This Makes No Sense, Love Makes No Sense

So last night dear reader, I went through what for some weird reason I prefer calling a break up.Could it be because it has been a light year since I was someone’s cinnamon apple or maybe I just like the taste in my mouth of uttering the phrase, ‘Got dumped’?

Look at me psycho-analyzing my own being. Doubting whether I’m emotionally and mentally balanced. Believe me dear reader, the doubt in me, by me, has all the right reasons. This is no digression, merely a different string of thought that eventually leads to the moot point.

So here we go, she wasn’t really my girlfriend, I wasn’t letting her borrow my jacket during cold nights, we never displayed any form of affection in the public (not even holding hands), and even though we had tried and failed miserably, we never had the occasional cute names for each other.

We however bathed in the pool of carnal knowledge more often than some couples do. I would be the moon behind the earth and she would in turn let me revolve around her teeny cave that is guarded by the two pillars that are her thighs.

I would seek shelter in her internal warmth while she showed appreciation  of the company within, by mild mourning and groaning. We had loads of sex! This was the only time both our worlds
 seized existing as separate entities. We were a coin; two but one.

The first time I forced her legs apart like marionette strings in the hands of an amateur puppeteer, and asked, “You gonna write about me?” The second time, with my fingers making bruises on her neck, I asked the same question. So the third time, when she was beaten down like a piano beyond repair, all broken keys and a slowly dwindling melody, She wrote about me.

She wrote, “I beatbox with ghosts. I got a handful of knives in my back from all the times people like you stabbed me when I was just starting to turn around.”

She wrote, “Land of the free, home of the brave, but you’re just the coward who didn’t even bother to ask my name. I gotta heartbeat like a pendulum, it swings so fast you’ll never even know what hit you. You’ll never break my heart. It’ll break you.”

When I apologized over texts a few weeks later then forced another woman the way I forced her, she started slipping the poems under my front door, beneath the wind shield wiper of my car [winks], inside the sleeve of my pillowcase.

I asked her if she would write about me. And so she did.

She wrote about me to anybody who would listen, until her final poem ended up in the hands of the police. Then she pulled all the knives out of her back and severed all the blame she’d aimed at herself for so long. She was not the best writer or a writer at all for this matter, but, her life was a bulk of pages from her emotional experience with me.

Dear reader, perhaps my words make no sense, perhaps I don’t imply to make any. Point is, I played the part, she wrote the play, my bed was the stage and the crowd was but our voices; a two man crowd.

Problem was, she wrote to many plays. I may have been good on stage but I wasn’t the best. I rocked the stage, I rocked the bed, I rocked her world. She called my out my name and so did the bed; this name dear reader, I had lost teeth and broke buckets of sweat for. Pubic hairs died over the name goddamn it! But she had written too many plays and played lead in them. It was her world. It stopped spinning when she closed the page.

Dear reader, I was dumped after my role made no sense in the her next play. She wanted a man who wouldn’t have to pound her senselessly for her to call out his name. A man whose pockets pounded her! She was writing the play ‘The Great Gatsby’ and I was left in her last masterpiece where I played the Pauper.

ME: Is this a break up?

HER: We weren’t an item

Simple as an Eskimo transmitting a nasal infection, precise like a guided missile and bearing more truth than the words of a Buddhist.

HER: But we are still friends though- right?  (few words that would make any icecream flavor taste like penicillin and melt diamond in an instant)

ME: Uuhm, sure I don’t see why not? (Even a blind man has no right to say these words. Either am a chronic compulsive liar or I actually meant these words out of fear of losing her.)

En masse, the stage exists devoid of the playwright and so does the actor. Raise the curtains!

Pennies Down The Wishing Well

The first time we undressed, I buried myself in your trenches

and waited for the gunfire to stop coming.

Last year I forced myself to let go of twenty-three friends that could

no longer do anything for me.

I sent them all handwritten apology notes in the mail, and two

of them wrote back furiously, claiming that I had “laid them off.”

But the truth was I only meant to make more time for you-

and we go well together, like blood and wine,

argue that we want something more permanent,

something like the handfuls of human hair that the Victorians

buried their dead with, so you grow yours out and form

a bracelet of it for me to wear around my wrist.

I am consumed with light when I touch you,

the kind that guides ships’ ways in the dark; two years ago

on my birthday we made love in the back of a moving taxi,

and you told the driver to hit all the bumps

just so you could crash into me harder.

Did you know that every memoir I have ever read

somehow involves alcoholism, despair, or dysfunctional families?

Most of them have the word madness in the title.

If I were to write a memoir on me & you, it would be a Russian novel,

643 pages long, Helvetica type, bound by the finest printing

companies in our state, and the dedication page would contain

only two lines:

My body is a punchline

and you are still waiting for the joke.

Beam Me Up Scotty! ;-)

It’s self-fulfilling, the perpetual motion 

made possible by diving all the way to the bottom, 
growing feathers and flying right back to the summit.

It’s buoyant. It’s fucking on the stairs 
whilst knowing 
your parents will knock any minute.

It’s seeing where the bones go, 
where the birds dive, finally after hovering, 
umming, erring, working out when 
to make the move that changes 
the name of the day.

It’s peeking at the last page. 
It’s being left in a room, 
blindfolded with your hands free.

It’s feeling every wave walking through you, 
shaking hands with every you in every universe.

It’s being the ghost in the room 
filling in, fleshing out in front of everyone 
and switching off again like a dream 
at the click of a morning alarm.

It’s my finger on the pause button 
whilst watching the atom 
split.

Nothing else but stillness, 
the completeness of ‘yes’ 
in my ear, 
death’s cold lips down my neck.

It’s as close as I can get.

DEAR ELIZABETH

The first time you made love the bed looked like a crime scene that no one wanted to investigate, even the boy whose heart you broke.

Elizabeth, two days later you chopped all your hair off with a kitchen knife and buried it in the backyard beneath the willow tree. Even now when the wind blows through its leaves, you can still feel the strands whispering like ghosts around your face.

There is salt in your voice and sugar in your tears, inviting men into your bed until it rocks like a boat and everything you touch becomes a shipwreck.

Dear Elizabeth, one day you will stop learning how to crack eggshells for the sole purpose of tiptoeing over them. One day your hair will grow back and all the envelopes you lost to the sea will be returned to you with extra postage included.

There will be a time when your shadow will finally want to follow you instead of turning its back on you when you need it most. Elizabeth, one day when your room fills with water in a dream you will remember all the people who taught you how to swim.

One day Elizabeth, that black-legged white desk shall be the nearest to home you have ever felt and that guy you said "Hi" to every day but never saw, will be the only good memory you have. One day

The 4th Dimension Could Be The Internet

Okay this might prove a bit 'Stretching' or even exhausting of a thought, but hey, what's the use of imagination if you can't abuse it? All I need is your ability to imagine on this one; are you ready? 

Imagine what the 4th dimension is like. You are perceiving reality at a much higher frequency than in 3D. The molecular density is different, so everything looks different, and the way you interact with your environment is also different.

You are able to communicate telepathically with those around you, and can even connect with people through your heart space over long distances (this is assuming you are living on a spiritual path of harmony, of course you could take a more dualistic way of living, and you could still potentially communicate telepathically, just… you .know, less one-ness)

In this dimension or higher, you can do anything. You can fly, you can manifest any experience you want instantly. We all know and remember what it’s like to be there, we are there between the spaces between our lives… but of course, it’s a little bit different “down here.” 

Okay, now think about life on earth in 3D, and how we’ve used technology to enhance our communications. We can communicate with each other across the entire planet, exactly the same as communicating in 4D. We’ve developed video games where we can experience entire new realities where we can do anything.

Think of World of Warcraft, massive communities gather together to experience new worlds and have amazing, magical experiences. We have , which – despite it still being a controlling mechanism that limits our communication and ability to work on things (because the various social media platforms like facebook aren't a project-management-resource it’s an attention focus and a timesink), they still connected a LOT of people together, and that’s pretty cool.

But the point here isn’t to rag on nor to claim how great it is, but to point out this one very specific thing: Through these digital mediums we are ultimately communicating on higher frequencies!

Straight up, flat out, it’s communicating on frequencies that we cannot actually visibly see or touch, but we use our technology to tune into these frequencies, rather than our physical bodies, minds, and consciousness.

But what does it mean?! I almost want to say that after Humankind fell in consciousness, we lost our connections to each other and ourselves, and have felt that missing void. As we expanded our awareness around the globe and began developing technologies which have been attempting to fill the void of “what’s missing”. These communication devices are a big part of that.

Through technology we have brought people together, as well as separating others apart. Of course, the thing that’s REALLY missing is our connection to our hearts, which brings everyone together in love and truth. Yet, at the same time, we have the opportunity to explore something really incredible.

From my understanding, when a species goes the path of duality and begins creating technology without any emotions whatsoever, they sever themselves from love. In doing so, they lose their spiritual connections to each other, but gain new things in the process. What makes humans really interesting, is that we are able to experience both technology and love at the same time! It’s mind boggling to think about it, we are potentially a very new species of life in the universe, a merging of the dualistic and unity path. The path of Trinity? Perhaps.

There’s a lot more that I could go into here, but I’m going to wait for now. I shall bid you adieux.

When She Stops Saying "I Love You Too"

Don’t lose pieces of yourself inside her mosaic.

If there is shattering, then there will always be a rebuild.

Worship the moon instead of her favorite song

and the next time you hear it, don’t sing along.

Never walk the three miles to her house

even after all the gin is gone

and your friends have taken away the keys.

Your time with him is out.

Stop pretending you can still hear the clock ticking.

Trace the equator on an atlas

instead of all the piercings you remember on her soft lips

so you’ll finally have a place you’ll be able to end up at.

This was just a typo in your life story.

You’ll know how to proofread it better next time.

Until then, even if it takes a forklift,

sit yourself up from the floor

and let your heart go door to door

until it finally finds what it’s looking for.

She didn’t forget that she loved you, she simply realized

that she did not love you in the first place.

a harsh reality that might have taken too long to

hit

5 women I never met

I

.

Gertrude worked as a Thrifty’s drug store cashier through the 40’s and then married a television grip. She knowingly flick her cigarette, lean on her elbows and say, “listen, I know, I was a cashier at Thrifty’s”. 

II.

Fat Lena who married a wealthy Entrepreneur . The wealthy entrepreneur developed agoraphobia and read aviation magazines all day. The same three magazines. They burnt through the wealthy Entrepreneur’s inheritance. They had four sons, three died of heroin, one went to jail. For a while, no one heard from Fat Lena or husband. She came back, said they had gone on vacation, got the inheritance back. But then they went to Santa Anita and lost it again. She worked as a coffee shop waitress until she was 70. Fat Lena was everyone’s favorite. 

III.

Ruth got out early, married to an aerospace guy and didn’t talk to the family. 

IV.

Maya knew an abortionist in TJ and she had the phone number. When you got pregnant and you didn’t want to be pregnant anymore you called Minerva and she would set you up with the doctor in TJ and then maybe spend a night in her East LA house recovering.

V.

The girl who had the most abortions, Melody, and had the worst pill problems met a guy from the neighboring city. They found God and they built a house for him in ranch lands. Many people came to the house of God and gave Melody and her husband lots of  money to make sure their house of God was the best and the most Holy. Melody crusaded against abortion in the 1970’s and raised more money to carry the crusade into the 1980s. When her husband and children died in a plane crash, Melody made the most money then retired.

I am related to all these women. By blood.

IF LEONARDO DA VINCI DESIGNED TONY STARK’S IRON MAN SUIT, IT WOULD LOOK LIKE THIS

The internet’s an interesting place. It’s home to fans, musicians, comics, gamers, makers, writers, hackers, artists and everything in between. Whether you want to observe someone’s work or put your work on display for others to observe, the internet is here to help. Today, we have for you a category of the latter because some genius comic book artist by the name of Axel Medellin has created one of the coolest thing you’re going to see today: mock-ups of what it might look like if renaissance man (literally) Leonardo da Vinci had created the infamous Iron Man armor that made Tony Stark the Marvel hero that he is.

Top of Form

 

Bottom of Form

This is the kind of s**t we love. We know it’s fake, but there’s so much beautiful attention to detail here that we can believe if da Vinci had designed the armor, this is totally what the sketches would look like. It makes sense thematically too considering Tony’s essentially a modern day Leonardo da Vinci, dabbling in nearly anything and everything that expands his knowledge of how the world works… and doing it while being far more intoxicated usually.

That said, on a serious note, this is a cool piece of work, and it’s a great reminder that there are benefits to – safely – browsing the depths of Deviant Art because sometimes you can actually come up from it with gold. Well done, internet/Axel Medellin. Well done.

What do you think of Axel’s Leonardo da Vinci inspired Iron Man armor? Let me know in the comments below.

CHAOS BY DESIGN

This is the story of the anorexic catholic girl who wouldn’t even eat the Eucharist. The dyslexic who was exceptionally good at reading minds, the obese girl who ate nothing but her words, that bald guy who always hanged at the barber shop and the gay guy who liked making ‘that’s what she said’ jokes.

The story begins at the end of the life of a child in his old age. In one of the million dots in the milk-way galaxy on the third rock from one of the smaller stars, he was conceived by the power of ignorance between two humans who chose to share coital knowledge. A colossal accident of infinitely epic proportions; Infact, the word “accident” never before made more sense than that cellular level second he was conceived!

He called the womb his home for a period of something slightly short of the normal human gestation period and came out too early: Even his birth was an accident you see? What normal human has a birthday on the 29^th of February? A day sometimes more rare than the elusive bigfoot. His story will go untold in this story.

Family: Ignorant father saw the face his product and wished he more than just heard of the words “Trust Condom”. Wished he had switched the gun to safety mode because you see, in the ever raining city of ‘Storm’ every citizen has an umbrella. But the eras of genies and wishing wells were long gone. In his current space-time, pennies were no longer devoured by deep dark holes, they were given to the needy.

Mother? Never ever before in her life in death, had she been this emotionally confused. Love, shock, adoration and pain of course all manifesting at the same time. Hours of labour so just she could be able to hold and suckle this mistake that had haunted her for nine months.

She had too squeeze a 4 inch wide skull out of her sacred fortress that stands between the two pillars that are her thighs . 4 fucking inches! Sounds like a scene straight out of horror movie- right? Wrong! This sought of brutality has never even crept into the idea chambers of all the Hollywood movie directors. For you see, It is simply too barbaric of a thought.

Now back to the story of the atheist who owned a church, the artiste who never saw the bigger picture, and the barren mother of five. The end of this story begins with the last cry this child airs. Story of a child from a rich family who grew up in the projects; the same child who had no dad but grew up with a father.

A child who morphed into a young good looking man who passionately hated mirrors. The young man who had a lot to say but seldom spoke. The chap who took his time in the fast lane and same youngster who had friends as many as beach sand but always considered himself alone in a crowd. The happiest sadist alive and the realist who spent half his life in his imagination.

Could this be the same story of the fashion eccentric nun who married the drunkard who had never stepped foot in a bar? Yes. Yes it is. This is how this child viewed the world; a big ball of entangled thread that was only good for cats-play.

His best friend a haemophiliac

who had an odd fetish for knives, his girlfriend, the dumbest rocket scientist he knew and him, well he was that igloo that spoke of nothing but summer. That one mistake on that blue marble that made it less blue.

The story of the dumb dead man whose last words were “I LIVE”.

Taman Shud

Writing Advice From A Liar

"All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath." - F. Scott Fitzgerald

I have not been writing truthfully. There are things I have not allowed myself to admit. I must tell the truth because that is where the juice is. The good writing is in the truth. The real truth. And the truth about the real truth is that it is mostly about lies. Truth is deception. All of the ways we are deceiving and being deceived. Deceiving ourselves. If we write about things we can easily admit to those we love or to ourselves then we are not writing truthfully. Good writing is about writing truthfully about deception. And fear. 

Good writing is always the scariest to write. You are scared of hurting people, of isolating them, losing them. Scared of the places your mind goes to. Scared of your own proclivities. Scared of admitting what you really want. Scared of being weak. Scared of needing someone. Scared of realizing you do not really need anyone at all. The truth is scary and that is why we do not and why we should write about it. Write about the real truth, the deceitful truth.

Once you have done that you can lie again. Bury the truth in a web of deceit. Exaggerate flaws, consolidate personalities, change universes, centuries, genders. If, at the heart of it all, you have told the real truth, the scary truth, the secret, squirm in the gut at the thought of anyone knowing it truth, then people will know it as the truth, and those embellishments will only make it better. Sometimes lying about the details of the truth just makes the truth more honest. And more interesting. The opposite of truth is not deception, it’s silence. It’s fear.

Be true. Be scared. 

On The Significance and the Insignificance of Being Human

Human beings fascinate me. Being a human being fascinates me even more. In the billions of other possible species that I could have been, I was, by luck or pure chance, thrown out of a womb that belonged to a descendent of the most cerebral species on the planet. What did I do to deserve having a human brain, the most complex system/organ in the known universe? Nothing at all. My existence is contingent. It doesn’t have to be. It isn’t necessary. And it's totally meaningless and purposeless. 

But this is what makes it so amazing to be a living, breathing human being. The fact that I don’t have to, but nevertheless I exist, is indeed the purest element of “meaning” I can attach to my existence. If my existence was the decision of a higher intelligence, and if I was created and put into this world for a purpose, then it would be rendered less meaningful and less valuable because my life would then be the product of somebody else’s will and decision, and not the result of an accident. To me, something that is planned is somehow always less miraculous and exciting than something that just happened by pure chance. So miracles are in their essences, deeply paradoxical, and it’s why I unfold meaninglessness back upon itself until it becomes meaningful. 

I would scrutinize everyday objects and events with existential joy and astonishment, for even broken condoms, car wrecks, gum wrappers, cuss words, and the kind of fallen-from-grace sort of building display asethetics, brilliance and creativity unmatched by anything in the known universe. Just as the slowest and the oldest cheetahs should nevertheless deserve the praises for having great speed, the laziest and dimmest of all people, spending one shabby day after another, doing their work should all the same, be praised for their intelligence by a larger and wider standard. The difference between Einstein and a high school drop-out is non-existence under the perception of a monkey, dolphine, or a fish.

But on the other hand, I would feel pity towards myself and my fellow human beings when their lives are examined under a different lense. Sometimes I would watch TV in between sets during my workout, and there would be one monitor showing ESPN, with some black guy sweating his balls out with a pole just so he could out jump his opponents by a few inches. And on the monitor next to it, there would be some seemingly insignificant flea on Animal Planet, without even asserting energy, jump over objects that are 200 times over its height. If humans have the potentials to jump that high. Even the oldest and sickest of us all would have the ability to leap over the Times Tower with ease. And then I would feel obtuse, ridiculous, and hopeless for attempting to become stronger and faster, for even the most athletic human beings pale in comparison to the power and speed of many other creatures on the planet. What did I do to deserve being locked inside this bald, weak, and slow body? Nothing. 

But then again, for most people, sense of desperation, depression, envy, jealousy and misunderstanding only comes when you compare yourself to people who are around you, and who are within your own league…people like your neighbors, classmates or coworkers. We are jealous of our friends and co-workers if they are just a little bit richer than us, but lose very little sleep over how rich Steve Jobs or Bill Gates is. I would rather live in a world where I make 10 bucks a day and everyone else makes 9 than in a world where I make 20 a day and everybody else makes 50. I see a lot of kids playing their hearts out on the dusty neighbor-hood football “pitches” . I used to wonder why they even bother to try, for it is obvious that people in the major football leagues, say Real Madrid? Yes, even the worse players from that team, could beat them to the ground with minimum efforts. 

And then I realized that the reason why they feel significant upon winning is because they are beating people within their own league from their own world, playing against people who are wearing the same torn uniform and shoe sizes as themselves. If I played Lionel Messi and he beat me(like it’s not that obvious), I probably wouldn’t feel half as bad if I was beaten by that teammate of mine who was always competing with me for playing time…

But sometimes it helps to widen your scope, and compare yourself to members of other leagues or of other species. But such act of comparison can also be a double edged sword, as you can easily be discouraged when you are looking at the situation from the opposite direction.

If I shaved the hallucinatory Harvard University degree off my tongue, I would have simply put all that this way, "Stop Becoming and instead Be"    

SHIVA

Idioms and idolatry 

Prophecies, apostrophes 
All mean absolutely nothing to me 
Honestly 
The Devil isn’t in the flesh, he’s in the filigree 
Revel in the reverie
Of in between breaths
Remarkably 
We should touch in degrees 
Don’t you agree? 
I have no idea where I should go
Yet, this mouthful of palpable 
Parables, mountains of gold 
Out beyond where infinite rivers flow
Bask in the ambiance, take in the afterglow
The pillar I was thrust upon, I wouldn’t know 
Mask me in the undertow 
And watch as these shivers slither through fingers 
Slivers of winter 
And a pound of snow 
A constantly ever changing internal dialogue could prove 
Whether or not I’m more alive than the other corpse in the room
Yet still somehow the pile of ashes continues to grow 
I’m too busy finding my third eye to notice the fumes 
Building up to take me home

Introduction

They say procrastination is like masturbation; well I guess if that was the case here, by now  my hands would be sour and I would have run out of lotion because It took me quite a while before I could decide what my first article would be, how it would look like and what it would sound like.  Despite the endless journeys the arms on my clock took, I still couldn’t settle on what to put out first. Then it hit me! This was not one of those David-Goliath states. It was me having a lot of thoughts I needed released; so fuck David! I opened the gates for an entire armada!

PROLOGUE

Conveying thoughts, ideas and  knowledge I feel is worth sharing which sometimes will simply be in the form of a sentence construct from words that had gone unsaid, will be my agenda on this blog. I will quote and feature minds/ characters/ teachings throughout the different phases of time that I consider “Prometheus Fire”. Fictional or not: Plato, Leonardo Davinci, Picasso, Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku, Jesus, Enoch, Albert Einstein, Buddha, Tao Channellings, motivational speakers, The Joker, Bane(from Batman), Dr. Manhattan  etc.

Most of my work will be considered uhhhm, ‘bizarre, hysterical and even heresy to the common folk but what essence is freedom when you cannot think outside the stipulated lines of reality? I hope you find it helpful, enlightening and sometimes a pat on the back. This work none-the-less will be rooted on known human knowledge (both existing and lost, throughout time) and have both as its point of reference and spine. It may be a trip down the rabbit hole but there can be only one

ALICE IN WONDERLAND.

So this right here is the ‘measuring point’ whether you’re tall enough to get on this ride or not. Religion, race, gender, wealth and all other measures in the third density will cease to exist in most of my thoughts I lay here; and so should yours. “Ubuntu! Undus Mundus”!        

After The First Black Eye

After the First Black Eye

1. She calls to say she still loves him, despite the fresh black eye turning ripe like a blackberry stain on the left side of her face.

On the phone people can usually hold themselves together but you’ve begun to notice in person she’s started to carry herself like an ancient map that already knows Pangaea will crack apart at the slightest wrong touch. She is Pangaea. And you know that if they have enough time together, he will break her.

2. On her bedroom wall there is a yellowed article about a boy who was dragged from the water of a harbor by the fisherman who saw him jump over the railing and below the ship. There is a reason for him jumping, and the reason is some sort of sadness. Everyone knows it is there, but no one wants to bring it up. The same is true with the bruise on her right hip, blooming like a cactus flower in all the wrong colors. Everyone else pretends it’s only a tattoo.

3. She calls to say she still loves him, and you try your best to tell her that love does not leave birthmarks born from a fist. The rain falls in whatever shape it wants to, always believing the ground will soak it up and never turn it away. She falls in love with him despite every hit, always believing one day his hands will form the right shape and cup her face instead of turning it away with a slap too.

4. Salmon spend most of their early years in rivers before swimming out to sea to live their adult years, and every time she phones, you will keep telling her to swim away too, to reach the calmer currents but she will always find her way back to him no matter how many times he batters her body against the rocks.

5. You have done your best, and she has too. Whatever happens next, whether she finally manages to swim out to the sea or he keeps her captive downstream, those bruises will always be entirely his fault. They came from his skin; she never wanted them on hers and neither she nor you will ever be to blame for the pain she was forced to endure.

Voicemail from the Ex- Poet to the Ex Girlfriend

This message will be too short to encapsulate how long you wish your relationship had lasted. You will think your life has ended like a poem ends as soon as the last line has escaped from the reader’s mouth the same way jet trails mark everything that has been left behind.

But there is still your own body language to learn, to become fluent in, instead of concentrating on all the syllables the soft underside of someone else’s thigh makes when it falls over yours- there are still so many words to decipher that only you alone can make.

He may have fled through your window or left directly from your bed, he may have left a thousand wounds inside your head, but you were never anything less than an entire poem.

You are not unfinished just because he has finished with you. There is something about the way owls call out in the middle of dusk

that reminds everyone on earth that “who” is not always a pronoun but sometimes a question. And yes, without him there will be twilights that feel like the perfect time for cops to arrive and file a missing person’s report for the one half of your heart that belonged to his, twilights in which, like the owls, you will call out to ask who you are without him.

We all feel like when one part of our lives has been lost, we are “something ex.” Ex-girlfriend, ex-poet, ex-ballerina. So please, before you erase this message, remember this: you are not his “ex marks the spot.”He is not on your map anymore, just as poetry is no longer on mine.

You will make beautiful geography alone. There is beauty in an Island.