i. open hands are hard to hold
This song. on repeat. to break me open, to reach the grief, and the truth of what I know.
ii. breath is the only way to survive
This song, on repeat, as if it could save me.
And because it has saved me, over and over, for almost two decades.
iii. we must break the boxes
Of all of the boxes I have twisted, contorted and shrunk myself to fit into, in the name of what I called love, none have been smaller than the boxes I have built with my own two hands.
iv. the arithmetic of worth: unwanted doesn’t mean unworthy.
Undesired ≠ Undesirable
v. it is never too late
”As long as you are alive, it is never too late to be found”
Blue Sisters, Coco Mellors
”As long as there is another day, there is another day”
Lidia Yuknavitch
vi. return to self begins with this question
One of the most excruciating and revealing questions I know to ask myself:
Where and how am I being complicit in my own diminishment?
vii. get off the train
viii. a true poem requires a true life
Sometimes the hardest part about starting to write a new poem is knowing which opening line is true:
I become a woman who has forgotten how to want.
or
I need so much that wanting has become a distant, foreign thing.
or perhaps
Why am I afraid to know the truth of the wanting?
If I know, I will have to change my life.
In order to write a true poem, we often first have to write our way to the truth.
In order to write our way to the truth, we have to be relentless about making sure we are living a true life.
ix. the only way out is through
source: https://www.tumblr.com/probuccalfat
x. everything will change if you do
When the moon was full last month, hanging low and heavy in the sky, lighting the world on fire, I took a good, long look and asked her, “What do I need to know right now?”
The moon took a good, long look back at me and smiled sadly before replying.
“I’ve been showing you the answer to this question for quite some time.
You can look at what I’m illuminating or not. No pressure. It is always your call.
The only thing is, if you don’t look, nothing will change.
The only other thing is, everything will change if you do.”
xi. we are not always ready to realize our own deepest desires
Tell me: What do you most want, right now?
No, wait, don’t answer that yet.
First, tell me this, if I were a genie and could grant your wish, exactly as the thought formed in your head when you read my question, would you want me to deliver that want, right now in this very moment?
Or would you turn your back on it, overwhelmed with the possibility of what having your desire realized might mean?
The answer to the first question will tell you a great deal.
The answer to the second? That one has the power to change everything.
xii.
”Settling down is the goal we are told to have.
Which is why unsettling feels like the holiest work.”
Rebecca Woolf
Continuing to carry what no longer fits is a heavier burden than the grief of letting go.
Alex Elle
xiii. pay attention, this all ends
We do not ever know when the last time will be the last time.
This alone is reason enough to bring a holy sort of reverence to the entirety of everything.
xiv. there is no love without losing
xv. love lives in the impossible tenderness
We know by now, it isn’t love that keeps it all going. We know that chemistry and desire are the least of it.
It’s the willingness to be inside that impossible tenderness—to abide. That’s what does it. That’s where the hope lives.
That tenderness you want to run from, my love?
It is what will save you, if you let it. The doorway to the whole damn thing.
The crack where love gets in.
xvi. an invocation for what comes next
I do not know what this new year will hold, or what the next 12 months will deliver to my door, to my tender heart, to the animal of my body. I do not yet know how I will show up for love, what truth I will speak, how I will be changed by the months to come.
And so all I can do is ask that this year come to me kind, but not the sort of kindness that placates and mollifies, the sort that blazes light into all the dark corners and illuminates what needs relief and then holds you in the aftermath until you are ready to stand again.
I ask that she come to me gentle, in the way that fierce lovemaking can still be gentle, when what is held between two bodies is too ferocious to be tamed or limited, but too reverent to be anything but eternally safe.
I ask that she bring me closer to my voice, my magic, that she thin the veil between worlds and let the wisdom of my ancestors settle deeper in my bones.
I ask the year to come, and all the months and days and weeks and hours and minutes and seconds she holds, to carry me gently into the holy wisdom of what comes next.
xo.
jlb.
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xiii. pay attention, this all ends
Loved all of these, but that one spoke to my soul this morning.