Luck I By Joy Sullivan

hey man I found a piece of your soul stuck in the text messages of old friends you don’t speak to anymore. do you want it back

I used to dream of death

or blazing, blistering pain.

A mark of martyrdom above my

twisted, tortured brain.

But now I sigh and dream of life

and care for all my wounds

No need to be a martyr

I don't need no cocoon

Me: You know how when you were a kid and you’d wish that you’d get sick or injured in a way that would justify why you didn’t live up to your potential?

Everybody, apparently: No?

And why?

First five years spent poor

Beaten, clawed by toxic stress.

A rough start, darling.

Acrylic paintings by Jason Limon on Instagram

As far as animals to be afraid of, deer rank pretty low. From afar, a deer is harmless certainly. Docile, wide eyes, silent staring before they bound away. But if you’ve ever been up close, that likely means you’ve found one trapped. Wounded maybe. Only then will you realize what fear does to a prey animal. If you wander too near, the acrid smell of desperation and deadly will to live is pungent in each flare of its nostrils. Then all of a sudden that deer seems much bigger, and fiercer, and you really ought to back away, but your brain works slower than its instincts, and you’re about to discover that hooves are like rocks and like knives, and those legs are longer and your head is closer than you would ever like. And for a split second, you, apex predator, will understand prey-fear.

Someday will be better

One day you wake up and you live alone, even with two flatmates, and you buy your own groceries, when you can afford it, and you go to class and work and sometimes the gym. And you go to the doctor, and the dentist, and your therapist and your friend’s house, and you take the medicine that keeps you from killing yourself, and you get out in the sunshine and eat food that fills you and make barely enough money to stay alive anyway, and someday will be better, you know that, but someday isn’t today, and today your jaw is clenched and your thoughts are shrieks that hate your friends and someday will be better, but right now it’s all you can do to make ramen so you don’t have to use a knife because someday will be better and you better be around to see it, and your clenched jaw turns to gritted teeth and you can’t bring yourself to shower but damnit, you brush your teeth and think that someday will be better, and your gums bleed when you floss and you want to scream but you’ve been stopped up like a forgotten bottle of wine and you’re not sure you know how to anymore, and now you’ve been staring at your bleeding gums and the void in your gut aches and you --

collapse in bed. 

You remember how to breathe.

Your heart is here. Your lungs are here. There is quiet between your thoughts.

You are here.

And someday will be better.

Joyous tears, the river of progress, the trail ever on to freedom, the themes, the motifs, you get it.

The mile-long rainbow flag being carried down First Avenue in New York City.