it will always fascinate and horrify me
how the people responsible for bringing you into this world
are the ones who make you rapidly sift through the file cabinet in your mind labeled "suicide attempts you haven't tried yet" in order to exit it

young girl,
you will scream at the top of your lungs
and they will call your cries crazy and your eyes will swell

young lady,
you will run down the streets of a city that will consume you
and you will pray it gets to you before they do

and you will age and you will return
maybe for a visit, maybe for a funeral, maybe for an answer
and you will be quieter, softer, and a little less angry

you might not understand why they pinned you in a corner
or locked you in the garage
or tried to quite literally **** you

you might not understand why they bought you plane tickets
and cars and shiny new things
you might be haunted by long car rides, equally terrible in silence or otherwise

"you know we love you"
"i know"

say it back
say it back, you ungrateful *****
you want to complain about how oppressed you are but they gave you everything, didn't they
everything money could buy, right

what else mattered?

**** your spiritual sanity and intangible desires
what kind of hippie nonsense are you whining about this time
ungrateful
******* ungrateful

then leave
run away (again)
you won't have us when you come back

come back
how dare you abandon us
******* ungrateful *****

don't you know we love you

at least say thank you
at least say thank you
at least say thank you

5:32am
walk three avenues if you don't catch the M116 bus
6 train
1 stop
transfer
4 train
3 stops
10 minute walk
deli stop
1 small tea + 1 everything bagel w butter
1 block
"good morning" to the security guards
she won't make eye contact but she'll smile so let that be something
4 flights of stairs
12 of us
in an office for over 6o hours a week
holding each other accountable
holding each other close

there are two types of cancer.
there's the kind that's caused by an uncontrolled division of abnormal cells; we call them malignant tumours.
and there's the kind that's boys born on july 9th - 5'11'', with expressionless brown eyes, and in desperate need of a haircut;
we call them malignant *******.

i can't shave my head in preparation for everything he will ruin, and requesting time off to cope with the fact that i loved this person is not a valid option.

MRI scans won't show you what happened to my brain after he told me i made it hard to hate the world or what happened after he told me i was the worst person he met in it. they won't tell you what it looks like to be told you're loved, hated, and then not cared about at all.

side effects include:
mood swings, triggered by those who are as infuriating as they are infatuating
loss of sleep because he wants to rant to you about socioeconomic structures until 3 in the ******* morning
dissociation of time because it doesn't exist when you can make someone laugh and tell you about his favourite jewish children's book and why he doesn't like big dogs and that even though his family is full of jerks and idiots, he'd still do what was needed to support them.

more severe side effects include:
writing about him months after he's made it harder to breathe, but willing yourself to talk about it to a room full of strangers
being crippled by the fear he might stumble lost in manhattan again and find the cafe you are complaining about him onstage in

i want this to be a survival story and tell you that i do not have business cards for being a tragic event organizer who throws the best pity parties in town. i want to tell you that i had enough self respect not to call him when i got re-diagnosed, despite the fact that he once told me diseases like cancer exist to **** out little pests like me and because he was the only person who told me i was going to be fine, live longer than him maybe, and to stop talking like it was the end.

but that was really hard because there's two types of cancer, and he's the one that did a significantly much better job at making me feel like i was dying.

opening yourself up to the potential for pain also opens you up to incredible kindness and joy. the heart is a paradox. and you know, new york invented love at first sight, so if you wanna simultaneously expand your threshold for heartache and capacity to love big, do it here. everyone is as scared and willing as you are.

california is that girl that puts her hands on either side of your face, and the whole world falls away. you will have never gotten so lost in a kiss before. and then the space between you explodes. your heart keeps missing beats, and your hands cannot bring her close enough to you. you taste california and realize you have been starving. you have loved before, but it didn't feel like this. you have kissed before, but it didn't burn you alive. maybe it lasts a minute, maybe it's an hour. all you know is that kiss, and how soft her skin is when it brushes against yours, and even if you did not know it until now, you have been waiting for this forever.

we are somewhere between maintaining the comic relief we find necessary to stay alive and inappropriately utilizing a coping mechanism during a time in which we are hyper aware of our own mortality. we're standing by freight cars and staring at the river, while a toddler races by on a tricycle. we know we are going to die someday.

take bad news out on a date. give it your time and attention on a subway ride after work. buy it $2 margaritas at a gay bar on a tuesday. ignore questions about it. plan tattoos about it. sing terribly and loudly about it. do anything but talk about it. do anything but talk about it.