| WISHING IT AWAY “237. In any case, I am no longer counting the days.” [1] —I am wishing the vestiges of myself away. All the parts of me that live in other people: I want you back and I want to wish away all my former selves (living in me like russian nesting dolls) and all my former thoughts. You are still a part of me but I am wishing it away. And I know I am still a part of you but, again, I am wishing it all away. —Counting the days is wishing them each away, wasting them wishing for yesterday, pining for tomorrow. Living for summer is just wishing the other seasons away. Waiting for you is wishing life here away. I am no longer counting the days. —I am wishing it away as if there is nothing to loose, or as if I haven't already lost it. Washing the night off us and slowly coming to be. You are already irredeemably and irrevocably that which you can never change nor divorce. Not passively, but actively within every shower, every meal, every passenger drive, every undressing and dressing. Every bed unmade, finger broken, cigarette unsmoked, grandmother promised. And in the activeness of yourself, unbecoming what you are not, wishing them away. Wishing away the words still left unsaid, birthdays yet celebrated, needles un-inking virgin skin, breakfasts skipped, dances spent tied to walls. “238. I want you to know, if you ever read this, there was a time when I would rather have had you by my side than any one of these words; I would rather have had you by my side than all the blue in the world.” [2] —If you ever read this let me begin by saying that I would rather have you than any of these images. I am wishing that feeling away. —Your head is turned and resting slightly on the crook of your shoulder, somehow turned both towards and away from me. That feeling accessible, per usual, in its safe warmth. And optimistic excitement. Some exhausted moments after spending time with my family in their new backyard on Juniper. Your glance, profoundly and smile sweetly. I am god damn lucky to receive these, if only in recurring dreams. —To say I am wishing now is in an understatement. “239. But now you are talking as if love were a consolation. Simone Weil warned otherwise. ‘Love is not consolation,’ she wrote. ‘It is light.’” [3] —Love is not consolation, it is all this darling–yet faulty–light I'm among. Just light transposed has born these images. So now I am wishing away what could have been and I am showing you the results of my laborious wishing in all its ugly nakedness of sacrifice and mercy. “240. All right then, let me try to rephrase. When I was alive, I aimed to be a student not of longing but of light.” [4] —Caught between wishing it away and wishing it back and to stop wishing all together: to stop muttering these whispered prayers between bedsheets. In the end–which dearly we’ll never reach–it was all it needed to be and good for what it was. —Yes, I am gluttonous. But in any case, I begrudgingly accept Nelson words like a mother's wisdom. — — [1] Maggie Nelson, Bluets, Wave Books, 95. [2] Ibid. [3] Ibid. [4] Ibid. |