Mirror

A mirror with fixtures fixed askew
invites accidental self-admiration
or abominable trips into the abyss.
One’s own passerby, a single self
certain to question the singularity of
their soul upon a small sip of reflection.
When consciousness whets the tongue
twas dry from the hydrating licks
of internal love, mealy feelings
gyrate and tumble quips of sparkly
personal acknowledgment like soft
sand into glass into sequins into
surprisingly sultry patterns of shimmers
one wears on the skin like a
lacquer of bravery in the ability
to conquer a customized you.

Something unseen

Negative space feels luxurious in a world of clutter. Invert the narrative with me. Let’s call it positive space.

Hone in on the air around you until you’re treading through it. Look not past the air at any point but through it to get to that point.

Invite the smallest sounds to tickle your inner ear. Welcome them as the molecular vibrations they are, physically chain-linking in the same air you tread.

Inhale deeply until you catch whatever small scent billows around your aura. You may be used to it—overcome autonomic rhythm, pick up the olfactory off-beat.

Place your pointer finger on the least interesting surface within reach. Apologize to that surface and tell it how interesting it truly is. Swirl in small, slow circles or find a pattern to produce gentle friction.

Find a wall and care more about it than anything on or against it. If outdoors, gaze skyward until your perimeter drops to an ocular meniscus.

Make a small sound only you can hear.

Nod imperceptibly to all that’s not yet has always been here.

Cleaning unwritten drafts

While headed towards a Chinese restaurant, I held my notebook tucked in between the warm fold of my arm. The notebook is a go-to object to grab when headed out the door on a solo excursion where I know I’ll be occupying a space meant for more folks than one.

Surely enough, I was sat at a four-person table in a packed place full of cheery, chatty citizens. I opened the brown, cloth-bound book and didn’t know what to scribble in the time before my tofu peppercorn dish would arrive.

Thinking of what to write had me writing down topics I could possibly write about. Here are those topics.

I’m also including a slurry of pending post titles to clean up my drafts folder. At one point I thought these words would spur well-wrought articles, but instead they’ve occupied a digital graveyard. In case they might be a source for future thoughts, I wish to preserve them—while not allowing them to crowd the sacred canvas, the digital abyss, the zero-bit brain bin dot txt.

…

• What it means to break from comfort and why it is the absolute most comfortable
• Whether it is necessary to deviate from your authorial style after you are almost certain you have established one
• What it feels like to imagine the magnetization of attention and why it is a lie
• Embarrassment toward certain potential writing subjects and why those are the most authentic and therefore essential
• Pseudo-intellectualism, uncertainty in one’s craft, and how to be sure you are not simply a savvy buffoon
• Jealousy towards cheery people and how a single phrase can open wide the otherwise unaffected
• The daunting thought that everything has already been written and you are wasting your words

…

Beach House, Bummly, Capitalization Crisis, Deletism, Discontent, Fructose, Giddy Prompts, Literary Blue Balls, Milk, Plants, Principles, Privacy, Self-discipline, Stingray, Superstition, The Horween Wrist Wrangler, Tiny Concerts, Ukrzaliznytsia