Monday Required Reading. Sarah Kay recently released a video of a new poem, and, as with most things she writes, I love it more and more each time I listen to it. This is going out to the ladies who are oh so dear to me.

Monday Required Reading. This essay made me cry. Read it. Then go call your best friend, or write her a letter, or send her an email. Something. Lindsay King-Miller's "Hold On To What You've Got":

In seventh grade, Heather was the new girl in school. She was chubby and bookish and wore weird, gaudy clothing - denim hats covered in puff-paint flowers, neon orange skeleton earrings that dangled to her shoulders. During a game of kickball, she sat in the gravel on the sidelines, drawing circles in the dust with her sneaker with her face buried in a huge, hardcover Unabridged Shakespeare. She carried that book with her everywhere. I adored her instantly. I didn't want to play kickball either. I sat down next to her and we were best friends. 

There's a surprise twist in this story, but I don't want you to feel waylaid when it comes, so I'll spoil it now: Heather dies in her sleep, at the age of twenty-five, of an undiagnosed heart condition. 

It's difficult to articulate the process by which two twelve-year-old girls with a lot of things in common - archetypally awkward, voracious readers, intellectually far ahead of their burgeoning social skills - become inseparable. It feels predestined, unfolding with the simplicity of a teen-movie montage: sleepovers, slasher movies, painting each other's fingernails, singing into hairbrushes. It's hard to imagine that there was a time I didn't know her; that there are aspects of my personality that predate Heather. It feels like we created each other from scratch, scribbling in the details and watching ourselves take shape. We like scary movies. We say "fuck" a lot. We write poetry. I learn to think of myself as strong, confident, unaffected by adversity, because that's how I see heather. Without her I would be too self-conscious to be the first person on the dance floor. But she is always there beside me, throwing her long hair into my face, and I'm not embarrassed if the two of us are together.

[KEEP READING]

Tequila and Galoshes

The land mines went off.

I show up at her door
armed with rainboots
and tequila.
"Honey," I tell her,
"life is gonna give you lemons,
so break out the tequila and dance on the table."
And so we do.
And when we've finished one bottle,
maybe two,
when we've listened to very 90s album she owns
and broken the table in two,
we collapse on the couch,
laughing.
And I say, "Baby,
life is gonna give you rainstorms,
so break out the galoshes and dance in the puddles."
And so we do.
And when we've traipsed down the street,
around the neighbourhood,
when we've scared the children who live next door,
and scandalized the old man down the street,
we stumble back home,
laughing.

A quick poem for a friend who is having a rough go of it right now.

Life shifts.

Before you know it, you've drifted away from people.

Sometimes it's nice to go back to a place of love and laughter with those people, even if it is a little bittersweet.

This is a moment I've been thinking about a lot today as my thesis has been overwhelming me and pushing me toward a very public mental breakdown. In fact, all year D has been serving as a calming and encouraging voice in my head, and this is the moment I return to on a regular basis. I'm not sure if writing this post almost a year and a half ago helped solidify this moment in my memory or if it would have been emblazoned regardless. Either way, I'm glad to have it down in such a physical form. Whatever vibes D was sending me that day seem to still radiate from this little piece.

He strolls past the office door looking like he's on a mission. But he catches my eye as I'm coming out and takes a couple steps back. 

"ENCOURAGEMENT," he says, waving his hands in the air between us as if they are the conduit for positive thoughts and reassurance. 

"I haven't even started," I say, gesturing with my head toward the stack of textbooks in my arms. My voice is tinged with half-crazed laughter. Laughter that teeters on the edge of tears and is born of stress. 

"That's okay," he replies. "ENCOURAGEMENT." Once again, waving his hands. 

He looks a bit foolish, but he makes me smile, and it's the first genuine smile I've given in days. And I actually do feel encouraged.

Crepes and coffee and friends. A sure-fire way to improve a morning otherwise marked by rain and work.

If I had to describe what I think of when I think of summer, I would talk about afternoons spent in cars, blue skies outside, windows rolled down, radio cranked up, dear friends, laughter, and nowhere in particular to go.

Without fail, love notes and grand epistles from friends arrive in my mailbox exactly when I need them. It's a mysterious thing. Perhaps in order to become a postal worker you must have psychic abilities that allow you to know when people need a little bit of extra special love, because the amount of time it takes for a letter to traverse the country seems to vary greatly from one letter to another. I have visions of the postal workers hoarding letters, waiting for that particular moment when they suddenly know that whoever those pieces of wonderfulness are addressed to needs them most.

For three years I lived in an apartment with five other girls. Even now, almost a year after we all moved out, I am consistently surprised to discover that I don't own things I thought I did. I find myself planning an outfit, only to realize that those peacock feather earrings weren't mine. Or I'll decide to make scrambled eggs, only to realize I don't actually own a whisk.