Loving

To love even the dirty eraser which smears dark marks where there was meant to be nothing. To love even the birthmark too faint to call a birthmark. To love even the sick swallow with its jagged edges. Not to feel gratitude for wellness when you're sick––to remind yourself to acknowledge the well––no, not that. To find expression in the cough. That purging is a communion with the opposite, the antipodes, the tensions and the upside-downs. To love even the rotten fruit and the liquid at the bottom of the compost. To love hair after it's come off your head. When it's as dirty and common as dust. To furnish a painting with a gold necklace and locks of your own hair for hair and flakes of skin and lips, to make it real. What does it really take to make it real? Sometimes I put makeup on clay busts and that feels real. To engage as superficially with the artificial as I do with myself. Sometimes I scratch an inanimate surface as if it were itchy just to see how alive I can make it seem to me. Petting, a caress, a kiss, can only make it so alive. It feels much more real when you scratch at it like a healing wound. To love the crumbs under the refrigerator. To love a dull knife. As a child, I had a hamster, and sometimes I would make him miniature versions of regular food. Tiny pancakes, out of hamster, friendly ingredients, cucumber, sliced tea, sandwiches, little oat cupcakes, whatever it was. I still have dreams about neglecting animals, forgetting about them for weeks. I used to embroider flowers on my elementary school backpacks. That's a lie. I never did that. To love the lie. To never chop off Pinocchio's nose, even when it was too heavy for him to stand, even when it's wait forced him into the sky, shooting upward like a reverse tree, the branch of him becoming larger than buildings, larger than life. To love him even then.