To Be Love is To Be Changed
Dog-Ear: September 29, 2024
9/29: I’ve seen spiders where I was told nothing could live. I’ve seen friends whose eyes soften when they see me, forgiving, forgiving. When did September become snake eyes? Lucky & seeing so clearly. I hold the molted body of tarantula, soft and curling into itself. Black fangs shiny, harmless. I hold soup in my hands, sitting in a circle. I am held close to make sure I know. We go out and we look for the rooms w/ red lights, the lace curtains, the apartment w/ no number. We let the moon play catch up. This city that tips itself and watches us tumble from end to end together.
Pieces of colored glass w/ smoothed edges, soldered to fit perfectly. Repurposed wood sanded and smoothed into the shape of water. The limbs and legs of spiders stretched and pinned onto canvas, kept behind glass. Bat wings and beetles and animal skulls bleached from Africa. Notebooks w/ stretched elastic bands & scribbles that tell the secrets of the world. Photos printed on glossy paper spread out in lamplight and kept in Goodwill photo books, the warm glow of memory. Microphones shared, unafraid to sing, unafraid to see. Mornings spent w/ adventure.
I sit, a spindly witness, to the art of my friends’ lives. I am bored w/ all other art. I am reminded everywhere, To be loved is to be changed. Here, I am welcomed beyond artifice. Here, I have learned the words that extend into the caves, the depth of gratitude in the short time we have together - I have my friends to thank for this. The love I have felt always thrumming below our feet, an erupting thing, destroying thing, devoted thing. Now, I know how to speak w/ it.
Even the phone calls and front door pit stops, they root into the joy of me, dirty hands & invaluable words. Maybe we will never be closer than this.
We talk about Time like it could one day move at the pace we want it to, to chip it from the earth like diamonds from rock. I say, Hell, if it can’t be forever and always, at least let’s have it honest like the sky and just as vast, as endless. I am finding pockets of life where I don’t have to dig for meaning, I can simply run my fingers along the surface and feel it wet, feel it sticky. I can hold moments of this life joyfully incredulous like maybe there’s a poet at the end of the world after all. I believe we are meant to find each other, my friends, exactly when we do.
A summary of pages I dog-eared from my Nightmares & Morning Pages series ~ thank you for reading ~
G
That last segment, gorgeous gorgeous.