1. There are sixteen paper cranes hanging from the ceiling, dancing with the vertigo of sunrise panic. Wait for your organs to stop falling while you count them. One, two. Sixteen is smaller than you think.
2. Leave your phone on read. Leave it face down next to the Christmas cactus and let it die next to the drying dirt. Consider water. Cacti are better alive.
3. Wash your hair with argan oil or tea tree or coconut. Wash your face blank. Cover your body with your softest sweatpants, then a blanket, then your own arms. Add a layer of soft pattering rain.
4. The curling iron will remind you of depression, so pull the old radio out of the blueberry box and listen to waves instead of wearing them. Skip the breakup songs and opt for ski resort ads. Skip car sales entirely. Dance, if you can.
5. Bake cheddar bread with too many sesame seeds and not enough sugar. Powder the counter with flour like gingerbread snow and eat cheese like gumdrops. Lie down next to the dough as it rises under the wood stove, warm, and breathe in time with the yeast.
6. Cheap nail polish doesn’t come with clever names. Invent them while you fill the room with toxins. Burnt toast. Computer screen. 2am sky. No one else is home to complain about your idiocy. You laugh all by yourself.
7. Eat cold sweet potato fries from a box, but also eat peanut butter on apples and cucumber from yesterday’s salad. Drink. Your best friend wants you to read Sappho. Your mother wants you to walk outside and listen to the birds. Step, then breathe, then step. Cold air is catharsis.
8. Don’t ask yourself what you mean. Ask yourself whether you should listen to jazz and drink lemonade in a wine glass. Ask yourself how many sesame seeds you dropped on the floor. Ask yourself whether you should turn off all of the lights and stare out at the window-frame stars.
9. Count the cranes again. Two, four, fifteen. One of them flew away.
10. Sleep.
2. Leave your phone on read. Leave it face down next to the Christmas cactus and let it die next to the drying dirt. Consider water. Cacti are better alive.
3. Wash your hair with argan oil or tea tree or coconut. Wash your face blank. Cover your body with your softest sweatpants, then a blanket, then your own arms. Add a layer of soft pattering rain.
4. The curling iron will remind you of depression, so pull the old radio out of the blueberry box and listen to waves instead of wearing them. Skip the breakup songs and opt for ski resort ads. Skip car sales entirely. Dance, if you can.
5. Bake cheddar bread with too many sesame seeds and not enough sugar. Powder the counter with flour like gingerbread snow and eat cheese like gumdrops. Lie down next to the dough as it rises under the wood stove, warm, and breathe in time with the yeast.
6. Cheap nail polish doesn’t come with clever names. Invent them while you fill the room with toxins. Burnt toast. Computer screen. 2am sky. No one else is home to complain about your idiocy. You laugh all by yourself.
7. Eat cold sweet potato fries from a box, but also eat peanut butter on apples and cucumber from yesterday’s salad. Drink. Your best friend wants you to read Sappho. Your mother wants you to walk outside and listen to the birds. Step, then breathe, then step. Cold air is catharsis.
8. Don’t ask yourself what you mean. Ask yourself whether you should listen to jazz and drink lemonade in a wine glass. Ask yourself how many sesame seeds you dropped on the floor. Ask yourself whether you should turn off all of the lights and stare out at the window-frame stars.
9. Count the cranes again. Two, four, fifteen. One of them flew away.
10. Sleep.
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Lizzy_Rights
Feb 25, 2022
This is beautiful.
"Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words."
-Edgar Allen Poe