- I'm sitting on my friend's couch
several months into being intentionally single and celibate
for the first time since I was 20 years old.
20 years old,
when I believed sex had to involve a dude
and the word "screw."
I'm telling my friend about the psychic who said
I'm gonna meet the love of my life by the end of January.
It's January 10th,
and I am so far from ready for Cupid,
that naked little shit,
to fire anything sharp my way,
so far from ready to be the kind of crazy
only love makes me.
My friend musters every bit of New Age jargon
she can fit onto her tongue and says,
"What if you are the love of your life?"
I think, "Oh, my god, I hope that's not true,
'cause I am absolutely not my type."
(gentle piano music begins)
But let's say for a moment, I am.
Let's say I am my dream girlish-boyish-girl,
and I'm standing on my front step,
ringing my own doorbell,
waiting for me to answer,
so I can hand myself a mason jar full of water lilies
I have rescued from a millionaire's Monet.
Let's say I am so charmed by the radiance of my own anarchy
I invite myself in for tea,
and when I'm not looking,
I sneak the steam from the kettle into my pocket,
so the next time I am missing the coast of Maine,
I can gift myself the fog.
Let's say I'm not just running my mouth around an old cliche
that says we gotta love ourselves and we don't.
I know I can keep getting down on myself
'til I'm tucked in my grave,
looking up at my name,
carved in stone,
wondering why I never knew
I'd been cast the lead in my own life.
When it comes to love,
the only thing I'm certain of
is you are the best thing that has ever happened to you,
whoever you are.
You're a quitter?
Great, there's plenty worth quitting.
A sore loser?
Who isn't?
You got no discipline?
Maybe discipline is for bodybuilders and closeted gay monks.
Picture a magician so attached to being perfect
he cuts off his own legs just to pull off the trick.
Picture the 738 selfies I deleted
before I took one I was willing to show to the world.
Picture me wishing I could have all of those back,
my so-called flaws in stacks,
like baseball cards I know will be worth something someday,
like tenderness, like compassion,
like my capacity to think myself a catch
just because I've never seen a chandelier
I didn't want to swing from,
because I'd maybe go to space just to know
if railroad tracks look like zippers from the moon.
On days I have a hard time keeping warm in my own weather,
I imagine what the first flower said to the first human,
trying to name half its petals love me nots.
No, that is not how anything grows.
Of all the violence I have known in my life,
I've not known violence like the way I've spoken to myself,
and I've seen almost everyone around me hold that same belt
to their own backs in ambush
of every way we have decided we are not enough,
then looking for someone outside of ourselves
to come clean that treason up.
If I were to ask myself out of that cycle,
I might say, listen.
I am still going through my growth spurt.
I am still yet to get my worst tattoo.
I am still clearing the smoke from burning the toast
I wrote for my own wedding day.
I am still trying to get rid of my mirror face,
look myself dead in the eye.
I know Facebook is a lousy mortician,
desperately trying to make us all look more alive.
I know there are things I haven't survived.
I know there are people who have had to work to survive me.
I don't ever want to take that lightly.
But I want the heavy to anchor me brave,
to anchor me loving,
to anchor me in something
that will absolutely hold me to my word.
When I tell Cupid I intend to keep walking out
to the tip of his arrow,
to bend it back towards myself,
to aim for my goodness
'til the muscle in my chest tears
from the stretch of becoming
what I came here to be,
a lover of whatever got covered up by the airbrush,
the truth of me,
that beauty of a beast,
chewing through the leash
'til I get a mason jar full of water lilies,
and I got a kettle full of sea,
and my whole life, y'all,
my whole life is just a boomerang valentine,
coming back right back at me.
(audience cheering, applauding)
(gentle piano music concludes)
Thanks, that felt fun to read.