“I Have It All Wrong / But I’m Somehow Alive.”

“I would never tie you down, not even with garlands of roses. I don’t want anything from you that doesn’t come from your own impulse, like water from the springs.”

— Dulce María Loynaz, tr. James O’Connor, Absolute Solitude: Selected Poems; “XLVI”

When you find your people you’ll still look over your shoulder sometimes to see if you’re being followed. You’re hoping one or two people you don’t know will want to see where you’re going. When you find your people they won’t ask you where you came from because they’ll already know & if they don’t they’ll be busy putting good food on your plate & asking you if you’re hungry or broke. When you find your people they’ll tell you  to use any bathroom you want, marry anybody you want, work side-by-side for long hours with full wages without any fear of being harmed.  When you find your people they’ll throw their star to you, offer you  their love song & say you need to listen to this dance & shine with us whether or not you know all the steps. When you find your people  they’ll say Do You Remember & you’ll say Yes until you remember together the different ways the whole thing happened. When you find your people they’ll say wear whatever you want, wear the tightest dress, wear your hot pants, your fishnets, your damn birthday suit. They’ll say we love your black skin & drag & fat & natural hair & we love you from your roots so please just live & don’t let anybody kill you or tell you they’ve killed you & you’re just fine the dead way you are. When you find your people don’t leave them & don’t let them off the hook when they are in the wrong.  When they are trying to take themselves out of the world  lay your hands on them & call them yours & yours & yours. When you find your people be sure you’ve been preparing your difficult heart by loving yourself, & what you pretend you don’t know you actually do, so that when you see your kin smiling into your eyes, the soft or tough flags of their hands covering yours in a truth so light & fierce, you see you all have been midair for some time, & could go higher, & burn some shit up, if you remembered what else is good, everywhere & everywhere you look.

— Rachel Eliza Griffiths, “Chosen Family,” in Seeing the Body

“I see him. / He is exactly / the poem / I wanted to write.”

— Mary Oliver, White Heron Rises Over Blackwater

“Summer arrives in a strawberry, sweet, juicy. As long as you feel its flesh on your tongue you’re unaware how. One minute inches into the next. But how could you observe awareness anyway? Or, for that matter, a thought? It grows in you, not as a sensation. (Nor like a baby or tumor.) An experience that you can’t hold on to. Any more than to the smell of lilac. Though it soothes emptiness.”

— Rosmarie Waldrop, from “Asymmetry (2)”, The Nick of Time: Poems

bpd makes me love others the way i myself crave to be loved. entirely, blindly, obsessively, overall crazily.

this type of love is unsustainable but i've never been shown how to love healthily, and reasonable love from others never feels like enough.

““Can I see you again” is such a sweet thing to say.”

— Unknown

The beginning and the end

After randomly playing a song, everything started there, but now it’s the end. a new beginning is coming….

I fail to what we had

Not wanting us to go back

nice-looking ripped presence

Gloomy puppet with her controllable player

Images glancing to find her ways out

an Irresistible love with doubts

Everything going upstairs to the unknown being

Refusing to believe what was unseeing

When we first met emotions isolation

At a corner alongside expectations

we told each other we never find a closure

At the beginning, it was a lovely ‏explosion

Is it me or you who roll that lighter dice

Earliest treads when we faced the eyes

Beautifully either cruel stabbing to my heart

Is it my mistake or yours, my love

Devout rain was frequently hitting extremely

Recognizing rainbows will arrive at the scene

Even so, I’m here gratefully dancing

like a butterfly peacefully landing

Forever and ever be remembered

Who wrote so many phrases

Back to the sadness of December

“The past may shape us, but it doesn’t define us. We have the power to change our own story.”

— Mona Kasten, Feel Again

“Free yourself from the illusion of good and bad days. Labeling time makes us nostalgic of the past and demanding of the future. There is only here and now. Let it be.”

— Ram Dass