bagel-without-regrets

[bagel-without-regrets]

“The fault, dear brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves, that we are underlings” - Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene III

[bagel-without-regrets]

“Tell me every terrible thing you ever did, and let me love you anyway

- Edgar Allan Poe

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“We ruined ourselves, I have never honestly thought that we ruined each other.”

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

[bagel-without-regrets]

I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where once we were so close...  I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, I will love you if you don't marry me. I will love you if you marry someone else--and i will love you if you never marry at all, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all. That is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.

Lemony Snicket, The Beatrice Letters

[bagel-without-regrets]

Every great story has a beginning middle and end. Not necessarily in that order. We are all great stories. Chapter 389, the boy, still hair long and fingers too short, is 98 years old. Sits at the restaurant alone. The stranger next to him is eating something that looks vaguely delicious. The boy takes his fork, sticks it in his meal and takes a bite. He says “I’m 98 years old, go ahead say something… asshole.” Chapter 14, the boy is eight years old, he and his best friend come up with a great idea for a prank. They are sure they will not get caught. The next morning, every house on his street except his own has toilet paper on their front lawn. They get caught. Chapter 146, the boy and the girl live happily ever after. Chapter 231, the boy and the girl vow to never speak to each again. Every great story has a beginning middle and end. Not necessarily in that order. We are all great stories, but not all written as chapter books. I know, there are moments not meant to be bound. That we scribble too much in the margins to read our own page numbers. Like the nights you thought we were invincible. Ran out into the lightening storm with a million keys. Tied to a million kites with a clench in your jaw that said, “Take me with you god damn it. I dare you” In the weeks, when you finally reached out to feel your father’s cheeks and just found paper cuts. I know the nights we shatter hourglasses to fall asleep. In the afternoons, we take photographs of our own shadows just to prove that we left a mark. I know the wetness of your lips. Know that you are a leaf off the tree of your parents’ first kiss. As you hold your shrubs to the sky you can see their veins there. Know that in later chapters you will complain about how things were better back in your day. - give yourself lots to complain about. Know; that your legs were made to run, your bones were made to heal, so let yourself fall so deeply into somebody else you do not know which way is up. - knowing, that one day you may fall out, know exactly which way is down, call your mother, crying like the first day you were born. “Baby,” she will call you. “Baby, it is okay. Every great story has a beginning, middle, and ending. Not necessarily in that order.” Chapter 189, the boy too old now to celebrate his birthdays and too young to treasure them, uses his fist to punch his own reflection to see if it’s real. Breaks his hand into back into the opposite of a fist. A conch shell of sinew. He holds it into his ear and hears the ocean of his own bloodline. “Stand up boy and not just with your legs." You, be your own story. 600 words per minute. You, glasses by age seven. You, never stop to read the back cover even if you know what happens in the end. Chapter 431, once upon a time there was a boy, he’s not here any more. But the branches that he left all holds the leaves to the sky . You can see the outlines of his shadow on the side walk. Chapter one, once upon a time there was a woman and a man. The first night they kissed, a seedling blossomed on the back of her neck.

“Beginning, Middle, and End” published in Phil Kaye’s “Date & Time”

[bagel-without-regrets]

“if you pressed me to say why i loved him, i can say no more than it was because he was he, and i was i”

- Michel de Montaigne ‘On Friendship’ The Essays - book 1 chapter 28