getting even

Dear k-

Alone again. The feeling is starting to grow familiar. I found myself anticipating this split, so it wasn’t as painful as it could have been. Still, the sensation of rejection is never a pleasant one. I am also annoyed that it took six bloody months before this guy figured out that apparently I wasn’t his cup of tea. And even then, it didn’t feel like his reasons were sincere. Who needs time to “think” about if this is really what he wants after six months? Who does this out of the blue, in the middle of a pleasant walk in the park?

Oh well, fuck it. As I said, I’ve grown used to the sensation and this time I didn’t shed a tear. I guess that means it wasn’t meant to be, if I didn’t care that much for him. Still, it’s frustrating to be back at square one. I feel like the romantic version of Sisyphus: constantly falling in and out of love.

The world is terrifying these days. Mass killings, threats of nuclear war, natural disasters one after another. It puts one’s own life into perspective and makes it difficult to mourn the loss of a potential friendship/partner when others are losing lives, homes, family. Who knows what is to come next.

I hope you are doing well.

-k

fuck global warming

Dear k-

A large portion of my life has been consumed with a bitter pursuit to experience the autumn of my memory. In actuality, it’s not one single autumn, but the amalgam of several years’ worth of autumns, spanning decades, loosely woven into one ideal memory that I keep reaching for but falling short. It’s comprised of those perfect days, the ones where, if you’re lucky, you pause and think to yourself, “this is exactly what I want in life right now and I am content”. The crisp breath of winter’s chill beginning to sneak into the late summer air, still heavy and radiant with accrued heat of the sultry months prior, the wind just barely nipping through my sweater, staring up at a blue morning sky unblemished by a single fluff of cloud. In the air there is the scent of a fire, carried by the intermittent breeze, from some neighbor burning leaves in his yard. It’s technically illegal within the city limits but I don’t complain because I like it; it makes me feel at ease and so I breathe deep and hope I never forget how that scent makes me feel.

Halloween is approaching. I have a marching band competition in a few weeks. I have college homecoming this month. I have to start winterizing my garden soon. I volunteered to monitor the corn maze with the other kids from church tomorrow night and my mom said she’d drive me and my friend. The pavement feels different under my shoes these days. It’s no longer the sizzling bright expanse that felt so brutally hard and intolerant the past few months. Now it feels somehow softer, older, more tame, gritty with sand and sparkled with broken glass, more forgiving in the wake of the first frost of the year. The gutters rustle with papery leaves of reds, yellows, but mostly browns. With every gust they shiver and break out into a thrilled form of applause, cackling as they tumble across the asphalt. I’m fourteen years old walking home from practice. I’m twenty, ambling across the University quad towards the library. I’m twenty five, standing outside a cafe with a steaming black coffee warming my bare hand, thinking about the exam I have to take in a few days.

Last autumn was nothing but a disappointment. We sweated through the months that are normally reserved for that first shiver, and then within a week the temperatures plummeted so violently that the flora did not know how to respond. Trees went from being green to suddenly bare. Grasses shriveled so quickly it seemed like the world changed nearly overnight. Snow was on the ground to muffle the crackling shuffle of leaves before the first gust could even catch them. It left me feeling empty, cheated. There would be no ideal autumn memories to log for this season. And it seems, upon retrospect, that the last few years have followed the same pattern. The quintessential transitional season is becoming rarer as I get older. Is it because my memory is flawed? Am I casting everything in the rosy glow of youth? Or are is my favorite season truly becoming scarcer? Do I have less to celebrate now? Am I not taking the same time to pause and admire?

Here’s to hoping this autumn will give us something better.

-k

places

Dear k-

I have been thinking about airports. For the most part, I like airports. In this day and age I know that might sound strange. Most people equate airports with long lines, stress, bitter cups of overpriced coffee, lost baggage, headaches…And I am not denying that all those things certainly exist at airports. I think what I like about airports is that they are a limbo. I have always been drawn towards transitional spaces. At the airport no one is permanent, everyone is en route, even the people who work there never truly seem to be established. They constantly rotate, change shifts, wander between gates, never limited to one post. So whenever I have a flight planned I arrive 2-3 hours early, even when I have a very early morning departure. I love to sit, headphones snuggly tucked into my ears, and watch. I watch people bustle to and fro, a family trying to make sure everyone is accounted for, a twenty-something turned face-in on a bench of seats, trying to sneak in a nap. Staring out the windows I watch the metal behemoths lift soundlessly into the air, as if they are just floating away with hardly any effort and I almost forget their bellies are seeded with human beings.

I think I also like airports because they satisfy my restlessness. To be in an airport means I am going somewhere. There is something ahead to anticipate. Even if the final destination is not a pleasant one, such as a funeral, I still feel a guilty contentment from the journey. I’ve wondered if I was forced to travel more frequently, such as for work, and if I spent more time in airports if they would lose their appeal. Would they become the dusty, dingy, stressful places that most people see them as?

I hope that is never the case.

-k

like clockwork

Dear K-

You have nothing to feel ashamed of in this circumstance. People of our disposition fall in and out of love, even though many times we wish we could be in love, even if just to spare the feelings of the other person. I know I have debated with myself alone at the kitchen table over a cup of tea, asking why I no longer can feel as enthused, as mesmerized as I once was, and why I inevitably have to hurt anyone who dares to get close enough to me to care. The heavy chains of guilt are always there. The feeling is unavoidable. I blame myself for leading them on, even if it was inadvertent. I hate to be the source of pain for someone, especially when I don’t have a good excuse other than “I just don’t feel the same anymore”. It makes me nervous. Can I trust my own feelings at this point? When did I become so mercurial, that not even I can predict my sentiments in a month’s time anymore?

I think you made the right decision, if that means anything, coming from me. She doesn’t want you, she just doesn’t want to be alone. I don’t blame her; I’ve been in those uncomfortable shoes before and tried to waltz that same clumsy step. No one benefits.

You can find someone else to dote upon. You can find someone else to make smile. It’s one thing to find someone to elevate to be the center of your life, to admire and adore, but it’s another thing to find a Daisy Buchanan for which to waste your life away. Think about it. Daisy is Gatsby’s ideal, he falls in love with the idea of her, what she represents…but when you look a little deeper, Daisy is really an awful person. She’s a disappointment. Shallow and selfish, she gets by on her beauty and charisma, but she is barely a husk of a being once you scrape off those superficial layers. That was always the problem and the appeal of the Great Gatsby for me: Daisy didn’t seem worthy of the adoration awarded to her. As much as it frustrated me to see someone so hurtful and superficial be worshipped by a wealthy, love struck man for his entire life, it also seemed painfully realistic. Of course someone would throw everything away for her. Some people need that corporal source of light and purpose in their life, and Gatsby was one who needed a goddess, even one that he built up and embellished in his mind, in order to drive him. Don’t be fooled into thinking you need a Daisy Buchanan, K. Find yourself a powerful, eloquent women who not only appreciates your devotion but reciprocates in kind. Find someone who not only sparks the fire in your heart but douses it in gasoline and continues to stoke it with wood throughout the long years, after the initial fuel has long since burned off.

I know. Easier said than done.

I am probably a little more sympathetic than usual because I have also recently hurt a few men whose only offense was trying to love me. I have a heavy heart, K. Many men have tried to lift it and it has only ended in pain.

It’s spring. Try to think of the sun washed afternoons and the lingering cool twilights of summer to come.

Stay vigilant,
-k

Another

Dear K,

It's Spring and I feel guilty. I really tried to do the right thing. What I thought was the right thing. It gets hard to determine what that is sometimes. I was dating this woman, and we had a good time, however anytime it seemed as if the relationship would progress she would pump the brakes and say things like "maybe I shouldn't be dating you, I shouldn't be dating anybody right now, I should be single"

This was fine for a while. We had fun, things were casual. Then we started fighting, started getting distant from each other. We'd be in the same room and hardly talk. One day I said, "it seems like our dynamic has changed, maybe we should break up and just be friends". It seemed like what she wanted, what she kept telling me she needed.

The following week she said she wanted to get back together.

In that week I had realized that I had been spending a lot of time with her, or talking to her, and that this had taken up the focus of my life. I realized that I had spent the preceding months making things about her. I don't know if she ever felt this way, and maybe that's not even true, but it's how I feel about the relationship. Don't get me wrong I love doing that. I love doting on pretty women. It makes me feel good to hear them giggle and laugh and say nobody ever treated them so good. I like to be good, I like to do good things.

She's been sending me long text messages and asking to talk and trying to get back together ever since we broke up. I've been thinking about how I'm going to get to LA.

I still think she's a lovely lady. I still think she's funny and smart and cute. I just don't feel the way I used to about her, and that really hurts her feelings, and that makes me feel guilty.

I don't like it when anybody I care about is hurt. I'll usually try and do just about everything I can to make them feel better. I'll talk it through with them, I'll try and listen as best I can, I'll make jokes and dance around the room, I'll do anything, say anything to get them to stop crying. Sometimes though there's nothing you can do. It's not my job to make her feel better. I know that, but it doesn't stop me from feeling guilty because her feelings are hurt.

Anyways,

I hope everything's good with you,

K

Dear K,

Do you ever think about how hard it is to make things? And how hard it is to not make things? And how when we make things we tell ourselves that we have to make them so well that we become fabulously successful at them? And then we place so much pressure on being validated that it stops being fun to make things?

I'm in a rut right now.

I've got to get to work somehow. I did some good editing though yesterday. Things are moving slowly towards spring up here.

I hope you're well.

Best,

K

a brief response to your failing american dream

Dear K-

I sympathize with your despair at the nation's current state. I haven't felt truly American for a long time, mostly because I never really felt quite right here, never really totally at ease, at least in the same way I seemed to instantly click with Czech culture. Since then I've always pushed a bit against the "American way", and by that I mean the stereotypical American that you see on desperate television series like The Bachelor or MTV reality shows: ignorant, unhealthy, and usually a bit culturally insensitive. That being said, I still have to admit to my birth place and write on paper documents of importance my place of origin. I am American. That is a fact. Now, it brings me more shame than ever. I am embarrassed to discuss politics, in private and in public. It makes me feel sick. It makes me feel hopeless. It makes me shake my head slowly back and forth while staring at something infinitely far away, out of focus, and struggling to find any words at all.

Just trying to get through it the only way I know how,
-k

click, click, click, click

Dear K-

I apologize for the radio silence. I’ve been in a weird place lately. I haven’t been myself, and that’s been eating me away for the last few weeks.

When I say “I haven’t been myself”, I don’t mean it in the usual sense in that I just haven’t been feeling well. I mean I have been prevented through various means and commitments from doing the normal bits of my life and routines that make me feel like myself. Over the last four weeks, the nights that I have had off and to myself I can count on one hand. I haven’t been able to go on my normal runs. Even my weekly grocery store trip has been disrupted.

I shouldn’t complain; it is no one’s fault but my own. I’ve stretched myself too thin. Too many social engagements. The tedious burden of the working day. A new boyfriend who gets nervous if I don’t devote a certain amount of time to him. I like him, and I like spending time with him, but when I haven’t had a night alone to myself in several weeks I start to feel like everything is a burden, even him. And I know that isn’t a good place to be. I tried to explain it once but it didn’t go over well. I don’t think I had the right words. I don’t know if I’ve ever really had to right words.

Tonight, I cancelled plans with my friends. I saw them last night. I have plans to see them tomorrow night. I love my friends and I love the time I spend with them, but I really just can’t do it right now. I needed a night off. I need a night to go home, strip down to nothing but my underwear and an old club basketball sweatshirt from college and lay on my couch, petting my dog and playing video games. I need a night where it is okay for me to sit in silence and not have to actively engage my mind in listening and responding.

I really knew I needed a night to myself when I believe I offended a friend earlier this week. She was actively talking to me, vomiting up story after story about work, and I felt my mind drifting to and fro, weaving in and out of her stream of verbal onslaught. I nodded occasionally and tried to appear engaged, but I’m sure my eyes gave me away. I felt dead. I felt numb. Although I wanted to listen out of politeness and respect, I couldn’t force my brain to give a damn. I think she caught on and I could feel the shift in her mood from that point on. She still kept talking, but when I started to fade out and then return to focus, I’d meet her expression of exasperation and disappointment that I wasn’t providing the reception she demanded. It made me feel like I wasn’t a good friend. Similar to how I feel when I have to explain to my boyfriend how I love him but I don’t want to spend time with him. It’s like I’m on the high wire and trying to manage a difficult balancing act, and the wind has just picked up and started to gust.

I’m going to try to handle it the best I can. I’m being more active about identifying sources for my discomfort and trying to manage the cause rather than just the symptoms.

I’m sorry I haven’t been there for you lately. But, to be honest, I really don’t seem to have been there for anyone, even myself. But I’m working on that.

Still faithfully yours in friendship,

-k

Meditation On America In Late Winter

Dear K,

I've been on a journey backwards through America, and I want to set down some ideas that have been jangling in my head. Our current President disgusts me. I cannot say that in my short lifetime I have seen a man that I despise more take the presidency. I hated George W. Bush with a righteous fervor, with a fever that could only be stoked by the fiery passion of youth. I hated that man for the inglorious wars he started. I still hate him, and now I dearly miss him. More than him I miss our recently departed Barack Obama. I miss feeling like the office of president was held by a man with a cool head and steady hands. Now I feel as if it is held by a screaming infant, shitting in its drawers.

I know any number of people might take issue with this thought. But I do think America is exceptional. You can quote your Zinn at me and recount all the long list of sins committed under the guise of Americanism, and the list will be long and dark and bloody. I think it is a folly to look at American history and see anything but a long and bloody struggle out of darkness, but I think that's the history of mankind as a whole.

I think that what makes America special is not what we are, or who we've been, but who we tell ourselves we could be. The ideal America strives for is a land where each person lives by their talent and sweat. I suppose it's more than that, and has always been more than that. Pioneers didn't settle the land and prosper in vacuums. They joined in together to harvest. I don't know if there's a more powerful metaphor in my mind than farmers coming together to reap.

There's a book I read in college called Witness To The Combines. It is a series of essays and memories written by a man remembering his childhood on a farm in North Dakota. The title essay is about his father's death and the subsequent selling of the family farm. His father died a couple of months before harvest. The family was mostly grown and they all knew they would leave the farm and not take it up themselves, but still they thought they had a couple more seasons together. They needed that last harvest in order to get themselves out of the obligations they had to the land and set their mother up with a house in town. They couldn't do it by themselves. Their neighbors from all over the county came in with their combines and harvested that wheat for them together.

You know we're a republic, and one of the oldest symbols of republics in western civilization is the fasces. Now this symbol was corrupted and twisted by the fascists, which is a real shame. It was an ax surrounded by a bundle of rods. Individually the rods were weak, they would bend and snap and break if they weren't bound together. The symbol is evocative of a sheaf of wheat. The thing that makes us strong is our union, it is the bonds between us that give us strength. Whatever system of government we have, whatever symbols we use, whomever we choose to be, we must never forget that we are individual strands bound together, woven together. Together we are stronger than we are apart.

I hope you are doing well.

Yours,

K

How's Your Flame?

Just south of where I was born there is a town called Indianola that is famous for its balloon festival. When I was little I would see the balloons drift through the sky. If you've ever seen a mass of things drift in the air you know what sort of hope it inspires in a child's soul. I think that's why I write things. Not the balloons, but what they represent.

There are various lantern festivals all over the world and I think they get at what I'm trying to talk about. People put little candles in boats and float them down a stream. Or they put a candle in a lantern and let the heat from the flame take it into the air. Or they set a paper lantern on fire and it lifts off into the night sky. Thousands upon thousands of these things float into the dark. We do this out of hope, or to celebrate our lives.

This is why I write. Every time I sit down to write I am really setting a candle into a stream. I'm setting a bit of paper on fire with my soul's flame and watching it drift off into the night.

At some time or another everyone confuses the purpose of the festival. We think our lantern should be the grandest flame in the sky, the brightest, the most beautiful, and that our soul will only be magnified for its glory when everyone says it is the the brightest and most beautiful and the grandest one hanging there in the dark, floating down the stream. The flame will still go out. The candle will gutter and flicker and die. The lantern will still come crashing to the ground and nobody will know who set it in the sky or whose soul lit the flame. The point is to light the world, to let our lights shine, and not to be the brightest.

I think I'm getting at what I want to say. It's a hard point to make. The festival is our culture. The lanterns are all the things we make and do and say.  We look at others and think their lanterns are much better than ours. When really it is our task to just light as many lanterns as we can. To make them as well as we can. To light up the night sky. To reflect back to heaven the glory of heaven. To show God we love this world as much God loves this world.

That's why I write. It's the thing I've decided to make my lanterns out of.


I hope your soul is aflame and blazing,

K

Buck Up!

Dear K,

I started seeing somebody. I really like her. We just had our first date last night. But we've been hanging out all week. It's one of those head rushes that takes you out like a tackle from nowhere. You're trudging along in the snow and then someone wraps their arms around you and you find yourself on the ground in spring rubbing your head and wondering how you got there. It's a reminder that the world can be a fine place to live in, and maybe all we need is just a little kindness to get by with. Just somebody to look at you and say they like who you are and what you do and how you do it.  Thinking about all the time I spent crying into the wind, trying to get back something that I left, trying to march upstream in a river when the water's already in the ocean, and it strikes me that I'm a fool, and I'm glad I'm a fool. I'm an idiot in a good way. I'm really enjoying life. I've been going through a lot of ups and downs and this life is quite a wild ride and I'm so glad of it.

Cheers,

K

Now The Gates Of Jericho Were Securely Barred

Dear K,


Last week I went to the Des Moines Art Center, which is our humble little art museum here. It's got a couple of treasures and they do their damndest in a town that has little time for anything other than cubicle sitting and couch sitting. The new exhibit the art center has on display is photographs by Vivian Meier. There are exhibits of her photographs all over the country now, she's been in vogue for the last couple of years. They made a Netflix documentary about why.

You see these two yahoos in New Jersey went and bid on a storage unit in an auction and they won. In the storage unit were thousands and thousands of negatives. Some of them were dated and had the location on them. A lot didn't. Vivian Meier had died some time ago and never intended for this work to be exhibited or used or thought about. I believe that she took these pictures for herself. Took them and made them and kept them secret like you keep your writing secret. Now the secret is out though.

It's a strange exhibit to see, because there's no authorship in the work, by that I mean you don't know how or why she took these pictures. A lot of the ones up at the Des Moines Art Center are in the genre of Street Photography, which is where you take pictures of strangers on the street. Vivian Meier took pictures of strangers without them knowing, she didn't do street portraits. She didn't ask people about their lives. She just took little snippets of their lives, parts of their exteriority and hid them away. It's kind of the inverse of what happened to her work isn't it?


Here's the thing though. I guarantee that your work will resonate with somebody. I guarantee that what you write will save somebody's life in a small way. I say this because I think that we live and die in small events. Every minute is made up of sixty seconds and those sixty seconds are made up of smaller bits and smaller than these is where we live. They're not all good, and not all bad, and it's the whole that matters, it's in aggregate. I want you to share your work for the same reason that if we were all put into a choir we should all sing. It's the duty of everybody who can move a pen and put together a sentence to write to the best of their ability, and to share it. To sing with the choir.

I'm not going to stop trying to convince you to that your work should be made public. And I won't have any part of destroying it after you die. You know what I'll do? I'll edit it all into books and publish them myself. That's what I'm going to do. You better hope you outlive me because if you don't I'm gonna find all your writing and share your voice with the world.

Yours In Annoying Friendship,

K

i took the lights and radio towers out of my dreams

Dear K-

I am sorry to hear about your friend. It’s always hard to lose someone, especially unexpectedly, and especially when it was anticipated on their end but they didn’t relay that message until it was already over. Suicide always makes me feel guilty and selfish. I think to myself “what could I have done” or “why didn’t they tell me” and even sometimes “was I not enough to keep them wanting to live”? I may have only talked to the person once, at some crowded college party and we exchanged some joke about Jamaica, but still their choice to later consciously leave this world always hangs heavy and I feel like an opportunity was missed. I am not foolish enough to think these sentiments are original or unique; I am sure death tends to rock all our cradles in a similar fashion whenever it passes near. We always miss the things most that we can never have back.

In regards to your previous rants of the new year, I did not mean to make you feel targeted by my lamentations, although I always welcome your perspective. It is one thing to read a past love’s work and admire it for its sentimentality and heart, but it’s another thing to react in such a way as to make the author feel cornered, trapped. You know that I have a long history of writing without an intent to share, so I still startle easily when I realize that I am exposed, vulnerable. I don’t like my words being twisted to suit another’s purpose, especially someone who has left such a bitter taste in my mouth. But I guess that is inevitably the plight of every writer; once you give yourself up and let other’s in on your world, it’s no longer yours. Someone will always find themselves in your writing, whether the interpretation is accurate or not. Someone will always feel when they read your work (or maybe they won’t, maybe it won’t resonate at all), and that is something you and I and everyone else just has to accept. I am sure some of my favorite authors would probably be disappointed in the sentiments they evoke in me, because perhaps it wasn’t their intent. But there’s nothing to be done of it. You are right. I shouldn’t let it stop me. What should I care what some little, lonely man thinks?

I have been drinking a lot more coffee lately. I know it isn’t good for me, but I have been trying to be better about other aspects of my life in exchange for this simple pleasure. It’s hard to give it up. There just isn’t anything that can compare to staring out a cloudy winter window while sitting in my knickers, sipping a steaming cup of black coffee in the gentle morning silence and musing at the birds around my backyard feeder. I like to watch them flit and flutter and their undulating flight paths. I don't get to do it as often as I'd like.

Yours cordially,
-k

Listening To Absent Friends

Dear K,

Yesterday one of my friends ended his life. He sat down on some train tracks and waited to die. He left a note for the people he was living with. They got home, saw the note and ran to the tracks. The police were already there.

Charlie was a musician. He had this magical quality to his songs. They were democratic driving songs that didn't care too much about themselves and just rushed forward. Charlie's songs came at you and overwhelmed you with their sweetness and innocence and care for you.

When someone dies you stop and think about them. I don't know if I would have stopped to think about Charlie if he hadn't taken his own life. I went online and bought his albums for $10.00. They're the kind of music I love best.

I didn't know I would miss this sweet man the way I miss him now that we'll never have a chance to meet again.

You and I talk about sadness and sorrow a lot. We do a lot of wallowing together. I want to rebuke us for this but I won't. I can't. I'm just gonna end this with an excerpt from one of Charlie's songs.

"Misery loves company, and you're my favorite company, so won't you come and dance with me and take me home."

Regards,

K

Some Of The Ways In Which I Am An Idiot

Dear K,

Uhhhhhhhhhh....... Man. I know your pain but from the opposite side. I have been, and honestly I continue to be, the old ex that reads poetry. I hope though that I'm not putting my former partner through the tortures that you're describing. Also if my former partner is reading this I would like to apologize for reading your poetry online, but I'm going to continue to do so. Also I'm proud of her for continuing to write! More on this later.

That dude that's reading your writing and thinking its about him? I'm guilty of that sin ten million times. Hopefully, he'll quiet down. I have some real questions for you though. It is very stupid that he thinks he's a better poet than you, poetry is non-competitive. It's part of being human and expressing what it means to be human. Being a person is not a competition and anyone who thinks being a person is a competition is a DOOOMED idiot. But I suppose we all have to suffer in unique ways.  Still though, what a ridiculous area of life to make claims about being better or worse than in. Read that sentence out loud, I'm not sure it works written but it definitely works out loud.

How did he stifle your creativity? Perhaps a more precise wording of that question is "Can you tell me the mechanics of how he stifled your creativity?" Because I feel like I may be guilty of some parallel sin and did so obliviously. Ok, so one time I got into a really stupid fight with my most important ex about sudoku. I got really competitive about it because I was having fun and I'm good at Soduko and she was too. Sidebar she was and is smarter than me. But without noticing it I took all the fun out of the competition and turned it into a fight and when she stopped competing I got real mad. It was a strange moment for sure, but a moment that I've really learned a lot from and that I've grown from. Overall I learned from the relationship that you need to pay attention to what things are actually about and talk about them and negotiate, and a million other useful things.

Anyways, how is this guy contacting you? Is he writing comments on your posts? If so, delete them! You're a powerful strong smart lady and you have tools and weapons at your disposal. Fight! Rise up! Sing your song for all to hear! The soul is a thing that is built for combat and action and it is built to suffer and in suffering, despite suffering, bloom and blossom and rise rise rise! Poetry is the language of the soul and no soul should be denied their voice. So write in metered or unmetered verse, or as I prefer to title my poetic musings: mangled meterless malformations. Your poetry is yours and no one not God not the Devil, not St Peter or Jesus or Judas Iscariot can take them away from you. Delilah might cut your golden locks but she cannot put your heart in the Philistines' public stocks. Souls are made of fire! So burn damnit! Burn! Light your pyre! Build the fire! Let your voice be heat and light and smoke. Raise it up to God. Poetry is sacred. Poetry is yours. Poetry is every individuals' provenance and promulgation and proliferation and providence and perpetuation and predominance and propensity and prosperity and prostration and a plurality of other potent properties. Take back your god damned land and write that poetry. Write it like it is branches you want to put forth on a bonfire. Write poetry with hope. Write it without hope. Light up the winter night sky with your words. It is the duty of every literate person to write, so write. [this paragraph is the more that I promised in the first paragraph]

Some confessions: I have abandoned all sense of what a paragraph should or should not be. I've just kind of started a series of loosely collected rants in this letter, I know you'll forgive me because this epistolary of ours has always been a place where we have been free to crack our heads and hearts open and let the goo pour out, and I think it should ever remain a wild protected preserve. Free from scrutiny. Free from the jealous venom of the red pen. Free from editing or second reading or re-writing or even proper punctuation. I'm a criminal of the written word and I hope someday to reform. In the meantime I'm going to continue creating sentences that are crimes against nature and god as evidenced above.

In conclusion my dearest K. Send me a link to your poetry blog and I'll send you mine and we can read the lumps of coal that pour out the bottoms of each other's souls, and I will not judge you and you will not judge me, we'll just be, together, in poetry.

Yours for better or verse,

K.

the district sleeps alone tonight

Dear K-

I am glad the earth of your youth is empowering you. Don’t break too many bones, tiger. I know we all go through phases when we want to smash and destroy, when the energy inside us is boiling to the brim and we have to let out the steam lest we scald out our insides, but be careful. The sinews and cartilage are not as easy to mend as they once were, now that we are getting older. Be mindful and selective of which injuries you incur so as to keep yourself functional. Other than that, have fun! Get that devil what for!

Speaking of aging, in less than a week I slip into another year of life. Almost done with my third decade. I don’t feel like celebrating. But then again, I haven’t felt like celebrating much of anything in what feels like rather a long time. I’ve gotten paler over the winter. The weather has finally started to show its fangs and frost is nibbling at my flesh every time I go outdoors. We finally got some snow, although it’s nothing like the snows I remember from my childhood. It did feel good to go for a run in the early hours of the morning, through some forest trails covered in unmarred snow, not encountering a single other soul. There’s something satisfying about that. Something that is rare to find ever since I moved to the city. I love the city, but sometimes it just feels too crowded. Sometimes I just want to be alone with my thoughts in the wilderness.

I’ve been drawing a bit more but I haven’t been writing. An old ex found the site I had been using to post my occasional musings, and he started encroaching on my quiet soil. He interprets everything I write to be about him somehow. He also fancies himself a better poet than me, and he used to remind me of that when we were dating. He always found a way to choke out my creative voice when I was with him, and even four years later he’s still finding ways to make me feel ill at ease. The few things I’ve written since his incursion have remained on their crumpled sheets folded on my nightstand. I hesitate to post them to anything for fear he will instantly try to attribute my words to something he’s done, something he’s influenced. In truth, they have nothing to do with him. I want to tell him: I never think of you. None of this is for you. But even so blunt a statement would most likely be re-interpreted and only better convince him of the opposite. So instead I’ll just stay silent. Radio silence.

At least the days are slowly starting to get longer.

-k