dear grey,

as far as all of your ‘spiritual’ readings of late are concerned, has it occurred to you yet, that this might be your first time around the planet?  it’s possible, grey.  think about it. 

if you’re at all interested in an outside perspective, i don’t think that your soul’s even hit puberty.  that was all of my furniture, grey.  the only thing you got rid of that actually belonged to you was the microwave.  a microwave that only you ever used, grey.

seriously.  please just sit on our very-spacious-now-thanks-to-you floor and just think about it. 

love, linda

i saw swallows down at goose creek this morning.  it’s time to plant the tomatoes.

Suzy Q,

I hate the word ‘kilometer’.  I hate it because it takes too long to say.  I wish I were from a place that said ‘miles’.  Say it.  Say it out loud.  Say ‘kilometer’.  And then say ‘mile’.  Way better, right?

650 kilometers is almost 300 miles.  “300 miles” sounds way better than, “650 kilometers”.  Less syllables.  Less movement of the tongue.  Less breath. 

I am always looking, these days, for the things that use less breath. 

I’m not sure, really, if that is a good thing.  If I want to turn my world into a thing that rolls better off the tongue; if I want to choose words that turn this thing to poetry.  For instance, perhaps it’s better if it’s harder to say?  Perhaps it’s more worth saying?  Perhaps I am up late, and scribbling to myself on your special paper.  Perhaps you won’t even finish reading this, because it is, like, no pulse dull. 

But maybe also, you’ll start saying ‘miles’ too.  And then I wouldn’t be the only one.  And then I wouldn’t be so far from home. 

-Jeff

hi billy boy,

i’ve discovered that optimism is a kind of learning disability. 

i am disabled. 

love, t

Dear “Love”,

If one carries many baskets, one must make many trips.  My eggs are all in one basket.  It’s better that way, so that you can carry all of them.  One shouldn’t carry several baskets of eggs just because they think they might drop one basket.   Just don’t drop the basket is all.  It’s really, no! big! deal! 

“Love”, U (I do)

Dear U,

I’m not ‘worried’ per se, but why are you putting all your eggs in one basket?

Love. 

i borrowed your sweater but just for one minute because it smells like cat pee. 

you might like to wash it.  if it was mine i’d throw it out. 

peace!

xox

I would have a broken heart but instead I have a bottle of wine.  I am, right now, believe it or not, at my very best. 

I am doing what most of us only ever aspire to do which is actually living inside of a dream fiction of my very own creation.  Some of us want houses by the sea.  Some of us want a fleet of charming children who say cute and sweet things only and never ever cry.  Some of us are hoping for acknowledgement or a financial sponsor, or simpler things like world peace.  Many of us are hoping for things that are not entirely possible.  My dream however, is real.  Mine has undecided outcomes thus far, but the future of my make believe matters little.  You are either 1) still here or 2) you’re coming back. 

You’ll notice as well that I’ve left this note for you, which means that I truly believe you’ll read it.  Why would I leave a note for someone who wasn’t going to read it?  That would be dumb.

(Dear Self Come Morning,

This was part of your process.  You thought this would be a good idea at a time when it was pretty impossible for you to come up with a lot of good ideas.  But, whatever.  Make some coffee.  Drink some water.  Good things are on their way.  One has to make room for one’s future blessings and that ‘room making’ only feels like loss.  It’s not really loss.  Don’t think of anything but the moment, at most, the day.  She’s gone.  She’s really gone.  That’s going to be ok.  Soon, I promise, it’s going to be ok.  You’ve made it through much worse than this.  Remember that, much, much worse). 

Love, Jack

i see you quit quitting smoking. 

that’s ok. 

i’ve always liked kissing you, you know.  the smell that lingers in your hair and from your sleeves reminds me of my favourite aunt, which doesn’t mean that i ever wanted to kiss my favourite aunt, not the way i want to kiss you, but that the smell of your addiction reminds me of a time when my favourite grown up showed me that you can make a straw for your ginger ale out of twizzlers. 

she was awesome. 

so are you.  i don’t care if you smoke.  i don’t care if you don’t smoke.  it doesn’t make you ugly.  nothing could.

xo 

please read the letters that i wrote. 

when you say i’ve got ‘walls up’ and suggest that i’ve got ‘ghosts’, i am not listening to you like i usually listen to you because i am wondering what on earth you’ve been reading.

try ‘franny and zooey’, ‘their eyes were watching god’, or the atlas.  you’ll learn more about my love on those pages than you will in ‘pshychology today’. 

stop it with the psycho babble.  it makes me think you’re boring.

-j-bird

you needn’t remind everyone all the time that you’ve found something special to share using the word ‘we’ when you really mean ‘i’.  it makes me worry about the ‘you’ that used to be an ‘i’ and it makes me worried for him, too.  like, does he know that the ‘you’ he fell for would rather be a ‘we’ than an ‘i’ decidedly abandoning the ‘i’ that was the ‘you’ he fell for to begin with, while simultaneously and perhaps accidentally abandoning the ‘i’ that was ‘him’, too?

you don’t say ‘i’ anymore.  and without an ‘i’, i don’t believe you when you say ‘we’.  no one does. 

i can’t catch the fucking squirrel.  i tried.  it’s a big fucking fuck off sized squirrel and it charged me today.  i’m going to move, i think.

-j

i will think on our shared time together as a period of my life where for some reason, i chose not to evolve.  i’m not sure i ever loved you.  i don’t think you ever loved me.  we both needed something, i guess.  only thing is, neither of us knew what.  maybe neither you nor i would truly have endeavored, but i guess when we met, we were just so damn hungry.

(when kids fail grades now, they don’t say ‘fail’, rather they tell the kid ‘we’re going to hold you back a year’.  we didn’t fail, we just held each other back a few years).

peace be with you. 

let’s get on with it, no?  probably both of us could stand to evolve. 

love, L