Everything you stand for , everything you are , you can’t hide. Everything you do gives it away.
The way you carry yourself.
The way you talk to a child.
The way you walk.
The way you eat.
The way you love.
.
.
On Political(ized) Life, Kanika Lawton
[ Text ID: Everything I do is out of love; which means / I am constantly splitting myself in half, which / means I am both the knife and the waiting flesh, / urging myself to be gentle, breaking apart instead. ]
it is all love.
sometimes you will see something saying what if it is all worth it or it gets better, doesn't it and in the little heart of you - you feel a darkness.
was it love, the way i was hurt? some things don't have a lesson in them. no silver lining. they were bad things, and they shouldn't have happened. i'm sorry they did. i am sorry they warp the space they hold in you. we tightrope walk around an ever-present grave. we carry that ache for so long it becomes smooth, overworn. i worry that i'll bore my therapist - despite all of my attempts, the pain persists the same, as sharp as it always was.
but it was all love.
every ugly moment after. every bad night. every time you drank too much and cried on the bathroom floor. every time you threw up from anxiety, every time you panicked in the grocery store. everything you ruined, and everything you walked away from.
some small part of you loved you enough. made you get up. made you wash your face and clean your teeth and call home. made you try again, even from the bottom. even when you were so tired of it; of restarting, of having to do-it-all-again. some part of you reached out. some part of you reached up. even there, in the bad spot - you somehow got up.
love will so rarely be big. it will so rarely be a moment like a dawn. love is shy, i think. she keeps her hands in front of her cheeks. she waits to peek out. and if you're not looking, she will look - normal.
but it will all be love. the way you pour yourself a glass of water. the little rabbit outside your window. your friend pushing your hair behind your ear. the way your dog greets you at the door. "put on a seatbelt". "text me when you get home safe". "oh, i started watching that show you love." "have you been okay?" "let's go for a walk" "whatcha doin?" "what should i make for dinner?"
oh, my life is so different these days. i don't have a partner. i call my friends a lot. i keep falling in love with the little tender moments; the glittering ones. you know, the bird in a puddle and the shush of a newly-lit candle. the movie-moments.
i am also learning to love the ugly. every moment i spent belly-flat to the floor, anxious and panting. every hour i stared at nothing, losing time to my adhd. every missed opportunity and bad memory. i am not doing well. i am spiralling.
but somewhere in there, while i am reduced to ashes. some part of me is an ever-burning ember. her little thankless job, her shy and croaking voice. she holds me to my body. she doesn't let me go. stay, she whispers. out of love. my love. wherever it goes.
some of the bad things that happened to me will always be bad. they did not make me a better person. they made me worse. i only learned what i can endure. and i did endure it. and love wasn't just the perfumed moments. love was just ... staying. while it's ugly and hard and horrible. love was just saying:
okay. i will keep trying. keep going. i owe it to the version of myself who brought me here. i owe it to my future. i owe it to the small loves i have found since - the music and the new recipes and the new books and the new hobbies. i owe it to myself to wait for the next best thing. this wall we have hit - love says keep walking. maybe one day we will find a door.
always, always: just one try more.
Made up of more than simple synapses of the mind, elements bonding from all parts of life and time we define.
More than chemical compounds flowing through human veins, or moonlight brightening darkness once overcame
From cosmic dust to outside lust, death and struggle tie this together.
The odds always played against our love, that may just last forever
We’ve wrangled comets, loved under the starlight, fought tooth and nail embracing hatred with all our might
Yet recognize we would be lost in unbalanced orbit, if madness was allowed to make this all forfeit
We unknowingly test the boundaries, while the gravity of trust is constantly compounding.
It’s never just a feeling it’s a lifestyle of selfless, put your life in my hands and know I’ll protect it.
Kept warm in the shadow of the sun, held shaded from the rays which fade so we can be one.
Evolving into a untouchable galaxy in the sky, perfectly untamed but arranged, never on purpose it’s how our cosmos was designed.
Cryptictalk
Absolutely stunning paintings by Spanish artist Cristian Blanxer.
r – “i don’t want you to be sad”
i miss you & i often think of your raspberry blood, how it pulls away anxiously. your heart cautions ivory teeth while an elephant in your mind emits a chaos i understand with my fingers. braille to the touch, i find my way to your chest, how it rises violently. & as the night gleams longer than the moon’s reach, i find you among stones, a babe lost in the world.
r – “you don’t want to die”
do you miss me? i’m calling you from the ground. there is a chaotic elephant in my chest that won’t settle without your voice near. i’m waiting for your fingers to find my mind to ease the sadness. i’m drowning again. where did you run off to this time? she said you were my mistake, but all i know is perfection in a simple form of morning when your voice is the softest peach my lips touched. & i’m watching the skies. i see your wings again. i keep waving. i know your eyes won’t find me, but i’ll keep waving until my arms give out.
I do not know
what this
earth in me
wants
from
the
humaneness
of what
the soul
seemed
to fail
miserably
at
abiding?
-
Dolly
19.01.2019
January nineteen twenty nineteen #08
*
as we take custody
of the surrounding environ
outward from this spot
to the horizon of our imagining
*
the path forward involves
a certain applied alchemy
to concepts suckled in bassinets,
boardrooms & brothels
with a bottle.
*
launch an elbow to the gut
of any exaltation
of data before destination;
information before meditation
on an informed application,
AI over EI;
Wagner over Miles or Sly…
just launch it.
*
also to the epicenter
of the over-educated pawns,
points of adverse light stanning
for shareholders’ superiority,
suckling the tender whey
from of the soymilk of human
kindnesses in the name of profit
anywhere & when they occur.
*
no mere placid reign
will serve to rein in
these children of chaos,
tribal chanting couched in
testicular incantations
of trends & tabulation;
*
tend their infestation
disrespecting territorial
boundaries of body & soul
in surface to air missives
through wormholes in whole
worlds spinning on their axes
pining for competent caretakers
to step in & stop the bleeding
*
to preserve the trough
from which, like sublime racing equines,
we all find ourselves feeding.
*
1/19 - lebuc - a certain alchemy
the poem goes like this: god and i dream that we are sitting together on the rim of the galaxy. the stars look like flecks of honey from this far up, the ascending souls like fragments of indigo-stained glass. i ask him how it felt the first time he spoke the word grief out loud. he says it was like cutting off his own hands using only his teeth. then i ask him what it means to heal. he says the dead always leave a part of themselves embedded in your heart, orange rind, cherry pit, apricot seed. those moments where you stand in the sunlight and feel some large unnameable thing press up against your chest, that’s their memories petaling, that’s their voices whispering, fall in love with this warmth for me, today, tomorrow, the next day, the next day, the next–
