Time for Another Disclosure

It’s not what you save but what you don’t save that defines you.

Our allies are not as enthusiastic as they once were.

Making summer plans in winter.

The sound the seal makes breaking on the cheap whiskey I buy each year on the anniversary of my maternal grandfather’s death.

You see the snow, you say it’s white but look closer, see the blue, bring the blue forward.

In my heart a little boy is walking around pretending a stick is a sword, he has no idea yet what a plowshare does or why it matters.

Once I understood that therapy was narrative, it stopped working and I had to move on to prayer.

Lately I cannot escape a dimly-felt memory of Halloween – something beautiful and dark, magical and strong – that was the antithesis of the demons I have spent a life wrestling to various standstills.

Is it time for another disclosure?

What we covet.

The nexus – for me – between seeing and writing, as if going blind were the worse fate, is this why I have struggled so to say Jack’s name? 

You have your Penuel, I have mine.

Steadfastly gazing at Venus in the cold dark of winter, the love I feel in my heart for Lucifer, for all the forsaken and loveless, for all the despised, I don’t care anymore who knows the ruins my love makes welcome.

Clouds coming out of the sky, much as the adult we are comes out of the child, or seems to.

How tired I am of this long sleep, this cold dream, these nameless helpers who are not actually helping anyone.

Perhaps every kiss is forbidden, who knows.

Dad was mostly remote save for the very early years when he told me stories every night before bed, I don’t know why he stopped, don’t remember many details, only that it mattered in ways very little else would matter ever again.

This is your brain, this is your brain on Chopin.

Saltless broth and other elusive stags.

The lake freezes, truck tracks embedded in sweeping arcs across it, we walk carefully, hand in hand, determined not to be scared of everything we know can even now happen.