Analogy

Sometimes you have to watch movies you've already seen again to notice the parts you've missed the first time. The shoes that change color. Character's expressions. The emotions they really meant to convey. Sometimes you don't see everything the first time around. Because you've read the book. Because you knew what you were expecting. Because you didn't want to be disappointed. And the fact is that sometimes you are. Sometimes the script is changed. It's not what you wanted, but the film wouldn't work any other way.


I am writing my own script. It's new. It's unfinished, and I couldn't tell you if it has a happy ending yet, but I can tell you that you're dying to read it. Because whether you love me or hate me you're reading it. You can't take your eyes off of me. Every word tastes like candy, or maybe poison, but you'll fucking lap it up. 

I did this once before in 2008

I feel like I should write something. I think it's the weather. I should be sitting on the window seat, my head leaning against the rain spattered window, looking out into the gray,  making broad statements about the state of things, or religion, or at least letting my eyes tear up listening to a man play an acoustic guitar, singing about the women he left or let leave. 


That's not what's going on here. 


The truth, if you'd like it to hear it, which no one ever really does, is that I have nothing to say. 
I did. 
I do, maybe, but no one's listening and I'm not one to let my voice compete with loud music in a bar, or that guy you fucked, didn't fuck, want to fuck, kissed on your birthday, lied to, fell in love with, thought you fell in love with, shit...do we ever listen to ourselves?


Most of all, I feel like the louder your voice is the less I care about what you have to say. So we have to break up, myself and language.
Don't call. I won't answer.

I Had A Dream

I've been thinking about scars tonight. 


Scars from acne on cheeks that you'd only notice from lying next to someone in the light, trying to figure out the mysteries their face hides so well. 
Scars from chicken pox that shouldn't have been scratched. I almost forgot about those.
Tiny ones on fingers that no one has ever noticed, whose origins have never been quite clear.
And big ones from near fatal accidents that most people knew of, and the less familiar never know how to ask about. 


I had a dream earlier this evening that my thigh was filled with what would become tiny scars. It was at first a tattoo, but then turned into to burning painful cuts, made by a razor blade. It looked like dashes, or the kind of perforated line on forms that have sections that are made for tearing away. 


I just wanted to write that down. Maybe it'll mean something some day, or maybe I'll make it mean something later. 

The Not So Back of My Mind

I don't know how to say this. Other than saying it, however it comes out. 
I wasn't sad today or tonight. 
There is paint all over my hands and my room. It took up some time. 
Now I'm crying. And I want a cigarette. 
And I realized that now when I cry I reach for a lighter instead of the phone like I used to. 
I'm just so tired of saying it. 


But I never said this...


I wouldn't have done anything differently. 
Your life scares me. For you. Not me. I'm fine. 
Please take care of yourself. 
Please ask for help. 
Please work through and don't just get around. 
I miss you, I think. 
You're as scared as I am. 
I am so fucking scared for and worried about you.
You're in danger of talking too much. 
Fuck you. But I don't mean it whole heartedly yet. 

The Reason I'm Sometimes Bad At Making Conversation

     I've been having a staring contest with this tree for the past 15 minutes. It always wins. My eyes usually start to water. Sometimes it makes me feel like I won. Sometimes it doesn't. 
     I visit this tree a lot. It's not the one I've written about before. I should give it more credit. I think it's the same tree I started this late night ritual with, but that was a long time ago. I can't be sure. Let's say it was. Full circle. It feels nicer. 
     It's on a street called Abbey. Fitting. This is kind of my church. We mirror each other, me and this tree. Tonight it's cold and so am I. It's bare, looks a little defeated, but it knows, like I do, that it'll seem prettier, more alive to others some day when the weather changes. We'll both remember how it looked before that though. We'll carry the knowledge that it'll appear dead again eventually. 
     This tree and I are close. We always find each other. Sometimes alone. Sometimes with company. We both secretly hate when company comes. This is our place, that's all. 
     Tonight I feel taller than this tree. I am above all the things I've heard and endured today. I'm towering over the emotions of others. Not because I'm better, no, not that at all. But because if I keep my feet off the ground I don't run the risk of having to run. Or, let's face it, of being trampled, knowing my track record. 
     I'd rather sit and look at this tree and its bare branches, white against the Halloween sky, trying to find the moon in my rear view mirror than pick up the phone and keep trying to fuel fires that will burn without me or not. 
     My eyes aren't burning as much as I'd like. That lump isn't in my throat. I accidentally play memories in my head like the melody of a song I really liked in high school, but don't remember the lyrics to. 
     I don't know how long I can live up in the branches of this tree, dangling my feet above the pavement. I suppose I'll come down some day. Probably a Sunday. It's always a Sunday. It feel better up here for now. Out of reach, not from your grasp but from my own. 

"Sleep. Don't weep."

     Your eyes open, but not intentionally. It's as if the night's anesthesia has been lifted, and your eyelids flutter open. They're heavy. You're midway between sleep's paralysis and waking's motion. Look through the spaces between the blinds. The sky isn't as black as you think. It's the type of sky that can mean late night or early morning. You're not sure which you'd prefer. Voices on the television are trying to sell acne treatments and quick weight loss tips. You don't have to look to know what their owners look like. Happy. Smiling. Plain haircuts and colors. Clear skin. Enthusiasm. You wish you could be them. Enthralled by walks through forests and afternoons on wooden swing sets. You hate them because you can't believe them. You can't sleep without the murmur of their voices lulling you into scarce periods of sleep.
     You long for these fleeting comas. The only useful distraction. How much can you write in a day? Paint in a day? Read in a day? Fuck in a day? Sing in a day? Speak in a day? How many times can you forget a lifetime only to remember it again when your eyes open, when your hands start working right? How long will it feel like a lump in your throat? A welling of tears that never spill over?
     Turn off the television. Lay in silence. On your right side. Then your left. Then your stomach, but never your back. Breathe. Count your breaths. Remind yourself to breathe. Tell you're brain to stop. It's time for rest. It's time to stop fighting. The silence is louder than sin. What is all this noise? This pounding? Stop breathing. 
     You knew it was your heart. You know it's always this loud. And everyone else knows it too.

This is not my best. But you've never seen my best, anyway.

     Lately, I've been watching a lot of films. Films about magic. Films about stolen things. Characters with accents and teeth that are too perfect for the lives they're portraying. I've been watching films to forget about the scenes that run through my mind on rainy Sundays, and let's face it, every day since the leaves changed color. It's your film and I've always just been watching.

     I've been sitting with my cold hands in my lap. I've kept my eyes wide open through montages of parties, dark bars, freeways, sex, old girlfriends, old friends with families you thought you wanted. Montages of your best days in vivid colors scattered between nights of illness, no sleep, and self medication. I don't cry when you're giving speeches about your past, your parents, weddings, and houses you have or will live in. I keep my eyes open while you tell stories of jackets left behind. I want to close them when I know I've missed a scene, when I watch your tongue wrap around only the parts you want me to know. I keep a straight face. I choke in private. I sit here watching, for too long, hoping maybe I'll understand when it's all over. Hoping the lights will never turn on. Hoping I never have to leave.

     I've tried to tear my eyes away from the screen more times than you'll ever know. I never wanted to be your audience. I don't want to be any one's audience. But you've got me. I paid for my ticket with more money than I had in the bank. I don't think the price means anything to you. 

     But it's all a veil. It's all a metaphor because if I had your worn face in front of mine you wouldn't know what to do with me. Because I said what I meant. Because I'm too much. Because this isn't what you're used to. Because I cared too much. I don't think you gave me a chance to speak in more than a whisper. And I'm certain I won't get that. A chance, a song, a painting, a book, a poem, a reason, a conversation, a fucking honorable mention in the margins of your journal. 

     I get a ticket to a show. A seat in the middle of rows of empty chairs once occupied by people I'll never know, and will never know about. But they left. They aren't watching anymore. They walked out. They walked away. And I can't figure out how you notice that they're gone if my seat goes unnoticed. Or why it doesn't make you feel any different in the morning. Because in all honesty I'm jealous. I want to watch only what makes me smile today, or tonight, and not give a shit about tomorrow. I want to walk out of films that have just begun, or might end badly. I want to leave before something makes me cry, or remember what feeling felt like. 

     But I am right here. Sitting in a chair no one's looking for. Thinking about heading for the door, turning on the lights, and being honest. Because honestly, I'd never walk away. And if I'm honest with myself, it's not my face, my smell, my smile, or even my fucking personality I want you to notice. 

     I just want you to know that someone stayed. 

Realism...for people in reality.

We're running out of things to call it

"I know," she said.

It hurts. 

"I can't hear you."

I feel heavy. Like my blood turned into lead. 

"Keep moving."

I'm frozen. 

"You'll thaw."

There's only so much I can do. I can't read anymore. 

"I had good thoughts today."

We can't always speak of such things.

Let's just get this over with...

There are footsteps outside. Some in a hurry. Some that don't really belong here anymore. They make too much noise. They never stop at my door. I blink. My eyes are dry. I have been laying here staring out the window at this tree behind a streetlight. It's wearing fall colors. But it's not beautiful like you'd read in a book or a poem. It's disgusting. It looks like illness, like suffering, like change. There isn't a cloud in the sky and the streetlight is modern and dirty. Nothing looks like it's in its right place. All these fucking houses look the same. I've got to get away from this view.


Years ago I wrote about this tree, this streetlight. It was a month when all the houses had their Christmas lights up, but mine. The sky was grey, and I wasn't sad, I remember. I wrote this piece about the tree from a man's perspective. It was shit. It was foolish of me. I still don't know how men think. They probably don't ponder over Christmas lights.


I can't look at the tree for much longer. I wish I could stay here until the sky turns black and the streetlight becomes useful, but my body aches and my brain needs a shower. I worry that the smell of smoke, and sex, and rum, and roses, and beer, and perfume, and vomit, and sweat, and pine, and toothpaste, and hairspray, and adolescence will never wash off completely. I'll always catch the smell when I least expect it. Everything now will remind of something then, and I will hold my breath until I know how things will pan out. I have been holding my breath, did you know?


So I scrub until my skin turns red, and then breaks, and my eyes aren't so dry anymore. I scrub so that the list, the aforementioned list that sits atop my chest at night, is gone; becoming new scars that just trace the old ones.
I stand naked in front of the mirror. Reflected. Reflecting, constantly. I see messages I wrote myself, like post-it's on the fridge or notes in margins.


Things to Remember...

• Hope
• Balance
• Keep Growing
• Levity
• Build yourself back up when you've broken
• Heal from the inside, out. 
• "Tomorrow I shall sing more sweetly."
• "Try and live."

Sometimes I'm good at not listening. Not leaving. Not paying attention. Not using my head. Not seeing.
I'm better at disappearing.

If you asked me once, "Kailee, why don't you ever write anything for me?" this is for you. It's not about you though, sorry.

     I wasn't looking for anything in particular. Let's say it's a bookstore, but then, knowing me, I would've gone in there knowing what I wanted. Ok, I got the book I wanted, but since it was my day off and I had nothing else to do I was browsing for fun. I glanced around the store like I always do because I'm a.) paranoid and b.) convinced I'll see someone I know. I usually don't, but I always think the time I don't look it'll suprise me. I usually don't these days because I'm in a new place.
     Then I saw you.
     I'm going to say it had been a year, but I'm not very good with time. A year seems long enough for me to be slightly over you, secretly yearning for this run-in, and for my hair to be longer, signifying a passage of time and my new mature self. You didn't know I'd moved. Or you might have heard, but we weren't speaking anymore so why would I think you knew? Regardless, you didn't see me yet, I saw you first. Maybe that's how this all started anyway. Or maybe I'll only ever know my side of the story.
    Deep breath.
    This is usually as far as I get. I imagine I'd start playing with my loose braid (because I braid my hair now that it's long) and picking at my nails because that's an old nervous habit. I resist the urge to phone anyone and tell them about the trainwreck that's about to happen. Because no matter what happens I'm sure I'll still be a little pessimistic in a year and would classify anything as a trainwreck. Some girl friend will tell me I'm being nuts. I will still appreciate it.
     And there you were.
     "Shit." That's what I thought. You saw me and I wasted all of my preperation for witty banter playing with my braid. You're walking closer and, in my mind, you look exactly the same. But you have a new shirt. And you look tired, but healthier I hope. I make that face I make when I want to smile, but I'm pretending to be unaffected. I made it a lot around you. Maybe in a year you'll still recognize it.
     And that's where it ends.
     I want to think we'd have an awkward exchange of "How are you's?" and "How are all those things you wanted to accomplish working out's?" I'll try to sound more put together than I am, but I'm a little more put together than most so I figure we'll break even. You'll have done things I expected and feared. In this moment I remember how I quit smoking so when this is all over I have to leave without a crutch. We'll be newly decorated and make small talk about small things in this big picture. I'll end the conversation earlier than I want to, because you're still hard to leave, and I'm always far too easy to hold on to. You'd walk with me outside, because if anything you were always polite, we'd hug. It'd be the long kind that breaks your heart. I'd will myself not to look back as you walked away. I'd assume you were as unaffected as I tried to seem. I'd wonder where the rest of your day took you.
     And then I'd go home and read my new book. 
     Isn't that the absolute worst way to end this? It doesn't matter, though. None of it does.

The Truth

I meant to be asleep, 

even if on the wrong side of the bed. 

But I'm outside again. 

My eyelashes are wet. 

And I'm wearing some sweatshirt from a boy who only wanted to see me naked in pictures, and never held my hand. 

Salvation

     It was an area code I didn't recognize. I usually never answer, but I thought someone might be in trouble. I'm always a call for help, like a private emergency line. I don't mind. It makes me feel important. I expect it, which is why it was so surprising to hear the young girl's voice on the other end of the line, trying to help me. 
     She spoke with hesitation and an unnatural cadence to her voice that I instantly knew meant she was reading words on a paper laid out before her. I imagined her sitting in an uncomfortable chair, checking off names on the call list she had next to her speaking prompts. Or maybe I was the only call.  She knew me by name. She sounded younger than me, or less articulate, or less sure of her convictions. I asked who was calling. She said, "OK," after every sentence she spoke. She said she got my name from a friend. She asked how I knew him, and if I was familiar with what he believed. I told her "high school", and "yes." 
     I was half asleep. The sleeping pill was wearing off, but I was in that warm place between awake and asleep, stretching my legs, gaining the feeling in my fingers. I knew the church she was from, I knew the city, I knew where this was going, and I was too tired to say what I really thought. I was polite, I made my voice sound like I wasn't sleeping in later than usual, I hung up the phone. 


     This isn't the first time someone has tried to save me. I'd be kidding myself if I thought it was the last. I'd be lying if I said it made me feel cared for. 
     I've never liked church. The stiff Catholic kind I grew up in, or the others that appear less terrifying, but choke me with similar ideas I can't swallow. I cannot abide by a book of stories. I cannot repent for being imperfect. I enjoy sex, and curse words, and I don't want to be married. I write instead of pray. I go to movies instead of mass. I live to live, and not for a seat in Heaven. 
     Close friends and ex-lovers will disagree with what I say. They have for years. I keep my mouth shut, they think it's out of fear. I'd say it's out of respect. I don't believe you, but I believe you believe in yourself. That's fine. I love you the same. I will be here for you as I have for years. Do the same for me.
     I will feel magnified emotions. I will write about them. You might read it. You might worry. You might wonder if I'm doing alright. You'll hear about a time I was drunk, or the beds I wake up in, see the ashes pile up on the dashboard. 
     You should call. You should ask me, if you were wondering.
     Please don't save me. I have been treading this water on my own for years. Always waiting for a flood, knowing I'll go it alone. Afterward, I'll be sure to tell many of you how it went. How I held my breath and kicked until my legs were numb. How I finally found some land to rest on for a while. 


     What's it like to hear these stories after they've already been written? When the tears are now just salt crusted stains on freckled cheeks, bloodshot brown eyes are glossed over from lack of sleep or substance. While you watch my dry lips gently close around a filter, and exhale stale smoke, is it then when I look like I'm in need of some salvation? Because in case you haven't noticed, you only see me after I've survived. 

Velvet

     She wore an orange wig. Something about the highlighter colored bob felt right in the poorly lit bar under the fog of alcohol. The winter air blew in behind her raising the natural blonde hairs on the nape of her neck, as she thoughtfully pulled the door shut behind her. Easing onto a sticky barstool in the corner she waited, slipping her heel out of her red ballet flat and dangling it playfully off her toes.
     He seemed like a nice enough guy after two drinks and was completely intriguing after four. It’d been a long time since she felt like her old self, talking to strangers. The orange of her hair only drew more attention to her large, sage eyes, which naturally drew him in. She lapped up every word he said, not because she didn’t know better, but because this was a new town and she didn’t care to know better. She just wanted to connect. She agreed when he asked to walk her home and again when he asked if he could come in.


     As they sat on beanbag chairs in the half unpacked living room she listened to his philosophy on drug use and its correlation to religion. He’s definitely a man, she thought distracted by the shadows under his glossy brown eyes. When he brushed the synthetic hair off of her face with his rough fingertips she thought, well, we’ve come this far.
     She let him kiss her. She kissed him back dutifully. His lips moved from her mouth to the bone of her jaw, down the side of her neck. She knew he wouldn’t get further than that. She was in control. As she let her hand wander over his chest, her fingers outlining his collarbone she came across a chain she hadn’t noticed before. While he was occupied, running his lips over the soft skin of her shoulders she worked the chain out from underneath the collar of his shirt. “Oh God, it’s a pentagram.”
     Though her green eyes were still glassy her perception was on point. In that instant within the constantly shifting crevice of the two beanbag chairs she recalled the pagan ideals he seemed too eager to share with her. As if he’d seen the same documentary that aired at 4:00pm on the National Geographic channel. She couldn’t help but giggle, causing him to think he must be doing something right and to press his lips even more forcefully against hers. It wasn’t as if she disagreed with his beliefs or had any strong beliefs herself. It was the fact that even here in this town that seemed to promise an inherent sense of freedom, where people often didn’t wear shoes, she had to meet another person dangling a philosophy on a cheap chain.
     She walked him to the door with a gracious smile and made polite plans to meet up with him the next day. While he fumbled with his phone, promising to save her number and call her the next day, her eyes darted to the dangling pentagram on his clavicle. Almost simultaneously she was startled by another detail she’d previously ignored. His shirt, the color of cranberries, was crafted out of some sort of crushed velvet fabric she’d last seen in the form of a tracksuit. Without stopping to recover her face from the shock and disgust she respectfully ushered him out of the apartment and into the cold night.

     Alone, she removed her wig and along with it the shimmery veil of the night. The apartment may as well have been a palace. Even with boxes haphazardly acting as a living room set it was hers. She couldn’t remember the last time she hung a picture or personalized any space. She’d been fit onto couches and squeezed into extra drawers for years now, but it worked. In the six months since she moved north she’d felt an increasing anxiety to run. Not from or to anything specific, but just to remain in motion. It helped that she didn’t know a single soul here. It was so much simpler to remember people as scattered addresses on Post-it notes.

I wrote this when the weather was warmer. I wrote this because Katie told me to.

Projects

Today I thought about ripping my face off; taking a straight razor and tracing a fine line around its circumference. I’d hook my fingertips around the inside flap of skin and peel. I imagine that my eyes would come out too. It is logical to assume they could stay, nestled in their sockets without the pervasive obstructions of eyelids or lashes, or my nose. My nose would come off too, probably.



If you were wondering why I’d think about ripping my face off I’d tell you to wonder, “Why not?” I can’t think of anything else that would satisfy this new urge to shed my skin and trade it in for something that exposes my nerves, make me feel raw, naked in the worst way. I want to let the freezing air of this fucking desert ignite my nerve endings and chill my wobbly bones. Maybe it’ll make me more resilient. I’ve just been hiding behind this face anyway. Making the same one for years and years and years of lost loves and lost strangers who would have ended up in that previous category eventually.


If I had no face I would worry about it constantly. I’d wonder what people thought if they thought of me. A bloody mess of honest tissue held together with those tiny fibers we never see. I’d stay hidden behind dusty blinds. I’d turn the music up to the highest volume. I’d sing along to the cries of burdened musicians. I’d imagine all the similarities between us. I wouldn’t have to worry about that wedding tomorrow, or the start of my life without structure, or the distance between me and my sanity, or the man who might have loved me if I’d met him before that other girl he’s probably loving, or the boy who cares about me so much he hurts me for my own good, or the lemon fresh prison I’m too poor to escape from.


If I had no face it’d be a lot harder to hide, but easier to find a reason. That’s all I ever wanted in the first place. A reason to: hide, or hurt, or scream, or crawl out of my skin, or try on a new face for a while. A reason other than ‘this is life’, and things happen, and it’s not luck, or God, or me, or you, or him, or her. It’s just what happens. Because it happens. And we all have to deal with it, whatever that means. I’ve never been one for ambiguities.

Laundry

Every time I put a clean pillow case on my pillow I see the bloodstain from the time my ex-boyfriend's nose bled in the middle of the night. I think about how much he apologized for it in the morning. Then I think about all the things he didn't apologize for. The things he never will apologize for. That bloodstain makes me instantly nostalgic; not for him, but for that time when things felt like they were working out. "Working out" meaning the way I thought things were supposed to happen. 


I don't know what that way is anymore. 


Lately I've been down. I'd like to be up. The shower drain is clogged with more hair than I remember having and I have to struggle daily wondering where all my cigarettes went. I've been prescribed pills by friends who aren't pharmacists. They help. The friends and the pills, but only until morning. 


I need to write more stories. I need to climb out of this. I need to go to bed. I need a massage. 


Bottom line: It's late (or early depending on how you tell time), I'm drunk, the sleeping pill is kicking in, I needed to put some words down tonight, and if they're all spelled correctly I will sleep soundly. 

Dear Mr. Carver-

     You said all we have is words. I think of this often; when filling these pages; before I display my heart on new tables, in unfamiliar houses that smell like home; while I replay or write future conversations. But I do not have the right words tonight.
     There are few dark roads or empty parking lots in this town I haven’t littered with cigarette butts and the contents of my head. The car stereo will never be as loud as I need it to be. It plays words written by men I’ve never met, juxtaposed in perfect lines. They’ve all felt this before. This isn’t new to anyone.
     With every night lit by passing headlights my voice gets softer, my tongue dry, it gets harder to weave the right words. My mouth moves in familiar patterns, silently trying to recall a time when the noise it made drew the hairs on the back of someone’s neck toward the sky. Affected.
     I always meant to speak simply, even in my long-winded sentences. Tonight, I feel so simply, without, that silence seems like the only thing I can say. It’s been a while since I’ve heard my own voice. There are no mirrors for that.
     I admire you for your simplicity. For the scenes you paint with brevity. For your words. For the weight you’ve placed upon them. I believed you when you said they are all that we have and we must make them right. But tonight I wonder if all we have are the words what can be done when there’s nothing left to say?

-K

"That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones."

Things I'm Not Good At...

Letting fires burn out.

     There has been a fire in my life. I think it started the moment I finished the last story I wrote for a grade. This fire has burned deep and loud. I think it might have come close to dying a few times. Either way it scorched my skin.
     It seems to be dying down. I long for the warmth it gave off in a hazy fit of recollection the few minutes before I finally fall asleep. I wake up and burn the same way.
     I've had a consistent record of dowsing fires and running, as fast I could, away from the embers and what they all felt like once. I've tried to fan flames, wasting my breath, frantically breaking my lungs. I can't find enough water anywhere this time. I'm scared.

     So I will change.

     I will let this fire linger. Watch as the flames turn into a faint orange glow. The smoke it gives off is suffocating me. I will shift. I will get some air, let this fire breathe and change. I would pray to God if I believed that time, free time, and a strong gust of wind will spark the flames into the blaze I imagine it can be. I will stoke this fire will all the strength I can muster, but I will not inhale this smoke anymore. I will guard my lungs. I will not inhale you.

"So let's go out west and bask in the overcast..."

I hate how some songs and some weather still reminds me of you. Metal love songs. Ditching class on mornings that felt like this afternoon, to slip out of my jeans and under your sheets, just to get some sleep. I keep thinking about that time I told you I liked cold kisses. Memories are fine I guess, just not today.

Recycle

Is it possible to feel so much older and so young at the same time? To know, with your whole heart that you are accidentally submerged in love again, but that your whole heart can never, might never, and probably wasn't ever immersed in the kind of love you have to give? To constantly yearn for the best, but know the best is only the least of the worst? To be surrounded by ghosts, but feel like the only one who remembers what dying felt like?
Dramatic? Yes, but it's Tuesday.
The season is changing again. We're running ahead of the dying leaves, black ice, and two-day-old cups of chai. We're running out of pavement. I can feel it giving way beneath my feet. I'm still running, like your mouth about our unedited lives while you scratch out the adjectives you used to own with a blood red marker you keep next to your mascara. You'll be the best story he's ever read.
I am slowing to a jog, coming to some metaphorical crossroads between 'through' or 'around'. We've all seen my pattern, the situations I haunt. My clumsy wade through the mess of lovers, friends, family, finances, hopes, habits, and insecurities I've accumulated since the day I blew out the speakers in that piece of shit Cadillac. 
It's dirty. It's exhausting. It's tough on your phone bill. 
I'm sorry. And I mean it. I mean every word I say. Even when I'm the only one who hears. 


We know I'll walk straight through it again, like I never saw it coming. I'll still be better acquainted with your voicemail. I'll scribble another name on the lists of ghosts. You won't hear from me in the morning. 

I pride myself on my foresight.

It’s Too Soon to Write a Poem Like This

You’re sleeping.

I’m naked.

In so many more ways

than my bare skin touching yours.

Our decorated bodies

tangled

You might be a fucking hypocrite,

but the sound of you breathing

is ringing in my ears.

Artificial Tears

I've been thinking about that phrase a lot lately. 
Artificial tears. 
I think those have sprung from my tear ducts before. Because of artificial feelings, artificial memories. Everything looks better through salt crusted eyes; feels like the real thing.
We'll break the same either way. 
This is quite possibly the shittiest thing I'll write all night. I don't have the energy to top myself. It's fine. This is real. This is it. 
I need a phone call. 
A pep talk. 
I'm fishing for compliments and all of my fish are in far away ponds. 
It's better this way. They never bite the right way. 


A dear friend told me that when a good thing is about to happen the world seems to throw all the bad at you first. 


Something fucking great must be coming a few tomorrows from now.

Perspective

Same night
Same seat
Oliver and I
Different cigarettes
Longer hair
More stars
Less sleep
Bat wings across the moon
Steady hands
Foggy memory
Deteriorating vision
High school sing-alongs
Certain heart
Flailing feelings
Scars
Bare feet on cement

Someone remind me of tonight.
The night I said things have been getting better, long before I knew what better was.

Commute

It was Thursday. I was driving home from work. Almost home. Definitely in the desert. Definitely feeling like I do every time I approach that lake. I had a cigarette in one hand, my phone in the other. I was trying to change the song on the stereo with my mind. I was probably speeding. I looked to my right. Some boy, I guess a man really, my age or older. Are boys my age considered men? In some cases, I guess. In most cases, I'm doubtful. He was wearing some uniform. Or at least that's what I gathered from the patch on his shirt sleeve. I imagined the patch had something to do with the medical field. I imagine a lot of things when I'm on the 14. We looked at each other. I'm going to say he looked at me. I think I was just trying to merge. He waved. I waved back. I didn't recognize him. He might have been attractive. He had an arm full of tattoos. I should know him right? We should all know each other. 

I keep thinking about it. 

I feel like I missed something. 

Why did I wave back?

The Difference Between Medicine and Poison

     Do you remember the night we sat on your roof? It was summer I think, or getting close at least. It might have been the day we walked around a city you lived in when your life fell apart, where I now spend all of my week days. I sometimes I drive past your old street thinking about the night it all started. One of my destinationless drives that led me to your front porch, and eventually that shitty couch where we crashed into each other.

     The air was cool. my skin was burning. We sat too far apart. We didn't touch. I didn't know if I was allowed to touch you anymore. Or if I ever touched you at all. Your eyes were clear, tired. The lids a translucent pink. I think I loved that about you. That you always looked like you'd been crying. In retrospect you always were. In retrospect I always thought I loved you.
     It felt like the place we should have sat years ago. On top of that blue house. Sharing a pack of Camels, letting the nicotine swirl through us. We were the slowest burning fire. You looked out across the rooftops of neighbors we never got to know. You talked about the ocean. About the problem with all of our friends. Or maybe you talked about the future that you're still working toward. The ideas that rolled off your tongue like dice. You'd be fine no matter what, just never alone. I watched you from where I sat. My fingers dying to lock within yours. My lips dying to taste the smoke on your tongue. You still blow so much smoke.


     We headed back in through the window. You first, I followed, so common those days. The lights were on. We were alone. You kissed me. I panicked. You asked if I wanted it and I said "yes", breathless. A lie I didn't know I was telling.
     We laid close in your bed. Our skin in familiar company. Your arms loosely wrapped around my waist. It felt crowded. The bed was always too small. We just didn't fit anymore. Or didn't want to. Your breath on my neck felt like history. I closed my eyes and prayed to the empty sky I'd forget your smell, your crooked smile, and all the things I ever knew too well. I turned over and kissed you hard on the mouth.

     It felt like the worst night of my life, and in comparison to the rest of the nights that compete, it still wins.

Mirrors

     Today I met a man I’ve met at least ten times in the past.

     Different seasons. Different circumstances. I remember his wet eyes. He is always polite. His words seem genuinely courteous and grateful.

     He is not old, but the lines in his face tell me he feels each and every one of his years. He dresses his age. His pack is full, heavy with a responsibility I rarely see from where I sit each day. He radiates a melancholy I recognize like my own finger tips dragging across the bones of my hips. His gaze is like a familiar smell. I can see years, months, hours, and minutes of memory simultaneously. We have spoken few words to each other.  

     He overwhelms me. He knocks me over. I strain to hear him like whispers. He closes the door behind him. I don’t know when I will see him again. I don't know that I want to. 

Menthol

     These days it seems like anything less than a full pack of cigarettes isn't enough. I liken myself to this feeling too often. For years. Even in the years I felt full, sustained.

     I sat alone, or in the best company, on the pavement at two in the morning staring at the stars, remembering when things felt worse. How they should feel now, but they can't. It was a night like that one I listened to a now distance voice tell me, "She's just not you."  But as the summer months came, planes were caught, plans were made and I still stared at the stars alone, at two in the morning, killing my lungs and I thought of you. All of you. And hoped that you were doing alright.

     I said the other day to a good friend "I am too much initially or eventually." it occurs to me now as I try to find a glimpse of myself in other people’s words that I am perhaps always too much but never enough.

     I am notorious for breaking myself for you. For answering every call for help. For holding fast to hope I lost almost as quickly as I etched it into my skin. I am your rock. Your safe place. Your shoulder. Your conscience. Your savior. Your dictionary. Your rage. Your logic. I am all these things as honest and severe as you need. I am all of these things but I am never enough of whatever else you want. I am too much and hard to break.I fall apart on my own time. In parked cars or speeding on freeways. Or in your bed. Or that bench in your front yard. On the other end of phone lines. 

I am the best person to talk to when you're stoned.

I like opposites. 
Mostly the kind we are. 
The complimentary kind, 
or maybe the perfectly contradictory kind. 
Split brains and tugs on bracelets in other states, in dirty cafes, in sticky bars that make me claustrophobic.  
I like how you appreciate songs about oak trees and everything that would scare anyone else away from me. 
I like that you never condone my bad habits or redundant mistakes. 
I like that we've conquered time zones. 
I will remember everything. 
And you will remind me time and time again. 
We should say "I love you" more. 
But not this time. 
It's ok, this time. 

Assigned Seating

     Twenty minutes ago I was trying to choose a table to sit at, today this seemed like an important choice. A man in a fishing hat was gathering his things near the table I set my bag on. As Alyssa and I situated our over sized purses and laptops and sunglasses the fisherman stopped and turned to us like he had something to say. I thought for a second that he was offering us his table, which made no sense since we already had one and this cafe is dead aside from the old couple simultaneously thumbing through pages of separate Diabetes magazines.  

     I looked at the fisherman and smiled, nervously. 

     "Are you a writer?" he asked

     "What?" Alyssa said even though we both heard him clearly. She said no, then looked at me. I didn't saying anything. I'd been talking about my apparent writer's block all day. Am I writer? I am, in most senses of the word, right? I didn't admit to it. I just stared at him. 

     He stared back from underneath his ridiculous hat and motioned at the table he had just vacated, "this table is good for writing." I smiled. He left. Did he know I was having trouble today? Did he know I've been struggling for the past few months to put a cohesive idea on paper? That I'm afraid to get everything out on paper because it makes it all real?

     In my mind this was one of those moments other people have, but not me. The moments I hear about through long distance phone calls where someone has an experience that totally sets their life or, at least, their day in perspective. A powerful run in, an intense conversation with a stranger, the perfect song on the jukebox, whatever, today was my day. 

     I walked over to the fisherman's table. I could see some writing on it's surface. I assumed he was talking about some inspiring phrase he found printed on the table top. I looked down and realized that the only thing written on the table was an add for the cafe's premium coffee blends. This wasn't one of those moments. 

     So, twenty minutes later I'm sitting at a table, not THE table, but one that's proving to suffice. I don't know what the fisherman was inspired to write sitting at the table across from me or what it means that he told me about his experience and that I've spent half a page reliving a brief conversation. I am, in this particular moment sure of one thing...

     I can't make it mean anything.

     I attach meaning to words and actions like I inhale and exhale. It's involuntary. It's like I'm trying to solve a chronic mystery coming out of everyone's mouth. Today, in this freezing cafe, in the most uncomfortable chair I have decided to change that habit. During conversations, that usually happen  through phone lines or in parked cars after midnight, I've been reminded of the importance of the present and all the challenges I'm missing trying to find the logic or meaning in what might not mean a god damn thing.

     Tonight I am accepting, being, and breathing in the simplest sense. I am shivering. I am aching. I am longing. I am hoping. I am forgiving. I am creating. 

     I will be everything tonight. I will mean only what I mean. And I will take you the same way if you'll let me.

     

     

     

     

  

     

Mermaids/Faking it/Exaggeration

Blogging is like swimming lessons...follow me, I swear it'll make sense. 

When I was seven or eight years old the biggest fear in my life, aside from natural disasters, Christ, and my next door neighbor, were the weekly swim lessons my mom mandated me with. Every week I'd pretend to fall asleep in the passenger seat while Mom drove to the east side of town singing along to Amy Grant completely unconvinced of my unconsciousness. It never worked. She never looked at my peaceful darting eyeballs under their lids and drove past the pool. We'd walk through the back gate, past the poorly painted mural of The Little Mermaid (which makes my current fear of mermaids so much more involved) and toward the pool where some girl, probably not as old as I am now waited in a blue one piece swim suit with a highlighter yellow whistle around her neck. The chlorine fumes made my eyes burn, but I was usually crying about something else long before I was waist deep in water. 

"Kick, kick, kick, breathe..." or something like that. That's how you learn to swim. That was the whole lesson. For weeks that felt like months. For an hour that felt like a lifetime. I cried, panicked, faked sleep, and faked illness to get out of it. Why? Because I didn't like to do things alone. I didn't like not knowing anyone. I didn't like putting my trust in a teenager with a whistle and sharp fingernails. I didn't like being told to jump off that fucking diving bored that cannot have been as high as it seems in my memory, looming over what was most likely eight feet of water. I don't like doing a lot of things, but the fact remains, I have to and I learned how to swim. 

So, I start this today because it's Wednesday and it seems as good of a time as any. I have reservations and insecurities and a mess of other emotions that will soon become all too apparent as I fill the page (does that make sense when we're talking about the internet?) with words. I have been reluctant to create a space for all of the nonsense in my head to be shared, beyond my control, but it's now or...well... it's happening isn't it? 

Lately, I have been floating quite well on my own, but it should go without saying that I wouldn't have learned without being thrown into it all by other people, situations, etc. I will hopefully be as consistent sharing as I am at rationalizing why I should keep it all to myself.

So this is for anyone past or present who has reminded me to kick, kick, kick, breathe...