CLXXXIV

I’d like to think my very bones and marrow are crying out for justice, and they are. 

But it will come. 

In its time. 

And until then, just let the simmering sadness and heat of hate wash over you, rolling, until one day they make you the person you were always meant to be. 

They’ll make you or break you. 

Let them make you, alright. 

[Image: Doutzen Kroes for Porter Magazine]

CLXXXIII

An Ode to Friendship

Not many people do the days with you

You know, each and every day

The day you wake up and your heart’s so heavy you need help carrying it out the door

The day you thought would be fine or even great and it wasn’t, it was almost unliveable

The day your world falls apart in front of your very eyes and you don’t even know how to say it let alone do anything to stop it

The day it starts fitting back together again

The day something happens

The day nothing happens

The day you feel everything all at once

The day you feel nothing at all

There’s not so many people there, on all of those days, or even most, or even a few

And the only way to know is to know 

And the only way to see is to wait, and see

It’s easier to be there, almost, for the months, for the years 

Skipping the tough stuff

Hearing the resolution story

Getting the short of it, because the long of it is done

And it’s not everyone’s burden to bear

The days

But there are some who will

And there are some for whom you will

And there is the beauty 

And the blessing 

And the best of everything 

Don’t you forsake it

Not even for a minute of those many many days

Don’t you forsake it

CLXXXII

Time is slowing down. In the heat, in the holiday glow. I wish it wouldn’t. I could just manage how it was going, before. Not too fast that I feel my life slipping, not too slow that I feel my life slipping. Just the right amount. 

[Images: Grace Hartzel and Ruth Bell by Cass Bird for Dior Magazine]

CLXXXI

Enough

Im spending so long convincing myself to do the more difficult thing

To do nothing

To wait for hope to appear

However it appears

Whenever it appears

To stay

Stay soft, stay alone, stay unknowing, stay

And I dont know if I can, but what else can I do?

And I think I might lose my grip, but what else can I do?

So here I am

Answering my own questions

Knowing I know what I need and I don't yet know what I don't yet need

And thats frustrating, always

Bit it has to be enough

How it is right now has to be enough

It has to be enough

[Image: Andreea Diaconu for Unconditional Magazine]

CLXXX

The Sadness

I put on a brave face for everyone else

Why can’t I put on a brave face for me?

I sleep here in our bed

In our home

I dont sleep

I try to erase this word from my memory

Our, we, us

You’ve erased it 

Already

Took you a while to tell me.

I put on a brave face for everyone else

But to me I'm the saddest I've ever been

And I can't separate it out

Into losing you and losing us and losing me

Its all in there

The sadness in layers, upon layers

How will I sift down to the part where I'm losing me

And save it

While the rest is erased

Erased so easily.

I pace the hallway that was ours

Run my finger along the bedsheets that were ours

Dunk my head under the shower head that was ours

And I cry

To me I'm the saddest I've ever been

But only to me

[Images: Grace Hartzel by Cass Bird, Unknown, Karmen Pedaru for Glass Magazine]

CLXXIX

There's a point when you go with what you've got. Or you don't go.

- Joan Didion

[Image: Andreea Diaconu for Unconditional Magazine]

CLXVIII

I dealt with it the same way I deal with everything. I just tended my own garden, didn't pay much attention.

- Joan Didion

[Image: Lyman Gardens Greenhouse, MA]

CLXXVII

Are you still in love with me
Like the way you used to be or is it changing?
Does it deepen over time like the river
That is winding through the canyon?

Are you still in love with her?
Do you remember how you were before the sorrow?
Are you closer for the tears
Or has the weight of all the years left you hollow?

Are we strangers now?
Like the Ziegfeld Gal and the vaudeville show?
Are we strangers now
Like rock and roll and the radio?
Like rock and roll and radio

- Like Rock & Roll and Radio, Ray LaMontagne


[Image: Russh Magazine]

CLXXVI

To anyone who’s ever crossed oceans for love. To anyone who’s ever faked a love of fine art, or quick-crammed knowledge of ancient Rome or spent more money than they had to spend for love. To anyone who’s ever agreed to a new home, a new culture, a new way of life and a new skyline for love. To anyone who’s ever promised, “I’ll wait for you”, who’s ever lost a presence and gained a pen pal, who’s ever waited by the phone for love. To anyone who’s ever granted a second (third, fourth, fifth) chance, who’s learnt to forgive or just to forget. Who’s learnt to trust again, for love. I salute you. I hope they made it worth it. I pray they gave you all that you deserve. Because you gave it to them. Because love is a risk worth taking.

 Because only the people crazy enough to believe that love exists, are the ones who find it at home in their hearts.

[Image: Achro SS17]

CLXXV

Life doesn’t work the way people lead you to believe. It’s not always an upward slope. Sometimes there are downfalls. Sometimes there are pitfalls. Sometimes there are plummets back to the bottom where you started. Sometimes you lose your foothold. Sometimes you forget the direction you were heading in. Sometimes you lose the battle and the war. That’s how it is. 

CLXXIV

There’s a reason we celebrate love the way that we do - weddings and anniversaries and valentines and roses for no reason at all - because as much as we live in a world that honours independence, and the power of one, of going it alone and making a lot of things happen for yourself; none of us can truly deny the sheer joy and great relief it is to find for yourself another human being who’s willing to give you every part of them, forever, and to take every part of you as theirs. We all want to be understood and if that’s what love is, understanding, then the surest critic can’t dismantle the innate human desire to be fully known, and fully loved. Maybe marriages fail because we can’t hold on to our independence and our deep desire for an other both. We must decide. And for some, the decision is harder than once thought, the fear of losing yourself a simple byproduct of a culture that tells you to be dependent is to be weak and to be resilient is to always have an escape plan hatched that only you know about. But it isn’t true. It isn’t true. Love cannot operate in such hostile terrain, it can only ever be a shadow of itself in such foreign territory. Love is brave - to love another truly is a brave act, and a noble one, noble in the way that self serving and self seeking never could be. There's a lie going around that too many hearts are breaking over - how many more can it take? Before we all awake, to love as the ultimate letting go and getting; the most selfless and rewarding; the truest act; the noblest pursuit; the only stealer of breath, still-er of a beating heart. To be independent, in truth, is to be alone. When will they let us know it?

[Image: unkown]

CLXXIII

Sometimes

by David Whyte

Sometimes

if you move carefully

through the forest,

breathing

like the ones

in the old stories,

who could cross

a shimmering bed of leaves

without a sound,

you come to a place

whose only task

is to trouble you

with tiny

but frightening requests,

conceived out of nowhere

but in this place

beginning to lead everywhere.

Requests to stop what

you are doing right now,

and

to stop what you

are becoming

while you do it,

questions

that can make

or unmake

a life,

questions

that have patiently

waited for you,

questions

that have no right

to go away.

[Jean Campbell for W Magazine]