TumbleDweeeb

A Tuesday Poem
By: Emmitt Owens
(Index #12302025)

Tuesday weighs heavy like wet wool, this day that pretends
to be productive but really just slouches between the bookends—
and I’m thinking about how we’ve built this elaborate theater
where everyone’s both audience and performer and no one
can remember their lines but we all keep showing up anyway,
swiping left on our own reflections, right on our projections,
the app says “be authentic” but punishes you for being
anything other than carefully curated spontaneity—

isn’t it strange how we say we want connection but design
everything to keep us at arm’s length, how opting out
feels like failure and staying in feels like drowning,
like being asked to solve a math problem where all the numbers
keep changing but the answer is supposed to be “happily ever after”
and you’re not allowed to question the equation itself—

the psychology books say humans need intimacy, but they don’t
mention how exhausting it is to be a person presenting yourself
as a person to another person who’s also pretending, they’re not
pretending, we’ve gamified vulnerability, monetized loneliness,
made algorithms out of the unmeasurable, and somehow
we’re surprised when it feels like work, like auditions,
like being hungry at a restaurant with no food only menus—

to opt out is to be suspect, aromantic or afraid or broken
or lying, because the narrative says everyone wants this
even when half the people who have it seem to want out,
the contradiction sits there like Tuesday itself, necessary
but not quite real, this idea that solitude is the problem
when maybe the problem is we’ve forgotten how to be alone
without calling it loneliness, together without calling it settling,
human without calling it a market value—

Today, I’m drawing lines in the sand between ’73 and ’90,
these arbitrary borders that somehow feel like natural law,
not young enough to need raising,
not old enough to need retrofitting,
just somewhere in that sweet spot where we both remember
rotary phones but also know how to update our software—

and maybe the whole trick is refusing the vocabulary they gave us,
boyfriend
girlfriend
partner
lover
significant
—all these words
that come with instruction manuals and user agreements,
what if we just are, what if presence doesn’t need a press release,
no relationship status to update, no box to check on forms,
just two people existing adjacently, deliberately, without
the weight of definition crushing the thing into a shape
it was never meant to hold—

ambiguity as honesty, vagueness as precision,
because the DSM can’t diagnose what won’t sit still for examination,
and her eyes hold an entire universe I’m not trying to map,
colonize, understand, or worse—explain back to her
like I’ve discovered something she doesn’t already know,
she’s right from where she stands, I’m right from where I stand,
and the beauty is we don’t need to occupy the same coordinates
to walk in the same direction—

this is dating as jazz instead of sheet music,
as weather instead of climate control,
no titles because titles are tombstones for living things,
no psychology because psychology is just expensive fortune-telling
for people who want their chaos organized into billable hours,
just this: meeting someone in the gap between too young
and too old, in the space between attached and alone,
where Tuesday means nothing and everything,
where we are what we are without asking permission
from the dictionary to exist—

so yes, we can date, call it that even, the verb not the noun,
the action without the archive, and if something grows—
here’s the part they don’t tell you, the secret they skip—
we’ll call it friendship first because that’s what it actually is,
and I mean friendship, real friendship, the non-sexual kind
even when tempted, especially when tempted, because that’s where
the soul-searching happens, that’s where hearts meet and mend in the margins
between coffee and conversation, between knowing someone
and wanting someone, holding that space sacred, that gap
where you learn if you actually like each other before the chemicals
cloud everything, before desire rewrites the narrative—

friendship first is the long game, the patient archaeology,
the foundation they always skip in the rom-coms because it’s not
dramatic enough, not cinematic, just two people talking, laughing,
showing up for each other without the performance of romance,
without the agenda of seduction, just presence, just witness,
and I know—I KNOW—this is the authentic way, the real way,
the way that actually works when you’re tired of the theater,
tired of auditioning, tired of building on sand and calling it foundation—

you want to find a partner? Find a friend first. A real one.
The kind where sexual tension might hum in the background
but you don’t act on it, you don’t rush it, you let it simmer
while you discover if this person is someone you’d choose
even without the promise of physical intimacy, someone whose company
you crave for reasons that have nothing to do with bodies
and everything to do with souls recognizing each other
across the noise of modern dating’s carnival—

and maybe one day, when the friendship has deepened,
when you’ve weathered enough Tuesdays together to know
this is solid, this is real, this is built on bedrock not fantasy,
then maybe it becomes relationship, not because you declared it
but because it became undeniable, organic, earned,
a friendship that grew so deep it transformed into something
more without losing what made it matter in the first place—

and I’m telling you this with a wink, with the knowing
that comes from watching everyone else skip this step
and wonder why their foundations crack, I’m telling you
this is the secret hiding in plain sight, the ancient wisdom
dressed up as patience, as restraint, as the counter-cultural act
of actually liking someone before you love them—

because I can’t relate to Digipets or purple dinosaurs,
I’m from the era of KITT talking to Michael through a watch,
when Saturday mornings meant five straight hours of cartoons
you had to actually be awake for, or you’d miss them forever,
when outside had no timer except the streetlights clicking on
like some municipal parent calling all the kids home,
when after school specials tried to teach us about peer pressure
with absolutely no subtlety and we loved them anyway—

I need someone who remembers when technology was still magic,
not mundane, when a car that drove itself was sci-fi not a Tesla,
someone who knows the difference between Atari and Nintendo matters,
who understands that Rugrats and Barney mark a generational divide
as real as any war, just softer, stranger, harder to explain
to anyone who wasn’t there when childhood still had commercial breaks
and you couldn’t pause live TV so you ran to the bathroom during credits,
negotiating with your bladder and the network’s timing—

this is the archaeology of connection, digging for someone
who speaks the same dead language of analog nostalgia,
who can date without dating, relate without relationships,
exist in the friendship that maybe becomes more
or maybe just becomes deeper friendship,
and either way, we’re good, we’re here,
we’re Tuesday people in a Tuesday world,
making it up as we go, but making it right this time,
building on friendship, on soul-searching, on heart-meetings and mendings,
on the authentic foundation everyone else is too impatient to pour.

#ThisIsMineEO