Take doors off their hinges.
Sometimes it’s a little dramatic to throw your shoe through a door, then step through the hole in the wood. And it’s a little weird to hold your pants up with a clothesline. Still, when it’s raining, mush through the sinkholes to the shed. Find your father clipping and crafting. Find him later in the basement cleaning and counting. That basement was built from nothing, the way everything else is. It’s one room, in one town. My father is a detailed man. I get my wood-chipped knees and high waist from the ideas that wander. Up the stairs, down the street. Six hours northeast to Portland? No. Tie string around your waist and carry a screwdriver in your pocket. Tear and tape, live just a little bit easier.
2. Fix your achy knees.
You wouldn’t know it’s there, off of Pohopoco drive. Gem of sunbeams over a waterfall creek. Hang a towel on the trees and sit below the rocks. Start with a whisper, book corners dipping into the cold. There is a point to that square cave curtained by quarry water. The deep pools that float your shoes downstream. Maybe you’re meant to go get them. Skip through the wooded meadow, stripping naked in the parking lot. That ache beneath your skin to be seen. Or known. Replace doors with the park ranger’s map. Slap the car roof twice and tighten the friendship bracelets around your wrists. Be the somebody that your physical wellbeing matters to.
3. Scratch words from car windows.
If buildings could talk, did I ever wonder what they would say, my dad once asked. Between construction and abandonment. Red lights and Philly traffic. Watch that building go through continuous stages of decay. What of humanity has that building seen? What stages of the city has this building lived through? Ask the same about trees, mountains, the ground, the dirt that’s burying what the world wishes to forget. Stories of life that will never be written into existence. Limited to what we can read and wonder. Find that you are not a writer, if you are not a reader. Love-hate relationships with the page and our words. Creation and recreation. Paper is not one to have rules and regulations. Windows do not watch for top notch quality. Your finger tastes the color of your thoughts.
4. Recognize the idea of being…
My sister, the sun, a tube top summer. Rings on almost every finger. Layers of necklaces and wristfuls of handmade bracelets that say things like walk my way and bury me (in violet, of course). She’s found herself in 50’s music. All heart-eyed and love notes. Me, looking for what’s right. My bracelets say shelter and storm. There’s a haven, a memory in a rainy basement. Those four walls built around possibility. Him, a dark room of soft hands. The bar, it’s warm, comfortable. Piercing familiarity as elbows touched in a goodbye. Perceive the world in individuals, and locations. Parallel experiences left to be just that. Or, shatter the kaleidoscope into the Playland parking lot. Walk ten minutes and watch them shake hands on a beach in Rye.
5. Suck life from between your toes.
Your toes are roots, and the smile on your face is fake. How to un-fuck this fucked up place? Drink a spiked lemonade and watch a concert recording from the show you drove three hours to see with your sister. Chalk your tears up to the blood and sugar you tasted that day. The stores that felt broken into; the parking lot that felt like a city. See why this is all worth it? Get carded at the mall. Buy coffee at an I-95 rest stop. Baltimore was never, and will never be home, but tonight it was. And tonight it is. Toe-tickling and hair-raising. You are the moment when the lights go dark and the first notes play. Play into roots extending into whatever ground.
6. See Maine, Finally.
There’s an Evergreen in your head wishing itself into a lighthouse off the Atlantic. It’s beaconing a safe haven to middle school girls afraid they might have to stay in their hometown forever. Escape and explore. Two words spinning around the harbor. One family, one town, four generations. Dream while you are awake. Cry when you’re not. Keep the tears trapped in that landlocked state. Think of Maine to remind yourself you don’t have to live forever. Escape to the misty cabin waiting for you. Hang your sweatshirts on the dark wood. It’s too close. It’s not grey enough. Let harmonies align into you and pretend that the scratches on your stomach aren’t longing for Eastern White Pines. Wonder. Escape and Explore. Await the ambiguous future. Circles will roll, and spin, and bubble. Don’t let the words lost forever mean anything to you. Maine is still there. Maine is still waiting.