t h i n k i n g

I am forever grateful for you.

Because of you I never seem to go looking for love in places that will hurt me.

i am not something to be soft or held in warm lighting and golden memory

i am someone who is fought for, hands dirty, heart open, mind wild.

you won’t love me until after you’ve hated what loving me cost you. and then it will not be love for me.

it will be the adoration of something you’ve won.

i mean to be the searing light that pulls you from your bed each morning as something to win back every day.

you’ll be exhausted of the hunting but you’ll never wish to lose.

i mean to be the race, the joust, the battle, and the crown.

i intend to be more than just costly to lose. i am meant to be costly to earn.

but i promise it’ll be worth it

and they’re having ugly little babies

that they’ll teach to be beautiful

and weddings they can’t afford;

shoving everything they are into tiny little houses they’ll never pay off

just to be together

and to say forever like it means more now than it did before

and me

no not me

i’m just here in my apartment alone

wondering if the $300 in my account can make it two full weeks,

and thinking about the beach;

i’m going to church on sundays

and starving myself so gently i don’t even realize

until i’m pitching up bile in the olive garden bathroom an hour into my shift.

but God’s still around here somewhere

ollie’s wrapped in grief and another 8 battles she didn’t ask for.

she might go off the grid and

i’d like to go with her but she won’t let me

so i’ll pack her suitcase for her out of love

not me.

no i’m halfway home by now.

i left while you were reading.

there’s some juice in the fridge and maybe chicken nuggets in the freezer?

i can’t offer much.

but you see i also cannot stay.

i need to be asleep or i need to be dead

and if i cannot have one

i will force the other.

she’ll never forget this about me.

this will haunt us for the rest of our lives together.

short hours later i’ll still be sucking on my breath right before i have to present data in a meeting of people who i could not care less to see ever again.

life is moving in waves of dirty water and the only salt is coming from me.

nothing will ever be clean again.

i want to go home.

late into a night (or early in a morning) like any other but much more plagued by things i haven’t identified,

i wrote a poem about my grandmother who is dead

and then i thought about you until i came.

then i slept.

i am not a good person

i barely cut a good woman

but god when im dead, no one will ever be able to say that i was without passion.

every moment

every pen i picked up

every movie i saw

every person i wanted

every boy i loved

every thing i ever baked

every laugh i breathed

every argument i made

every concession i caved

every friend i made

everything i touched i touched passionately and with intent.

and couldn’t that be enough?

there used to be words and stories falling from my fingertips so fast and so full of life and potential you might have guessed it was my only passion.

for a long time it was.

now it’s slower. the words leak from me like my parents basement faucet; slow, out of order, unclean, and too lazy to be worth saving.

i wonder, lately, if it’s a sign of something. if i’m healing or if i’m on the edge of something far worse.

i wonder how to tell the difference before it happens to me.

i live alone now and my house creaks and clicks and has cracks in the walls but it’s all mine and i love her for it.

i could be happy i think. i wonder also if i’m allowed to be.

my mother sent me valentines chocolates from 1000 miles away, and her sweater that i love like a hug from across the world.

i wonder what happens next.

sometimes i want to love you so badly i can’t find my footing. like something heavy has replaced my bones and i have to hold my chest up with my hands to make sure my blood still pumps properly. but there are all these uncanny tuesdays and things that i can’t go back on. things i said id never do again because where would we be then but treading water in separate oceans. the point is i miss you more often lately and it’s not the distance. you love me in your friendship and i crave even that like i crave every sweet thing i’ve ever tasted. like the first time my mother made pana cotta, or the first time i successfully made lemon poppy seed muffins. i’ll never tell you this of course. and like the other tuesdays, this will fade to a low hum beneath our laughter and our long talks of music and books and life and love and hopes and dreams. and for a long time (maybe) i’ll be as content in your friendship as i ever was before. but let’s be honest, since we’re here… we both know i’ve never been as content as i seem.