One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy

one must imagine sisyphus happy

here is the way i will live the rest of my life: one day at a time.

on sundays i will brew an entire pot of tea and drink it while reading a book or an article or a newspaper, anything i can do to never stop loving that magic and strange poetry of reality.

on saturdays i will go grocery shopping, the real way, at bakeries and butcheries and fruit markets. and if i buy something exotic, something strange, it will be my own choice, visiting italian markets and east asian seafood shops or arabic spice dealers. no one could blame me.

on fridays i will cook something new each week, a recipe to try, made out of something simple or complex but always different so that life does not become a terrible monotony and instead the flavour of adventure sits lingering on my tongue.

thursdays i will devote entirely to my menagerie, and wednesdays for the house- to clean will be to rid myself of any common perceptions.

on tuesdays i will be kind. not to say that i am ungracious or abrasive on every other day, but that i will make an uncommon effort to lighten someone’s day. the world will not turn any differently for it, but there are things we do for stranger reasons than this.

on mondays i will write, letters to my past and future selves, poetry, philosophy, discourse on science and reports, bills and taxes and novels and i will write like the world is ending in my hands because in a way it is.

every day i will live like the world is ending and i will get up and i will repeat this over and over and over, living this life because it is my only and my last, accepting the absurdity to be happy in my own peculiar way and falling in love with this strange, incomprehensible impossible world somehow over each time, every day that i live it and all its possibilities again and again and again.

PERSEPHONE: fuck the seasons. fuck change. peeling a pomegranate / only to find rot, blood-red hands for nothing sticky fingers and silver knives. empty but coming back for more, this / winter came quicker than we expected, came with a vengeance. sick from the inside- how it looks pretty but when it’s cracked open //

split, thick pulp rushing from inside juice dripping / and swallowed the brown. the red. seeds whole and the crescent of a fingernail / cuts across the surface quicker than a knife would know to sever. how it is only aimed, fuck anything more than an attempt to break this fuck / me more than anyone. i would know what it means when you say the rot started on the inside //

and he told me that i was Apollo 13 on the very last day-

of the year where we cried over things that we meant to go wrong or go right, little lives that we played from paris to l.a. on an eastward bound plane or the train that you took across empty lands with open hands and a dream that we could be more than we are, our broken-down scarred beating hearts, bursting lungs and minds full up of hope and the stars we see in our arms, magic and mystery and innocent mischief; a rocket taking off in our eyes, a year bending into place like a piece of a puzzle you can’t quite see has escaped, something you didn’t know you were missing until you felt the edges line up, all systems go three two one pushing off of the ground to fly up away like he always said you could do he told me i was his only dream and the stars he had looked for he found in my heart with the love of a daughter a child of his own and he kissed me goodbye, set me off on my own through the dark into space, helmet clasped around my face like the mission he loved galaxies up above said shoot for the stars don’t forget who you are and when the clock strikes twelve tonight you’ll come home and it’ll be alright set down on the face of the moon, know you’re where you belong and the world turns anew in a year without you

he told me that i was Apollo 13 and that if i believed what i dreamed- right before he left i said i know who i am and that it was because of you; you taught me what i know (i know) and everywhere i roam, i’ll see you on the road

THE VERY LAST DAY :: o.m.

2016

i hate that you tell me your diagnosis before your name

like you have to prove you’re not insane or looking for attention.

i hate whoever made you feel like you had to say sorry for everything you did.

i hate that every other word is sorry sorry sorry like you weren’t good enough.

who told you that you weren’t pretty?

who told you that you had to be pretty, that this was what mattered?

i hate that i can tell exactly who you used to be because of the way you say sorry, like it’s not an apology but an excuse for your existence.

i hate that someone called you Cassidy without asking and you were afraid to correct them.

what made you so afraid?

who made it so hard for you to be yourself without worrying what people would think of you?

i hate that you say sorry to me.

i hate that you think you have to say sorry to me when you have done nothing wrong.

why would anyone ever tell you that you are worthless?

why don’t you stop saying sorry?

i hate that i can’t understand why you do this.

i hate the semi-colon tattoo on your finger because, don’t me wrong, i love you for staying strong. i am so unbelievable proud of you and i cannot even begin to imagine what it took for you to be here- i hate that you had to go through hell just to say you’re not joking.

why would anyone ever doubt someone else’s choice when it has nothing to do with them?

what kind of person makes a joke about the option “choose not to answer”?

i hate the way people assume.

i hate the fact that I am still writing these words long after you said sorry to me in the art room because every day I see someone saying sorry about something they shouldn’t be, and not enough saying

“why don’t you change?”

chain of gold

love her for it, and in spite of it; for this she will love you. and of this, nameless in its entirety, something good will grow. do not doubt this. do not forget this. for anything, for everything, for this: love her love her love her.

crown of thorns

how someone can disintegrate with a touch and you did nothing to stop it. you can be nothing but still breathing and give without giving up. no one ever said that you would end up the same, with gold and lilies and beating hearts. you were nothing once, not a queen, not a girl, not a thought. you can be nothing again, hung out to dry with a crown full of thorns instead of flowers on your head. regina corda, you have lost your own. maybe still breathing is not what you want to be.