A pack of dogs

 

How quickly I move in and out of limerence 

I don't want to dye my hair pink but I do want to live in a world where people can, and they can still be taken seriously 

Five and a half miles around the circumference of the lake 

At the teach-in 

At the slide of silver linings 

At the time for your efforts is now, and also then, but certainly 

now 

Every new thing I learn about my country's maneuverings abroad is more horrifying than the last horrifying thing that I learned 

Perhaps we deserve our suffering

Similarly, those eighteen months: a progression of horrors 

I am ashamed to tell you how horrible it was 

For their part, my siblings continue not to do their part 

For the claim that he was making art, I have fired my therapist 

I get massages instead, teasing out all the emotions I've stashed in my shoulders, tucked into my hips, stuffed deep in the center of my left calf

After the hike I eat a large salad with chicken 

I stretch

I watch a comedy show 

For 21 minutes I remember how to laugh 

Gag

 

Of course, I overdid it 

Prickling my flesh 

I rip the hoodie off 

My favorite part of today was when she wanted to help me garden 

This week I am struggling to feel happy even when I'm with people whose company I typically very much enjoy. A lot of the time I'm faking a good time. So far one person has called me out on this. I'm grateful for it. 

Another one of those spiral epiphanies: I am afraid that other people will find me too much 

I'm textbook

Gag me with a spoon 

Fantasizing in the bathtub 

Early years with the faucet 

Most especially I don't want them to know the litany of traumas 

Who wouldn't be repelled by someone as broken as me 

Some people are saying 

Child, remember to breathe 

Housemade soups are back

I think it's time to admit that I'm unlikely to develop the hobby of crocheting my own clothes 

Frankly I just like knitting scarves, and then only rarely 

Treat yourself to tallow! 

I will try to remain resolute about the fact that anything can happen 

He can't figure me out 

Past the kumquats, she read it on a sign 

Just change two letters

Stop faking 

Stay focused on what you want for your own life 

Red

 

At the membership desk a decorous woman replaced my Dad's name with my own 

We walked the brown meadow until she got hungry 

We walked through one glass building and then another 

I told her what the dots were for

I forget sometimes how little she believes me 

One of the bonsai is approximately 800 years old 

We walked to the lake but the water was gone 

What is the eye without water

We are little but flesh and bone 

tired

 

I work for a few hours, then head to the garden 

On the way there a man leers at me from a van at a stoplight  

I glare into him and he doesn't stop

They are emboldened

Fifteen years ago on the streets of happy valley: so skinny and weak, and all the young men leering 

I have not missed being prey

At the garden I chop and rake and bend and scoop 

I drive to the natural food store and buy kale, yogurt, coconut milk, bok choi 

When I pull into the driveway I'm too tired to get out of the car 

Maybe I will stay here, in the front seat of the Subaru parked in the driveway 

I have food to last for days: kale, yogurt, coconut milk, bok choi, a glass jar of concord grape juice 

I'll warm myself by the bags of decomposing leaves and garden clippings on the back seat 

My toe hurts

 

It is shades of blue and yellow and purple and it hurts to bend it 

It hurts to walk

You won't see me limping 

Turn me on again

 

I wish I hadn't stopped making music 

I'm not sure anybody knows that one of my favorite colors is camel. which is a pretty silly name for a color 

The person I most want to fuck right now is Chappell Roan's drummer 

I'm sorry if I'm being problematic 

I feel like I'm not allowed to say that I was partly living out of a car and sleeping on my friends' couch ten years ago, with less than $340 to my name after I spent my life savings ($3,500 earned over nine years of working) on a Subaru Forester. But the truth of the matter is that I was partly living out of a car and sleeping on my friends' couch ten years ago, with less than $340 to my name. And nowhere else to go. 

Now I am lying in a Queen-size bed that I bought for myself in a house that I bought entirely by myself. Then I was making more money than I ever thought possible and now I am making less money on purpose, because I am trying to do more of something meaningful. And in the center of all of that money, and the lack of it, the having more and the having less, is me, a person, who has a name. 

I have been fortunate, and I have also been effortful  

I have efforted 

Here I am another layer into the spiral 

Learning again, not surprising and also epiphanic, the same lesson and also different, deeper: If you aren't able to be yourself with people, no matter how many you surround yourself with, you're still alone