I was waiting for a grand proclamation, a visitation of word to download some meaning into the withering hardware. I was waiting to want you, to let the barrier blocks fall so that I might stand free of them and that other person. I was waiting to understand the fundamental attachments that I formed in my absence.
I’m beginning to.
Under the main process, there’s wheels spinning, creating thread out of the morass of fluff that passes for thought in my brain. You helped me by being angry at me, upset that my twists have always ended positive, that every fairy tale disaster has been paid off with joy. You echoed years in that voice, a handful of fingers all pointing accusatory. I remembered being younger, shorter, less prone to speech yet talking in a rare moment of surety with someone who used to be my friend. “You just have to wait the right away, there’s a presence of mind and a shut-down. You can’t help me, like I can’t help you right now, but we’ll get there. We’ll find it by walking into it, like we need our eyes closed to walk into a wall.”
You don’t remind me of him, he hurt me later, crossed lines that grown men should not with little girls, but rather of what I said. What I began to try to say again, with as little eloquence as years ago, I’m sure, to you in the kitchen. That there’s ways and then there’s ways. There’s action in inaction and misery as debt. I don’t know how to convey how I know things, and I’m sorry. I want you to know how to survive in joy, but I don’t carry the work with me as you do.