Love Is Enough Except When It Isn’t

Artwork by Kim Asendorf
Artwork by Kim Asendorf

How you feel about something often has a lot to do with how you already felt.

Whatever it is, it’s always lots of things at once.

We’re on many different levels at once.

That’s the only way this even works.


The wolf you feed wins and I’ve been a fractal this whole time.

I am infinitely dividing myself against myself.

Summer is still happening

Isn’t that what you said you wanted.

All winter long.

The wolf you feed wins.

That’s the only way this even works.


There’s nothing hotter than doing hell.

How many reasons can you think of?

You know that when you’re at the bank, that money is yours.

Right?

My friend texted me that the guy she’s into told her he is going to keep her in bed for 3 days straight.

I hope he takes good care of her.

My mom texted me that my dad was stung by a swarm of wasps this morning.
I hope she takes good care of him.

Fear is a sickness and I have seen the Earth’s only moon before with my own two eyes and didn’t even care.

The passions of this dull planet run through me predictably and it is not a big deal.

I wear cutoff shorts all over my gentrifying neighborhood.

I told the stylist to shave the sides of my head.

Some dude told me he has made love to many women who have my same haircut.

I hope he takes good care of them.

Love is enough except when it isn’t.

My sister gets very irritated with me quickly.

When we were little, she used to sit me down and teach me lessons about how the world works. The other day I told her I think the President is a reptile and doesn’t care about us.

She is disappointed. I was a bad student.

My sister met her boyfriend when he was working in the record shop she lived above. She left the bathwater running and flooded the ceiling of the store and he ran up to knock on her door to tell her to turn it off.

When they were first dating, he told her he didn’t like sports that much, but that wasn’t true. He likes sports a lot. He told me to download an app that will track how fast I can run around the block. They live together now.

I hope he takes good care of her.

This morning I went to the public swimming pool in my neighborhood. The teenage lifeguard girl told me I couldn’t bring a bag out onto the deck. I had to leave it in the locker room, but I could take my things out of the bag and put them on the deck. It would be fine as long as I left the bag in the locker room.

She couldn’t tell me why.

I hope one day we figure it out.


If somebody likes the way your face looks they’re going to let you get away with a lot more than they would if they didn’t.

But you are still against the law.

Trying not to feel self-conscious is the essence of self-consciousness.

And you’re only a girl to me.

I’m always looking forward to the best new rappers.

When the Iraq war started, I thought they were going to show it on TV like football.

I’m always looking forward to the best new wars.

I think every one that’s fought is better than the last because I’m an optimist.

When I take adderall sometimes I get more tired than I would if I hadn’t.

It’s a thing we do, feeling like we need to put something outside of ourselves into ourselves to make us work.

My roommate accidentally drank a Diet Mountain Dew the other day and had to sleep it off.

I know exactly how he feels.

Everyone can tell how you feel all the time because they can look at your face.

You have to be honest with yourself.

I just wish I knew how.

I’m considering using ‘Ferrari’ as an adjective more often. Like, it would be totally ‘Ferrari’ if I ever saw my dad cry.


You are so pensive.

I worry you are going to crack like an egg that I’ve never heard of.

I wouldn’t know how to clean you up.

I want to put you out but you aren’t such a fire to me anymore.

I remember you.

I have told you I love you with varying degrees of conviction at least 1,400 times.

We have had sex until we couldn’t or it hurt and until it couldn’t hurt any longer and both agreed that we fit nicely together.

Sometimes it’s not enough to fit with someone.

Most people fit.

I am trying so hard to fit in at least 47% of the time.

You are trying so hard to let me go.

It’s enough.

There’s something you should know about me. When I was nine years old I became the youngest father of all time and incidentally the coolest boy of all time for exactly 14 minutes until some kid in Florida managed to swing all the way over the top of the swing set. He was only the coolest boy on the planet for a split second before his heart exploded in his chest and his stomach got stuck in his throat, but his memory will live on. Meanwhile, I have this rude teenage son who is basically my age, calls me his “roommate” and won’t listen to a word I say.

If you would feel sorry for me right away that would be great, I could just take that right to the bank.

No one has ever gotten more people to feel sorry for them than Kurt Cobain except for Anne Frank.

No one has ever gotten more people to feel sorry for them than Anne Frank except for Jesus.

No one has ever made more money than Jesus except me.

I am making so much money when I move through this world, flowing through the spaces in each moment that passes through me.

An ape does exactly what I do at the zoo when I sit on my stoop in the summer time.

So do you when you watch me out of the corner of your eye.

You don’t have to shave anything for me. It just doesn’t matter. You’re just a ball of fuzz to me anyway. I want to keep you that way. I’d even cover you in furs. Girl, you know I’d kill a man for you but I wouldn’t touch a dolphin, no no. You can be so furry to me all the time. Baby baby baby you are the youngest person I have ever met and when I squeeze the sides of your skull we are both screaming at each other in our own language and I wouldn’t expect anyone else to understand.

Would you wear that clickety clack plastic shit in your hair for me if I braided it?


The night ministry van comes by the library and gives free hot dogs to all the homeless people who hang out around there at night. They usually stay all day until the hot dog van comes back again. My friend got one from them one time but I didn’t. I felt weird about it because I live in an apartment with my own hot dogs.

The homeless people have started hanging out inside the library during the day too. In the afternoon, the kids from the grade schools in the neighborhood all go to the library and use the public computers and play their Dora the Explorer video games. The homeless guys mostly watch youtube and porn. There aren’t as many homeless women, but I think I saw one of them watching a Celine Dion video.

The library only has one security guard. He’s an old black guy who’s been working there forever. He wears a jacket that’s way too big for him, the sleeves go over his hands, and he transfers his weight from side to side when he walks like he has trouble bending his knees or doesn’t actually have them. He travels slowly around the library in a big predictable loop. When he passes by, the homeless guys just change tabs to something that isn’t porn then switch back once he’s gone.


The water faucet in my bathroom only makes hot water. I try to wash my hands before it gets too hot but there is a moment at the end where I usually feel intense discomfort from the heat for a second before pulling away.

A lot of people have been burned alive by scalding hot water.

A lot of people are being permanently bullied by their own nervous systems.

A lot of people have probably tried to summon the devil so they could sell their souls and were disappointed when nothing happened.

The Dalai Lama says we need to find ways to incorporate teaching warm-heartedness in our education system.

I would imagine he is probably the most qualified person to be burned alive but I hope that doesn’t happen.


Favorite Flavors: Heat, Dirt, Income, Porcelain, Tank, Water (not flavorless), Tear, Bark, Humidity, Drug snot, Toothpick.

Turn-ons: Ball pits, Rotisseries, ‘Hot’ peas, Hair/Fur, Groans, Cat posture, What I think Israeli dance clubs are like, Phones, Men/Women (Adults), Databases, Chill parents, Telling people that I thought David Byrne was Robin Williams as a kid listening to ‘Once in a Lifetime’, Small business owners, Kindly worded copywriting in bank advertisements, When people use the phrase ‘bread and circuses’ smugly, Lake Michigan in one month.

Beautiful things I can think of right now:

  • A snowdrift
  • A deer running somewhere (quietly)
  • Someone smiling at me and I know why and it’s a good thing about myself
  • Smelling gasoline in a parking garage
  • Imagining Mozart saying something racist (would give me a lot of pleasure, maybe not beautiful but pretty funny)
  • People having unrelated arguments about race/politics/gender in the comment section of a nice song
  • A train car of 100 commuters returning from the city to the suburbs (silently)
  • Someone jogging and looking really upset about it
  • An animated snowdrift
  • Someone really cool wearing a gold chain and twerking until they fly the flag at half mast or the economy recovers, whichever comes first
  • Being broken up with via silent treatment and just figuring it out eventually
  • Saying really mean things that you don’t mean to get a reaction and regretting them but not bothering to apologize because you were ignored
  • Thinking about mirroring people facial movements and cadence patterns while speaking to them in order to create a rapport as opposed to just being yourself because you’re sure that won’t work
  • Your family being disappointed in your life decisions but still forwarding you humorous emails with pictures of animals and children
  • The bus picks you up right outside of your house
  • Not knowing how you cat ever feels really

I saw a couple having an argument at Six Flags Great America.

They were wearing matching Looney Tunes t-shirts, the kind where the characters wear backward hats and display an aggressive, confrontational attitude.

They had been sharing an elephant ear (fried sugar bread snack) but didn’t finish it.
I saw two female lions chase down a baby zebra and rip its striped skin off its body in front of its whole family while a male lion sat under a tree and watched and yawned.

I saw myself grow older over time.

I watched myself dissolve, becoming permanently incorporated into something else, forgetting what I was, with these brand new cells.

I want to go to where God works and smack the dick out of his mouth.

You fucked up on ‘time,’ bro. And I know you still fuck with the devil.

I’m not supposed to be writing poetry right now. I’m supposed to be doing something else but I don’t know how to do anything else.

There are two Batman themed roller coasters at Six Flags but Batman doesn’t care about you and neither do I.

Sometimes people do things on purpose to make you upset and then feel victimized when you get upset with them.

When my brother was first born, I was told I walked up to my mom and said “Congratulations” and the nurses laughed because they thought it was cute and I thought they were making fun of me and got angry.

I used to make my hand into a claw-shape and shake it in my little brother’s face and make a noise like “nn-nn-nn-nnnn.” Not sure how he felt about that. Probably bad.

Paul Hanson Clark ended one of his poems with a line that read “There are innocent people on death row” and that is how I will end this too. Thought Catalog Logo Mark

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