Right, Write.

What are you holding in your hands?
Time and love and a glass of water —

you could keep your wallet in your back pocket
like a normal person, safe and sound, easily accessible.

Ever wonder how you acquired so much crap?
When you want something, you get it — love included.

Don’t need it right now? Just put it down.
Put it on the floor. Yeah, there’s just fine.

How much do you take for granted
knowing things will be just where you left them.

Come back for me later, I am waiting here.
You’re hands were full, I understand. No worries.

On this day in Georgia,
everyone had something on their mind
other than Georgia, but they were in Georgia,
so it didn’t really matter.

I have Georgia On My Mind
stuck in my head
way more often than I actually have Georgia on my mind,
but then I have never stuck my head in Georgia.

I have only ever thought about
what Georgians are thinking about…
There’s a chance of thunder-showers, but we need the rain
with a sad song such as this to live up to.

Remember when I said
the best thing you ever did for me was leave?

Foul words is but foul wind, and foul wind
is but foul breath — and I drink coffee.

You can see the coffee stained smoke off my breath
billowing in winter,

the opposite image to the cream
swirling in a morning cup o’ jo —

and I could never drink coffee black
after that morning you left…

I would call this a love poem, wouldn’t you?

Look at that line, so uncertain —
could tell you about how familiar I am with uncertainty,
or how uncertainty is bred by love,

but you have a confidence, don’t you?
I read about it in one of your love poems that wasn’t a love poem —

skipped all of the unnecessary words;
“call this
love poem, you?”

And there it is, so plain and simple,
so flat and strong,
a heart on the page, still pumping and giving you colour,
contrasting these colourless cheeks of mine,
scared shitless.

Why?
Because now you know!

Read these lines and be reassured that I cannot live without you,
like how I cannot live without these unnecessary words.

My heart, like this poem, is padded by handfuls of ands.

Your poem, so scarce of words,
so cryptic in meaning,
is a love poem too, I would say —

but who am I to say? A love poet with uncertain word choice.

And in the morning I tell myself that what I tell myself
is not going to change the fact that it is morning.

The busiest day of my life was when I adopted the mantra,
“what’s done is done.” I did so much that day.

And I’m young enough to know better (most of the time),
but still too young to really care. What’s done is done.

What seemed like a good idea was still a good idea
despite the people it hurt, the problems it caused…

Once, I heard a funny thing about justification,
or I laughed and I told myself it was funny. It was funny.

Head on two shoulders,
you carry your head high —
I need the curls of your hair
to teach me of circularity.

Girl, lie next to me
and teach me of circularity.
Proud to call you mine,
or proud to see you lying.

Every word
got lost in a ringlet,
a dark brown curl
wrapped around my finger.

Girl, you left every time,
every time I smiled
in a straight line —
what once was mine, come back.

Head on your shoulders,
I have lost mine,
my head and my heart
stuck in your curls, on a line.

Some people see a grey sky and think,
“the day can only get brighter from here.”

Light a candle for every unbelievable line.
Light the way for something or some things.

Have you ever known a liar?
Can you see the impossibility there?

Suck me down into the frozen pit
of conversations about the weather.

Suck me dry of any hope for drought
and I won’t complain, just lie here alone.

Some people know when a rain’s a-comin’.
Have you ever felt the last drop of a storm?

Over the ocean,
all that blue of blue vastness,
cries a bluer blue.

Where can you begin except with an address; Self,
where can you start except with the eye?

Take this down off the shelf, this note to yourself,
and figure out how you can get by.

Word after word of address; I said to myself,
“Self, let me put this down in words, or at least try.

I see, I see all that is wrong, I see myself
in every possible way that I can see myself; why?”

Put it back on the pile of letters, back on the shelf.
Where can you end except with a question. Try.

I don’t know when she became more than something I don’t know anything about.

I don’t know if an uncertainty is a truth, or if a truth about another truth is an autonomous truth.

When she reads these truths, will she know they are for her, or will she think them falsities? Is she right to say I have never been true at all?

Inspired by “3 truths” by shermeanuhh