i have formally decided to do the wrong thing. here's the paperwork.

meditations on attachment & trust

i think most bad behavior comes from loneliness and so forcing more loneliness as a punishment is not an effective solution for bad behavior. i say this knowing many suffer from a scarcity mindset when it comes to love, connection, and attention, and will inevitably take advantage of whatever they’re given, no matter how much they’re given, and will perhaps never learn.

i am maybe ok with this. how do we protect everyone? we create a symbiotic environment where taking care of me means taking care of you. money disrupts symbiosis through alienation. it was inevitable that we would create money when we created writing. and when we created writing, we created time.

i don’t mind writing, or time. maybe because they are poisons we used to make a cure. maybe we were always supposed to impose separation, as an experiment. maybe we are here to look.

regardless i am lonely, and make bad decisions because i’m lonely. i put my hand in your mouth, i burn my foot in the bath, i run afield with you and put you in harm’s way because i’m lonely. but also, i channel god when i’m lonely. the absence turns inside out and reveals presence, order, like the last step in making a quilt.

reversals are not mirrors. “if the roles were reversed” will never be an argument that makes any sense.

so, will you edit my poems down into quotations that support the text, bolstering your story about the impossibility of understanding me with deliberate misunderstandings? will you give me over to the journalists and new wives? will you ruin my poems with furtive deletions, absentminded disposals? will you go so far as to burn my manuscript—the absence of what i wrote and the presence of what you kept hidden producing a sort of double exposure? will you ruin my poems?

the way i hold myself still across the table from you, like a deer: calm and receptive, warm and loving, soft and brown, no sense, no breath, no way of getting home. if you hurt me, it would make sense.