#dear you
Dear you,
You don’t have to be okay.
I know you think you should be, in order to help those around you.
You think you should be able to make the most rational, logical decisions that leave you with the best value.
You think that everybody wins by you sticking it out just a bit longer and being a bit stronger, a bit braver.
You know you can do this if you try hard enough.
But its killing you.
It’s painting your outter shell in steel so you don’t break everytime you get dropped.
But you can’t breathe through steel and eventually you are going to suffocate from being that strong.
And that is a stupid and unnecessary reason to die.
You should never have to be that strong.
Sometimes the “weak” thing will actually keep you alive better than the strong or brave or responsible one.
Sometimes the “weak” thing is the right one.
And I want you to breathe, to live.
But you know yourself best.
If you have to decide, please choose to save YOU.
Whatever the other costs, YOU will always be worth it.
I promise.
Love, Me
Dear you,
I know it might be tempting to listen to the sounds in your head.
I know the sounds often sound like voices.
I know they can be very persistent and convincing.
But I also know the vast majority of what they say to be untrue.
A fire won’t keep you warm if you are drowning.
You need to reach the shore first, then we can dry you off.
Please don’t stop fighting the current.
You really will be okay.
I promise.
Love, Me
Dear you,
Just because you are going to survive this doesn’t mean it isn’t hard.
It doesn’t mean it isn’t terrifying.
It doesn’t mean it won’t hurt or that your pain isn’t real.
What doesn’t kill you might not make you stronger.
It might not be progress towards a goal.
It might not teach you anything but that you can survive it.
But surviving your life, your pain, yourself still means something.
It means you are alive.
Sometimes that is enough.
Love, Me
Dear you,
It’s not your job to make sense to other people all the time.
Sometimes the bits of you that mean the most won’t make any sense to other people
Even people you want to be able to make sense to.
Arguing with them in order to validate your differences might make you feel hollow and broken but you are not broken.
You are not broken.
You are just surviving and doing your best how you know how.
That’s much more important than making sense anyways.
I love you.
Me
Dear you,
You have really made some amazing progress.
I know you are tired and somedays you can’t see it but it’s there.
You are there and you are shining so bright.
Other people notice it too.
Trust me.
Love, me
Dear you,
The world isn’t always warm.
People are frosty, even without meaning to.
They will give you a cold shoulder when they are tied up in them things,
Days it pours down on them and they are drowning in it.
It’s not really your fault that you didn’t bring a spare lifevest.
Its not really your fault if they don’t want your help.
The world isn’t always warm but you still are.
There’s nothing wrong with that.
Love, Me
Dear you,
You are not always going to like yourself.
You are not always going to like your work or where you are in life.
But life is a journey.
You are a mostly unwritten book.
Just because you don’t feel like writing today doesn’t mean your story isn’t worth reading.
Someone will appreciate your complexity.
Someone will appreciate your perseverance and grace.
Someone will appreciate you.
You’re not always going to like yourself but you can learn to love yourself.
Just give it time.
Love, Me
Dear you,
It takes a lot of time to get comfortable with the reality that you can’t be good at many things.
It takes time to accept that many things will be harder for you.
To accept that you will fail often.
It feels like a cycle that hurts us more and more as we continue to fall.
As we continue to be beaten down and crushed.
As we look up and out of the pit we are in.
Sometimes we find a ladder or rope to pull ourselves out with.
Sometimes we still have the shovel to dig ourselves some stairs.
But sometimes you won’t be able fix it, just live with it.
Your worth is found in being a survivor.
Your worth is found in continuing to breathe even when its all you can do.
You are enough just by existing.
You are enough, flaws and triumphs and all.
You are my hero.
Love,
Me
I’m not sure if this will come out right but:
Being loved is NOT a reward for being beneficial or useful in any way. You don’t become less deserving of being loved if you aren’t productive for a day or if you have a bad day and can’t get out of bed.
I promise. Being loved has nothing to do with how you “help” the world or those around you.
Dear You,
There’s no point staying where your hungry heart has nothing to eat.
Love, Me
Mae, just go
fromReckless Chants #25, August 2019
dear xxxxxxx—
I miss you, you bastard. no. that’s not true. I haven’t seen or spoken to you in five years now, so I don’t miss YOU. I miss the you I knew back in the fucking day. I miss the me I was when I knew you. sometimes. (other times I could not give a damn. you knew I was gonna say that, didn’t you?)
most times I’m just tired of writing into & around this loss. I keep writing about what went wrong, trying to gain some closure, some new insight, but I still can’t figure it out. maybe because there was no ending, there was just a long, slow dissolution. there was no big fight, you just decided you hated me.
why? I know I said & did some shitty things. I regret hurting you, I regret hurting everyone I’ve ever hurt. I’d apologize & try to make right whatever it was I did that hurt or upset you enough to drop me for good, but you never told me, never gave me a chance to atone. for years, I racked my brain for what it could be. was it that time I fucked xxxx in your bed? but then, I said you had your blessing. you offered me the use of your bed, & we made jokes about it the next day. was it the time I sent you that drunken, freaked out text message accusing you of stealing my identity cuz you’d bought an accordion & started dating a guy I’d had a crush on? but I apologized the next day, you said you understood, & we made jokes about that for years afterward. was it that time I cried because I wanted you to come back to Chicago instead of staying in Texas, did you feel like I coerced you into moving back? I’m sorry about that, but then again it’s not like I forced you to do anything. you were an adult, you made your own choice, & I know there were other reasons for you to return to the great lakes. maybe, maybe you were hurt by that time I vagueposted on my blog about how I hated to see my friends getting grown-up jobs, how I wished we could stay weirdo artists & punx forever. I’m sorry about that. it was never meant as an attack on you, it was just me expressing my sadness over the way all of us (myself included) were changing.
I’ve rehashed all these moments & a hundred others, but I still don’t fucking get it. yeah, I made mistakes. regrets, I’ve had a few. but then again… it’s not like you never said anything that hurt my feelings, not like you never abandoned me, not like I never saw you through drunken nervous breakdowns & questionable hookups. we were both young, dumb, & full of cum, back then. both addicted to bad ideas.
maybe the reason you ghosted me is that you are truly ashamed of who you were back then, & I’m not. yeah, I’m sorry about any hurt I caused, but overall—I feel nothing but affection for my old selves, & I don’t regret the foolish things I did. maybe the main difference between you & me is you’ve always wanted to rid yourself of anything & anyone who might remind you of who you used to be, & I’m always talking about “back in the day.” okay, maybe I do cling too tight to the past, but is that a friendship-ending crime? I’ve always been this way & you know it.
& I know you’ve long had a habit of dropping friends. it was something I couldn’t see until you did it to me. (thinking now of that Tom-Waits-by-way-of-Hank-Rollins quote we oft repeated: “she’s a bitch. she did the same thing to me. she’ll do it every time.”) you’d be best good friends with someone for months or years & then one day you’d say “I can’t hang out with xxx anymore, they’re a bad person.” & you’d name something they did or some quality they possessed that made them a bad person. often, it was something you did, too, or a personality trait you’d liked when you first met them. like I said, I didn’t see it that way when we were still friends. I always took your side, never thought to question it, & I dropped them all, too. after all, if my best friend said they were bad people, they must’ve been bad people. & then you did the same thing to me. dropped me with no word, found the most passive aggressive way to let me know I’m a bad person in your eyes, & convinced a number of mutual friends (who were my friends first! who I introduced you to!) to cut me outta their lives. I never saw it coming, but—nobody ever sees it coming. I never dreamt things’d go bad between you & I.
for a while, I wanted to repair our friendship. I wanted you to realize you missed me. I wanted you to reach out, tell me what I did wrong so I could apologize for real, & have us pick up where we left off. if you’d done that in the first year or so after we last spoke, it probably would’ve worked. but now, it’s been too long & I’ve gone through too much hell because of it (it’s really hard for me to make friends these days—since you & xxx & xxxx & xxxxx dropped me I don’t trust anyone to stick around for the long haul) & even if you came crawling back to me, saying YOU were sorry, saying YOU were the one who’d fucked up, I wouldn’t be able to trust you enough to be your friend again. I’d like to say I’d at least be able to forgive you, but…I wouldn’t want to live in a world without grudges.
for a while, I wanted revenge. nothing big, just some kind of “how d’ya like them apples?” moment. like I wanted to tell you that I’m publishing the books of one current member of the World/Inferno Friendship Society, & might possibly be publishing an Inferno-related book by another current member. remember when we used to dream that one day we’d be on World/Inferno’s permanent guest list? well, now I AM, motherfucker. remember when xxxxx said you were riding my coattails, & we laughed, because what kind of raggedy-ass fucking coattails did I even have? I think of that & I think: if you were still riding my coattails, if you hadn’t dropped me, you could be my +1 to every Inferno show from now until the end of time. but thinking about rubbing your face in it doesn’t bring me any joy. it just makes me fucking sad.
I don’t know what I want. even if I could erase you from my memory, I wouldn’t want to, because you were there for so many of the defining events of my life. if I forgot you, I’d lose pieces of myself, too. I guess I want not to forget, but to let go. move on. I want to go certain places without worrying that I’ll run into you & have a public panic attack. start making new friends without fearing they’ll one day decide I’m shitty & abandon me. write about some different heartbreaks, for once. I suppose I’ll have to forgive you, someday, just for my own peace of mind. but I still don’t fucking know how. so until then—
we’ll make a toast to absent friends & better days.
to remembering, & being remembered, as brave (& not as a bunch of whining jerks).
to the quitters & complainers—
if we never meet again, remember this.
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…I know that everything that makes me a good little cocksucker, I mean poet, is also what makes me a bad (girl) friend.
I use lovers as cures for boredom & everyone I’ve ever slept with has been my muse, like I’m some Edna, some St. Vincent Millay with flame-red hair & combat boots & a ripped thrift-store prom dress.
My reputation precedes me.
A different dude I once fucked put a character in his novel, she shared my name & was described as the kind of girl who sleeps with other people’s boyfriends, & I’m sorry that I hurt you but I don’t regret the boys I’ve done, only those I did not do.
I ain’t got a regret, & I can’t forget—
—Jessie Lynn McMains, from “Lines from Apology Cards Hallmark Will Never Make (Pt. 1)”
Postcards from the Circus, 5: Dear One (The Art of Burning Bridges and Grinning Broadly) // Jessie Lynn McMains, June 2021
Dear one—
I knew a man who was his own ten-in-one. A trickster with a three-ring brain, the magician from his own tarot deck. He breathed fire in every town from Bridgewater to Birmingham, got kicked out of punk clubs and burned city halls to ash. He was a legend, the kind that comes in the night in a black coat & boots, that tempts you to follow your circus heart’s most overwhelming desires, makes you wonder if you’re dreaming. And in my dreams, I burnt every bridge and followed him from Chicago to Chattanooga. But one day I woke to find him gone & there were no more circuses for me to join. I’d spent so much time running away. I never would have left, had he stayed.
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Postcards from the Circus, 4: Dearest (Closest Thing to Heaven) // Jessie Lynn McMains, June 2021
Dearest—
In a garden of stained glass & vines, I confessed my circus sins to a clown priest. My penance was to recite the Hail Emmett & the Our Lou while I stuck eight pearl-headed hat pins through my painted cheeks. And then I danced on a blanket of glass while I played a sad-clown valse on my accordion. By the time I’d finished I was wild-eyed, wet with sweat & blood, grease-paint running in rivulets down my cheeks. A Russian girl read the cards for me and I set my accordion on fire, said: “Welcome to Hell, here’s your squeezebox!” And I saw that place & that night were the closest thing to heaven I’d ever find.
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Postcards from the Circus, 3: Dearest, Most Beautiful Baby (The Spells He Cast) // Jessie Lynn McMains, May 2021
Dearest, most beautiful (baby)—
I remember the circus motel and a door numbered 30, and how the trains came thundering by with their cargo of corn syrup and drywall, and I could have had the circus bear but I chose the thaumaturge and his ruddy mouth. O the spells he cast: spell of bend-me-in-half, spell of me dying to cry out, spell of bone-bruise, spell of baby in my belly. Real magic. The only illusion was thinking that he really loved me.
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Postcards from the Circus, 2: Dear Dear Wonderful You (Every Rose Has Its Thorn) // Jessie Lynn McMains, May 2021
Dear dear wonderful you—
I came here with nothing but my ghost-heart & my rose tattoos. Once I was Rose Red, but my sister—O my sister—Snow White drifted off with a dancing bear. Now, a ghost girl by any other name, I am. And here I stand on this stage, with the spotlight blooming red, and stick myself pin-full. Every rose has its thorn.
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Postcards from the Circus, 1: Dear One (A Prayer for the Roustabouts) // Jessie Lynn McMains, May 2021
Dear One—
A prayer for the roustabouts & rabbit wranglers. For the funnel cake-makers & flea trainers. For the face painters and fire-breathers. Pray for the bearded lady, the snake charmer, the magician & the huckster & me. There is no carnival season, this year.
Last year, I briefly did a thing where, if people ordered a copy of The Lonelist Show On Earth directly from me, or if they ordered it from Bottlecap Press (before they took it out of print) and sent me proof of purchase, I’d write them a brand-new postcard poem inspired by the epistolary sections of TLSOE. This was the first one.
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fromReckless Chants #25, August 2019
dear xxx—
today I drove & wandered, my head filled with personal anniversaries. remembering the first time I hopped a train, from the twin cities to some one-horse Wisconsin town & back. crows in the dumpsters, abandoned factories, a bar with beer spilled sticky on the floor & dim red light spilling soft across the weathered faces of old men. remembering the first time xxxxxxx visited me, before we lived together. how I took him wandering my favorite train yard, how we kissed in the candlelight of my favorite bars. those are moments I keep in my pockets like hard candies, little drops of salt & rust to suck on, to savor when life is bland.
today I drove & found a park I’d never seen before. I walked the muddy, needled path into the woods, into the sunlight flickering dimly between the branches of the dark dark pines. I sat on a bench, poked the faded iridescence of a dead dragonfly with the toe of my boot, drank my iced coffee. I found a remnant of yellow chalk left by a child & drew my old hobo tag, the one I scribbled on boxcar walls back in my ramblin’ days—the saxophone with a dandelion sprouting from it, & the initials JJ. Jackie Jazz, the Dandelion Queen—that was one of my names.
some traveler kids came by, sat down near me. I gave them a couple cigarettes & they told me they were on a summertime hitchhike around the midwest. we talked trains & tattoos & I thought how glad it makes me to know there are still kids like we were, hitching & hopping across this country. then the boy pulled out his beautiful red guitar & played a Townes Van Zandt tune, one of those songs as wild & lonesome as the land. the red-winged blackbirds sang backup, swooping & squawking in the marsh grass. it was a moment I’ll carry with me, in my pocket next to that last letter from you.
that is my name.
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There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep and still be counted as warriors.
Adrienne Rich
