The Visitor's Vacation.

You are coming to visit so I will tidy up this room, I will change the sheets and flip the pillows and set the clock right so you’ll know exactly what time it is. I will clean up all the mess so that when you arrive, you will feel like no one has ever been here before.

I will wait by the window, I will help you with your bags and I will hide my disappointment when the weight of your suitcase confirms it: you won’t be staying long. This is just a visit, you are just a visitor; I am a vacation.

You will ask me for a tour and I will take you room by room: the living roomthat seat isn’t yours, the kitchen ignore the photographs, the bedroom don’t open the closet, the bathroom stay out of that drawer. Then the guestroom: sanitized to your liking, fit for someone new, and if you wander out of it I can’t promise that you’ll like what you find. There’s only so much space to hide the things others have left behind.

We will share a drink or four; we’ll get to talking. You’ll be aware of how foreign I am, this is, it’ll take some getting used to but soon enough you’ll find familiarity in this lived-in space. It will remind you of a time when you called someplace home.

And you’ll remind me of a time when life felt less cold, when summer was endless, when I could pad around barefoot on wooden floors. When body heat was mass-produced between these four walls — on very cold nights, even I have trouble believing that it ever happened. But right now I believe it because it is warm, you are warm, you are a vacation.

You will shed your tourist skin and I will let you open that drawer, sit in that seat, look at those photographs. We will play house and it will feel wrong and right, all things considered. All things like, you have no intention of staying. All things like, I knew that before I let you in. All things like, can’t we suspend the inevitable and have breakfast in bed one more time? Things like that.

Your last day here will sneak up on us, even though the clock in the guestroom announced it was approaching. One belabored tick at a time. On that day, your open suitcase on the bed will reveal what we always knew we were: a visitor, a vacation, a guest, a distraction. We will stand in the doorway for longer than what’s comfortable and you will remark that your luggage feels heavier. Everything will feel heavier.

When you walk out of the door, a draft will rush in to fill the space you once occupied.

Don't Take This For Granted.

Don’t take your health for granted, that flighty thing. Anyone who’s battled with their own knows how temperamental a body can be. That humans are imperfect machines, short-circuiting beneath our skin a tiny bit each day. Once the health goes, it leaves the door open so that many other things can go with it.

The taste of love in a homecooked meal, your eyes reuniting with something you’ve missed, the scent of a former fling, the sound of dancing piano keys. Use your senses, use all of them in ways that enthrall and embarrass you. Leave nothing untouched.

That buzz in your brain, that vibration you feel when your ambitions have been awarded, when you finally succeed where it matters most? Hold on to it tightly; recall it when the champagne giggles of accomplishment fade into a content sigh, when the high of recognition wanes. Never take the electricity of achievement for granted; you will have been lucky to experience it in the first place.

Don’t take for granted your freedom. The freedom to create, the freedom of thought, the freedom to imagine because these are the freedoms no one can take away. Be thankful for the people who protect the freedoms that can be retracted, the ones we take advantage of most, the ones that didn’t exist 20, 50, 100 years ago. Realize you’re entitled to speak, to vote, to assemble because someone long before you put in the grunt work; realize that others might never see a day when they can express themselves in public. Understand that freedom is fickle, that we could lose it to apathy at any moment.

People should not be taken for granted — not the ones who raised you, not the ones who ground you, not the ones who love you. Not the stranger who chased you for a half-block to tell you you’ve dropped something, not the one who holds the door for you, not the one who asks you if you’re feeling okay or the one who asks you to dance. Their actions are not inconsequential; they are what it means to be human, a state so common that it’s rather easy to forget how extraordinary it can be. Don’t. Remember it always, remember how bland and unsatisfactory and meaningless life would be without humanity.

The time someone stood in front of you and nakedly, candidly told you how they felt about you; the time someone let you cry for minutes, hours, because you couldn’t do it alone anymore; the time someone asked how you were and wanted to listen to the answer. Don’t take this for granted, because moments like these don’t come in bulk. Acts of love can’t be bought on sale or saved for rainy days — they come when they come and the best you can do is recognize them for what they are: flashes that make life worth living.

Don’t take for granted the small things: the last time the sun kisses your face before three days of rain or having a pair of eyes to look into, hands to hold. A warm bed to collapse into at the end of a long day and an illuminated sky on a clear night. Embrace the people you can sit in silence with, and the ones who make you laugh for hours with little effort. The small things add up to big things, the big things add up to everything. Don’t take this for granted.

Universal Roles.

Let’s play the Universe game.

I’ll be a star cloud because that’s what your presence reduces me to. A mass of luminosity and in those moments, I’m impossible to measure mathematically. Not with the naked eye, anyway. It’s simpler than that: you say my name and I’ll glow.

You can be the North Star, burning bright and hot. You’re Polaris because you stand out, because you’re a fixture in my sky. Because when I’m lost, I can find you and be okay. You’re my point of reference.

Speaking of Polaris, we can be the Big Dipper and Little Dipper, the Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, the Big Bear and Little Bear – whichever name you prefer as long as we’re partnered together in perpetuity. Our bond will know no lingual or cultural or geographic limits. No matter where two people stand on this Earth, they’ll look up and see us and know that we belong together.

We can be whichever constellations you like, at least in the beginning. In the beginning we’ll be all starburst and Andromeda and other striking sights that’ll inspire envy; but it won’t stay that way.

This is when the game loses its sheen.

Maybe we’ll stop communicating. I’ll grow distant; I’ll grow colder like Mars. And you’ll grow angrier, volatile like Jupiter. A mess of rock and metal and discarded things will separate us, an Asteroid Belt of our grievances. But I’ll overlook it; I’ll still sit by your side and will your storms to quit brewing. Anything to make them stop brewing.

Or maybe you’ll grow distant first. Perhaps you’ll become the Sun and I, the Earth — turning in on myself to revolve around you because you are the light and what keeps me warm. Me rotating around you. Your selfishness so belittling that one day, I’ll become too small to be the Earth. So you’ll take my place, and I’ll become your moon. This is a better fit because some days I’ll appear to be whole but others? I’ll look like I’m half, or a quarter, or just a tiny sliver of who I was. On rare occasions, we’ll still align. I will pass through your shadow and bask in your sunlight; my face awash in gold and red and I’ll remember the way things were. But lunar eclipses, they’re few and far between and they’re not enough to save us.

Perhaps one moon won’t be enough for you, eventually. Eventually you’ll want what the others have, you’ll want eight moons or sixteen moons or more, so you’ll become Saturn. You’ll have more rings, more moons than you’ll know what to do with. And I will have no choice but to take the hint. I’ll be Pluto: downgraded and disregarded and cast aside. “You’re not even a planet anymore,” you’ll say, and I’ll know we’ll never be the same again. I’ll feel really, really small.

Finally it’ll become too much, the heartache. So I’ll be a supernova, one who was once a star but is now explosive, exploding, exploded. And it will be spectacular, you’ll be impressed by the amount of light I had inside of me. You had no idea just how much.

But it’s of no consequence. Because you are all of the planets, and all of the moons, and all of the matter; you’re all that matters. You are the sun; and you’ll just keep spinning and spinning and spinning. 

Lurking Shadows.

Yr ghost still haunts me.

He's always
ruffling
my bed's
sheets.

Yr ghosts still pulls my hair and leaves

patches
of
it

I do not take the alley ways at night
for I know yr ghost will sneak behind me
cleverly trying to hide himself
when i turn my head

'you still have a shadow, ' I say

yr ghosts pulls up my floorboards

searching

for what he lost

'you're not going to find it here, ' I say

and then he mouths that he'll leave
but he never completely goes away.

It's Time To Let Go.

It’s time to let go. I know: it’s scary right? I’m about to let go too, so let’s just do it together and maybe the whole process will be easier on us both. No, no, you can’t stay, it really is time to walk away — you’ve been holding on for too long now, and so have I. I know it’s simpler this way — just, shhhh, OK, listen to me — great now I lost my train of thought…

What I’m trying to say is that whatever you’re holding on to is holding you back, and it’s come to the point where you can’t hold on any longer. You’re like the picture of that adorable kitten on the string saying “hang in there!” except that you’ve been hanging for so long your paws are bloodied and gravity has dislocated your arm sockets. You’re a rag doll, a limp and impotent version of what you need to be, so quit your bitching and release your claws. It’s time to fall, whether you’re ready or not.

It’s time to be a grown up (what an awful concept). It doesn’t mean all the stale things you think though, like wearing cravats and only having one glass of wine over dinner. It just means you have to let go of a few things. You have to let go of the baggage you’ve been carrying around since high school. Sure you have your insecurities, we all do, but it’s time to put them down in a place where they can’t hurt you anymore.

You have to let go of all the childish things you see in the world, and start understanding limitlessness for real. let go of your anger, and all the stored up rage inside you (just let it rip if you want, scream and break things, but be sure to let it all go). Let go of the detritus of all your failures and of all those who have failed you. Let go of your adopted cynicism because maybe being a grown up is really just about accepting that the magic has been there all along, and you’ve just been too immature to let it happen to you.

It’s time to be less afraid, because all those broken hearts only amount to as much as you allow them to. If you don’t let go of them now, let them fall to the ground and actually shatter the way they were supposed to before you so greedily scooped them back up and held them to your chest, you might miss out on love. So drop it now — your mistrustfulness, your obsessive, unhealthy relationship with your wounds — yes, it really is time to Let Go.

It’s time to fall — yeah OK, when you let go, you’re going to fall. I’m not going to lie; it’s probably going to hurt like a mofo. If it makes you feel better I can go first, and I’ll wait at the bottom to catch you. Because we’re doing this together remember? We’re going to let go because holding on to this wire is cutting lines through our palms and if we hang here too long they’ll scar and every time we look down at our hands we’ll remember we’re just prisoners.

So, here we go. On the count of three… One… Two… Ready?… Three. LET GO. Now we’re falling, and all the things we kept wrapped around us, all the spikey, nasty, ugly things that we thought made us safe for so long are just specks in the sky, becoming smaller as we fly away.

-by Kat George

a self-indulgent letter for every little girl who still holds on to their excess load of crap baggage of fears, inflicted wounds and whatever  that is prohibiting you from enjoying the present