We struggle for some sense of regularity, hope for some form of consistency, and long for predictability. It’s like grasping at rays of sunlight, it’s like describing pain, it’s like getting out of bed in the morning. For some of us, it is the hardest thing to do. For others, it is the idea of getting into bed at night. The heavy breaths of loneliness sound the same as those of financial crisis, of motivational despair, of creative stagnation.

The thoughtful mind craves the antitheses of what a normal life should hold: friction, struggle, surprise, pain, loss, anger…fear. To stop moving in this world is to die. To feel all of those things is to imbibe danger. But stagnation. Stagnation is cancer. You cannot burn it away with alcohol, you cannot bleed it away with cuts, you cannot wash it away with source and media. Stagnation is betrayal to the thoughtful.

And you wonder why so many of us slip away in the night. We run away like children, but never cross the street because it is not what we are supposed to do. In order to escape, the thoughtful mind must find the bubble that encases their life.  In the night, lean against the walls of your bubble and find that comfort in the way it bends, like when you were a child and you leaned against the walls of a bouncy house. Sleep there, and listen to the sounds of your freedom, like the roar of ocean through a seashell. Perhaps when they find you in the morning your tears will be dry, and the movement will be easier.

Although Cancer has no cure, it is treated with resistance. With love. With better choices. A thoughtful mind knows this. 

I’ll cast my fingers into your life.

I watch my lines twist and twine as we sink deeper into our plot.

And the farther down we tread, the less lost we seem.

I’ll grab a pen and press in into your hand if you desire a map.

But I like the pain of memory, I like the burning rubber in between my ears.

I would love to grab your vernacular and your desire by the hips and drag you down the road once called adventure… but darling, we’re getting tangled.

And so it’s time to pull out the scissors and shears, and try not to get cut.

The words are gathering dust under my bed. I’m peeling them out of my hair in the morning. They must be crawling in while I sleep. I found a sentence in the back seat of my car, but I was driving- so there the sentence remained. I wonder if the thoughts are magnetic. If I were to sew horseshoes to the hem of my skirt, would they come? Would they play for me and put themselves together the way they were meant to come out? I feel so terribly sad, finding the phrases circling the drain. But I guess I can’t complain. After all, I am the messy one.