I'm sitting on my friend's couch
Several months into being intentionally single and celibate
For the first time since I was twenty years old
Twenty years old
When I believed sex had to involve a dude and the word "screw"
I'm telling my friend about the psychic who said
I'm going to meet the love of my life by the end of January
It's January 10th and I am so far from ready for Cupid
That naked little shit, to fire anything sharp my way
So far from ready to be the kind of insane
Only love makes me
My friend musters every bit of new age jargon
She can fit on to her tongue and says
"What if you are the love of your life?"
I think, "Oh my god, I hope that's not true."
'Cause I am absolutely not my type
But let's say for a moment I am
Let's say I am my dream girlish boy
And I am standing on my front step
Ringing my own doorbell waiting for me to answer
So I can hand myself a mason jar
Full of water lilies I have rescued from a millionaire's Monet
Let's say
I am so charmed by the radiance of my own anarchy
I invite myself in for tea and when I'm not looking
I sneak the steam from the kettle into my pocket
So the next time I am missing the coast of Maine
I can gift myself the fog
Let's say
I'm not just running my mouth around an old cliché
That says we gotta love ourselves. We don't
I know I can keep getting down on myself
'Til I'm tucked in the grave
Looking up at my name, carved in stone, wondering
Why I never knew, I'd been casted the lead in my own life
When it comes to love
The only thing I'm certain of is you
Are the best thing that has ever happened to you
Whoever you are
You're a quitter? Great, there's plenty worth quitting
A sore loser? Who isn't?
You've got no discipline? Maybe discipline
Is for body builders and closeted gay monks
Picture a magician
So attached to being perfect
He cuts off his own legs just to pull off the trick
Picture the 738 selfies I deleted
Before I took one I was willing to show to the world
Picture me wishing I could have all of those back
My so called "flaws" in stacks
Like baseball cards I know will be worth something someday
Like, compassion
Like, tenderness
Like, my capacity
To think myself a catch
Just because I've never seen a chandelier
I didn't want to swing from because I'd maybe go to space
Just to know if railroad tracks look like zippers from the moon
On days I have a hard time keeping warm in my own weather
I imagine what the first flower said to the first human
Trying to name half its petals "love me nots"
No
That is not how anything grows
Of all the violence I have known in my life
I have not known violence like the way
I have spoken to myself
And I've seen almost everyone around me
Hold that same belt to their own backs in ambush
Of every way we have decided we are not enough
Then looking for someone outside of ourselves
To come clean that treason up
If I were to ask myself
Out of that cycle, I might say, "Listen,"
I am still going through my growth spurt.
I am still yet to get my worst tattoo
I am still clearing the smoke
From burning the toast I wrote for my own wedding day
I am still trying to get rid of my mirror face
Look myself, dead in the eye
I know Facebook is a lousy mortician
Desperately trying to make us all look more alive
I know there are things I haven't survived
I know there are people in this world who have had to work
Really hard to survive me
I don't ever want to take that lightly
But I want the heavy to anchor me brave
To anchor me loving
To anchor me in something that will absolutely
Hold me to my word when I tell Cupid
I intend to keep walking out to the tip of his arrow
To bend it back towards myself
To aim for my goodness
'Til the muscle in my chest tears from the stretch of becoming
What I came here to be: a lover
Of whatever got covered up by the airbrush
The truth of me: that beauty of a beast
Chewing through the leash
'Til I got a mason jar full of water lilies
And I got a kettle full of sea
And my whole life, y'all
My whole life is just a boomerang valentine
Coming right back at me