As days drift on I contemplate my own trajectories, where life goes where it wants to go with unknown guarantees. Some days are high, some days are low, some days are in between. Most days are blessed delightfully in ways I'd not foreseen. No good can come from floating by without self inquiry, and anyway it's much more fun to build philosophy, so here I think about the nature of companionships and collections of grins and frowns acquired by my lips.
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The opposite of loneliness is having a best friend who thinks about you just as much as you think about them, a pairing where the sum of one and one makes more than two, with bonding so in balance nothing ever feels askew, a comfort countless fathoms deep no matter what you do or how much time elapses 'tween each happy rendezvous. These kinships are the ones you spend your whole life looking for, to feel the closeness beaming from their eyes at their front door. But if there is a disconnect it can create despair, emotional imbalance that feels karmically unfair. So woe betide the reckless fool who enters willingly into impossible romance without humility. Your fortitude might not be quite as strong as is required to sidestep psychic suffering inherently hard-wired. And if they're unavailable but say they want you near, it throws you into limbo where your future path's unclear. Should you run deep underground to hide from memory? Or maybe they will come around, so should you wait and see? And yet maybe it's all worthwhile, to fling those feelings on the pile of exotic experience. What's life without some limerence? Like cooking with ingredients combined in piquant deviance, all pleasure's in comparison to measured bitter medicine.
66
I'm lying on the sofa and my cat sits on my chest. It's the best. I put down what I'm doing to make room to settle in. Such a win. His purring vibrates noisily. He croaks a hoarse meow. I'm stuck now. He rubs his face against my face. We both have found our perfect place. He suddenly looks at the door, springs up, jumps down, and leaves. With a sigh I grieve. He didn't even say goodbye. So I die.
65

Glinting, gleaming, glowing eyes that see the world through sound and touch, knobbled, knotted, gnarled hands that swing a cane, not as a crutch but as a percussive surprise for tapping beats on makeshift drums or finding giant outdoor urns to thrust her face inside and hum. She seeks the resonating tone and lingers with musical glee, and when she stops the note continues in the air echoically. And in the dark two glassy paintings, mottled blue like stormy seas, emit a light that's joy-sustaining and observe invisibly.
64
Single serving popping penes, tensive turgid whizzing wienies, flying free like green Houdinis, spraying seeds from burst zucchinis. Seedpods explode like grenades, pressure pulse from valve cascades launching pips like cannonades from plant rubbing escapades.
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https://www.instagram.com/miss.mantis/
A miniature sculptor of moderate size, of entomic dresses and floral thigh-highs, of possums and blossoms, communing raccoons, and curated shades of purples and maroons. And off in the corner under picture frames her husband is working 'til time for boardgames. A cool summer evening on top of the hill, we sit in their condo and quietly chill. Tip-tapping of fingers, the scratch of my pen, a peacefulness lingers among us, and then she offers me chocolate with hazelnut bits and gathers her laptop and blanket and sits on the other sofa with her cup of tea, and says, 😫 "Too much liquid! Now I have to pee!" And each exposed surface is covered in bugs. There are bugs in the windows and bugs on the rugs and bugs on the shelves and bugs on the wall and bugs in the stairwell and bugs in the hall and bugs in glass cases and bugs on the floor and, let's not forget, there are bugs on the door and bugs on the spoons and bugs on the mugs and bugs wearing costumes and bugs giving hugs. And twining vines line every wall of the room, with bats, skulls, and ravens like a gothy tomb, and fabulous fabrics fresh from her dad's loom, and crêpe paper flowers in permanent bloom where packed cozy comfort leaves no space for gloom.
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