about the work: this is part of a series i wrote my freshman year of college, and frankly the only one of the lot that’s worth salvaging. it’s a combo of a few different influences, namely Siken’s ‘Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out‘, this tweet about orcas that went viral during 2020, and the miracle of being here, all combined into a musing about the first time in my life i got properly medicated.
there has been this small and urgent restlessness in me since the day i was born. i look at it in the mirror, and it tells me: there is something more than this.
i look at the lightning, and there are no faces in it.
but maybe this is too ambitious. maybe this is too much. we don’t love you for all the weapons you can carry, etc, etc, on and on in that same vein. isn’t it crazy? doesn’t it make you want to look at it all with new eyes? doesn’t it make you want to run away with the cashier at walmart, the one with the dip-dyed hair and the ripped jeans?
the leaves are changing. all is red and yellow. wear shorts outside. drink orange juice with ice. there’s something about what i’m trying to say to you that won’t come across right if i just go on and say it. i would tell you to go crawling over a boat dock at midnight, but it misses the point. just barely. just enough.
don’t do as I do, don’t do as I say, and all that comes with that. a few nights ago, i started crying because i went to bed excited to get up the next morning. isn’t that something? isn’t that all that we need? people will try to sell you on sex and drugs and gods, and i’m sure some of it is worthwhile.
it’s just this: how does it feel in the morning?
to extend kindness, to wake up and feel the stretch of your own arms?
it’s not to say there isn’t any pain (because there is), but you still paint your nails on the leather couch. you still get back on the horse. there are whales out there, somewhere, and you’ve never seen them.
how would you do it, if you could? how would you come back? where would you stay, to climb mountains, to swim in lakes? this is just the thing: contentment is not an office. it’s not a screen. it’s not a number. at least, i don’t think it is. (but then again, it was once.) so maybe it will be again. there’s no telling.
but if it isn’t — if it’s just me and quietness and the fact the leaves are changing —
i think maybe that’s okay. i think maybe that’s not potential wasted. i think maybe when i was younger, no one told me happy was an okay thing to be.