Little snail, out after a hard rain, hiding in her shell— trying to make it to the wishing well, but being told that she's too small to lift the pennies in... because she did not make them on her own.
This bitterly cold weather is a shift from an even colder half of year. It's as if we're back to some sort of embryonic development that brought us to where we started: an inertia of life— changing positions like atoms within a molecule— the cruel, cruel curse of the winter sunset... a reminder that natural light comes and goes as it damn well pleases.
So many things in this life that you would consider trash are my personal diplomas, my favored scars, my most priceless junkyard. So many things that meant nothing to you are the encyclopedias to my whole, are the ticket fares to my soul, are the things that you repoed when I caught you dressed in black... wearing the things you've stolen, filling pockets of me, swollen.
I can hear the moths crackling and burning on the bulb, I see myself as one of them, flitting around this porch light. I can imagine me bewitched by the wink and sparkle, but I couldn't imagine myself taking up camp here, forever. I am suddenly abundantly aware that this is not even summer yet. This is just a porch with a jerrybuilt swing and creaky planked floors, a frayed recliner, and splays of gray hairs just (now) taking root. I remember that first summer when we strung sprinklers like toy lanterns...
You can keep moving your blowup mattress around in the night where the shadows keep you pretty, and cover your face, so that no one can see that you have a home in me that you won't admit you'll never and always be: the beach bum of my heart.
He helped me clean out my head in time for floweret sunshine, while I raked dead leaves from underneath the bed of my nails that were waiting to be organized in diaries. As the 'Forbidding Numb' piled up, he laundered my abandoned hope clean. All that I could smell on my hands were the roots of the root words I had diluted with extra letters and slushiness. There isn't a corner that we missed; and, in no time at all, I will forget the wretchedness of this winter. Soon, I will only smell peonies and calla lilies, fresh cotton sheets, and maybe—just maybe— the paperless books that I have written being pressed like petals; yet, no longer incinerators burning perished wood that already pushed up daisies right when autumn left its leaves behind me.
He taught me what true love is: helping each other breathe a little easier— smooth and steady— instead of dying a little every day, choking on being loved as someone's vice.
The current's run is too wild, and we created it. A mermaid and mariner have so much romanticism, but too different of backgrounds. One breathes on grounded land, and one breathes above and below—fluidly. This is how she always gets stuck in their nets. They both try for the sake of fascination, but unlike the mermaid's lungs, fascination runs dry. So, they wave at the shoreline and go back to being whoever they were: half humans without each other.
Little girls start changing their life as they get older. Their rhythm changes... Their stories, joys, tickles, and merriment do not change; they do. Their laughter becomes about chagrin, apology, and cordiality. It becomes a nervous laughter. It stops coming from a place of pure abandonment anymore; it comes from a place of abandoning their pure abandonment. They forget how to laugh from the bellies of their being.
It's all a conundrum, isn't it— forgetting the mixed tape in the car... feeling forgotten when... so many people are thinking of us? Drinking when we should be eating... sleeping when we should be making love... thanking God above when we don't have enough? Each day is a mad rush to something irrelevant. We measure our pricelessness by our successes, which... still equals money. Life goes by so quick when each day is a mad rush to slow motion. We eat fast food so that we can go to bed on time, but, trust me, everyone wakes up too late.