Self-acceptance at the end of the world
a poem about kissing & a poem about cycles of shame
My poem “On My History of Kissing Everyone at Parties” went a little viral last week. It reached my hometown’s population x 16 on Instagram (which is my new favorite unit of measurement). And it was featured by Substack here (thank you).
As I got messages and comments from people saying I felt this deeply/it resonated/it’s so me, I mulled over my kissing-everyone-at-parties true history and realized I could have never written this poem then. I felt too much shame to even conceive it.
I am not always the speaker in my poems but I was when I told you, I can’t stop flirting, shoot me. But I’m not the desperate slut my ex would have you believe. I’m just a Gemini rising.
Back in those days, I was his self-fulfilling prophecy—like a Petri dish growing contempt. The more he hated me for catching someone’s eye, the more I hated myself, the more I needed that attention, the more he hated me, the more I hated myself—and on and on like that for longer than I care to admit.
I made art then but it was mostly flat and false.
You can’t make art when you hate yourself as much as I did.
Things are better now. I’ll be 35 in March. My boyfriend loves my gravity. I’m not the worst person in the world anymore, just a nameless runner-up.
The same time this kissing poem was circulating, there was Trump’s inauguration, Musk doing a Nazi salute, rich pigs in the front row, dreamer David Lynch and the president of Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards, both passing away, strong winds stirring up the awful aftermath of the LA fires, and the on-the-nose astrology of the Sun and Pluto coming together in Aquarius for the dawn of a new age.
Aquarius is the humanitarian sign. It represents systems and community. This new era is nothing light. It’s scary. There are real villains and they want real destruction. Self-love and self-acceptance might feel trite and irrelevant in times like these, but they are foundational to healing. Because you, too, are a system. Because everything is a reflection of everything else—the self, our relationships, the country, the world.
This poem is about that ex who mirrored my shame. We loved each other but we hurt each other in that cycle, and it spread—as above, so below; as below, so above.
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Even with all the stress of this election and fear around what is to come, I will never stop feeling like I somehow got lucky enough to exist in a time where I get to read your writing!
I am so glad you found ways to get beyond your self doubt; it took me well into my 30s before I was able to do it. Perhaps, this is the curse of the Gemini rising.
Born again every seven years. I have been thinking about this phenomenon for a while and you have slipped it into this poem with such ease. A wonderful poem.