You're Looking Like You're Looking For Something

My Things on a Pedestal

I wonder if I hold on to the things that remind me of home. The purse and bags I carry, the sweaters I wear, the places I visit when I need a break from reality. All of these things are the same, whether I am here or there. Today I wore the sweater, carried my laptop in the bag, and ordered the same meal I ordered more than a year before. And I carry with me everywhere what I bought in June nearly two years ago, the purse I have yet to replace, that has traveled with me back and forth and been my companion. Is it simply that I want to be reminded of home, of a place where I feel happier, softer, sweeter? Or is it my longing for the place that I hold on, is it the idea that by given them up, replacing them with other, newer things, I will have lost something dear while it is so far away. As if I cannot allow myself the luxury of a new purse simply because I am not yet home. Simply because, to replace it would mean that here is where it dies. Here is where it stays, replaced, and without use for it, I somehow stay here. If I move on by moving up to a new bag or sweater, I am comfortable, and somehow promising I will never return to the place I was best. It’s as if, somehow, these things are destined to be mine until I can return home and replace them proper. Or maybe I just like the way it feels.
I still love this sweater, and the bag that I’ve fixed up so it won’t break. And the purse—even though sometimes I hate it more than life—I can just never find a suitable replacement. These are my things. My true things. Which I will not let go without knowing I can.
Maybe, when I return, someone will convince me I’ve had them all too long, and we’ll go shopping for more.

January 25, 2008
If Only You Could Hear Me Out

She Said "You're a Masochist"

Roll Up Your Sleeves

Why do I get this feeling
that life is harder without you
so close and so easily obtainable—
so easily found on street corners
were buildings are tall enough to swallow
our small hearts?

If there weren’t an ocean of grass and land
maybe life would be less heavy,
maybe I would feel less hard—
stone walls and glass barriers and
borders I put up—seemingly impenetrable.

If trees as fierce as skylines, cold
and metal and cruel,
didn’t appear in the distance;
if they were as beautiful as
small pines in the past, left behind with
all the things deemed so difficult
maybe I would be kind.
Maybe I would be gentle.

I get this feeling the world would
be softer if you weren’t
a distant thing, long sought after.
And I ask it, all around me, the cars
and concrete and cold steel,
I ask the world: “when will I be soft?”

When will I begin again, closer
to you, swallowed and whole
in the belly of the world
so distant I can’t but feel
the world would be easier
if it were close.

January 25, 2008
So Roll Up Your Sleeves

Full of Things Even I Don't Understand

In the Sun


I made a decision today—the kind that plague my life, full of worry and the possibility of regret—and worse, the chance I’ve ruined my opportunity. But, unlike so many others, all those decisions I’ve made that have racked my body with grief and fear, this one I hardly questioned. This one I didn’t fear. This one, I stepped out and rook a risk, believing whole heartedly that taking a risk truly will do us all some good. I was never before one to risk. It was unnecessary, earlier in my life, to risk what I had—which was absolutely nothing, although I wasn’t aware. I did it, though, eventually, without regret, with everything I knew on the line. I experienced phenomenal fear, but I stepped right out and chose it. Once I had, the door was opened. Something, in that first risk, was available to ruin, and I allowed that chance. I survived, taking another risk soon after, exceptionally pleased each time with the outcome. But then, I stopped; I moved back to Oklahoma; I returned to play-it-safe—for safe is the only word I can think to describe it. In fact, it wasn’t safe, I wasn’t safe. Not from myself. I endangered my future. I, on some unknown, childish, God-fearing level, refused to resign to safety. I lived, and in many ways, I failed as often as I succeeded. I risked everything—the life I wanted, and the person I was. I put her on the line. I lost her. She went, gone to a sea of problems, fears, regrets, and the inability to learn. I lost her, risking what I had left to replace who I was. I found along the way that a move to safety hadn’t been a risk I was willing to take. Thus, I changed part of who I was; a new person possibly emerged. Until this day, I thought one had. Now I know I had only changed enough to satisfy my needs, not enough to satisfy my wants. I feel, today, however, that the risk is ripe for the time, and the place; and the girl destined to survive will be the one I must eventually be. Not to mention, it will end with a city and a hope that’s new but familiar, and worth all the risk.
I dropped out of school today. Returned my books and left the campus a weight lifted. As if something had truly changed. All I can do is understand my deepest desire, and from there find my own way toward it. It is a risk, but more for the sale of salvation and security, and hope. It’s a risk of character, I suppose, one I have never been truly willing to make, despite my many lines about personal change. I’ve been satisfied by the little changes I’d made in order to survive. However, without further change, I might as well have never made them at all. Even today I wonder about my true willingness—how I advocate personal change on a daily bases, spending many an hour writing these odes to new beginnings. I wonder if I will do it and I know myself enough to worry. But, I am not allowing myself a declaration of dedication. I will not right another note of personal motivation—and redundancy. I haven’t taken the risk to change who I am, so I have placed school on the backburner to find who I am. And to find my way home. I want to go home. I no longer want to be satisfied with what little change I have made, as difficult as it was. I want to, finally take a risk worth taking, once against, and not emerge on an act of luck but with an ability to survive.
I made this decision with as much rationality as I could allow, and then I did it, with one swift motion. From here I know where I will go. I know what I should do. I know how to finally deliver myself home. It isn’t going to hurt, this risk, not in the long run, not the way I’ve been hurt before. It’s simply time to go home. It’s time to put myself out in the sun, as I have pledged many times before. It’s time to make everything that’s been put wrong right once again—even if I’ll only see it turn again. It won’t be without worth, whatever I do.
I once wrote that my heart was shattered, but when I put the pieces back I was able to sew in the holes that previously perforated the surface. I hadn’t finished the sutures, and they ripped again, pulling the muscle apart. Those holes can’t be shut if the pieces can’t heal and scars can’t form. I wasn’t ready, to perform open heart surgery, to crack my ribs and cut right through the mess. It’s time to mend the poor thing, allow the scars to heal. And they will form, a sacrifice I cannot ignore. The holes will disappear, behind scars and sutures, maybe even patched with new pieces. The holes will fill and the stitches mend the muscle. It will still be fragile, someday break, as hearts tend to. That is no reason to leave it in pieces, that it could never break for it is already broken. I’m willing to risk the mend, even just to let it break again. Make it right, even just to watch it go wrong. How can it, after all, beat if it remains in so many pieces?
I’m not worried, not about this. This is something I just can’t avoid. Taking this risk will do us all some good, including those who refuse to allow me this one quick jump, right off the cliff. The sea is below, red with blood and green with envy. And I will jump, arms flailing, throat screaming, legs preparing to swim.

January 8, 2008
But I'll Try--Oh How I'll Try