How Can I Love Myself?

Sometimes I fall in love

with a musical key or scale.

I want to live in it,

suspended between the tones and frequencies,

like a shower of harmonics.

The notes become imprinted within me,

the hum of a guitar, the ring of a piano,

vibrations.

I will dance with them endlessly

until we grow tired of each other.

Then I will fight with them,

wrestling around.

I will flip them, warp them,

bend and break them,

try to forget them,

until they sound new.

 

Sometimes I fall in love

with an image or video.

I want to live in it,

suspended between the details and borders,

like a shower of pixels.

The frames become imprinted within me,

warm fog from a rooftop vent, a floating feather,

dancing dust in a streak of sunlight,

views from a window

replaying on loop.

Eventually, I won’t be able to

distinguish myself from the image.

I am the image and the image is me,

a motion picture, emotion picked her.

Then I feel trapped,

wanting to rip myself out,

a tear in space and time,

like folding a beating heart into itself,

until the insides are the outsides

and the outsides are within,

until it looks new.

 

Sometimes I fall in love,

the bounds of love,

at once both comforting and confining.

Nothing is new.

Only the same you

from a different point of view.

– JPR (1-15-18)