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Love wants to be found / Date Night Ideas in Anchorage, Alaska

By 

mari asai

Love wants to be found

It’s your turn to find them.

Love is a hide and seek pro

Cry for love

Love won't buy it at first

Love will think you're trying to reveal her hiding spot

But love will come to her senses soon

and then she'll smile and walk away

You want to follow her but you were crying too hard to see the crucial moment and now you try but you can't and you're lost without trying to be lost, without anyone left to try and find you.

Love gets lonely too. Love will miss you.

Love will enjoy the lonely.

She will write books with it, and when she gets tired of that, she will write songs with it.

Others will hear the songs, and she will start writing for them as she starts seeing them.

Eventually, you will listen to her latest release and find that it is no longer written for you, that you no longer know the places she sings, that you’re not in the memories she writes into her songs.

Someday, you will miss love so much more, miss her for the person she became without you and the person she was when she wasn't with you.

But she will no longer miss you, she won't even be lonely.

Love carries many confidences.

She doesn't falter easily, and when she falters, she catches herself with the poise you lost the day you met her.

Sometimes, jokingly, you suggest she took it when she left you, when she took your clothes and your cat, your breakfasts and your laugh.

She always scoffs but rarely looks up from her phone.

You know this love wouldn't want anything of yours anyways.

You take quiet joy in the thought that once, she cared enough to take something.

You just wish this love were more in your memory than a suave nothing in between your greatest joys and deepest sorrows.

You wish you had kept track of the ephemeral her and not just the experience of being with her.

Because, you see, love never waits.

‍It's not that love doesn't wait, but love is impatient.

The best you can do is to hope that you can make love stay.

I have 25 floating paper lanterns. If you want a few, I will let you have them. Don't burn Anchorage down.

Go to Skyline Drive in Eagle River on a clear night. Drive up that road up the mountain. Don't get stuck in a ditch. Look'em in the eyes, then look'em in the stars, light the lantern charcoal, put it in the dish, wait until the hot air builds up in the balloon. Let go. Set Eagle River on fire.

Take the fucker to Mooses Tooth before midnight. Fill up on pizza. Drive around downtown. Begin smoking socially. Talk about your feelings. Cry.

How do you make love stay? Wake love up in the middle of the night. Tell him the world is on fire. Dash to the bedroom window and pee out of it. Casually return to bed and assure love that everything is going to be all right. Fall asleep. Love will be there in the morning. 

Cry.

If he really is still there, man the fuck up. Take him out to Kaladi Bros Coffee. Patronize the baristas for their bad life decisions. Go out to lunch. Yelp that shit. Take him to Beluga Point on Turnagain. Go past the sign that says do not trespass. Yell at the wind and take pictures. Talk about feelings. Cry.

Go on a hike in the wintertime. Wear socks that don't strafe your ankles. Man the fuck up. Cry.

Build a snowman. Cry.

Learn to ski. Check out the Out North Theatre for events. Cuddle by the fucking fireplace. Fuck for fucks sake. Hold his hand when he doesn't want to be seen with you in public. Go to the Dimond Mall. Win a bunch of tickets at the arcade. Buy a bunch of plastic parachute men. Go to the top floor of the mall. Unleash God's wrath on the preschoolers learning how to play hockey. Watch them cry. Feel bad.

Let me guess. Cry?

You're catching on.

Go to Walmart. Bring your booklets of the Communist Manifesto that you printed off with your mom's printer. Make sure they're double sided, use the sparknotes so that people will find it easy to read. Hide them behind the preteen girl magazines in the literature aisle. Shoplift some nail polish while you're at it. Eat at McDonalds. Cry.

Get really high. High enough that his face starts reminding you of certain genuses of the animal kingdom. Have a sober friend drive you two to China Lights. Talk to the waitress to butter her up and get you to a booth seat instead of one in the middle of the restaurant. Go to the buffet tables. Eat foods starting from the bottom of the food pyramid. Watch him laugh as you attempt to eat a plate of just white rice. Eat because you are high and everything will be delicious. Eat until you can feel your insides trying to eat their way out of you. Eat until you are crying and on the floor. It will hurt like a motherfucker.

Go to the drive-thru of the Taco Bell on Old Seward at night. Tell them you want your nachos crushed up in a tortilla. The tortilla should be free. Ask for a drink consisting of half a mango fruitista and half of a tropicana lemonade. It will taste reminiscent of Sunny D. Sunny D tastes like shit. Drive in the middle of the group of douchebags with pimped out trucks. Take your shitty Sunny D and throw it at the alpha Dodge Caravan. Drive away fast. Cry.

Go ice skating. Buy some skates from Play it Again sports. Tell them that you are new to Alaska. Let them make fun of you. Cry. Go to the West Chester Lagoon. Put on your skates. Find out they are too small, help each other put your skates on. That'll be romantic as fuck. Get onto the ice. Fall on your ass. It'll be fun. Cry.

Tell love you want a momento and obtain a lock of his hair. Burn the hair in a dime-store incense burner with yin/yang symbols on three sides. Face southwest. Talk fast over the burning hair in a convincingly exotic language. Remove the ashes of the burnt hair and use them to paint a mustache on your face. Find love. Tell him you are someone new. Love will stay.

He'll make you so happy that you'll cry.

Quiz question:

What does Tropicana lemonade and mango fruitista taste like?

Cherry Kool-Aid

Cherry Kool-Aid

Orange Soda

Orange Soda

Capri-sun

Capri-sun

Sunny D

Sunny D

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Issue 5

published 

September 22, 2017

love wants to be found was written by mari asai. mari acts like they are five, has never forgone a conclusion, is so over threesomes, has two cats, and cared, once.

Date Night Ideas in Anchorage, Alaska was written by Jaron Saturnino. This poem uses an excerpt from Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins, which he definitely recommends.

i dont feel like fininishing this website right now and i am sorry

Drinking and smoking

is easy but it won't help

you in the long run.

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Issue 5

This writing was originally published in Opium Magazine, and is not listed in the Lit.cat archives.
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