bird by bird

“I still love you,” he says, “but I have to go my own way.” “So you want to break up?” I ask, trembling. “I guess so,” he says. I fall to the floor, like a woman in the twelfth century fainting at the sight of a hanging in her town square. Later, my mother comes home from a party and finds me catatonic, lying across the bed, surrounded by pictures of him and me, the mittens he bought me at Christmas folded beneath my cheek. I am crippled by what feels like sadness but what I will later diagnose as embarrassment. She tells me this is a great excuse: to take time for myself, to cry a bunch, to eat only carbohydrates slathered in cheese. “You will find,” she says, “that there’s a certain grace to having your heart broken.” I will use this line many times in the years to come, giving it as a gift to anyone who needs it. From Not That Kind of Girl by Lena Dunham

I just had the best weekend, and I'm so grateful for it! I ate quickly melting Ample Hills ice cream cones with some best friends at the beach. I bar hopped while linking arms with a friend walking down Franklin Ave singing Shania Twain tunes. I cried at the Amy Winehouse documentary and then toasted her at a German beer garden after the film. With friends, I walked through the park, sat outside, ate tacos. I laughed so much and danced and spent too much money. I got a few more freckles and felt like myself more than I have in a while. Things are looking up .

I am in love and I am lost But I'd rather be Broken than empty Oh, I'd rather be Shattered than hollow Oh, I'd rather be By your side

June was gray. It was cold and wet and gray and hot and wet and gray. It was truly miserable, inside and out. One rainy Sunday I went by myself to Bam to see "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl" because hey, why not? When you're sad and it's gloomy, there is something comforting about being in a dark room with strangers watching a movie about a kid with cancer. I'm serious! It was so comforting! The film was lovely and quirky, and I sat in the very middle of the theater wrapped up in my cozy grandpa sweater. It was hot and muggy outside, but I've made that movie theater mistake before, and the sweater was needed for both heat and security. I snuggled into it with Kleenexes in one hand and a diet soda in the other. Things have not been going well lately. Big things like life plans and small things like spilling strawberries all over the grocery store floor. One night while I was sleeping, a rainstorm blew through Brooklyn, and due to a re...

by Freya Manfred                                    When you’re young, and in good health, you can imagine living in New York City, or Nepal, or in a tree beyond the moon, and who knows who you’ll marry: a millionaire, a monkey, a sea captain, a clown. But the best imaginers are the old and wounded, who swim through ever narrowing choices, dedicating their hearts to peace, a stray cat, a bowl of homemade vegetable soup, or red Mountain Ash berries in the snow. Imagine this: only one leg and lucky to have it, a jig-jagged jaunt with a cane along the shore, leaning on a walker to get from grocery to car, smoothing down the sidewalk on a magic moving chair, teaching every child you meet the true story of this sad, sweet, tragic, Fourth of July world.