Monday, October 26, 2020

 It's almost funny, i guess, how I spent all of these years convincing myself to touch things with my palms and then it turns out that we can't touch anything at all. 

I don't know, friends. Everything just fell apart. The world collapsed and my life blew up and for a while there was no part of me that wanted to find anything beautiful. Not much has been, after all. Everything is dark and hard and cold, and people keep dying, and all of the places I love are always just a breath away from closing forever.

But the cat and I have landed somewhere full of light and surrounded by hydrangeas. We're fine and we're lucky to be so--we are healthy and loved and there are squirrels that run back and forth all day for us to watch. I am working from home and keeping mainly my own company and thinking about that Derek Walcott poem Love After Love:

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

When you remember me, in that dream you have sometimes where you're looking at a painting you've never seen before but somehow know that you've produced, remember me like this--soft and tired and trying hard. In the fall I want to kiss you like apple cider, warm and spiced, smelling like rain and fallen leaves. When you remember me, remember me like this--in a sweater and happy to see you. 

No comments: