I think everyone in life is art. what you do. how you dress. the way you love someone, and how you talk. your smile and your personality. what you believe in, and all your dreams. the way you drink your tea. how you decorate your home. or party. your grocery list. the food you make. how your writing looks. and the way you feel. life is art.
sometimes I feel like if I open my mouth I’ll start speaking nonsense. I’ll start admitting things that no one should know. I only wish for everyone to know my secrets, for everyone to know all the monsters that tear within my insides, crawling out wishing to escape. maybe if they knew, they would understand, maybe they would care. those days, when I feel like I can’t contain anything inside me, I sleep. I sleep so I won’t say anything that most will never fully comprehend. I sleep to escape into a thoughtless world where he loves me, where she is still my friend. I wish to scream to the world, out my window, in the parking lot. I wish to scream, “I am here and I am not alone.” but some days that is all I fear. I fear of being alone, I fear of never finding someone to stay around and appreciate every ounce of my being. I fear for never finding love. I just wish I could get something right, just once. I just wish I could leave this city and live in a small cabin in the woods with the one I love. no problems, no money issues, no work, just love holding us together like the trees that will surround us.
come save me from walking off a windowsill, or I’ll sleep in the rain.
don’t you remember when I was a bird, and you were a map?
now he drags down miles in america, briefcase in hand.
the stove is creeping up his spine, again.
where were you when I could have loved you? where were you when I gave my heart away? all my life, I’ve been dreaming of you, but you came along one promise too late.
only one person in a thousand knows the trick of really living in the present. most of us spend 59 minutes an hour living in the past, with regret for lost joys, or shame for things badly done (both utterly useless and weakening), or in a future which we either long for or dread. yet the past is gone beyond prayer, and every minute you spend in the vain effort to anticipate the future is a moment lost. there is only one world, the world pressing against you at this munute. there is only one minute in which you are alive, this minute- here and now. the only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable miracle. which is exactly what it is- a miracle and unrepeatable.
to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you’ve held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. when grief sits with you, its tropical heart thickening the air, heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs; when grief weights you like your own flesh only more of it, an obesity of grief. you think, how can a body withstand this? then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes. I will take you. I will love you again.
girl….
you know when you’re singing along with this song, and you know all the words bcause you really love it. then a train passes and a door closes, and you can’t hear the music anymore, but you keep singing anyway. then, when you can hear it again, you’re still perfectly in time with it. well, that’s what love is.
