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"We are both of us some secret third thing". yes. yes.

despair is simple. Life: Life is myriad.

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thank you for your anger. i welcome it with love. i welcome it to be big and bold and daring. i welcome it to run out of your body. i let mine. i let mine break empty candle jars and heavy conch shells and flooring samples against stones in the backyard. anything that can absorb my force and be digested by the earth free of harm. if you don’t have a private outdoor space, perhaps a lot of abandoned concrete would suffice as a nice surface to mother your rage. i allow myself to scream full shriek no pillow. the neighbors have never called the cops. i’m thankful for that. i’ve also done this while driving on the highway. my eyes remain open and most people have music going so they don’t notice. i wouldn’t really mind if they did. i dig holes in the ground barehanded. the dirt beneath my fingers feels wild and open. the dirt understands me. the dirt drinks my tears with grace. i scribble and rage write on paper larger than my torso and then let it burn to ash in fire. the physical alchemy mirrors that which occurs inside of me. peace finds me here.

thank you also for the wise people of Santa Fe for honoring your delicious poetry and you sharing that with us. congratulations to you, sweet kristin. thank you also also for sharing this incredible artist’s work. i’m forever changed.

🌞🍄❤️‍🔥

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I often have to come back to your posts and re-read them. Certainly was the case this time. They are poetry in themselves.

I love how the structure of your blog post suggests the structure of your poem, even if the emotional tone is different. Ragged question and calming answer. Sort of. At least that's how it came across to me, reading it a couple of times.

If I may... I think anger is given a bit of a bad rap in our society. For sure, it's ugly and often scary. But it is an emotion, which means it's hard to control. Definitely, each person can control their *actions* during anger -- I'm not giving free passes here. But I know growing up it was the only emotion that I was allowed to have, besides happy. "Big boys don't cry" -- so frustration and sadness that may be focused to tears otherwise get focused in the anger direction instead. Partly environmental, partly biological (you need to summon anger if you are going to protect your group in the face of danger). I think if boys had been allowed to cry, we'd live in a much different world.

I don't think I've ever put that on paper before.

In any case, it's interesting that due to social norms, I feel anger and (perhaps) due to social norms, you don't feel it's okay to feel anger. (I don't want to speak for you. Seems that may be what you're saying...)

What's the answer? I don't know. Talking about the sun seems like a good step in the right direction.

Congrats on the poetry win! Well deserved! I'm not really a poetry guy, but there are some poems that hit me in the right place, and this is one of them.

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