When I was a kid, my family took car trips in an uncomfortably purple van. 

We left painfully early in the morning–something about getting where we were going with enough of the day left. 

This was mostly fine, not least because there was a 50% chance that my sister and I would get a drive thru breakfast. 

I, dear reader, always went for the coffee cake muffin. It was big–a real bang for buck situation–with the top all crusted with cinnamon and sugar and butter and whatever else. Just really excellent work all around. 

Early morning trips were usually to visit family (someone was getting married; someone died; someone had a baby) or, dear reader, I had skating. 

I figure skated for seventeen years. Which is wild, because I almost never talk about it. It was a pretty big part of my life–especially in high school when I was on a synchronized figure skating team. Never heard of it? That’s fine. It’s niche and incredibly beautiful and completely irrelevant. 

It has been refused entrance into the olympics games every year, forever. Or since it became a thing in like, the 60s. 

What is it then? Sweet reader, think colder synchronized swimming. This shit was wild–and I mean that. Eight of us skating together. Arms connected, movements synched. To music. Supremely lame and really fucking cool. 

We would leave early in the morning and I’d get on a bus with my teammates for 12 hours or something ridiculous, and we’d skate the next day in a different city, in front of an almost empty arena. We would win occasionally but mostly we would lose. It was my favorite fucking thing.

I ate coffee cake muffins before every skating trip. “Before” is important because of the aforementioned 12 nauseating hours on a bus. Starting at 6 a.m. 

I had to bulk up, see. 

The last coffee cake muffin I remember eating was the morning after my first proper blackout. I had never been hungover before–I’d never even been. truly drunk before. 

Nevertheless, I yakked up the alcohol, needed something big and absorbent in my stomach real quick, and regrettably chose this muffin.

I was a teenager then, too. And mind you, I was not cool. This is important to remember. 

–

I give coffee cake muffins — 3 stars

–

I’m silly, overearnest and romantic; but such is the history of love letters. 

Do you ever think about how fucking cool it is that we write to each other like this? How this takes guts in a way that is, dare I say, punk?

Don’t stop reading. Hear me out.

Sincerity–real vulnerability–is subversive in art. We know this. And so then, love letters are punk as hell.

This got me thinking about what makes letters, and what makes music, good. 

Of course I knew that some music made me feel more than other music, but I figured that the difference was talent or some kind of secret knowledge of music theory. But no. The difference was sincerity–the difference is music is good when it is sincere. 

The other stuff helps too, I guess. But that’s less dramatic.

You can hear in a melody when something is honest. It’s easy to make a song people will dance to–that they’ll get drunk to somewhere dark and loud–but to make a song that holds emotional power is difficult. 

Making punk music–music that is deeply honest–is harder. And of course and regrettably again, such is the history of love letters. 

Let me explain. 

“Doing-it-yourself” is revolutionary–synonymous with progress in music, in social justice, and in the creation of Punk counterculture (I capitalize Punk here, for emphasis) as a distinctly separate entity. 

To speak of self-direction as a means of creation is, I believe, to inevitably speak of the kind of love expressed in letters that have outlived their authors. 

One such letter, sent to Virginia Woolf by Vita Sackville-West in 1926, is a good one if you’re looking for a sickly sweet read. The letter begins, “I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia.” 

The love letter is a reduced thing, too. The love letter distills a moment; it tracks just a piece of feeling as it moves—one too big to pin down completely. And of course and goddammit again–such is the history of punk expression. 

Peter Webb and John Lynch describe punk music in their essay Utopian punk, (which, by the way, is about Bjork–I would highly recommend both her and the essay) as a cultural revolution. They write, “The emphasis, [of punk music] therefore, was on music as a process, as transformative action that transported an audience to a place that made them aware of their individual power.” 

Individual power. Honest communication–however that happens–is an expression of individual power. Absolutely. This is a hill I’ll die on, but I don’t think anyone will argue. 

Sincerity, like most expressions of individual power (at least the ones I can think of) isn’t inherently pretty as we understand the word.

Missing someone isn’t pretty–love mostly isn’t. But there’s something especially vulnerable–especially unpretty–about being deeply sad because I can’t be where I would like to be. This is real and this is what it is supposed to be. 

I could write a song–sure. I could bare my skin or teeth. I could write a love letter, and sign it “Yours.”

I think these are all equally subversive, equally brave, and equally Punk.

I give the love letter — 4.5 stars

In trying to get my appetite back, I’m beginning to feel like a desperately lonely ex. I try to coax her out real gentle–treat her right. Reassure her that we are safe here together. That she’s super hot and I only want her. 

But alas, the thought of eating makes me queasy. My appetite just buries herself in the work of being an illusive bitch. 

It’s fine, though. We’ll work it out, her and I. Our relationship has been a rocky one, but we need each other. 

So I’m eating. I’m writing too, because if I don’t do something with my hands I’ll think in too many circles. 

Plus, it looks like I’m busy. Less people are inclined to speak to me if I look engrossed in work. Or gross in general. Could be both. 

This is not really me—looking aloof. And for good reason. I think it is so much more pretentious to pretend not to care about things–about people. Everybody is a fucking nerd for something, or someone. Usually lots of things or ones.

I find no value in being aloof.

I work at a tourist-dominated kite store. People from all over come in—tourists and people on road trips to the Grand Canyon. It’s a whole mess. But I like speaking to people. 

The only bit of my job that I like is speaking to people. 

I’ve said this before, but I think I have the kind of eyes that let people know I’m ready and willing to hear their shit. Or maybe it’s because I pronounce the whole of a word when I don’t need to. Or that I ask questions and really wait for answers. 

How do you gather yourself in one place so that someone can look at it and trust you? I don’t know. I’ve done it I guess.

I guess that’s a part of me I like. 

You know what else I like about myself? Cause I don’t.

I’m kidding, though. I like a bunch about myself. Plus I know insecurity isn’t sexy–it is another thing I’m insecure about.

I’m very very tired of feeling inadequate. I will compare myself to death, I think, needlessly–it doesn’t help me at all. Just makes me feel like shit. And I know I’m the kind of person I would want to be around–I know I am–I just struggle to remember why sometimes.

If you’re here with me, dear reader–and I hope you aren’t–what are we supposed to do? What am I supposed to do with this?

I’ve tried to make sense of it, but instead, I chose vices. I tried again and chose Zoloft. I tried a-fucking-gain and realized there’s not a solution I didn’t already know and believe to be impossible.

The only answer I’ve found is, essentially, to choose to believe something else–just choosing to believe that the person I am is somehow good enough. I have to make this choice about a thousand times a day, and it is a herculean effort. Holy shit is this hard. 

I am very very tired of telling myself all the reasons why I am not good enough. That I’m not tall skinny blonde funny brave smart successful whatever enough. So I’m not going to do it anymore. 

I don’t want to. Can’t make me. 

I was speaking to someone the other day. They said I have a habit of, “misplacing empathy.” 

Dear reader, I don’t think I do, though. I think it is a hard and scary fucking thing to be real in any capacity–and to be real in front of everyone, all the time, is near impossible.

I want you to know that I am not “misplacing empathy” when I say I’m so sorry if you’re hurting. I’m so sorry if you feel like you won’t be enough in the end. You are, though. You’re just scared.

I love you.

You’re not empty or helpless. You’re great. 

As far as parts of me go, I’d say my hair is of middling goodness. 

My favorite bits of the bod, of course, are my spacious eyelids. This really throws eating disorder therapists for a loop, though. They say, “focus on the parts of yourself you like.” And I always close my eyes. 

I used to dye my hair blonde, but I ran out of money and the desire to change myself. This is the stance I take with most everything these days. Unapologetic brown hair. It pays off eventually. 

When I was in the hospital, I tacked a picture of the Grand Canyon to the wall across from my bed. A very kind nurse printed out an incredibly pixelated, black and white photo of this big hole, and gave it to me. 

Very nice gesture, really depressing gift. Like a bottle of wine. Or cutlery.

I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon but I talk about it like an old war buddy. Making plans to go and see it but never really getting there. Thinking of it fondly. Crumpled old picture in a drawer somewhere. 

My hair is growing again. After many years of halted follicles, we have movement. It’s really nice. It touches my elbows now–that brown mess. I shove it all in a hat when I run. This usually works, but sometimes the hat falls off and swoosh–I feel like a dramatic bitch. 

Then it sticks to the sweat on my forehead. 

I’m reminded of the time someone stood in the shower and asked me to shave the back of her head. She couldn’t reach and so I stood shearing off her long, straight hair like it was my god-given mission. 

She kept it, put it in a box–her hair, and gave it to me on my birthday that year. Absolute loon. She was incredible. 

Most everyone goes to the Grand Canyon. It’s an unimpressive dream, and that is part of why I keep it.

I can have it if I want–I can go.

I will, dear reader. Certainly sometime.

All my love.

Take care.

I’m losing faith in the whole practice, really. Being a person—a woman in her 20s. I’m in school. I go to work. It’s all kinda fucked.

And then I remind myself it doesn’t matter. That I’m the only one in control of this person I’m creating, and nobody really cares if I’ve got a plan, or what that plan is. No one cares, and this is supposed to be freeing. Liberating. But honestly it just makes me feel like getting supremely drunk. 

But instead, dear sweet reader, 

I smoke on my lunch break because I lost my appetite. And I get in the shower if it all goes wrong, cause that’s what I’ve been told to do.

When I’m angry or sad or insecure, I run. And when I can’t run because I am selling kites at a store in godforsaken Boulder, Colorado, I plan the run I’ll take that night. I’ll think it through real well. Exactly where I’ll go, and how hot I’ll be as a result of all the running. 

I’ll run miles and miles. I’ll run until I collapse. I’ll run and then I’ll finally sleep without all the useless thinking. 

What do you listen to when you’re all the way in your bag, dear reader? This is when I need music most. Unproductive anger, or whatever, needs a solution other than pouting and loud music will usually do some kind of trick. 

For me, it’s Territorial Pissings if I’m really mad. If I’m medium mad, I’ll go for Clean Jeans. If I’m brink mad, I’ll do like, Love It If We Made It—I fucking love that song and don’t want it to have bad associations.

I don’t know what I’m trying to say here, other than I’m on my lunch break and I’m not hungry and I’m thinking about running. What do you do when you’re stuck somewhere? What do you do, dear reader, when you want out of your body with urgency?

I don’t know how to do any of this right, and so I go with either complete failure by abstaining from any choice at all, or writing about it. Or both. I think this could be considered a both because I’m just sitting still. 

I’m like Buddha. Sitting still till things make sense—that’s the deal right? I sit on this curb and smoke my silly nicotine and wait for some kind of light to hit me right in the eye. Some kind of light, right? That’s it.

5 more minutes of lunch break, dear reader. Better get going. 

I love you.

Bye.

I thought that apathy was the worst pain I’d ever felt. 

Though uncaring, lethargic, unproductive stillness is still my least favorite swing of the old mood, I’m learning that it doesn’t really hurt. It’s just a kind of absence.

Absence doesn’t feel like anything other than maybe wind blowing through my body’s openings. Apathy makes my chest whistle like my chain-smoking stress habit, but it doesn’t feel like a punch to the gut. 

It’s not pain, I’m realizing. It’s worse, maybe, but it doesn’t hurt.

The real gut punch is knowing that things could be different—it’s the ache of being in one place when there’s another I’d rather be. I mean this in a literal, physical sense–I’d rather not be here in Boulder–but I also mean it in this larger societal sense. 

We don’t have to kill each other. Groundbreaking, I know. We don’t have to undo the tireless work of so many brilliant people by “reentering the social world” too soon or in egregious ways. We don’t have to make it so painfully hard, but of fucking course we do. We make it nearly impossible.

We don’t learn. Why would we?

I live in Boulder and honestly, I would very much like to leave. But, dear reader, I care deeply about this place and the people who live here. It’s my home.

On Monday, ten people were killed at a Boulder supermarket. They were shot, and killed. Their lives ended, and mine chugged on, and we never seem to learn that there’s somewhere else we could be. 

So here’s my floor rant if you care, and maybe even if you don’t. To borrow but hopefully to keep:

In early 1977, Jimmy Carter created a presidential commission for mental health. 

Presidents do performative bullshit all the time, but listen: his action here suggested he was aware of deep-rooted problems in our mental health system. It was fragmented, lacked cohesion, and often failed to meet the needs of our communities—especially those individuals with severe and persistent mental illnesses. Systemic issues were finally being acknowledged in mental healthcare, and this was a pretty big deal.

This commission had an important (mostly symbolic) impact on the American people: It was the first to put mental health in a place of importance. This was big and validating and necessary.

This commission was intended to recommend policies to overcome obvious fuckery in our mental health systems. Its work led to the formulation of the National Plan for the Chronically Mentally Ill, but a system of care and treatment for persons with serious mental illnesses was never created. 

Surprise sur-fucking-prise. The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, signed by President Ronald Asswipe Reagan August 13, 1981, repealed most of the commission and its progress. 

Of course it did. That fuck. 

And so the critically mentally ill and people of marginalized groups were unable to access treatment and were subsequently pushed deeper into confusion.  

A major focus of our current shit show is achieving equal health coverage of physical and mental health conditions – often referred to as “parity.” Moves have been made; but because we continue to press on at alarming rates of environmental and societal catastrophe, mental health policy is not at the forefront of American politics.

And this makes sense. We need to vaccinate and educate our public. We need to keep people from being evicted. We need to recover from the past four years of unbridled chaos. Of course we do! These are the things we need right now. And it is, of course, our own damn fault.

But, dear reader, as the past 2 weeks have made brutally clear, the pressure we put on lawmakers must include mental health reform–it must continue to include gun reform and regulation. It has to.

Dear god I wish it were a nation-wide gun ban. Fucking hell. But if we can’t get there quickly enough to save lives we must advocate for mental health treatment access for all people and ESPECIALLY those who are critically mentally ill. This is absolutely essential.

We must push for this–for both. Less guns and more help.

Less guns and more help, dear reader. 

My rant from the floor is over for now.

I love you so much.

Please take care.

And as always, fuck you Ronald Reagan.

I’ve found it difficult to trust anyone since my first love lost it all. It was 2003, and he was Clay Aiken. The pain of his second place American Idol finish left me reeling. It set the stage for a devastating string of losses, beginning at my eight birthday party where I barfed all over the carpet and my guests ran from my house screaming. Real friends would have stayed.

In all seriousness, trust is a motherfucker. It is hard to believe in the same people who allowed a talent like Clay Aiken to come second after such an enthralling performance of Piano Man. 

Reality shows aside, It is hard to trust when you’ve been given a lifetime of proof that people will let you go on hurting. 

The only thing I’m certain of trust is that it cannot exist in a vacuum. Seems obvious but let me explain: you have to be hurt to be able to trust. Silly as it sounds I’m pretty sure I’m right. 

It’s complicated. Being rejected and hurt and cast aside; being cheated on and lied to and fucked over; these are results of caring deeply. These are results of being vulnerable to a point where the mistreatment of the person you are feels bad or wrong. You’ve let yourself be seen, truly. It’s hard fucking work. It’s punk as hell.

Not to get all Brenee Brown–cause Jesus I don’t know if she says anything other than “vulnerability”–but if you let yourself be seen that means you have a self to show people. You made a whole fucking person and you did it all with an IUD. Fucking wild. 

I used to call it “grace”–holding myself up in the face of fear or rejection or hurt. I used to think I just needed to be poised and careful–that if I was to avoid the pain of being left standing alone, I needed to pick and choose what I let people see. I had to choose my words carefully–I had to be x weight and x size–I had to watch others closely. What a crock of shit. 

Trust, I think, has almost nothing to do with other people.

You know what you believe–if you don’t think you know, you’re wrong. That’s okay. I’m wrong all the time, it’s totally cool. You know why you do the things you do, and why you are the way you are. I know sometimes part of who we are is hard and scary and the result of trauma–see a decade-plus of an eating disorder–but what is in our control, is in our control, baby. 

We make decisions all the time, trying constantly to get closer to these things we believe in. I believe, say, that literacy is important–I’m trying to become a teacher. Or I believe, say, that I’d be a really sick frontman–I started a punk band. I didn’t start a punk band but that, dear reader, is irrelevant.

We are doing the absolute best we can with what we have, even if what we have is very little. 

So, knowing this. Knowing that we are trying our fucking best, and trying all the time, we have the knowledge that we are creating a human inherently worth something. We are creating a human worthy of kindness and love and honesty. All people. Always. We are all doing this. 

This is trust I think–knowing that we are always acting in the best possible way we know how. That when we are standing alone in vulnerability, we stand with every decision we’ve ever made–good and bad–and let people look. We know why we’re here. Blacked out in a bathtub–we still know.

Then, the choice is no longer ours. Other people’s treatment of us is not a reflection of the person we are, but instead, an indication of the beliefs that they hold–the ways that they have learned how to be in this world. We know why we’re here, and their treatment of us can be beautiful or feel like shit. Doesn’t matter. We already know why we’re here.

Trusting others to see us, really, is trusting ourselves to be constantly moving towards what we know is right. Which we are, even in spite of ourselves. Even if we lay in bed all day for a week because we are sad and scared–we are preserving and persevering. 

And, dear reader, what is trust if not Clay Aiken persevering. 

I love you so much.

See you next time.

Sincerity is scary: here’s my poetry with frighteningly little irony. Yes, I’m terrified. 

Oh well: Rock n Roll, baby. 

—

Space to Move

This is space in The City.

A kitchen for brushing teeth

A place to sit

A drawer for socks

How lucky I am

Even without a window

In the bedroom.

I sleep with my eyes shut

Anyway.

—

they were old 

someone there to hold your hand 

while they fuss around and fix your bed dressing you

as I undress, touching you just there. the softness getting colder

but never cold, not really. I don’t need you to carry me.

I need you to have been here 

with me here

to have shared this breath just this one.

this last one.

that’s fine, it is

that’s fine. 

—

Space

There is a space

-a vacancy

Between my shoulder blades

Where I often place my hand

In place of remembering

—

I’m imagining a mirror 

the tips of their hair
dripped invisible drips–
colors mixing, turning black
blending into the folds
Of an old shirt of his

he told her they looked good together.

she told him it made her shy
to watch the two of them
together there.

she felt a fawn.

weak kneed, speckled
with white–eyes 

wide and searching
for something steady

he smiled and she
turned her eyes
into his chest

pretending not to see 

the mirror bleeding an 

imperfectly remarkable shade

—

Bright’s Disease, of which she died in 1886

-For Emily Dickinson

And so I sit here, with Emily

As I always seem to do

When I’m scared to die 

Or bored of static minds 

That all snap shut 

On the curves of a woman

I fight through dusty words

The kind that haven’t seen a line

Since she chose them

To carry her

Like wooden shoes—noisey

Uncomfortable on purpose

I think about her often

Not always writing but

Dead too

And how remarkable, truly 

That she should die

Just as she lived

—With a terrible Brightness.

—

The Cubical is not Friendly To Reflection.

In the wreckage of calculous

Of twelve years

Of wars and deals

Six years of Spanish

Novels dissected

The cell turned inside out

In cold terms 

Who died 

At whose hands

When 

For what reason 

Do the tides

Like sky turn 

Blue to red

And still–nothing

The mind turns over

Empty.

—

Chess

Why don’t we play more chess

Why do we fold our napkins

In wild shapes

And why do we cook 

Fried eggs that run

Why do we water our lawns

Why do we pull our hair back

Why do we drive

With bone-white knuckles

Why do we paint

Just the ends of our fingers

Why do we pick at our lips

Why, at the end of each day

Do we not lay down our anxious

Hands and why do we not

Thank the Earth when we eat

Why did we start keeping time 

On the wrists that we pray with

Why, when we look in the mirror 

Do we pinch our skin with the same

Hands we used to 

Give thanks with

That we used to 

Play chess with. 

—

synonymous with

I began my day comparing myself to a small, circular strangeness. It was someone else’s mirror, taken and placed in front of every one of her sentences. Her beauty directed for some reason at my collarbone. I drank coffee, deeply sweetened, and compared myself to this. 

I counted every inefficiency in the female body, and further, my female body. When I reached a number high enough, I continued. This is synonymous with pain, I think.

I want to be synonymous instead of what I am, which is some undesirable reflection. I am at a loss, sincerely, for ways to appropriately alter my body. 

To make it small is limiting on one’s ability to modify—I have far less space to work with 

than originally planned and so I am forced within. There I find only less of the same. 

A bruise so dark it has taken years to bloom and dry up. 

A deep love of the missing bits of memory and old credit cards. Destroyed out of fear or something sinister. 

Destroyed out of fear, I think. Needlessly. 

—

I love you, dear reader.

Without any irony at all.

I know it’s not interesting to talk about therapy, but I’m going to anyway. This is my pity party, after all. I won’t talk about anything current, or even recent; I’ll share with you an experience I had when I was 19 and very afraid. 

I was always very matter-of-fact in therapy; I just wanted to get an answer and be done with the whole mess. I showed worryingly little emotion and felt much the same every time we “talked things through.” 

I thought that if I just got to the bottom–to why I was so afraid–I’d feel better. This way of thinking can be a horrible cycle, as sometimes there just isn’t a definitive why. I could have looked back forever and it wouldn’t have told me how to go on living my life that day. 

So, living perpetually in the past, I went to every appointment with a list of questions all aimed at why. It’s important to ask them, don’t get me wrong–the issue is I was only asking them. 

The most emotion I think I ever showed this therapist was in response to questions completely unrelated to my reason for being there. 

He once asked about a book I was reading–a very good one. I fucking loved the book, but God knows what it was. I think I spoke for nearly half our time, just rambling on about this book I now can’t remember—recounting bits and laughing loudly. 

When time was up, he looked at me and said, “You know who you remind me of?” 

What a great question, always a nail-biter. I waited.

He said, “Chopin.” 

Great. Fucking excellent. A crusty dead man. That absolutely tracks.

 “No.” He said, “His études. Little moments of so much energy, between all these heartbreaking melodies.” 

It is probably the saddest, most weirdly specific thing anyone has ever said to me. So naturally I listened to hours of etudes after that. Looking like a pretentious fuck and feeling very sad, I was trying to know myself. 

This did much more than asking why. I was trying to know myself. It’s a big job, dear reader. An important one.

That’s all I have to say, I think. I wanted to keep this short.

I love you so much.

Sincerely, 

Embarrassingly,

AL

I remember sitting in my hospital bed–I had been there long enough to call it mine–with a monitor attached to my chest. It was a machine to monitor my heart rate, which was projected at every moment to a screen at the nurse’s station. I passed this screen (and squinted my eyes to find my flashing number) when I chose to take my 2 daily allotted laps around the unit. 

I was walking too fast–the nurses would say–I was making the monitor beep; my heart rate was increasing too quickly and that was a risky no-no. But I couldn’t not power-walk down those halls, c’mon. More than my diseased brain wanting to burn as many calories as possible, I didn’t want anyone to see me.The other patients would surely be disgusted by the size of my humongous body. I sincerely thought this, dear reader, with a heart rate monitor attached to my chest. 

It is very hard to think about. It feels important, though, to write about the lies our brains are capable of telling us. 

I looked in the mirror and saw myself distorted—according to it, I wasn’t sick at all; I shouldn’t have been there; I should be at school, at home, with my family. One night my heart rate dropped below 40, and I woke up to a panicked nurse’s face. I wasn’t sick at all. Somehow I believed that. 

It feels both important and self indulgent, dear reader, to talk about the guilt I feel around my illness. It is painful to remember my willfulness towards recovery when I was given so much help. The very strange apathy that comes from wanting so badly to recover for one’s family, yet feeling absolutely undeserving of it is, ya know, a real bitch. 

If this is where you are–if you are fighting through apathy, distortion, fatigue, hear this: you SO have a shot. You’ve got more than a shot, dear reader, you can recover. I promise. Don’t give up, will ya? The number of doctors that nodded, took notes, then told me they thought I couldn’t do it…I was twenty fucking something years old. Do not believe that bullshit. 

Believe sincerity, dear reader. Believe the people who want to help you, truly. You’ll know when you’ve found them. 

I remember sitting in my hospital bed–though it wouldn’t be mine for much longer–and meeting the founder of the eating disorder unit I was in. He looked me dead in the eyes. “I read your chart,” He said, smiling, “You’re going to be just fine.” 

I cried. What else was there to do?

Sometimes you just need to hear it. Maybe he was bluffing, but I couldn’t care less. In those words I heard, “You’ll feel deserving soon.”

I fucking did, man. 

It’s been a year since I’ve weighed myself. 

I love you so much. 

You’re going to be just fine.

Please forgive me, sweet, understanding reader: I’ve written a lyrical essay. It was a practice in being pretentious, but honestly I really enjoyed it. I’ve been thinking a lot about how sincerity in art is subversive, and so I thought maybe telling my story in this way might be kinda

Punk.

–

The Art 

Of             Walking Home

A Sacred Affair–one not without sacrifice, compromise, stockings torn at the thigh. But I am to write about greatness. About my body—bones, I’d say, the greatest of all mismanaged efforts. I have even heard that ribs can float. “We”, all conceptual of course, stand on faulty wiring. Look here. See a neck arranged for tender strangulation. Look there—see a hip set wide to welcome in. To force, assuredly, out. I like leaving–I’ve done it exceptionally for 23 years. Only and entirely. I pride myself on standing easily. “Stay.” And maybe I would. It is novacane, still. 

Steps echo in my bones if I listen. They hit every joint and stay there, rattling. A tiny electric shock–enough to rid the bottom bunk of spiders as I hoped so long to do. I know what it means to walk home backwards. To be a girl reduced to want is expected–to be a girl who wants, condemned. Like blown glass, say. A warm, melting container. To hold–to be of use in fragility and beauty. Above all else, utterly clear. Above all else, somehow still restrained. 

If, truly, there is “nothing good to see in the city” that is where I’ll go. Anorexic at 18, then Anorexic at 20. Anorexic at 23 but with an asterisk. I went to The Met alone. I stood in the middle, and wept. I go every year. Every day, even; alone and trying to get somewhere. Outside, she shuffled a while in her purse. I offered to buy it for her. A stranger. She laughed and found a card. I went to The Met alone.

I was eight when I decided to be skinny. It felt how church was meant to–wrapping my hand around the width of my arm, my leg, my waist. This Is My Body. It Will Be Given Up For You. It didn’t matter who, it never mattered. “You” was enough to empty out. Sincerity is scary, so instead I aimed for agreeable. Sincerity is scary, and so I starved myself ironically. Irony will kill me, certainly, but I still hope to be in love. Inconsequential is fine so long as I am skinny. I won’t write a thing I’ll just listen. I went to the Met alone. I cried in the middle and nobody really minded. 

I think I could be happy there. North of here, and walking, still. Never riding home–though the offer is there. I resent most shoes but these are fine. I’ve worn them right on out.

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Cheers, lovely reader.

I love you tons.

Take care.