I cry while I drive, grieve while I eat,

blubbering with peanut-butter in my mouth.

Who has time for melodrama in this economy?

I can’t care for myself. If I had a child,

I would plant him on someone else’s doorstep

and watch him wax like a moon from afar.

I say words just to see what happens.

Snickerdoodle. Bioluminescent. Lollygag.

It all sounds fake to me, like how pet fish

don’t recognize their own names.

Who has time for wonder?.

Whitman said we contain multitudes,

but I’ve scraped my guts clean and found

only a bloated god coughing up dirty water.

Who has time to own their body?

We can only make macaroni art out of our parts.

The first time I felt loneliness I imagined running away

with a bandana full of food tied to a string.

Of course, this would make me lonelier,

but the thing about loneliness is that it tortures you

until you believe the only way out of its chokehold

is dying. So you tighten its grip.

My favorite bodies live without me,

slurping up buttered noodles

without remembering they’re my favorite meal.

What’s the point of anything if there’s no one

to share it with? I have tried carrots. Peaches. Milk.

All things enticing to convince those around me

to come closer. There’s a reason I appreciate echoes.

As a child, I liked playing Marco Polo in the pool

because someone always called back.

That was the rule. I was always answered.

"The quality of being rare is what makes something valuable. Anything that is plentiful has very little worth." -Grant Cardone

But what of water, or air, or sunlight? For many, these things are often plentiful. Are water, air, and sunlight worthless to us for whom they are not rarities? Of course not. These things can never be valueless. We depend on them for survival. Only to one who does not value life could any of these three, water, air, and sunlight, ever bear no value.

Perhaps using life's necessities was a cop-out answer. Let's explore something that we can live without, though, I would argue, still is valuable - Unconditional love. The defining characteristic of unconditional love is that it is ceaseless, plentiful. That said, unconditional love does seem to be rare. Despite being perpetual, it is a rather unique occurrence nonetheless. This is where the scarcity lies. Unconditional love might be an ever-flowing tap, but there are very few such taps in the world. Furthermore, these taps generally only flow for one person.

I am leery to say that this scarcity is actually what affords unconditional love value, however. It is not the quality of being rare (though also uniquely plentiful), that makes unconditional love valuable. I believe it would be valuable even if everyone had one or even many ever-flowing love taps. Perhaps, love is simply valuable in and of itself. This might be true. But there is something special about unconditional love. If you are only loved dependent on X conditions, I think that love has different meaning, and thus value, than unconditional love. I suspect that common intuition would agree with me.

One might argue that value being derived from scarcity or plenty can only be ascribed to physical objects. I'd listen to such an argument, though I am not sure I would agree with it. In fact, Mr. Cardone was actually using the opening statement as a segue to say that excuses, non-physical things, are worthless due to their overabundance.

Have I solved anything? I'm not sure. Can the labels rare and plentiful even be ascribed to a thing such as unconditional love, a mere construct? Perhaps you will know better than I. As you consider this, call to mind the love in your life. Regardless of the answer to the above question, I invite you to let gratitude fill your heart. The source of love's value is of less importance than the lone fact that it is.

“My battery is low and it’s getting dark.” -Opportunity

The Mars Rover died. I had lost my Valentine

by choice. I had been crying over everything:

dead bumblebees, spilled orange soda, meandering machines.

There is something ugly about the numbness—

this lack of care for my own body.

I match with men who tell me I’m pretty

even though they’ve only seen me in 2D.

I want to kiss them even though I feel nothing

when we touch. I question what is wrong with me.

They said it was a dust storm that killed Opportunity,

but I bet it was loneliness. The thing about zeitgeists

are their singularity—the solitude in such spirit.

I broke up with her because I didn’t love her

anymore. If I was cruel, I would have stayed.

It was my first February that I lived alone

after four years. There was so much static

as Opportunity passed—I imagine the snap crackle

pop. The sudden stop. Maybe there was nothing

left to say. I could never survive in space—

all that pinging again and again.

I like to tell myself everyone had their list of ways to die

but I believe it was just me

and my own imagination

the catalog was long:

pills and pools

blades and baths

a jump

some rope

if I could find any

but I never killed myself

and I believed I never killed myself

because I didn’t have guts

grit to me was the ability to write one last letter

but what really kept me from the dream

was the mundanity of it all

the everlasting question:

who would drink the milk if I was gone?

it was like living inside a grave the suffocation

growling in my stomach as I ate eggs off a paper plate

and told myself this was it I would never believe in god again

the bracelet rash the

personalities the dodgeball

game

in UNO I always drew

four in war I always lost

I dreamed of it for years after the sweat

and metal beds the grayness of it all

how I fell apart like the continents

how much I wanted to die

and I rationalized I behaved

differently I swallowed my medicine

and earned enough trust to remove it

from under lock and key

I didn’t think of cutting myself once

I actually wanted a bath

now in my mind I try

to make this place beautiful imagine

the nurses as patient crickets the yogurt

as liquid gold the white walls as rose petals

and I a bug inside the flower trying

to feed on what was good

"Not understanding that you’re a horrible person, doesn’t make you less of a horrible person.”

So much of us is lost to the bad,

and maybe that is why bugs bite us.

Maybe math can’t derive the root of darkness, either.

No one would be washed up

if they wanted to.

No one would shatter glass

or ruin a rock-opera on purpose.

Right?

What even is forgiveness.

Is it looming over old selves

like bad moons, or helium balloons,

crossing our fingers in the hopes that

soon we will crack our corrupt cocoons?

There are places for people like us,

but we can’t all fit on a spaceship.

Besides, which one of us

would be the shepherd?

We fuck up, but the people

still love us. And they won’t stop.

And it tears us apart.

Because what can we do

but say thank you.

What can we do

but promise to try harder

the next day, even though we know

we will act the same.

Funny how cruelty can be love:

my mother plucked abdomens off fireflies

to fashion earrings for us to wear at night.

We would play baseball in the backyard

with our ears blinking patterns of light.

I learned not to cry at their touch on my skin.

That summer, we saw the first photos

of Saturn’s rings: braided, icy spokes

supposedly prettier in person.

Saturn didn’t blink green like we did.

Our bodies glowed go go go

even when we wanted to stop

so we kept our hands in our mitts

and quit only when the flashes faded,

scared of what our mother might make next.

When the cicadas came, we imagined

their shells as toys on the shelf: finger puppets,

toe bands, fragile slinkys we never wanted to touch.

Tell me I didn’t ruin your childhood.

The TV is muted. The storm is distant.

Even the verbs aren’t working.

No clatter, no crackle, no sound.

No memories to beat with the broom

or the belt. What’s left feeds sobs

into the throat and sweat into the hair.

If the dog wasn’t dead, it would lick the air

and beg for more attention from our locked eyes.

Dry mouth outstrips my lips.

I am left with nothing but a nod. A lie.

You are good. Good needs redefined.

The moon stops following you

down the highway like it used to.

You both know better.

You pick up a baby bird

and call yourself a savior,

you killer.

How many marshmallows

can you fit in your mouth

without crying?

Your parents call you

by the wrong name once or twice.

You forget yourself, too.

The wind no longer whistles,

it whispers. You notice nuance,

shadows.

So what if the rumors are true?

You swallow watermelon seeds

anyway.

If you jump, you will fall.

You shut off the TV.

Try again later.