This is an old(er) entry that, at the time, felt too personal to post. Now it's maybe like a poem or a prayer, beautiful in the weight it once held but more distant with a bit of time and space. Similar to Ben Folds, "We are smoke," the cremation of memories attempts to resolve the discomfort of a difficult relationship with ceremonial finality. Maybe it could have been distilled down to a simple, "screw you!" and tucked securely in my head, but then it still might be rattling around there, making more trouble to this day.
Set my letters on fire. Take photos if you’d like but burn the paper, the canvas, the drawings, the parts that touched my hands, the things I made. May their embers exorcize me from your thinking and you from mine.
I don’t think I manufactured this experience. I’ve looked at it a thousand different ways. I held it up to the light and pressed for perspective beyond my own. I talked about it and prayed on it, grasping at the silent expanse, open hands, deep breath, sober and searching for clarity of thought and action.
I really thought we were onto something, the gravity was enormous. An explosion of creativity, growing with every person we ignited along the way, in the shared pursuit of possibility.
So I’m not asking for forgiveness. I know who I am and what I give.
I’m asking you to burn my letters – the words I felt so fully when they were spoken out, the flooding vulnerability like I was breaking open to channel something bigger than myself. The parts that named the truth to the best of my understanding, the struggle within it, all that upset you, because for you it wasn’t true, or because I was your mirror, or something I can’t understand because you won’t say or I won't hear.
Set it all on fire, every part of me left in your life and glovebox, The tiresome repetition of everything unsolved and the parts of me it occupies.
Burn it all.
references:
this
and thus