Faced with the most strangest of decisions (that in which I cannot control eg my heart)

I used to be the kind of person who fought within the boundaries of that which I thought I needed to fight in. This was the box, the framework and I then would learn everything there was about that framework. How to fit it all in that framework. I would bend and break bones to fit in the coffin. It never occurred to me that there was no box.

It is terrifying to discover that a rigid and concrete box that you built a life inside of may not even exist. Or at least in the way you thought it did. How do you begin to restructure an entire life and all of its pathologies? All of which you deemed ‘right’ or ‘wrong’?

When the bomb goes off, when the nuclear reactions designed in the depths of some lab, by some scientist who thought he was ‘discovering’ and ‘creating’ becomes a weapon to be used against some oh so evil, but faceless and nameless enemy (Let’s be honest. There is always a name.)

How does it feel to have nothing to ground you? Is it preferable to thinking there was a shelter and being ill prepared when you are shaken?

Black and white is so much easier. When everything can be categorized and placed in this one or that one, you never have to deal with being uncomfortable.. There is never the option of cognitive dissonance. You never have to worry about readjusting your moral schema, because the base of what is Right and what is Wrong never falters. It is very easy to know exactly who you and where your confidence lies if you never have to consider that there may be shades of grey (Let’s be honest. Isn’t it all grey?)

I am worried about certain things, that perhaps are too old for me. I am saddened that these people I hold so extremely dear may not be living a parallel life to me any longer. I am saddened, and I hurt. I always thought that this/you/would be there. For example.

And I haven’t taken time to ‘process’ largely because I am not sure what that means. Process what? What is there to feel after all?

I dreamed of this, of you, being here or back or at least looking at me again.

And now, here you are. Alive, and wanting me. Alive and real, and I remember and know your features.

I remember what or who you are/were to me.

Here it is. Honesty. I loved you, my dear I loved you beyond what has ever been in my heart for a boy or even a man. I loved the way you smiled, your laugh, I loved the confidence that you built up over yourself even when you could not feel this. I loved that you had aspirations, that you wanted to learn but more than that, you wanted to do. I loved that you loved me. That you recognized me as a fellow traveler, that your heart wanted to go in the same direction as my heart. I loved that you promised me that you would be constant. That you would love me forever. That you would be in the nursing home with me one day. That there would be prizes for the bingo because even older people deserved surprise and hope.  My dear you crushed me and devastated everything I am. I would collapse on the floor in absolute agony,  breaking and shattered and confused. I was deeply hurt and I loved you, and I loved you, and I loved you.

And I knew, then, one day while sobbing on the floor, wondering vaguely of the neighbors and what they must think (what kind of person is this? who do you think I am?) that this must end. One way or another this cannot go on like this. It must end because I cannot survive this. I will not survive this. Do you hear me? If I do not let this great and dreadful love go, I could not live. This love and I were not compatible, this aching draining abscess of a heart would kill me if I let it.

Ah and you.

You.

Seeing you now and hearing you now is like an echo of an echo and I know I should love you. I know that you should mean everything to me, that seeing your face and hearing your voice should cause my whole being to erupt and explode with something. Anything.

Ah but is it too late? You see I had to let it go. I had to let you go. I had to accept and commit to feel nothing because it would have killed me darling, it almost killed me, it ripped me and was ripping me at every moment I let your name cross my lips or your mind cross my mind.

Now. You are here. I remember this pain and I remember this love but I feel like I am looking at a stranger,

and I have reverberating pains like the aftershocks of an earthquake or the body’s memory of a heart-attack.

What do I do with this?

Say it.

That may sound repeated and old, like a sock. You know the one. The one you wad up and throw in the corner of your closet. The one that has a hole in it, right between your toes.

I have to say, I don't care any more. I really don't.

I'm telling you, you've heard me. I don't know what I want.

Why does this feel like a weakness, when it is just honest?

But I don't care that you know what you are to me.
Maybe this is a weakness too, if everything is just a game.

I could play, but I already laid out my cards.


I just know that the times I have imploded and been rendered loveless for months and years was when I remained silent. I made a promise once, to never let what I feel thicken and suffocate me from the inside out by being ashamed of it, or by thinking that feelings were 'wrong' in some way. That they made you broken and weak, in need of fixing.

Even if I intended silence (that caustic, corrupting thing) I already have failed at this.

Say it.

I don't know what it means. I don't know what I want.
But: You are beautiful. I love you. And I'm leaving.


If I were the kind of person I should be, I would let this go now.
But ah, if I am most alive when I say yes to the most dire of risks,

how could I ever look away from this?

We have to be content with the missed paths.

The times you have connected with this one or that one, and you know

that circumstance and selfishness steers you from intimacy.

You cannot mourn the ways in which you could have known the preciousness that is the complexity and story and life-arcs of these people

who amaze you with their existence, and the ways in which they have both chosen and been created selves.

The squelching of the
spiritual portion of what is a human;

is more than the necrosis of a small body part,
or the headaches that angels sacrificing your pleasure for
some heavenly vision can bring.

It is the starvation of a soul in its entirety (for what is a soul if not spiritual?)

I will take trying and failing to a half life, with safe half loves, any day.

Half of halves, portions and chunks of this or that heart.

A tearing off of you, a piece ripped from that one or this one.

So when I leave, there is a dull ache of one who has lost
a limb, a scab. When you leave, I miss one portion of my body.

No.

When I leave, I want you to feel the missing. When you leave, I want to feel with every every bit I have.

Take it all, so when you have left there is a deep gut-wrenching emptiness-- because I risked what having this means. You risked this (being oh so known by me).

Anything else but this is mocking what your heart has been made capable of.

I choose nothing if not this.

Here is the deal.

Even if I am angry, or defensive, or if you hit just a little too close to home---

I won't react.

-- I will not abuse the way I know people and use it as a shield, or wield it back against you.

I won't manipulate you.

I won't take something from you that you unintentionally gave me, unless you want me to have it.

I will keep secret from you the things I know about who you are, because you have the right to discover them and not be confronted with them from me.

You are quite welcome.

Miles to go until I sleep

I think it can be hard to maintain the intensity of conviction that a life-changing experience has on you. Or several. It starts to fade or seem far away.

We get bogged down by the details. I have student loans, and I don’t want to be homeless. I like exposed brick, I enjoy sushi, I like clean air. It is … nice… being around people who don’t have to think so hard to function, and it is refreshing just to be sometimes. People who don’t know what’s going on in my head. I can pretend for a second or so that this is what I want, and could maybe be satisfied. I want to make sure my parents are comfortable when they are older, I want to make sure I don’t die in a nursing home alone where they have been cited for elder abuse, and have taken away all the photographs away. It is nice sometimes to just be without considering everything so much, and focus on these ‘normalcies.’ This tempts me, but only slightly. When I get tired. And I do get tired. I get exhausted with the implications of evil in this world, the cruelty that this humanity is capable of. The cruelty that I am capable of.

It would be nice to be a participant, instead of being this observer. Which I have been accused of. Which I probably in all honesty am, and in all honesty know in my heart of hearts I am not able to undo. I feel like an imposter, watching all the people living their lives so easily. Sometimes I am jealous of that ease.

But I made a promise. Several.

I remember a particular turning point when a close relationship to me was shocked that I would ever consider going back to Uganda, and I realized that for him this was the equivalent of disaster tourism. For me it was the realization that this wasn’t ‘the developing world’ or ‘the third world’—it was simply the world.

How can you ever live knowing what you know and choose to do nothing? I ask this in earnest. What kind of cruelty would that be? Am I even capable of this?

I fiercely, fiercely fought to maintain my convictions, and it scares me to see them waning in other areas of my life. I am losing them, and it saddens me, and I mourn them.

But in this—it is a conviction of my life, and it has not changed, and will not really ever change. It can just seem far away when I am here, and consider what I have yet to do. There really is not enough time, and I am already saddened by the end of my life, because I know that no matter what I do, it will never have been adequate.

There is a scene in Schindler’s list where the only possession that Schindler kept was his wedding ring, and he breaks down weeping. “This could have saved … one more.”

Now I am no savior. But I damn well know I don’t want to have anything I love enough to hold on to as more valuable than the life of someone I could have affected had I not been selfish. Because I know myself, and I know that it is much much easier for me to make myself not fall in love (with a person, life-style, place) than it is to stop loving someone or thing. Whatever ‘this’ is—it could not possibly be more important or valuable than a human life—and I believe that with everything I am.

I feel the exact note of what you were dreaming.
What else do you want, what else could you imagine?

Captivate me. You have me, now what will you do?

"This is fragile" you whisper. Now, stop, acting like this is delicate.
You want me to breathe you in and out, now. Are you afraid? Shouldn't you be?

If I had to describe a greatest fear: Thieving Ghosts

The ghosts of this city are gnawing at my bones,
wretched creatures, spiteful and passionless.

They weave their hands, translucent and cold, through my hair, tugging and pulling me towards the ground.

I protest, because I do not like the way the pieces of gum are sticking to my shoes, and imagine it would be less than pleasant to have my hair (dammit, I should have cut it, I always want to cut it)

stuck in the gum.

They laugh at me. I dislike being laughed at. I feel a rumbling nauseousness in the pit of my stomach, aching for them to embrace me, aching for them to simply let me be.

The ghosts taunt me with records, carefully penned, of people who once were loves of mine but have ceased being anything but cruel remnants. "See the evidence!" they gloat.

And I do. I see it. I see the memorabilia, stacked in a corner, dust (insect shells, broken jagged grasshoppers and butterfly wings, dried maple leaves and candle wax)

slick over the top.

Now I feel nothing, and instead of merely stealing my past and disabling me, holding me down to the ground, these ghosts.... ah. They make void my present by weaponizing my future.

They are crafty, wiley things, devoid of kindness.

"See how you feel nothing now?" they taunt. "Nothing for that which you 'loved' with everything, everything?"

"For that which you say you love now--
--You. Will. Feel. Nothing."

As I pen and read the present declarations of feelings, emotions, love and other such things, these ghosts steal from me what is mine in the present by revealing the emptiness and only distant fond affection for what was once

ever so dear.