Every once in a while I have these moments of calm. I am submerged in this deep blue tranquility I feel I can only achieve in sleep. For the last 6 years or so it hasn't come in slumber. It hasn't come often. It comes like the calm after a storm. This utter loss of control. This weight that cannot be lifted. It is most often a calm of resignation to my circumstances. But tonight, it is different.

I feel a smile playing at my lips. Even, here on this porch, where I have spent so many nights with dry salt streams on my cheeks, it feels like...well I can't say that I've ever felt this before. I can't describe it. There are simply no words, which scares me. The usual worries about the validity of this calm are still pushing their way through the Prozac. Screaming their high pitched warnings:
"Don't trust it."
"Don't hope"
"Don't be fooled"

But these days, these voices, these demons (if we're going to be Catholic about it) are held at bay. Because, the calm I feel today started to creep in when I let my gaze wander to those deep blue tranquil eyes. When, after putting up a fight, I stared my dreams square in the face and kissed them in the cold, on this porch, in this chair, where I've cried so many tears for so many who weren't worth them. In these blue eyes I feel safe, I feel calm, I feel a future again. These eyes are not glassy, glossed over like so many influenced by substance or that lacked it. These are not the eyes I've spent year writing about. These are not the eyes I thought I deserved to stare into, but with the new year, came this opportunity, this encapsulation of the dark corners of my heart. The secrets I started to keep even from myself, because they were too precious for even me to ruin.

This might not make sense. Or be the best thing I've written. My fingers are frozen. My lips are chapped. I cannot wrap my mind around all the things that make so much sense, and the things that are only making sense now that they've destroyed me.

I cannot wrap my mind around him. But I've accepted the fact that I must stop trying. I must stop trying and simply give in...

but we all knew I'd do that the first time he held my hand, didn't we?

"You're a Strong Racehorse"

Being that I am now a part time truck driver I have a lot of time to contemplate the state of my life whilst navigating the "open roads" of Stepford-esque housing tracts. Since my life is apparently in a chronic state of chaos that flows more than it ebbs this contemplation is not only a habit of mine, but necessary for survival, and the well being of others, because let's face it, I know it's not easy to be around me all of the time.

Without delving into the details I've talked to death already, my heart has been broken, or at least shaken violently. I'm currently penciling this in as the most painful occurrence, seeing as I can't bring myself to hate the person responsible, or even dislike them a little bit. There are so many excuses, and honest to God reasons, and fears, and insecurities, and patience being ignored running through our small community as of late...and though I have been trying to wade through the mess making sense of it all, because I feel it is my duty.
I can't.
And over the loud clunking of the engine this morning I've realized...I can't.
Stop Kailee. Just stop.

It isn't a secret to me, or you, or anyone maybe, that I try to hold too much in my little hands because I trust myself and no one else. When someone lets go of my hand, yanks it away, I will inevitably break down, fall to my knees in the dramatic fashion I hope captures every pained emotion on my face. I want those expressions etched into your brain. I want you to know all the things I feel, but here's where I'm wrong....
It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that I keep loving everyone to death. It doesn't matter that my ears, my heart have served as a confessional for more or less everyone I know. It doesn't matter that I could be the brightest light in everyone's life (maybe not brightest, like a consistently warm light, but not too bright, come on I'm still talking about me here...) because my solitude is so fucking dark. I don't know exactly where I lost my way. I know who, and who, and who, and who made me feel like I only mattered or didn't matter in reference to someone else, but I didn't realize how much I believed it.

So you were right. You- my friends, or family, or exboyfriend, or ex-people who weren't ever really my boyfriends. You're right. I need to fix things. I'm not perfect and trust me I'll never let myelf live it down. I will rebuild.

But... I will always be too much.

Too much love.
Too much understanding.
Too much willingness.
Too much strength.
Too much patience.
Too much to say.
Too much to feel.
Too much romance.
Too much imagination.
Always too much love, though, always.

And one day that will be enough.

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. 

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. 

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.

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."

"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.

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?

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.