It’s not ok. But it is. Forgive me. Or don’t. I know it was a miscalculation that mercury is ever in retrograde, but such a beautiful one. Sometimes we trust our eyes or guts and they’re wrong. It happens all the time. Both/And. Both/And.

I’m not being profound. I’m being basic AF. It’s ok.

It’s ok to be broken and triumphant. Beaten in the dirt and punching up.

There are lame words for this last year, but I can’t ever, ever shut up.

It’s ok to walk around, bleeding. It’s ok to scream during your blood eagle. I mean to be as gruesome as this year has been. As so many before and so many that will follow. Lame, lame words here. But it just keeps gutting me. I keep shouting but and just.

None of it was. Those we’ll never see again is constant and this is painfully trite. We feel it.

Those we’ll never see again. Deaths for which we were not present. Mass graves. Hands and faces gone. Shooting. Bombs. Missiles and rockets. Mud in a mouth is never fair. We vomit, and march, and cling. The children, the air, the waves.

I’m crying again.

I spent all of yesterday with the trees around my sandstone bowl, and the paper across which I drag my ink. Today I will walk with nothing but clouds.

That’s not true. I will take food and I will eat. I will hug those who are left to me. Masks are not new.

Clutch and clutch again until your fingers find purchase even after they are broken.

It’s ok to smear in a pile with all those who are not ever ok.

No more drafts. Just hit send.