Why don’t you fall of this cliff, swallow this gravel, punch your way out from within this tree?
Why don’t you cut strips off your forearm, coke on this pile of nails, squirm your way through this furnace?
Why don’t you hope, why don’t you scream, why don’t you beg to be other than me?

An ease doesn’t mean any of this easy. The way the dew freezes on my lips, the way your hip grinds atop mine. No one says it has to be easy. But the ease of it, the guile of it, the struggle to get there, makes it wonderful.

This is how you measure it:
A prolonged glance.
A prolonged embrace.
A prolonged moment of kindness.

In the night, it can be anything. Utter nonsense but it gets somewhere. I haven’t been anywhere but in my mindn where it goes. One obsession after another. Everthing fleeting but profound. At some point I will forgive him because he is human and flawed. In the pulpest of fictions: sometimes we are more in love with the flaws than the strengths, the marrow of character. Anyone can be strong, anyone can be weak. But to be both, to find strength in weakness and to admit your weaknesses when you are strong. There the fine edge.

Not even a year and a half, my son tries my shoes on for size. He defends everyone, doesn’t like it when one of us yells at the other. He is constantly smiling. When you tell him, he slowly grins and does it anyway, saying ‘no’ in return. Amused and unselfconscious, a new treasure.

So much more than this, the sliver of her smile, the crack of the bat, the lip snagged on the thorn. The dub of paint beaded along the frame, the gathered lint in the crook of his elbow, her breath when she pushes him out, the stain of something broken, the pain of the needle pricking his eye. The light breaking gathered curtains, the smell of pork burned in the summer, his laughter as they cuff him away. The windshield breaking in the night, his cigarette doused in the rain, the feel of the brick against her cheek. So much more than this, all of it lost, never too sure, nothing ever quite complete, accept the sweat on his brow and my hand and the shudder of his last breath.

We are all drawn by habitual patterns of remorse. The way her hair gets caught in her mouth. The way his scorn turns into a smile. The way my fingers lose their sense of touch while I sleep. We are all drawn by an unsteady sound, with pitches and tremelos, discordant but somehow still a tune we tap our feet to. And this, and this.

To lose, lost, wordlessness, to have nothing, nothing to say is,kt nothing to lose, it is being lost, words define place and time, situate you firmly, you are here, this place, it is recognizable, it has meaning. To have nothing to say is to be nowhere.