life’s little cliches, the epilogue
**dedicated to fulminous, on his 26th birthday. thanks for being a warrior.**
love hurts. sometimes we wish we didn’t love as hard as we do – we’d hurt less, wouldn’t we. sometimes we barely know when to walk away, to let go, and even when we do, we keep looking over our shoulders at the thing we love, at the thing we’re letting go. love bloody stinks. we’ll all keep coming back for more, but there’s that last moment when it just stings and pulls and tugs and drags and you yell, that’s IT! ENOUGH! i will resign myself to catladydom. you know it isn’t true. but if feels nice to say it.
things never go as planned. you can hope and believe and trust and have faith and count chickens and it won’t really matter on the battlefield. and things you’d hoped for, little pieces of feathered hope, they float slowly down until they’re unrecognizable on the ground. but like a recent amputee, you keep grasping for them – here was a road trip we’d talked about, here was a weekend we’d spend together, here was a meal i wanted to cook, here were my cutest underwear, tucked in a drawer for a special night, here was a bed, here was a towel, here were little dreams nestled all over new york. and you have to remind yourself the arm isn’t there, the plans are smudged and unreadable.
you’ll always have your friends. people who take days off work with you, to sit in the park and mull over romances and heartaches while tugging at springy green grass and watching children play. people who call you twice as often as they usually do, because they know it’s rough out there. people who buy you drinks and know when to change the subject to something ridiculously funny. people who let you cry – in public, on the phone, on their favorite shirt. people who make you ‘wallowing in misery’ mix CDs but know when to come to your apartment and wallow with you. people who let you crash on their couch because you don’t want to be alone. people who rally for you and sing your praises. people that love you when you don’t feel like loving yourself. and people who’ll offer to fight your battles, knowing full well you have the strength to fight them yourself. friends.

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