At some point, the mere way you pour your coffee is going to convict you.

How you fold your clothes. & what you pack in that bag. & where you are going. & when. & when?

The things of the Every Day will bellow & boil with Bigger Questions: Why am I here? What am I doing? Is it making me happy? Or, is this all there is?

What happened to those feelings, those feelings I used to have that always made me feel like wearing  party dresses in July? Tell me, do those feelings stir here?

Me? Me?

I am just a girl who can promise you sound syllables & all sorts of deep cutting language. I can give you imagery that floats—like the birthday balloons gone running & away from their tied spot to the back of the lawn chair but I cannot promise you a lifetime. I cannot promise you joy in the grooves. I cannot promise you grasses thick with passion and a reason for waking every day. That, my dear, is a promise you learn to whisper to yourself when you first decide that you are worth it.

Worth the seeking. Worth the tougher questions. Worth the days spent soul searching in Central Park and doodling deep the images of a life you’d love live to one day.

Worth the day you declare yourself a hostess at your very own tea party and learn to usher Actions to the table: Changing with her hatbox. And Morphing with his drum. Letting Go with his somber smile & Growing with her long, white veil.

Rowdy party guests. Sure to shake the table and knock over the finer china. But they’ll make you better if you let them. They’ll make you better if you let them.

I lost a good friend nearly a year ago.

It is hard to believe in a calendar so cruel that will let June come, & then July & August, & then just a September before we sigh and say, “We’ve spent a year without his laughter in our conversations.”

Ask anyone who had ever known him and they’d claimed they lost a soldier. A bright light. A passionate seeker. A fighter. A friend who took you in on your best days and pulled you closer on your worst ones. A boy who made them feel that oxygen was a prize & they’d have gobbled up the air if they could have, because to be beside him breathing was so very good. & precious. & real. & we always seemed to know that this couldn’t last long enough.

But October took him.

The Skies took him.

And me? Well, he made me promise that I’d take back Today.

Take back Today and lose all sense of Tomorrow. Lose all sense of Later & Maybe & Someday. All the pitiful words that used to let me put things off were placed in a cardboard box to dust & stale & sell like crazy in a Tag Sale of Never Living.

Tomorrow might seem like a pretty thing, but what about now? This moment. This collection of seconds that should sum to the fact that we are trying to live better lives. And we are trying to collapse one another with compassion & strength. And we are trying to be more patient. And we are roaming through the halls of one another just to find understanding. And we are deciding this: that if we are unhappy then we are changing it. And if we are feeling Fake then we will pull out the flashlight and scavenge for Real. And if we have done somebody wrong then we are asking for Forgiveness. & if we’ve learned to wrong ourselves then we are willing to try Love around the shoulders with Amazement in our hands.

And if This, this Jumble of Life—this morning coffee order, this strolling to the office, this 9-5 job, this dinner conversation, this stream of Somebodies we are texting at night—if This is somehow broken then we are fixing…

Ever Fixing…

Our eyes on something brighter and our hands on a Happiness that is worth a sweet pursuance. A happiness that will one day pierce our skin with the wrinkles of Well Lived.

This post was inspired by a girl I’ll never know though I’ve reason to believe that we would have found ourselves sipping coffee together one day. Marina Keegan, a 2012 graduate from Yale University, wrote this piece just days before her graduation & died tragically in a car accident on Saturday. And so now we carry her words & the weight of them.  For her. We pitch tents out of her memory & burn lanterns with the light she gave to this world. Rest in peace, sweet girl.

I’ve given up my birthday.

Ditching the cake. Swapping the candles & nursing no desire for a single card. Don’t you mail me… I repeat: Don’t You Mail Me.

Birthdays are nice. Sure. And 24 is sureeee to be a lovely age (though I have a clear disdain for even numbers and would rather plow for 25). But I don’t need to celebrate 24 years of dancing on this earth because clearly I’ve been dancing for 24 years of this and I’ve got it good. Got it Great. Got it Better than I could have ever hoped for and I don’t need a single thing.

So join me, please, in forgetting my birthday this year & buying a graduation card instead.

Her name is Eilis.

Her father passed away from cancer nearly two years ago and it hit the family hard. “He was the kind of father who got down on the floor to play with the kids, teased them but not too much and was firm with his expectations. Eilis was closest to him…her favorite parent.”

This year, Eilis turned 18. Had her senior prom in April. Will graduate in June. Head off to college in August.

Her life is happening. All. Over. The. Place. & just 5 years off from that very spot in life, I know how Crazy. Chaotic. Overwhelming. But Exciting it can be.

Eilis’ mother came to me with the hope that I would gift Eilis with a love letter for this brand new chapter in her life.

The first thing that came to my mind? Screw my birthday, y’all need to help me with this one!

So…

If you love me, if you support me, if you have ever believed in a single thing that I do, then I need you… right now… to help me gift Eilis with the best bridge possible from High School to College.

In lieu of birthday cards, I am asking for graduation cards. Inspirational cards. Cards not to be opened until after Eilis arrives at college. Cards for Eilis in the Every Day of her life as she pursues her dreams with the memory of her father tucked close to her heart.  

Be creative. Raid Target (the aisles are packed with grad cards!). Make playlists. Write what is on your heart. Tell your friends. Help me gift this girl with the best Bundle of Love Letters possible.

This time (and this time only) I am forgoing the More Love Letters PO Box for my own snail mail. Please send all letters & cards to:

Love Letters for Eilis

33 Belvedere Rd

North Haven, CT 06473

Please be sure to postmark your love letter(s) by June 5^th.

Please & Thank You.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to dancing…

I’m going away today & I’m packing no bag.

& when you come seeking, all you’ll find is this letter: a cluttered ransom note of all the things I won’t ever come back for. Signed by a Retired Perfect Girl.

The Sadness. The Defeat. The Insecurities, they’re buried. Resting in some sort of peace. Ambition be their grave digger & Joy has signed on freelance to write their obituaries; she’s come with great promise of a seasoned Times’ writer.

All you are clutching is this strange note now, Signed & Sealed by a Somebody that you used to know. Just the clumsy, clumped cursive of a Someone who used to think she had to please you.

& others. & everyone. & even strangers who I had never met beyond the shaking of a hand but my hand was already shaking, sweating through the palms, because I could feel them Sizing me already. Assuming already. Writing me off, already.

I’ve left behind a Someone who wanted you to like her. To pick her for your kickball team. To pat your hand down on the seat beside you and invite her to join the lunch table. & sit in the sandbox beside her until the sun went down.

& I’ve held conversations that I never wanted. & drinks I have never liked. & politics that have only bored me. & secrets that only shamed me.

I held that all for you &, all the while, tried to be more laughable. More Worldly. More Exotic. More Intelligent. More & More of a Someone who had begun to wonder, Will I Ever Find the Strength to Walk Away from Fake… & Half of a Wholeness I Still Have Faith Exists… & Unhappiness.  

& truths told, I have compromised. My true self. My beliefs. My real hopes. My values.

To fit your fables. To make you think that I was worthy. That I was someone who could make you laugh & would never cause you trouble.

But I’m a trouble maker… one who has never fit into your Little Box and All Your Ex. Pec. Ta. Tions.

And here lies my Sorry, rooted in the ground within a Graveyard of Regret.

Sorry because I should have told you I was stronger. Than this.

Better. Than this.

Wiser. Than this.

Should have told you there are days when I feel lovely just like this. & I would have walked away from you on a Friday but I just found the strength on a Sunday. & that even if it is hard to feel it on a Monday, I am a child of God on the Every Day.

& because of that, you cannot wedge me.

Mold Me.

Make Me.

You can only Watch Me:

Walk away. Turn new leaves. Build a stronger faith. Seize something that I have wanted. Empty out the oldness & find the cocoons of this chaotic, crazy life. & Still know that it’s ok to harbor a fierce wanting to be a butterfly. I have always had a fierce wanting to be a butterfly.

I’m imperfect & it’s lovely. Clumsy & it’s rhythmic. Indecisive & it fits me. I’m a dreamer & it is a “born this way” kind of thing.

And I used to be a living Sorry–for taking up space, for never living up to what you wanted me to be, for trying so damn hard to just be the kind of Perfect you could stand to have around– but not anymore. After today, not anymore.

& I wish you the best. & I hope you work it out. & I’ll send you all the light & love your little arms can handle. But I’m not staying here. No, I’m not staying here.

So take my signature below but don’t come looking. Don’t hang the wanted signs. I won’t come crawling back with cash rewards.

You won’t find me no more.

Not here. Not here.

Signed,

A Retired Perfect Girl

Sign your name below…

I took God back through a spoken word poem.

I’m sure I never told you that. It’s been 16 months since we last spoke (19, if I’m really counting) and I thought you should know that I took Him back. And I’ve learned to capitalize all the He’s & Him’s that hold His name because He’s been good to me in a way you never knew how to be.  But I don’t blame you for that. We’re all broken, so I don’t blame you.

But I wish you had been there. Beside me on the balcony as a girl down below poured Perfect Pearled Prophesy out from her lips, like no Poetry I’d ever heard. Never, never, never, did I know things with more Sweet & Tang than Sunny D could exist on the lips of people so human. And I thought, that’s God. He’s shining in her.

And I lifted my arms up to the rafters as I imagined the nightlife creeping up with laughter outside the walls of my church tucked close to the bedside of Chelsea Market.

And I took Him back.

Like the man who stands outside the car whose tires have just lent themselves to screeching, vowing that he won’t walk away til’ morning. Not til’ she rolls down her window & lets him in. I took Him back in that way.

The girl spoke of a car crash. Not a literal one. But the one in her soul that resembled the Crashes where the caution tapes been drawn and the mother has had Five Minutes of Holding by the stranger wearing the blue police uniform who questions God too. She spoke it and called it by name, this place in her soul: Ugly. Hurt. Crushed. Untouched. Tainted. Deceived. Messy.

And I thought, I know that place. The places we could never talk about together cause you always called it moving on and I stayed back wondering if I could handle to gather more pieces.

The dark places. That places that never gets the flashlights or the lanterns or the Christmas bulbs. No, we just keep on trudging to find other pockets of happiness, forgetting we were battered. Bruised & Broken. Wronged.

And sitting on your bed, with a barrier of experience so thick between us, you asked if I would ever go back. To God. To prayers before bed. To Bible in the morning.

“Probably not… I don’t know… I’m just so hurt…”

One-syllable kind of words was all the conversation could hold– breaking like that game we barely ever played because there was so much damn assembly required. With the penguins. And the tissues. And the marbles. And the water. Don’t Break the Ice, wasn’t that the name?

And we took to separate corners of the earth when I really should have told you I was more hurt than I had words for… and I still needed a Savior more than ever before. And it would never be you. I’m so sorry dear, it would never be you.

I wish I could have found the words to tell you then that I still believed in God. & prayers. & healing. Even when Religion had Indian-burned my wrists like fifth graders on the bus rides to school. When Religion left me thinking maybe I would never go back there… Bury it in the dirt and move forward, for its Bibles & Condemning & Preaching had hurt me too badly.

I wish you could have been there. In the Chelsea church with me.

Like a 5-year-old waiting in the wings for her father to stroll down the aisle of her ballet recital, I wish you could have been there. To see me take Him back. How easily it happened. How effortless. How much grace poured in to water the limbs of a girl who had become like a Tin Man. Needing a wizard. Needing a new heart.

Maybe then we wouldn’t have ended up on bar stools.  Dry liquor between us as you told me you decided that you didn’t believe anymore. In someone who could clear away the crash. In an Abba within a world that failed us yesterday. That God was now sitting in an abandoned waiting room, locked up inside you, beside a woman who collects baby teeth at night and an obese man who devour cookies before filling up the bottoms of our evergreens with wrapping paper.

I didn’t have the courage then to tell you I’d never lost the faith.

I didn’t have the courage to share with you a Gospel that felt so foreign and strange on my hands.

I didn’t have the words yet to tell you that no Tomorrow would ever hold a day when I didn’t need a savior. A higher power. A God who caught my every tear in big ol’ basins made on the angels’ pottery wheels.

Because if I don’t have that, then what? Then what? Then what?

I’m sorry I never told you… about the spoken word poem. About the surrender. About the God who showed up in the rafters to handle my junk like fine china.

I’m leaving these words here.

And if you still read me, like the days when you promised you always would, then maybe we’ll talk again soon.

Maybe you’ll find my number.

Maybe you’ll dial.

 & ask me why I believe in Him now more than ever.

I’ll answer.

Back in college, I was the girl with plans to change the world.

I shoved up my peace sign and pummeled my friends with bits and pieces of the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child before trotting off to some 180-page report on sustainability in Malaysia that needed my reading eyes before bed.

And so, it only seemed appropriate when a girl like me, on fire and ready to rattle the cages of Injustice, trotted off to start my new job at the United Nations.

I basked in that first day, the flashing of my bright blue, holographic pass, and marveled at the building where Change Happened and Things Got Done.

No turning back.

The United Nations was my cake. And I was so darn hungry. So I gobbled, gobbled, gobbled: trafficking for breakfast & girls’ edu for lunch & microfinance for dinner. And then got sick. To my stomach. From eating too much. And not knowing. Just. How. To. Digest…. that change was a slow thing and not always an overnight slumber party buddy.

“This place only works for the ones who can be o.k. with baby steps,” a woman told me one morning. And she left to be angry, wringing my fists over orphans who needed me and an Unchangeable World.

And so, slowly & so sneakily, Doubt pulled out a stool and ordered a coffee in the cafe of my soul. And then another. And another.

But let’s be truthful. It was really Mark Zuckerberg who kissed me on the forehead and sealed my silence.

Yes, six girls. And my own Facebook status that shut me up for good:

“If I have only one quality for the rest of my life I hope that it is foolish… Foolish enough to think that I can make a difference in this world and then go out and do the things that others say cannot be done..”

They mocked it one by one. Skittering from page to page to laugh & “like” & make fun of me before defriending me. One. By One. By One.

And I decided then that Silence was better. Indifference was easier. And if you said nothing at all then no one would expect anything of you. And if you just shut up then the world would never know that your skin once thought it was made for World Changing.

I’d forgotten all of this until tonight. Until the preacher on the stage. Until his message on Salt. Of all things, salt. Leaving my mouth watered with a severe ache for french fries, he spoke of the Bible Days when Salt was more valued than petroleum. Where salt was so very good and people never took it for granted. To have salt in one’s home was a Very Big Deal.

His hands rose up as he spoke of how we, as Little Pencils in a Far Grander Love Letter, are called to be salt. Shakers in this world. Hungry for justice. Hungry for a difference. Hungry to Change the World.

And I licked my lips and thought: Yes, I am hungry. For girls with arms full of textbooks. For boys who put down their guns and run back to the schoolyard. For college students who emerge out into the world with an ache to change it and then get ambushed by the Doubt in the cafe. And the Doubt in the cubicle. And the Doubt in the media. And so they listen to statistics and they do a job they never grew a passion for, and ten years or twenty years later, they’re still thinking, “I would have really liked to change the world.”

And sincerely, I’ve grown tired:  of not talking about it enough. Of not filling more notebooks with the hope of it all. Of not wanting to call it “World-Changing” because the very word has felt narcissistic & self-absorbed & impossible since the day I placed it into a Facebook status and then ached to wash it away with a swift backspace.

But no more, cause we’re talking. No more, cause we’re seeing and we’re saying that this world is very broken. Her legs are mangled. Her mind is messed. And Once Upon a Time, we wanted to be doctors so let’s just pull out the plastic stethoscope, get real close to hear Beating, Bleeding Heart, and listen for a while.

And no more, cause we’re meeting. Gathering in tea shops & brunch on Amsterdam Avenue. In pools of social networking sites where we’ve all convinced once another that the Waters of World Shaking feel just fine so you better dive in. Doggy paddle if you got to, but Just. Jump. In.

And no more, cause I’m ready. To be a girl who doesn’t look back. And a girl who leaves her salt all over this whole place. And her breadcrumbs. And her Whole Entire Being if it means that someone Gonna Find the Light. Gonna Go to School. Gonna Break the Chains. Gonna Do their Part.

Baby, baby, I’ll pull up a stool. I’ll sit right beside you and I’ll ask you out loud, “Do you want to change the world?” And if you answer yes, I’ll finally find the words to say it.

“Yes… Me Too.”

That last line was inspired by my BOMB.com, space cadet of a friend who isn’t really a space cadet but rather a poet who has stood by side in learning the art of butt kicking. Her name is Azure Antoinette. #Cupcake. She was just signed into a contract with ABC Family yesterday. I am more proud than a mother watching her triplets graduate from Law School. And Azure, this post is for you. I’m not tired anymore.

When my mama came to you with Remnants of Tears Still Yet to Be Cried left in her sockets and the stiff smell of Sadness on her breath, did you touch her wrist first or take her full force into your arms?

When she came to you looking more sleepless than Seattle, more worn than the limbs of the teddy she carried 17 years back, did you see her?

And when the strange ruckus of sounds moved out from her lips, “I don’t love him anymore. Will you help me call the wedding off,” Did you hear her?

When Indecision hijacked her Being— the tall frame and skinny legs of a daughter who was wearing a ring just yesterday—did you hold her?

Did you take it all in? And did you think, for maybe a moment, that before a more efficient version of the record player came around we should probably find a way to suck the tears from the eyes of one another?

Cause we don’t do that so well anymore, Grandma. No, we don’t do that so well.

You know, I’m afraid to admit to you that most of the fragmented pieces of my friends’ hearts come to me by way of messages that take up half an inch of space on my screen, that scream and howl beside Social Steals for yoga that is only 30 dollars this month. Only 30 dollars… I think that’s a deal.

That I’ve got more pain piled- like fluffed whites and linen- in my inbox. So I respond when I can. I click “reply” when I can. That I’m furiously tapping “Stay Strong”s and “We’ll meet up soon”s before my mimosa reaches the table and the conversation turns back to me.

Truth told, I’m scared. 1,500 followers lately and I’m most petrified, really. To tell you that all of this is Normalcy. It’s habit. Lifestyle. These Parades of Personality, this Character in 140 Characters, this Follow the Leader who has no reason to be followed, really.

I like mud runs. Chai tea with the skim milk steamed. I believe in people, in their goodness. I’ve been praying for my husband, wherever God has him right now, every day for three years straight. There’s not a reason to follow me at all.

And Grandma, I’m so torn. Because something like last night, four women sitting beside one another, laughing over thai food and wine while they talk of education for girls in India & poems in Brooklyn, never would have happened without a thing called Twitter. Torn because I’ve found God’s Children in tweets and they’d be the kind to join you for toast and hot chocolate. I know it. They would.

But I want to relearn Sacred.

Something you once told me would matter before the days I had to wonder if heaven had an inbox or if I could send a text message that would reach you through all the dirt. And the tears we cried. And the bagpipes that played when we placed you there, deep in the ground.

Sacred.

Like the dinners where phones don’t touch the table. Or moments when a vibration couldn’t take someone away from me so easily. Like boys whose faces glow without the help of a screen. Friendships founded, planted & rooted in dialogue such as this:

I’m struggling. I need you. Diner. Ten Minutes. No Questions.

Sacred. Like a time when you had me. You really had me. Showing up at my kitchen table to help me piece together the JonBenet Ramsey murder case, sitting with me for Tiny Eternities to talk about Who Done It. No text to answer on the other end. No reason to pin & tweet & tumble somewhere beside strangers who never called me “beautiful” with my ballet tutus on.

Grandma, I’m still teachable. Still so teachable. & eager to believe in the boy who makes poetry in hand movements, with blue eyes that sculpt lullabies like fragile fingers on pottery wheels. Eager to believe in Presence & Speechlessness & Skin: The First Connection.

Grandma, I’m so teachable. & ready to re-remember that I had you at a time when Apple was a thing that sat in the middle of table before you halved it and spread your love and peanut butter on top.

Here’s to the ones who were never normal. Never conforming. Never able to sink into the soles of a follower.

Here’s to the ones who were told to stop. To give up. To quit trying. To shove themselves into a little box because the world never needed their arms stretched out wide.

Here’s to the ones who refused to listen. To the negatives. To the naysayers. To pessimists & the procrastinators.

Here’s to the ones who believe in Away. And Going. And Newness  within Newness. And a world made to wash us & move us & sculpt us & change us. And the courage it takes to believe in all those things.

Here’s to the ones who have uncovered the recovery from darkness. Who have cried on bathroom floors. Who have found pockets of strength in cracks in the sidewalk. Who have declared new days & brighter days & lovelier days than this.

Here’s the ones who say, “I’ve moved on” & “I’m stronger now” & “You never completed me. No, that never happened.” Who believe in their wholeness even after breaking. Who believe in Better Than Ever even when the Better Half of them has eyes towards the neon EXIT sign.

Here’s to the ones who stopped trying. To please others. To be perfect. To get smaller. To live in the lines. To color with only the classics of Red & Blue & Green within a lifetime that swoons over Fuchsia & Gold.  

Here’s the ones who believe in shoes & stories. Yellow rain boots in any weather to Parade through Puddles of Passion. World Shaking Heels. Who believe in slipping into Sizes Too Big and doing a little walk, a little trot, a little stroll, before saying, “I know your story.”

Here’s to the ones who live. Life like a love letter. Like a well-worn pair of leather ballet shoes. Like a ferris wheel- spinning, spinning- and all the parts of it touched by great love stories and boys who used to help girls on by the hand.

Here’s to the ones who laugh within the thunder. Cry within the mud. Dance when the bagpipes of sorrow play. Here’s to the ones who hear music, even when the sacred songs of childhood get stuck in the throat, stifled by fear.

Here’s to the ones who wear “joy” like a sweater. Like a wedding dress you wish to wear while eating pancakes & Nutella. Your bare feet on the counter. The train of white hanging down on the tiles. Laughing, always laughing, as they have another short stack of blueberry.

Here’s to the ones who choose to be relentless. With their purpose. With their ambition. With their desires. With their calling.

Here’s to the ones who know their calling & that its greater than a cubicle or a paycheck will ever be. A calling to be a light. To be a lantern. To be a match in the darkness. A flashlight in the power outage. A bright star in a sky of a night that lost hope.

Here’s to the ones who pick up others. Who don’t need to believe in karma to understand “humanity” and how her wrinkles live on in the faces of others. The Sick. The Poor. The Lonely. The Down Trodden.

Here’s to the ones who say, “Enough” & “No More.” Who believe in things as crazy as a world where children can feel the fullness of a belly before Sleep. & Dreams. & Peace. Where girls can feel the itch of a school uniform & let their arms grow tired from stacks of beautiful books.

Here’s to the ones who believe. In a tomorrow packed with promise. In conversations where souls undress secrets. In late nights & knees that touch under blankets. In mornings that hold solitude.

In air just gasping & groaning to be sucked in and turned. Into gratitude. Into prayers. Into well wishes that float into the ear lobes of others.  Into Hello’s and Goodbye’s that leave us never the same. Into a life that is thrilling & delicate, like the very first time we saw the elephant tamer dance.

Into something wonderful that will leave us in rocking chairs, in older years, saying out loud, “Here’s to the sweetness that I never could define. Some call it ‘life’ but it has left me too breathless to give it a name.” 

“We will map it out in the sand,” the Girl with the Curls said to her Most Precious Friend.

“That way we will never forget it, that we are coming back to one another.”

The Girl with the Curls All Up in Her Hair was a bit older in years. She’d seen more stretch of the earth. She’d touched more tops of fingertips. She knew the good that could somehow live in a word as strange as “goodbye.”

She patted the ground for her Most Gracious Friend to come and sit down beside her. And then she began to clear away the rocks to make for a space, a map that would mean Together during a time of Apart.

“This is where I will be,” said the Girl with the Curls, tracing a circle out in the sand. “I will always be here and you can always find me here.”

She set on clearing a space several feet away, “And here is where….”

“There,” said the Girl with the Curls’ Most Lovely Friend, pointing back at the newly traced circle. “There is where I want to always be.”

“But we…”

“There.”

“I know it would be eas…”

There.” Her finger grew relentless with its pointing. “There or here. Whichever one keeps me with you.”

The Girl with the Curls had no answers. No answers for why, one day, she wouldn’t smell the lavender in the hair of her Best Friend or how she’d have to call upon her memory to play back the sound of a laughter she used to marry with her own percussion of giggles.

And so she said nothing. Not Much. And she let the Hunger for Words & Goodbyeless Goodbyes fill the air, thick like the humidity of August that calls curls to go untamed and motherless.

The two girls sat in the sand and stared at the circle for a very long while. They sat still & quiet until the stars had no choice but to join them, resolving to shine their brightest on this Night for Girls who were Never Good with Letting Go.

“It will come one day. One day we won’t be sitting here beside one another. It’s just the way it has to be,” the Girls with the Curls finally spoke, laying her head down to see the whole sky. Her curls splayed and spiraled across the parts of the map that hadn’t been drawn yet.

“But why?” asked her Most Sacred Friend.

The Girl with the Curls just nodded her head in Unknowing. And her Most Real Friend stared and let the whistles of silence out from her lips.

For they both had learned the hearts of one another—all the curves and spots of wear—as if they  old watercolors perched up on the mantel of a hallway from childhood. They’d learned each other in an easy way, in moments as slow and wonderful as the whispered names of French sugared sweets. Savarin & Souffle. Tartin & Brulee.  The two girls marveled at how it was never a thing that took effort or angst. They had simply found one another at a time when all they craved were open books and a Someone to sit beside when the world rocked crazy. A Someone to sit beside and find your whole self understood in a world that rarely leaves room for Understanding to take off her shoes.  That was the best thing they could have. They knew it in conversation & secrets & nights of tea with three lumps of sugar. It was the best thing they could have.

“I’ve never really known but it’s a thing called Growing Up,” said the Girl with the Curls to her Most Radiant Friend. “I think it’s probably beautiful but awkward and silly at times, with just pinches of pain to remind you of Aliveness.”

 Because that is how most things are: beautiful but awkward and silly at times, with just pinches of pain to remind us of Aliveness.

“But we can’t do it together? I want to be Growing Up with you. Not without you… I don’t want a reason to draw maps in the sand.”

The Girl with the Curls heard the stinging in the voice of her Most True Friend. She didn’t have reasons. She didn’t have answers. And she, also, never wished for Growing Up without her Best Friend beside her, Growing Up too.

“You know,” she finally spoke. “We could be Artists & Weepers. Dreamers & Dancers. We could own the stars if we wanted to. We could climb mountains and let the salt waters of the ocean pucker up to our ankles. We could be Explorers. & Finders. & Lovers. But I know we cannot be Keepers. A Carrier, maybe, but never a Keeper.”

“But why? What is the difference?”

“A Keeper would mean that we stayed here. And we never moved. And we held each other’s hands too tightly. And we never saw the world.

And you never became You and I never found Me in the spaces of this place where we were supposed to Be.”

For the Girl with the Curls had no answers. No connect the dot reasons. But she knew she could never be a Keeper, no matter how badly the urge tickled at her. To keep her Most Gifted Friend all to herself would only lead to a lifetime of picking Regret up by the armpits and spinning her round & round.

The world needed a Best Friend like hers. Strangers needed her. The sick needed her. The lonely needed her. And how does one become a Finder if they always stay a Keeper?

“Carry,” said the Girl with the Curls, to fill the spaces in the air left for Sadness & Sorrow & I’ll Miss You & Take Care. “I can be a Carrier. I promise I will be. I’ll carry you wherever I go.”

“Really?” said her Most Sacred Friend.

“I’ve already started,” the Girl with the Curls bit back more words.

She’d already started: The Letting Go. The Packing. The Looking Backward for a moment or two. The Finding but not the Keeping. And the Carrying. The Always Carrying the Heart of her Best Friend.”

I think that I am tired of this, I tell myself as I watch her swirl her purple fingernail in circles on the table and refuse goldfish crackers for snack.

Her mouth is shut now but just a moment ago she was spilling with stories of girls named Arya & Hanna–two girls who only come to her by way of the TV screen.

She is ten years old and looking to Aria & Hanna as role models. The Cookie Cutters of What She Should Be. Arya is 17 and sleeping with her high school English teacher. Hanna looks as though she has been cut out carefully from a catalog. Perfect clothes. Perfect skin. Perfect size.

Ten years old and already I want to hold out my hand and tell her to spit it out. Please, spit it out. Spit out the lies the world wants to feed you and just eat your goldfish, baby.

Yes, I am think I am tired of this.

Tired of a band of girls with Operation See My Hip Bones as their next endeavor. Tired of a culture that feeds its young  with skinny tips & “how to please your man” rhetoric.  No wonder we are hungry, starving for something more than this.

& I’ve been there. Wrapped & Wrapped & Wrapped by a world that would only want me if I took up less space. I spent an entire year dreading the door of my own apartment because to open it meant to walk outside. To walk outside meant to face the world. To face the world meant to move into conversations where I was expected to speak. And I was always afraid that someone would look at me, stare me up and down, and tell me that I was not good enough. Not pretty enough. Not smart enough.

But funny how it never ended when the door of the apartment slammed at night. It only started when I roamed into the kitchen, long after the moon had pulled blankets over the eyes of its children, to fill bowls with ice cream & cake & peanut butter & any ingredient that I could find.

It had only just begun when I sat on my kitchen table shoveling numbness into my mouth and let the tears dance wild on my cheeks. Oh, I still ache over the emptiness of it all. Oh, I still cry for the girl who always believed in other people’s mornings but never her own.

I have come a long way. I have battled with my body & a world that whispers lies upon my lovely handles & freckled forearms. But I remember clearly the day I woke up and said out loud, “You cannot stay here any longer. You cannot stay here any longer.” Put down the spoon. Put away the carton. And move.

Because if we always stay then we never move.

And if we ruminate on body fat and smaller thighs and tiny arms then we never see the miracles of life that already glitter the palms of our hands. That our lungs take air. That our feet get us there. That our fingers tap on keyboards and suddenly we are talking.  That with just an “@” I can find you, roaming somewhere in your own networks, and we can find a way to push through this. Together. I don’t care that we’ve never met. In fact, I have never cared.

That we serve the world better in Larger Proportions, out of our boxes and the bindings of other people’s beauty definitions. And if we’ve got a dream- a Keep You Up At Night Dream- then there is room to make it happen.  To make it more real than the leather of his jacket on the night he wrapped you in it and called you his “daisy.”

Because you are delicate like that.

You are beautiful like that. You always have been and you always will be. And your limbs– well they are perfect. Your words– I want to hear them more. Your thoughts– make them sing, baby. This life… well this life is only a one-time thing and I don’t want to wait until the close of it to see that it never had a thing to do with thighs or legs. It never really mattered how little of space we took up in our jeans. I cannot help but think we’ll get asked the Other Kinds of Questions as we stand beside a gate that brings us into fields that know no heartbreak or the calorie counts that create it.

“Did you spread your arms out as wide as you could?”

“Did you wrap them tightly when another needed you most?”

“Did you dance in the Today you had? Did you save Tomorrow for its own mystery?”

“Did you do something that mattered, really mattered? And was it outside of yourself?”

I want to answer Yes. Already, my mouth is watering to answer Yes.

The boom-crash-churn.

You’ll be standing off to the side of the highway & suddenly counting fingers & toes.

One. & Two. & Three. & this one off to market. & this one is deciding to stay home.

“You alright?” the officer asks. You bite your bottom lip & you nod your head & you ache to tell him a story. But he aint your librarian, just a man in blue waiting to clear your wreck off the road so that he can go on home to a girl in a princess dress whose words are crystals to him and “Daddy” is a sacred name.

“I’m sorry,” you say again, this time to a young man with a grin that has probably captivated some girl since their high school prom. Since the very day he slipped a corsage on her bony wrist.

“Eh, take it back,” he laughs. “It’s not your fault.”

& so you stand, shifting from foot to foot to foot, aching to tell him a story. To tell him that you’ve never taken a “sorry” back. That you’ve always believed in sprinkling the grounds with “sorries,” like rose petals, after damage has been done.   

That’s the know-how of a Good Girl. & you don’t know or know how it gets done any other way.

& so you go back to counting…

Four. & Five. & Six.

As they hook your pretty little car to chains & pullies and haul, haul, haul. & you think the ground is sacred. That your standing: sacred. That your whole: sacred. That you’re all just fine: sacred.

& Seven. & Eight.

& your seeing–just now– what car accidents do. After the boom. the crash. the churn.

How they make you want to clutch. & mend. & walk away better with grace in your arms.  & call people. & burrow your body into unexplored parts of the library with books of French & German surrounding you. How they make you want to learn all the ways there are to tell someone you love them so that you never run out. So that you never run out.

& Nine.

& the man in blue strolls back again & he asks if you need anything else. & you want to say sidewalk chalk. & tea. & arms that take you without explanation.

& a life that lives itself out like a love letter. with imagery that drapes you. & adoration that takes you in by the elbow. & not an agenda in sight. No, no, all the Musts & the Shoulds & the Coulds went down with a ship they said was unsinkable one hundred years ago or so. That all you really need is grace. & a hug.

grace & a hug will fix you just fine.

grace & a hug & you’ll be brand new.

& you’ll reach Ten & start counting again.