love yourself they say over and over one guru then another as if right

try as you might okay as I might

this just doesn’t happen I think

myself wrong off miss-drawn

because I can’t really

it’s not love that makes this idea of theory this humanist way of being become real

yesterday I arrived at the place I’d been traveling to

for days

-days of course a metaphor for an ambiguous term of life-

a little more I could feel in this arrival that was a composite of many the same arrivals acceptance

I could stop revising myself

I could take the full weight of truth that is always amorphous and disorderly

I could take my secret deep fear of an inability to love consistently

I could realize it was never that they have always been not quite right even terribly wrong

love does not hold the same shape over time to make it hold form inhumane arriving at the place again

acceptance is a gentle swirl of snow across the windshield the first flutters of quiet stillness that carry full through the distorted phrases that never quite land on the earthen floorboards of life