20 February 2024

Dear Love,

What would you have me know today?

Yours,
Me

Dear Maya,

You experienced a sinking sensation yesterday, a deeply rooted fear that you do not know how to be close with people and, worse, that you never will. When heavy fears like this burden your body/mind, I urge you, gently, to sink.

Sink deeply into this feeling, nestle into the dark crevices of it, make yourself a real comfortable seat in this cavern of your fears. Close your eyes and let this fear be your anchor until you can see it— until you can look it in the eye with such peace and strength and love that you can say,

“Hi there. I see you are tired. Why don’t you rest with me awhile?”

And fear will curl up in your lap gratefully and you will hold it tenderly and sing it sweet songs of peace until it falls asleep. Then, after a while, you can slowly and very carefully lift yourself from under it, making sure it’s real comfortable, and creep quietly up and out of fear’s cavern once again, knowing now that you are capable of such love, you can’t help but give it to others again and again.

- Love

recieved after i burned and flooded someone else’s kitchen by throwing a cigarette into the trash can

dear love, oh godde,

what would you have me know today?

. . .

oh dear maya,

precious green sweet pea, welcome to the human handbook! you have fucked up, which is a very easy — and mandatory! — thing to do. congrats! what comes next — which is even more essential, and a helluva lot harder — is this:

tell the truth.

tell the truth again. tell more intricate truths. tell the dusty truths that don’t feel so true anymore and the viscous ones that are just bubbling up. tell the lies you thought were truths and the truths you thought were lies. tell truths so naked and complete there is no shadowy crack in which to hide.

moments like this one, when the truth feels so mortifying and shameful, when you would trade countless realities for the one you’re in, when a loud part of you longs to fabricate a blanket of deceit so sturdy and opaque it could absolve you of any responsibility to face that mortification and shame... moments like this task you with expanding the scope of your honesty

until you are saturated with it in every pore of your being,

until honesty is the air you breathe,

until you can meet each and every gaze with an assuredness
only being an honest fuck-up can give.

-love