change is the only constant

Finding myself, by letting you go.

You are the alchemist of your loneliness. You can create anything in its place.

You have to learn to get up from the table when love is no longer being served.

Change is the healthiest way to survive.

All you have to do is pay attention, lessons always arrive when you are ready, and if you can read the signs, you will learn everything you need to know in order to take the next step.

This year I should have burnt that house down with you in it. This year I forgot my mouth wasn’t an apology and was,  in fact, just a mouth. This year I spent too much time shoveling dead things into my stomach. This year I refused to become a ghost  and look what’s become of me. This year I did not know how to be loved as I deserved, good and properly. Nothing like shaking hands and trembling lips, how you hated looking me in the eyes, how I kept looking everywhere for sharp things. This year I tried to write love poems into my thighs but you never kissed me there.  This year they all turned into eulogies. This year I felt so lost because I learned how to hide so well in a man’s shadow. This year I knew nothing but the rain, and  how it feels beating down my face. This year I forgot my body wasn’t an apology and was, in fact, just a body  or a playground or a crime scene or a graveyard. This year I looked in the mirror and saw nothing but scars and your hands.

Things can’t go on for ever, she thought. Things pass, things change, she thought, looking up at the ceiling. And where are we going? Where? Where?

I’m not sure which is worse: intense feeling, or the absence of it.

There are two ways to reach me: by way of kisses or by way of the imagination. But there is a hierarchy: the kisses alone don’t work.