The First January Sun I Want to Share with You

At least a handful of sunshine,
the best ataractic; I
steady myself in the russet
downpour, attempting to trace
down this new feeling,
like a

You don’t see her for several years after that, minus a brief and sweet span of days that following summer, in your usual place. You play Bob Dylan’s Mama, You Been on My Mind squeezed on a piano bench with her.

The first time I met Courtney, she told me she loved my ballet flats. We were wearing the same $14.99 shoes. She hated her curly hair and middle name and Democrats.

Alchemy

Gathers me          with her silver gaze

     the moonlight reflects               milk

                                                                       and

Your gym is perhaps your favorite thing about Hattiesburg. Your student budget is tight, but you’ll manage to eek out thirty a month somehow—you have for the last three years.

The day before isolation, I celebrate my birthday, unwed, the first of its kind in my adult life, my divorce from a great man with whom I shared an OK eleven years, finalized by way of a $250 internet

I’d spend the night there on Saturday nights, get up Sunday morning and drive to my church and preach. I didn’t find God because I wasn’t looking for him. I was looking for me but I didn’t find him either.

His fullest attention. No one gets that. And here it is, steered onto me.

1. Driving east on I-94 from 8:41 to 8:55 I saw brief glimpses of beauty.

you’re out of touch i’m out of time

“You know what to do with that big fat butt

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle”—Jason Derulo

        EVERYDAY WE

Nirvana

I don’t think it was nirvana playing
I don’t know what it was
in the ocean sometimes
warm water is pulsing under the cold surface
I don’t know if I really mean it. I mean,
maybe it’s a

My favorite blurb about Amy Long's essay collection, Codependence, is Joshua Mohr saying: "Long leads her readers into emotional investigations and she has the courage to never flinch." To do what

“Don’t flatter yourself,” I said, turning to the man in the seat beside me. Though he didn’t appear to speak English, he intuited my rejection. Loneliness, like love, is an international language.

Maybe you can do this. It’s not your idea. But maybe.

I’d learned from Rock of Love that a diabetic’s rollercoaster blood sugar is a constant interruptor at best.

Previously on...
Part 3  ||  Part 2  ||  Part 1  ||  Prologue

The top of Yoda’s house looked like it had been splattered with molded yogurt. There was an allure to it. Like, had he intended to paint it this odd assortment of colors, he would be proud of it.

last month, every
robin I saw looked
like it wanted to fight

In her dance, Chang’e waves her sleeves to disperse the surrounding mist.

Your boyfriend was the first...

 (Netflix is the opiate of the people!)

He couldn’t yet do the thing he’d learned to, of establishing some authority by playfully, sweetly infantilizing her. By appealing to the equalizing, mutual infantilization of early love baby talk.

when i’m

on coke i feel like i’m

in cruel intentions but

i have the personality

of winona ryder in

girl, interrupted

NO BOOKS, NOTES, OR ELECTRONIC DEVICES ALLOWED.

Deep inside some problem of self-perception / a face believes...

I was at a party, one of those parties where everyone is drinking heavily, like they are trying to accomplish something. Me, I was trying to calm my nerves. I don’t know what anyone else’s end goal