The Heist
I've set my research deep inside folds and I have too many canvases to love. Stuck on The Heist, stuck on WWII, stuck on. No more floundering, just forward movement, when. Set free, you say.
I can't decide to commit a year in advance, let alone a week in advance. I'm allergic, I say.
I will restart my five artworks. I have enough blank pages.
Swimming in Justin Timberlake and Macklemore, the cars carry my thoughts toward and away, pulse. Mt. Rainier came out behind clouds yesterday, his presence a grace.
I could pretend to be lost. I could say, I don't know what I'm looking at, where to go.
I bought a Paul Klee self-help book. I also bought a book on how to write about art. I am lapping up Tar Baby and looking out of windows.
I could say I don't deserve, but that isn't it, either. I could say I am sad, still--forgiveness not budging. These are false, too.
I am still in need of The Heist. It's hard to ignore my anxiety regarding framework, thinking the voices messed me up and prevented any kind of movement.
Here at the end, we know. It's another shoeless spring entrance. I've already compressed and added it to my timeline. Four years ago bought exact tears and I've yet to collect more.
It's both sad and strange to know another human that holds an incredibly similar trauma. I knew the signs but I left her be and re-read Beloved for the third year in a row instead. I am blessed to know her. The past eight years are justified simply because I can connect to the broken parts and know.
I knew when a different girl was stuck on one word repeats, stamped in a row to make an opera. I knew it was because the brain needed a rut to control and couldn't be moved just yet. I have obsessed over one word for days and weeks, meditating on it. Leaving it alone only finally when my body healed that spot for me.
I knew the condescension toward naiveté wasn't out of hatred; rather, it was out of missing and needing love. It was about "when will it be my turn," and "when will I be redeemed."
Maybe this is why I made a map, because I needed to take inventory to learn how to be redeemed. That really inventory doesn't define me, my identity is not school or my work or the people I know.
Knowing my identity isn't confined to a label is the most freeing thing.
Smells like summer in the dead of spring, and how can I pine for a place that has never been mine.
All my energy used up to organize an exhibition and feigned importance.
One day I won't have to smell the summers my childhood consisted of.