Caleb Tankersley
Instructions for a Better Me
1. Wake up with the sun. Your skin feels a need, yesterday’s light fading until your insides are clammy and cold. Feed like a plant. Sit by the window. Close your eyes and arch the muscles of your back. Your eyelids are beginning to glow. Greet everything rising.
2. Become tyrannical. Recognize the shrinking value of others. Everyone dies alone. You are part of everyone. Take better care of the only person with whom you’ll spend the rest of your life.
3. Always charge your phone. When dead it becomes a black mirror, all the ugly parts shimmering back. We can’t have that.
4. Prioritize the body. Don’t forget the bone-blood-flesh sack you live in. Add small touches to make it yours. Get that forearm tattoo you’ve always wanted. Make a house a home. Taste every room. Use tongue. Invite your friends. But when guests leave tidy up, just for you.
5. Sleep like you’ll never wake. Fall into voices you can’t escape. Disappear. Travel to worlds you hoped didn’t exist.
6. Drink more sugar. Drip syrup down your throat. Learn what sweetness means. Lick what’s stuck in the corners of your lips. Use tongue.
7. Embrace your scheming self, the part pretending not to be plotting. Keep him bottled up, but occasionally let him loose, get away with his feisty little shenanigans. Turn your head back and forth slowly, say “I don’t know how that happened,” shake your fist. Feign disappointment. This isn’t going to end well.
8. The body is not a temple. There’s no such thing as static prayer. Give and take on the altar of you. Wrap your arms around a torso, pull it toward you. This is worship.
9. Lean on the mercy of anyone willing to give. We are in a mercy deficit. Do your part to rebalance the world. When compassion is involved, be ravenous.
10. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Fuck about. Cross anything you want off this list. The instructions are written inside your lungs. Take a wide breath. That’s good. Now exhale slowly. Take another. Let the air flow deep inside you. Isn’t this what you really wanted?
2. Become tyrannical. Recognize the shrinking value of others. Everyone dies alone. You are part of everyone. Take better care of the only person with whom you’ll spend the rest of your life.
3. Always charge your phone. When dead it becomes a black mirror, all the ugly parts shimmering back. We can’t have that.
4. Prioritize the body. Don’t forget the bone-blood-flesh sack you live in. Add small touches to make it yours. Get that forearm tattoo you’ve always wanted. Make a house a home. Taste every room. Use tongue. Invite your friends. But when guests leave tidy up, just for you.
5. Sleep like you’ll never wake. Fall into voices you can’t escape. Disappear. Travel to worlds you hoped didn’t exist.
6. Drink more sugar. Drip syrup down your throat. Learn what sweetness means. Lick what’s stuck in the corners of your lips. Use tongue.
7. Embrace your scheming self, the part pretending not to be plotting. Keep him bottled up, but occasionally let him loose, get away with his feisty little shenanigans. Turn your head back and forth slowly, say “I don’t know how that happened,” shake your fist. Feign disappointment. This isn’t going to end well.
8. The body is not a temple. There’s no such thing as static prayer. Give and take on the altar of you. Wrap your arms around a torso, pull it toward you. This is worship.
9. Lean on the mercy of anyone willing to give. We are in a mercy deficit. Do your part to rebalance the world. When compassion is involved, be ravenous.
10. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Fuck about. Cross anything you want off this list. The instructions are written inside your lungs. Take a wide breath. That’s good. Now exhale slowly. Take another. Let the air flow deep inside you. Isn’t this what you really wanted?
Caleb Tankersley is the author of the story collection Sin Eaters—winner of the Permafrost Book Prize—and Jesus Works the Night Shift. His writing can be found in Carve, The Cimarron Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Puerto del Sol, Sycamore Review, and other magazines. He is an Assistant Professor at the University of St. Thomas and serves as Managing Director for Split/Lip Press.