i remember when you let me see you and at first it was like a dream turned into a nightmare—the kind where you’re floating or swimming but not quite flying and more like drowning because you’re directionless and under the control of the winds of your own mind, being tossed and turned by every errant thought, every desire a gust to nowhere. i recall the enchanting splendor of your terrible glamor, the white hot lightning of your misunderstanding, the torrent and thunder of your shields and guards, your tears like fire arrows and your confusion all ballistas and mangonels and trebuchets because that is the way fear works; turning what it knows works in reverse, as if siege engines could keep you safe from my eyes or drive my heart away from yours.
that’s the way it works, even if it doesn’t work. great balls of flame in the name of love, contempt and scorn and derision when you want to say hello; misprizing what you can’t have, devaluing what you can’t explain and anything you can do to forget what you can’t admit is not for you. it’s a deeper pride in the name of love, a deeper pain in the work of protection, and it’s twisted about you, like an injured Spirit Animal gone feral and red and foaming—too wild to live, too beautiful to be put out of its misery.
but the rages you hide beneath the surface, your disdain for the world and the other and the disapointment in yourself—the way it curls up in your lips and tenses in your shoulders‚ i want you to let that go.
i want you to exhale the need to make it all about you—kapalabhati style—to let the fear or being alone drip down your body and pool in the path behind you; so you don’t hurt your back carrying all them bags like that.
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you can’t be a half a player and a part-time revolutionary your whole life. and you can’t be the star if you’re scared of the heat and the light and the dark and all the frequencies that come with it. there’s no use in going if you’re not going to go all the way.
Tags: air conditioning, bird in the hand, chameleon, plug
