Clover Jay

Sometimes life is stifling. For years I forgot to look outward, I focused inward on myself and on the rotten things spiraling around in my life. I focused on the small bad bits and forgot to look at how beautiful the whole was. I don't know what broke me out of that, but whatever / whoever it was (my guess is that it was a team of people and experiences), thank you. Thank you so much. My life is so much better now that it is instinct to look outward and see the joy and beauty of the world. To say 'astounding' to the little things, instead of 'well that's just my luck'. It feels like finally being whole.

I do math when I don't want to think. When I need a objective goal (solve for x) instead of a subjective goal (write some pretty words). When I need everything I do to be simply right or simply wrong. When I can't handle not knowing if anything I do is good enough. Because it is either good enough (I got it right) or not good enough (I got it wrong), and if I got it wrong, I can always try again and fix my mistakes.

There is a chest at my Mom's house in which we keep our games. It is wooden, worn from years of use. On the top there is a sharpie mark where my mother scribbled when she was young. But she is not young anymore, and neither is the chest, but both are still here. Both are still surviving.

Have you ever stopped to think about pencil shavings?
          They're so uniquely beautiful. Sliced thin like cucumber salad, little uneven shapes shed from the tip of something used to capture words and images. But it's a little bit bittersweet, because these little pencil shavings have to be removed, destroyed, before the pencil can work its magic. I feel like I could very easily make that into a metaphor, but I'm not quite sure for what.

There are trees outside my window and wisps of clouds floating across the sky. I am here. I am real. There is a crystal hanging in front of the window, but there is not enough light to refract into tiny rainbows across the room. I am here. I am real. There is the drawing of a bird sitting near me, that I did with me day off today. I am here. I am real. There is music in my ears. I am here. I am real.
          <3

I was planning out which poems to put in for the one i cannot love and I needed an abbreviation to put on the poems that I was going to put in the collection and anyways apparently for the one i cannot love abbreviates to ftoicl. Which is for some reason such a sweet word. Ftoicl. Ftoicl. Ftoicl. It sounds like toady for some reason. Mushroomy. Almost witchy? Ftoicl.
          Why is that so funny to me?

Um.
          Well this is awkward.
          Let's all gather around the crackling campfire, fellas, I have some news! I guess. There are 34 of you plus me. Do we have enough chairs? I don't know. I will sit on the grass. We do not have marshmallows, I apologize for the inconvenience.
          Anyways, the announcement is, I am entering "for the one i cannot love" in a . . . contest thing? It's called the Rose Awards, if that rings a bell. I don't know if I'll be chosen. I just was required to give a shout out. It's pretty cool. It's on @Mystical_tinker 's page if you'd like to check it out.
          So. That ends the announcement. You can stay here, if you'd like, though, the fire will be warm for a while.

Hi dear...
          We just found that u had some books related to poetry going on ..we are rose awards for all genres and we were hoping if u would like to participate ...

I just finished cataloging some of my more recent poems, and total in google slides I have 209 poems cataloged. And I'm definitely missing some.

I can't decide if I'm bored or I think that the snow falling outside is really pretty and hypnotizing because I keep looking at the snow but also I just really want to like chat with somebody about nothing at all because I'm bored and I've banned myself from YouTube because it was sucking my time and I have nothing to do so yeah if somebody's online and also has nothing to do it would be lovely if we could just chat for like five million years or until lunch or before lunch or like for five minutes would be okay too honestly.
          Um.
          Okay I could go overthink this and I probably made some typos because I keep glancing out the window at the snow but I'm just going to post this as is because I'm intelligent like that.