Rhyme and Reason
I could think of words with rhyme and reason, but I don’t. Some pages are words already spent and sent because nothing is ever new, especially when they’re rhyme and reason. Some pages are words never meant to see light after the page is turned, especially when they take their turn at rhyme and reason. And some pages never become pages at all. The words come too fast, the thoughts too slow. Words skid by, unwilling to wait their turn to be more than obtuse and ephemeral, unwilling to become rhyme and reason. I force noise into my head, listening to songs from thirty fucking years ago to fill vacancies left behind by impatient words that slip away believing themselves capable of being poetry, impatient with the prose that needs time to fill and carry the thought. My thirty-years-ago Then forms my Now, injecting thought and rhythm to distract the self-parts into a congregation of all the me’s stopping the words that make us whole. I would take any words but any-words don’t want me. They would rather taunt me with the blankness of this page because all the me’s know I want you to have all the things I wish I could be, knowing that even rhyme and reason are just as useless as the any-words. But at least the any-words understand that page after page are only iterations of Let Me Love You, Let Me Love You; Let. Me. Love. You. Rhyme and reason demand proof. Rhyme and reason think Nietzsche is still relevant. Any-words want to drink martinis with Tesla on his deathbed and have olives stuffed with gorgonzola cheese for dinner.
Once upon a time, there was a notebook. It was made from recycled bicycle parts and thick, creamy paper that pens dream about. A notebook made to stop the bleeding ink, the bleeding thoughts, and the bleeding heart that only found release through my bleeding eyes. It was thick and dense. Its weight comforted my hands, readying me, assuring me it could hold the weight of the words that needed escape. This notebook was waiting for me, ready and able, rhyme and reason aside, to hold the self-parts that needed their wounds given to a story meant to be repeated and repaired with each re-write and each new experience that teased out a new telling of LetMeLoveYou. It took five years to fill. I skimmed through the pages; wondering who was the prose, who was the poetry, and would I ever be capable of rhyme and reason that could gather and fill the thought. I let the pages soothe my hands before I closed it for the last time. I made myself a dry martini and sipped it while I watched the notebook burn. It felt like another five years before it turned to ash. It took twenty more years before I forced myself to say I am a writer. It took two more years to be published, get a nod from a fancy lit mag I had no business submitting to, and write a book-length manuscript that still feels unfinished. My questions and questioning haven’t changed. The answers still vacillate. But I finally understand that slippery any-words and half-filled thoughts are their own rhyme and reason, and I’m grateful for the 10,001 ways to say, let me love you.
