Happy Imperfections

There will be bad days. Be calm. Loosen your grip, opening each palm slowly.  Now, let go. Be confident. Know that now is only a moment, and that if today is as bad as it gets, understand that by tomorrow, today will have ended. Be gracious. Accept each extended hand offered to pull you back from the somewhere you cannot escape. Be diligent. Scrape the gray sky clean. Realize every dark cloud is a smoke screen meant to blind us from the truth, and the truth is, whether we see them or not - the sun and moon are still there and there is always light.

Be forthright. Despite your instinct to say, “it’s alright, I’m okay” - be honest. Say how you feel without fear or guilt, without remorse or complexity. Be lucid in your explanation, be sterling in your oppose. If you think for one second no one knows what you’ve been going through; be accepting of the fact that you are wrong, that the long drawn and heavy breaths of despair have at times been felt by everyone - that pain is part of the human condition and that alone makes you a legion.

We hungry underdogs, we risers with dawn, we dissmissers of odds – we will station ourselves to the calm. We will hold ourselves to the steady, be ready, player one. Life is going to come at you armed with hard times and tough choices, your voice is your weapon, your thoughts ammunition – there are no free extra lives, be aware that as the instant now passes, it exists now as it did then. So be a mirror reflecting yourself back, and remembering the times when you thought all of this was too hard and that you’d never make it through.

Remember the times you could have pressed quit – but you hit continue. Be forgiving. Living with the burden of anger, is not living. Giving your focus to wrath will leave your entire self absent of what you need. Love and hate are beasts and the one that grows is the one you feed. Be persistent. Be the weed growing through the cracks in the cement, beautiful - because it doesn’t know it’s not supposed to grow there. Be resolute. Declare what you accept as true in a way that envisions the resolve with which you accept it.

If you are having a good day, be considerate. A simple smile could be the first-aid kit that someone has been looking for. If you believe with absolute honesty that you are doing everything you can - do more.

But know that there will be bad days, times when the world weighs on you for so long it leaves you looking for an easy way out. There will be moments when the drought of joy seems unending. Instances spent pretending that everything is all right when it clearly is not, check your blind spot. See that love is still there, be patient. Every nightmare has a beginning, but every bad day has an end. Ignore what others have called you. I am calling you friend. Make us comprehend the urgency of your crisis. Silence left to its own devices, breed’s silence.

So speak and be heard. One word after the next, express yourself and put your life into context – if you find that no one is listening, be loud. Make noise. Stand with poise and be open. Hope in these situations is not enough and you will need someone to lean on. In the unlikely event that you have no one, look again. Everyone is blessed with the ability to listen. The deaf will hear you with their eyes. The blind will see you with their hands. Let your heart fill their newsstands, Let them read all about it. Admit to the bad days, the impossible nights. Listen to the insights of those who have been there, but have come back. They’ll tell you; you can stack misery, you can pack despair you can even wear your sorrow – but come tomorrow you must change your clothes.

Everyone knows pain. We are not meant to carry it forever. We were never meant to hold it closely and let it shape us into who we become, so be certain in the belief that the pain that belongs to now will soon belong to then. And when someone asks you how was your day, realize that for some of us – it’s the only way we know how to say, “Be calm. Loosen your grip, opening each palm slowly. Now, let go.”

We all wanted that high school sweetheart
We wanted to be young in the 50s with meatloaves and sock hops
and lawns, lawns so perfect they looked like Clark Gable was kissing them

We wanted to be thirteen and alive and meet a boy that was thirteen and alive
and walk with him, to sit and hold hands, to sit and kiss, to sit and sit, like it was something you would miss, but it really never was.

We once went to bed as if between the bed sheets there was a valley with dinosaurs still breathing, but even they were broken and taken up with the smoke that rose out of the homes and the corners that we once climbed through,
the streets with the footballs which we once threw,
the school desks upon which we once drew,
the windows that sat open through we once flew,
before the outside world of parking spaces and dead friendships came flooding on in.

We forgot what we wanted
and we became what we become: waitresses and bartenders, underpaid employees with temp positions, we are junkies and one kiss poems and we cry put to the stars
as we write our scars and mistakes onto dumpsters and electric boxes.
Because the only thing that we can hear is our hearts
and the streets are the only ones listening to
that blood that breathes through the letters we leave
and we dream to rise ourselves up out of these burning buildings
but instead we get buried somewhere beneath the fire we started.

Because I know my life is like some high school kids notebook
a high school kid that shuffles back and forth between school and home
stacking the drawings and the letters and the pictures far too close for anyone outside of her own imagination to read
because it’s through the words and stories that her heart beats,
that her heart breathes
and we all just wanted to write these notes:

check if you like me
check if you don’t
check if you’ll date me
check if you won’t

Because we all wanted the love songs to be true,
and we did love dinosaurs once,
and we wanted the stars to hold our hands,
but they ended up screwing us.
So let your smile twist
let your heart dance precariously on the edge of yout fingertips,
staining them red like that same high school kid over thinking her thoughts,
using her permanent marker tip, writing:

“I was here. I was here and none of you can write that in the spot that I just wrote it in. I’m here and we all are here because every breath I give brings me a second closer to the day that my mother may die. Because every breath I take takes me a second further from the moment she caught my father’s eye. Because every word I carry is another stone to put into place in the foundation that I’m building in my heart. Because the days can erase something that I never saw. What all of us wanted and what none of us got, What we all had and have and what we all forgot. That we all wanted to be something. That we all became something, and it might not be the shit we once thought we’d be when we were kids but something is still something and like some cats say, something is better than nothing. Feet are smarter than an engine, and dreams run stronger than thighs, and questions are the only answers that we need to know that we are as alive as I am when I have the mind of a child.  Asking why is 2 + 3 always equal to 5 ? Where do people go to when they die? What made the beauty of the moon? And the beauty of the sea? Did that beauty make you?  Did that beauty make me? Will that make me something? Will I be something? Am I something?”

And then the answer comes to me: already am, always was, and I still have time to be.

Down The Line

I can’t describe the sound of his voice, the music in our hugs, or the perfect stutter in his walk. But I imagine that his words are like fig leaves that dance to the sound of opinions that refuse to be silenced, the conviction in his sentences can make an ocean question the beauty of its own waves. I bet the stars spend hours in the mirror getting pretty and putting on extra sparkle, hoping that he will notice them in the moonlight. I imagine the morning gets jealous whenever he wakes up at noon, I bet the knees of twilight buckle whenever he compliments a sunset. I bet the streetlights shine a little bit brighter simply because he is standing underneath them. I bet the sidewalk plays a symphony just to make sure that his feet have something to listen to in between steps. I can’t describe the sound of his voice, the music in our hugs, or the perfect stutter in his walk but I know, I know that he is more than just another piece of land waiting to be claimed. He is a music note waiting to be loved into a song, he is an acoustic guitar waiting patiently for the hands that have been trained to hold him properly. He is a wind chime at the end of a culdesac and his skin is a melody, that very few women will have the pleasure of hearing. So I’ll go, but we know I’ll see you down the line. And we’ll hate what we’ve lost, but we’ll love what we find.

Dream Girl

She’s the most wonderful thing you’ve yet encountered. You think she has a beautiful exterior with her angel-woven hair. Her dark brown eyes reflect her sincerity and depth with every blink. Her radiant smile brightens the darkest corners of every room. And her laugh? It is the most intricate symphony ever played. You think she is the absolute personification of beauty. In fact, beauty doesn’t even begin to reiterate how lovely she is. And the craziest part? Interiorly, you find her to be equally as gorgeous. The words that escape her mouth are intellectually stimulating. She is open and courageous, always adding onto her list of experiences. If you wanted to take a road trip across the country, she wouldn’t question your actions. She’d probably just pack her bags, count what she has, and jump in the car. To you, she is exciting and free-spirited, throwing herself wherever the wind blows. Not only is she unpredictable in her actions, but in the sense where you weren’t sure what she’s truly thinking. And that makes you all the more curious to know her. Because she is addicting. She is beautiful, and she is different, and she is the closest thing you’ve ever come to truly living.

But her heart is exclusive. She has this tendency to keep herself closed. She’ll never let you in no matter how much you prove yourself to be worthy of her trust. You can spill your soul out to her and you won’t even see a flicker of who she truly is. What she dreams of. What her true desires are. What she wants to be. She’s the girl who you always wish you could capture, but she’s too free to obtain. She’d rather live in the moment than make future plans of what’s not guaranteed. She’s lost hope in people. She’s learned to cut herself off from this heartless world, and that’s what made her different. How easily she can let go of herself, her emotions, her worries. How easily she can forget everything she has been through. And that’s how you know, that no matter how much you’d wish she could be yours, she could never be fully yours. This unreal beauty, will only be a vision for what you’d aspire to have, even when you feel like you have all of her. And no matter how many times you whisper secrets with her, hold her hand, or share a faded and sunbathed memory, no matter how many times you try, she will never be anything more but a dream.