stand clear of the closing doors

I am in love, and I buried my best friend’s… I think we’re still best friends, our contact has dwindled over the last 12 months -Admittedly he’s been living in Dubai, Italy and India, and I haven’t seen him since July of last year.  Okay focus, I said I would watch his two cats, and on the 8th day out of 30 - I thought it would be 7, Molly was actively dying on the basement floor when I walked in on Monday. I buried her on Tuesday and wept graveside that afternoon. Thursday I drove up to the mountains with my lover/my guy, and Saturday morning I got my period in the state park women's bathroom. I spoke with the women there about menopause, briefly and carried my blood-stained underwear back to our campsite. 

I am in love, and for the life of me I hate the layout of my apartment. I want to throw everything out into the yard and start again. My back protests. My informally diagnosed ADHD can’t stop thinking about selling everything I own, and starting new with a handful of things. 

I am in love, and my body feels familiar and foreign. The intimacy makes me forget about my body, and instead thinks of closeness, stars behind my eyelids, and weak knees

I am in love, and I am wrestling with a lifetime where I was the only one who met my needs. 

I am in love and I messed up the spacing of my garden beds, and can’t stop buying vegetable plants and seeds. And just a couple -12- more bags of mulch, and the paths between my gardens will breakdown and be a healthy ecosystem. I eat dirty radish sprouts and try not to nibble on my fingertips. My nails are all shredded and broken, I refuse to use gloves.

I am in love with myself, and in love with a man. He loves me. Daily texts and calls, endearments, secrets, confessions, long hugs after long days. Deep romantic kisses in the garden when both our hands are covered in dirty. 

I am in love with myself as I struggle with the softness of my body, and the full and emptiness of life. 

I am in love, and my kitchen is too small for two people.

I am in love, and I have 5 pets, plus his 1 sometimes 2 dogs. Full beds, tangled limbs, dog hair, cat nuzzles. Wimpers and barks. 

I am in love and I want new music to hyper fixate on. 

I am in love and I am struggling on how to spend time with him, and with my other friends, when my own company is so sweet. I don’t know how to make more of myself to spread around. 

I am in love, and …

I am in love, and …

I am in love, and …

I am in love, and  I lost my train of thought. Or it went off the rails….

My hands were slightly wet when I returned to this room. Blessedly, my pup knows my moves better than I do, so he led me to the front of the house, I took him out, and previous me left the burnt popcorn bag of trash on the fire escape.

I found something comforting about the smell as I walked it down the stairs and across the lawn. It wasn’t harsh like office lunchroom microwaves, the burnt paper bag I think part of the worst of the offense. I thought of it then thought of returning to this room and trying to write. Not before I took the overflowing trash cans out. Previous me forgot to take them out on Tuesday.

My hands are foreign to me at moments.

Should. Should. Should. Should.

I made an analogy to my therapist yesterday, yesterday a big blue day. I told her sometimes it feels like people want from me all the time. They want and want, they try to pull me into their lives, but not the good, not the lovely, or shiny but the shitty. The graphic bads. The big sads. Something about me says please tell me your worst, there is space here for you. But a lot of their bads are heavy, and cloying, and impossible to escape. Like tar. The hot sticky and lethal tar that keeps you trapped, warps your skin and pulls off your hair. I apologized for the graphic nature of it and made several more analogies.

“You give the best analogies of anyone I’ve ever met.” She says as I carefully break off pieces of my sad and give them to her for safekeeping.

I haven’t dragged anyone into the bads & sads of my life, not fully. I sometimes share. My therapist gets them after they’ve rolled around in my head. Like those tumbling machines that you can put rocks into, with sand and glass, water, for days and days until they are shiny and stunning and so fucking smooth. I don’t like handing out the jagged unprocessed pieces of me, I could cut someone, or they could cut me. So my therapist gets some, but mostly after time with her I take them and I set them to tumble again with a heavier grit. They could be more smooth, more digestible when I share them with others.

People are surprised about the bads in my life. They don’t believe it until I’ve presented them with proof. Like when you are in the car, and suddenly the traffic is all stopped, “the jam” and then when they finally get to the catalyst it’s the gauk and stare, the drive by nice and slow to catalog the thing that held them up, so they have a reason. They have something to feel lucky about, or sad about, that doesn’t linger. So many things linger with me.

I’m so sick of performing for what I want. I’m so sick of swimming when all I want to do is tread and float and feel blissful. I want this freedom to float and enjoy for everyone. Liberation must be based in care, consideration, and tenderness to yourself and others. I’m afraid we’re all unsure of how to share the jagged bits and pieces to fight for something bigger.

I don’t know the last time I felt bliss. Okay. Maybe it just was fleeting and it’s not now and I’m tired and chasing the bliss just out of reach.

I don’t want fights to ruin things. I want fights to solve things, to reveal a deeper connection. I don’t want tears to gain sympathy. I want tears as a pure form of expression. Of grief, and power and beauty untethered.

I wonder when I’ll get to stop performing for good. Probably when I let go of a lot of this shame and anger.

2017 Housesitting and tired.

I’m a  bit buzzed. Gin, with fresh cucumber, and mint, a greedy bit of ginger ale poured on top. I just rinsed out my glass. I change into my pajamas and I sit in the house I spent the eventful and formative years between 8 years old and 18. 

I’m watching Closer and I hate it. I’m watching Closer and thinking about my past relationships. I’m thinking about if you truly love a person, like really actually care about the little and large things, or if maybe you just find someone who fits beside you in the moment. 

I’m never lonely. I’m too selfish to be. 

I’m wondering what it takes to spend time with someone. To truly spend time with them, to be honest, open, and good. The good. The horrible. The strength, the weakness. Two sides of two coins, facing each other at any given moment.

Closer. It’s the fight scene, the married couple talks about the sex between husband and wife, different from wife and her lover. 

My stomach rolls. I’ve never liked Jude Law. I’ve never liked Julia Roberts. I’ve never known them. I just don’t like how their hands move, how their mouths try to act for them. I don't like this movie at all, but I’ve watched it several times now. I’m 27, the movie is 13. 

I can’t remember the last time I felt whole in my body with another, willing to give it all to another. It’s been months and months, more than a year. 

I don’t recognize myself in relationships, or who i was in my past relationships. I’m unlike most of my female friends. Mostly serial monogamists. The longest relationships I have are my places of strength. 

I’d suppose that I am at my most when I’m single, I’m shiny. That’s when I attract a bit of attention that seems empty to me. Staged, Rehearsed. When was the last time I felt like someone told me the truth? Maybe it was the last time I wanted to heart the truth. 

I’m tired. I…

Unfinished 2017

He asked me to send him a picture of what was in my fridge and told me to tell him about the last time I’d gone grocery shopping. He sent me photos of his lunches, and favorite meals. His view on walks, and videos of the pets around him. He asked me to weigh in on the layout of a potential apartment, by sending me a video of it, then praising me when my suggestions were thoughtful. 

She talked about taking me on family vacations and sent me reminders throughout the day that she was thinking of me. She smiled so big every time the screens would show us each other. She told me how well I’d get along with her brothers and Dad. She shared about the grief she had for her mother and her mother's pets that she ushered into the afterworld. She messaged me on walks, and running errands, she wore shirts she knew I liked and she commented how she wanted to steal my hoodie just because it were mine. She told me my previous idols would have liked me, as she knew them in real life.

He told me he never talked to anyone the way he talked with me. He promised me with his actions that things would be different that time. Truth telling to a level beyond immaturity. He waxed poetry about how he wanted to drink from my lips, and bask in my presence... specifically in his life.

She only held me close in private because I wasn't openly bisexual. She sent me lust filled scathing looks across the bar, and made sure to push me against the wall just right when we were alone. I was enthralled and terrified. I still remember getting to take pictures of her that one time and having all her attention completely on me, behind the lens.

He and I met in a city I had only been in a handful of times, I traced the stab wound scar on his back after only hours of meeting. Shared his bed as we diced out immature lies and truths, only to be friends years down the line... after some misunderstanding.

I nursed my heartbreak of the best man I knew when I was 21 with one of the worst I knew at 23. I managed to call my own bluff and get hurt all the same time. Character development, I told myself. But how many times can you seek the gaze of your lover and see a mask. Carelessness, as I made myself vulnerable to it all.

I want devotion, because I can give it. I want someone on their knees showing me the parts of themselves they don't even know. I want the goodness and trust to do the same. I've spent years trying to figure out what went wrong, halfheartedly telling myself it was timing.

A part of me thinks I stopped daring to dream, wish, manifest and take up room with what I want. Romancing my imagination with words. I stopped writing about the love. I stopped giving myself the room, and instead leaned towards a bit of chaos to distract from the past hurt.

That hurt. A constant companion who makes you wary.

I loved myself fully these last few years. Gave her as much as I could possibly muster, not realizing that there is a bit more and it's missing it's mark. I suppose it's time to steady myself and practice my aim.

2023 Films on my to watch list...

I always have the best on intentions to start reviewing movies in depth, and yet instead I just share on a whim, so here’s a list I hope to watch and review in this new year.

Okay starting off…

Phoebe Waller-Bridge…. Indiana Jones. Say less.

Devastating true story adaptations

Interpersonal relationships and dark comedy:

These seem like they are just going to keep me on the edge of my seat:

I have to. First of all I’ve seen every other adaptation of The Three Musketteers. Then, Eva Green? A woman villain! Speaking french the entire film.

In the probably terrible and entertaining categories:

Alright there’s a start.

Promises, angles, and consequences.

I promised you years ago that I was a mess. I made believers out of nonbelievers. That neck ache view to the pedestal is a bitch and a half, I can tell you... you used to listen, or at least watch my mouth move. Even looking south has my shoulders curved, the length of my spine seemingly knocked down an inch or two. Years later I'm now finally proud of the jump that seemed to leave me lame for a few. Broken pieces, but not noticeable. As they got left for me to move aside into a box or closet. Out of sight, into organized chaos. Meaningful, valuable at another time.

My mess is a breathing exercise. First the shame of not being able to catch on just right. Then losing yourself to the glory of it all. Depth in it. Corners you can keep leaning into. Space. Glorious, selfish fucking space.

When was the last time you breathed so deep the space between your rib cages could swallow territories? Thrash and coax them around on an inhale and throw them back out on an exhale, giant waves of something deeper. Living in the spaces between the essential... stomach, liver, lungs, heart.... for long seconds.

It only takes seconds short or long for scars, tattoos, tragedies and triumphs. I made promises on the deepest knowledge of my heart, soul, and mind. In the past. For people I used to think I could hold onto, leaving the biggest marks, tho seemingly left only on me. I was a little selfish then. The self consuming kind. Now I'm selfish for the push, for the power of momentum. The kind that keeps you alive.

But what is the present without that devious, jealous, all consuming past. The past is a wild fucking ride, cheer-sing your mentors, matching your heroes, forgetting your enemies, begging subconsciously that the glory lives on forever.

It is not enough to say that forever is an ending in and of itself. A mirrored image of you in a mirror. Depending on the angle it's understandable and not. Forever.

I promised you. Did you listen? I want. Constantly. No different from being human, I suppose. But, as I am the one that once sat on the pedestal that's since crumpled, that was on the vessel that rode the deep breaths and toured the world inside me, the one that has claw marks, and ragged claws, I know how deeply I want, it's just making sure that depth doesn't tempt one of two things.

One. A depth, a chasm, that people come and throw their least desirables and curses down. A place for detached hate, fears, and actions.

Or, a depth filled with something familiar but achingly reflective, then I have a narcissus, looking at their reflection in me, but never really seeing.

I have entertained both. I think I keep learning, but the consequences seem to leaver a bigger impact each time. And these days fear and consequence live in the same room. Worst case scenario.

I wonder if I could let things go a little easier if maybe I'd straighten out my spine a little. But, as I promised you. I'm a mess. I just don't have to prove it by showing you.

I made mistakes recently. Many in fact. It doesn't diminish me. I won't let it. I refuse.

I went looking for answers to questions I never voiced. I found hurt that only lived in my memories. I remember vaguely reading and clinging to the idea that that every 7/10/14 years all our skin cells have shed. Started fresh, become new.

It means that one day my skin will have new memories of the words 'I love you' whispered against it. Unfortunately, my bones demand a seat at the table, a voice in the vote. They always have. Growing fast and long. They hold memories from growth to death. As quickly as 8 and 9 years old. I remember coaches, teachers, authority figures commenting on my height and composure. Old soul. Trauma response. If only I could give space for more of an explanation. Not this time, not this space.

I remember at 16 I wanted to be tall, and strong. Those both synonymous because I thought my father strong because he was tall. One time, I was 20, my sister voiced her disgust that I was dating tall brunette men. Which my father was. Which I wanted to be. I wanted to be tall and strong. I wanted to demand a room. I wanted the world to take notice before I had to open my mouth and demand it.

So I dated men who were tall and strong who demanded the room. Through their wit, or looks. Through their ability to make anyone laugh. Self deprecating. Loved, cherished, respected by others, not just my mind in my 20a. Tall but not so brunette also. The pride one had in me, that I've never found again. I cling to those memories, sorry I couldn't reciprocate.

I've never really belonged to another person. Not the way that feels right deep in those demanding bones. I can't fake it for more that a few liquored hours. I say that with no pride, no grit, no give. It's the truth I live with. Some fuel to feed the feelings I manufactured. I felt the spark only because I told myself it was there, not because it was.

I remember leaning into feelings with pure goodness when fueled. Taken advantaged of. I became a beacon for what other people needed from me, not what we could give each other.

I build my own spine out of bamboo every moment, and the moments in between, I forget left uncared for, bamboo splits and cracks, no longer solid and strong one cut and pounded into the ground to stabilize. Dry rot begins.

I don't need someone else to build me a backbone. Never had, never will. I just need a gentle nudge when I get caught staring too long at the coming storm. Thinking about the preparation rather than the ride.

The fucking ride. I remember the first time I let my horse have his head as I galloped along along the ridge of my parent's property, only slightly replicated on the dirt bike as I shifted gears up and pulled back with my wrist on the same path. I don't need a partner. But I want one.

Not for a child, nor a breadwinner. Not for marriage. Not for our friends nor family. I want a partner for me and them. Selfish, perhaps, or maybe because survival, and betterment, at its fullest is shared when you can meet the eyes of someone, or someones who understand the sentiment with few words, and all the feelings.

Fuck if I don't remind myself that time is that one cunt I cant ever seem to grasp nor understand.

Love and hate are lovers and if you tell me otherwise you’re a fucking liar.

Sickly sweet, like lemon and sugar. The weight in one, makes the other its worst version of its self.

I don’t fall in love. I promise. I don’t. I remember when I was 23 and I swore every which way I was in love. I remember my smirk because I knew no one would believe me. I was the pillar of not needing anyone. I was the one waiting. Waiting for it all.

I remember meeting someone the same day I met my best friend Amy, we all three sat together in the corner of the small, smelly english classroom in the small smelly english building on campus. She was firecrackers, she was loose a finger, she was bright glory raining down in the sky after a big bang. She was a story I vaguely remember, maybe about her marrying a man her father’s age when she was 19. I was 19 when I gave up my first kiss, pinned us against the hallway of a college apartment. Pinned like a rare insect. I collected bugs as a teenager.

I swear my heart was in my tongue. I swear hearing feral, terrible details of a teenager married to a man broke my heart and her casual tone made me an accomplice. I don’t remember right and wrong, I remember what people told me and how I could help hold the walls before they would crumble.

I don’t fall in love. And I think may be part of it. I thought I loved the men who thought they saw me. But when you give people a shuttered version of yourself. When you don’t know yourself, how can you let someone in.

The darkest parts of me have only had moments of clarity. The best and worst thing about it, I see the worst of me, and I really like her. She’s a fucking fighter. She is vicious. The age old question of being a woman… Do I want to be her, or am I attracted to her?

Guilty. She is, she’s heavy with it. With sins and celebration. She doesn’t have a regret because if someone doesn’t love her, the weight of love means nothing to her. She understands scars, and blood. She understands fuck ups, and failures. She understands crawling out of the worst versions of ourselves to depth and discovery. To wells of love, and living. Is it instinct, she asks… covered in blood.

Or is it just how some of us live, the hunters. The scarred. The defendants. The ones determined to die on their terms. Victim isn’t a word for some of us, survivor seems a bit performative for her. She sees deeply into the eyes of survivors and can reflect right back. But the word itself has a bitter taste on her tongue. She’s fought so fucking hard, but that one time, she didn’t know how to fight before the fight started.

Instead, she fights against the brutal and unforgiving waves of being. Living isn’t living until you see, feel and acknowledge that you’re on a boat and that the captain you thought was the captain never was, and you have to grasp the title and responsibility in the middle of the biggest storm of your life. Everything you’ve known is a cruise, and instead you must grasp tightly to the reality that you’ve seconds away from a fate as vast and unknown as being hurled into space. You will live or you will die. Will you lose your mind while you are thrown in either direction.

And so you navigate. Seeking acknowledgement that will never come. Fighting tooth and nail against something much bigger and scarier. Do you become bigger and scarier? Do you allow the tides to take you, either into the dark, or maybe to the light.

I know love and hate are lovers. I know life and death are too. Paradise and eternal suffering. But is your hell on earth someone else’s heaven? Can you dream of hell because you understand the fight and how it makes you feel more alive?

June 9th, 2021

Everything smells like humidity and anticipation and neither is doing me any good lately. 

I told myself firmly tonight that I have to leave shit where it lies. Like the 6, yes 6, dead deer I saw on the roads I drove the past in the last 48 hours. I used to stare at road kill. Before it hurt so much to see it all. 

I was about to back my car out of the driveway the other morning and a dead baby bird lay on the windshield. A sacrifice as no nest could have even been close. I thought about scooping it up and burying it in my garden, but I was sick with hurt and loneliness and I ignored it. 

I smell the deer. Seeing the road kill that’s so close from the moment of ... Oh it’s a possum, to ‘oh it’s a cat.” It’s almost always too much for me.  All I think about is childhood films like robin hood where the characters were animals. I think about the animals I saved as a child. The cats I’ve saved as an adult. 

I feel odd in my skin. 31, isolated for so long. Not sure what intimacy feels like. Does it feel like what I was taught to pick up, or care for… the dead animal,  bury in in the ground you have, that land that is and isn’t yours. Return or help the animal that needs it. No holds bar… That’s respect. Intimacy is respect but warmer. 

Even those I love, I don’t know how to love… their way. Oh lord, do I know how to love my way. My love is a she, and she is messy, and warm. She is present and delightful. She will find a way, because it must. She is troublesome, and trickery laced in sweetness. She is challenging, and anticipatory. Intimidating because it has a foundation, first floor and more. She is fine textiles and carefully picked out furniture. A furnished, well cared for house.  My love is racked with that space of want and anticipation. 

Rarely do I ever feel that my live aligns with others. So she and I wait, aggressive, on edge, ready. A predatory where the methods are extinct. 

I love myself, and it’s complicated. I respect myself and it’s complicated. I am my own companion and it’s complicated. She and I both are combative, greedy, and can’t shut her god damn fucking mouth. Not out of spite, not out or hurt, not out of manipulation. Never… because there’s a moment where things are clear, life gives us divine timing when there is distraction and it doesn’t.. and then where they aren’t and the latter seems more common. 

December 22nd, 2020

The fog rolled across the empty road. All I wanted was to get out and stand in front of the head lights of my parked car in the rain and tilt my face up and accept and praise the moment’s beauty. 

Beauty hadn’t appealed to me much except for these drives. The few I had taken. 

I drove past the abandoned airport at the edge of town, next to the diner, and across from the little houses where people i’d never met lived. 

My dad kept his plane there when I was a kid. A Piper Comanche. Stolen native names for things only white men could afford, could profit from. I remember trying to climb the wings by myself. I remember sitting in the pilot’s seat, grounded, with the headset on my head. Too big on my child’s head. 

This town haunts me with memories. Born to the age of 7, then 18 til 31. I don’t know everyone but I know enough. My best friend and I met when we were 6 and 7. He chased me through the halls of the college’s swimming pool. His sister and mine were swimming. 20 years later we re-met at a local bar that used to be a dive, and I preferred it that way. The meeting and the bar. 

This morning, I singed an inch of hair off with a candle I received for my birthday, a fitting start to 31 I think. I laid in bed awake from 7am til 10am, listening to music and reading. I thought about how many people have eaten up parts of my life. Served prettily on a silver dish to them. I think about the people that I invited into my home, and found raiding my cupboards and refrigerator. 

Kindness doesn't disappear with intimacy. Kindness shouldn’t disappear with intimacy. A learned truth that disappears with your first love and loss.  

Don’t get lost, I tell myself. Just pick up your knees and push. Push a little bit farther, a little bit harder. Don’t push other’s it’s not nice. Don’t push your heart, it won’t heal as fast. Push deeper, though. You could love again.

Remember how lovely it is to be looked at like you’re brand new to someone? Remember looking at someone and feeling the wanting familiarity that comes with holding someone’s face lightly between your palms and kissing them. Above the right eyebrow, scattering kisses across the bridge of their nose. On to their lips. Taste. Remember feeling the hair on the back of their neck against your fingertips for the first time, your how their shoulders square off towards yours and you feel content?

Remember car rides? Well, imagine new ones, and they squeeze your knee, or take your hand and kiss the back near your knuckles. Think about reaching out and brushing the fingers of your left hand against their ear. Sit back, and trust them to drive you where you need to be. 

Remember, not always where you must be, but where you need to be, a lookout, or the beach, or maybe just windows down with a good song on going around the block a couple times, or maybe just to the grocery store to pick up two ripe plums. Let the plum juice run down your fingers. Sit on the roof or hood or trunk of the car. Make sure your thigh brushes theirs. Kiss them. 

Think about a kitchen table where you share your mornings, and maybe nights. Think about your legs and feet brushing theirs. Think about lazy morning kisses, hand holding. Hugs. Think about the new ones you’ll share. Push yourself to think new, not compare to old. Think about what will make their day better. Your day better. Your day collectively better. 

Remember yoga at first, how you felt weak, detached, immovable, always trying to catch your breath? Well, that’s not you anymore, you are constantly focusing yourself for the next move, the next pose trusting that the sequence will play out, that eventually after deepening, lifting, trusting, a bit of a challenge you feel exhausted. Eventually you will lay still, quite, motionless, content. 

Eventually love will come again, you’re deepening though, the way you think, feel, the way you exist. Always learn more, challenge more, live more. Don’t get lost. Push, baby. Push. Your effort, that your result only need to effect you. Make yourself proud. Hold yourself to your standard. Don’t brag, explain. Let your passion show your liveliness. 

And don’t forget to savor the stretch, don’t forget to savor the kiss, don’t forget through the struggle, it’s a beautiful thing called existing. Revel at the moon, dance or run till your legs tire. Do deep, go fully. Trust yourself. Share that passion for the outer world with someone else. Don’t forget to fill every crack, crevice, hole in your heart… with affection, respect and love for yourself and the people who have made and continue to make you.


Persephone is leaving. I feel it in the soles of my feet. I feel it like a quilt falling to the floor once upon my slumbering body during a chilly night in bed. Soon we lose the markers of summer on our cheeks and shoulders. The glow we get from heat and sun, and supple earth feeding and holding us. Soon we will put on more as the trees lose theirs. The rhythm of the earth tied to us, and us to it. 

Just slow down. She’s leaving and there’s nothing we can do to convince her to stay. Instead we collect what we can and we batten down for what must come, death and after it rebirth. Ever moving. Every coming and going. Unforgiving, but teaching. Persephone’s leaving slow, but when she’s gone it will feel sudden. She’s leaving just likes she’s left us before, I hope like me, you take a moment to take her hand and praise her for the strength she gives us. 

Appreciation looks a lot different when you slow down and give it purposefully to people, to the earth, to yourselves. What comes isn’t always peaceful, or easy, in fact it takes a lot of strength and expectation on whether we survive this. We have to be here for her on the other side, to greet her as the earth thaws. Strong, better, appreciative, ever evolving. 

Persephone is leaving and she’s now reminding us that when she comes back to us, open armed, ready, that we do not live for the absence, but for anytime we are able to have with her and appreciate her.

I’m sweating more than I have in years. It could be the heat. Or the state of these “united” states. It could be my refusal to air condition my apartment. Selfish for that thick air dissipating before a storm comes rolling in. It could be the deep introspection isolation takes, or self education, or the fights I refuse to step back from. 

I remember having friends I no longer have. 

The light of the hardware store sign across the street just flickered out. Maybe a timer…

I find peace in meditating before bed these days. In personal pleasures. Cold brewed tea. A garden filled with the rewards of my singular labor. Dunking my body into the water trough I asked my mom for, now nestled in my backyard, once used for the since passed horses from the farm. 

Remembering. I remember when I did labor for others. So soft, treading carefully to provide for others, then roughly, forgetful, unsure. Those rewards not nearly as sweet. I’ll tell you that. 

I do miss the easy physical nature with friends now gone. God damn, what I wouldn’t give for soft affection, or even a crushing hug. I miss slightly sloppy kisses on my cheek, or even a rough harsh SMACK on the ass, and arms thrown around my shoulders. Flipping off a close friend with a grin on my face even seems nostalgic these days. Mirrored in my 20s, now seeking depth and sincerity while being devilish in my 30s.  

Intimacy seems to be around the corner on a never ending road. Just ahead. Maybe. Sickly sweet humidity makes me think of the wrestling of making out, roaming hands, exalted breaths from smiling mouths, words off the tongue between me and those caught in my web, me in theirs. Soaking wet, nude dancing in the rain, sharing kisses with a beautiful woman. Drenched after a skinny dipping session filled with me throwing back my head and living as a muse of affection and attraction from the callused hands of men who I’ll never speak to again. My bare shoulders pressed against a building as mouths spoke a wordless language. 

What will intimacy look like on the other side of this. Not a question, as you can see by my punctuation. 

I see wooing, yes, even in my impatience. And that I am. Impatient. I type that with a sly smile on my face. Oh, how to freely touch someone, reverence and slight belonging. Some of you lucky assholes don’t revel in the intimacy of free and safe touch these days, and I’m here to glare at you with my words. Complain not to me, fuckers. 

 I am a greedy mother fucker when it comes to the intimacies given to me, allowed to me, gained by me. I am a greedy mother fucker when it comes to the truth syrup of moments made safe. Safe. A laughable word in this current world. 

This lack of safety, and lack of physical affections makes me daydream of violence. A double edged sword I will not be shamed of. Accept me, my love, for exactly as I am. I live on the edge of fantasies of breaking bones, and sharp edges. 

Take my sweaty, conniving, tempted, argumentative, socially starved ass for what she is. Magnificent, learning, trying, the patron saint of failing. I will kiss your brow, and run my fingers through your hair, only to be pulled away wishing you the best as I’ll never see you again, or maybe just because sleep pulls me from you. 

I am finding with myself, moments given and taken away. I am my own keeper these last few years, a pandemic placing even more “responsibility” on my lap, distracted by my own care, I tend to move from here to there with the best of intention. We’ll see how long I can keep keeping. I have faith, but proof comes in reality I made a way too sour bunch of overnight pickles, and mouth puckered I refuse to give up on them. A talent or a torture? Who’s to decide. 

I lick my fingers after eating medium rare steak, I slice a lemon in half dunk it in sugar, and suck the sweet and bitter nature of it, no mercy, not even for myself. I pluck sun ripe tomatoes from the vines I planted and pop them in my mouth, braless, short shorts in my garden, dreaming of 15 acres and no visible neighbors. 

I dance through this apartment, not another soul stepping foot in residence in 133 days, I watch my 13 year old cat wither away daily, and my 2 year old cat chatter with birds on the other side of the screen window. I weep for the woman my grandmother was when I was 17, and I never knew. I weep for my mother as she gave me every good trait I posses, at the expense of her own path. 

I won’t lie to you. I learned how. I promise, I can lie prettier than most. My bottom lip going soft and shoulders dipping just how you’d like. Reading what you most like to hear. But it means nothing anymore, not my lies. They used to comfort. Not anymore. There’s nothing my half-heartedness will give to you that you couldn’t find on some corner of the internet. I won’t even lie to myself anymore, because she really doesn’t need that. 

I soak my hands in rain water, I leave those begging too much of a me, they’ll never see beyond their needs. 

I look in mirrors and love myself with words, and dance moves. I am training right this very moment for everyday for the rest of my life. 

I love myself with my mess, and my talents. The other side of this will surely not distract me from the true lessons learned this time around. 

I won’t be small, I won’t be quiet. I won’t be what someone demands of me, what someone desires of me because god fuck, damn, how fucking terrible to be a projection of someone else’s half-formed opinions, or their understanding. 

I will be the dark and terrifying thunderstorm rolling in, I am the break in humidity. I am the sweat rolling down your chest. I am the tickled of your hair on your neck. I am the way your ass shakes on a jump and skip. I am the flooded lawn, I am the wasp that sneaks into your open window. I am the corner taken a tad too fast on the backroads. I am the crunch of a garden cucumber un your mouth. I am the perfect piece of ice on your tongue. I am the slippery grilled corn on the cob you’re delighted to eat. I am the flash floods that you watch on the road. I am the movie you watch to fill your soul when it feels empty. I am the sunset after a fucked day. I am foremost these things to myself, and I’d like to maybe someday be those things for you. Or maybe just one or two. 

BEING ANTI-RACISM isn't just about posting/talking/engaging when and where it's "comfortable". I always think about my business, local, and familial connections and not engaging for certain reasons on FB. But that's just my privilege, and inherent ease my skin color and gender has made in my life.

I know changing the minds of people who don't acknowledge their racism isn't going to happen on social media, but I know I can attempt to share INFORMATION and call out and clean house on anyone who is racist instead of letting them have space in my online presence to spout their ignorant or racist opinions. "FREE SPEECH" can happen on your own fucking timeline, "bud".

You weren't born racist, you were raised in a society that allowed your skin color to make your life easier, and the concerns and stressed and inequality of black, indigenous, asian, latino, and anyone else who doesn't present white be LESSER TO YOU BECAUSE IT DOESN'T AFFECT YOU DIRECTLY. "THAT LIFE IS HARD ENOUGH FOR ME, RACE DOESN'T INVOLVE ME".

Liberals are racists, conservatives are racists. Your ancestors were racist, and just like the recipes we were handed down, generation to generation, we white people are taught racism.

This isn't about political parties (OUR GOVERNMENT AND IT'S INSTITUTIONS AS A WHOLE WAS BUILT BY RACISTS).

Our Government was built to serve and protect people who look a certain way, present a certain way, and make a certain amount of money. THAT'S THE WAY IT IS. THAT'S NOT HOW IT SHOULD BE.

I KNOW my internet presence isn't going to change the way society works, but it makes my community work better as a space where true equality is something we strive for. Specifically asking my white friends and family to look at what makes your life easier than someone else's. And in turn actively working towards something better.

It's about looking at YOUR RACIST thoughts, feelings, reactions, and dismantling them, calling out the racists in your life and providing information for them to do the work at dismantling your own racism. IF YOU ARE DISGRUNTLED AT ME FOR POSTING THIS OR HAVE AN "ARGUMENT" WITH IT, YOU ARE RACIST.

I'm not discrediting anyone's difficulties in life. ESPECIALLY NOW.

I'm saying YOUR SKIN COLOR DIDN'T MAKE YOUR DIFFICULTIES WORSE. This isn't about all lives. This isn't excusing "NOT ALL".

Please watch this: (https://www.instagram.com/p/CAtJnvbHFG7/).

This is about any life that isn't white and why we've allowed and excused the extreme trauma and abuse that POC have to carry around, and confront constantly on top of the day to day struggles we all have as humans.

Share information. Please take a minute to read these posts I share, and maybe further investigate the racism that you have been conditioned in, and that most of us have THRIVED in, and how absolutely FUCKED that is.

TAKE ACTION IN YOURSELF AND OTHERS AGAINST IT.

Resources are aplenty, but Rachel Cargle is one with information abounding... starting here and compensating your educators is key:

https://linktr.ee/1thatgotawayy



“You aged as I suspected you would.”

“That’s what you would say?”

“Yes,” she tapped her lower lip with her finger. “Yes. mmhm.That’s what I would say.”

“Okay, let me repeat the scenario…” he said, “We leave here tonight, slowly get to know each other, fall in like, fall in love, get comfortable in each other’s company, commit publicly to each other, move in together after a year and a half of dating. Then we are together for 8 years we almost get married, we break up, 9 years go by and that’s what you say when I see you?”

“Yes.”

“I’d probably tell you that I’m sorry I missed 9 years of you.”

“Bullshit.” She said, laughing. “Bull-fucking-shit.”

“What, why?” He looked affronted. 

“Because.” she said, “that’s just sad. People only say sad things when they’ve got nothing else to say. Mine can be designated into two categories. One, you age like shit, you know it, I know it. It’s a direct hit that can still be considered polite depending on my tone. The other being you aged like I’d always hoped and I’m giving you this slight nod of understanding, and appreciation, tinged with a pinch of sadness. Not enough to bring the room down, allows for further conversation.”

“You’re terrifying.” he said.

“That’s right! Then I’d walk away and leave you to buy your wife and kids those ice pops they’d requested. I’d grab the band aids and Neosporin I needed and we’d never see each other again.”

“So we’re in the grocery store?”

She hummed again. “Grocery store, a Target near an airport across the country, a Walmart/truck stop near where you and your family are camping and I’m driving down the interstate. Something dumb, and run of the mill and the kind of opportunity where the cameras could have followed us through the aisle and we could have missed each other. Maybe you’re family’s in the car and I have a bleeding person in mine. Maybe we don’t even get to say it, maybe we check out in the same line 12 minutes apart.”

“So you’re a pessimist?”

“I think I just have a dark, comedic mind, and overactive imagination.” She said dipping her chin and smiling. 

Top Shows, Series, Specials & Movies

Shows/Series

  • Schitt’s Creek

  • Godless

  • Shameless

  • Bob’s Burgers

  • Fleabag (Season 2)

  • 30 Rock

  • Rick & Morty

  • Sharp Object

  • Arrested Development

  • The Witcher

  • High Maintenance

  • Pushing Daisies

  • North & South

  • Trailer Park Boys

  • The Chef Show

  • Madmen

  • The Office

  • True Blood

  • Santa Clarity Diet

  • 6 Feet Under

  • You

  • Scandal

  • Parks & Recreation

  • Sherlock

  • Marvelous Mrs Maisel

  • Pride & Prejudice (1995)

  • Spinning Out

  • Gilmore Girl’s

  • To All The Boy’s I’ve Loved

Netflix Comedy Specials by:

  • Mike Birbiglia

  • Tom Segura

  • Taylor Tomlinson

  • Hannah Gadsy

  • Katherine Ryan

  • Bill Burr

  • Dave Chappelle

  • John Mulaney


Movies:

  • Comedy

    • Sleeping with Other People

    • Trainwreck

    • Because I Said So

    • Sabrina (1954 & 1995)

    • For A Good Time Call

    • Miss Congeniality

    • Forgetting Sara Marshall

    • Band Aid

    • Clueless

    • Booksmart

    • Bridesmaids

    • The Little Hours

    • Down with Love

    • Pillow Talk

    • Disney’s Robin Hood

    • Shaun of the Dead

    • The Big Lebowski

    • The Birdcage

    • Roman Holiday

    • Death Becomes Her

    • The To Do List

    • A League Of Their Own

    • The Importance of Being Earnest

    • Charlie Bartlett

    • Best In Show

    • Hot Fuzz

    • Some Like it Hot

    • My Fair Lady

  • Drama

    • The Guernsey Literary Potato Peel Pie Society

    • Frances Ha

    • 21st Century Woman

    • Mansfield Park

    • Persuasion

    • Charade

    • Call Me By Your Name

    • Apocalypse Now

    • Once Upon A Time in Hollywood

    • Little Women (2019)

    • Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

    • Pride & Prejudice (2005)

    • Bad Times At The El Royale

    • Harold & Maude

    • Lost in Translation

    • About Time

    • Gosford Park

    • The One I Love

    • Gone Girl

    • Mad Max Fury Road

    • Stranger Than Fiction

    • Strictly Ballroom

    • The Fall

    • Nobody Walks

    • Anna Karenina

    • The Fighter

    • Marie Antoinette

    • Beginners

    • The Darjeeling Limited

    • An Education

    • Cool Hand Luke

    • The Sting

    • Drinking Buddies

    • The Hours

    • Lawless

    • Little Miss Sunshine

    • Bronson

    • Catch me if you Can

    • The Philadelphia Story

    • The Graduate

    • Fantastic Mr. Fox

    • Django: Unchained

    • Fargo

    • The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

    • Rear Window

    • The Dressmaker

    • Lars & The Real Girl

    • Much Ado About Nothing

    • The Revenant

    • Longest Ride

    • A Single Man

    • Practical Magic

    • Chef

    • Big Fish

    • In Your Eyes

    • Amadeus

    • Obvious Child

    • Blue Valentine

    • True Grit

    • Stand By Me

    • V for Vendetta

    • Road to Perdition

    • The Truman Show

    • The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

    • North by Northwest

    • Witness

    • There Will Be Blood

    • Ex Machina

    • Romancing the Stone

    • Mildred Pierce

    • Rebecca

    • Vertigo

    • Jane Eyre

    • Amelie

    • Safety Not Guaranteed

  • Musicals

    • Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

    • Blue Hawaii

    • Please Don’t Eat The Daisies

    • Hello, Dolly!

    • Singing in The Rain

    • Viva Las Vegas

  • Action/Adventure

    • Batman Begins

    • The Mummy

    • The Accountant

    • Lord of The Rings

    • Indiana Jones

      • Last Crusade

      • Raiders of the Lost Ark

    • The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

    • Blade Runner 2049

    • 007

      • Casino Royale

      • Quantum of Solace

      • Skyfall

      • Spectre

      • Die Another Day

    • The Spy Who Dumped Me

    • The Guest

    • Drive

    • Revolver

    • Snatch

    • The Gentlemen

    • Brother Where Art Thou

    • Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World