Tuesday, June 14, 2011

I will miss this backyard...

     One winter the power went out. There were candles and attempts at ghost stories. Katie was over like always. She backed me into the corner of my bedroom and spoke in that scary voice she uses while I talked on my parent's cell phone to the boy I would later fall in love with. Maybe fell in love with, I don't really know now if you can fall in love with someone when you're 15. I don't really know if you can fall in love with someone when you're 24. 
     The power is out tonight so I'm thinking of that night back in 2000-whatever. I remember thinking then that Katie is the only person who could make that night memorable. And how she's done that for so many nights since then. I don't remember what I talked to so and so on that phone about. I don't remember what I talked to any of the so and so's I thought I loved about. I remember that I thought it was really important at the time, and that I cried about it later, and that I sometimes try to hold on to all the so and so's and words, and nights and that it just doesn't matter sometimes. 
     It doesn't matter now. Oliver and I have a home in Nashville. We will be far away from all the people I keep saying I need to forget and remembering in my dreams. I will be far from my family and the few friends I'll remember on nights like these. I will miss my sister, and my Katie, and these chairs in the backyard, and the dry California air, but I won't miss the so and so's. I already don't. I'm just prone to weeping about the past. And it hasn't made me weep in a while, which confuses me.  
     It's the future my eyes tear for. The possibility. The way this is so natural. The way it's working.
     The battery is draining on this thing. The house it still dark. I'm still alone. So I'll sit, one last time, and remember the one's worth remembering, who coincidentally have stuck around long enough to still be relevant. 
     

Sunday, June 12, 2011

I don't write because it's trendy...

There was a cat in the bar last night.


It kept rubbing against my legs, 
and hers. 
More her legs than mine. 
I hate cats. 
Because I am allergic, 
or because I make myself believe I am allergic,
because I hate cats. 


No one spoke to us this time,
and this night felt better, 
until we saw them, 
and panicked,
and peeked around the corner
before running to my car,
and giggled nervously at our nerves. 


Please come visit me 
in that romantic city 
in the south.