My heart a bird's heart

Halfway through another year, I say a small prayer for your peace, try to notice what's changed and changing, and share two poems about (almost) touching.

It’s very nearly the middle of another year on earth, my god, time keeps on coming. I hope you’re held together.

I hope you can look at the months behind you and thank yourself for trying. I hope you can look at the months ahead and see what you love, living. I hope you are not currently hungry and if you are, I hope you will be well-fed soon.

Soon I will be well-fed.

The doors are open now. In the garden out front, there is salvia blooming, iris too, mint starting to spread like butter. Bees and butterflies have begun to return. Yellow warblers and waxwings too. I saw my first hummingbird moth of the year. I am getting good, if goodness is a meaningful measure, at spotting hummingbirds wherever they hover. The trick is listening. The lilac’s nearly spent but in the back, the peonies are coming. The ants will lick them open, and when they do, I may or may not see it. In a matter of days I’ll be in Georgia, surrounded by friends, and days after that, in the afternoon, I’ll take a bus to Las Cruces, arrive in the evening, and hours later, in the early morning, my mother will wake me up to get into the car and together, with two of my tias, we’ll drive to California, where all of us were born, a place we all left, and love, and will make the most of together for six days before coming back to New Mexico, where I’ve been now nearly a year, after nearly twenty in Chicago.

If I regret anything at all, it’s that I didn’t get to know myself sooner.

I try to give me ample permission these days to have whatever kind of day I need. If I have deadlines, which I often do, I aim my days toward doing. If I don’t, I try to leave space for a more spontaneous experience. I trust more than ever I can take good care of myself while I take care of business and good care of others. I try.

I tell myself you can be bigger than before. You can be a whole fucking house, your own home, wherever you go. Some days you will find this easeful, others it will be hard. You can do hard things, I say to me often, because I can, and it helps to remind me. For instance, you can look at the world as it is and decide every day to keep going. You can pick up the phone and call customer service. You can be kind. You can listen, even and especially when you’d rather speak.

You can be a perfectionist, fine, but not all of the time. You can live with a mess for a day. You can be a mess for two. You can tell your mother you’ve been smoking cigarettes again. You can quit. Again. It won’t be easy. You can say out loud you’re struggling.

David Shrigley

You can appreciate how twenty years ago you kept yourself standing by sharpening your tongue. You can take a nap and ask for help. You can accept a friend’s generosity, a stranger’s wholeness, your father as he is. You can see your sensitivity as a strength if you squint. You can lay on the bathroom floor. The tile’s cool in the summer and warm in the winter. You can bury a bee and take no shit.

You can be two people, one for yourself and another for everything else. It might be best if they love each other.

You can be two people who love each other and struggle, some days, to say here’s what I need. It’s patience, grace, consideration, ten minutes of stillness, a month off from dreaming. It’s I need you, from time to time, to read my mind, unfortunately. It’s I need you to help me understand. It’s I need you. To listen. Even and especially when you’d rather speak. To forgive me quicker than I forgive myself. Something softer than I know how to give me. I’m learning.

You can give yourself flowers, a break, a day off here and there, maybe three days a week. Maybe three-day weekends every week forever. You can whisper sweet pink agitprop into your friend’s ears. It’s a start. You can be stronger together than on your own.

You can tell your mother no from time to time. It will hurt you, somewhat, and you can do it. You say yes to what matters anyway, more and more these days. As I’ve said and say again—we only get so many.

Let’s all try while we can.

Here’s a few nice things before your poems—

The Animal Eats got a lovely shout out on the Wired podcast Gadget Lab this week. If you came here because Lauren Goode told you to, thank you for listening. And thank you Lauren—it means so much to me you’re here. Let’s hug before we’re done.

(You can do what you say you will do. You’ve done it before.)

Also I’ll be reading on Tuesday at Words // Friends, a really wonderful virtual reading series curated by Sara Matson (whose chapbook (Women) in STEM is a great gift for the recent graduate in your life). My mom might be there. You can come if you want. The line-up is goddamn excellent.

The next time you hear from me, I’ll have been in California. It’s likely I’ll feel more alive. In the meantime, have some poems.

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Flight

In the end we love the line we cannot cross. 
In the end we fall for what we fail.

Forget friendship. Ardor. 
Forget the years that only grow harder

as the soul recedes in what the years bring,
grown alien to any touchable thing.

Touch me. As I am. As you can.
My heart a bird's heart just beyond your hand.

Christian Wiman

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The End of Poetry

Enough of osseous and chickadee and sunflower
and snowshoes, maple and seeds, samara and shoot,
enough chiaroscuro, enough of thus and prophecy
and the stoic farmer and faith and our father and tis
of thee, enough of bosom and bud, skin and god
not forgetting and star bodies and frozen birds,
enough of the will to go on and not go on or how
a certain light does a certain thing, enough
of the kneeling and the rising and the looking
inward and the looking up, enough of the gun,
the drama, and the acquaintance’s suicide, the long-lost
letter on the dresser, enough of the longing and
the ego and the obliteration of ego, enough
of the mother and the child and the father and the child
and enough of the pointing to the world, weary
and desperate, enough of the brutal and the border,
enough of can you see me, can you hear me, enough
I am human, enough I am alone and I am desperate,
enough of the animal saving me, enough of the high
water, enough sorrow, enough of the air and its ease,
I am asking you to touch me.

Ada Limón

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