Both the light and the dark have been friends to me

for years I've slept with the moon in my bed and my platform boots out, ready and waiting.

Matheo JBT

For years I have defined myself by my creative output.

I’ve always written into the thing:

what if I started this new project, or made this one, or created a new space for the holding of that nebulous and indefatigable endeavor?

What if I marched on against the thing, holding my art splayed out in my hands,

or else put on a golden fucking pedestal so that to anyone around me, it couldn’t be denied:

I am not a human being.

I am a human (in the) making.

and if I put forth everything within me

to help make (mine) (others’) (the collective) pain

a little more palatable, even if I can’t quite make it pretty. What then?

if sometimes I feel things so intensely

that it’s as if shards of glass are being slid beneath my skin

and at others I’m out for the night, I’ve got my steely-pretty sparkles on as armor, and I simply don’t want to go home. What then?

if I’ve only ever been interested in what has threatened to consume me—

if I don’t know how to offer half my heart,

if it’s always been all or nothing. What then?

Both the light and the dark have been friends to me; and for years I’ve slept with the moon in my bed and my platform boots out, ready and waiting.

I’m still trying to figure out what that means.

I’m still trying to figure out what it all means.