hi i think your writing is beautiful

It is in small, fleeting flashes where I fall in love with life: how my dog leaves his toys by my side when I sleep so that I’m ready to play when I wake, how there is no better weekend recipe than warm coffee and singing in the shower, how some songs are exactly what you needed to hear, or when there’s no better feeling than the Sun simply kissing your skin.   I apologize to my body for ever wanting to leave this. It took a long time to learn I deserve every moment.

Inktober 11 - Run

i think this year only taught me to love the smallest things. okay. okay. so the world is trying to kill us. so the world has succeeded in a few cases.

But here’s a little secret for you: no one is ever the same thing again after anything. You are never the same twice, and much of your unhappiness comes from trying to pretend that you are. Accept that you are different each day, and do so joyfully, recognizing it for the gift it is. Work within the desires and goals of the person you are currently, until you aren’t that person anymore, and everything changes once again.

run your fingers over the cracks of my skin, fill the emptiness with your sweetness. let your hands linger a little longer in between each secret page. kiss me until our tongues speak a language only the two of us know. hold me tighter, i’ll let you come a little closer, let our bodies remember every curve, every ache in our bones, every majestic imperfection, every crevice that holds beauty, every twist and turn of fate. love me, love me until it hurts. love me, love me until you start seeing me in every person you meet. love me, love me until the night ends.

Sadness found me again, like I was neck deep in water, like I was sending smoke signals. Depression tracked me down, but if I’m being honest I was leaving a bread crumb trail after every step. Heartache wrapped me in his arms, & whispered sweet words and lullabies & I finally slept soundly. Sadness is an old friend, & even though I stopped writing & answering his calls, he welcomed me back with open arms & I’ve never felt more at home.

I wonder if god grieves me too, wonder if he feels that same heaving aching space in his chest and if like me he looks at his hands and says oh god this was all supposed to turn out differently, if he like me remembers those hot silver days before our house burned down and he burned down with it, those hot silver days when our land was flowing with milk and hymns and street preaching tactics and all the other believers the other brothers and sisters lived in that great holy chamber together with me and god was the echo but it was ours and he was my everything, if he remembers the day I exiled myself the day I found myself outside the gates and no brother or sister noticed and I didn’t either, for a while, if he even saw me leave, clutching my own hand like it was the passport and a small suitcase my therapist calls baggage, just trying to act natural in this new land of sex and drugs and Harry Potter where people listen to more than one radio station and don’t compare sexual purity to water balloons and needles, trying not to let my accent show through, to learn the new dialect the new diet and customs like Beyoncé and sleeping late on a Sunday, trying not to let my grief show through or the bruises and scars, if he knows I’m never coming back and the borders closed, knows I’m a refugee with my arms full of shame and the sound of his name, that people look at me and say wow you used to live there?, that I call it immigration but you could call it trauma, that I am still waiting for him to apologize.

You’ve ruined peaches for me. I can’t eat one without thinking of your hands dipping into my soft flesh, mouth dripping, teeth skimming across skin, tongue lapping at the excess: greedy, greedy, greedy. I am all rush and blush at a summer picnic lunch, hands shaking at the farmers’ market.

the greatest irony was that it took me being myself before people loved me. i know that’s all they shoved down my throat for years: that if i was just me, just all of myself, unapologetically - somehow, people would feel that. but the thing was: i didn’t want to be myself. i hated every inch of who i knew i was, the person that itched under the surface of a veneer i’d carefully crafted. the real me was meaner, more sarcastic, less tolerant, less patient, was selfish and ugly and emotional. i knew that it meant no one could love me for being me. 

you blazed beside me, a million bad choices that i couldn’t stop making. you laughed and called yourself satan. you said “stick with me, kid.”

pain comes in sneezes. my advice? try to lie still. live in the sweetness of unfeeling. it coats you like the perfect cream, like mid-summer dock-water, like perpetual floating. massage chair mind, the world rolling. there is pain, but not now. let the pain comes in sneezes. we get so hurt, but there is hope. eventually we won’t feel it. my secret? I stole an egg from the sun (because it was warm and perfect). Inside there was a fortune, reading: “some things are clean. some things are still in their original packaging.” can you imagine? 

One thing I always struggle with in my writing is when it comes to describing something that happens unexpectedly. For example, when a character shows up without warning, or if it suddenly starts raining. I always want those instances to stand out, but I always seem to revert to old, worn out cliches ("When finally, it happened", "An unexpected voice interrupted", "Before he could take a step,..") Any tips on how to write unexpected events like those so that they sound more natural?