dear young foolish little me,
when you join the first triumvirate,
it will seem like the most infinite, right thing to do.
you will be wrong.

it'll all start off with faint words,
bright smiles and silly things,
in the smallest yet largest of worlds.

but friend, you will find yourself,
on the other side of a fence,
you think you'll never cross.

yet the triumvirate will,
and i do mean will,
lead you down the road most steep and most taken,
until your old self has vanished entirely.

on this road you'll all leap into a lake,
a world much larger and daunting,
but you will quickly warm up to it.

you'll spend too much time worrying
over a silly piece of seaweed,
leaving only a duo to steer a boat for three.

soon they'll grow tired of your talk of seaweed.
the loud one will become silent;
the gentle will boldly curse your name.

the first triumvirate will not last.
and you will not fixate on this seaweed forever.
you will rediscover your old self,
renovated and broken all at once.

in fact, darling, you will eventually find yourself,
in a second triumvirate.
this like the last, in that there are three.
but unlike in that of course, this time it will last.

or so you think.

you will grow close with the young,
who finds the same seaweed just as fascinating.
the outspoken will speak out of hand,
and the triumvirate will be worn.

i am uncertain of the future of this second triumvirate.
oh future me, i am young, foolish, and little.
please,
will this triumvirate last?

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

why can’t oxygen
ever be enough to feel
safe in my own skin

i just want to feel alive
unbothered by my own thoughts

I am finally starting to understand winter nights for what they are:
sterility of a black sky, inner warmth that never quite touches skin, shivering on the side of the road after tequila and laughter have laid waste to four AM and it is only the traffic lights left to reflect you.

Maybe that's why we listen to the downbeats of summer, the slow songs made for rooftops but more devastating in the pitch dark of seven PM on a main road somewhere in the city, all alone and au revoir and sepia memories of honey-warm light leaking through the kitchen we used to share.

internal warmth and windchimes outside sing hellfire for the passing storm.