“Human beings are such knotted, desperate pieces of work - it’s a rare thing to know one completely, to the core, and still love him.”
is it weird that i dont know you at all
but i crave you as deeply as the day goes
as darkly as the night cries
i want pieces and shards of you
lodged in my skin
i want your scent wrapped around
my waist in the morning
i want your lips open with enough space
to fill you.
i want to feel you
Play:
“‘Live each day as if it’s your last’, that was the conventional advice, but really, who had the energy for that? What if it rained or you felt a bit glandy? It just wasn’t practical. Better by far to simply try and be good and courageous and bold and to make a difference. Not change the world exactly, but the bit around you. Go out there with your passion and your electric typewriter and work hard at…something. Change lives through art maybe. Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved, if you ever get the chance.”
Desert Sestina by Susan Sink
I feel at home in Joshua Tree’s desert.
There’s peace in the vast emptiness,
the illusion that you could never get lost
because you can see so far, and sounds carry
over desert like they carry over water,
alerting others to your presence on or off the trail.
Have you ever noticed how two women on a trail
will talk and talk, never running empty,
but couples are more quiet? In the desert
they stop briefly to share a bottle of water
as if time together allows them to be at a loss
for words, or many ways to show they care.
I pay attention to these things now; I care
what brought these people to the desert,
and wonder if it makes them feel full or empty,
the barren rock beneath a sky the color of water.
I know it’s hard for anyone to stay on the trail
and in the world, as in the desert, easy to get lost.
--------------------------------------
JOSHUA TREE REVISITED by Dawn Huntley Spitz
Ageless rocks stand like desert monuments,
Trees with spiky arms reach toward the sky.
Roads snake into endless wilderness
Distant views bemuse the eye.
Sandy trails slice through unyielding brush
Where shy inhabitants slither, crawl and run,
Bold wildflowers in radiant colors
Lift their heads to the relentless sun.
Vast and wild, the park calls to adventurers
Who roar along its roads in fearless quest.
While those who come to look for sanctuary
Soon discover gifts of beauty, peace and rest.
Some say this place is where the spirits dwell
And who’s to know who has not felt its spell?
“Does everyone feel this way? When I was young, I was perpetually overconfident or insecure. Either I felt completely useless, unattractive, and worthless, or that I was pretty much a success, and everything I did was bound to succeed. When I was confident, I could overcome the hardest challenges. But all it took was the smallest setback for me to be sure that I was utterly worthless. Regaining my self-confidence had nothing to do with success… whether I experienced it as a failure or triumph was utterly dependent on my mood.”
Willow Smith is an anomaly. She is 15 and just came out with her first album (available on Spotify).
At age 13, she wrote and produced the first track in the playlist, Your Love. She writes music like she's been on the planet for decades. I had tickets to see her on Valentines Day, but I left the house too late, and only made it to see her chilling in the parking lot after the show in knee high glitter socks and converse.
I connect to how she is experiencing her adolescent years, filled with moments of insecurity and uncertainty. Her songs "Roll Up" and "Chinese," struck me in particular, and reminded me of growing up and being a female in this backward world.
It's hard to be young. The world telling you who and what is important, and none of it applies to you.
At 23, I still not feel doubts I felt a decade ago, ask questions I asked a decade ago.
“Let someone love you just the way you are – as flawed as you might be, as unattractive as you sometimes feel, and as unaccomplished as you think you are. To believe that you must hide all the parts of you that are broken, out of fear that someone else is incapable of loving what is less than perfect, is to believe that sunlight is incapable of entering a broken window and illuminating a dark room.”
With us,
there is no other half.
No “you complete me"s.
No “without you I’m nothing"s
Yesterday
my flight was cancelled
and I wanted to run to another
airline counter and
buy the next ticket home,
just so I could see you that night.
I miss you. Acutely.
My missing is a fire licking
at my throat. The absence of you
is a flame threatening to pour
out of my mouth and shake hands
with my loneliness. I’m burning
in it. But I’m still something.
So we don’t do incompletes.
We don’t tell each other
we’re nothing without the other.
You’re not here and I’m lonelier. I’m less person
and more flame. I’m licking
smoke off my bottom lip
and tasting all of the ways I can
miss you, but still, I’m something.
Always.
Still Something, Lora Mathis
“1.
I say, ‘I am fat.’
He says ‘No, you are beautiful.’
I wonder why I cannot be both.
He kisses me
hard.
2.
My college theater professor once told me
that despite my talent,
I would never be cast as a romantic lead.
We do plays that involve singing animals
and children with the ability to fly,
but apparently no one
has enough willing suspension of disbelief
to go with anyone loving a fat girl.
I daydream regularly
about fucking my boyfriend vigorously on his front lawn.
3.
On the mornings I do not feel pretty,
while he is still asleep,
I sit on the floor and check the pockets of his skinny jeans for motive,
for a punchline,
for other girls’ phone numbers.
4.
When we hold hands in public,
I wonder if he notices the looks —
like he is handling a parade balloon on a crowded sidewalk;
if he notices that my hands are now made of rope.
5.
Dear Cosmo: Fuck you.
I will not take sex tips from you
on how to please a man you think I do not deserve.
6.
He tells me he loves me with the lights on.
7.
I can cup his hip bone in my hand,
feel his ribs without pressing very hard at all.
He does not believe me when I tell him he is beautiful.
Sometimes I fear the day he does will be the day he leaves.
8.
The cute hipster girl at the coffee shop
assumes we are just friends
and flirts over the counter.
I spend the next two weeks
mentally replacing myself with her
in all of our photographs.
When I admit this to him
we spend the evening taking new photos together.
He will not let me delete a single one of them.
9.
The phrase “Big girls need love too” can die in a fire.
Fucking me does not require an asterisk.
Loving me is not a fetish.
Finding me beautiful is not a novelty.
I am not a fucking novelty.
10.
I say, ‘I am fat.’
He says, ‘No. You are so much more’,
and kisses me
hard.”
