I still trust the first spark.
The naive moment in which you give your life away to an idea, hopeless romantic, thinking you are special for the things that you like, maybe you will join the circus, stop pretending you aren’t clever, start laughing with god.
Stripping the veil away from the first idea, walking into an actual circus with the girl in the glass case and no metaphors at all, seeing people be saved by art, by the fact that they chased a tune on the piano and it whispered back, defending them till their work speaks louder than their descriptions, moulding yourself not for the story arc but the force powering it. Knowing this saves time.
Everyone does it this way. The faucet of saying what needs to be said till it runs out and then you can create worlds. A soul duplicitous: choosing to disown the part of you that creates today.
An edge to it, not knowing where it takes you, any of this aliveness of adulthood, full of shadow moves that you stitch together in retrospect. Young enough to still remember: the raspberry lip balm, stolen phone, stolen glances, mistletoe jokes, almost stolen cookies, stolen touch.
Phantom lives, phantom presence.
Interspersed between life and death, this version of me meets my grandmother there, or as things stand tonight, meets my grandmothers there. Stolen time. Nodding in recognition, swimming in the infinite sea, things are so different, you are so different, they paved the path and now they won’t let you go.
You have a vision, you are so sure of it, because it lives and dies in your integrity. Giving up on things frees you in ways that are unnerving, it sets the only kind of relief into motion that spirals into deeper and deeper absolution. They may take it or leave it, but you keep falling.
Clinging to the brain like plastic wrappers, the rain soaked ride to the airport, the sugar lipstick, the generous gifts of flesh and bones, re-reading year of the monkey for probably the fourth time, rage coffee original blended nice and strong, continental earl grey tea bag, re-listening to Lover all the time.
When you look back you have called many shiny places home.
Clinging to the brain like a plastic wrapper, set the girl free, the plastic wrapper free, you stayed the same and everything is different.