The D Train

If a writer falls in love with you, you can never die.

Mik Everett (via thelovejournals)

Or you can die a thousand times, a thousand different ways. 

A Poem About Cheese

If your heart was a cheese, what kind of cheese would it be?

I’m sure my heart is made of brie. Hard on the outside, but once you cut it open it oozes all over the kitchen counter like butter. It’s an introverted cheese. Some people like the moldy rind and some don’t, but brie never makes any apologies. It’s the cheese you put out for holidays when you want to impress people. My heart is like the holidays.

I’m pretty sure her heart is made of cheddar. Just as sharp as her tongue. As yellow as the sun that shines through the blids onto her cheek in the morning.

Or swiss. Full of holes because she gives too much. Or blue cheese because she’s always cold and her heart crumbles whenever I try to take a piece for myself.

She told me my heart is probably made of gruyere. Old and cracked and mostly good in fondu. The kind of cheese you melt down and make a party of and share with friends, and then regret that you didn’t save more for yourself to give to someone special. A type of cheese that likes to please. That melts too easily. Goes good with beer and cider.

I disagreed. I prefer red wine, myself.

She said her heart is made of pepper jack. Mild, but spicy when it needs to be. Versatile. The type of cheese you fall in love with instantly and will love you back just the same, but every now and then in the middle of the night it will wake you up and remind you, you’re not as young as you used to be. You have responsibilities… like no eating spicy foods past 10 p.m.

We love the beauty of flowers so much that we rip them from the ground take them out the sun put them in a vase and then watch them die. Such an ostentatious display of decadence and decay for one to think they can plant a garden inside. But whatever it takes to reaffirm us that we possess just a little bit of light to make tulips bloom in a dimly lit living room for just long enough to give us a glimpse of all the wonder the world has to hide. For just a brief moment we kept something alive. Even if we knew that it would eventually fall apart, we tried and we held out hope because for that short amount of time it was beautiful and we thought we had something to do with it. We felt we were the reason why when those petals finally opened up despite all the darkness we provide.

Choose your weapon just in case this doesn't go as planned. Hold my hand but hold your knife too. I promise I'd never hurt you but this might kill you. Will there be any pieces of us left when it's over? If it's over? I've never done this before - loved someone I couldn't hide from. Can I love you when I'm still in love with everyone else? Can you love me when everyone else is still in love with you? What are we gonna do other than clutch our knife and our gun and hope the other doesn't run when things start to burn? We always love the savage but never before was that savage a friend. Stability or madness? I'll choose the madness, again.

“There is nothing more powerful, than an idea whose time has come” - Saul Williams

WTF?

All that looking and staring and talking and asking and texting and sweating and calling and meeting and seeing and eating and drinking and repeating and trying and lying and promising and touching and hugging and kissing and licking and sweating and undressing and resisting and submitting and letting go and giving in and moaning and cursing and screaming and cumming and going and pulling out and pulling away and questioning and going with it and rethinking and getting dressed and regret and being quiet and accepting and ignoring and cursing and screaming and crying and lying will have you wondering wtf just happened?

I asked her who she voted for in 2004, we were discussing politics and religion and that was the first election I was old enough to participate in. I said, Gore, she said that was the year she stopped believing in anything, but she still went to church just in case. She still voted in every election after that just to be safe because she didn’t want to be blamed when things went wrong, and things always went wrong. And knowing she wasn’t the reason why helped her sleep at night. I asked her how she’s been sleeping lately.

She asked, why do you put so much pressure on me to dream when I’m still stuck between feeling lost and feeling free? Forced to get along with those who arm themselves and dream of harming me. Sold me a house with a lawn and picket fence, but made copies of the key so you can come and go as I sleep at night and my dreams can be policed.

I told her I had been struggling with these dreams of my own, on the verge of packing up and selling everything I owned, but it was still too comfortable to pretend.

She told me I sounded like a politician campaigning for an election I knew I would never win, and American woke up a while ago and wasnt letting anymore new dreams in.

But I was just trying to get her attention…

Every time I see my Grandmaw she asks me why I never come around.  I tell her I’ve been busy doing things, like missing you, and leaving town.

Yet, you make me feel guilty whenever I ask for your company; I’m too needy,  get too attached, you can’t be all up under me. And I told my Grandmaw what you said, that I should spend more time alone, get to know me,  find myself,  do a few things on my own. 

Now, her memory ain’t the best, but she remembers that she never liked you much. Said that you were the needy one, so out of line and out of touch.

She told me that she missed me, but I’ve been going about it wrong. Grandmaw said we should treat love as a visitor and never as a home.

Lately I've Been Falling In Love

I try to fall in love at least once a week. Lately I’ve been falling in love with music and cities because people don’t always love you back the way you want them to. Instead of setting myself on fire, I’d rather buy a ticket to New York and fall in love with the view. Or listen to Coltrane and fall in love with the blues. Or run my finger across a map and fall in love with the idea of falling in love with someone new, somewhere new, in a place I’ve never been and in a language I’m not that fluent. But sometimes I can’t help myself and I still fall in love with you. All of you. Over and over again. I fall in love with the memories. I fall in love with the possibilities. I fall in love with cities I’ve never been to, like Montreal, or Paris, or Little Rock, Arkansas. I fall in love with new Prince songs I’ve never heard before. I fall in love with bad advice. I fall in love with that missing hour of sleep I lost last night. I fall in love with the people who love me every now and then just to see what that feels like. 

Eternal Sunshine

My grandmother is slowly beginning to lose her memory. No, she hasn’t been diagnosed with anything because she refuses to see a doctor, but every now and then she will ask me the same questions over and over again. Like, “hows grad school?” and I’ll tell her I graduated over a year ago and she’ll congratulate me for the 5th time and I’ll just nod my head and say thank you. The bright side is she’ll offer me 4 or 5 slices of pie and serve each one to me like its the first as long as I sit through the same story that she’ll tell to me 3 or 4 times. I try to act just as surprised as the first time I heard them.

Eventually she starts to do things like leave the oven on, and forget who she’s talking to on the phone, and what day it is, and what she had for dinner last night, and how to get home when she goes somewhere she hasn’t been in a while, and everybody else thinks this is a reason for concern. Except me. Because I see the beauty in slowly losing your memory as you get older.

There is a certain magic in forgetfulness that God rewards us with if we are fortunate enough to make it into old age. Because after a few years of the mundane every day is something new. An opportunity to experience old things for the first time as those bad memories fade away. In her mind, there is eternal sunshine and that's all any of us really want anyway. The look of surprise on her face every time I tell her I already got my degree means, to her, every other Sunday is graduation.

Every visitor is in town for a holiday. Every birthday is a surprise when you wake up and don’t know why everyone you know is calling you to tell you they love you and every package you ordered is like a present to yourself. You no longer recognize people in old photographs. There is no more living in the past. No regretting old mistakes or wishing you had second chances because as far as you know, you’re still on plan A and everything worked out exactly the way it was supposed to be. Beautifully.

Until that day we wake up on a beach in Montauk and feel everything fading from our memory we will drag our regrets to the shore and relive our mistakes over and over until we bury them in the sand and treat every morning as an opportunity to start over. 

Just don't forget who I am.