A Manual on How Best To Love Me
1. Know that I will never get tired of looking at pictures of cute animals,
or petting dogs.
So if you’re in search of a good date idea, you can’t go wrong with a dog park.
2. If I become petrified with a small decision,
the choice between reading a fiction or nonfiction book next,
how to word the email I am trying to write,
what colour shirt to buy my dad for Christmas,
please, treat me with the tenderness of a first kiss.
I know it’s silly.
Listen to my pros and cons list anyway,
and
3. when I do make the decision, act as though I was running out of breath and offered air or water to breathe,
and I chose the air.
4. There will be days when I want to write in the margins and across the lines,
instead of on them.
When I want to summersault down the middle of the road at midnight,
eat chocolate before breakfast,
make random sound effects,
or dance naked in the wilderness,
just because I can.
And all I can tell you for these days is this:
let me.
5. There will be days when I won’t quite be able to tell if this life is real.
Where I’ll stare into the mirror unsure that I am the one looking back at me,
or colour over my tattoos just to see them remain when I wash off the rest.
I will convince myself that I was meant to live where they drive on the left side of the road,
and that’s why everything feels just a little bit off.
On these days I need to be taken outside,
a forest is best.
I need to lay my body down on the soil,
feel the Earth press into my back like a lover that has gone too long without my touch.
Ground myself there amid the pine trees and sounds of the wind.
6. When I start staying up until even the teenage girls have stopped whispering, ended the late night phone calls with their high school sweethearts, it means:
Either
I am too excited about life to bother with sleep, collecting a bouquet of every minute I can pick from the field of silence where the rest of the world sleeps.
Minutes filled with poems to write,
books to read,
trips to plan,
ideas on how to touch happiness.
Or
I am too afraid of my loneliness and insecurities,
and the thoughts that will slow dance into my head while I lay
in the distraction-free desert I call a bed.
My least favourite love song set on repeat, singing
does anyone miss me when I’m not there?
am I desirable or just available?
are the small details of my day worthy of being heard?
what is the point?
of anything?
You can usually tell the difference based on how much of that time I spend scrolling through Instagram.
If it is the latter, do not try to fix my sadness.
Call me into it instead,
remind me I need to sit with it.
7. I’ve spent enough time searching for myself along the palm lines of the hands of men
to learn that I cannot escape myself in their arms.
To learn that I do not want to escape myself.
But sometimes I will forget this.
So if you catch me trying to read the wrong map to find my way back to myself,
please just nudge me towards the right one instead.
A hot shower.
A fire to watch.
A quiet place to sit.
A thought to meditate on.
8. Do not be delicate in the way that you love me.
Even though my last lover left me crumbled in a ball on the floor,
like every love letter I’ve ever tried to write myself.
Even though sometimes I stop myself from reaching out to someone just to prove to myself that I don’t need them.
Even though
Even though
Love me with the ferocity of the sun burning our entangled limbs from 150 million kilometers away anyway.
9. Love me for my mistakes.
For the fact that I keep trying,
keep vowing I will apply again.
I will love again.
I will plant more trees today than I did yesterday.
For the ways I let myself grow,
by pruning thorns off my rose bushes that
I didn’t always know needed pruning,
by listening – and I mean really listening –
to what other people have to say,
to what I have to feel.
Love me because I try to make this life feel limitless, but also like something I can hold in the palm of my hand.
Love me for the ways that I love myself.
Love me despite the ways that I don’t.
Do You Believe
in Angels? In feathered robes
and twig woven crowns. Do you believe
in other worlds? Where the sun rises in the west,
oceans make you dry, and grass grows shorter?
Do you believe we can
change, sprout ourselves to flourish?
I don’t know the colour of rain.
Flashy lustrous hues, illusion of the eye,
uncovered veil in the sky.
But I know the colour of laughter.
Sound born of joy,
museum exhibit of connection.
I believe in hearts that skip a beat
on the playground, humming of Strawberry
Shortcake or Cinderella dressed in yella.
I believe in sex. The bending of spacetime,
two bodies transcending the laws of sensation,
become one.
Do you believe in second chances,
still two bases from home? In running?
Even when the path curves like the moon,
circling us back around?
I don’t know if we’ve been here before.
Before the trees were taller than waves and the soil breathed
life, before our sun was compressed
by Angels, when caribou gathered
in the undergrowth, grew under the ancient satellite that cloaked
our world in gift wrap of the Gods.
Do you believe in God? Holy Mother
Sister Lover Fighter. Do you believe
we can choose? Would you
choose this wild world? Untamed
thunder. Messy, ink-stained, stumbled word
love letter of trying, written for a spellbinding
force, written by another.
We couldn’t have just happened
to land here.
It’s Here
Music vibrates
through my veins,
keeps me warm
in my light flowing dress
this midsummer night,
hours past the sun
wandering away.
In the mess tent,
my friends tremble
with energy
I’ve only seen here,
among people who wake each morning
at the birds’ first song.
Who plant trees all day
in the heat,
just to bring that same fire
to the dancefloor
until the sun arrives
again.
Glistening skin and swaying limbs
move together in rhythm,
spin, twirl, and glide
around each other,
merge
into a single mass,
shifting
with time,
balancing
in this moment.
I flow into the crowd,
feel its pulse echo
through my body,
feel my pulse echo
through the room,
let go of the concept of me,
release into something
more,
become part of us.
I pause all thoughts,
let my soul guide my motions,
until a force I cannot see
pulls me
away. I step
into the night, stand
under the stars
twinkling in rhythm
with the lights inside,
the colours
on the dance floor
the same dappled greys
and deep blues
as the ones above.
Arms surround me,
and with my best friend
I look -
in
at the people we love,
up
at whatever the universe holds.
She points at the sky and whispers
we don’t need to look for what’s out there
because we already have it
right here.
It’s right here.
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