Let The Blade Do The Work

I've always been skeptical about people with a rampant work ethic. How much of the work is actually just reinforcing the ethics? Work ethic has a tendency for taking credit for all the best things I've created outside of office hours and sometimes way past my bedtime. Usually, it's just circumstance of desire latching onto the right words at their right time, regardless of what I've done or not done to inspire it. Investing in my desires is something I rarely regret, but inspiration isn't a controlled process. I'm good at gathering a storm, but that's not the kind of thing you want to rush. Patience is the unsung hero of that cultivation. I could never get the timing right on the harvest, though. My best sentiments are always plucked on the verge of ripe and rotting. The bite rarely sinks like I want it to, the sweetest parts always escaping down my chin.

Tossing anything into the Earth is a spooky gamble now. You never know what it's going to spit out at you, unfurling at an unseen pace. All sorts of things bloom even in darkness, using whatever it can to take root. So do you and I. It is tricky to try and be a bigger person when my entire my life, all I've learned is how to make myself smaller. On days when either seems impossible, I evacuate my frustrations through a forceful exhale. It feels very stupid. But people who seem to know what they are doing say it helps. The heaviest air flattens into steel, shooting out my mouth. That's how I can tell it's working. When I'm sharp, I don't have to push so hard. When I'm so sharp, I don't even feel the cut. Let the blade do the work. It's easy to expedite whatever relief there is to have when you sever whatever's in your way before you overthink its complexities. Hastiness makes for clean cuts but not always precise ones, and casualties are inevitable.

But you can only cut away so much until you're faced with an emptiness of your own making. Vast expenses tend to bring comfort or anxiety. Whatever you fill it with is your choice but I wouldn't let the vastness decide for you. I gather everything I've ever tried to cultivate, hoping it will thrive in the space I've carved out. Hoping it doesn't need much more than what I have left, even if that's just the desire to see them bloom. Even if it's just the love I couldn't find a home for.

Love sustains a lot but not when it's hurled into the void on the edge of a blade. There's an etiquette for it that I've only learned by watching others. I'm getting better at it. I imagine all the ways I want to be loved and I try them out on other people to picture how nice it must feel. Like a ritual that demands reciprocity,
I'm planting future spells. You don't have to love anyone to do it, but it's much more effective when you do.

Meanwhile, I've been gnawing on my own heart, using the wrong utensils for the wrong course. It doesn't feel the way people say it's supposed to. I guess it's because you can't love from the teeth (or the tongue, for that matter). You cannot love from the teeth for the same reason you can't unravel a cobweb. The more you do, the more of a mess it becomes. Besides. Love was not meant to be prettily portioned out on fine china to entice your unmet hunger. It only grows colder the longer you pause to admire it.