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.