WHERe.

In the middle of the night, I am alone with the sounds of ryan adams and cat rape. I am alone without you but I have these noises to comfort me, to remind me that if I do not want to become a Jahovah's witness, that's my choice---- that if there were a better way, I would take it, obviously. The sounds of my screen ripping from some feral creature trying to gain the juice of my kitten (no, like really, my kitten) just reminds me that sometimes we can have exactly what we want as long as we are willing to rip through window screens and conquer the kitten owners and know that you may die for what you want. the steve jobs Movie was just like that too. He ripped on so many kittens.

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 There's nothing secondary to being other than being in love or being caught up in somebody else's creation of a Big Fish. No-- growing up is something like the way your aunt always told you how much she liked your nose most of all and realizing that it wasn't just that you had a cute nose, but that you had a nose at all, that your nose was that of existence, that your very nose represented how glad she was to see you, just to know you, and just to know your nose was the nose of somebody she could love and be in the life of, etc, etc. Life is like that sometimes, but growing up is exactly that way, if you teach yourself to smile or laugh, or pray. Life, inherently, is more like when your best male friends are doing acid as teenagers and talking into the fuzzy tv station, understanding with one brain that the tv itself does not exist and that it is exclusively speaking to said best male friends, at the same exact time.

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If i die before they release the soundtrack to my life, make Sure you remember what song I have been dying to. Remind me in my casket. Make sure it is a song I like. It doesn't have to be a good one, but God, if you find out I am dying, put on a song I like, make the radio play. If it's just the How I met yOur Mother theme song, that will suffice. I will let these songs sing me to sleep for the moment between life and my death, the dying, the part I am looking forward to (but not in a negative way). I hope with all my heart that somebody else is there when I am dying, so that if they don't know how to stop it, they will at least know I liked a certain song and it will play, and it's okay if it's Justin Bieber's Die in your Arms because wouldn't that be appropriate and I could sing myself to sleep and I wouldn't mind if that's just how it is. It's not a problem to love or be loved. It's a problem not to know what to do when you feel unloved. It's a problem when you are scared or uncertain in love, a problem that can be fixed with hearing the right song, accepting you are one who accepts music instead of plays it. Do you know what I mean? It's not a problem. It's just a small girl, humming and wondering how long you can do this, wondering if your college professor who gave you a B in poetry is doing what he is doing because he, like you, didn't know what else to do, or if because he feels it is his right, his mastery, the thing he is, the thing he wants you to become. I'm not sure if I care, but it helps me to think about things, to think about the way it goes, to watch the words pop up along the fake pages without fake lines or real ones and at the same time to see my fingers getting bony as they reach to mark letters that will eventually pop up along the pages. This is the ultimate form of magic. Isn't this a gift?


I'm not talking about writing. I am talking about fingers. I am talking about bones. I am talking about the way it all sounds and how it all goes and how we sleep at night and how snoring is like death but also like falling in love and how when I turned on the news today, I could not find news but I realized I had seen this anchorwoman somewhere before, maybe in a dream, maybe somewhere else, maybe deep within myself I saw her reflecting in the pool that leans against the inside rims of my eyeballs, maybe she was throwing coins into the well. Maybe in that place we were both beautiful.

I'm going to Hobby Lobby now, even if it takes me 45 minutes!

too truthy

Bringing it back to the way I like it, windows wide open and a kitten running around, making a mess of all material things because this is my room and this is the way I like it, Joni Mitchell calling me home and telling me none of it matters anyway, or maybe that's God filtering down because that's how He's wanting me to hear it, but that's the way I like it. I like it when I am alone. I like it when I am alone. I like it when I am alone. Something like a mantra or maybe it's me trying to convince myself that that's actually how I feel. Something like that is more about right.

I like it warmer with the roses in my way, I like crawling through the darkness to laugh with you in the mornings and I like the way it is when there is a quiet after it all and you are telling me I am pretty even when we both know there is a long way to go before that's true. I like it when I can feel you wanting me forever even though I'm not sure how either of us feel about that on a practical way. I don't want you to feel differently even if I talk that way to myself sometimes because I can't imagine long-term pain and even with all of you surrounding me and all the voices inside of me from love songs I use to navigate the way I feel, I could never know how to hurt you that way and the only thing about you that could make me cry maybe is that--- is fear, is us, is our fear, is our lack of being able to imagine something possible. I'm not asking you for a way in, all I am asking for is a way to settle my stomach when I am in the middle of thinking things big girls might think about (not that I would know even what that resembles). I am not sorry. It's just weird to be honest with yourself. I'm not sure how I feel about honesty because the only policy I have found that ever works is listening and then keeping everything to myself. It's not a good policy but it seems to be working better for me than saying what I mean.

//

Laying naked under a willow tree, I am crying.
Sad things make me cry. Sad people make me
feel at home. Something like forgetting is the way
I feel best. I am glad to be under that tree in 40
years with bare feet, whether I bring someone
along is not up to me--- up to up alone and alone.