My life is an exercise in patience and forgiveness and deep, unyielding self-love, and sweet grateful yielding to the hand of the universe. So soft, so careful, so much the teacher for those who ought to be taught. 

The passing forward, the pay it forward of every single scratch, every sting, every scar. Every method to undo, every dream undone. All the sugar making you sick, deathsick, can’t take away the pain. The pay-n. The pay-n forward of shame and secrets and stories from another language. 

The protection, the control, the self-protection, the self-control, the armor and the weapons of choice. The noise and the sweet, the rotting of teeth, the sword and the sheath, the gone too far. 

The voice in your head, the voice in your throat, the you that the universe expresses. A singular expression. A voice. 

The sound of learning and loss and the groan of lovemaking and lietelling. The leaky refuge of another ship. The lonely safety of following your star, being your captain, the push of children. The devil’s birthmark on your neck your deck, the cage of promises ajar.

The neck. The tendon and skin, the sin. The breathing within. The swallowing the shallow swallowing and the taste of purity and pausing to remember, to forget. Bring him to me.

Each climb a noose, every plan at loose, falling without end. Hanging to every word, every drag of the bow, making music in the empty peace, not wanting any soundtrack but our own, alone. 

The skulls and skullptures the souls and sculptures. The cheekbones, the deep sockets, the lips the hips the sunken trench of the lovelorn, the not. 

The sweat under sweaters the layers the wools the eyes the heathers. 

The rain in our umbrella, the amber Spaniard, the Danish dewdrop, the hair brushed from the face and tucked where the whispers outcrop.

The strings, the piles of strings, the lengths the wag of applause, the weave and the woven, the cleaved and the cloven, the open and closed in. 

A mouth full of lime, a Peruvian swine is a fish on a twine. Each certainty cooked in a citrusy stew. Each heart killed and fried. Each woman left behind when you died. Each child. Each chide. 

The saints gather maggots and feed them to sin, to kill sin from within. Each larvae, each embryo an echo of your soul and an echo of that one last note. The worm that dangles the hair that tangles, your fist contracting as you get the gist. And give the new list of demands and improvements. Pave, save, gave it all and do it all over again. A road to be ridden, a ribbon at the wrists, a cheap tie, a star you can touch. The unstoppable, the undroppable, the violin in the sea the youness in me. 

Your bladder at birth, your ladder of worth, the sales in his eyes and the bullshit and lies and his self-deception, and his spiraling replies.   

A straight line home, a desert alone. Asleep at night, dreams on the flight. A soup a tea a chocolate hot strawberry. Your face, knee lace the sacred and the sewn. A goose a goat a voyage alone. The creak of the sails in the windless candle moan. 

I remember that rainy night in the pool, the water milky and white where it curved in the dark. Every droplet that crashed from the abyss up above, a small storm from your past, steam off our skin, silenced cries from a dove.

You were so scared, so exposed, struggling with your swim cap to keep the water from your ears. What if it leaks in and whispers your fears? What about sight and sound, what about the route, the safest way, the ground? You tested the seal of you goggles, blinking new eyes. Where does this lead? Why can’t I see? What if you drop me? What happens to gravity?

Where were the ropes? Where were the stars? Where can I touch? Where are the feet? Why are there lanes? What is this square? What is this liquid? What lives down there?

What if your breath left your chest for good? What if the bird left the nest? Left his hood? Where is the dust and the dirt and the trees? Run faster, night is upon us, I can taste the chlorine.

I also remember that night at the sea. The moon like an anchor, the sea sequined and free. Your fears dropped gently like jeans on the sand. You knew where to find me. I was right in your hand.

You ran and you played, we were protected by time. The gold dusted shoreline under our feet held us together far from the heat. It was always the ocean crashing on rock. It was never a feather, it was never a flock.

The inland sea was the place you felt safe. Circles upon circles all locked with a gate. I never got in, I never did see. I climbed till I bled, I cried in my bed…everything about me was too scaled too gilled. Everything inside you wouldn’t ever be filled.

You believed I could live through the winter alone, under ice, underfed, undone, unknown.

But instead I dug deep and tunneling sand, I made my own canyon and found my own land. The waters here are peaceful and blue. The sky has its secrets. The foot has a shoe.

In the rain, in the pool, in the night, I was fooled. I thought I could be a new world for you. And adventure a journey with courage and leaps. I would hold you. I’ve got you. Put your arm around me. Hold your breath, hand on chest, three times give a squeeze.

But you disappeared to an island one week. You never returned, we never did speak. I grew up and grew old, you flew up and flew east. The gator, the clock, tick, tock, tink.

One of the toughest days will be the day you drive east. 

When I was barely cutting my wisdom teeth, I wrote my first adult short story, about a young woman who invents a better egg carton. The story is far from subtle and the writing is worse. Our hero, Jess, has an abusive mother and a younger brother she is determined to both protect and liberate. 

I reread the story today and imagine what I was attempting to communicate. The dialogue is trite and the imagery glares at the reader with amateur dread. I was at the beginning; I was a fool. Jess is an inventor, a scientist, a student of egg physics. Her invention is undoubtedly superior. But she has almost nowhere to go where her creation will be valued. 

The story is the story of every invention, every creation, and the likelihood that each of them will struggle to be meaningful in the context of market forces and product adoption. Each one will struggle to be seen, to be shared. Thus, the artist will inevitably fail to be seen as innovative because the existing hierarchies depend on the upholding of the status quo. 

Jess knows that eggs cannot be crushed when pressure is placed evenly on their pudgy sides; they are most vulnerable on their ends. She describes her product, called NEST (Nodular Egg Storage and Transport) as such: 

“The rubber, mushroom-shaped nodules equalize pressure while holding up to 36 eggs securely in place. NEST can float, invert without dropping a single fragile oval, stack higher than the inside of a warehouse, and is completely reusable. After weighing and handling, NEST protects the eggs while they are washed and oiled. I run my hand across its bulbous, contained surface, pressing the nodules into the base. They are firm and push back, a bed of insulated nails.”

The suffering, the breakthrough, the hope of a brighter future is contained in the idea of her younger brother. Named Eppe, he is her personal epiphany, her calling, her hatchling. He collects marbles and wears a leather headband with a feather because Jess has given him a fictional origin and an imaginary Native American father. 

Bringing stories to life is easy; protecting them and transporting then in a world that has heard a million stories before and is frankly, unimpressed, is a more treacherous enterprise. A short-sighted dairy distributor at a state fair yields unjust power, much like an editor, or an ill-timed act of cruelty from anyone in a position of power. You must keep creating, protecting, and transporting ideas. You must not be your cruelest audience. And you must do or not do anything you must. 

Please remember that you’re allowed to create. Anything that diminishes that act is simply not true. 

Only love, 

Nicole