sleepingwithserenity

[sleepingwithserenity]

Actually life is beautiful because the sound I make while trying to breathe around hot food sounds like my dog trying to eat an apple. When I yawn my cat tries to put his face in my mouth like a little dentist man and when he yawns I put my finger in his obligate-carnivore trapzone and we both know he will not hurt me. When I do not fold my clothes, they do not hold it against me.

I am demonstrably sad, and lonely, and full of fear. But there are other people who will hold my hand, who will point out the hawk overhead, who will give you That Look in a public place. The other day at a coffee shop a child said “look! It’s snowing!” so all of us strangers went to go look out the windows. It wasn’t the first snow and it won’t be the last but wasn’t it lovely, like that?

How wonderful to live in a world where birds and frogs both say beep! How wonderful to have an ocean of beautiful sharks with their dinosaur teeth! How wonderful the moon and her changing face, how wonderful the bees and their dancing to communicate, how wonderful shrimp and their forbidden layers of vision! How wonderful, you, and what you will give the world! The way we love things enough to spend entire blogs devoted to them? How people will let me explain my Pokemon team to them? How we will both jump at the scare in the movie, how we laugh so loudly, how it feels to give someone your baking? How wonderful to be alive. I am sorry for forgetting.

This is the process of getting better. With wonderful people and wonderful strangers and wonderful friends: I am getting better, slowly. Thank you, whoever you are. In some way, you’ve been wonderful, and left a wonderful place in the world to ripple out to me. In some small way - isn’t it beautiful - I promise, you’ve been helping.

[sleepingwithserenity]

One day I’ll love myself as much as I love you,

Maybe then I’ll see is both as beautiful

[sleepingwithserenity]

Good shit

characters who continuously tell themselves they’re okay and even start to believe it until someone says their name very gently and asks if they’re alright, at which point the facade crumbles completely

[sleepingwithserenity]

AND THE NIGHT SAID:

I LOVE YOU AS A FIST LOVES THE BROKEN RIB AS THE LUNGS LOVE THE CHASE AS THE FINGER AND NAIL LOVES THE GOUGE AND TEAR

I LOVE YOU AS THE TEETH LOVE THE TENDON AND THE TENDON THE BRUISE I LOVE YOU AS ADRENALINE LOVES THE POUNDING IN YOUR EARS

[sleepingwithserenity]

john my beloved - sufjan stevens / birds hover the trampled fields - richard siken

[sleepingwithserenity]

jenny slate’s sentences are the absolute only thing that makes me think hmm may be….. human intimacy + the mortifying ordeal of being known…… is good

[sleepingwithserenity]

the feeling when your mom calls you to ask what you want from starbucks because she drove by and thought youd like some then she buys you a cookie too? thats love. your friend knowing your drink order from tims (”a frozen lemonade right?”)? that’s love. your friend asking in the middle of something if you’re okay because you zoned out and got lost in your head and they just know that? that’s love

love is being known, love is someone taking the time to know the little things about you. your drink order from your favourite coffee place. the book you’re reading. the classes you love and the classes you hate. your favourite chocolate. things they picked up on from spending time with you because they like you and want to know you.

love is connecting songs to a person in your life. each person has A Song, and when you fight you either cannot listen to it or thats all you listen to. love is seeing things everywhere that remind you of different people in your life and sending them pictures or telling them about it. sending your friend the meme that reminded you of them.

love is in the little things, the small everday gestures that remind you someone cares, someone is there for you.

[sleepingwithserenity]

when oscar wilde said 'i am tired of myself tonight, i should like to be someone else' and when sylvia plath said 'i wish i knew what to do with my life, what to do with my heart' and when rilke said 'this heavy humanness'

[sleepingwithserenity]

reasons.

[sleepingwithserenity]

Virginia Woolf, from The Waves

[sleepingwithserenity]

Jo Shapcott, Of Mutability

[sleepingwithserenity]

gosh but like we spent hundreds of years looking up at the stars and wondering “is there anybody out there” and hoping and guessing and imagining

because we as a species were so lonely and we wanted friends so bad, we wanted to meet other species and we wanted to talk to them and we wanted to learn from them and to stop being the only people in the universe

and we started realizing that things were maybe not going so good for us— we got scared that we were going to blow each other up, we got scared that we were going to break our planet permanently, we got scared that in a hundred years we were all going to be dead and gone and even if there were other people out there, we’d never get to meet them

and then

we built robots?

and we gave them names and we gave them brains made out of silicon and we pretended they were people and we told them hey you wanna go exploring, and of course they did, because we had made them in our own image

and maybe in a hundred years we won’t be around any more, maybe yeah the planet will be a mess and we’ll all be dead, and if other people come from the stars we won’t be around to meet them and say hi! how are you! we’re people, too! you’re not alone any more!, maybe we’ll be gone

but we built robots, who have beat-up hulls and metal brains, and who have names; and if the other people come and say, who were these people? what were they like?

the robots can say, when they made us, they called us discovery; they called us curiosity; they called us explorer; they called us spirit. they must have thought that was important.

and they told us to tell you hello.

[sleepingwithserenity]

sometimes a poem is just a poem and sometimes a poem is actually a confession and sometimes a poem is a person and sometimes a poem is a cardinal. sometimes art is just art and sometimes art is actually therapy and sometimes it’s a pipe and sometimes it’s also not a pipe. 

sometimes the text is “got home safe!” and sometimes the text is actually saying i already miss the way your hair feels in my hands and sometimes the text is a warning and sometimes the text is thank you for caring. sometimes you are on the phone with your friend and you’re talking about curious monkeys but you’re also both admitting how lonely you are but you’re also both talking about how love can be a bicycle and sometimes it is not a conversation it’s an intervention and sometimes it’s not a conversation it’s a poem and sometimes it’s not a conversation it’s an art piece and sometimes it’s just a conversation but more often it’s holding hands without touching

& sometimes you are in an argument about the dishes but none of the things you are mad about are about dishes, they’re about the stuff around the dishes and the hands and the soap and how he smelled on sunday of another girl. sometimes the dishes aren’t even dishes they’re blankets and sometimes they’re burnt food and sometimes they’re your favorite book. sometimes the song isn’t a song sometimes the song is a manipulation and sometimes the song is just bad and sometimes the song is stuck in my head from you singing it in bed and sometimes it is “i listened to this so i could learn what you like” and sometimes it is “i showed you this because i want to also show you my palm lines and my heart and the inside of my head.” 

sometimes you are dancing alone but you are not dancing alone because you are picturing seeing her in a green velvet dress across the room from you, and sometimes you are dancing with ghosts, and sometimes you are dancing with your mother’s voice. sometimes it is not a dance it is a walk and sometimes it is not a walk it is lying in bed and sometimes it is not lying in bed, it is not-dying, which is often good enough for survival purposes. 

& sometimes you say  oh, take a cookie with you when you go and you mean that i should take a cookie and sometimes you mean - take me with you, also. sometimes it is just burning something and sometimes it is burning something and sometimes it is burning a lot of other things first. sometimes it is just a shirt and sometimes it’s what you wore when you kissed her and sometimes it’s what you wore when you didn’t kiss her and sometimes it’s what you wore to the movies when you saw your last in-theatres movie without knowing it would be your last in-theatres movie. 

& sometimes the poem is just a poem and sometimes the poem is my earring in your hand and sometimes the poem is your smell and sometimes the poem is calligraphy and sometimes the poem is good lord you are addicting and sometimes the poem is a poem and sometimes the poem is unfiltered yearning and sometimes the poem is an anvil and sometimes the poem is - can i write a home, can you crawl in, can we be like little ferns, all curled up in bed. sometimes the poem is a poem and sometimes the poem is a dance and sometimes the poem is saying - no, i will skip showering, if you need me there, i’m coming.

[sleepingwithserenity]

something i wish i had realized earlier: you can write poems on the same subject more than once. you can write, paint, draw the same thing over and over if you want to. you can spend your whole life making art about oranges. i think i always felt this pressure to get it right the first time like i couldn’t go back and use that inspiration again. but you can. you can go back and revisit it. you can pick up the conversation again and again if you have more to say.

[sleepingwithserenity]

character development is growing up and realizing many of the books you read in middle and high school are terrible and realizing you could’ve been reading something better during the time you could actually concentrate on reading. 

[sleepingwithserenity]

[sleepingwithserenity]

when i’m so anxious that i want to crawl out of my skin, you rub small circles on my back in the dark. when i don’t know why i’m crying, you pull me close and whisper prayers into my hair. when i’m being too sensitive, too needy, too much, you press your lips to my forehead and remind me that you love me anyway. we drive around unfamiliar cities with your hand on my thigh, we walk through beloved parks with our fingers interlocked. when I look at your mouth while we sit on a bench by the beach, you pull me in for a kiss. our love exists in and out of closed doors. we refuse to hide.