superlunary

- mom i’m tired

- mom i’m tired

this is not a burden. i think maybe "burden" and "love" might be oppositional, the way sometimes "love" and "hate" are not opposites. a burden is a dragging. i love you because you brought me to the water, and it is the horizon of your heart. i love you because of your nervous pacing around the edges of the rabbit hole.

often you are right. some songs on that album remind me of the spark in your eyes. the book was really thought-provoking.

more i just want to understand enough that you can talk to me. that you can explain, in depth, why it matters that wheat has shallow roots. i love you, even platonically - your love of this thing leaks into me. i watch you, cautious and dancing, the shy desire for you to smear the colors of this thing into my life, too.

they are your colors, though. of course i want them here, in the marginalia of my life. you matter to me. i want them to crowd the little moments of my day. i want your fingerprints scattered throughout the rooms of my heart.

one time i spent about six months reading and researching a particular author, just so i could talk to one of my friends about him. i never got the chance. she betrayed me, broke my trust, and sided with her abusive ex-boyfriend. standing in the sodden floodplain of what she left over, some bitter part of me asked - isn't that tragic? you have all this knowledge and nothing to do with it.

to be honest for a while now the world has passed over me in static. i feel it rumble overhead, unruly and unhappy, tire tracks over skin. when i close my eyes i see only refracted light and rain. no matter how much i sleep, i am exhausted over and over again. i have tried everything. girls and pills and makeup and prayer and chastity and sobriety and violence and tearing off a fancy dress and putting it on again. i might just be permanently shaped like this.

something about you, though. you cut into the soft bits. everything turns color-swift and loud. like you can push your hands through the fabric. like you can find me and pin me down. like all the running and fighting and biting down was pointless; i'd been home for longer than i'd counted. the first time you looked at me - really looked, caught my anxious eyes like a bird - i felt some little rabbit kick her legs, bound up somewhere in the razorwire radio silence dominating my heart.

i can't be known like that. i can't be touched like that. you can't love me like that.

i don't want to celebrate, this was a terrible year and i accomplished nothing.

i put coffee on the stove though. i made my bed. i handmade all my christmas presents this year, and it made my mom happy. i don't cry every day anymore, just some of them, and it's not as violent. i finally made something recognizable as bread.

we are supposed to celebrate sometimes, because it is important for the animal body to feel joy, even for manufactured reasons. i hold garlands and feel raw and sullen. i want to spend the party with my eyes closed, just breathing. this was a terrible year, and took too much. in the span of twelve months - my life, slashed in pieces. from half-full to bottom-of-the-cup.

i am going to bake a lot of cookies. i am going to make champagne punch. i am going to show the cow of my body to an empty field and tell her - it's not much, but. this is how i will love her today, when i do not want to. i will put a bell on her and hold her. we are celebrating that i finally learned how to knit, and am very bad at it. that i walked my dog in dark woods and watched the seasons pass. that i made myself a good meal once in a while. we are celebrating nothing but the sun, the grass. the ever-lovely wide night sky.

i had a nightmare of a future where at red lights and stop signs, an ad would play across the stoplight. advertisers had sold it as "encouraging drivers to pay more attention." i woke up covered in thin sweat, grateful i don't live there yet.

i am playing video games with my girlfriend, make a twitch stream. i am good at makeup, make a youtube. i am good at crafts and mildly funny. tiktok and instagram and brand deal paid partnership.

commodity! make yourself a commodity! in this economy if you land the dehumanization of advertisement that's a godsend. get that bag! chase that coin! good luck paying off your student loans! make yourself a billboard. karl marx crawling in his grave, paint yourself as capitalist hellscape. show your followers. be terribly alone. build an empire of bone.