just looking...

i think my biggest ambition as a writer is to someday write a really good piece about an inchworm crossing a leaf.

because have you watched one?

the front of it goes somewhere. its rear comes up to meet it. and the middle has to go overhead to accommodate the arrangement.

then it stretches out and does the whole thing again.

a little green accordion with somewhere to be.

i would like to get that down properly.

make it worth reading for the way it moves, the strange little shape of it,

without getting halfway across the leaf and discovering that we are actually discussing my healing process.

apparently i, too, am learning to move forward.

jesus christ.

the worm was just going over there.

now it has a second job.

my mom used to sing me the inchworm song when i was little.

i would rather not make the worm carry that either.

i am not giving up metaphor. i would be fairly fucked without it.

half the time i do not know what i am feeling until i find something else that behaves the same way.

a thought makes more sense once i can give it a shape.

the world is easier to understand when i can put one thing beside another and recognize how they correlate.

i need that.

i just do not need my autobiography falling haphazardly out of every accordion.

sometimes i would like to look analogy in the eyes without it gazing back into mine.

let the resemblance be between two other things.

i do not have to be involved.

a worm can have trouble getting across a leaf without the two of us having so much in common.

it stops, maybe.

maybe reaches around for somewhere to put the front of itself.

i would like to be interested in where it puts it.

not what the hesitation means, whether i relate to it.

just genuinely curious about how this particular lively little animal is going to negotiate this particular bit of leaf.

and then write it well enough that somebody else gets curious too.

and be satisfied with that.

let it just be simple.

it reaches over a raised vein, sets itself down on the other side, and gathers into a loop again.

then it stretches back out.

look at it go.