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Thoughts From Late August 

|| "It’s almost September and I’m still trying to learn how to rid myself of the glaciers that last winter left behind. Every time I pass one of those ads stapled to a telephone pole with rip-off tabs swinging from the bottom, I’m reminded of how difficult it is to keep holding on. Today my eyes look more charcoal than blue, more ink than peacock green from the day before. Unlike the people whose hair changes colors with the seasons, I will forever be left wondering if my eyes change colors with my cycles of sadness.

A long time ago I stopped looking at every apricot in the grocery store the same way. All different, all bruised in their own ways, all soft and barely healing. And despite the stone heart in the middle, if you smashed one to the linoleum floor it would explode into pulp. I once had a friend who left a rotten grapefruit in her ex’s bed, the tangy sections blooming into a stain like blood on the sheets. She was one of those people who appreciated the sour and sweet in everybody.

Scientists are now beginning to say that the tongue map or taste map doesn’t exist. That no different parts of the tongue are responsible for certain exclusive tastes, and maybe I am part sour and sweet too, the salt comes from the tears, but maybe science has proven that I will never be as full of all the different star clusters and flavors as I’d like to be. I am just a mosaic of all the mistakes I made and wish I could take back but according to the latest scientific research my tongue hasn’t learned to apologize with all of itself just yet.

Yesterday I ran through the fields of burning light just as the sun had begun to set and everything was golden. That’s when you think, this is what life is supposed to be. But somehow you only ever get glimpses of that feeling a few more times throughout the rest of your years. I only ever feel this way again when someone kisses me on the forehead, when someone cups my elbow in their hand like even the sharp parts of me are actually worthwhile.

The best miracles are the ones in which a bird comes to land in a stranger’s hair, and stays there like that, so content and at home in an unfamiliar house, and the person below can’t help but feel the same way. We are all small miracles. Every bone, every notch of spine and lopsided smile.

It’s almost September and I’m still trying to remember this."