To Whom It May Concern:

The girl is disappearing and you have to let her go. 
You should have let her quietly slip into the shadowy corners of your memory years ago when you started on this path it seems you will follow for as long as you both shall live. Perhaps it is not sadness you feel, or guilt, or loss. Perhaps you can't wrap the words around the tip if your tongue. Perhaps it's just that old habits die hard, but you don't want to watch her drowning anymore. No one does. Not even her, and she can't breathe properly while you hold on with the firmest fleeting grasp. 


The calendar has replenished itself, as it does,  with blank pages, filled with days and days of endless trial and error, and trial. And you will succeed, and she will exist beyond your comprehension as she has always been meant to do. And while you may try to search through the pages to find a note that will predict the next sideways glance or crooked smile you cannot find it now, though you must know it will come. And while the pit of your stomach burns with a longing you don't understand, for a glimpse of a memory that was unfairly dragged into the present, you will have created a present more overwhelmingly beautiful than you could have done trying to hang on to this girl. 


So let her disappear. Let her breathe. And lastly, don't criticize how she treads water. Because if you truly let her go you must trust that she will make it to shore on her own, and that if you ever become concerned that she didn't, all you have to do is ask. 

Solitaire

I try to hold all the cards and never show them. Because if you saw them they'd be scattered, out of order. I keep them facing inward because it always seems easier to know I'm if winning or losing in private. It's a secret I tell to just about anyone who will listen, but I keep my lips locked tight while we're playing.
My hands are too small to hold them all. I can't do it anymore. I'm working up the courage to lay some on the table before you.


I hope that you can make them add up into some combination that makes sense to us both.

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. 
     

"Stay What You Are"

Sometimes I get this feeling right before I fall asleep that I need to silently weep until I drift into whatever semi-unconscious state my body accepts as sleep. I get a lump in my throat, I choke on each breath.


But there's nothing to weep for anymore. No tears come to soak my pillow. It's just habit. A bad one. And I've spent the last few months breaking some bad habits I recognized a little bit too late. The trees are showing their leaves again. There are plans. There are roughly 3,000 miles between where I am and where I'll be. I am in love again, but in a new way. A better way. The most honest way.


There's much to smile about these days and smiling has always been foreign to me. I've saved them, but I've started to give them more freely. Not because anyone asked, but because they are deserving.


I don't know what to do with happiness, but I'm learning.
My hands are full and my grasp is just right. 

It's been a little while...

     Oliver and I were at the vet this morning. He's almost a year overdue for his shots. I sat in the waiting room trying to think of a good excuse to give the receptionist because I was sure she was going to scold me for being such a horrible parent. It's bad enough he hasn't had a haircut in a month and has to crane his neck upward in order to see anything since his hair is covering his eyes. I've had somewhat of  a rough year, give me a break. 
     So, I'm sitting on a seat I'm sure had been recently peed on, and subsequently disinfected, looking down into Oliver's sad little shaky face when I became aware of the loudest woman in the entire world. Of course she had three small dogs with her. Of course they all had horrible ailments, that of course I wanted to know all about. And yes, she was wearing a zebra print hoodie with what are commonly known as "yoga pants," but couldn't possibly have been what she needed them for since she was wearing a knee brace and I'll just leave out the part about her being shockingly overweight. I have a feeling her knee brace was from some sort of injury she was trying to get workman's comp to cover. She just seemed like the type. 
     Oliver and I remained quiet in the corner observing the other patients, and let's face it, if he's anything like me, making silent jokes about them, and judging the dog who peed on the scale, twice. I was trying to will Oliver to stop shaking with my mind because the voice I talk to him in is inappropriate for public and makes me look just as bad as zebra lady, who, I should add, had been talking about Sally's diabetes for close to 20 minutes. The topic soon changed to a tsunami in Japan, which I had no idea about because if I'm going to be honest I rarely know what's going on in the world and I have no excuse for it. Concern for Japan quickly turned to a concern for Palmdale.
     "What the fuck?" you say.
      Right. I have no idea why zebra lady and the lady with the chihuahua/poodle hybrid would suddenly get a sentimental look in their eyes when expressing their gratitude that this desert is so dry and disgusting, but they did. "That's why I love it here," Zebra said shifting a sleepy dog on her lap, "there's no drama." Because a tsunami is drama. Because I wake up and thank God every day that there are no tsunami's in the Antelope Valley. Give me a break. 
     It should be noted that a woke up in a nostalgic, bitter mood this morning. Whether it was the bad dreams I've been having or just impatience I started to feel a little bit lost. But, at the moment this horrid conversation was taking place, while Oliver huddled next to me in the corner I remembered all my plans and felt good, no, great even. And when zebra lady blew out the door, making an awful ruckus everything made perfect sense, except the Antelope Valley with it's abundance of dog wielding ladies in tight pants. 
     

No Title.

     It's funny that in the static between song changes on the car radio, the Jesus channel, for lack of a better name, comes through clearly with bits of sermon I always feel guilty about silencing. It's funny because it's me, and so many people seem to associate my idea of religion as a joke. (Note to self: make sure people know that just because I joke about religion doesn't mean I consider it a joke.) 
     Tonight while selecting songs the deep voice of some preacher was speaking a truth I should be grasping for while I tumble rage around like ice in an empty glass. Pointless. It was about enemies, forgiveness, and the lack of validation for their wrongdoings. I'm not sure I can believe with the faith some possess so strongly. I'll remember it though, write it down. Maybe it'll feel right some day. 
     I've never been one to need guidance from an entity I've considered more as looming than nurturing. I can't trust it. I can't trust anything. But I'm not sure if all these feelings in the pit of my stomach are just chemical. I'm not sure when I'll stop thinking about God when the streetlights go out. There's still some hope it's not just malfunction, that we're not all just flickering on and off. 
     I am sure that tonight, on a Sunday, my decisions feel different. They feel true. They aren't burdened by insecurity, wonder, or the thick pessimism that coats most of my days. Maybe I've shed some skin. Maybe the company I'm in currently is just long overdue. Maybe I should always keep the streetlights a mystery.
     But I think I'm on my way to grasping something I lost last summer, or the one before. Or  maybe it's always been missing. 

February in Advance

     I've had these diamonds in my back pocket for what feels like a decade. I've moved them from my jeans, to my breast pocket, and now I clutch them in my left hand. They are tarnished and worn. I can't remember them ever looking as dazzling as everyone tells me they were, they are, or they should. My knuckles are white from the force I use to hold them steady in my palm. If you know me at all, you know I've been dying to give them away, but am dying too frequently to give them up. 

     I know of more diamonds in southern states. One in particular, that with any luck (you know I don't believe in luck) will soon be my home. I plan to wash these diamonds in a pond, near a new tree, with leaves that change color because it's their nature not their burden. I will lay them with the other diamonds that have been dragged across the country to regain their shine, their luster.

     I am happier than I have ever been in this last decade knowing that my gems are welcome in a new state. I am sure that within new borders and new company I can show the world their worth that has been overlooked in my hiding places. If you know me at all you may have seen a few of my diamonds, or at least a glimmer when I wasn't holding on so tightly, but the timing wasn't right, the words were always on the tip of my tongue, and you never asked to see.

     I have to get them far away from here. Closer to a home. Closer to the things that make them sparkle. I promise to send pictures, write letters, and stories. I promise I'll show you, if the timing is right.

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. 

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.

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.