remainders and the backbone that stays

I can commit myself to perforated pages with ease for these days can be removed at the seams of indentations.

But for now, so long as I can, I will let them remain intact since the dimples along the inside ridge allow for flexibility. These pages can lay flat and bend. At the same time. I can write.

And then, I will see that the marks, which could appear as wounds, are actually those parts that line up within the inside of this tree-body of thoughts and feelings. They create the backbone that replaces the sewn-in spine of all the other books.

It's also true that perforated pages can be easily removed. Maybe this is where confidence swells because what words may fail me are only temporary. I can remove them from my personal journal and report a different story. Maybe by then I will have forgotten what was even said about the last pages before I lost my patience, my space to write, my room to breathe, my openness to create. I can tear out these thoughts and never remember, except for the fact that there would be the remainder. The part that was already sewn to the cover, the brown outside that is exposed. It would still be there--truncated, amputated, cut from the rest of the story.

But it is also the case that perforated pages are those that can be cleanly separated from the rest of the past, delicately wrested from the words of days, months gone by in redundant incantations. They can be intentionally freed, one vertebrae at a time, with the pace of an old tree's resuscitated heart beat. slowly. deliberately. gracefully with patience. So that the page torn out becomes the one that is carried away in my pocket, or in my hand, or folded and neatly tucked away in my heart so that I will remember how easy it can be to flow when there is security in multiple possibilities.

I remain open to the chance that I might want to hold on to this particular page. Maybe for just fifteen days. But maybe for longer. Maybe there is a chance for even more maybes.

2.13.10