You’ll never know the #quintessence of another person.
All images are crafted, even the honest ones.
The trick is, you’ll never know yourself, either.
If you knew yourself, it would mean you’d stopped changing.
What a sad life that would be. Rejoice in discovery.
#vss365
Mother wanted to be kept #apprised. That’s all. Of my work and dating life.
I told her of my career change. She said how nice, and I knew she hated it. When I told her about Felicia, her silence said everything.
Mother wanted to be kept in the loop. That was too much.
#vss365
I had one goal: get away from people.
No parties. No sports. No bars.
The less time around others, the happier I was.
Then COVID happened.
Turns out, when work isn’t forcing me to be social, being alone makes me unhappy.
I’m an #introvert, but I do need people.
#vss365
The Lovers: a flower named for its paired blooms. Their stems spiral together, and they face the sun like a couple facing the future.
Because of climate change and habitat loss, they’ve been #extirpated.
Nature is less than it was, now it no longer has Lovers.
#vss365
In place of money, the rich old man #bequeathed to his children gifts far more personal.
To his eldest, a sense that love is anger at rest. To the middle one, a fear of raised hands. To the youngest, a want for love like the day’s for the sun.
The old man was bastard.
#vss365
Within the lake, strange forms move. Coiled flesh unspools. A scattering of claws takes the faded moonlight.
There is a sound.
It shakes the earth, vibrates your lungs. Your skull aches with it.
You’ve #awoken that which ought not wake. There will be consequences.
#vss365
#Embox yourself, you dumbass. Retreat from the noise and indignity of daily life and figure yourself out.
Don’t embox yourself, idiot. You have to get out there, in the vibrant realness of it all, to figure yourself out.
It’s so simple, you prick.
#vss365
Eric doesn’t think or plan. He #excogitates. Picture him pacing the hills of Arpinum like Cicero.
This is why his unfulfilled purpose is to advise rulers of nations. It’s why he’ll drift through life, out of time and place, until, like Cicero, his misery is ended.
#vss365
In the #gallivant a man flat under. A great house, pungent like lines. The man flat about coordinates between. That’s the energy.
The sound change shaped measure. Too loud a measure by far. No surprise, because of houses.
Hindsight yields pounce. Pumice leads to graft.
#vss365
I didn’t mean to #vanish. I thought I’d explain to the kids that I was destined for fame, not parenthood.
But through the living room window I saw them at dinner. Their smiles, their chatter. I couldn’t bear to make them sad.
That’s why I ran out.
I’m weak.
#vss365
Never a more perfect #duet—her on bass, him on violin. They anticipated one another, gave and took, responded intuitively.
They were so in sync. He figured their relationship would be the same. How could it be otherwise?
I don’t have to tell you why that’s rhetorical.
#vss365
The truth came out: Richard had kept up not one, not three, not nine, but seventeen affairs across the city.
He had secret phones, agreements with restaurant staff, and all manner of #furtive concealment.
My biggest question, though, is how did he find the time?!
#vss365
I bit the #serrated knife. My tooth cracked. My gums bled.
Mother ran over. She fussed. Her attention soothed like novocaine.
The baby, jealous of me, cried. He looked so weak. Needy. Desperate.
I had his number now. Mother would never leave my side again.
#vss365
He weighed her every time they met. If she came in above 110lb, he wouldn’t go out with her.
This, and other #draconian rules, she accepted as part of their relationship. After all, relationship is compromise. He wouldn’t act this way if he didn’t care.
She was young.
#vss365
#Taxes like a collar on my neck slowing me down, restricting bloodflow, hauling me off my feet because the taxman’s got the lead in both hands and he’s heaving away.
Except this is a dumb fantasy. Taxes are good, actually. I like schools, roads, and healthcare.
#vss365
My cat is #hardwired to destroy.
It knocks glasses off tables, chews undefended shoelaces, and makes tassels of upholstery.
It’s its nature to mess order, dirty cleanliness, break what’s whole.
Regrettably, it’s my nature to love that cat.
I accept the consequences.
#vss365
When she rose from bouts of depression, she #bleached her whites—no dinginess on her sunlit days.
She emerged all brightness, looking made that way, like she’d never been otherwise, like she’d never dim again.
The effect was so striking, she nearly believed it.
#vss365
He #hearkened to the styles of times gone by. He affected a frock coat, preferred harpsichord music, and spoke in Dickensian vernacular.
People didn’t like him. He struggled to like himself. But he’d made his choices, and he lived with them.
That’s all anyone can do.
#vss365
I cut my teeth in a writing forum where all #critique was fair game. People got mean, yes, but they were honest.
That approach is flawed. The point of feedback isn’t to correct. It’s to build up.
A critique that leaves a writer feeling like a failure has itself failed.
#vss365
Wake up, write, eat healthy breakfast, work, focus, eat healthy lunch, work, focus, get home, practice fiddle, eat healthy dinner, hit the gym, get home, shower, write a poem, ignore fear, sleep.
The fear: when his routine breaks, it won’t #fracture. It’ll shatter.
#vss365
The day before they signed the papers, they called a one-meal #truce.
He got milk for her coffee. She swapped her over-easy eggs for his over-hard.
It wasn’t an end to hostilities, just a reminder that things weren’t always bad.
Maybe one day they’d be good again.
#vss365
It made him sad, angry even, to see lovers holding hands, walking together, #canoodling in the park.
He deserved love too! Where was his person?! When would he get affection?! Who was to blame?!
It was only once he relaxed this attitude that he found someone to love.
#vss365
My instinct is to say #soulmates don’t exist.
Romantic partners go on a compatibility spectrum. A soulmate is just someone on the compatible end.
But why “just”? Why diminish that?
Life is missed connections. Finding someone is precious.
Give them a name.
Soulmate.
#vss365
At dinner he laid out a #whopping $400.
She saw the gesture for what it was: a flex, a need to impress.
At the end of the date they passed a field, and he plucked a daisy and tied the stem into a ring round her finger.
The flower, not the money, led to a second date.
#vss365
Derek felt #yodeling’s low and high notes as the beating of wings. Freeing. He had to learn.
Where he lived, there were no yodelers. For years he made his own study. Finally he flew to a convention in Austria.
Among the yodeling greats he found his flock. He soared.
#vss365
#Tacky trash—Mom’s words for my clothes, style, taste. Me. Even when she didn’t say the words, I heard them.
She left me with two options. Give in or resist.
I was young. No fight in me.
It’s only now I’m grown that I’m relearning my taste.
Turns out? I like trash.
#vss365
Attendance, grades, behaviour—Jenny’s record at school was #sterling.
Then her mom died.
She couldn’t study, focus, or even care.
Her record, and self-impression, became tarnished.
It was only years later that she realized silver under a dark light remains sterling.
#vss365
Trauma like shadow moves in #peripheral vision. To look its way is to confirm or dispel. But why do that when you can ignore, ignore, ignore. So the shadows box in your vision. So they reduce your world. You’re ok as long as your neck is stiff, eyes fixed, mind confined.
#vss365
I’m not a #romantic. I’m not one for grand gestures or love poems.
But now I’m partnered, happy, and my heart bursts with affection. It must be released, through gesture, gift, or word.
Never forget, we are more than our circumstances.
I am a romantic after all.
#vss365
The daisies #nod at me. The willows cease their weeping. Even the wind through the trees cheers not moans.
I am well. I am happy. I am whole.
Nature celebrates alongside.
#vss365
