July 28, 2011

Promises...

From, Thought Catalog:
During the crystalline nights of winter, summer held an almost indecent promise. The kind of promise composed of hands resting lightly on bare shoulders, sliding off a thin slip of a strap from a cotton dress. A time of lying lazily in the grass hoping for a slight breeze to skim your face, of kisses in the kind of cold bars that had dark corners with wooden tables, and of picnics near-forgotten in a whiskey lemonade drenched haze. Afternoons of hazardously licking melting ice cream cones while riding bikes across bridges and nights of telling secrets on roof tops still steaming from the hot sun.

It was the kind of promise that keeps you sane, hopeful, and young.

But instead, summer became sad summer. The kind of a season where the thick, heavy air weighs you down—not with the heat from a storm about to break—but with the mistakes you’ve made, with harshly lingering regret. A time that feels full of significance you can’t come back from, of adulthood no longer pending but here. Gone is that childish wonder. Moments of almost incomprehensible glee find you fleetingly and slip quickly through your grasping fingers, disappearing.

Summer became a broken promise.

Now you sit, hours after midnight, chasing tumblers of whiskey with more whiskey, spinning sentences full of meaningful adjectives with your favorite companion in hyperbole. Each of you half in the moment, half inside your heads, claiming—wondering—if autumn turned to winter will hold a different promise you can reach for. If somehow once you stop running barefoot in the grass, unable to capture that same enthusiastic momentum you once had, you’ll be able to find some sense of peace in where you’ve stopped. That somehow months from now, your previous heartaches will be something contained only in memory instead of your everyday breath, constantly reminding you that your recovery time is no longer as fast.

But even to you that promise holds false.

You know winter holds gray days that take you to dark places, brief bits of laughter book-ended by melancholy. That you’ll find yourself silent, listening to the strains of the National on repeat, exile, vilify, wishing it was still summer because even if your heart was heavy, you felt light. That winter has stolen all the sunshine you once twirled beneath. And that snow will fall on your darkest day, burying you. But staring at that white perfection free of foot prints, you’ll smile. You’ll remember one magical night of stumbling, tumbling, falling tipsily through the drifts. And you’ll feel wistful for those icy days when the wind chills you to the bone and conversation brings you comforting warmth that no fire can provide.

Perhaps the promise of a promise is enough.

July 27, 2011

A Cheap & Easy Affair...

If tomorrow my kids ask me why I didn't marry that very rich and good-looking guy, I hope they'll understand when I tell them that he did not read. I hope they'll forgive.

Paul Bloom: The Origins Of Pleasure


July 26, 2011

Rain...

The earth, wrinkled, looks up at the sky
They are here, yesterday they weren't
but today they hover, full of promise, dark, heavy, lovely
The earth waits, expectant, eager, (so)ready to blossom
But they come and they go, unrelenting
A little thunder, a little lightning, a little teasing
A little show, but nothing yet again
And so the earth, full of yearning
Aches a little more, cracks a little more, begs a little more.

July 25, 2011

A Whore's Heart...

Suddenly this defeat.
This rain.
The blues gone gray
And the browns gone gray
And yellow
A terrible amber.
In the cold streets
Your warm body.
In whatever room
Your warm body.
Among all the people
Your absence
The people who are always
Not you.


I have been easy with trees
Too long.
Too familiar with mountains.
Joy has been a habit.
Now
Suddenly
This rain.
-Jack Gilbert  

July 24, 2011

Stray Words...

"What should I do about the wild and the tame? The wild heart that wants to be free, and the tame heart that wants to come home. I want to be held. I don't want you to come too close. I want you to scoop me up and bring me home at nights. I don't want to tell you where I am. I want to keep a place among the rocks where no one can find me. I want to be with you." — Jeanette Winterson
*****
"What a strange world this is when you can have as much sex as you like but love is taboo."
— Jeanette Winterson
***** 
"I think now that being free is not being powerful or rich or well regarded or without obligation but being able to love. To love someone else enough to forget about yourself even for one moment is to be free."
— Jeanette Winterson

Tears Dry On Their Own...