My favorite tweets, both to write & to read, are essentially chiropractic in function: quick, precise readjustments that, with luck, add up to better emotional alignment. Writing this way comes naturally to me because I’m often low-key coaching myself through weapons-grade neurosis.

I especially like tweets that seem insubstantial at first but expand rapidly over the next few seconds, minutes, hours I allow them to steep. The trick for me is not capturing ideas of the right length for a tweet, but taking more expansive, subtle states of mind & finding a way to fold them neatly into Twitter’s compressed form.

Tweets, like most small negotiations, are best done recklessly, artlessly. Some of my favorite tweets have a muttered, throwaway feel to them; they show up to the party dressed in weird punctuation, illogical capitalization, & mangled slang. There is often a great deal of deliberation behind a tweet or a Twitter persona, but unless the execution seems effortless & debonair, the whole thing deflates like a botched soufflé. I sometimes perform this high-wire act gracefully & sometimes do not.

Perhaps I like writing tweets so much because small, delicate things—tarnished rings, seashells, loose buttons, love notes scrawled on hotel stationary—are more important to me than anything else. Crystalizing bits of my life in 140-character amber gives me a kick in the heart, a shot of stillness, a stolen gold feeling. My only goal in sharing them is to give other people the same mysterious thrill.

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@petfurniture is a human woman living in texas

 editor's note: if you'd like to be featured in a future TWEETPOETIKA plz send an inquiry to other(at)queenmobs(dot)com  (and, wink-wink, it might be nice to include some of your tweets!!)