Hanabi
Why I go to bed with my shoes on
There’s an unpacked bag in my closet, with a change of clothes I’ve never worn. It’s there for the same reason I sometimes go to bed with my shoes on.
Some people sleep easier with a gun under their pillow. My weapon is a passport and a wad of cash, just enough to put a few oceans between here and me, to head off in one direction: away.
So that on the worst of nights, I can leave for the unknown. I am going to run away, because I do not want to turn to stone.
I want to learn something.
“That’s the real pleasure, when you understand an idea or you answer a question. When I was a little boy I used to think you could get all the answers to all the questions. I thought that you could learn who God is and will he answer why he made me. You think you are going to get those answers but you don’t.”
Francis Ford Coppola on what interests him, happiness, money, and creative purpose. (viacuriositycounts)
Leftovers
Gather what’s left of your half-eaten plate. Wrap in tinfoil until it takes shape. Store in plastic or an airtight bag. Bring to a freeze to keep from going bad.
And then, much later,
Unwrap it, undress it, reheat as you please.
Season to taste, it isn’t the same but it almost is. It’s good once again, and maybe this time, it’s just enough.
But we are not yet there. There,
where we cling to our names
for old times’ sake, and clouds
would read like empty pages
at last. But we are not yet there.
Maybe I’m in the gap between the two trapezes.
Something happened, I had to know things.
That the road goes on. That my heart can skip a beat. That the fire in my stomach still burns. And most importantly, that I’m choosing a life that doesn’t sit down.
So maybe I’ll keep eating out of a can. Maybe I don’t get to keep the same post code for more than a year, or the same friends. Maybe I’ll never be able to afford hardwood floors, a stainless steel kitchen, or love.
Maybe I’ll wake up at thirty, wishing that the world’s greatest minds have at last figured out the complexities of time travel, so I could undo things as I please,
but I won’t.
(Because whatever it is, it can’t be worse than not ever knowing.)
Feet
I will have to argue that feet are amongst the most underrated things in the whole universe. Those things at the end of our legs that we tread on everyday. The ones that gather dust and grow thick with callouses and grow blisters and smell sometimes when damp socks are worn.
I couldn’t care less about the ugliness of feet only the fact that without them, we would never get anywhere.
Heroines
It is a curse that every damsel in distress must spend half her life in waiting. For prince charming to be the center of all the monster-slaying, horseback riding, heart-thumping action. What a shame it is for princesses to fall under the mercy of the prick of a needle, or a shiny red apple. What a shame it is to sit and lie in wait to be kissed and rescued, to be carried away into happily ever after,
when all this time they’ve had arms to wield a sword.
(for my sister because she’s prying into my stuff, reminding me of what I’ve written and felt some ages ago. Also because I know she believes in fairies.)
