helix/noticings

a word gossamer

walking hard into the bell light

two butterflies swept together

dust across the beautiful

small of their flight.

white heron rises over blackwater

I wonder what it is that I will accomplish today
If anything can be called that marvelous word. 

It won't be
My kind of work, which is only putting words on a page,
The pencil
Haltingly calling up
The light of the world,
Yet nothing appearing on paper half as bright
As the mockingbird's verbal hilarity
In the still unleafed shrub in the churchyard—
Or the white heron rising over the swamp and the darkness,
His yellow eyes and broad wings wearing
The light of the world in the light of the world—
Ah yes, I see him.
He is exactly the poem I wanted to write. 

Mary Oliver

the moment

That brief walk was one of those moments he knew he'd remember and look back on, one of those moments that he'd try to capture in the stories he told. Nothing was happening, really, but the moment was thick with mattering. 

An Abundance Of Katherines; John Green

and with those hands

if you learn one thing, it will be that you never ever have to feel sorry for your feelings. your emotions are a fucking triumph to your name, okay? it's only the people who give a shit and catch fucking fire that truly move this planet. we are made to open up and share these things, the stupid smiles and the absolutely seething hatred for those we love. i know everything these days persists to say otherwise, but it's all wrong, and we must set out to fight fucking gravity to prove that. always go the boldest bravest move, whether breaking down or wearing your name.

i must seem incapable of communicating in normal words, but this is just what comes out.

i just: you're protective. me? i am ... i keep a piece of everyone i know. if you mean anything to me, there's already a glint of your colour held deep within me, always. and so the one thing...the absolute thing...when i see the people i love hurt or sad or destroyed, it sets me on fire. i would do anything to take that pain from the people i love, always. so i hate knowing that you carry this sadness, even for a moment.

now, turning to the focal point, i understand how you feel, about friends and relationships. it's one of the hardest changes to deal with. and i know it's a sensitive issue, so i mean, i will say things, but it's by no means telling what you should do to 'fix' yourself - nothing like that, at all. i just want to try to offer the perspective that is hard to find by yourself when you're hurting. unfortunately, as with all overarching themes of balance and change, it will and has to occur. things change, and people do change. people grow and tectonic plates shift in friendships.

i think the most important thing to do when you're sad, especially about friends and 'losing' them, is to maintain very intently the idea that this person has been sad, just like you, that same crushing despair, and now they have a chance to be happy. so whenever i am feeling bad and missing people, i try to remember them sad, destroyed, coming apart. then using this, i can make a little spark, and apply myself fully to saying hello and making sure they're okay and keeping them safe.

outside of that though, as much as sometimes people go too far with new relationships and do tend to draw away from friends, returning to the other idea - balance - it swings both ways. we can distance ourselves in turn and add poison to the mix. but then, at the same time, we're not always perfect. our brain has mapped out a situation, it changes, and we press the disaster button. one fleeting moment, and we're too far into poisonous emotions (fuelled primarily by sadness) to come back from that. we all do it, but not always do we get given the grace to redeem that moment right then. but we retreat, and readjust our heads.

it's a scary thing to face, but it will happen and again, and ultimately, we have to try to remember that the change is ultimately making life a little more bearable for someone else, even if we ourselves suffer silently in response. but then, everything does balance out - it does - it will. so hopefully when the time comes, our friends will in turn understand when we fall into the deep end of love, and we are happy for each others happinesses, keeping each others sadnesses as wards for our own unsettlings.

i know this is a lot of words, and i hope you dont miscontrue any of it. you are one of my favourite people. truly. you have a huge heart, and the fire of truth. and you are beautiful, and not in the way that says we are beautiful for our personalities, either. everyone is truly beautiful, and everyone will look at someone, where other people might not see, and find a monument, a spark, a breath for weary lungs. the length of time differs for everyone, because we all weave our own tapestry of colour and story. how long we wait does not make it any less real, if anything, made infinite, igniting, every day fucking blessed.

i think i am just trying to say, don't be sad. keep every smallest thing possible close - everything to remind you. in the storm, find calm, find landfall, and see every beautiful stupid wretched spinning slowest thing. take it all into your heart and mind and soul and smile. then we can do amazing things and we can keep everyone safe.

she kept the diary, not the other

i would never say happiness is overrated. it is the spark in the darkness, however fleeting, but always with highest hopes for its giddy rushing return.

but then in that, it is all a matter of perspective. because you are right in the sense that happiness does not, can not and will not last. there is no permanent state of happiness because permanence makes us numb to ebb and flow. even if we fall madly perfectly in love and nail the perfect career and we're amazing and brilliant and flawless, we would never stop. we don't. the brain doesn't allow that. it's always teetering on the brink of something it can never ever attain, always taste but never touch.

so then, really, speaking from the depths of the sadness that everyone knows, always remember and feel the little things. the sparks before that brink. because they are happiness and they are real, but they cannot stay. they flitter and you smile.

but, truly, i would never say any of this to diminish what you feel. just trying to share the memory of lightness, while i am currently teetering (because i am denying this night and this doubt and will declare right now brilliant, and so the perfect place to teeter.)

p.s. you are read, and you are heard, and you are loved, and you are not alone in anything.

the pooling of

I am feeling better, but it is that much better, just to be here in the night. I had my feet in the pool, smiling at the light swimming. feeling inspired, and I can feel the steam still on my toes, the cold tiles, the song in my ears, and I swear, the water knows.

everyone

can you feel this?

when you stand before this kind of night, and it just radiates, the air so thick with steam, the wet footprints splashed across tiles, the lingering smell of the barbecue.

everyone hangs in the air, in this moment snapping to, photographs in their chairs.

and, you know, you could get nostalgic—these summers used to be yours. but now there are new kids, with chattering teeth, pizza spilled across the floor. their mothers tracing lines across their cheeks, zinc, smiles.

it really is beautiful, stunning, all these words that mean so little, in the end, and you just have to be there, holding your hands together, feeling it all.

and clarity by jimmy eat world is playing, and it is just, this, forever.

wrap my hands/hands up, Night!

but loneliness will always try to surround you, blotting out the exits, just you, and the hungry room. we are so very connected, wires where your hours were, and nothing at all. you work your eyes, and your imagination never blinks: they are so fucking happy. I will never belong. I am crawling.

and you play the game, balling up your hands, refuse that last fucking card, the one that just sunk you.

but how do I get out of this room?

because you look around, at the windows tightly wound, doors are so many months away, and the only light source is them (you used to call them the empty armies, biting on your cheek.) your feet pressed up against the back of the desk, looking out for monsters at the corners of your eyes—you will not escape with your body.

okay, I have: an empty glass, a library full of songs (these playlists are your friends), and the ability to make hope. sure, it is a goal, a mission, a list on notepaper, somewhere in this night. the first step: move your body, move your mind. though you cannot escape the room, with its evil eyes, you can certainly move within.

sometimes you would at least have your cat, because they never leave you alone. and with your cat, and a cup of apple juice (I think a cup of apple juice is nicer than a glass), you are inclined to think the world is a little more brilliant, the smallest crack more.

(but, see, dangerous interludes—people can either save us from ourselves, or jam us back into our box of limbs. we were so close to safety, but now you're scrubbing out the clean worlds of my list.)

this is where you have to fight really quite hard, and it is terrible, but, transfixed, you're just a wasted moth. if you are looking for hope, look away—see all the things crooked in the darkness, recall those happinesses. though you stare at horror, in wrongdoing, you have music—always—music to sear the night, unravel the windows, drag the door into this day.

(my current weapon, armed, is who watches the watchmen? by the prize fighter inferno.)

it is the way you just smile, awkwardly, tumbling outwards, for each time you fought the night, you bore the scar. and when the songs play, the words snare what you hold deep. and when the night rises up, the notes ignite, the colours burst, and this battle calls faster breathing.

what makes us different—our whole unseen world. we fell, scattered, but on the mischief of high winds, we are found, so slowly, we are safe.

we can fight it off/axs

it is a long list of names I will never meet, a single picture, I could never face in the dark, and I start to crawl alone. while you can feel the chemicals building up momentum, it is always, vague, blurry. arms move in slower axs, thoughts ragged behind your body. I record this: it is here.

I always play coy, but it is not a game, just—it really is an aversion, to name it like the night, the names of moons—Depression, or.

but you can move. you can escape. you can get up. you can pour that glass of milk.

Recall their faces, how they fumbled in the Halloween light, just a smile. And you were stupid, standing in the rain in your socks, showing your ugliest look to the camera: just a smile, completely unguarded.

I write this, and try to stay in this tense, not slip behind the haze of broken angles: you are not alone.