on running away.

I go through certain phases where I can get kind of obsessed with certain poets. Anyways, right now it's Clementine Von Radics, and I just bought her book. I can't get enough of her.

She was kind enough to autograph the small homemade paperback copy of poems she mailed to me. I am silly enough to admit that it made me rather giddy.


Advice to Those Like Me, With Hearts Like Kindling

Darlings, sometimes love will come to you like a fire
to a forest. When it does, be braver than I was. Just leave.
Take only what you can carry. No tears. No second thoughts.
You have hands like tinder boxes, the smallest spark
will kill you.

Get in the car. Pour water on the maps. Avoid gas stations.
Don't look at the flames dancing in the rearview mirror.
Go to new cities, climb on rooftops, and slow dance with
your coldest memories. Wallpaper your home with every
dusty, desperate love letter you swore you'd never send.

Find a stranger with sharp edges and uncharted hips
Press your stories into their skin and forget you ever knew
his name. Just promise me you won't think of burning
or embers. Even when there is ash in your hair. Even when
there is smoke in your mouth.


There was this one time I went to a hairdresser my sophomore year of college. She gave me fringe bangs that day and I was thrilled because I thought that they were edgy and exciting and different, and goodness, I needed different that year (heartbreakingly, fringe bangs don't make your life that much more edgy, exciting, or different).

She also told me about how two years after her high school graduation, she ran away to San Francisco for a year with her best friend. I thought, "Forget the fringe bangs. I need to run away to San Francisco." For a split second, I was so sure that it would solve all my sophomore year problems.

I am an avoider sometimes, a kinda restless wanderer. I sometimes leave with no explanation at all, whether or not it has something to do with problems or love or possibility. With hands like tinder boxes, sometimes I think I'm afraid of what could happen if I stay too long. 

I leave, but it really has nothing to do with bravery.
Part of it was just because I could.
I could simply leave.
Shockingly easily.
Always.

I flit from place to goal to the unknown to what I've always thought I wanted. 
This poem makes me sad because I realize now that I have always chosen to leave
because I thought I was afraid of burning.
Now I'm afraid that maybe that wasn't what I was afraid of after all. 

Tell me that someday there will still be smoke in my mouth.
That I won't be able to wash the ash from my hair.
I would like to know that there was at least one thing that I couldn't just run away from. 
That I didn't run away from. 
That was powerful enough to make me stay. 

I think I would like that. 
I think love is supposed to be like that.