359/365

just write the damn thing
don’t over think it:
mention the food and drinks
and naps and records and puzzles
and movies and how you find joy in sadness
and how sadness brings you joy
and mention gratitude and the easy
contentment lurking just beneath the surface,
within reach: so close you can almost touch it
and feel its warmth as it tucks you into bed
with a good book and the promise of another
day of rest and a week after that and then a whole
new year to get better at being better and finding
that elusive meaning that might help you fit into your skin
and look in the mirror and make it all make sense.

282/365

it’s after midnight
birthdaycake and a
a new phoebe bridgers song
keeps you company
on the cab ride home.
enough red wine to make
them bearable beneath
the fluorescent chandelier
at the wedding at a mall.
we sat by the river
electric blue river lights
as we drained a pack of smokes
talking how about we used to be free.
anxiety. depression. normalising mental health
until it cuts too close to home.
we guess we’re happy
because we weren’t taught how else to be.
a friend’s sister died of cancer on facebook,
but what can you really say?
we’re all dealing with our own shit
pretending that the sunshine by the pool
is enough to make this worth it.
it’s been a decade since we coined
embrace the sadness. but a lifetime
of riding these waves. making do.

215/365

there’s only so long you
can burn trauma as fuel
before even the smoke and ash
have long since blown away
and new seedlings litter
the scars with a carpet
of optimistic foliage  

walking the street
in your nondescript neighborhood
to a friend’s house for beer, wine and darts,
the sun setting and the music
tugging at all the right chords.

i almost started crying.
not sure from joy or sadness
or from knowing that i’ll never
get this poem just right.

nostalgia is a gut punch
soothed by hope and gratitude
that we are somehow still alive
and full of every idealistic promise
we ever made in the darkness when alone.

138/365

all his heroes
are suicides.
turn out the lights
and set yourself on fire
the song says.
chris. kurt.
hunter. elliott.
how can there be so many
words for sorrow
and not one comes close
to the tangible truth
he’s known since
those first memories:
the uncle on fire
behind the waves.
the frail ankle
caught in the spokes.
the creeping hands
in the darkness.
the just getting by.
the arguing.
the solitude.  
the crashes.
the hospitals.
the split.
the plunge.
the lessons learned
(embrace the sadness)

because their candles
burn too bright,
we almost forgot
it is twilight.

all his heroes
are suicides,
and so, in this house
we long to be
room by room
patiently,
we’ll wait there
like a stone
to make the
insoluble night
more pliant, the pain
more peaceful—
a collective step
toward a palpable truth.