If someone were to ask of

The return from Saturn

What would I say?

I would tell of driving through the vein of the continental divide

Every book 

Every dress I possessed

inside backpacks and plastic totes

And Paul Simon singing of a land where we never fall from grace

And the crack of my heart breaking

Is loud enough to shock my lungs

 and heavy enough to steer the white Subaru to the reservoir pull out 

To stare into the blue waters

Collecting cold courage 

To move on

I would tell of the weeks of dirt and questions 

Days in the screaming silence of Joshua tree

And how my bald tires and 

waning bank accounts

Pushed my frenzied mind to rash decisions of never returning to anywhere

And how my heart whispered ‘hold on-decompress in a safer place’-

And my fear and ego flung forward 

Further west

Into a glittering sea

There is a recurring idea of boundaries within and without me these weeks

Of knowing that saying yes and no will somehow have a heavier impact on the tomorrows than it had ever before

I listen to music notes and I write notes to no one

I pour coffees and smile beneath the strands of hair over my face

It is always okay, I am discovering boldly and late, to not smile back

It is okay to not always be okay

I write sentences then erase them and try again to explain myself

I feel that my passions are enveloping into pressure than purpose and it sits heavy on my frame in a way that frail ankle bones are not easy to perch upon

I am learning more about myself and understanding that I bloomed late in this world

It is spring here, and yesterday the rains fell and froze over the tiny beet sprouts in the backyard

and all I can feel is the dull hum of a quiet panic of never being in the right time of the seasons of my life

“You live through certain things before you understand them. You can’t always take the analytical position.” 

-Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

There has been a pressure to accomplish and create a wealth in myself lately. I am certain that my old ways of thinking are not comfortable with this. I am also certain that it is time to develop new patterns of doing. Of being. I have grown into myself with a fear of monetary value. Placing judgment came easier. I am slowly learning, or rather, unlearning, the notion that having a livable income means compromise.

I am sitting in our garden, a raised bed of raised hope, tiny green sprouts with the promised wink of beets, a row of carrot tuft, spinach leaves and so on. My legs rest on the pine edge, while my postured position sits on our chopping block stump. The sun is already heating up this high desert earth, and I welcome it with greedy slurps of bare skin. Ryker lazily sniffs the air from his nest of mulch a few feet away. E types inside, emails of updates, inquiries and deadlines. I close my eyes and silently send him this heat, this moment of realized calm.

I wonder what the purpose is. Why do I hungrily devour cold essays, Paris review and Vanity fair biographies on Joan Didion, Eve Babitz, Hunter S. Thomson?

I think that what I admire and arduously envy in youth is the idea that one can change convictions and still be seen as whole. The unseen and unlearned has time. A consecration of beliefs and molds will not set, for seemingly ever.

I believe this is what I fear in age

that by writing out my thoughts they hold some inane power and also purpose over my steady life.

The days will have added to a completion.

An idea that has stood the harsh winds of actions and progress, of stages and sins, of chance and choice.

I wonder sometimes about the type of person I would have been if i had stayed in that expensive school in Minneapolis all those years ago. If I had paid back all the debts I owed.

If I had never made rash decisions and packed up countless times. If I had stayed, somewhere. In any of those ‘wheres.

Before the geographic differences and subtle layers of time and events covered the days and set the bridges on fire.

I have always been afraid of moving backward and my biggest fear is that there will be a reckoning for this someday

I crawl forward only to meet myself in a new closet

in a new place the mirror always reflects the same perspective

Where can one go to understand the choices made years ago, and is there a goodness in knowing that you might have done it all the same?