Well I broke one bottle at least.

We're better off untogether.

stone in my belly

I could vomit, I could heave and hurl all of this out of me. I could take the bottles collected under my sink and heave them into the sea or better yet the pavement. Feel the release of something. Let something crash.

It's anger again. Such a strange building. I've crushed it down because anger isn't proper, isn't loving, isn't right. Right? Or is anger something more passionate and truthful than I've ever been comfortable enough to admit?

From the deep of my belly where it burns to the tightness of my lungs where it aches to the sour in my throat where it chokes- I am consumed with care. With a weight, with a stone and I hold it. I know at some point I'm supposed to release it. That's part of the pretty picture. I'm not supposed to carry the stone, it's not my job. And yet, maybe it is. Maybe I'm alive by knowing it's weight. It's the most real, the most truthful, the most passionate thing I can grasp in life.

It's that you- you hurt my pride and my feelings, toss stones into the basket of the lies I fight not to believe. It's that you are indifferent and I bare the consequences of your blindness- but that for you I ache and sorrow to see your frustration. Sorrow over your desire to escape and to mute and at the same time claw to feel the highs of life. It's that I see you and I hurt selfishly and then I am crushed by your spirit- it is sad. And I want to fix, to mind, to bind, to soothe, to warm you. And I cannot and I know this and so instead I am alive by holding your stone for moments. For knowing your spirit, though incomplete, for long enough to gasp at the weight of it. Your story, your life, with as many sentences and plot twists and heart aches and thoughts as my own.



And in my living room are hearts I love, I love, I love, I love and they are breaking. They are breaking themselves and they are breaking me. I am choking on their stones. My face is hot and my hands are shaking and my heart is tearing and I am overwhelmed by the tension. By the sorrow, by the anger, by the hard pride, by the blind eyes, by the foolish faith, and the ropes they are binding around themselves. I can hear them talking, a word here and there, but mostly I hear the melody of the story being told.

The tension between their sentences, the pauses, then the interruptions. My God, God Damnit why is it so? My God, where is your character are you good? When do I get to break the bottles and throw the papers in the sea? When do I stop choking on the stone, let it kill me or get it out of me.

But then I'd be afraid of the silence, afraid to not feel. This reminds me that I am alive. Because my face is hot and my hands are shaking and my heart is tearing and I am overwhelmed by the sentences being written with their voices. I am dismayed and the turn of the story, who is the author, will it be fiction or truth. My God, God Damnit I am not simple and this cannot be normal.

From the deep of my belly where it burns to the tightness of my lungs where it aches to the sour in my throat where it chokes- I am consumed with care. With a weight, with a stone and I hold it.

This I know.

For every breath that has uttered my anger and distrust. My despair, my heartache and my apathy, YHWH has answered with lungs full of himself.

And I cringe and pull away. I keep his words on my bed but I do not look at them. I dare them closer, by my pillow when I wake and they are open to Luke 18, but I will not let my eyes follow the words. And in the morning I grow angry and push the leather bound thin pages to the floor and I leave them there.

And I think about talking to him. I think of what I would say and I etch out my arguments and my apologies, my tears and my stories. I edge closer and closer to uttering them to the Spirit, and I refuse. I call someone I know will not answer or I sit here and I write. I write these words that I'm writing now and I roll my eyes at myself.

As if I could make him less near by deciding he isn't. He is, and it's unavoidable and I'll be honest, infuriating. If the depths of hell and the East and the West cannot pull his lung fulls of himself from my suffocating body, why dare I tell him he cannot be where I am.

He is, and it's unavoidable and I'll be honest, beautiful.
This I know.

I laugh and they are deep laughs full of mirth I did not know lived. My sentences have better endings today, and I am home on Thach.

my vagabond heart and gypsy soul are
wrestling and aching to be heard.

but tonight I am home on Thach.

Things of note since moving back to Alabama.

A month without crying.
A week straight of crying.
A concussion.
A new house.
A new job.
Beautiful friendships.
Hope of family.
Smoked for the first time.
Drank too much whiskey for the last time.
Being asked why I said, "no."
Restlessness.
More questions.
No answers.
Heartache for home, for Brooklyn, for King's, for the Gallery,
for Esperanto, for the Crooked Knife, for the L train, for Humboldt,
for hearts that loved me through the worst.
Jonah.
Anger and heartache over settling.
Knowing my sister loves me.
Tuesday group.

My dad told me he was proud of me.



What if I have a story, and it was a good story. But I wrote too many bad sentences. And now the story is no longer good. And nothing gets rewritten. How does the story end?

The past.
The future that could have been.
Gone.

Could I have ever said yes? Would I ever again?
Fear held me back, and what else?

Somethings will not be, but do our choices determine that or is it too deep in the wood?
Could my lips have formed any word but no?

I've run the dust out
and now the house smells, well it smells like pine sol
and the glade plug in named "sunny day," that's in my bedroom.

It smells slightly feminine, mostly clean,
and an awful lot like someone is trying to live here.

I wonder who lives here?
A woman, a coward, a child, a writer, a has been, a hopeful?
Is it too soon to be a has been?

Walking down streets people smile at me, say my name, and greet
me with affections I don't quite understand. I have done nothing,
nothing in a long time, to deserve such smiles.

I am a has been, a woman who once did, but now writes. A child afraid to hope that things could be different. Could be different because I did something. But I write.

Two feet from my head, on the other side of the wall, is a boy I believe in more than he does. One I hope for, one I'd do something for. He's asleep and I'm afraid he will never know how to love me. I'm afraid he won't fall in love with you as much as I have. I'm afraid I'll believe in him too much- and like the list before him, I will make him run or I will run myself.

I don't want to live in this house alone. But I'm afraid to invite you in. My door way isn't holy, my closets are full of things I don't want you to see. But I don't want to live in this house alone. If I invited you in, would you come? Would you believe in him for me? Love him for me, so I don't have to run?

Will you follow me if I run?
This house smells like it's trying to be lived in.
Would you live with a has been, a woman afraid to try?
Your tent must smell better than this.