Our eyes fixate on the mess of stars and call them a mess when in reality that mess you are calling a mess is truly the entire work of someone's sorry life who saw a mess and called it stars. We make excuses for the good not being good enough. I am only here to buy this milk and those eggs but while I am waiting I will criticize you on my screen. Silently. And this will be my life's work. The stars of you should be a mess and I might make you believe it, too. That mess is now mine and I am angry you no longer look like the stars.

You spend days, months, years, working toward this one thing. And then you get that one thing. And you find yourself dusting off compliments as if they were condemnations from the people who love you because you got your. One thing. The seams of my perception sewn so tightly the sound of your compliment could condemn an angel. If the car stopped in the most beautiful place on earth you would get out and you would push the car somewhere hideous just to say you pushed that car 300 miles. What comes next? Who should I be better than, next? Next, I will accomplish this. One thing. Here are your things, I will display them on your beautiful shelf. And that shelf will always be more beautiful to you than the one who built it, than the wood itself supporting all of your. Things day after day, after day.

You tell me my hair looks pretty like that and it's cruel that I don't believe you because you probably mean it. I will feel the space between my fingers warmer but I will respond with my restlessness about the roads with their painted cars and that painting of horns and thorns undermined by my desire to get closer to the coast before sunset. If I can drive this one car faster than the many cars, then we can make it. We can survive it and we will see the sunset and I will look at my hair the way you do. But only then. That scene would be worthy of my affection and maybe then I could and I would think about the mess of gold scraping my cheeks. If the painting in my mind could be a sunset instead of cars I would tell you thank you for saying my hair looks pretty like that. I would park my one car and let the many travel forward, or what seems like forward, because the sun had already arrived and it would never set. Maybe I would smile at these draping strands after wiping the fog off of my bathroom mirror, eyes dilating because I see myself the way life truly is and does not seem. I could stand still because the sun rises and the sun sets and it is. That simple. Feel the sensation of towel against my skin, every string like the wet, yellow lattice scraping my cheeks. I will think about you liking my hair like that for a long time.