fact #3

i don't give a shit about your money.

for just a moment, suppose:

i'm not "figuring things out." i'm living my life and doing the work of it. having the fun of it. learning how to enjoy it without guilt. learning how to grind without self-pity. learning how to suffer - brilliantly, rather than angrily - growing and dying and breathing and going, going, going.

there's nothing for me to apologize for.  at least not in this regard.  so what if my title is humble and my needs are few?  i look out the window onto my street and reach for my coffee and feel so lucky.  i drempt of this moment for so many years. now that i have it, i will not erase my delight in it by allowing the opinions and preferences of others more weight than my own.  i have my own expectations for myself and my own private demons to corral. i have no excuses to offer for my behavior.  i accept full responsibility.  if i have been mean, i say i'm sorry.  but to thwart another's expectations is not an act of cruelty. i do not say i'm sorry for being a waitress, for spending long mornings scribbling in my diary, for plucking a guitar badly.  my title is humble and my needs are few.  i am a happy woman.

for free

so what if i'm a loser?

that's almost the point.

i'm teaching myself how to breathe.

actually.

in.  out.

it sounds so simple until you stop

sit still

and listen to the inward draw.

the mean, mad thoughts fire up.

but i am choosing not to busy myself to silence them.

i am choosing to sit here and strive for no greater result.

i am teaching myself how to breathe without having to earn it first.




because the definitions for love and friendship and family and safety and belonging have always been contingent.  so much so that i can't seem to shake it.  even i am making me earn the gift of love. even i am making me earn my right to live another day.  and that's exactly what i'm trying to stop.



i just want to sit here

and to not worry

that if i never sell another painting again

people will stop loving me.

i want to sit here

and scribble in my diary

and not worry that people will go away

if i never write a book.

i want to sit here

and enjoy the way the light slices through these shitty blinds,

falls across my hands,

and reminds me of my mother's.

i want to sit here

and listen to music all afternoon

and all night long

and regard someone else's art with the esteem it deserves.



can't enjoyment be a worthy cause?

can't enjoyment be a purpose?  a pursuit?

can't i chase the end of my perfectionism

and finally learn how to just breathe?



i do not want any brass ring.

nor any golden carrot.

i want love and friendship and belonging

and i want it for free.

no resume.

no bribery.

just you.

just me.

fact #2

i don't miss you at all.

fact #1

i have been missing you for such a long time now

disorganized

i am not a very organized person. there are many obvious penalties attached to my disarray. discomfort and irritation, of course, but also an over-looked, potentially hard to accept pleasure: an increased rate of romantic coincidence. of stumbling across something you weren't at all looking for but certainly need. that jolt of happiness, the rush of recognition when, out of the blue, you find your brother's birth certificate or your parents' marriage license or the haiku you wrote in 3rd grade that won a district-wide poetry prize. items you have no reasonable need for now as an adult. or do you? these little beauties. these treasures. these histories. the hook that drags you back to moments of the past and set your heart beating in a flurry of remembrance. that surge of emotion that comes from being confronted with true memento mori- the artifacts of ones childhood, of ones parent's childhood, back and back, a lineage of belonging. or of rupture. the red thread of how ones life, as it stands in this very moment of Finding, had been built.

allowances

today i spent

$14 on poetry and 

$17 on stones which

may or may not help me

with anything.

when i was 8, i would

sometimes swim

with ankles twined

pretending to be a mermaid

in the cool blue obsidian 

bucket of our

apartment complex pool.

i hoped that if i stayed long enough

if no one was looking

if my mother forgot her watch

forgot herself to wine-coolers and adult conversation

if the sun was going down and

the pink shafts of sunset firelight

sliced through the water 

at just the right angle

and the wish in my small heart was honest and true

that the change would take place 

and i would be transformed 

and i would go home to the ocean

beautiful, immortal and mythical

safe, dispite the coral

safe inside the whale of the world.

a new

blue obsidian sits

to my left on my crowded nightstand.

i'm coming home 

with a new stone each week

and praying again

for the first time in years.

i read a poem called "Zero" 

by Maggie Nelson 

and hinge myself to old hopes

for my own

"gem future."

only that isn't what she wrote

it's what i remember

or maybe just what i need-

something to reach for that isn't

"fiction."