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I woke up one day and found
myself in love again.
---
I don't know. I don't know how this all
works, to be honest. I've never really done
this before. been in a stable, solid
relationship, one that doesn't promise
heartbreak around every corner. been happy
for long enough to know that it
ebbs and flows,
and that's normal. and okay.
and I think I brought it on myself,
too. cut my hair and flirted with the cute
girls and work and asked myself again
and again
and again whether I could really be happy
with a guy forever, not taking a breath
for long enough to realise that I'm in love
with a fucking person,
not a gender.
the thing is, some people -
I mean me - spent so much time
coming out, carving a place in the world
for myself, fighting with my mother
for years and years
and counting, losing and gaining friends,
rediscovering all these facets of myself
that I spent a whole lifetime hiding away...
so much of my sense of self is tied up
with that process. I fought and cried
and bled for myself, fighting
to get here. I feel sometimes like I'm
losing something.
but then I have to stop and realise
that I'm essentially reducing the entirely
of my self into this one single aspect
of who I am. I am seriously telling myself
that my worth and value is based on my
sexual orientation. and that's stupid.
and it's part of who I am for sure, but man.
besides. I was standing in the kitchen today
in my knickers and a tank top, only one leg
shaved because my back hurt too much
to shave the other one, sipping cider because
I forgot my painkillers at work... and lover looks
over at me from the living room with this
weird look on his face.
what, I snap defensively, aware that I am
a total fucking mess. and he shakes
his head and laughs and says,
nothing. I just - I just love you so much.
come here and let me hold you.
and what on earth could I possibly be missing
that isn't right here.
---
myself in love again.
---
I don't know. I don't know how this all
works, to be honest. I've never really done
this before. been in a stable, solid
relationship, one that doesn't promise
heartbreak around every corner. been happy
for long enough to know that it
ebbs and flows,
and that's normal. and okay.
and I think I brought it on myself,
too. cut my hair and flirted with the cute
girls and work and asked myself again
and again
and again whether I could really be happy
with a guy forever, not taking a breath
for long enough to realise that I'm in love
with a fucking person,
not a gender.
the thing is, some people -
I mean me - spent so much time
coming out, carving a place in the world
for myself, fighting with my mother
for years and years
and counting, losing and gaining friends,
rediscovering all these facets of myself
that I spent a whole lifetime hiding away...
so much of my sense of self is tied up
with that process. I fought and cried
and bled for myself, fighting
to get here. I feel sometimes like I'm
losing something.
but then I have to stop and realise
that I'm essentially reducing the entirely
of my self into this one single aspect
of who I am. I am seriously telling myself
that my worth and value is based on my
sexual orientation. and that's stupid.
and it's part of who I am for sure, but man.
besides. I was standing in the kitchen today
in my knickers and a tank top, only one leg
shaved because my back hurt too much
to shave the other one, sipping cider because
I forgot my painkillers at work... and lover looks
over at me from the living room with this
weird look on his face.
what, I snap defensively, aware that I am
a total fucking mess. and he shakes
his head and laughs and says,
nothing. I just - I just love you so much.
come here and let me hold you.
and what on earth could I possibly be missing
that isn't right here.
---
november 20 2019
last week i blew incense into the corners of my kitchen and talked to anyone who would listen. hera, i said, freya, mom. --- this winter all i want is healing. all i'm giving is the gift of home to myself. i am flying over the rockies just to drive myself back with my brother in the passenger seat. he's 24 and being deployed to afghanistan in january. i still can't let him drive the winter mountain pass alone. when he was ten and i was sixteen, he'd crawl into bed with me in the mornings. we'd play james bond on the n64 and tell each other stories until school. when he broke up with his girlfriend he curled into my lap and cried. i wish i could keep the small things small. i don't know how to see him as anything but the child i sang to sleep after nightmares, who loved me to press into his hip bones with the arches of my feet and thrust him into the sky like flying. now he jumps out of helicopters. i want to be there to catch him, every time. ---
november 16 2019
write a poem to celebrate the animal inside of you. too easy. --- there are four accepted methods for culling deer. 1. hunt them on hoof. claim the meat, the antlers, the hide. their last moments a frenzy, but a desirable one, because they have more room to draw it out. 2. bait them. a humane bloodbath. 3. tag them. fallow deer live in herds. use their weakness for social grouping against them. one will lead to others. 4. hunt them from the air. low-flying helicopters are a temporary disturbance to what will soon be a deer-free landscape. (5. invite the wolves, the wolves say.) ---
november 14 2019
today i'm supposed to write a rhyming poem about the ocean, but i never rhyme, and i have written so many poems about the ocean that i'm over it. i am done pounding the same sands over and over and over. my time is so much smaller than that. these days my inner landscape is post-apocalyptic. it's the clearing in the woods behind my parents' house in sepia tone, the wild dogs circling. it smells like wood smoke and fresh meat. warm meat. hot blood. --- when my poems were ocean songs they were expansive. i felt them for miles. these poems are personal. feral. they're mine. it's just me and the wild dogs, here, and the dogs are mine too. --- i gave up half my life to move to the coastline, these days, i miss the woods. in the northern boreal forest, you can drive for hours and be nowhere. you can get lost and mean it. when you're that far north, you're on your own. survival means something different. ---
november 11 2019
i bought a journal with one poem prompt a day for 100 days. i have never done something good for myself 100 days before in my life. plus, like all good tortured artists, i only feel like writing when i'm sad. then the writing makes me less sad. then i stop writing. --- last night i dreamt about the corner of the abandoned lot down the street from the house that i grew up in. when i was nine i dreamt of witchcraft and freedom, like all nine year old girls do. my best friend and i practiced magic(k) in that corner, so overgrown that the patch of trees felt like a forest. we stepped outside of our ten-year-old lives in that corner. we walked barefoot on dead leaves and painted sigils on our faces with dirt and our own spit, our hair tangling around our faces no matter how tightly out mothers tied it back. we couldn't be tamed in that corner. we didn't feel safe there, exactly. i don't think of that corner like home. but it was dangerous in a good way, in a way we liked. we felt so
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That's just lovely.