even-fools-are-right-sometimes

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

And suddenly she can see the whole trajectory of her life laid out behind her in a massive spiral. It's not fate or destiny drawing her to this path, winding her towards the middle like cord wrapped around a pole, nothing magic or artificial. Just herself, slowly but steadily closing in. Switchbacks not retreats.

She gets it now, something like faith filling her up

She hasn't been wandering aimless at all, shes been exploring. Testing things out, learning what she likes and angling towards it like a plant in the sun. Like everything leading up to this point has been a Markov-chain random walk, exploring parameter space to find the optima - except it hasn't been random, not really. She has been following something. Her gut. Or her heart. Tracking some indefinable feeling of rightness and drawing closer to the center.

She doesn't know what she'll find there. But she can see the shape of it, the way all the little pieces might fit together to outline a single future.

She knows it will be hers and it will be beautiful

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

“I need you to say everything will be okay I won't believe you”

– if you repeat it enough i might forget its not true (Haiku #147)

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

“Tell me it's okay I know I won't believe you I need it despite”

– i promise i want to trust it (Haiku #146)

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

I need someone to tell me it's going to be okay but I don't think I would believe anyone if they tried

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

A midwest town relearning that nature isn't the enemy, that we must steward the wildness

It rains all the time, so the dirt is rich and brown and the trees are dark and alive, the perfect contrast for those first precious greens. The redbuds and magnolias are blooming, filling the tree lines with blooms of pink. The dandelions are sprinkled like bright little stars and no one is mowing them down. There are so many daffodils.

I'm aching already, knowing how fleeting this spring is. The air is fresh and floral, winter clean with the newest tint of crab apple blossoms, and I want to breathe it and then hold my breath so I never have to let it go. Why can't the world always look like this, I want to paint it all, need some way to force the image onto paper so I don't ever need to give it up. It's so lovely and I can't help but mourn its loss while I'm still in the thick of it. I say I want to take a picture, but what I mean is, I want to freeze the world so I can live in this spring forever, everything on the cusp, all of the growing and none of the pain.

Spring where you are -

Location: (can be a general region like “Midwest” or “city” or something)

What it’s like: (observations, ecology, who is out and about, quiet moments, hiding places, etc.)

How it makes you feel:

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

I'm all tangled up over you. I've been not-dating-you for longer now than I was ever dating-you but I'm still so Tangled up. The i-shouldn't-be-missing-you all messed up with i-am-definitely-still-missing-you. I tell my friend all the terrible ways you hurt me and they say good riddance. A year ago I told them all the wonderful ways you loved me and they said I was the lucky one. I feel like I'm lying whatever I say. I can't hold the whole of you in my head anymore

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

I should be angry. I should be mad and violent and sharp

but its like i forget how to be cruel halfway even while you stab me through the stomach

somehow it always just goes back around to being my fault. He lied and led me on, but really I should have known better. I saw the signs, watched the sudden icing over of the river and yet I stayed.

Yet I soften all of my words, say it was frustrating when i really mean that it hurt the entire time, that I felt betrayed and abandoned.

But whats the point of all this sharpness. it won’t change his mind, won’t make his cold heart feel any remorse, won’t make him care that he hurt me, won’t get it through his thick skull that what he did was like laying down next to me in my bed and then slapping me everytime i tried to reach for his hand

and im furious, furious like an ocean, smooth waves on the surface and a violent undertow underneath

---

from the first sentence i knew it was a lost cause, the next two hours was just mapping the extent of the damage

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

Mary Oliver, from “Hum Hum”, A Thousand Mornings

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

we dissected salamanders in class today. did you know the eggs have to travel half way up their abdomen, loose in their belly, to get from the ovary to the oviduct?

he holds me close and calls me his little monster because of how much this (me and him, him and me, us) scares him. it scares me too

i'm flaying back pieces of skin, offering him slivers like organs like facts about how salamanders mix their oxygen-rich blood with their oxygen-poor blood and its inefficient but its alright because they can breathe through their skin

and he keeps taking them gently and smiling and is slowly fitting them together like something worth cherishing and it should hurt but it doesn't. its never been so fucking easy to peel back a tangle of veins and give them away.

i'm crazy, this has got to be crazy, he's interlocking our bones with every word and every touch and i want it but i'm terrified. the ribs on a salamander don't surround anything, but if this doesn't work its going to take breaking all of mine to remove him from where he's grafted himself into my chest

salamanders lose their gills when they move onto land. they don't ever get them back. do they realize as it happens how much is changing?its not that i want to stay in the water, but what if once i leave its too late to come back. the call of void equally opposed by the fear of the unknown

it's good, somehow its so good but i keep anticipating my scalpel to hit rotten flesh (is it pessimism or prophesy) listen to your gut, but mine only trembles (is it warning or anticipation)

i don't know what i'm doing, peeling back muscle and viscera to say here is my heart, fragile as a liver

after this is free fall

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

oh no i met another cute guy

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

@even-fools-are-right-sometimes // this is how i love you, yukla // @iamcon-fu-sion // Françoise Sagen, Bonjour Tristesse // The Abduction of Persephone, Gian Lorenzo Bernini // History student falls in love with astrophysics student, @boykeats // Snowbound, objectlesson // @even-fools-are-right-sometimes // Marathon, Louise Glück

(plus a bonus from @dogmotif)

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

I keep imagining how this conversation will go. How I’m going to sit you down on my bed and then settle in your lap as if that will prevent you from running away from me again, as if it’ll make me feel any more in control of this.

Sometimes I start the conversation like a fist fight, Why don’t you kiss me anymore? all of the anger and frustration and betrayal bubbling to the surface before I remember to swallow it down. Sometimes I fold myself down into something soft and light, plead hey, i miss you, talk to me and pretend there isn’t something wild screaming in my chest. Lately, I’ve been looking at your too blue eyes and saying I’m mad at you with no inflection and watching to see if you even care.

I’ve tried to imagine your response, a million different possibilities. In most of them you break my heart. I don’t know if that makes me a pessimist or a prophet.

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

I wanted to say i love you like an accident, like it just slipped out my mouth, like bars of soap, like youth. Anything so I could pretend it wasn't on purpose, wasn't carefully scripted and rehearsed, everything weighed on the great scales -- my dignity against the shape of your lips around my name, my heart against the exact temperature of the sheets between us.

There was always this core of me that thought you would treat me more gently, might not realized how the distance from my thoughts to your ears has consumed me, if it seemed to surprise me too. As if the practiced spontaneity might convince you I said it without thinking, and that might protect me.

I've never done anything without thinking about it.

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

I am kissing you on the forehead. I appreciate the kind words, but do not worry about me. My happiness is not so fragile as all that

And truly, none of my friends would actually begrudge me my happiness, but I’m in the sort of job right now where everyone very much has the mind set of “this job is hell and everyone is depressed” so it kind of surprises them that actually i really like this job and am happier than I’ve ever been. And also there is a very big difference between being happy and telling them “i know you’re struggling, but I’m doing just fine and actually im flourishing (so clearly this is a problem with you and not the job)” which is what I’m trying not to do cause it can be very disheartening. And I am strong enough to be gentle with them and still be so happy I dance in my kitchen at 9 in the morning

I feel like I’m not allowed to talk about it sometimes, with how depressed everyone is. Is it alright for me to say that I’m happy?

I don’t want to brag, only I do want to lay it all out; like a picnic, or an art exhibit with the title in all in bold: if this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is. I don’t want to brag, but I want to shout it from the roof tops and breathe it in until my lungs hurt from how full they are. I didn’t know I could get here and sometimes I need to say it out loud just to remind myself.

I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. And its not because I have everything figured out – it’s just that for the first time, I finally feel like I’m pointed in the right direction. (It doesn’t matter if it takes me the rest of my life, the point is that I smile after every step)

I’m happy. I laugh so easy now. It’s nice.

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

I feel like I'm not allowed to talk about it sometimes, with how depressed everyone is. Is it alright for me to say that I'm happy?

I don't want to brag, only I do want to lay it all out; like a picnic, or an art exhibit with the title in all in bold: if this isn't nice, I don't know what is. I don't want to brag, but I want to shout it from the roof tops and breathe it in until my lungs hurt from how full they are. I didn't know I could get here and sometimes I need to say it out loud just to remind myself.

I'm the happiest I've ever been. And its not because I have everything figured out -- it's just that for the first time, I finally feel like I'm pointed in the right direction. (It doesn't matter if it takes me the rest of my life, the point is that I smile after every step)

I'm happy. I laugh so easy now. It's nice.

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

1. Do you know how pearls form? It’s like a splinter for an oyster, an irritant slipping inside and being wrapped gently, incessantly in smoothness. Bundling up the pain until its soft and shiny and doesn’t hurt anymore.

2. I broke up with him on a Saturday. I didn’t tell anyone until Monday and in those liminal hours in-between I wrapped myself in three blankets and watched competitive baking shows for hours on end. I didn’t want to tell anyone because that would make it real. I didn’t want to say anything until I could tell the whole story without crying. (I couldn’t bear being seen until I could stand under the weight of it all)

3. My grandparents bought me a pearl oyster for Christmas when I was eleven. We cracked it open in my great-grandmother’s kitchen right after presents and I watched, too young to hold the knife, as my grandpa broke the shell open and pried out my prize.

4. I never learned how to swallow pain, only how to hold it in my mouth, rolling it around on my tongue like a terrible mint, unable to stop myself from tasting it, unable to speak around the heaviness.

5. I still have it all these years later. When I was younger, I would slip it from its little necklace cage and roll it around in my mouth. I’m not sure I can explain why I did it. Perhaps I just liked the feel of it. Or maybe I had the strange desire to take this paradoxical treasure inside myself. The irritant and the reward. Maybe it was practice for all the pain that would come later

6. Perhaps someday, someone will take a knife to the hinge of my shell and pry this ball of pain from behind my teeth. Perhaps I will thank them

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

It’s stupid. we were all a little drunk, celebrating the exam i had passed that morning, everything was a little raw and open, still high on the adrenaline of not failing even hours later. you asked me about my baggage and between the alcohol and the rent in my chest I forgot to lie, forgot to spin some clever half-truth and said i need everyone to love me so fucking much with a little too much feeling for a cheap bar

did you hear it? could you tell how deeply i meant it, and how little i meant to actually say it out loud? both of you kind of looked at me, perhaps as surprised as I was, worried maybe or confused. that doesn’t seem healthy you said. i’m supposed to be the stable one in our trio

And then I had to backtrack, shore up all those defenses I had so stupidly thrown off its not a problem. im fine. i dont let it affect me. if i hadn’t said anything you never would’ve had guessed

i’m still trying to figure out why i said anything at all. maybe i just wanted confirmation that i hide it as well i think i do. whether i look as needy as i feel. i think i was curious whether there’s some part of me that makes sense now that you know this terrible thing at the core of me (if knowing changes what you think of me)