If I lend you my time, please spend it like you're rich. I don't charge interest.
Spend my time the way I do--at the same three dimly lit coffee shops or park benches, alone or with the same four people. Just the way you like it. Take notes, copiously and just to have your hand moving. Write to notice how red the sun looks through your curtains, how the light swims in your room. Write to remember the feeling of drawing the top of the Biltmore in art class, to understand that the discomfort of letting go was disguised as pain this whole time. Don't let your knuckles turn white.
If I lend you my eyes, read. Obsessively. Frankenstein summaries this morning, Past Lives reviews yesterday, expressions usually, eyes always, too far into things when you forget yourself. Watch indigo espadrilles skip over the mouth of an escalator; look up and realize that you are 50 years too young to have jumped the same way. On Sundays, see faces that you know aren't here; on Monday morning, believe your eyes when they say "I've lied to you." Forgive them.
When I lend you my ears, use them for listening. To "Graceland" every day since late July. Take notes on the lyrics and admire how the meaning changes. Listen to Frank Sinatra when you miss home and "Could You Be Loved" when you don't. The same jokes on rotation between you and the people you love.
With my mouth, taste the honey in your coffee. Say "no, this is the best day of my life" once a week. With your arms, swing. With your legs, run. And when you get where you were going, wring the rain out of your hair. Sit down with your friend, eat the same breakfast as you did yesterday, write in the back of a novel because your journal is on a shelf too far away.
Be here. And be here now. Write it down in your notebook. Obsessively, until your hand hurts. I am here now I am here now I am here now.
Me. Here. Not now, but close enough.
Also this is a combination of things I've been writing in my notebook!
Wooohoo happy Sunday.