I wear this tattoo for all the right reasons, that there is ground inwhich I cling to, there is something I stand on, there is a light at the end of this tunnel.

You need to do the things that sustain you, that surpass you: if not at work, then everything else. Read everything, study, go beyond, be beyond, allow yourself to grow out of the expectations of your place. Explore, write, listen, reach. You have arms boy for a reason: they are meant to grasp as well as throw away.

Days go by and not a word. No, that is not true, always words, incessantly, mantras, ghosts, whispers, in my head, always, I am never alone, always speaking, listening but hardly writing. Letting the body rest, feeding the soul.

in my youth i would look at pictures, i would weep for the child i had been, i would stare and my gaze would become muddled and burred, from despair i would beg “what happened to you?”

and i was reminded again of it, but this time, this time the child had answer, i begged him again the question “what happened to you?”

and he replied, “you lived.”

simple and true, i am nothing without the distance, i have seen, i have loved, i have despaired, i have danced, i have written, i have gone, i have betrayed, i have been betrayed, i have been loved, i have been abandoned, and all of it precious, all this accumulation, all these markers on a very long journey.

i’d rather have traveled the world than to remain.

It feels like it’s over, the harhness, the darkness, the bitter cold of a particularly brutal winter. I sit outside and catch the faint smell of spring, of renewal. She has renewed us, and yet I find myself asking, have you truly forgiven yourself? Are you ready to say goodbye to these ghosts of your failures? He says to me, does it ever occur to you to say, this is good enough? That you have are enough?

she says to me, i feel so out of touch sometimes.
i tell her, don’t worry about being out of touch
you will never be out of my reach
i will always pull you out to sea
for far away lands and distant locales
for the strange and the delightful
for the macabre and the unusual
and together, we will return to home
together, we will find the shore
she replies, you keep me in the world
you have always been my connection to the outside
and i wept. who is holding onto to whom?

try to convince me i haven’t sinned, that i am not wretched.
and he gambles, i start from the point of forgiveness, that forgiveness is possible. do you get what i’m saying? this is very different from where you start from.
and he’s right: here i am pondering what why i am so wrong, why i’ve done the things i’ve done and he turns it around:
why do i begin with what new thing can i do today that i will punish myself with tomorrow?

there is something to be said of beauty and grace. there is something to be said about despair and the night. there is something sexy about the way i put my hand on your neck. there is something sexy about the way you look over your shoulder at me. there is something to be said about how i feel inside you, there is something warm and welcoming and peaceful about the thrust, the trust, the need that i must be there. there is something to be said about all of it, about holding you and fucking you and wanting you and wanting to fuck you even more, slower, harder, sideways, from behind, on top, it doesn’t matter, as long as we’re fucking ourselves into something.

I am obsessed with wordlessness, the gesture, the sound, the image. I am obsessed with silencing myself, with erasure.
She dances before me, she never dances. She thinks herself too awkward, but there she is dancing. She crosses the room, suddenly, kneels down, kisses me. I ask her, why? Because I’ve been dancing without a partner but you’re here now. You’re here.
I am obsessed with recovery. Words have lead me into and out of trouble. Words have lead me here, with two children, a house bigger than what we need, and a wife from whom I have much more to learn from than I ever imagined.