doubt.

Media and prescription bottles tell me that the voices should not be encouraged. There should be consistency within the leak of our pensiveness. But where is room for doubt? On an evening in a basement full of so many books, I got paper cuts from breathing, I was told by a poet that “love is a place you can go for the rest of your life.” And I wanted to weep against my bruises. And I wanted to ask: but how can you be so sure?

I want to believe in a love that can exist far beyond the grey cloud thunderstorm cold shoulder puddle splashes. I want to believe in a love that makes room for silence and bad behaviors and wrong turns and indigestion and allergic reactions and doubt. It can be easy to find the right words on a Saturday or a Wednesday. In the heat of bodies curled like erotic perms, it can be easy to say “the right thing.” To choose the right voice from within to give to another.

But convince me you’ve never pushed down a voice so far down that you choked. That you suffocated so many syllables, all that came out were gurgles of drown.

Convince me love is drawn on every map, so there is no way of getting lost. How can you when there is a GPS on every fancy phone and most automobiles and if you don’t know which turn to take, a pre-programmed voice will.

Doubt is like seventy pounds of cheesecake in your gut and you are lactose intolerant so no matter how delicious this creamy was, you feel weighted; you feel confused by the asphyxiation in your brain.

Sometimes doubt is born out of its antonym: conviction.

Sometimes these voices are so strong because they remind us of how potent life is.

I have spent more than half of my life unsure about mornings. I have used ropes and pills and drugs and silence and darkness and starvation to attempt an end of alarm clocks and open doors.

Doubt. It is a powerful mechanism reminding us the necessity to slow down, hear these voices and weave gratitude into the wavering. Weave in the echoes of question marks.

Is this good? Is this healthy? Is this right right now? Can I be present while living like this?

I want to believe that doubt is a doorway toward a conclusion. I want to believe. I want to want. I want to remain.