UP TO AND INCLUDING HER LIMITS

Authority issues. Authority issues! I can’t work with editors who are themselves poor writers.

For reference: http://gizmodo.com/why-astronauts-were-banned-from-drinking-wine-in-outer-1513304233

Hello from this new and hostile  planet, where I’m thirsting for a sip of contraband parabolic sherry and preoccupied entirely with you and your little daily miracles. I’ve been taking the universe and its physics very personally, and I believe we are its newest constellation–two points in a story with a beginning but no end, suspended in a fragile and contingent balance with all this dust between us. You are there, and I am here, with eyes heavy though less than kissable, rings around them to match the black ring inside my lips and the restless dirt on my teeth. I’m not being hyperbolic this time–I’ve finally figured out the difference between “hyperbolic” and “parabolic,” which lately has exclusively meant “nauseating” in the context of practice space flight and sherry. Seriously, wine from a tube? More important/less rhetorical question: when you come here, will this finally feel like home? We won’t be able to do any of the normal things, like stepping onto the balcony in nothing but sweaters and underwear; the climate is inhospitable to the parts of your ass that peek out of either side of any underwear worth wearing.There are thorns everywhere, and dust that blows and sticks to your lipstick with no regard for the fact that you’ve prioritized putting on lipstick over putting on pants. Still, I just want to drink and smoke and spit at the ambiguous horizon with you, and think of what becomes possible when heat is invisible light.

You are alotted only so much energy in a day, week, lifetime. Your challenge is to resist the temptation to waste that energy on pettiness, fear, pride, self-pity, self-harm. Use it to move onward and outward (Use it to steal from your favorite poets without citations). Use it to write run-on sentences, and know where semicolons are appropriate, and know when a comma splice isn’t a comma splice, and do everything else that matters to you here and now. Use it to glide past those who waste their energy on the scrutinization and judgement of others. Let them win today; defeat them by waking up and thriving tomorrow. If in the morning it all feels like too much, pour yourself another cup of coffee and exhale. Inhale earthy mischief and opportunity, the satisfaction of a bit of stolen energy–let it raise your chin, lower your shoulders and lead you into another day. Today, like yesterday and tomorrow, holds no inherent promise, only room for you to stretch your presence, purpose, and pace.