The fool loves completely.
He stands with arms wide open, hoping to give away hugs for free.
He does not consider this work, he believes this is necessary.
Believes someone has to put a positive spin on the term arms dealer.
So he gives out hugs for free.
He stands with arms open like invitations to a party.
No need to rsvp, you are cordially invited here right now.
No need to disavow a need to be held.
Weld your arms around his shoulders, glue your cheek to his chest, test his commitment if you must.
The fool will never let you go, nor will he keep you forever.
He will be yours until you say so.
He doesn't know how to hold on.
He doesn't stay long enough to see if the boomerang comes back.
He doesn't pack lightly.
He will be first in line for the party of his demise, but will surprise even death by leaving early.
He was raised with no sense of direction.
If it comes down to it he will fall up.
He will rattle a cup looking for change, because he can't stand the sameness.
He will dismiss the simple questions.
Don't ask him how it's going.
He doesn't want to tell you what's new.
He is deaf to weather reports, and blind to cute pictures or your dog cat or baby.
He will however look at your fish.
He will listen to and record screaming lobsters, that he will then remix into extremely dope but haunting beats to be blasted through car stereos in the parking lots of seafood restaurants.
Don't question his methods.
The fool doesn't know how to stop, but he is expected to understand in the instant his hand is let go.
He is expected to know that the tiny kindnesses were just pretend.
He is expected to transcend his own feelings and step aside to make way for the something better that so suddenly came along.
The justification plays in his mind like a theme song for a bad cereal.
Silly creature,
love is for humans.
He smiles as his ears become garbage bins, filling with the throw away advice that people always give, but never seem to take.
His body becomes the lake into which others will throw the stone of his heart, hoping it will sink beyond rescue.
Even in this he will glue his hands together, and wish you an unrelenting happiness.
He will plant a kiss upon each open wound where love left him to bleed.
Each kiss a seed blooming into a wreathe that he will rest upon the headstone of the grave, where he stands in solitude to pay respect to whatever this was.
He will do this because that's what he does
His love does not end.
He will bend it back to the beginning, wrapping the finish line around your waist like a belt, just so you can feel what he felt when he held you.
When he knew nothing of ownership.
When he refused to slip chains around you because he knew then, as again he knows now, how obedience is only beautiful when it is given.
He will be the nail driven in to the coffin of your doubt.
He will tell you the truth about this race you've been running.
The only finish line is death, and whether hurried, whether slow and steady, ready or unwilling, one day you must win
Stand as still as a mountain if you must.
Your finish line is running towards you, so smile and trust that we, all of us, will arrive at the same destiny.
For now you are the inventor of your history.
So be creative, live like the world around you is your workshop, swap out the parts that don't work for the ones that do.
Build through the hurt.
There will be hurt.
There will be disappointment and guilt.
There will be monuments built for the sole purpose of celebrating all of the awful that must exist simply to give us beautiful contrast.
The fool will walk past all of it.
He will split atoms with his heels, as if each new step forward reveals a tiny chaos left tumbling in his wake.
He will break himself open and offer up his trust, knowing it is the only gift worth giving, that the hardest part of living, is watching what others will do with it.
But the fool believes.
The fool believes that there are those who would keep it bastioned within the heavy chambers of their marrow, sacrificing their own bones for its protection, that the risk of finding one honest connection in the midst of bedlam is what makes the hurt worth it.
There will be days when he is spent, days when his heart becomes the low rent housing that others use to store their back up plans.
His life will be the piece of string between two tin cans where the lovers perform the high wire act of happiness.
He will not consider this unfair.
He will refuse his instinct to care less, the first one to say "guess it wasn't in the cards" will get the obvious kicked out of them, and he will lean in to tell them.
It wasn't in the dice either.
It wasn't in the dominoes god I don't believe in knows.
It wasn't in the air.
It was beyond atmosphere.
It was everywhere all at once.
It was so beautiful, people will forever question if it even existed.
It will be listed in between Bigfoot and Loch Ness.
People will press science for an answer that science can never give.
It will live in the imaginations of the foolish, those few willing still to wish upon stars and believe even in the smallest percentage of possibility.
It will be hope, and you can't have it until you're willing to admit that there are times when the only honest answer is "
I don't know".
The fool will go through life at the same time life goes through him.
He will pour himself past the brim, and swim through the mess he has made, knowing that he played his part the only way he could.
That he stood still when asked to move.
He did this to prove that the only things that belong to us are the choices we choose.
That we lose everything by risking nothing.
That we bring about our own ending by pretending away our pain, as if we were somehow above it.
The fool steps blindly, reminding us we cannot simply bear what is necessary, we must love it.
