And I’m just so tired of wasting good love songs on all the wrong people.

b.m.

3,568 miles-

That is the distance between you and I.

Every mile,

Every inch,

Every little space between us

Hurts my fucking heart.

I would do anything just to see you again.

-b.m.

I miss you more than I’ve ever missed you before.

-b.m.

I keep thinking, fantasizing

About you-

Being back beside you,

Sitting in the passenger seat

Admiring the view of snow capped mountains,

But overall enjoying the view of you.

-b.m.

“I seek love, yet I hide from it when it reaches out.

I seek the warmth of a lover but cower when it surrounds me.

I seek the words laced with honey but accept those filled with poison.

I seek eyes filled with adoration but find an empty space in front of me.

I seek someone in my sheets, my hands roaming to find someone, but only stumble upon blankets and cold sheets.

I seek a smile but find myself drowning in tears.

I seek a life filled with love but find myself running away when it finds me.

I wish upon the stars to find what I am seeking to find me before I yield and cower again.

I pray there comes a day where I’ll stumble upon all the things I yearn for and that the warmth, the smile will grab me with so much strength that I will have no choice but to accept it with everything in me.

Because for once, I’ll allow the love I run away from to fill me up with everything I wished upon the stars, and for once, I’ll smile without any fear.

It’ll look me in the eyes and tell me that what I had been seeking was just waiting for me to accept myself and be free of the chains.

The smile and the crinkle beside their eyes will tell me that I was everything they too were seeking for, and they were glad we found each other in a place that had no place of running away.

I seek for you, and I pray you also seek for me.

I wish upon the stars that when we find each other, it will all be enough.

Because baby, you’re all my wishes upon the stars.”

- g.d. (the stars)

“You’re always allowed to heal, always.”

- g.d.

“And she looked at the moon and asked if this was how life was supposed to be. If it was supposed to be hard and tiring. The moon smiled at the young girl wistfully and sighed. She knew that everything was wrong and she couldn’t fix it except listen to her woes and show up for her almost everyday. She was let down by everyone and would be let down by her as well. But at least she’d see the little stars she’d leave behind to be there for her constantly. It wasn’t enough but she hoped she’d realize that those who cared would always stay or leave things about themselves behind to be remembered by. And that they were never truly gone. And for that moment she shone a little brighter and stayed a little longer to listen to her woes before she disappeared for another day.”

-g.d. (moon and stars)

the world has new birdcall. something outside my window is dying. the little feathers of the robin flatten against the tarmac.

they are so happy to tell you just go outside. 

in this, the world you made for us? i am wondering if the plastic of these rosary beads will spend years in a landfill, if the ants that come over it will learn how to pray for us. i am sitting with my legs crossed on the front stoop of a 7/11, which is the only place left for someone to just-sit-for-a-second. somebody bought the last place we used to go talking; it’s been paved over only halfway and then sat abandoned. all the little rust rings of the fence up around it; each one saying no trespassing. no one ever bothers.

just go outside! the yellow crane neck of construction; the orange beak of chain restaurants. someone told me once that nothing else can live inside the shell of a walmart, it just sinks to the bottom of the world and all that steel chitin refuses to rot. there was something living there before, sure. but what would we even do with all that space? and with the things kids get up to these days…

nothing pretty about having feelings about infrastructure. it’s a long drive but if i wanted to i can go to the clear raucous forest, no others in sight. feel the big swell of nature and the great silence. pretend in this place there’s no such thing as money. no more roads and no more lighting. picture a world like this; of waking up to this every day. 

but when i go home again: i’ll have to take the highway.

you could never stomach gore, though, could you? so what exactly is this, that you’re doing to yourself? what would you call that? you flinch at the sight of spilled red wine - but here, in this place, you call a sharpness the divine.

will you curl your hair for this and leave the sink so full of little bits of you; toothpaste and lingering strands and the full shake of your fingertips. the little wet linage of your shaking saturday night: this is the time you’re supposed to be young and stupid, right. these are the best years. this is the way the birds in the morning are all asking you: why did you fall asleep? you are awake, and everyone expects you to begin and beget your life, full and vibrant and shining.

don’t cry. the price is right. you can apply the eyeliner with a smooth stroke. you can whiten your teeth. you can commit insanity quietly, privately, like pressing prayer out through your teeth.

are you alone? in this world of so many people, are you alone again?

i. august the earth. let the blue chemical of the morning shush the way the too-sweet waking burns in your stomach.

ii. i forgot to go to therapy yesterday, because the reason i go to therapy is also the same reason i forget things.

iii. they won’t let you talk about it, but the truth is that the illness wants to outlive you. and there is something beautiful about anxiety; about the press of my tongue to the roof of my mouth. that immediate, single-toned insanity. where would i be without panic? she is protecting me, goddamn it.

iv. i’m going to die alone. i’m going to die with my hand over my eyes.

v. they made this world for lovers, didn’t they. the exit has a single red eye over it. they won’t let you talk about it, but being sick is addictive. it needs to be, or none of us would be sick, would we? it makes the effort of surviving horrifying. why would i do that? why would i get better and force myself through the endless hurt and rehurting - when i could just waste? when i could turn rotten? it’s easier, this way. succumb to the hike of her skirt, trembling up a pale leg. the soft, mesh sack over an open mouth.

vi. lay down, lay down. let the train pass over you, so close your skull shakes.

the thing about watching someone fall out of love with you is how slow it is. how hard you try to get it back. the careful, horrible twisting of yourself into an unfamiliar shape - just in case this new form might finally be enough. just in case this next beautiful moment will call them back. each little slip is just giving them more reason to leave, so you try to never slip. in the end, you become accustomed to a strange and groveling perfection - and for what? they don’t love you, neither who-you-are or who-you-became-for-them. you wake up and they are okay and moving on - and you have no idea who you are or how to get back home again.

i went out to eat just the once last week. i caught covid. it’s funny; except for the parts that aren’t. my fever is keeping a patient 1.9 degree change - up and down between 99 and 100.9. i like that it only whispers against that 101; i keep telling my mom i’m just glad for the vaccines. the irony is: i have already spent this month healing. i like the little pretty circle - one exact month ago (to the day! i laugh to her, holding up the test, to the exact day!), i got my heart broken by you. you stood there with your hands in fists and set your jaw in that way so-full-of-resentment. and then i was just… out of your life. so neatly demolished.

we met at the start of the pandemic. it’s funny, except, bitterly, for the ways that it is not, and the hours i have spent on my floor, dominated by loss, sobbing into her collarbone. there are so many worse things happening at the moment; i feel petty and stupid to be laid out in bed. my therapist says my pious desire for quiet suffering is in the opposite direction of acceptance - but what else am i going to do? complain about it? post my paypal, so other people who are scraping-by can send me the money they need to feed themselves? and what will i do with that grief, knowing i shouldn’t have taken what they cannot lose?

i can’t quite outrun my catholic upbringing, i guess. i know i should be suffering in a witty, gentle way. i have this strange desire to forgive you, as if it would justify the violence. i keep picturing the unsaids between us; knowing the fictional conversations are spirals. i switch between the always-angry you made a choice about my needs and my future without talking to me first and the bitterly still-in-love sonnet of i would have changed for you.

this is the nature of healing. i drink my water. i write more than i used to, since you asked me to never write about you. i get up and i do gentle yoga. i get up and i take a little time to feel my body in the sunlight, and then i sleep for hours.

but it hurts the whole time, is the thing. over and over.

i. how big is your grief today? how soft do her little grey fingers push against your spine? can you breathe past it, or is she deep in your mouth now; crushing the bird in your windpipe.

ii. how funny - emily dickinson writes hope is a thing with feathers. on a tuesday, i turn to you and say - this makes sense. grief has always felt feathered, too. gentle cat paws on an august afternoon.

iii. where is your grief today? does she nap in the tender of your breast, or is she plunging through the floor of your hips? is she holding your hand through the shower. is she dragging you in a perfect tango - down, down through the floor.

iv. someone asks me how i’m doing in that way. like grief is holding her hands over my eyes. i tell my therapist i feel lost. it is another way of saying - the grief is leading, and i must follow.

v. when will you be able to let go? and, my love, what would you even hold on to instead?

writing-prompt-s:

You thought your superpower, always hitting your intended target while throwing something, was lame at first. Then, you began to realize your power was not bound by the limitations of space and time, nor was it a superpower to always be taken literally.

think about it. how many phrases we have for things like that. we say i’m just throwing things at the wall to see what will stick. we say stone’s throw from here. we say throw the whole man out. we say throw caution to the wind, wethrow a monkey wrench into things, we even throw someone for a loop.

you’re currently throwing a party. half drunk, one eye open, you’re googling how to make spaghetti bolognese with only two cans of tomatoes and leftover meat. when you type into the chrome bar how do i, the google search how do i get over a - comes up, and you have to put the phone down.

“i’m out of like, meat,” you say. “or like, anything.” (where did it go? did you throw it out? things happen like this, slippery).

tyler is slowdancing with himself, one hand on his face. “this is the best fucking party i’ve ever been to.”

it’s usually the best party anyone has ever been to. your mom thinks you could start a club, because she believes in you too much. “i want spaghetti bolognese.” you have to yell-talk; it’s too loud here. someone is chanting in another room. god, they better behave in there. someone else’s perfect night made your floor reek for like a week last time.

you pause and pull your stupid moleskine you spent too much money on (threw the money away on, ha!) out of your back pocket where you pretentiously keep it with its little bic pen. you write: data point request… can you throw a demon out of a body?

demons would have to be real first. so that’s stupid.

“i love your shirt,” tyler says.

don’t say it you stupid fuck. “thanks,” you smile with that same practiced grin. don’t say it don’t say it don’t - “i just threw it on.”

you have told exactly 1 person about this thing, and she’s… well, whatever. you’re throwing a party. that’s what this is, right? this is you throwing a good time. you’re having a good time. everyone keeps saying what a good time this is.

data point request: throw the thought away.

not helpful. last week’s datapoint (throwaway joke?) has been a success, though, so you can put a sticker next to that one when you remember. and yes, it only works in english. which is maybe a blessing, because you have a C- in spanish and you’re barely holding it together as it is. (top of page three, datapoint request: why the fuck only english? hello?)

you walk through the apartment, hold your hands up when they invite you to beer pong haha, no thanks, but it’s genuinely not fun when you can-only-win. people stop being cool about it during the third round - you just start looking like an asshole.

not that she ever saw you that way. fuck. for real, throw the whole thought out.

you go to throw your coat on. as-per-usual, people around you stop moving while you do this easy thing. you haven’t recorded a video of yourself doing this particular one, but like-everything-else, it always leaves people a little dazzled. just watching like they know they shouldn’t be tooimpressed with it, it’s just a coat.

you type into your phone again: how to mak-

the history from google: how to make her love you again.

fuck this. you close the page, and then your hands are too tight, and without meaning to, for the seventeenth time today, you throw it in a perfect arc directly into the nearest trashcan; so you have to hike your stupid body over there and fish it back out. you don’t open it again but instead take out the moleskin. datapoint: i’ll just throw something together?

the store is only a block away and it’s cold but that’s good. when you look back up at your apartment, you make another note: how long can i be gone before i’m no longer throwing the party?

she’d been so peaceful, is the thing. you’d been busy throwing your life away; the one thing you seem to be particularly good at. and she’d been something like the quiet rest of morning. and she’d been different, the way that some people can be, the absolute harness of …. whatever. you tried to write her a poem once and it threw her off. you stuck with sharing your spotify after that. little playlists titled things like after i kiss you i am dizzy. you would wrinkle your nose whenever you told your therapist about her, feeling woozy about it. she makes me better. your therapist, kind but maybe jaded, would say - “youmake you better, but i see why you feel that way.”

it hadn’t started, like, for real until the second year of dating her. (you should count your life differently. you’re an adult). you’d always had good aim, loved archery and sports. loved the shrugging - haha yes, it’s a stereotype but i play softball andi’m the pitcher jokes. didn’t love school. didn’t love work. went to both and did, like, fine. but was the absolute-honor of knife-throwing and skeeball and tennis courts. you were d-1. you were gonna actually make it. you were even about to sign a bunch-of-contracts, once things calmed down.

and then you threw, with pinpoint accuracy, your knee out.

the store is cold. it’s one of those that are alwayscold. your coat is perfectly warm, because of course it is, you threw it on. you nuzzle into it and traipse yourself over to milkandmeat, staring at labels that buzz in and out of your head.

that feeling again. missing her so big and terrible and laughable. it had taken you six months to start actually-believing this thing about you; it had taken you three months to convince her. it had been her idea to start researching it. to actually-figure-it-out.

her laughter, delighted, over her present of a throw blanket, perfectly hand-knit. her mouth, swooping over your collarbone or laying a kiss inside of your wrist or gently teasing you while you pay for dinner - throwing your money around.

and it had taken datapoint: let me throw this out there.

manipu-fucking-lation. easy-peasy. a gentle idea, so good and so perfect, and you just had to! ta-dah! throw it out there! an easy suggestion! a beautiful, perfect loop! it always made sense. it was always the right answer. it was always a perfect hit.

i’m just throwing this out there, but babe, could we -

to be fair, you’d just-said-it-by-accident, because that’s something-people-say. but once it had worn off, how the fuck could she evertrust you again? now that she knows you can just even suggest something to her, and she’d want to do it? how would she know you were ever honest? who cares if it was a mistake! there could be a time it wasn’t.

and fuck! you ruined her and you ruined it and you -

you drop the bag of onions. it’s dramatic. you sigh, pick ‘em up, throw them casually in a cart that happens to be exactly where you need it, even though you didn’t bring it here. throw in oreos too, because fuck it, might as well throw the diet out the window. throw something together. you don’t even look at what you’re purchasing. keep your brain focused on that blank space. tell yourself you did not throw away a relationship, even though you absolutely did.

you almost don’t see the man, until you absolutely know you do. it’s somewhere between the third and sixth aisles that you get the mealy, slippery feeling of being followed. you don’t have that kind of power, but you do live in the city in a femme-enough body. you know without being told what is happening.

“fuck, dude.” you feel yourself whisper in the slippery panic. you could defend yourself if you had to, obviously, you have a knife, but you don’t want to, like, kill a guy. you just want to make yourself some goddamn spaghetti bolognese and maybe end the party early (throw them out). don’t killers, like, appreciate that you’re going through a breakup right now? can he wait to do this, like, after the drama is over? here’s a familiar one now: the anxiety makes you want to throw up.

you feel yourself shaking while you try to look chill and unbreakable at the counter. the squirrelly teen is not someone you can enlist to help shake this dude - you are the adult in the situation.

you shere-khan your keys into your fist, nimbly poking out their blunt edges into claws. they look pathetic and short. you feel pathetic and short. probably he’s just, like, some guy who happened to be in the same store as you, maybe possibly also on a god-quest for spag bol.

but when you subtly use the windows on a closed starbucks to check - fuck, he’s still there. you do what your mom told you not to do, and then you look over your shoulder.

his eyes are wrong.

you want to throw up.

fuck. get yourself together. now he knows you know! you can’t run with a carton of heavy cream. fuck. there’s, like, a global shortage, you’re not gonna just drop the stuff and run, right? you gotta go, though. you like obviously have got-to-go.

you try to pick up the pace, gritting your teeth through the old knee injury. (the doctors told you with gleeful candor: you did this in the most perfect way we’ve ever seen). you should have gone to more of your p.t lessons like she told you to, fuck fuck fuck.

what the fuck are those eyes?

you hobble with your bulky bags towards your home, only to have a moment of panic - you shouldn’t be showing him where you live. where the hell are you gonna go with, like, a bag of groceries in your hand? when you were younger, you and your sister had to pop into a barbershop to stop a guy who was whistling at your skirts. but it’s almost midnight. nothing is open right now. you should have stayed at the store. you limp past closed doors and closed doors and closed doors and the city is suddenly very empty like this, and very alone.

fuck. you don’t have the hands free to dial anyone. what the fuck is wrong with his eyes fuck you should call someone you shouldn’t be alone who would you even call, she left you, you son of a bitch. why did you even fucking-

he is in front of you, and the air makes a strange, echoing crack. you don’t scream, but you do almost drop the bags. you tighten your grip on the keys and try to step backward, feeling the lick of panic in your throat. fuck, his eyes.you look anywhere-else, panicking, trying to figure out how to backtrack without getting trapped.

“fuck. dude. leave me alone.” you stumble, and his hand swoops out to catch your elbow.

“i ah, got you,” he says. “no, i’m sorry. i didn’t mean to scare you, i’m just looking -”

“dude, for real, like. leave me alone.” you yank your elbow out from his hands. you could drop the bag with the pasta, that one doesn’t have perishables in it. you could -

“i’m sorry. genuinely, i didn’t - mine is whip.”

god, what the fuck is wrong with people? can’t they see you’re, like, heartbroken and in the fucking city?if he’s gonna kill you, he’s gonna have a fucking hard time doing it because -

“no, please, i -”

you find your footing, turn to sprint, feeling the way your stupid fucking knee shrieks the high familiar pain up at you; fuck, she was so right about everything, she was -

“yours is throw,right?”

you’ve only taken a few steps, but the world feels like it is rushing up in a wall around you. you turn, the heartbeat in your ears like a howl.

he stands there, hands out, smaller than you thought he was. “i know, i’m - whiplash, whipcrack, whip around.”

throw up. throw up. throw up. you have to swallow hard. “stop it,” you say, for no reason you can think of. fuck. your mom told you never to fucking talk to these kinds of people. he’s gonna skin you and like, eat you for dinner. “for real dude, leave me alone.” you don’t leave though. you can’t look at him, you don’t like whatever is so wrong in his eyes, those horrible fucking -

he stays where he is, and holds out a single velvety green card under the streetlight. “there’s others. not many. but others.” he looks up at the sky, which is a relief, to not-be-looked-at-by-him. “it might take you some time to come around, but i hope you do. it’s… lonely otherwise.”

and then he whips the card at you. you flinch, but it does a perfect, impossible series of loops, and nestles itself squarely in between your clenched fingers, even though it shouldn’t have been able to fit. it feels almost-warm.

“see ya, i hope,” he says, and then he just leaves, so casually, and you want to chuck the whole meal at his head.

but you don’t. you’re throwing a party.

fuck.

you go back to your house and you throw on different clothes everyone loves and you throw on some music everyone loves and you throw together a meal that doesn’t end up being spaghetti bolognese that everyone-but-you loves and then you throw people out in the most gracious way so they are still very-loving of you and then you sit down on your couch and you hold the card until the letters swim and then you pick up your phone and you type into google for the third time this week what to do to get over a breakup and then you type into google i’m heartbroken and then you type into google how do i know if i’m manipulative and then you put the phone down and look at the ceiling.

oh, you know what the problem is: his eyes were yours.

“you seem nervous,” he said.

“i’m pretty worried.” and then i laughed, high and weird and strained.

he nodded at me and i nodded at him and i pressed my hands very hard together, which is what i do when i want to be politely still but i’m nervous and want to move.

“so there’s a lot of ways to think about this test,” he said, “but for what i’m about to show you - well. let’s picture the test is out of 100.”

“okay,” i said. i had begged him to give me a “half test”; one i could afford out-of-pocket. i had good insurance; behavioral health wasn’t offered for me. i’d been paying for a therapist by working 3 jobs; a situation that stressed me out enough i joked she earned her keep. if i took the whole test, the pricetag began at nine hundred and thirty.

robert the learning specialist is nice. robert was referred to me by a friend. i like all his books and his nice chairs and the warm browns he decorates with.

this is a funny story. i think this story is very fucking funny.

he places his hand on the side of the monitor and looks up over it at me. “so, there are diagnostic requirements for each condition to be considered medically significant. nobody really scores lower than, in this example, 30.”

okay. i was 25 and ready for this - that all the self-care, self-treatment… it was pointless. it had always been possible: i don’t have adhd, im just fucking stupid. im lazy. im the worst student and a terrible friend. everyone was right about me. this was a personality kind of a thing. i was pretending. i was jumping on an internet trend.

“at 60,” robert continues, “and - again, these aren’t the real numbers - but at 60, we would consider that to be significant enough for diagnosis. after that, we tend to think of it as increasing in severity.”

his brows are knit. he looks strained. so i probably got a 14. i probably didn’t take it right. im probably the first person on earth to waste three hundred dollars just to be told i broke the test. fuck. they’re going to cancel my meds.

robert turns the screen around. there’s a graph on it, a bunch of lines and numbers too small for me to read. “here’s the diagnostic line, this 60 i talked about”. he points to a yellow band, a little bouncy wave close to the middle. “here’s the average citizen, at a 37”. this is a red one, closer to the bottom. then he points to a blue. “at a 75 to 78, we would consider the situation to be severe. it’s not marked, but 90 would be extreme.does this make sense?”

“yes. definitely.” more nodding, more hand pressing. i skitter my eyes around the grey shape, trying to find where my results are. maybe along one of the control lines?

“out of a possible score of 100,” he says, “you scored ninety-eight.”

he points up at the top, a sparkling lime green wiggle. i hadn’t seen it; it was too close to the border of the graph. he gently points back-and-forth from yellow to green, like he is breaking bad news to me.

“well,” i say. “so i won the test? or is that a bad thing.”

“i’ve been doing this work for over forty years,” he tells me, “and never in my whole career have i seen someone score so highly.”

“i have adhd,” i say.

“well, these are preliminary tests, and it would be unprofessional for me to confirm until we continue to -”

“isuper have adhd,” i repeat.

he turns the screen back around. “i think it’s - i would be remiss not to say that i find it extremely impressive you’ve been able to structure your life around this in such a way that you have remained undiagnosed until now.”

“well,” i say. “i did have a feeling.” let out a little laugh again. sharp like a bark. “sorry. oh my god. sorry, i don’t mean to laugh. it’s just. i have,” i repeat, “like super severeadhd.”

robert rests his hands on his desk and looks at me. he looks sad, even though this whole thing is hysterically funny. “yes. i think that i can confirm that, but, like i said, i have to encourage you to take the whole test and to -”

“i thought,” i say, and for some reason i think it’s funnier than anything i ever said - “i literally thought i was faking.”

“well.” he moves the monitor so it isn’t between us. “if i might say something? if you’re experiencing these symptoms so frequently that your entire life has been structured around preparing for their inevitability - my question is always; why would you be faking? when you are alone, when you are struggling, what is the point of faking? wouldn’t you be able to turn it off? once you received the attention or the accolades, wouldn’t you stop? you’ve talked to me about how much you feel this - and i’m quoting you here” he looks at his notes. “… ruins your life. why would you submit to that, without any actual payout?”

“oh my god.” i have to text everyone i know about this immediately. “i have adhd. like big. like the biggest. severely.”

“well,” robert’s brows are creasing.

“sorry,” i can’t stop laughing, “you just - i mean. i just had the stray thought - what if i’ve faked this so well that the test can’t tell that i’m lying?”

the instagram post begins with all-caps - LADIES!

i’m a lady, and it’s 2 AM. i can’t sleep. it’s been a while since i felt rested. i am in and out of a springtime mania; all summer energy with six more weeks of winter to go.

the rest of the post says if your man kisses your forehead, you better appreciate it. he’s not getting anything out of that kiss; it’s just to comfort you.

at least the comments are ripe with derision; wow we’re really romanticizing the bare minimum here huh. i stare at it for a long time; thinking about how often these types of posts wound up on my facebook wall. i’ve since stopped checking facebook.

and there’s someone out there who wrote that. there’s someone out there who will just-read-that and accept it as true. there is someone out there who is reading it, right now, and letting herself say - see! he loves me!

i want to tell you a better story; but my co-star’s don’t list had editorializing on it today. i am 28 and safe now. you know what i’m going to say, but i still feel awkward admitting it: for five years of my life, i would have loved that kind of sentiment. i would have saved it for later, watched-out-for-it. noticed his small effort just a little bit harder. sure, it’s weirdly worded (…“get” anything out of it??), but it’s true, isn’t it. he loves me. this proves it. if you go far enough back in my writing (please don’t) you can watch me repeat it. how he loves me so much; demonstrated in these small interactions.

i was never the type to post that stuff; even in the days of livejournal or myspace. i used to have a private folder on my laptop. screenshots from when he’d say nice things. little pictures that read things like you know he loves you when he sees you crying and orders the hitman right away orif you’re the only one he’s soft to, you won or, you know. slap my ass and buy me pizza. tasteless, stupid, vapid little apologies for him. girl if he’s not texting you it’s because he’s napping. little ways i’d see him, over and over, in the lines other people were writing. if he hates your music, get to love his. the tepid-water system i was slowly boiling in.

i mean, i’m a feminist. i’m an activist. i’ve done the reading. i’ve been betterthan this. the other day my onedrive sent me the most unpleasant picture memory: if he uses you hard in bed but still cuddles in the morning, you know you’re lucky.

i had seen so many posters and signs and bathroom stalls that warned: you will always believe it can’t happen to you. there was no being better-than, there was no “deserving it”. it was just him, over and over again, taking up all this space. and, to some extent - it was me, finding reasons to apologize for him.

of course he loves me. he kisses my forehead. and i’m not going to like the picture or save it; it’s ugly. but see?the idea isn’t that unusual. and who cares if it’s the “bare minimum.” he does other things too. there are girls out there who are only getting the forehead kiss; i feel bad for them. he’s a good one! i just have to be more appreciative. i just have to work harder at seeing the little things. i just have to be patient; i just have to be more caring, i just have to -

i. frail bird. i got surgery on tuesday. not for the sake of this poem; for the sake of something they didn’t actually find. there’s a joke in there, about my past, but you and i shouldn’t talk about what we’ve already learned to swallow.i have 3 incisions. it took me 3 times to spell “incision” right.

ii. regardless of how big the wound is, you shouldn’t make a fuss over it. when you are the wound, the whole world is sharper. that doesn’t mean you need to whine about it. all you should get is over it.

iii. there are big puffy birds that love the feeder outside my childhood house. my father meticulously cares for them, pride of his life. something my friend said recently has been sticking inside of me, sweetly tender: the hardest thing is remembering even the bad people have good moments.

iv. reconciliation - another hard word to spell. from latin. to bring back together. i have forced this body through a lot. i have made her reconcile skin over and over again. the first time i showered after the operation, i knew just how to stand to avoid the sting of water - i did it without thinking. on instinct. there are people who know where i learned this from. you and i shouldn’t talk about it, it’s not proper.

v. my father feeds the birds. there are open secrets in this house, bleeding into our centers. we pick the scabs only when there’s truly nothing else for it; otherwise we let it rot and fester. better the devil you know. better to let uncomfortable be the standard. i don’t know where i learned this. above all else, we value silence.

vi. there isn’t a good way out of this poem; it doesn’t end.

vii. you and i know what happened, but let’s not talk about it.

salemferrellofficial:

My whims are nothing more

Than passing fancies

My thoughts no more than a sprout

…

My dreams are nothing more

Than strange realities

My melancholy no more than an out.

-s.r.f (if we were poets)

please don’t fall out of love with me