The days keep piling up between us. 
It’s been more days than I know what to do with.  I keep looking at them, trying to hold them all in my hands but they keep falling out, spilling over. 

I scoop them up but there’s too many of them now. 
They don’t fit. 

I will sew a burlap sack to hold them all in, then. 
I will keep all the days between us in there and carry it on my back across the map until I reach your doorstep.

I will hold them out to you so you’ll see I never let go of any of them;
you were always in every single one of my days.

Do you still think of me?
Or am I but a distant memory that never took shape?

I come home wasted and spent, falling out of the backseat of a cab at 7:30 in the morning and onto my lawn just as the sprinklers come on, my dress hiked up around my waist, one side of my panties stuck in the crack of my ass; crawling on all fours across my lawn; scraping my knees on the sidewalk as I pull myself up the steps and hurl myself over the entrance of my front door; lying there all day half in and half out of this life in here and that life out there.

First of all, we don’t even have cabs around here.
Second of all, I don’t use sprinklers on my lawn; and
Third, I don’t wear panties half the time.

But GODDAMN

Sometimes I want to embrace this train wreck inside me and just yell YES COMPLETELY WRECK ME LET’S SEE WHAT THAT WILL LOOK LIKE !!!!

It would look a lot like me coming home at 7:30 in the morning and falling headfirst onto my lawn out of the backseat of a cab.

Only the sprinklers would jam and I would asphyxiate there in the greenish/brown blades of grass while the sun baked my exposed right ass cheek a crimson red.

And that’s where I’d eventually be found.

THAT IS THE STORY OF MY LIFE.

THE END.

On Love
By Kahlil Gibran

I can’t relax.  Ever.  I don’t know what it feels like to just exhale and let go.  I’d give anything to let go of this breath I’ve been holding for more than 29 years, sink down onto the ground, close my eyes and sleep the most beautiful and most peaceful sleep of my life.

I’d like to crumble to the ground next to you sitting under that old oak tree over there.  You’ve got one leg stretched out and the other bent at the knee.  You see me coming so you reach up and pull me down to you, letting me settle my head there in the space between your stomach and your thigh.  We don’t say anything at all.  Your arm comes down to rest across my belly, the warmth of your skin soaking through my t-shirt, spreading to the rest of me until I drift off right there in your lap under that old oak tree.

I’d like a sleep like that.

Look, I’m not really all that excited to be turning 29 again, ok?  So let’s not really make a big deal about it.  I mean, I’m super happy I’m still around.  I don’t want to go underground anytime soon but I wish this roller coaster would slow the fuck down some.  I feel like this has all happened way too fast and I don’t know how we made it around that turn just now or what in the hell we’re doing upside down so much of the time but…here we are.

We made it.

Well, I made it at least.  Your birthday isn’t for some time yet.  The way things are looking, I won’t get to help you celebrate your next decade and that really bums me out.

I’m not sure this situation can ever be cured.

I’m afraid I will have to live the rest of my days with this expansive chasm ripped right down the center of my heart.

I am fully prepared to do just that.  I’ve been building this bridge, one plank at a time, so I can travel back and forth across it in search of you.  I don’t know which side you may show up on so I have to patrol each one all day long.  Don’t worry.  I’m not tired.

Anytime you choose.  I’ll be here.

I know if you were here you would tell me Happy Birthday so I’ll say it silently to myself from you.  I’ll pick out a really pretty or salacious poem or piece of writing to gift to myself and I’ll read it later tonight when I get home.

You see what happens when you leave me alone with the red wine late at night?  You really shouldn’t let me drink so much when you’re not around.  I get a little out of control sometimes and start carrying on like I’m some tortured soul that no one understands.

Gross.

Just ignore me, ok?  Honestly, that’s all you can really do when I go off on one of my tangents.  I promise to be on my best behavior if you come back.  We can read the newspaper together and clip coupons over coffee and bagels and I will not tell you how the cream cheese reminds me of the snow that fell in 1993 when I lived in that blue house down that dirt road and how it covered everything everywhere and we had never seen snow like that and we went out and made snow angels in it and brought some inside so my mom could make snow ice cream for us.  No.  I will not tell you any of that.  I will read aloud to you a headline about Iran and maybe an interesting obituary and then I will take my leave of you so you can go do your things and I will not disturb you until you need me to disturb you; at which point I will crawl into your lap and disturb the ache in your loins for me until you are completely spent and weightless.

Then I will cook for you and you don’t have to do anything at all except sit right here and read your favorite book or play a song for me on the stereo.  I will run my fingers through your hair as I look over your shoulder to see what you’re reading and maybe you will put the book down and pull me into your lap and kiss me.  Or maybe you won’t.  Maybe I’ll lean down and kiss the back of your neck instead.  Or here.  Go sit in your favorite chair.  Maybe you need to close your eyes for a few minutes.  That’s ok.  I’ll wake you when dinner is ready.

After we eat, you can help me with the dishes if you want.  But you don’t have to.  It’s been a long day for you and I don’t mind taking care of you right now.  You are tired and feeling bad so let me do this, please?  I know you don’t feel like it.  You don’t feel like doing anything right now.  I understand.

Maybe you’d like to take a walk around the block tonight.  Let me finish up here and we’ll go together.  I’ll hold onto your hand the whole way there and back and I won’t let it go.

I’ll never let go of your hand.

I hope your Saturday is beautiful.

If it can’t be beautiful, I hope it’s bearable.

I rule my life by the thing that beats inside my chest.  Sometimes that makes me a fool.  Sometimes it makes me a sage.  I don’t often know which one I will be when I go in any one direction.  I don’t much care.

Maybe that means I will  make foolish mistakes even when I’m old enough to know better.

I never want to be old enough to know better.  I want my bones to be old and brittle and thin and near death and even then I will never stop making foolish mistakes that involve my heart.

It means I get hurt.  It means I love too soon and too hard.  It means life is hard for me so much of the time.

I don’t care.

It also means radiance.  It also means I receive love too soon and too hard.  It also means life is beautiful for me so much of the time.  I can find meaning and beauty everywhere.  You would not believe it if I told you. You’d die to know the places I find beauty and safety and solace.

You’d also die to know the places I see torture and sin and angst.  In me and in you.  In everyone everywhere. In all the dark spaces between love and indifference.  Oh, that horrible place of indifference.  So many people are stuck in there and I want to tear down the walls and free them all but I can’t. 

I love love and I love life even though I am tortured so much of the time.  I would not choose to be untortured ever for no part of any kind of day.

I want this life to torture me.  Spend me.  Chew me up and spit me out, whole or chewed up, it doesn’t matter.  Just render me useless.  Use me all the way up until I can’t be used anymore.

I wasn’t put here to move mountains.  I wasn’t put here to invoke change.  I wasn’t put here to get people to listen. 

I was put here to feel.

I feel it.  I feel you.  I feel you way down at the bottom of my heart where the blood pools and coagulates.  I feel you everywhere all the time.

I feel you so deep down inside me that I am you.

This is maybe the greatest thing I’ve seen all day.  God, I love this man.  How is it possible that his voice hasn’t aged at all? Like it’s still 1987 where he’s at.  I don’t think his hair has changed at all either.  I’ve never seen a person age into themselves in a more perfect way.

I would give anything to see him perform.

For comparison and because I adore this song and this video in so many different ways.  What a total hottie he was.  Perfect parts strange and intuitive and sentimental.

I could post videos of The Cure all day long but I’ll spare you because I know you can just as easily go look them up yourself.  Do that!  Go check them out Live at Pinkpop 2019.  I just did.  It was amazing.

 Anyway.

What is that saying?

God willing and the creek don’t rise?

Have you ever heard that?  It basically means ‘if everything goes as planned; if all goes well.’  I’ve heard it many times throughout my life but I don’t think I’ve ever said it before.

Well, god willing and the creek don’t rise I’ll be turning 29 again Sunday.

I will be doing one of two things:

Taking Max to see The Harlem Globetrotters or leaving town after his basketball game Saturday morning and spending the night wherever we end up.  Or maybe both.  I guess there’s no reason we can’t skip town sometime Saturday afternoon and drive around until we land somewhere and also go to the show Sunday.  Sounds like a perfect way to spend another 29th birthday, actually.  I’ll keep you posted.  I haven’t actually bought the tickets for the Globetrotters yet.  We saw them last year and had courtside seats, which was super fun and I highly recommend paying the extra bucks for the experience.  I’ve waited too late this year and can’t find any available so we won’t have that same experience again which is kind of a bummer.

Listen.

I tried really hard to keep the sads out of this post.  How did I do?  Did I come across as upbeat and normal?  That’s what I was going for.  I was really trying very hard not to let Debbie Downer out tonight.

I did that for you in case you’re having a hard day and are tired of reading about my aching heart.  I mean, can’t I get over it already?  How many times am I going to say the same things over and over again?

Honestly?

Forever.

I’ll say them forever if that’s what it takes.

Today feels like Monday.  Yesterday felt like nothing.

I have the blues.

Are you so tired of my blues?

I’m so tired of them too.  I wish they would go away.

I feel like a caged animal at night when the world sleeps.  Or like right now.  It’s that in-between time.  It’s not really night yet but the day is finishing up her business and is about to clock-out.  The Gloaming.  That’s what I’ve always heard it called.  I don’t like The Gloaming.  I want to like it because I love the idea of it and I love the way it sounds.  The Gloaming.  I don’t know why I’m capitalizing it.  It just seems like it deserves to be capitalized; like it deserves that kind of respect. 

Didn’t Stephen King write a book about The Gloaming?  I should Google that.  Or DuckDuckGo it?
You know, the first time you mentioned DuckDuckGo, I had no idea what you were talking about.  When you went away, I downloaded it just because.  It was a thing of you and I was grasping at straws to hold on to anything of you.

Remember how I lamented that I was kind of bummed that this was the only version of me I had to give you because our lives had to run their separate courses before we could meet?  About how my face would be changing and evolving pretty soon and filling up with time and wrinkles?  Well.  I will be even less than I am now when you come back around.  I hope you will not be too disappointed in the way age has taken her claim on me.  I try to eat my vegetables and exercise and moisturize my face both day and night but I don’t sleep nearly enough and I drink too much red wine too many nights and I worry constantly about everything.  My forehead is starting to crease and the bags under my eyes have their own zip code now.  Oh, and my hands.  Good god, what happens to our hands as we age?  I can’t even deal with what they have going on.  They need to seriously chill the fuck out, though.

I hope it will all be acceptable to you.

I realize this sounds vain and I don’t really think I’m a vain person.  I just hope you come back before the sea of wrinkles overtakes my face and my body because I have a few things I’d really like to show you and do to you while I still can, you know?

I know you know.  You want to do them to me, too.  Remember how I was gonna coax every last drop of life out of you until there wasn’t any left?  Yeah. I still think about that.

I still get weak when I think of you diving under my blanket and scratching all my surfaces, your dishpan hands all over me, your beautiful words falling from your lips as they trace every part of my body.

I still quiver at the thought of you.

The thought of you is everything to me.

I’m sorry for the amount of sap in my post yesterday.  I’m sure it’s all over you and you need a bath by now.  Maybe it’s like that jar of molasses you were playing around with that one time.  Was it molasses or marmalade?  I think it was marmalade but I can’t remember exactly,  I just recall that it made a huge mess while you were buttering your toast that morning.  I would go find it but I don’t want to open your pages just yet right now.  I can’t look at them all the time.  But I think of them constantly.  

Max had his second basketball practice tonight.  His first game is Saturday morning.  His team is The Mustangs.  They’re all so adorable.  I can’t wait to see them play.  His coach is a bit of an overachiever for this age group, though.  I remember him from last year and was really hoping we wouldn’t get him this year.  So, of course, we did.  He was constantly yelling at the refs and his own kid.  I’ve always felt sorry for the coaches’ kids. It must suck so bad to never be able to live up to who your dad thinks you should be because he played basketball that one year when he was a junior and he was really good at it so, of course, his offspring should also be.  Gross.  Why do people project their own bullshit onto their kids?  I’m sure I do it too.  Being a parent is mad hard.  You never know if you’re doing it right.  It’s kind of a lonely place.  You just hope you’re giving them the best of you as much as you can to counteract all the bad that you also can’t help but show them.  Believe me when I tell you they understand so much more than you wish they did.  They don’t get to stay little long enough.  The world comes looking for them way too soon.

Max is a cool guy.  You would have liked him.  He’s smart and hilarious and really good at sports somehow.  He definitely does not get that from me.  He’s really tall for his age.  He’s almost as tall as me but I can still pick him up.  I can still carry him upstairs to bed when he falls asleep on the couch.  It just about kills me but I do it.  I’m not looking forward to the day when he doesn’t fit in my arms anymore. He has horrible taste in music.  Horrible. I’m hoping he’ll come around.  He’s stubborn as all get out.  He has a really smart mouth that gets him in trouble every single day.  He loves animals but will tell you he doesn’t care.  He’s sensitive.  Very.  He’s afraid of the dark but would not want me to tell you that.  He loves his teacher and school.  His Mimi is probably his favorite person in all the world.  He’s kind but he can also be unkind.  He’s really a lot of fun and we laugh a lot.  But he also sees me cry and act ridiculous.  I really don’t want him to see any of that but it’s just the two of us here and I can’t hide it from him.  He knows things I wish he didn’t.  

What’s going on over there on your side of the map?  I wish you could tell me all about it.  There’s so much I want to tell you.  More than the things I say to you here.  Just everyday mundane things, really.  I miss your sense of humor.  I miss the way you wrote to me.  I miss the shorthand you’d use sometimes and the symbols that I didn’t understand but wouldn’t dare tell you I didn’t.  I miss the way sometimes your words would go over my head and I’d have to read them again and again.  I miss the way I’d get so excited to see your name in my inbox.

I keep waiting to see it there again. 

I may never stop waiting.

I hope you’re ok with that.