Sunday Thoughts

How genuinely are you going to live? How afraid  are you going to be?

For how many more years are you going to let your demons conquer you?

  You are only in your 30s.It is not too late to start over.

In fact, I hope you start over all the time. Not by burning bridges or 

ditching town or closing yourself to what you have, but by no longer

fearing what you don’t. I hope you spend your free afternoons working

on the skills you need to have the job you want someday. I hope you

accept that you’re not supposed to look the way you did in high school,

or really want the same things. I hope you ask yourself: “What do I want

now?” every time it occurs to you to do so. I hope you learn that there

is only one way to guide your life, and it is by consistently focusing

on the next right step.

  Genuinely unhappy people are never upset by their circumstances; they 

are upset because they have externalized their power. They put their faith

in finding the right person as opposed to being able to attract and choose 

the right person. They put their faith in finding the right job, in the 

right economy, as opposed to honing their skills to the point that a

company would be remiss to overlook them.

  If you want to genuinely start over, clear the slate of everything you

ever thought about how to get your life together. Don’t predict, project, 

mind-read, assume. Don’t imagine a better elevator speech. Don’t only think

of what it makes sense to do. Think of what it feels right to do. Not what 

your impulses say, not what your laziness says, not what your fear says.

Those things have probably gotten you where you are. But a layer beneath

them is a more resolute voice, and it will tell you which way to go. You 

only have to get quiet, listen and act.

  Learn to live your life more than you’re inclined to sit around wondering

about it. You can’t reflect your way into a new existence, but you can think 

yourself into paralysis. If you know, at your core, that you must start over.

Maybe

Maybe we’re both lost

Clueless to where we are

Clueless to who we are

You say life is great

But don’t look me in the face

I’m struggling to understand

You used to tell me everything

Nervous and afraid

You never did this before

I thought I knew you

I guess we outgrew us

Now we’re on separate paths

Wondering where it all went wrong

When it was there all along

Stuck on the brave face

But it faded in the awake of who are we

became

We are not lost

We are no longer in love

Dazed and youthful to the truth

Finally Found You

I am not the first person you loved.

You are not the first person I looked at

with a mouthful of forever’s, we

have both known loss like the sharp edges

of a knife. We have both lived with lips

more scar tissue than skin. Our love came

unannounced in the middle of the night.

Our love came when we’d given up

on asking love to come, I think

that has to be part

of its miracle.

This is how we heal.

I will kiss you like forgiveness. You

will hold me like I’m hope. Our arms

will bandage and we will press promises

between us like flowers in a book.

I will write sonnets to the salt of sweat

on your skin. I will write novels to the scar

of your nose. I will write a dictionary

of all the words I have used trying

to describe the way it feels to have finally,

finally found you.

And I will not be afraid

of your scars.

I know sometimes

it’s still hard to let me see you 

in all your crached perfection,

but please know;

whether it’s the days you burn

more brilliant than the sun

or the nights you collapse into my lap

your body broken into a thousand questions,

you are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

I will love you when you are a still day.

I will love you when you are a hurricane.”