A Little Cheese Some Fruit Some Tea THATS An Afternoon

One day you think: I want to die. And then you think, very quietly, actually I want a coffee. I want a nap. A sandwich. A book. And I want to die turns day by day into I want to go home, I want to walk in the woods, I want to see my friends, I want to sit in the sun. I want a cleaner room, I want a better job, I want to live somewhere else, I want to live.

blood in the water 🩸

I understand people that believe in a religion. Isn't every sunset that's partially hidden by an average day's clouds proof of the devine?

Pablo Neruda, tr. by Mark Eisner, "One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII", The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems

Precious

The puppy is no longer young but he is still small and fits in the crook of my arm like a sleeping babe all sleep-warm and honey-slow blinking up at me with wide black eyes.

I hold his tiny face in my cupped careful palms press a kiss into the wisp-light fur at the nape of his neck and tell him like a vow: You are so good and so precious and so beloved.

And a soft, gentle thing in the cavern of my chest slowly rises to reply heartbeat-quiet: We are. We are. We are.

- by sylvie (j.p.)

I don't quite- I. Okay. Hm. Hmmm.

hello. you left a neon pink post-it with pgs 194-359 due 9/12 in the book, by the way. it is now May 23rd and the library's printer is running out of ink. it jammed and tore my passport application. one of the librarians dutifully blacked out all my information (front and back!) before proceeding to use every unmarred inch as scrap paper.

i think maybe our (plural, inclusive) lives are connected. all of them. i have been thinking a lot about borrowing. about how people move through the world in waves, filling in the same spaces. i have probably stood on the same subway platform as you. we held the same book. all of us stand in the same line at the grocery, at the gas station. how many feet have stood washing dishes in my kitchen?

i hope you are doing well. the pen you used was a nice red, maybe a glitter pen? you have loopy, curling handwriting. i sometimes wonder if it is true that you can tell a personality by the shape of our letters. i'm borrowing my brother's car. he's got scrangly engineer handwriting (you know the one). it's a yellow-orange ford mustang boss. when i got out of the building, some kids were posing with it for a selfie. i felt a little bird grow in me and had to pause and pretend to be busy with my phone to give them more time for their laughing.

i have a habit of asking people what's the last good book you read? the librarian's handwriting on the back of my smeared-and-chewed passport application says the glass house in small undercase. i usually go for fantasy/sci fi, but she was glowing when she suggested it. i found your post-it on page 26, so i really hope you didn't have to read up to 359 in that particular book. i hope you're like me and just have a weird "random piece of trash" "bookmark" that somehow makes it through like, 58 books.

i wish the concept of soul mates was bigger. i wish it was about how my soul and your soul are reading the same work. how i actually put down that book at the same time you did - page 26 was like, all exposition. i wish we were soul mates with every person on the same train. how magical to exist and borrow the same space together. i like the idea that somewhere, someone is using the shirts i donated. i like the idea that every time i see a nice view and say oh gosh look at the view, you (plural, inclusive) said that too.

the kids hollered when i beeped the car. oh dude you set off the alarm, oh shit is she - dude that's her car!! one was extremely polite. "i like your car, Miss. i'm sorry we touched it." i said i wasn't busy, finish up the pictures. i folded your post-it into a paper crane while i waited. i thought about how my brother's a kind person but his handwriting looks angry. i thought about how for an entire year i drove someone to work every day - and i didn't even think to ask for gas money. my handwriting is straight capital letters.

i thought about how i can make a paper crane because i was taught by someone who was taught by someone else.

the kids asked me to rev the engine and you know i did. the way they reacted? you would have thought i brought the sun from the sky and poured it into a waterglass. i went home smiling about it. i later gave your post it-turned-bird to a tiny child on the bus. she put it in her mouth immediately.

how easy, standing in your shadow, casting my own. how our hands pass over each other in the same minor folds. i wonder how many of the same books you and i have read. i wonder how many people have the same favorite six songs or have been in the same restaurant or have attended the same movie premier. the other day i mentioned the Book Mill from a small town in western massachusetts - a lot of people knew of it. i wonder if i've ever passed you - and didn't even notice it.

i hope whatever i leave behind makes you happy. i hope my hands only leave gentle prints. i hope you and i get the same feeling when the sun comes out. soulmates across all of it.

What are apples and toffee

and irdescent bubbles

and waves of grass and wind dances on fields

and neon lights and mischievous strangers

and cookies from acquaintances

and unbroken water surfaces and fireworks

and daisies

to her.

realizing that sticking to the "do it bad" "do it scared" mentality implies theres also a "do it bored"

loré pemberton

L.M. Montgomery, Chronicles of Avonlea