it can be a perfect second. sound rapiering through a gloom, or in this case, a superimposed landscape overlap. surrounding and moving through the arteries, oxygen-heavy and rushing gleeful and smiling towards the wall. back again, wanting more.

and for a girl petrified of beginings and endings, the rush in between is not droll walk through the day, the eating, the sleeping, the getting up and moving about, but leaves kazi-waving, the sirens somewhere, a torrential rainpour exiting a supermarket with a cantelope tucked under one arm... reminders of cyclical passage and things that last & stay beautiful in permutations.

it can be an awkward photo booth click with one of your best friends, a person you full walk the world with, semi-trucking conversations about old affairs and new ones, guffffffhawsnort and pauses over intense fuckups and failings (in the company of someone who meets you, there are none, only learnings and keep tryings and you're okay whoever you are's). that someone traveled the distance, and climbed past the curtains. the entryway of buttons and header choices: "windy city" because friendship is thunderstorms; hiccups in a cloud's navel; eruptions shared under an umbrella while kids in the house nearby push each other out and laugh in the wet and then laugh in the dry, to push each other out again; dowsing breezes rank with autumn. because it is a click this way, and a click that way, a beat, a breath held for two measures and let out halfway on the third.

thirty is just fine with me. it sat first on my shoulders, a shawl I tried on in the off-hours; oh, howdy, glittering scarf, I guess when winter hits you'll be wrapped up tight on my neck. it felt a little scratchy, some signature wool, a few horsehairs, grey and unruly. it felt a little sticky--by jove, there's still some heat in this city afterall! and what if wearing this scarf means my body is going to fall apart on me, first the back, the slow drop of bum, drooping titties? and what if I want to still climb trees and and pennydrop unafraid, even if I haven't worked out and put no effort towards being one of those powerwalking noble-sloops who could work me under the bench press, but probably wouldn't pull a paddle for a second?

but then it's not a scarf but some careworn familiars; those courderoy pants I can't help wearing too often even though they make my bum look wide and sweat me up badly in the crotch; the black sweatshirt I still wear even though my mum thinks it makes me look homeless in rags. Why, thirty, you look downright familiar, and darned if I'm going to stop wearing those jeans just because there are holes right down the middle (and an inkstain in the left back pocket). You're softer, you're just right, worn in, you smell like something vague that's always been here. Oh okay, thirty, I'll put you on.

But as soon as it's on, it's simply a skin, my skin, this very one I've been sluffing and growing back for years. the one I carefully skootch out of clothes when I go to the old beach, the one I get used to after a few hours in the sun. the one with quirks and angles, dimples in calves, hairs pointing multi-diverse, the one with bum-wriggle, the skin others have touched, the ocean I wake curled in, harbor anchored. How soft you are, thirty. How your eyes wrinkle in the corners, thirty (earned). I'll inhabit you.

How gentle you are, thirty, telling me to leave behind musty collections, hoarded greedily and pawed over like Silas Marner decked in leather with a whip (hatred looks like a pile of old grapes shriveling in the collander because... someone... was too distracted to eat them completely when they were ripe). Innocence suits you better, thirty. An impossible and miraculous retrograde. An anachronistic reflection. Fully memoried, but holding up better under the layers and layers we're given to hold. Reframed, the same person with a new cutout surrounding her. A mobile paneless window (green peeling paint) held to the legs, the knees, the curve. Reframed, yes.




You are the food. You are the sustenance--proteins and carbohydrates all, sugers natural from cane, naughty ice creams in the night, the rum in the coke, the pickle in the jar. To recap: music, lots of music, so much music, it's everywhere, from Peaches with her lovely nast, to Molotov, to Sarah Harmer. again, to emphasize, music in me, music right now: makes my head vulture forward, vulture back, yeah. paintings. booze and the company of those who make me laugh. apples and honey, baby, apples and honey waiting on my tongue for a few seconds. cards that look like me. sustanence. and traveling traveling: millienum reflections with gala apples, hispanic hellows and turn-around looks, museums, enchiladas, sudden rain onslaughts, china town with bubble tea and zodiac monuments (dragon all the way), river architexture tours in a boaty boat, ferris wheels, spinny swings, the amazing ritzy Lulu's (gnocchi & blackberry bellini).

I have been spoiled enough to last the rest of my life. that's it. no denying. no tears. fullness. i write for myself, always. but i write for others too. those here, those far, those for whom silence sits in me, those for whom I lift. and those I will never know.

A sunflowering painting from a brilliant friend:


Even on your birthday, it's silly to forget the opportunity for counseling:


What he told me, with his pencil hovering in the air: life is an earth-tone door, a little rusty.


about the song I'm listening to right now (hehnyah).