1.) the first person you see when you leave your house deserves a smile. so does the second. so do all of them, until you get to someone who makes you feel dirty, like you've done something wrong, even though it's not you, it's them. smile at them too, but tell yourself it will never happen again.
2.) walk into the ocean naked. let fish make homes in the palms of your hands, let barnacles grow in your collarbones. taste salt on your lips. this will happen again, so don't bother telling yourself it won't.
3.) allow birds to take up residence in your mailbox. you won't be able to get mail, but no one writes to you anyways, besides the birds. they like to leave passable imitations of shakespeare's sonnets on your doorstep.
4.) on the night of the full moon, stay inside and do nothing. the full moon doesn't do shit for this kind of thing.
5.) plant orange seeds in a sidewalk crack the next morning at precisely 7:22 am. step on the crack, break someone's back. they made you feel dirty a long time ago. they'll never do it again.
6.) water your orange tree with all the tears that fell on your last birthday, not necessarily ones you cried. it's not really a tree, not yet. it never will be.
7.) wait until it sprouts and then crush it. kill it. your belly is swollen with guilt, and water, mostly, but not new life. it doesn't matter, because it wouldn't have lived long anyways. tell yourself you'll never do it again.
8.) repeat the process any time someone asks you to.
it makes you wonder
when you pass people on the street
what was the last promise they broke?
YOU ARE READING
sonder
Poesiasonder - n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own. they will go home to parents or husbands or wives or children or maybe just an empty room, and they will think about their problems the same way...
