To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go
To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far

To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march into Hell
For a heavenly cause

And I know if I'll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I'm laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star

"The Impossible Dream"
from MAN OF LA MANCHA (1972)
music by Mitch Leigh and lyrics by Joe Darion

Forces – A Story of Light and Magic

--------

There are four fundamental forces.

Two – strong and weak nuclear – hold the elements together. Don't be mistaken; they're both quite strong but one is stronger. They make fusion, the creation of bigger elements, difficult to achieve, hence only possible in the hearts of stars and for brief moments in the hearts of our bombs.

The other two are electromagnetism and gravity. These are artists – often misunderstood and mysterious and despite being mostly predictable, capable of surprising beauty.

Electromagnetism enables, wait for it... electricity and magnetism, a pair of tricks some smart people figured out are shadows of each other and therefore the same thing. Your body is brimming with both. It also describes how photons fill the Universe with light. Magic was the old word and remains the best way to explain how it works.

Gravity, the fourth force, is by far the weakest, the simplest, and the one closest to what some call God. It's the sculptor of the Universe. Unlike the other three, it works over vast distances. It's caused when mass distorts the fabric of space-time, creating curves upon which other mass is drawn. At certain angles you get collisions. At others you get orbits and spin – vital motions by which we measure time. Days (spin) and years (orbit). Thus our Universe has shape, rhythm and something to do.

Despite all that, it's the weakest of the four because you can overcome it. Lift your arm; you're a god.

They give me comfort. The two nuclear forces keep our atoms from flying apart. Electromagnetism powers cells, illuminates the dark and is the ink in which memories are written. Gravity created the Sun and the Earth and keeps us tethered to the ground where the food and love is.

It's a lot to be grateful for, to exist. Other than brief flashes, I haven't been grateful for existence so I'm new to the feeling. It's an active practice that on some days I forget to do.

I arrived at it through a hard-fought battle with another set of forces, one with far more complexity and turmoil, more mud and poison and possibility – the forces of humanity. It's a boil of nonsense, not all bad, not all good, rarely gentle and it can be especially aggressive to tender minds like in children, the very people least capable of recognizing the wrong or of expressing confusion and pain. This is what we call innocence. It's worthy of protection, despite the inevitability that we all lose it.

Perhaps lost isn't the right term. Phase-shifted maybe? Like how water becomes steam or ice, time and biology force us into our adult bodies with our adult minds and to do adult things like get old and open mail and worry.

That's normal. Standard.

Because of some 'not good' forces set loose long before I was born, I was exposed to emotional radiation that emptied my atmosphere of its protective coating, like a planet too close to its sun. My innocence blown bit by bit into the emptiness of space where it's useless. I grew up far too young than was fair. I worried far too much about things no child should. I was influenced by forces I neither knew of nor could detect. It left my head wired in a way no person deserves.

The details are many but now is not the time. Here's the core of it: I was never taught I matter.

Only after these last two years during which I've clawed my way back, bloody broken fingernail by bloody broken fingernail, to more stable ground have I gained insight and perspective on what happened. I've forced the growth I didn't get when I was a kid, a difficult and painful process. I was on the precipice of suicide, an act of irrational self-mercy, fueled by the escalating madness of addiction, an act of irrational self-medication, underscored by the isolation inherent when suffering has no symptoms outside the skin, when it's riddled with shame and denial and only exists between the wet walls of one's skull.

A brain is a tiny Universe of its own and in some the forces compel peaceful silent orbits. In others violent collisions. Thoughts, patterns, pathways and predilections. We all get a mix of both, a ratio that serves as a sentence and predictor of outcomes.

Like our artist friend gravity, it's subtle yet powerful and ranges over vast distances, sending in motion consequences that endure for decades. If your brain doesn't know you matter, you don't know you're supposed to. Only raw, unmined, deep-inside-every-goddamned-animal's-core self-preservation got me the help I needed when I needed it. It was ask or die.

I leapt off a cliff and a hand was waiting. On my list of gratitudes, that hand is number one. Always will be.

Thanks to therapy and reflection and many deep dives into the algal lagoon of my past have I been able to even partially grasp what happened. It wasn't death I wanted after all. It was relief.

I hid my hurt because someone close to me didn't protect me from hers and I refused to hurt others in the same way. My own pain meant nothing. Besides, it was normal. What I didn't understand was it was a needless sacrifice. It festered and rotted and surprised everyone after it tumbled out like a gush of intestines. One of the moments I healed most was in my dad's car on the way home from the airport: I told him I'd been hiding this pain since I was a kid. I told him how confused and scared I've been. I told him I wasn't angry. I just needed someone who cared to hear me for the first time. He didn't try to fix it, he heard me. I waited in the car until the tears dried. We had chinese food.

In defiance of the forces that shaped me, I insist on being worthy. Of peace. Of calm. Of love. Of health. Of forgiveness. Of existing.

Work remains and the task is far from finished but clear weather looms in a mind that didn't even consider it an option. I've begun to rewire the ratio. Depression still arrives like chaos-causing thunderstorms but they are further apart and each hides a nugget of truth: you are stronger than you think. I steal those nuggets and squirrel them away for the next storm.

A good man is trapped inside me. My life's mission is to meet him. To become him. To free him. He knows how sorry I am.

I still hurt. I still crave. Fulfillment remains unfilled. Loneliness aches. I want to weep in someone's arms. I want to be held. I want warmth to look forward to. I want someone's hand to touch my face, someone's fingers to find mine. Fingertips are electricity dispensers, hence the tingle of touch. I want the mutual joy of each other's silence and screams. I want the hurry to hurry.

I'm a heart without an orbit, hoping to find one, to pull close, circle gently – the dance of gravity – bound by a force that sculpts matter into beauty.

Nest

From the moment I read you I could write the world. I can't place the how or why, but when it's your mind on the end ingesting mine the waters run stiller, calmer, and still more, the boiling rapids' boil abates, becoming almost cool enough to touch, which is the perfect temperature.

For you I have no defenses to let down. They never went up.

Time slows, the thought factory eases production, or my focus improves on account of the intensity of our propensity. I don't know.

Or there is no fear, which is the definition of home.

Or I just get. I get.

And getting begets being gotten. Maybe that's why. That's why it's okay for me to write about this...

Writers are never truly without at least a tether or two lashing him or her to the dead tree we flee when we open our wings. Sometimes we soar, far away, around and up until our faces frost and the world descends, becoming the silent jewel we always suspected. Up. Over. Above. So high the air isn't thick enough to rumble and the curve of the Earth bleeds blue into purple into the rich infinite black above, pierced by pinpoint stars poking through the construction paper of time. The tether stretches into a string of electrons. It is not a leash but a beacon back.

Then there are quick jaunts. Able sweeps to kiss the clouds, over the leafless canopy and its grasping pointed fingers reaching skyward like a million bolts of petrified lightning, a garden of tendrils blurring under the applause of beating feathers, for the sheer thrill of it, or to snatch a meal or investigate a glint in the distance, short but good, practicing the tendons and joints that make it happen, fulfilling the need, basic as breathing. Warm when done. Not warn out. Nourished. A little snot from the excitement.

Sometimes we flap and flap and can find no lift, can achieve no purchase upon the air, and with aching hearts we must set down to the nest, re-arrange some sticks, scoop shit off the sides, rest, recoup, look around at the stillness of the forest in which we live, each tree a statue to hope, until the compulsion calls again. It will.

And sometimes we fall out, and fall far, past the cracked withered branches, their patient postures passing as we tumble by, the careen coming to rest with a head-separating snap of the single thin, long unbreakable strap around our neck, a strap tied by a sailor. There we dangle. Unmoving. Eyes slowly losing their glisten, dust obeying a little less with each feeble gust of the nostril, the bark of the tree scuffing softly when the wind sways our carcass. A spider eyes a crevice and draws up plans. A fleet of gnats inspects the odor and decides better. A jay steals a tuft. It's his now, and why not. All but gone. Lifeless. Less life.

This is where I am. Low. Way down. I've been here awhile, rotting on a rotating world. Despite my best intentions, I've conspired against me, not meaning to, but through a series of deliberate accidents that I now know were all groans in one long run-on sentence. A march of ampersands. I've become numb to hope, and the usual old desires so pitched and fevered they're now background noises I couldn't begin to decipher.

A demon snuck up and has all his limbs firmly wrapped around me. I opened my mouth and welcomed his presence and I invite his talons deeper with every drink I take.

I can't write the word, even though I've thought it for years. It's one with ugly synonyms and uglier assumptions. You know them. Everybody knows them. Along comes stigma, shame and a language of regret that escapes through the gaps of gritted teeth. Truths, judgments and cliches, all, each a puncture wound on the penetrable pit of my soul, draining in drips the sap I'm surprised hasn't run out.

I know the right choices. I know the right steps, what's expected, what's logical, what's proper, what will work. But I don't often make them, more not than often, in fact. In fact, mostly not. And often.

Even now I'm trying to fold words into fun shapes, to hide behind my cleverness. The only safety I've ever known is the shield a smile forms, a smile not my own. Mine is a lie. Made of sand.

Issues only grow when you run and I run to numbness, because numbness works. It's instant relief. It's an answer to the problem of feeling too much. Chemistry and stress dance daily in my mind and body. They are loud and uncoordinated, knowing no fatigue. They tap and stomp within my ribs and gut and spine. What used to offer fun became relief and what offered relief is now the opposite. Now I need relief from the numbness. A curse. A nightmare. A thick demon on my back with hot wet breathe. It's the only issue that matters because it's fertilizer for all the others.

You know of the others. Maybe? I don't remember how much it ever came up. You know I've had a more than a life's full. Have baggage, will travel.

Now I'm here and LA is kind, full of life, light and glorious potential, but my circumstances are not. My job was a way out but it's become a cell, preventing me from pursuing dreams and happiness because of late hours, the same exact hours when that pursuit is possible. I'm trapped. Stressed. So I run. To that fucking familiar fizz.

To another cell, one with thicker walls, walls made of fog, walls I can't feel or see but which block all horizons. Nonetheless they split my forehead open when I stumble into them, split it open from the inside out, right down the forehead, where I keep my skull and my head full of stains. The gray matters.

I'd pity me if I cared enough. I've quit before. A month here. Two months there. The shame fades. Health returns. Shirts fit. Money saved. But tripping hazards offer their foot and inevitably I take it. An early one was when she tried to kill herself. Another was her coma. That wasn't long ago. The one after was friends I never said bye to. Often the hazard is just exhaustion, or boredom, or habit. Each stumble is worse. Each time the torch dims. This time it's finally gone out.

Dark. Cold. I call out and there is no response.

Fog doesn't echo.

Lonely. So lonely I sleep in the center of the bed.

Lonely I can do. I count it a skill.

Isolation. That's the true torture. It's far worse. It's exile. No community. No friends. Nothing worth rushing for. Nothing worth going home to. No home, besides. No hurry to hurry and none of that lovely worry people call love. Nothing.

Just the groggy grind of daily existence. Eying the spiders back. Daring them. Waiting for the breathe to stop.

Help is there but I won't ask for it. I haven't asked for it.

I refuse no more. I'm asking this time. Help. It has a human shape. People are good. Warm. They're waiting for me. Because someone waited for them. Isolation is a choice I choose to no longer make. It's that or die, early and alone.

My nest is above, neglected, full of shit and wind. It needs me as much as I need it. That strap I'm hanging from isn't a noose. It's the only thing keeping me alive. It's how I'm going to climb back up and fly again.

+++++++++++++++++

written through the steam of evaporating tears, on a phone, in a bed, while the world slept

The wonderful gift...

We broke up. I dumped her. I booted her out of my life. She was lovely, an absolute darling -- smart and thoughtful and completely crazy because she found me attractive.

The first time we made out was our third date. I didn't kiss her. I said goodbye. I went into my apartment and left her to her own devices. She texted me shortly that she was chugging water in her car, and that I should have kissed her. She called me a "chickenshit."

I charged out of my apartment where I knew her car was parked and opened the door without hesitation.

Three hours later I let her lips go from mine...

That's how we started dating.

Months later, one night we came home, drunk, with burritos. We were past the point where big gross bites were a negative and devoured the burritos around my kitchen island. My shirt was still clean and handsome, like my face and my hopes, unlike the rest of me. In my drunken mind, my burrito brain, I struck up the subject of tears... and my mom... and suicide... for lost but obvious reasons I unveiled various wounds and pains.

The night turned dark. Her head tilted. I swirled down down down.

From her perspective, a new(ish) man she new(ishly) loved was breaking... away way way. Funny, confident, tall, strong and me. He was rupturing before her eyes...

We were standing on opposite sides of the large kitchen island. In her instinctive intstinctiveness, and her goddamn good person hood, she made that perfect female compassion face and swept around the island to wrap her arms around me. I remember seeing her start to move sideways and suddenly I was engulfed by warmth, by her lovely beautiful arms...

It was the moment I'd been begging the Universe for-- I burst into uncontrollable tears.

I wept into her and her strong mind, challenging her strong shoulders with my heft and heavy desperate desperation. I hated the vulnerability she provoked but  I couldn't resist it. My long-warn wall crumbled faster than my manhood could repair it. Masculinity fell out of the bottom and for the best and briefest of moments I was totally purposeless.

She guided me to the bedroom and to the bed and to above the sheets and I clung to her with utter submission. I sobbed. I moaned. I wrenched. I erupted pain.

She took it.

I'll never forget her strength that night.

I'd never cried so hard before and I'd never needed to cry so hard before, except always until then. Years of protecting my mother and myself from her bipolar had built a shell. A shell I protected, a wall I hid behind. I protected it for decades, fortifying it with smarts and attitude and funny and impenetrability, because it was safer than being honest... And then she... through the mere act of acknowleding turmoil and trusting me with warmth. And telling me I was safe... she gave me the gift of rupture, of not holding it in, of not feeling fear.

I flooded her neck and nape and collar and my own pillow. With each shudder she squeezed and with each squeeze I felt safer.

Hours.

We barely knew each other.

It was the freest I ever felt, the least scared, the most honest in a life of dodging fear and fleeing honesty...

Such a beautiful gift she gave me.

I needed to feel pathetic for a change, not strong, and she let me...

We took turns at that for a couple years. Then it ended.

I still smile, though, because how could two humans entangled so, even briefly, not grow...?

Here now...

One street was lined with lines. Blueward rows sprouted from the ground along the edge.

It glowed. It glowed light. Brilliant but patient.

Another was a dappled mess.

Yet another bounced dimples of shadow across every smooth surface and even the rough ones.

A thick ray of light insisted that it's all going to be okay. 

The light lined up and dappled and dimpled.

It bounced, but it didn't try too hard. And it got it right.

The world yawns here.

I'm waiting.

Eager green leaves

every beautiful song makes me think of growing old and dying. Because every beautiful song makes me think of beauty. And every beautiful song ends. That's why I'm a sucker for time travel. that's why I'm in such a hurry to slow down and cherish every moment. I want each instance of life to last a lifetime. I want every moment to last forever, especially the beautiful ones. I want those to last, at minimum, past my life.  

I remember walking along a sidewalk at night in Chicago on a warm night last winter. Strings of white christmas lights were strung about the bushes and fences and porch railings of the houses I passed, little splatters of gentle photons laid one by one, draped with deliberate haphazardness... the best kind of order, the kind that works no matter what.

I walked past these lights and my eyes were open. Open. OPEN. I SAW the light, ingested each ray of photons. In any other scene I was just a cloud-headed passerby on his way somewhere with a brain full of futures and only one past but on this night I was neither of those; I was in the moment, I was ingesting the scene around me like a canvas swallowing paint. It wasn't one shade or hue that struck me, it was the whole of humanity expressed in one simple act: let's all enjoy these lights. Life is nice, existence is good, love is real--

I was a participant.

When I was breaking up with my girlfriend two years ago I told her of a similar experience. We were both crying. I told her that I had only two memories of being happy and I described a time when I was driving on Seeley street in Chicago on a beautiful spring day, warm but not too, windy but not too, sunny but too much in just the not too much way... that kind of day, hot but fucking perfect. Everything glowed at the right frequency, and I told her how I marveled at the existence flourishing around me, at the glint off the  and ready, the rigid insistence and wonderful organization of houses and cars and people being people, the fresh eager leaves that bounced clean green light at my eyes like a trillion winking lovers. I remember remembering to breathe at the beauty of light and the joy of breathe and the privilege of wind and existence. Something was lining up and I happened to be there. I was happy because I was somehow unconstrained by thought, as if my existence was out to play with pure reality, a dog digging a hole, a cat stretching her back, a man loving life.

My butt leaned on one counter, hers on another and I told her how mysteriously happy I was for those few minutes that day and she lamented that she wasn't included in the ledger. Not my intention, of course, but my breakup bruise deepened as it provoked more worthy tears from her beautiful eyes. My memory of joy didn't involve her and though I didn't understand why I understood why it hurt. What a shitty thing to tell someone, I realize. I got it. I got her. In that moment I understood being not gotten. Because I've understood being gotten. And getting someone. And being not gotten. And... well, getting you. I always understood that. From the instant I typed that first letter. I got you.

I guess I'm saying it's just good. It's all just good. And just. And good. Beauty is there and it will always be appreciated. Gotten. Maybe forgotten. But there. Sometimes it's in the past. Or the now. We're all twinkling lights strung on a string on a branch or a fence. We radiate light and love and are there for passing souls to pause and take measure, photons out.

Always.

Always spreading out.

Machinery

Nothing stokes the loneliness fire faster than new hope. It comes in gusts, hope. Sometimes it arrives and leaves with nothing more than a tender glance barely strong enough to arouse a cheek hair in protest to its presence. Other times it appears as if blown from the mighty lungs of Nature herself, a force of sudden, particles beamed urgently as light across the churning world directly into you, pressing, piercing, battering, boring its way in, to set upon you from the inside out.

By the time you command your body to gird itself for the dire new reality of its presence it whisks itself away, dispersing back into the elements, taking your breath and peace with it, leaving only bruises and the slow bleed of red back into your knuckles. That's what hits. Hope is the damage.

Twice. Recently. Twice. It struck. Rocks off cliffs. Such fleeting exchanges. Not even sparks, not even the sound of struck flint. Just the rare ease of lack of fear, the comfort of eye contact into brightly thinking minds. Honest words, simple breathing, smooth hair, the curvature of feminine posture, feet and legs, backs and arms-- beautiful topography, built as if awoken charcoal crawled from an artist's canvas. It's enough to click on the machinery, turn the gears, open the valves. Soft delicate sounds: a piano key brought back to rest, the clack of a clock between tick and tock, the whir of a lace pulled tight, the wet quick whisper of a waffle cone cracking, a bubble snapping back out of existence.

Sand landing.

It was enough. Threshold crossed. The sound woke the baby birds in the nest. Little veiny translucent beaks closing only long enough to rest the tiny muscle that flings them open so that frantic begging can erupt past sharp pointed beaks. Food food food! Now now now!

I speak not of an absence of hope. Our brains are calculators of it and mine has a mind of its own. All it does is calculate. It knows all the answers and not just the right ones. It also knows the wrong ones, millions of them.

One truth exists: There are more ways to screw things up than to get them right. The brain, mine specifically, doesn't distinguish between the two. It just churns. At all hours. All minutes. During precious seconds am I able to fortify against its ticker tape and achieve a moment in the present. I can remember four such moments in the past eight years. It's a big fast belching machine that wants so hard to please its owner that it overproduces the green, ripe and rotten fruit of thought.

This abundance is a curse. If only I could learn to let it not be. My mind is staffed by prison guards in tall towers that execute any emotion brave enough to make a run for it. I need to stop the guards.

Or run faster.

I fantasize about heat trapped under a blanket and eyes across rooms and the clicking of two forks grabbed and synced steps of feet and the silence between words and the flexing sinews of a washing orgasm and the soothing sound of an arrival and the delicate shadow of a hair across the face and the comforting squeeze of a hand about to be squeezed back.

About laughing at nothing and laughing at everything and not doing it alone.

Little bird mouths. Shiny hopeful eyes. Hearts pumping. It is not in their nature to know or understand denial. All they have is an expectation of nourishment.

I never have anything to feed them. I'd rather they slept forever.

I know they won't.

Grumble bee and the Distance of Close

It isn't fair.

All the flowers are taken. All the nectar is spoken for.


I'm a bumble bee bouncing along the prairie grass hoping for an appropriate purchase, a good flower upon to land, with a willing morsel, a warmed footpad, a soothing surface, a couple petals or one, a material shining to the Sun about to be wise like a smile, like yours, like how your smile arrives like a bloom that wasn't supposed to happen. That.

The sun washes. The wind blows. I flap my wings, despite it all.

Too warm for a long visit.

I bump against a window. There's glare and flatness and reflection and an impenetrable surface and yet, despite all that, I tip-click-tip, just so silently, tip-bzzzz-tip, against the slowly-melting silicone of a patient pane of glass. I'm a mindless being that insists despite the dangers and the odds and erosion patterns and the erosion of patterns that chemistry wins.

Insufferable like. My wings form the shape of like and their wake wakes hope. I bleed the color of need. Because bleeding shouldn't be something done alone. That's the essence of our brains. Unlike the animals we don't have to bleed or weep alone. Desire fills all the gaps. More than any figuring we could do at our core we want. Simply want. Crave. Have to have. Hafta have.

Except when want defies the schedule. When it's the shadow of the sun dial. 

I'm a creature with wings and a stinger and a silly piece of brain that says, "Keep at it! Go! Don't stop! Try! Try! Try!" The instinct of hope.

The stupid persistence of not quitting. Ever. Not fucking ever.

What other choice is there?

Quitting is what the rest of us does. Do. You get it.


Too many metaphors to make sense of it. Too many thoughts. Too many ways to close the distance.  Too many obvious answers and mysterious horrible ways to patch over the chin-hiding moments. Too many goofy whispers to sputter into the side of your face. Too many lovely little sweet nothings to drop off into your brain or into the rare brain like yours. Surfactant shuddering of a face well known for funny. I shudder to think that the dreams I've had lately and the face I've made during them could ever possibly be witnessed by someone caring enough to stay up and watch.

I watch my dreams. I've learned to let them die. 

Forgive me my thoughts, for they I cannot control.

Just as you can't, when you close your eyes.

Or when you blink.

And no one is watching.

Brain Slides

I can't turn off the memories.

I want to, sort of. I mean, they hurt a little. Not hurt, per se. Ache maybe. Pulsate? Throb? The way a bruise you got the right way hurts? Yeah? Get that? Of course you do.

You're you.

asterisk-smile-asterisk

Much of the time I want to erase them. But I can't. And I wouldn't. And that means the memories are good. Very good. Durable and vivid. Patina. Properly scuffed. Easily recalled. A little too, but that's okay.

Random clicks.

It doesn't mean something about now, or about whenever. It just means that when, back when... Then. They were good. Forged and minted, enjoyed, and polished with just the right amount of lovely.

Like how a flower or a caribou coffee or the color red is burned into the brain. Just good. A healthy purchase. Good grip.

Smiling.

Existence is privilege.

I wish I could write every morning. To be your dew.

I wish I was the steam off my tea and was the words you sniffed when you woke. The dust on your skin. The wind between your blinks. The negative valence of your laugh. I could be the photon between your window blinds, the ones that spy, and sigh, and apply.

I could weep off a cold glass, soak molecules into a leather ear flap, be the ink in a shitty tattoo, or the cash paid for a glorious one.

Or just a blink across a room between eyes. Screaming now and mighty. And soon. Such eyes. There's nothing stronger than hands reaching between the space of night. Warm and right and stupid with comfort.

To be your dew. To evaporate into your hungry air.

Sounds alright.

Taste Buds

Hi, reader.

Sitting on my desk are two packets of liquid. They are filled with flavor. Flavors I chose not to ingest, flavors I decided I didn't need, but two I would recommend to anyone looking for something arousing. They aren't bad. They just didn't fit into my plan. So they became garbage.

I should keep them. I should put them away in a drawer or on a shelf or on the right ink alignment. If I were following the organization blogs, I'd tumble them right into a plastic baggie, freezer quality. To store for later.

Because that's the genesis of hope: later.

The drawer I have picked is full of junk. So much so that that junk is the name the drawer has earned. The Junk Drawer. A catch-all. It exists for one purpose and one purpose only: I might need this later. Mine has tape, several kinds, and matches, and menus, several kinds, and rubberbands, and a vagabond allen wrench or two. And sauce packets. Lots of sauce packets.

Potential energy. Look it up.

Potential energy is stored capacity. It's work to be done. It's a coiled spring. A stretched rubberband. It's physics.

Unread words.

Potential energy is what dissipates when time insists we make a decision. It's what would have happened. It's the ghost of hope.

It's what dies.

Why is it that when I think of love I think of the ripples of no? I think of the denial of want. Why do I bleed desire? Why is it that the only emotion that's the color red is the one I see first? I see so many more. I don't care about so many more. All of it is.

Except it's not.

Us humans. Us weeping, crying, sniffling, touching, pretending, hiding, wanting, needing, loving humans, we ooze tears and joy and other fluids, which is why we blend so well together...

We are osmosis. Diffusion. Whatever that fucking word is.

That's what smiles are. Melting particles. It's why smiles cause love, and war.

Chemistry.

Taste. Flavor.

Put away for later.

PS whenever I write you I smell the odor of flame and snowflakes. The odor of comfort.