The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Love and selfishness are always going to be the same thing for him. The sullen looks, the embittered twist of the mouth, the persistently young quality to his voice and face -- he needs and rejects that need. He's only now learned what it is to give in gracefully, or that inwardly caving in isn't structural weakness so much as natural inevitability. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Falling apart can be a force. People do it all the time. Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
And then they put themselves back together, which is more than a mountain can say after an avalanche. He knows, if things work out and he does his part right, this can work for him. He knows he'll have help (suspicious, always, he won't touch Helena's ring more often than he needs to; his hands smart with the fire he keeps wringing out from somewhere inside him, his heart presses bruisingly against his bones).
He's still alive, and it's with love and selfishness that he's begun to have faith. This is not a war. He is done with wars. This is reassemblage. They will pick up these pieces, they will cradle Liz and Eileen in dissolving arms. He has been this tired for a long time, and maybe he really lives here in his head, not in a sick child's dream but the snug charred hollow into which the people in his life reach and put a cool hand on his forehead.--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
Fever dream: he thinks briefly of his mother, and how there's less than nothing between them anymore, like an inverted Walter. Did you ever dream of this, mom? It's okay with me if you didn't.
It's a secret he wishes he could share with Warren, but it doesn't work that way, and sometimes, these things work better if he's alone.
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Love and selfishness are always going to be the same thing for him. The sullen looks, the embittered twist of the mouth, the persistently young quality to his voice and face -- he needs and rejects that need. He's only now learned what it is to give in gracefully, or that inwardly caving in isn't structural weakness so much as natural inevitability. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Falling apart can be a force. People do it all the time. Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
And then they put themselves back together, which is more than a mountain can say after an avalanche. He knows, if things work out and he does his part right, this can work for him. He knows he'll have help (suspicious, always, he won't touch Helena's ring more often than he needs to; his hands smart with the fire he keeps wringing out from somewhere inside him, his heart presses bruisingly against his bones).
He's still alive, and it's with love and selfishness that he's begun to have faith. This is not a war. He is done with wars. This is reassemblage. They will pick up these pieces, they will cradle Liz and Eileen in dissolving arms. He has been this tired for a long time, and maybe he really lives here in his head, not in a sick child's dream but the snug charred hollow into which the people in his life reach and put a cool hand on his forehead.--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
Fever dream: he thinks briefly of his mother, and how there's less than nothing between them anymore, like an inverted Walter. Did you ever dream of this, mom? It's okay with me if you didn't.
It's a secret he wishes he could share with Warren, but it doesn't work that way, and sometimes, these things work better if he's alone.