10 minutes

They held each other for 10 minutes at least. They held each other, even though their car was getting booted across the street.

When all is said and done, you can tell them how horrible I was - how I made you give me massages and never bought the toilet paper. If you want these mistakes you can have them. Mistakes we make because we're young and we still think all the stupid shit counts for something. Mistakes we make because we're afraid of being vulnerable to each other. Because someone told us love is possession and we believed them. Mistakes capitalism would be proud of because if we weren't preoccupied with having and didn't always want more no one would make any money off of us.

The light is getting thinner - as it does at sunset.
Colors don't actually exist, but we see them anyway.
I'd like to believe in will.
I'd like to believe in self-determination,
but I've got somebody else's gum stuck to my shoe
and all my mother's problems.

hearts in garlic

Some say blood,
some rust, but none
are as red as me.

I discovered recently I have a fear of the ocean - especially at night. Its abysmal, incalculable depth. The ocean feels hungry to me even on calm days. Some absurd fish I am. Like the tides want to uncover me, consume me and leave the bones. I think I equate death with the ocean. Not death the way I like to think of it/experience it, but soul-less death. Dispersed into thousands of disconnected particles instead of remaining a whole, sentient being.

Or maybe it's the vastness of the ocean that bothers me. My ignorance seeing itself in the reflection of the expansive. I had a dream once I was submerged in it. Below me was darkness and above me light. I struggled upward until I broke the surface and it was at that moment when I woke. I felt calm after that dream, as if in it I had been protected. I wish I could feel that way again.

love as a

Love exists. Love is waiting only for you to open. Love is urgent as it watches you grow older. Love asks only to be received. Love is transformative. Love opens flowers in the darkness of morning. Love is fire. Love speaks not and thinks not. Love knows. Love I beg not to leave me alone. Love you don't have to deserve but should want to. Love gives everything and takes everything. Love ignites love. Love you have to be blind to see and blind not to see. Love you pray at night to wake up with. Love never grows because it simply is and always was. Love, inseparable from creation. Love as a fetus, a seed. Delicate love. Secret love. Love from behind a veil.

stake your claim

I met a woman yesterday who told me, with pride, that she finally convinced her husband to "convert" to Buddhism. Not only that, but he is looking forward to seeing his first Buddha shrine during their visit to Thailand. P.S. I should visit her blog.

If only belief were as easy as that - like washing dishes and talking about the weather. If only a shrine were erected, in any country, to any prophet, that people could actually go to and see.

Niche got it wrong. God isn't dead, religion is.

Amok.

delicate and luminous as the egg moon

My face is changing. I've got crows-feet around my eyes from smiling too damn much and creases in my forehead from frowning too damn much.

If you were to read these lines, like a palm reader, they would reveal a great trapeze artist. I perform emotional acrobatics. Flips, somersaults, etc. - usually without a net (when we're together). When you're with me we move so fast I can no longer tell who's catching and who's being caught. Probably me.

keeping account we
note each cent given to love-
always wanting more.

leaving day

Valentine's Day, for me, is not about heart-shaped candy and kisses, but bravery, pain, loss and personal transcendence. It marks the eight-year anniversary of my leaving home.

Eight years ago tomorrow my mother walked into an empty bedroom expecting to find me there. It took her a while to understand what she saw. I hadn't left a note. I had even "patched things up" before I left. I didn't want them to think I ran away from an argument. I had stood on the line separating our crumbled driveway and the black-top of Sherrell Drive before, and decided then. A person who runs away is weak. Leaving requires courage.

You take everything from your parents. You even take the absence of giving. You absorb everything into your child-heart. Mine had grown too full. It wasn't a crime of passion. There was nothing to be gotten back, no revenge, no point to be taken or made. It was sacrificial. People judge you for the sacrifices you make in the name of life. But to argue responsibility for others over responsibility for ones self is to deny every instinct and every decision a person makes in life - none of which are wholly selfless. I turned eighteen. I packed, and I left them. I was still in high school.