I Am, Of Course, Romanticizing;

We Had No One Else To Learn This From- None Of Our Parents Were Shining Examples Of Relationship Success- So We Learned This From Each Other: When Someone You Love Needs You To, You Can Get A Hold Of Your Five-alarm Temper, Get A Hold Of The Shapeless Things That Scare You Senseless, Act Like An Adult Instead Of The Cro-magnon Teenager You Are, You Can Do A Million Things You Never Saw Coming.

Real Isn't What They Try To Tell You. Time Isn't. Grown-ups Hammer Down All These Markers, Bells, Schedules, Coffee-breaks, To Stake Down Time So You'll Start Believing It's Something Small And Mean, Something That Scrapes Flake After Flake Off Of Everything You Love Till There's Nothing Left; To Stake You Down So You Don't Lift Off And Fly Away, Somersaulting Through Whirlpools Of Months, Skimming Through Eddies Of Glittering Seconds, Pouring Handfuls Of Hours Over Your Upturned Face.

Regardless Of The Advertising Campaigns May Tell Us, We Can't Have It All. Sacrifice Is Not An Option, Or An Anachronism; It's A Fact Of Life. We All Cut Off Our Own Limbs To Burn On Some Altar. The Crucial Thing Is To Choose An Altar That's Worth It And A Limb You Can Accept Losing. To Go Consenting To The Sacrifice.

I Had Been Right: Freedom Smelled Like Ozone And Thunderstorms And Gunpowder All At Once, Like Snow And Bonfires And Cut Grass, It Tasted Like Seawater And Oranges.

I'm Still Very Much In The Apprentice Stage Of Writing. I Read Somewhere That You Need To Write A Million Words Before You Know What You're Doing - So I'm Headed That Way, But I'm Nowhere Near There.