he's more than just some boy
with black hair
or eyes that peer from behind trees.
i know because
when he sits on my bed
or my couch
or my chair
or my floor
it's like he's always been there.
apart of a drawing or a painting
something permanent
but i didn't noticed until
his physical form
accumulated in my life.

It's pouring rain and my backpack is full of strawberry kefir.
I think when we decided to take a break,
you took half my brain with you.

Kefir is a delightful crossbreed of Yop and Perrier. Creamy sublingual fireworks. A single tablespoon is sufficient to send a conga line of 5 billion probiotic bacteria boogying through your innards. But like most things I enjoy, I cannot successfully covet in small, measured portions. Which is why I went for the litre in the first place.

I imagine your face as I rinse my strawberry saturated belongings and imagine the microscopic bacterium hoopla happening between my fingers (you would laugh at my conga line comparison, because you are one of the world's only people who knows how much I truly despise conga lines).

Oh God, the water is just diluting the yogurt. It has become the great Sea of Kefir.

You would have the solution to this. When it comes to logic, you manage to beat me every time without ever making me feel intellectually inferior.

But I need to figure these things out for myself.

Luckily my other groceries were sealed in plastic:
-chia seeds
-goji berries
-cacao nibs
-wheatgrass

These were spared.

As you can see, since we have decided to embark on our own paths for a while, I have tried to be "HEALTHY!". The bathroom is a small library of moth-bitten self-help books (Thanks, Mom) and my bedtime is close enough to twilight to high-five the sun on its way down.
I've started to work out again with a little more addiction than conviction or even common sense.
And because you aren't here to regulate me, I've busted my knees (aaaa-gaaaain.)

And all notwithstanding, as I wandered down 13th avenue with my organic Hippie super-loot, feeling very smug and self-possessed in my birkenstocks, I passed by my favourite breakfast joint, and my kale-fertilized stomach was very persuasive: No, I insist.

Proceeded to savour three enormous pancakes that I could have stitched together to form a roomy buckwheat overcoat. Drowned them with a 3pm coffee. I thought nothing of it, but after all we've been through when it comes to food, you would have been so proud of me, babe. When I admit that I've got a broken heart (-darling, I know I broke my own) people are far too kind to me. 110 minutes and three sacks of flour later I float in a sweet gluten haze from my free (and freeing) lunch back to my apartment.

Which is when I discover the Sea of Kefir.

I think I'm trying too hard.

I think, really, the Art of Becoming One Whole Person isn't so much about us becoming the Perfect People we've always wanted to be. That's not why we strapped a hundred helium balloons to our otherwise incredible relationship and tearfully waved as it disappeared over the horizon. I think it's really about just learning how to regulate ourselves.

Here's one Truth: We will never, ever be perfect. And we will never find our perfection in each other. We have to let that go. We have to stop fighting against the invisible standards we create in each other.

But we can get over ourselves enough to be Pretty Great.
Just make peace with the Pretty Great folks we are. Have the 3 pancake- sore knee- kefir backpack afternoons, and still feel Pretty Great.

And when we do, I think our relationship will feel Pretty Great, too.

Because I'd rather be able to remind myself that I'm Pretty Great,
than rely on you to convince me I'm Perfect.

Yikes, there it is.

So that's my homework. It's full of errors, and there are countless agitated holes worn through by pink erasers, self-doubt, and heartache.

But I know, darling- that by the end of this, you'll give me a sticker-

(and by then I wont need it)

I'll put it right next to the one I've given myself.

In love they wore themselves in a green embrace.
A silken rain fell through the spring upon them.
In the park she fed the swans and he
whittled nervously with his strange hands.
And white was mixed with all their colours
as if they drew it from the flowering trees.

At night his two finger whistle brought her down
the waterfall stairs to his shy smile
which like an eddy, turned her round and round
lazily and slowly so her will
was nowhere—as in dreams things are and aren't.

Walking along avenues in the dark
street lamps sang like sopranos in their heads
with a voilence they never understood
and all their movements when they were together
had no conclusion.

Only leaning into the question had they motion;
after they parted were savage and swift as gulls.
asking and asking the hostile emptiness
they were as sharp as partly sculptured stone
and all who watched, forgetting, were amazed
to see them form and fade before their eyes.

i see dead things, they coat the insides of my lungs
the scent of roadkill stings my eyes
the sight of mangled twisted carcass
saps the sadness from my gums
i see things in a red tinge, ever since i began to
absorb the fringes of weeping trees,
and stories of all the things i feared knowing
all scarlet letters that look apple-sweet
and hues of unhinged cringesom nights spent in the bath pooling
forties and bad memories and them stitched in the back seat,
sidewalks singed with a strange bitter heat speckled with white lies
while bruised fruits are dancing 4/4 measures on my concrete cheeks
grass curled, fists rustily sprung, wounds wound tight, see
my heart is beating 3/4ths of the time, waltzing meaty and slowcooked
falling from the bones, down to the knees
clinging to the ground with all my might, i thought of her
taking a lighter to the split ends of her hair in the bathroom
i didn't move, so as not to drag the blood through the streets
i will not let you see, i will not let them see
but there are never any band aids when i need them
and i wear my feelings on my sleeve and you read them
keep up a finicky fight with a world i don't believe in
i wish i knew exactly why we're fighting to begin with
you swallowed whole and chewed on the bones
and i'm getting ******* so i want to know
if you can just be ******* happy now
everything is slimy and porous and tinged with copper tones of terrible
how can anyone be easy to love and why is love so angry when no one is

Thank God we can't see their tiny faces,
masked over with dust and blood.
Thank God Uncle Sam erases
their mothers' tears in a vast, media-flash of patriotic flood.

Thank God they all die over there,
and not on our classroom's floor.
Thank God we don't have to care
about collateral damage behind a bolted door.

Thank God we can't see their names lie
beneath a bright, smiling yearbook photo of tragic glint.
Thank God we bury them out of our mind before they die;
the calamity of infants is concrete covered with tiny hand prints.

Our Windows are open,
but Thank God the blinds are closed.
-
I hope we write "HOPE" on our missile heads,
so they can see what we're really all about.