell her to stop looking for the light at the end of the tunnel and find God in the darkness. If my daughter ever walks in my house like shattering glass, I’ll tell her about you. I’ll tell her that we hurt like c-sections birthing dead babies, and that we cried together, and we prayed together, and we smiled together like our smiles were the only ones that mattered in this world. And that we hurt like women who loved women, who loved people that did not love us. Dear Ex Lover, I hope my daughter never knows what a goodbye kiss feels like.. I hope she never knows what “I’ll see you later.” really means. I hope she never memories the dial-tone of a last conversation, because a broken heart feels like poisoned butterflies taking their last flutters in the pit of your stomach Dear Ex Lover, I hope my daughter never bears her soul at a poetry showcase with her first love sitting in the audience. Knowing that the hands he’ll use to applaud her with, will be the same hands that will never hold her again.”