There and Back Again

and we flipped our life on its head to bring you home, so you'd come up with your cousin. You'd know your people and the land they love. We woke up from that weekend-long dream, but the stain of it still marks this place. Now we're headed back, and it isn't you I'll carry home with me -- just a box in the closet I'm afraid to open. It says "papa bear" and houses pajamas no child will ever wear.

I haven't. Should I have? I feel like it's hard to capture the sick-sweet nostalgia that pulls people back into their sicknesses over and over again without romanticizing it. I'd be interested to see something that gives a sober, earnest picture of self-harm.

So, I'm getting married!

The barstool troubadour in the straw man's hat sings minnesang as he strums the blues Borrowed truths, we like to think, from the one-can boys whose hanging eyes film over the back of the room Left hand depressed, right stroking through, he beams at the hips of his tambourine Which, undulating with perforated half-moon whips, give a rhythm in their shivering din Tapping in past gaps in the whiskey-wash grin of the gathered few as they begrudge the space between Beating no membrane in sight, it yet drives tune through the night, till it soon shakes the groom to the bone And as a final quivering note abandons singing lips for air, stopping, if only for a moment, to linger above the amateur's jar, He ascends from his chair and, introspecting there, coos out a verse of his own: The things I have loved were never so loved as they were when loved from afar.

Hang in there. Life does not end here. We will press on through the things we must. And now is the time to come together to support each other and fix our minds on things above. You are loved. Be kind to yourself and to others and be safe. God bless you all.