When time pulls lives apart,
Hold your own.
When everything is fluid and when nothing can be known with any certainty,
Hold your own.
Hold it till you feel it there,
As dark and dense and wet as earth,
As vast and bright and sweet as air.
When all there is
Is knowing that you feel what you are feeling,
Hold your own.
Ask your hands to know the things they hold.
I know,
The days are reeling past in squealing blasts.
Stop for breath and know it’s yours,
Swaying like an open door when storms are coming.
Hold.
Time is an onslaught,
Love is a mission.
We work for vocation until,
In remission,
We wish we’d had patience and given more time to our children.
You must feel each decision you make.
You must hold it.
Hold your own.
Hold your lovers,
Hold their hands,
Hold their breasts in your hands like your hands were their bras,
Hold their cheeks in your palms like a prayer,
Hold them all night and feel them hold back,
Don’t hold back,
Hold your own.
Every pain,
Every grievance,
Every single stab of shame,
Every day spent with a demon in your brain giving chase,
Hold it.
Know the wolves that hunt you,
In time, they will be the dogs that bring your slippers.
Love them right and you will feel them kiss you when they come to bite.
Their hot snouts digging out your cuddles with their bloody muzzles.
Hold.
Look, nothing you can buy will ever make you more whole.
This whole f**ing thing thrives on you feeling incomplete.
It is why you will search for happiness in whatever stupid thing you crave in a moment
And it is why you will never find it there.
It is why you will sit there with the lover that you fought for,
In the car you sweated years to buy,
Wearing the ring you dreamed of all your life,
And some part of you will still be unsure that this is what you really want.
Stop craving,
Hold your own.
But if you are satisfied with what you have and who you are,
You won’t need to buy new make-up or new outfits or new pots and pans
To cook new exciting recipes
For new exciting friends
To make yourself feel like the new exciting person you think you’re supposed to be.
Happiness, the brand, is not happiness.
You are smarter than they think you are.
They take us all for idiots,
That’s their problem.
If we behave like idiots,
It’s our problem.
So hold your own,
Breathe deep on a freezing beach,
Taste the salt of shellfish,
Smile at a stranger and mean it,
Lose your sh** to your new favourite English rapper,
Hold your own.
And let it be