Too early for intrusive sirens, I'm buying poptarts at walgreens and saying a prayer in your direction. It's not the same anymore and I'm so desperate to make something tough into something better but joy is a hard quality to navigate under rough circumstances- even when you've got it, it's hard to give out when the whole world is crying but won't just hold hands. There's something beautiful in all of this, I know. But I don't know how to help you get that, how to help hold your judgments back or how to dry tears you're not even sure you're crying. People never know if I mean it or not, but I do. It's about the translation. You know? I stare at the marble and try to find the faces in the twists, try to see if I can find a lion in the white walls.

I want you to know I wouldn't choose any other way of living because I love it just like this.

In other news, I like the sound of Obama's voice.

Scripture says He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes...

Walking and talking and learning how to forgive just by engaging in a matching feeling, twins sharing nostrils and breakfast. It's not that you needed this from me, but just something I needed, to remember the closeness just because - not for having things in common or things to talk about but just the good feeling of another person existing. I don't know how to explain what I've been going through but I worry it's something like regression. I just hope something in God is willing to work with me on this lack of green fields and moments of silence. I'm working on it. 

But in the mean time, I'm grateful for living this big life, in case it ends up being a short one.

Patience.

There is something about the panic and the body, the way the two merge and blend and how the panic swells the body, becomes a body, makes itself something grander than that which contains it. I want to explain how much it scared me, after years of the war against me and the me finally winning... I want to explain how this felt like the biggest failure of all, how I'm still not sure what it was or how I let it happen, how it came out of nothing, how it came and went and hurt so much even once it was over. I see now why people need someone else to talk to... I'm just not sure if it would help. The truth is, I don't know how to carry all of this weight on my own, and the truth is, my arms are getting so tired. I think I just was happy for so long that I forgot what it would be like when it began to creep on back in. I know there's a darkness within me I cannot and don't want to fight ... meditate with the darkness, let me radiate my light. Things aren't easy for me right now. I want you to know that when I say panic, I only mean it a little. I know it could have been worse. Just don't tell me you know how I feel, or that people understand, or that I'll be okay. Nobody knows how I'll be. I just need the silence, I just need a song, I just need the air. You know what I mean?

BART musings...

This song, and this computer, and the way you smelled when you picked me up last night from the BART station, remind me of the summer I stayed in California and all the time I spent alone, and all the writing I did avoiding all the writing I should have been doing. You weren't with me yet, but you are with me now in those memories, seeing as how you are here now, pouring out of each line I'm afraid of writing, seeping from the inches of fear and magic and anxiety. I remember that summer being full of so much I wanted to forget, which is funny because now all I can really remember are solitary moments and the song I played over and over again curled up on my what some people might call a bed in Germany, windows wide open but hiding under sheets that weren't mine. Nobody told me it would be cold. That's what I remember most of all... how cold it was and how nobody warned me. That's the funniest part about the San Francisco bay area... nobody tells you how cold it can get here... especially in the summertime. Just like Germany, there was so much alone time here in the beginning, and especially that summer... so much time being worried about being too much and so spending all my days alonely. Somewhere between then and now, I've only changed a little, added some lines to my face and toughness to the heels of my feet. There are new Yous now... but less music. There's a dog and probably more happiness. My dream told me last night that there were things I was forgetting I could feel, and when I woke up, I was scared. But the truth is, I'm better off without it and I know that we'll have our time to set sail and go somewhere new. For now, this is still new for you. That's okay.

Anyway, this is what I wrote on BART yesterday in the back pages of my copy of Infinite Jest...

We left one another in deep silence often. I'm learning to forgive boredom, forgive everyone around me for letting me believe I were what they call somethin' else. It's her in the quiet noise next to you, but I don't mind, making jokes about girls I don't actually care one way or the other about. I make comments but I know how I feel is mostly apathetic, mostly concerned with my lack of presence, mostly unconcerned in general about anything. Who am I kidding? You don't read this anyway. Before I had my heart broken, my favorite color was blue, but I never told anyone. But it was blue, like joni mitchell, like how I was often, like how it feels when someone kisses you when you know they have a secret, like how you know they haven't deleted their memory yet. Blue like broken bones and like they say about blood before it meets air, like eyes tired from crying and apologies and solitude and how blue is the word "sorry." Blue like salt, like worry, like music you play on repeat, like the places you'll never go. Like when noone asks you what's wrong even though you don't want to talk about it anyway. Like the missing button, like what Robert Frost really meant, like poetry nobody wants to talk about, like pouring out, like melting. Blue like a bad joke when it's on you, like water tastes, like sadness (of course). Like you when you were honest, like real heat, like how it's hard to wake up some mornings, like sleeping alone, like psychological tragedies, like Alice, like you after me, peaceful and ready for better things. Like how change can be blue. Like how water isn't really, like how we feel better thinking it is, like the last time you talked to God without a meal first. Like anything else, quiet and tired and ready to find land.

Sunny days, chasing the clouds away...

It doesn't get easier and that alone gets so much harder to understand. I'm not sure where I went wrong, or where we went right, or when I decided to grow up. Or why I won't ever know how to grow up. All I know is that the more I miss you, the harder it gets when you go away. And all I know is that the longer I love you, the more confused I am when I'm sad with you. I just want to fall asleep on my parents' couch and apologize myself to sleep. I think that's the only truth. Right now, I don't know how to explain myself. I just feel a little bit less than I know I am.

Okay, starting over.

I just want to fall asleep on my parents' brown couch and apologize myself to sleep, forget everything I know and just start humming the words to all the songs I remember, only 90s hits and songs about self harm and sadness, songs about the way I never know how to be, songs about doing the right thing the wrong way, like all things, like all humans, like bad times, and making your middle children write right-handed. There's nothing wrong with prayer except when nobody's listening, and when Nobody is listening, and when nobody listens, I stutter, forget how to say the alphabet backwards, and talk in nonsense. Honestly, this is the only honest moment: I was driving through the roses on a two way street, but only going that way, and I felt the skin on my body. I felt the skin on my body. I feel nothing but that when the air gets weird, trees are too much tree, sky too blue to comprehend, all of it too much like something people don't think about God creating (even though aliens like us, we know better). Somehow, I feel like talking like this says more about how I feel than things that make sense, than words you know, than alphabets in order of appearance. My dearest, let me be the tears on your lips )though we've never seen our actor cry( because I like the way salt tastes, I like the way it feels when I can't escape confusion, when I know nobody reads anything I have to say, when I know I'm the only person who ever played that one game where you see how much you can do it without crying enough for somebody to hear it --- again, remember how you never asked? All I remember is how I'm done talking. The only thing that ever worked for me was silence. And I'm sorry.

Only important things get written twice.

My days off are generally the same... drive somewhere... find wilderness. Sit in said wilderness. Write forever. Ignore everyone. Think about crying. Don't cry. Feel overwhelmed with good feelings. Consider writing poetry. Drink chai tea latte. Continue ignoring people. Love the earth. Wonder if I'm still much. Write on postcards. Wish I were better. Give thanks. Breathe deeply. Stretch. Pet a cat, somehow. Spend money. Drive home. Smile a lot. Go to sleep.


Something wild about how simple my life has become... something wild about how it's never the same day twice, even when I do the exact same things, talk to the same people, sleep in the same bed. You know why? The difference is a miracle, and a secret.

Christmas.

Truth be told, I don't remember what it was like loving you. Be that a blessing or a tragedy, I'm still uncertain. But what I do know is that sometimes, all we want is a specific "I'm sorry," one that can simply explain the pain, even if there's nothing we can do to take it away, erase me. Between us, it was the first after the end, the one that said in plain verse, directly and earnestly, "I'm sorry I couldn't appreciate you." A broken heart waited two years for words so clean. It made everything okay. And I'm sorry for bad words and madness, post-split poison and missing pieces, for not knowing how to forgive myself for you. We all hurt a little sometimes, and you were right, and I was always asking for it. There will always be a softness in my heart for you when I say your name, and for that I'm sorry I never knew quite how to love you. I miss your dad's laugh and your taste in music, the little sounds of unconditional patience and underrated experience. But in all of these shifting days, I don't know what else to do but raise up my hands to the sky and thank God we made it here.

I like the songs written in broken chords better, the ones with the choruses that just repeat a single name, that just cry out into the universe a chance for forgiveness.

I named this post Christmas because that is when I originally wrote this, and it's funny how much longer after the feelings actually caught up with the words, really. There is a season, turn, turn, turn. <3

And I think of Love, as something new...

My love and I

There is only stale jealousy between my lover and I, never quite active, at least not that I'm aware of. I'm only ever worried about my lovers big loves from before I even knew how to reach them, loves I have no way of touching or taking away, loves I know you could have loved forever if only she'd been just a little more patient and you just a little more aware that you could break a heart like Cinderella broke curfew, and your relationship just turned into smashed pumpkins after the crack of the bell. I'm thankful for this, in some way, in my way, in the way that the voice inside my head is more of an Alice than a Kate, the way that the words come so easily sometimes, and so painfully so much more often. There is something I'm thankful for in the way I wake up with my sister beside me and how it is a different kind of thankful when it is you. I know you might even have more to be jealous of, but where I hear the words and the same kind of love, just with a different one, I worry that this is not something I can live up to. I'm always worried I'm not enough woman to break a heart, not enough princess to sweep you off your feet, just a little too much youth to be taken seriously. The truth is, I've done my best and I love you as much as I never knew I would be capable of, in the big way that makes little girls dream about wedding dresses they may never wear but they're so sure of holding onto, the way that makes big girls sad when they can't make babies, the way you look at me when I know you mean it when you're not thinking about anything - just looking at me because you can and because you love me.

The truth is, I've done my best and that's my worry. There's this thing about humans, about how they don't know what they've got 'til it's gone, but maybe because humans don't understand disappearance, can't comprehend ends and stops and just over its. But I think about the way these things end and how hard it is and how much I never actually want to hold onto anything but that light in your eyes, keep it in jars on wooden bookshelves, like firefly collections. I think about how you loved her, and I know I don't have to  be that. But it would be nice for once in my life to realize I am loved and to just appreciate that being enough. You will always have another hole, another bruise, scars and stars and wasted pieces of paper and songs about girls I hope I never meet--- but I want you to know that in this moment I hope you understand that I hope I have you always, that I get to keep you, that you want to be that person in my poems, in my songs, in my prayers, praying with me, laughing with me, crying on beaches against big waves and knowing that the bugs in my eyelashes only like you.

Sometimes, it is all a little bit too much noise. My average work-day consists of so much noise and so many people and so many interactions, all of which I am grateful for. I just need, at the end of the day, that loving silence and to feel the pressure dissipate. Here we are.

I haven't been writing much because I can't handle my own noise. I can't deal with knowing there is this much going on in my head and that I haven't acknowledged a large portion of it. But in general, I'm feeling good. I just need a break.

Do you ever just miss dictionaries?