Something as Simple as this
I crossed state lines with a jacket full of borrowed philosophies,
rode buses through desert towns where the radio hissed old gospel songs
and men outside gas stations talked about the end of the world
like they had coffee with God every Thursday morning.
I went looking for answers because girls like me
are taught the answer must be somewhere else,
in another city, another lover, another cigarette, another night
loud enough to drown out the sound of yourself thinking.
So I traveled.
God, I traveled.
I stood at the edge of oceans watching cargo ships disappear
like all my better instincts usually did,
saw all seven wonders with tired eyes and a notebook
already half-filled with disappointments,
memorized dead poets and eastern prophets,
Confucius in airport terminals, Kerouac in cheap motel rooms,
saints and madmen and jazz-drunk philosophers
all promising liberation of the mind and soul
while I quietly came apart at the seams.
I searched in bottles first, naturally,
because whiskey always introduces itself like an honest friend.
Then smoke.
Then long conversations after midnight
with people who loved the sound of their own suffering.
I tried holy places too,
cathedrals smelling of wax and old regret,
silent retreats where everybody whispered like sadness was sacred,
institutions of the mind and soul
that taught me many beautiful complicated things
except how to live peacefully inside my own skin.
And every road kept leading me back emptier.
And while I was busy chasing revelations
through cities, bottles, smoke, and scripture,
the answer sat patiently beside me
in ordinary afternoons,
in somebody remembering my coffee order,
in laughter from the next room,
in the quiet mercy of being known
without needing to perform suffering first.
And somewhere between the crashing and burning
and all my magnificent unnecessary wandering,
it finally hit me.
The answer was never hidden in ancient wonders
or scriptures
or smoke
or cities glowing gold at 2 a.m.
No, the answer,
God help me,
was something as simple as this.
Something as simple as this.
Bleu de minuit 