how far have you walked for men who’ve never held your feet in their laps?
how often have you bartered with bone, only to sell yourself short?
why do you find the unavailable so alluring?
where did it begin? what went wrong? and who made you feel so worthless?
if they wanted you, wouldn’t they have chosen you?
all this time, you were begging for love silently, thinking they couldn’t hear you, but they smelt it on you, you must have known that they could taste the desperate on your skin?
and what about the others that would do anything for you, why did you make them love you until you could not stand it?
how are you both of these women, both flighty and needful?
where did you learn this, to want what does not want you?
where did you learn this, to leave those that want to stay?
― Warsan Shire
Maybe next time.
And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to father time. Death Cab for Cutie
See also I want to live where soul meets body.
I think the only time I will get to rest in one spot is when I die. I am not being melodramatic, maybe a little, call it writer’s creative license. But it’s an exaggeration with basis in reality, all exaggerations have those. I always thought I would like to have my ashes scattered in the places I loved the most. My lake, my nana’s back yard, my aunt’s cottage. Nah. I need to stay in one spot. Where soul meets body preferably.
I am a transient being. Transcending. Transcendental. I accept this.
Be the change.
Oh I am.
I let go of a bed I have been carrying around since the ex hubby years.
I’ll be letting go of a lot more before this is over.
I know exactly what it feels like to stay somewhere you don’t belong, to pay a mortgage in blood and tears on a house that was never mine. I won’t fight this time. I resign.
I don’t want to live here anymore.
I’ve finally wrapped my head around the idea that we have to move again.
I had planned to stay, let someone else stay in Panda’s room, I was holding onto the idea of staying still for once.
I was going to miss her terribly and I knew it.
We have plans, and prayers both to Father Time and whatever gods run YouTube.
I know I’ve said it, but it took me this long to catch up. Just like turning the key in my new car I still expect it not to start right away, because the last one wouldn’t. Maybe this time, maybe it will get better.
I have bet it all on black before and lost everything, repeatedly.
Thinking of painting my room red this time. I never have, not in all the rooms in all of the houses.
Red rum is murder, red room is Mordor, maybe no.
I’m already figuring out what I can throw away.
I’m craving the purge, it’s spring and with that comes catharsis, always does.
Swelling rivers carrying away a season’s worth of trash.
My heart knows it’s time and she is slowly disconnecting herself.
God I do not want to take down that lamp. I don’t know what’s worse, taking it down or putting it back up somewhere else.
I miss my old chandeliers.
I am realizing, slowly then all at once, that I am the same way with men that I am with houses.
I’m only renting. I move in and I make a nest and I think ‘maybe this time’.
It’s the only game I know how to play. Maybe he means it, maybe he’ll stay.
Eagles build upon the same aeries every year until they become colossal things, hummingbirds build new nests in new trees, delicate and fleeting like they are.
I have pontificated till I am blue in the face about how we don’t own people and everything is temporary and I write these words in black and white about how ‘ok’ that is, it’s just life, life happens everything flows. A river runs through it, and I am floating down.
Maybe that’s why I love my lake so much, she is both fixed and mutable. Always there always changing.
Maybe I am a river and maybe at some point I will run to the ocean and never look back, be swept up, carried away home.
“At the end of the day, it isn’t where I came from. Maybe home is somewhere I’m going and never have been before.”
― Warsan Shire
Maybe.
