Reservoir

I was running the marathon route the day i told someone. it was early. My running partner and I had started our run just as the sun was peaking out over the east, shining on us in the west, running the tops of the foothills. i run in the middle of the road on the dam that slices through the earth, cutting the reservoir off from the town below. I've always run in the middle of the road over bridges. i'm not acrophobic. i'm chronically suicidal. suicide ideation. i just can't not think about it when i glance over the sides. the steepness, the obelisks that beg me to worship them from the pointy clay bed of the arid reservoir.

settler

"I wanted to write a book. I wanted to document my time in the village, my experiences with the Kyrgz community. I didn't get a chance. I got so caught up in being 'on' all the time and constantly consulting 'the PC curve.'"
"I still have that chart.
I should have had it framed. We all laughed at that curve, didn't we."
We must make something of ourselves. Of our lives. We were part of the solicitous solution. What are we now but a slowly-spreading virus sweeping the land?
"I teach grad students. I want to be a teacher."

I make cheese. I'm not here to impress anyone. I don't have the capacity to eradicate my phantom life, so my real life becomes something I turn to for normalcy. I create with my mind and with my hands. My day ends with a result that is both quantified and qualified.

"What are you, like a chef or something?"
More like...or something. I've never been a chef, per se. I have yet to have both hands on that wheel. That leaky pirate ship, barely afloat there but by the grace of a good chef...or just a chef on uppers.

I wake up when the sun is struggling to push through stippled, warm hues of pink and purple and orange.
I gaze into my coffee and prepare to go into battle. I give myself the same pep talk that I did when my job was to step out into the world speaking Bulgarian.

"Do you still talk to anyone from there?"

Mimi was the first friend I made in our small village of Belogradchik. She's since moved herself and family to Utah. I live in Colorado. I haven't seen her yet although we talk quite often. She's a vivacious twenty-something, headstrong and yearning to find her way in this American society.
I remember discouraging her from applying for entry into this country. Her parents spoke virtually none of this language and would be leaving the comforts of job, self-sufficiency, family, friends, and home in that village, so close to Serbia that I wasn't aware I was speaking "village dialect" until I went to the city to visit my language trainer.
Many nights we sat at her house, peanuts and rakyia on the table as we talked. She walked me home across the village the night Pope John Paul II died and we saw a shooting star.
I think they settled in Salt Lake because of the familiarity. The spirit they found in the rock formations and mountains. Mountains always hold spirit. They make the best out of it. Much like Mimi, determined.
She would never believe it, but she inspires me to push myself further. After all, if she can uproot her family from their homeland and move them to this country, then what am I complaining about?
I moved back to Fort Collins for the sunshine. I said it was because of my family, that I wanted to be close, but they understand me less than ever. I moved back to Fort Collins because I wanted to be close to mountains I understood, never quite adapting to the mountains in Washington State that always seemed to kill unsuspecting hikers. Probably because they couldn't see. There seemed to be a dense fog always consuming us on hikes.
On one hike with my former husband and our friends S and Ven, another Bulgarian komrade, we got lost in the fog and snow on Rainier, ended up trying to find the water source, which was a 20 foot drop beneath us. I thought I might have to eat my friends to stay alive, at one point. At another, I looked at my then-husband and pondered the notion that we were both probably considering pushing each other off the cliff.

I was "not a chef" in Seattle. I was a cook. I loved my job, just as I love this one. My family thinks I'm insane for being in the food production/agriculture field. I think they're crazy for not knowing about the food they eat.

I didn't make many friends in Seattle, admittedly. I didn't fit in. I didn't let myself fit in because that seemed fake. Fake was actually what I needed to be to fit into Seattle. I needed to be so indie hipster that it hurt, or so foodie that I might explode with foodieness, or so coffee-shop-writer that i'd crap my pants from all the digestive stimulation.
The people that worked in the industry were not this way. They were something that I have only read described so well (read: Cooking Dirty by Jason Sheehan, whom I stole the "pirate ship" reference from earlier).
Mostly, I disliked current husband's friends. They reminded me of that line from that Steely Dan song "Reelin' in the Years"
"You been tellin' me you're a genius
Since you were seventeen
In all the time I've known you
I still don't know what you mean"
they all told me they were geniuses. I never really saw any results of that. I saw them outdo each other at parties in one area or another. I thought about handing out trophies at the end of the night for "best attempt at hipster coolness."
Really, I longed for something I knew. My real friends. The friends who I knew would never choke me with "fake" and make me go to "trivia night" or discuss inane bullshit.
I wanted to write a book, too. I wanted to write about the everyday ridiculousness of my life. My family considers me irresponsible. I think it's adventurous.

apprenticeship in the cheese cave.

"so, what are you like, a chef or something?"

4AM. not unfamiliar to us. Coffee is already done. I get into the car and drive.
The music is better on the radio at this hour. Pre-"morning drive" obnoxiousness. Post-infomercial.
Out the passenger window I see the sun struggling to wake through a blanket of stippled dark blues and orange-pinks, and to the west, illuminating the strange polygon of fog that is lifting off of the reservoir.

Step into my white boots, white pants, white shirt, all spotted with orange drips.

Close the door behind me and into the cheese cave, already lit and humid, the heavy sweetness of warm milk in the low atmosphere.
I lean in close to the tank and breathe it in. Grass and straw, thick and steamy.
Any attempt at early morning reverie is interrupted by the alarms sounding and the rote action of cleaning equipment, hooking up hoses, setting out forms on tables, weighing up cultures and calcium, cleaning.

I turn my hands over in the water. I have taken naturally to counting. This is just the job for the OCD-infected. I count, I wash. I turn my hands over. I count, I wash. Cold water only, one pump of soap. Wash wash. Rinse.
I see that my fingerprints have already been wiped clean today by the caustic and acid solutions, little cuts have already broken, edged by sharp corners.

I watch rennet. Always the same motion. The same detection. The fluorescent lights above flicker. Horror movie flicker this time. Undeterred, continue cleaning, continue pouring milk into the large buckets. Watching the curd form, i take my hand and lightly feather away the foam. I touch it.
It always feels the same like the dead, wet cheek of a woman. Rubbery and soft, moist, like liquid porcelain.
I handle it, carefully, like I'd handle a beating heart.

We cut it, ladle it, flip it over, salt it, cut it, ladle it, flip it over, salt it.
Then it's cheese.
It's not that simple.
Whenever I enter the ripening cave, I think of all the microorganisms swirling around me, fermenting the firm rounds. Careful not to disturb their work.
Flip them over. Flip them over. count them. account for them.

It wasn't so delicate in Bulgaria. Wasn't so refined. It just was. It was self-sufficiency brought to you by a generation that still keeps preserves of jams, picked vegetables, and fermenting wine in their cellars. That odor still haunts me. Salty, pickling cabbage, old potatoes, mold, stove fuel, and musky wine. The colors on the old shelves in the dead of winter when there was nothing much at the markets...bright oranges, greens, reds, sweet jellies. It just existed. The new generation has lost interest. They want box stores full of colors and bright, beckoning boxes of preserved, dried food, rehydrate at your convenience.

People sometimes refuse to understand my need for physical labor. Moving around. Creating. Producing. Turning earth and love and labor into something edible and delicious.

I sometimes don't understand why this road has led me here. It did. I moved back to the Fort so that I could see people I recognized. People that were contentedly happy. People that make a difference through actions and not just outdo each other with words.

Yes, Ted is still here.

Strangers

There's nothing real about those letters.
I read them. Reread them. Looking for a sign of life.
They were pomp and circumstance of you.
of you packing up and leaving your home.
looking for a reinvention.
That girl in the pictures.
You in the pictures. There's nothing real about them.
Those people. Those smiles. The implicating background noise.
Self-importance and dependence *flash*
You pose. You smile.
You write them as if you want to fall in love.
But your pictures say that it's nothing serious.
I watched the devastation pry itself between you both
As she left the room with someone else.
And you returned to the emails. Sorting. Reaching.
Connecting and disconnecting, thinking that this time maybe
This would be real.
This time you could improve upon the reinvention.
That this next one could replace her in your heart.
Even though you dove in head first and couldn't escape what you saw
Ensnared. Your own old knotted net.
You pretended they were her. And you could not forget.
It dripped onto all of the other pictures.
Like Dali. It melted time onto those letters.

sometimes i catch you looking

I was in the Fuel cafe with him, alone.
As he unwrapped a pack of smokes,
the clear wrapper floated and landed with no sound onto the sticky floor.
Slowly sipped his coffee, lighting the cigarette between two cupped hands, lifting his head for that first sweet drag, eyes still fixated on me.
He leans over to tousle my bangs.
"Let's go for a walk."

It was freezing.
I tried my best to maintain a bright, shiny smile, lips flattened, holding back the shiver held in my jaw.
"Where are we going?"
I wrap myself in the blue and black-striped Gap scarf,
it's freezing.
"Let's just go walk along the river."

No snow on the ground yet,
I watch him inhale, exhale,
smoke mixing with crisp air,
P-Coat blanketing me with scratchy certainty
of my intentions.

Standing on the bridge downtown,
snow begins to fall,
Knit hat forgotten on the chair in the cafe
Flakes bursting as they touch my face.

a letter

a barrage of typed letters
swirling into our mailbox
heavy cardstock and typed
under the guise of hard liquor and baudelaire
an annoyance to neighbors everywhere
click click click
click click
savoring the burn
the work
the sweat
pretending within a swirl of cigarette smoke
he pretends she's still here
and reading between the lines
he pretends she's alone, thinking of him at 3am
she hears his voice and is shouting his name
He grins through a stench of breath
days in a hard, wooden chair
pretending
that when he hears church bells
that she hears them
but it is his imagination
she is no where near
she merely dances, musing him
he sees her everywhere
click click click
click
pretending he's in cuba, NYC, Mexico, paris
he's not.
He's not even in a shitty apartment infested with roaches
he's in an upscale white suburb
not knowing what his point is, only that she and he
once
in squalor
behind a club when they were teenagers
when they were subhumans
when they were surreal
when nothing mattered except the odor of rain
steam rising from the hot asphalt-filled potholes
He sits, interrupted by tap tap tap
it is a wife he does not recognize
when he dreams

I now possess all of the copies of Catcher in the Rye

can we pick up the story from where my jaw fell to the ground?

You'd follow him anywhere. You'd never follow me. You told me so.
He's ceaselessly,
hopelessly in-between jobs. All of your friends are.
That's part of the allure. It's creative. It's creativity you never pursued.
and that makes you want to eat them up.

You wouldn't follow me out of the country, but you'd follow him.
it changed my perspective of you.

Move back to Chicago? Part of me might have, had I not just been posed the question by you
Only because your boyfriend said that when he comes back from Berlin, he might just end up there.

Move with him. You tried before. I remember. You were so in love with your boyfriend's ex-girlfriend that you tried to move to Germany
to be with her.

Maybe there's a chance for you all, yet.
I escaped those winters. No. I don't know if i would move.

we're gathered in a triangle outside a pretentious tavern in Seattle
on a Saturday night, the drinks will be watery and thoughtless,
and the waitress will pay slim attention and protectively tuck her demeanor into an apron pocket.

You can't stop smoking because you don't give a shit.
That's my answer to you.
I watch you. I watch your reasons and they are unconscious actions.
It's not as if a frustration, an anger, a social occasion arise.
you just do it out of instinct.

You don't even do it after we fuck.
Habitual nonsense. You simply are not present for your life.

Joining our gathering are your friends. Your friends. Arriving in a trickle.
They're all someone else's friends.
They're not mine.
I remember when a friend of mine went to Amsterdam with her boyfriend and all of "his" friends.
I remember her obsessing about it constantly.

I divulged this to one of the "friends" at the tavern-
That it had been difficult this past year because everything was this giant game of
Six Degrees of "Person who shall remain nameless".
She said this was hard for her, too.

I wore my wedding band last night.
I picked it up. I put it on the opposite hand.
I told you it was "just something i found."
But it was a deliberately measured move.

We move on after our shitty drinks to a party at an art gallery in SODO.
"Friend" leans over and says, "i feel so out of place at these things. I'm glad you feel the same."
I've spent a lot of my life watching. I've been there, I've just been watching.
I barely participate.

He hates that I have less friends than he does. He wants his friends to be my friends.
He should be more discriminating of whom he lets divulge information to his girlfriend.

We're all gathered at this party, "friends."
In a circle. Having a "moment" of "togetherness."
I look around the room, wonder if i could wear half of the clothes that the other girls are wearing.
I ask him if he thinks I could pull off the Skinny Jeans.
He looks at me and says i should wear more skirts.

Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option

my thought was to begin with "therapy: week X." In all honesty, I can't remember what week it is. I went from once a week to three times a week back down to two, with intermittent visits to other mental health professionals to manage the cocktail, to manage the OCD, to manage the ED.
I sit on the pink couch in the pink room at the therapist with a pink button-down and hair as white as an old witch atop her head.
I sit in front of her, our eyes meet on the same level.
She tells a story, I reveal a sliver, embedded visibly beneath my flesh, waiting for me to pick at it with a dull knife and tweezers.
Surfacing now.
Watching my mother with a drink in her hand. Then another. Then another.
Watching my dad with one drug or another in his lungs, in his nostrils, and another, and another.
And my mother picks up another drink. Everyone picks up another drink.
And i don't. And i can see what they hide.
And so i am distrustful and have every reason to remove myself and be the hidden reason.
The one left behind. The one with burns and blood.
I am beginning to shut the door on this
I can't stay out in the open and be left behind for another. and another.
And watch you hide from something that i see so clearly.
I stand on the gravel behind the house, staring up at the sun.
My arms are underneath the lid of the recycling can, attempting to mute the deafening sound of bottles pouring to the bottom.
I recall therapist's question.
"Are you strong enough to leave him when there's nothing left that you can support? When he's taken every ounce of love and turned it into nothing? Can you watch him slowly kill himself like you've watched everyone else fade and die and give you nothing?"
That answer weighs heavily.

that sheet pisses you off anyway

As I am sitting at my desk, preparing to create busywork for myself,
The sun beams through the window
I finger through my make-up bag, pulling out little orange pill bottles.
There are seven now.
What was it like before the morning cocktail of anti-psychotics, anti-anxieties, anti-depressants, supplements?
I look in the tiny mirror lying beside me.
Do I look like that person? Like the person who relies on three psychiatric professionals to structure her day?
Like the person who needed the fires put out in her head?
It is much cooler beneath my skull.
There are no flames spurting from between crooked fissures.
I still don’t sleep. Vivid nightmares wake me from a Benzedrine state.
A non-relaxed state, more of a sweaty sleep state
In which I expect those dreams. I expect the noises and familiar voices.
They cannot escape during the day, so they wait.
Yesterday, I walked out of the therapist’s pink, cheerful office
Out into the sunshine and to the car
And to the gym
And home
Where I sat, speechless, dead-eyed, staring at the television.
Not even at the television. At the fireplace. At the curtains.
Before we left for the market, I bent forward and laid my head
On the leather ottoman, stretched, and cried very silently.
There was no reason for him to know.

its behind you

i have to ask you.
why you won't cross the bridge anymore.
you only follow until we come to the grating.
then you fall and soundlessly hit the water.
and you follow me into vivid, recurring nightmares.
disappearing after i have chosen my weapon.
staring out the opposite window facing me.
pointing down from the 10th floor.
motioning.

i have not slept in days.
i sit here now, in a dark kitchen at the sharp-edged wooden table.
These chairs don't match the table. They don't match anything.
Odd how familiar this light is, the only light we see in homes.
Ginsberg walked along avenues noticing the televisions all on
in every home blinking wildly, pounding out lip-smacking propaganda
and variety shows.

my eyes hurt today.
sitting slumped into the couch, staring blankly at the television,
wavering whether to go out and be social or
sleep.
yet here i am. not asleep.
it's worse when i drink, much worse when i don't.

retract. there is a vulnerability surrounding me like a duststorm.
i am safely swirling in a comfortable vortex of particles
waiting to be thrown to the ground
my eyes teary and torn by debris.
what if i start fighting myself?

(ironic)

what if i stop.

nameless

I have become an unwilling participant on stage.
Not even in my own life.
On display,
constructing props, setting the stage, raising and lowering a curtain, waiting for the other me to arrive, to critique, to write about it later.
Shakespeare said "All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances"
I feel like I'm watching myself play this role.
That I'm not a real part of it, like a dream. Its not being controlled by me.
Sometimes I go out there, out onto the stage and act my own part,
but it's just an act, and the other me is sitting in the audience,
arms crossed, waiting for intermission so she can go to the lobby
and swig her gin.
"Break a leg," she says to me.
But i know she really means, "don't fuck up this time."
She's watching like a hawk,
meanwhile, I'm attempting to quell this wave of nausea
with a dose of what they've handed me to numb the nerve endings.
I wake up and cheer myself on in the mirror
Smile and wave like a delicate princess,
but my reality, my deservingness of these titles have been challenged.
My leading men they face me, and they turn.
They grab the hand of another
and she looks at me with a speck of disgust
How will I get through this act? I have no costume, no makeup, no lighting,
no magic.
Peering out into the dark audience, gripping at this restraint, this skin
no bouquet of flowers lands in front of me as i bow,
no curtain comes down and ends this act.
This is how i get through, half-believing and pretending,
shaking like a small dog, pissing on myself,
Unable to escape the breathy-humid confines of this arena.
Not knowing the script.
Doppelganger, double-entendre.
I step out of the spotlight.

"I'll be there in an hour"

Move here.

Father's Day

This is my dad.








Ask me why I can't have normal relationships.

two very different erics

"oysters, black morels, homemade vino"
posed atop a white table cloth, perfectly sunset-lit
left to right,
two glasses of sweet white wine
a small white plate
oyster shells and a delicately-carved, butter-smeared knife
a black bowl filled with ice, small oysters
a small white plate
succulent black morels
a large white plate of crusty french bread
buttered
with sprigs of fresh chives
from their garden.
They are more in love in their home.
Smiling in dirty overalls from a wet, lush vegetable patch
from over the handles of shovels
in falling snow, flakes caught in mid-air flurry.
Our conversations were sporadic, predominantly of
love and architecture.
There was a pinhole of hope as we parted ways at the bus stop,
each in the hands of partners who would soon be
shadows.
I scattered the photos and looked into her eyes,
believing it was two very different people
sitting, sipping wine
white tablecloth table,
food and home
created out of love more than out of necessity
"cheers. to us."

but how do you fill that hole?

For one human being to love another:
That is the most difficult of all our tasks,
The ultimate, last test of proof,
the work for which all other work
is but preparation.
--Rilke

isis

Watching first dates at Barrio, he and i munching on chips and salsa
over purplish-red wine, I contemplate the women that surround me,
and the words that people say when they see me in something other than jeans and a black shirt.
Their eyes open with disbelief. "Is that a skirt?"
I'm still exploring my adolescent, 32 year old, puberty-stricken body.
I stare at it in front of the mirror in disbelief, reciting a mantra over and over and closing my eyes to eliminate the existence of these new curves.
Eyes focused on the couples that flock to dimly lit booths, you can always tell.
There is too much smiling. Too much hope, optimism.
You lose that later, you learn to disagree.
We, sitting side-by-side at the bar. I take a sip of my sangria, dip a warm corn chip into a chunky, green tomatillo salsa, spicy, when he comes up with a gem.
"I like that neither of us have anything."
And that is true. It has always been true. I have whittled my life down to a shitty bed, clothes, half of the wedding presents and kitchen appliances, all of my books, my records.
I drift back to this afternoon, "Nothing matters when you're riding. Everything melts, doesn't it? That's it."
I drive back to my house, find ribbons in a box. I have thrown most of them away. I decided i didn't need those trivial mementos to remind me that this is the only real talent i have. Blue and red ribbons, reminding me that after almost five years of silence, my muscles remembered where they were when they hit the saddle.
I take another sip of sangria, eyeing the couples that are now silent, uncomfortable silence.
Ruminating. Masticating.
I tug at my hoodie, feeling squishy under the PMS. I'm in jeans and a black t-shirt, a black hoodie. It's how i always am.
I mull my strength as an athlete and how to balance it with the anorexia that i wish would magically re-appear.
"Once you're outside you won't want to hide anymore."
I've only been on one date in the past six months.
We've accomplished our goal, backwards.
"That one isn't a first date. Dude is in a t-shirt and flip-flops. You at least put the button-up over the t-shirt on the first date."
When the guy who sits across from me at work shows up in a button-up, he is striking enough for me to try to think of things to talk to him about. Although when he strips off his black hoodie, exposing sexy grey t-shirt and jeans, i stare at the tattoo on his left forearm. I cannot think of anything to say, so i turn back to the computer.
The girls at the bar, backs straight, arms draped over the back, eyes on the punk-rock, coked-out bartender. High-heels click along the wooden floor. Back and forth, strutting. Ritualizing.
Their waists have not yet thickened with age and stress.
Beneath stylish low-cut blouses, artificially made-up flesh reveals
Considerable cleavage.
Revealing. Riveting to watch the mating dance
As our tapas show their artful faces,
We don't name what we are. There's a certain comfort that comes
without a title.

Porch. Beer. Ex-girlfriend.

--"So if I absorb my environment, what do I want to be absorbing?"

My response: Last weekend, I rode with a friend down to the Red Hook Brewery. As we rode past urban sprawl, construction sites, through the tunnels, it opened up suddenly into the marshy farmland surrounding the Sammamish River. We stopped on the side of the trail to talk about it.
"Would you ever live down here? Farm? Horses? Vineyards?"
"Yeah. I would."
It was a response precluded by a heavy sigh and a look into the distance, into the tall ornamental grasses on the bank of this rushing, clear river.

"Me too. I've thought about it. I'd love some place outside the city. Close enough to go back to the city, but far enough that it's this quiet, this incredible."

At the brewery, we sat down with a beer, there were babies. An abundance of babies, toddlers. We sat there, half-paying attention to the pints, absorbed in these novel interactions between fleshy fat alien babies.

"You think they know? Look how everything is new. Everything is amazing and honest."

"Organic. They touch each other like it's the first time they've ever experienced anything. It's pure joy. Honest joy and discovery. Color and form, touch and feel."

"Don't you think everything is like that anyway? The first time you fall in love, the first time you touch someone intimately? The first time you read Kerouac, the first time you learn about crayons or clay?"

A glance in each other's direction. Honest.

This is my response to absorption. Making love to every moment. Realizing that death is an invitation to live. I have to remind myself not to be rote, and to open my eyes, acknowledge what i'm doing, what i'm touching.


--"Is it enough to just be loved by someone? If I am who I think I am, then I think it's got to be sad for [someone else to know this about me]. This is the man who got an open-ended date tattooed on his body - the day we got married and an empty spot for the day I leave or the day I die if I go first. What does that mean to enter a committed relationship with such an eye towards finality? Is that the ultimate realist or does he really understand that I might not be here forever?"

My response: Finality. I knew from the beginning that my marriage had an end date. I saw it happening. There was a tattoo on him with the foreboding warning, "caveat emptor." I didn't know then that i took what i couldn't handle.
An empty spot filled with room for the sadness that a final breath brings. That final kiss that disappears into thin air when you shut the door, falling on silent lips. Is life or death really relevant at that point?
I see it not so much as finality, but as an open-ended question.
I have this irrational fear. This terrifying fear that I'll be left standing, dead eyes welling with confusing, burning tears.


--"A friend of mine said I needed to find out who I was without a man in my life. What does that mean? I asked him. I don't mean that you need to be alone forever, but that you need to know who you are on your own, he replied."

My response: I spent my whole life alone. So did you. Man or not. This alone-ness in our heads becomes an obsessive full-time job. Reeling over these chest-rattling sobs, these uncertainties. Who exactly are any of us without each other? This isn't Walden Pond and we are unhappily attracted to people who willingly give attention, but what are we without homes? How do we know where to go? So we go where our food bowls are, as far as our chains will stretch and bend instead of finally putting out a hand and finally admitting that you can't run anymore. That you're so tired. I don't necessarily agree with "alone." I run in circles alone. Mama raised an independent woman. She also raised a woman who never trusted anyone else to help her up.
Yesterday, I was taking a CPR course. There was a point when we had to lie on the floor with our partners, putting each other on our sides into an appropriate position so we didn't choke on our own vomit. After it was over, I was lying on the floor, ready with my palms placed by my side to hoist myself up, and there "ES" was, bending over me with a hand out to help me up. I wondered why he did that.
Then i remembered what I'd said, "you're the first person I've not walked in front of or behind, but truly beside."
We've been alone in our own heads so long, having these conversations in our heads, lips barely moving, the words are dying to escape.

--"At the same time, I don't know if I could live the life in my mind if I was on my own. But would I have that without him? Could I love myself without seeing myself through his eyes?"


My response: Again, my marriage was an error in judgement. Pun intended. We judged each other unfairly. He watched everything i did and followed, in suit. I hated myself for it, for being weak. I hated him more for being weak. I always saw myself through his eyes.
I was never allowed the life I wanted, the only way was without him. I planned for it. For years, I thought about it. I thought about what my life really was. I was a woman stuck in a little-girl body, stuck with little-girl thoughts because I knew he'd take care of everything. I knew he'd bail me out. I had to learn how to bail myself out again.
The other day, lying on the bed, I realized something I'd never believed before. I didn't even recognize the words, the voice that was confident in who I was because I knew who I was in ES's eyes. There was no judgement there. There was no weakness or fear.

--"Over the years I've resolved that if this didn't work out, I would likely never marry again. If anything long-term arose, I would consider long term commitments, but not marriage. It's something I should have learned early, though my husband has said that if I hadn't wanted to marry him, he would have ended things. He needs that traditional form of commitment and I, now more than ever, know I don't. Granted, I enjoy the security and soft-landing of my marriage. In fact, the fact that I never had anything secure and stable in my life, let alone someone to love me and push me to be free, is precisely why it's so hard to think about walking away. It's an addiction. It's too easy. I doubt that if left to my own devices I would actually be able to follow through on the things I speak about for a life of my own: Can I live alone? Not the being alone, but the day to day practicalities of living...could I do that?"

My response: Is it not easy because it's right? Why walk alone when you have someone to willingly give you that cushion with no strings attached? With nothing but a beaming pride that you're his? Or are you? Are any of us when we give ourselves, emotionally to others? It's not physical contact, a quick fuck with another woman that I fear. I fear exactly what I gave to other men when I was married--what I should have been sharing with husband, I gave to them. I gave myself to everything else. I was allowed to, but there were terms. There was no feather-pillow, marshmallow landing. The mundane practicalities, we all struggle with, our kind, our generation of etherial attention-span-less-ness.

--"What he wants out of living life is different than what I want. Regardless of any deep psycho-emotional connection and understanding and love we have...this is the realization I am coming to and it makes me ill...I don't want this to be the truth...I want the other life...but I want him to be in that life, too. I think."

My response: I'm leaning over my computer with my hands covering my face thinking about what to say to this. I've never had this. I've never walked hand-in-hand with someone down the same road, with the same objectives, the same goals, the same life, looking at each other, completely content, completely without words.

You were right...it was a date

My therapist asked me last week if what happened last weekend when I went cycling with my new cycling friend was a "date."
I said i didn't think it was a date.
She said, "it was a date. You need to decide what to do before you get yourself into a situation."
Can't i just avoid this and hope it goes away?

We cycled this weekend over on one of the islands. There were moments when were forced to dismount on the side of the roads, these roads lined with tall grasses, vibrant wildflowers and dilapidated wooden fences, just to take in the view of the snow capped Cascades, of Rainier, seemingly on fire, floating on an island of its own.

I'd notice him peripherally, taking my sweatiness in, and at one point he reached to sweep my bangs out of my eyes.

This lighthouse at the pinnacle of an adjunct island. It reminded me of the old lighthouse in Milwaukee, the one that was being restored, that I'd run by through the park along Lake Michigan. White with a black ring, an enormous swirling lantern at the top. The metal casing would let out a flash reflecting the sun.

Low tide, we walked down to the beach, leaving our bikes on the rocks above, taking in cliche salty, fishy air.
"It doesn't smell like this in the city," he said.
"Can you imagine yourself living on an island like this?"
I said it depended on the reason. It depended on my age, my intentions.
"I can see that. It would probably depend on who you were with, too."
I bit my lip.

We finished our ride at a sushi bar on a little strip of touristy-looking buildings, old. Maybe they weren't touristy. There were no locals hanging out. I wondered if the island had locals at all.
"I don't know much about sushi anymore," he says.
"I think it is basically always the same. You spent 4 years on a boat and you don't know about fish?"

Two beers and a spicy tuna roll later he reaches over and touches my wrist.
He asks if we can consider this a date.
"You have to have felt this. Am I the only one?"
"I'm seeing someone."
i look out towards the patio, noticing the sun begin to set. I felt a slight warmth on my arms where the punishing orb had attacked me underneath his fingertips still resting there.

"So, is it serious with you and this other guy?"

I thought back to every email, every text, every conversation, every time my I would lose my breath, every day, every night, every time we'd managed to dislodge the sheets from every corner of the bed.

"It is getting serious, yes."
"Can we keep this friendly and see what happens? I really like you. I can't believe you hadn't noticed this at work. Do you think this could get awkward because we work together?"

It might. His eyes changed from bright green to stormy blue, dipping a piece of albacore into the wasabi, looking straight into my own eyes.
I wondered what color they were right now.

I thought about the veins on his arms and the lack of tattoos. I always expect to see them when I see guys in T-shirts.

Today, I saw him at work, he was in a meeting with one of the other engineers. He turned to look and flashed me a smile. Wearing those dark-rimmed glasses, poring through papers. I stopped for a second outside the glass, cocked my head, thought of how i hoped to god he wouldn't try to kiss me as I left his house, salty and wet.

Setting my file down, I closed my eyes and opened them only when i knew i was facing far enough to my right.
I opened them only when I felt the cool breeze from my fire-escape window.

We've only had one date.

breakup letter

Sitting cross-legged, entangled in a damp sheet,
This was the moment.
The last moment of epidermal strength
infallibility in droplets
stuck in a well-woven web
hanging by the last sticky thread.

visceral deconstruction
a rearrangement

i hesitate to define courage by fearlessness
contraction, expansion
only when we allow the air in the room
to clear

absinthe, cocaine, fulci or "it's your turn to clean the glue machine"

It's been since I left the brewery and went to Eastern Europe that i'd talked to J.
Facebook, you've done it again.

I can't really remember the first day we met. It must have been when i started at OBC. I would be out in front, my first position was as a retail girl. Folding shirts and serving beer to groups of frat boys. 3 or 4 o'clock would roll around, the bottling run would be over, the boys would start to gather in the tasting room, filling pint glasses with their celebration, or with infuriation.
I did remember thinking that I wanted that.

I wanted to stroll in after a bottling run, after cleaning tanks, after struggling with labels and glue, wet and tired, clad in big rubber boots (I never did get over the "wet" part). Mostly, I wanted to be one of the boys.

After a few months in retail, I asked for a transfer to production. I remember walking onto that bottling line and knowing that the next two years would entail dragging hoses and attempting to end a run without throwing bottles at the German machinery.

As with any job, you start to develop close relationships with co-workers. I remember my first days bottling and kegging with J. Patience beyond belief, that boy. We'd arrive at 4 AM to start the keg run. He did everything those first couple days, never left my side, even though i know he had partied till just about the time he had to come to work. Sometimes we'd find our bottling supervisor still sleeping in the large bin of plastic wrap that our bottles would come packed in, maybe in a pool of vomit, maybe not.

There were times that J showed up so late that i'd already kegged half the tank. He'd walk in, reeking of the night before, be very sorry, and offer to clean everything. Inevitably, on those days, the machines would break down and we'd spend hours fiddling with wrenches, nuts and bolts. J taught me how to be spatial. How to use my left brain for good, instead of evil. He taught me the finer points of not being killed by heavy machinery and the forklift.

We had such shitty days, he and I, scrubbing pig-intestine glue off of the machines, water so hot we had to wear thick, awkward-fitting black gloves, scrubbing the dreaded pink mold from the bottom of the filler. Shitty days when bottles exploded out of nowhere and shot amber glass in all directions. Days when we'd have to unpack the bottles by hand onto the conveyers. Our hands were always cut up from bottle caps. We took care of each other, he and I. He'd rarely not be by my side in rotation, and we'd take such painstaking effort to make sure that nothing would go wrong for ourselves. Those days were long.

But nothing replaces those conversations in the early mornings, the sky was always dark, the air in the brewery smelled like malt-o-meal. J would be so angry sometimes, we'd start drinking early. Sometimes, I'd change the schedule so that we could be on the same runs.

Sometimes, I'd change the schedule so that we could go out to the bars and clean the beer lines, but really all we'd do is get really drunk and end up somewhere in Old Town, talking about drinking even more.

Many an evening was spent in J's basement apartment with the cat and the cold tiled floor, fat rails of cocaine, a bottle of absinthe, and horror movies, up until dawn, talking about music, about Lovecraft, bitching about work.

Nothing replaces those days. They were long. I think about them and that stale beer and crushed hops smell runs from my brain into my nose. We missed a lot of each other's lives.

I still have that poem that he wrote me on the back of the 90 Shilling coaster.

you smell like glitter and cotton candy

Paperwork.
I write emails to friends, chat, look at other people's profiles on Facebook.
Look out the window, longingly, at my fire escape and the crows that gather there.

My eyes take in brief sunshine. Glance at my Outlook, notice there's a message from the person who sits to my right.
One word answers to my questions.

I sit here and try not to eat out of boredom. I try to chew gum. Bubble gum, minty gum. I think minty gum works. I chew piece after piece out of sheer boredom.

I walk into the production room on my way to the bathroom and run into my new cycling friend.
"We should make this a thing."
I have a hangover. Don't speak in riddles.
"What? What kind of thing."
"Cycling on the weekends."
"oh. that thing."
"Yeah, so this saturday, then. I'll think of a route, we'll go out to dinner again. Cool?"

I look past the papers he's carrying and notice the prominent veins on his arms, leading up to his neck. And then I am looking into his eyes and today, they are bright green.
I'm considering the scars on his chest from lung surgery.

He smiles and tells me about the fieldwork he's been doing. I fiddle with a pair of scissors and listen, thinking mostly about the hockey game i missed while cooking dinner last night.

I'm listening, but only half-heartedly. I'm thinking about last night. About making dinner for a chef. About making dinner. I suck at life, I'm thinking. I should do this more often.
Domesticity is not my forte and i forget about it, at the mercy of the wine.

But the chef's roommate was at the kitchen table with me, drinking wine, we were talking about something, laughing, chopping vegetables. I don't look at him, he brushes the back of my neck with a kiss.

I'm startled by new cycling friend's laugh.
I think he said something funny.
"What?"
He tells me about something that happened on Sunday. I look back into his eyes and again, he smiles and asks where we should go for dinner.

A friend asked me the other day what i'd say if new cycling friend asked me out on a date, or if i even thought these were actual dates.

Would i tell him i were seeing someone?
Part of me wants to say no.
The part of me that traces veins with the tips of my fingers and thinks grey hair and scars are hot.

I walk back to my desk, throw on my headphones and think about where I want to go to dinner.

things that aren't appropriate

I had a drink with my roommates last night.
A couple of drinks.
A couple of drinks after i had already had a couple of drinks. It's funny, when you don't see people in a while, you remember why you liked them.
or why you didn't.

I was sitting at the head of the table that the landlord left. It has an antique cover that i'd set my hot coffee on, and it left a white ring. We're trying to figure out how we can hide it. I'm having trouble figuring out exactly what to say, facing both of them again.

I never know how to begin conversations with my ex-husband.
Maybe that was part of the problem.
We didn't just laugh. We didn't just connect. We were good friends. We occupied each other's time, space, void.
We snarled and poked at each other until we bled.
And so we resort to suspicious behavior, snapping, hiding.

There is an air of un-forgetfulness, un-forgiveness.
No guilt, no remorse, only something left behind.

Our roommate decides to walk to the kitchen and pop open another Fat Tire. He asks if we want a chili dog.
I don't want a chili dog, but it breaks through the uncomfortable tension of me questioning my ex-husband about his new "friend."

She's married. I wonder about this girl, this married "friend."
Is she as unhappy as I was? Does she want out?

Why would he choose someone in exactly the same situation as we were in two years ago?
Wanting out, but wanting the security. Wanting the greener grass, but wanting to come back to the food bowl.

Does he wonder what she says to her husband? Does he wonder if her husband is expecting her home for a candlelit bubble bath, and what he is thinking when she doesn't show?
He explains that it's because there's no chance of it working out. Ever. This is the reason he sees her. They talk, they have coffee. They must have something in common.
They must share a passion for something. They must share experiences.

He doesn't ask about my relationship. I've told him that it's none of his business and that I don't want his opinions about it.
We're just not there, yet.

He has another drink and walks to the kitchen to sort out some cast iron skillets.
"These are mine."
I tell him he can't take everything.
"This is mine."
I tell him he can't have it.

He sits down with his chili dog.
I ask about his other girlfriend, the sugar mama that he doesn't want because he doesn't want a serious relationship right now.
I get nowhere with my questions.
And i'm too drunk to argue anymore.

I decide that, when i look at him, I don't like him anymore. It's not because he's being insolent, it's because i really don't like him. I don't know what he's about anymore, and he makes comments, likewise.
"I didn't even know you liked hockey."
I do like hockey.

I look at him and I cannot, for the life of me, remember what we had in common, what we talked about, if we ever really opened up to each other.
This was a good example of our relationship.

We made better roommates than spouses.

Detachment

"Do you know what the procedure is for detached retina?"
No.
"They place this little gas bubble behind your eye and...you have to look in one direction, not moving your eyes...for 2 weeks."
(It's called pneumatic retinoxepy)
Not moving your eyes.
Not moving your eyes.

One stray look
Might have adverse, lifelong effects.

Permanent detachment.

"I'm your typical boy."
I've never dated a "typical boy."
I have no idea what that even means.

Am I your typical girl?
I don't know if my eyes could ever be still.

There was a very long time when I was stereotypically
on a deteriorating raft
surrounded by thick, salty air and hungry sharks.
And sun that pounded my skin into blistery, bloody sheets.

"If you had a theme, what would it be? A theme. A word."

Suffocation.

And it will be a most undesirable way to die.

i brought a 4-pack of Guinness and potato chips to my first therapy session

I spent this past saturday with someone who told me that the reason they were 34 and had not ever had a serious relationship was because of their mother.
I spent that morning walking along the beach, sunlight finally beaming in a cloudless sky.
When he left me in the truck, i opened his wallet and peeked at his license.
It's the same as looking through people's drawers.
Piecing together their fragmented lives, snippets of an entire life before you came together. Bills, tickets, half-written-in journals, statements about their existence, condom wrappers, photos.
He spent that day looking at me, hard.
I couldn't quite figure it out, what he was looking for.
I couldn't quite put my finger on it. There were a few glances.
Hazel. Blue-green. Like mine.
You can't ever tell through the glasses.
I decided I didn't date light-eyed men, fair-haired and fine-boned.
It's a trust issue.
Which is ironic. Because i have light eyes. Although not fair-haired or fine-boned.
I did notice his room, his bathroom. The window that looked over the cherry blossoms and the lilac bushes and the quiet street.
And then we were cycling on the island.
And he always wanted to be on my left side, talking, questioning.
I wanted to know what he meant by that.
By stopping and mentioning where we were on the water, and the reflection, and the gin.
He didn't let me lead. I took it.
Sunset over the I-90 bridge.
On my ride home, alone, I was still asleep on the pillow. I had pulled the sheets from the corner.

bedside table drawer

The first memories i have are of my dad leaving for work. He worked swing-shift sometimes, and when he came home at odd hours
from the metal forge plant,
he would take off his burned, ashen clothes, pile them in the corner, and go to sleep.
I remember seeing a picture of him in front of the enormous drop forge, a furnace burning hundreds of degrees hotter than my little body could ever imagine.
In the summer, when my mom would take the scissors to my faded, worn-kneed jeans, she would give the legs to him. He used them as a layer of protection against the searing sparks that flew as he brought the heavy hammer down on a piece of iron,
molding it into a tool,
something practical, something useful.
I imagined the jean-legs disintigrating with each firey ball that collided with the layers of fabric, finally contacting the skin, the smell of singed hair melding with the smell of hot melting metal
He would come home, sleep, get up and leave for baseball practice.
There was a dirty, grey uniform that he wore. Stirrups and white socks.
I remember the uniform had a number on the back, maybe his name.
I cannot remember the number. Maybe it changed.
I don't remember watching him play.
I was small then. I'm sure i never knew the size of his hands, or if mine would fit into his palm.
I don't think that i ever knew if he had scars or callouses from work, from the baseball or the smooth wood bat.
There were so many rough surfaces, so many edges.
I ran into them all.
Get up, look around, find a band-aid for the wound.
"Don't bleed on my things."

if you can cheer me up, i can learn to love you

The quote of the day concerned two awkward goof-balls attempting to wax poetic about social cues.
this is something we do every day, pick apart a social structure or two until we've beaten it like a bad dog, until it's on the ground, begging for air, for the chance to show us a "different side."
these conversations last days. we can pick up where we left off, always, and let the disintegration begin.
i could potentially describe the bus ride that i had the other day,
the one that began with my partner-in-crime and i walking to the bus stop on a cloudless morning, i hadn't noticed until we arrived at the stop and he followed me that he hadn't lit a cigarette. I raised my eyebrows. The #3 comes every ten minutes. Of course it was full, it was nearing 8:00, filled with junior professionals heading down the hill, downtown to the high rise cubicles that we all occupy, even on beautiful days.
And then the Can Lady got on. The Asian lady with the half-drooping face. Some sort of deformity that i cannot define. She carries cans in ripped black hefty bags onto the bus, and they leave a slithery trail of flat beer and soda to the back door, where she absolutely needed to be, even though there were shoulder-to-shoulder bodies in the aisle.
I think the drippy mess crept onto my jeans as she dragged her bags on the floor through our legs. I smelled old beer all day.

i wish i were a better writer, i could describe what we talk about on a daily basis.
i could describe a certain friend's descent (or ascent, really) into unemployment. fun-employment.
everyone looks and says, "tsk tsk. jeez, aren't you looking? can't you find anything? aren't you bored?"
the answer i received, once, was..."no, i'm not looking."
not looking not because she didn't want to, but because this forced break from the rat race was exactly what she needed to be able to sit down and really take a look at herself and her own needs.
We work in this giant machine.
I'm a firm believer that the machine works. It serves its purpose.
That micromanagement is how people are "motivated" into doing "work."
That nagging barb in the back of your neck that walks by your desk, employing some secret mix of formulated bullshit to suck your soul out and thereby rendering you able to do no more than make charts and graphs (not using red).
The machine means that we all have a place.
But when she left it, it meant that she didn't have a place.
Accepting this was the first step. Because it doesn't come without withdrawal
that longing...wishing you could score a job, any office job, temping
anything to be able to prove your worth for 8-10 hours a day.

camera obscura

my perception of space is slightly skewed.
i grew up not having space
not having time
or privacy.
all of these things were occupied or taken away.

I left my phone at work.
I feel slightly disconnected, so i make up stories to pass the time.
I sit here in silence, because music distracts me from my original intent.

I climb the stairs to the anne frank room and look at the photo album.
The first photo is of our wedding day.
It's the newspaper shot. I don't know where it came from, or which paper it was from.
Its the first photo.

The pictures aren't chronological.
There are some of us in bulgaria, in the mountains, hiking with our colleagues.
There are some of us with friends, some with family.
Some of those profile shots of me in the sunset.
There are some of babas we passed in the streets, dressed in traditional
Rhodope baba gear.

I turn the pages, think about where we were.
I think we went in circles.
I think we came full circle, a complete 360 regression.

I told a friend the other night that i really have faked a lot of orgasms.
It was the truth.
"Fourth time, one hour. No lie."
That's what you said, right? An hour on the fourth go? The first one's for you, the second one's for her, the third one is for both of us, the fourth one is...an hour. It really had no point.

I talk to him when i have questions about things neither of us have a clue about.
I can always tell that he's laughing on the other end.
He tells me what he thinks i need to say when i have sex with other men.
"Mostly just don't say anything."

He talks to me when he has life crises. We've spent the last year re-evaluating his life, from one end of the country to another.

"Meet me in Idaho."

I think of all the opportunities in that album.
There were pictures of us at camp, pictures of us in florida, in mexico, in Hong Kong.
There was just no love.
There was no place in my heart for that kind of love. The love that one should see when they open a photo album.
"Look how in love you were."

I feel slightly disconnected.
So i write stories.

"Now is the time when your relationship will take a turn. You have a choice.
You can sabotage it, or you can stay and face it."

"We make a good team."
We make a good team when i make you laugh. When i get hyper in the middle of the afternoon because i want to come over and make out with you.

"What do you want for Christmas, little girl."
That was ironic. If only you knew what that little girl wanted.
Every Wednesday, she asks me what that little girl wants.
"Love. A home. Attention."
That's all she ever wants.

She doesn't get her childhood. I took her and ran, already.
We live out of a backpack.
A backpack that i set on the floor in the bathroom, and rummage through
in the morning
wishing i could just leave it there, and put my clothes away
in one place.
and not have to carry (enter heart skipping a beat)
everything.

"you know me, I'll walk away and never look back."

It might end at the point when I give up on having a childhood. It might end when I pick up my backpack for good, leave you all behind. Leave all of this behind. But those are irrational thoughts, unproductive thoughts. These are angry thoughts. I have learned that I have to stop asking so many questions and learning to actually answer them. I leave too many questions unanswered.

The end is here. The end is now. The end of my fear of everything has to be now or it will never come. It will never come and I will be lost.

I can only write these stories about my nonexistent childhood for so long before they consume me and my unrealistic expectations about the way things are supposed to fall into place.

“Everyone is like that. No one can commit completely. It’s not human nature to just fall into one thing. To love one thing, one person, to work one job, to have one dwelling, to have things that they cannot rid themselves of.”

When you are lost, go back to what you know. Now I have to come up with the answers about what I know.
I know that I never feel the same today as I did yesterday. I know that yesterday is, in fact, always dead. It is the ashes of what I burn in my sleep.
I know that my brain is on fire sometimes, and it is all I can do to soak it in a shower of cold chemical to cool its rampant flame.

So does it end with the cold numbing of neurons? Does it end with the deadening and dampening of neurotransmitters?
And when my eyes are dull and dirty, and my hair is matted and I haven’t been out of my pajamas for weeks, and I am still convinced that it is yesterday, and never today, and I can never persuade the sun to burn the memories into spots.

where did you sleep last night

Last night, quite aware of 3:14 A.M.
Restlessly weighing my conscience
And it being early enough in the middle of the night
To not medicate, I considered keeping this at arm's length
At a tolerable distance
As I secure a comfortable spot
Perched, watching,
hollow-boned and aeriform,
a tiny beating heart,
a tongue that never speaks more than antediluvian riddles
she watches her hair cascade
over his dark eyes
and remembers that there are still pancakes in the cast iron,
forgotten, burning;
left behind when they walked down the steps
together, already replaying the scene in their heads,
already drinking cheap wine on a warm patch of blanket, moonlit grass
already out of love.
already her lips sip the last drops of wine
hands fall to the ground.

truth or dare

When I was younger, I learned to allow words to resonate in my thoughts.
I took them very seriously.
I took apart every word, learned to play them, juggle them.
Every.word.counts.
Dare.
That was fleeting. It was only an action; the flash of a camera, a brief crescendo.
But the voices lasted longer.
Truth.
I'm leaning over my laptop watching a jungle flourish in my back yard, watching the black cats roll around on their backs in the grass that we should cut soon.
Dare.
I never told anyone. When they ask, I say we're friends.
Truth.
I think he still thinks about her.

i have is stories that i should write down, that i have begun to reveal.
pasts that begin to melt together in a swirl of place and time, kisses, addictions, and flesh and suicidal rage.

and i am told that none of these occurrences is in the least bit average.

Truth.
There used to be very little of my heart that i left exposed to be broken. I have always done the shattering.
and silently walk away, closing the door so i couldn't hear it fall to the floor.

Dare.
Being still is a challenge.

Truth.
He doesn't want to know what's inside my head because it scares the hell out of him. What he wants is to look into bright, clear eyes that aren't painful and stormy.

The distractions are imminent.
I take off my glasses so that i don't see them.
so that i can only see what is close to me.

i took a step slightly to the right, to make a point.
but he followed.

And when she returns, I wonder whose bright steps he'll follow.

some things will never wash away

unforgiving subtlety
nuances that barely reach the surface
cracks in the surface that never seem to burst
but spiral until they ripple
creating mountains, a frozen tectonic movement
inching towards certain misplaced eruptions
vigilantly upwards
nothing grows there
nothing grows when there is no air to breathe.

expectations

"Dating has been the sad, small experience that I always remembered it to be. Pretty girls with amusingly high expectations, and not quite as pretty girls with yet still higher ones...Sometimes I find find myself out with a girl, and halfway through the "date", I find myself just so annoyed, and wondering "WTF am I even doing here?". I think: "this girl will never really 'get' me, and I will never really 'get' her, and why the hell should I anyway?"

When i read these words this morning, I thought that it was self-defeatist. I thought, there are millions of people in the world who have this ability to go out, connect, be normal, have a life, live a dream.

Then I realized I wasn't any further along than he is. I read those words over and over. Realized that connection is relative. I've felt that annoyance. I know that feeling because the more i open up to people, the less i feel like i can control it, the less i feel like they don't "get" it.

It's a daily occurance that I chat with a few friends and debate what life is worth to us. Sooner or later, it will be par for the course that i will inadvernently try to find a reason to stop dating, find a reason that no one needs to know what is going on, a reason why I should be alone.

And so it comes back to the earlier statement, "WTF am i even doing here?"
But this is part of what has recently become, once again, a part of what I have become.

Yes, my therapist says that we are more than our diagnoses, but she also knows how personal and how safe I keep them. I keep them in my heart, save them from the world, from destruction.

Dating is hard. Dating is harder than before. Before, it was quirky. I was moody and foreboding. I was punk rock, I was emo. I was my soundtrack.

Dating is hard. I go back and forth. I think in black and white. I call it all-or-nothing. I'm supposed to say something about how "things" affect me.

All of you will nod your heads at this. You will say, hmmm...that's our girl. She has her own page in the DSM-IV
http://www.fortunecity.com/campus/psychology/781/bpd-dsm.htm

"You cannot have your childhood."
What can i have, then?
"You can have right now. You can start from nothing. You have nothing to lose. The only way you fail is if you take that last step off the bridge."

So what the fuck am i doing here, anyway.

be sure to wear some flowers in your hair

First of all, let me preface this with my middle of the night anxiety attack. The one where i can't breathe, where I clocke my pulse at over 100bpm when i should have been fast asleep. Blame my lack of available medication. I usually don't bring it with me. I usually sleep more soundly there, even though I am still awake most of the night.
I lie there, thanking god the window was open a crack, being able to concentrate on people walking through the gravel outside, birds still chirping in the early morning, chilly breeze brushing my cheeks, barely extinguishing the small fire in my brain.
Earlier that day, I was thinking about how well I'd been feeling. My happiness was walking down 21st street from Cherry to Madison, there are rows of Cherry Blossoms in bloom, and in the wind as i stood underneath them, their little pinkish petals would fall into my hands and onto my head.
Early this morning, I realized exactly who i dreamt of when i finally fell asleep at 4AM.
There may be people who read this and know exactly who i'm referring to when I tell this story.
Years ago, when I worked at the brewery, there was a friend of Chad's who worked with us, he married one of his best friends from home.
Sure, we all partied. We drank alot. But he never knew when it was enough. I guess we all knew he was an alcoholic. I guess there were a few around that place.
There were times when his wife had to come pick him up from work after he'd worked his shift, but was too drunk to move, asleep in the cardboard boxes of soon-to-be recycled plastic wrap from the empty bottles.
During the day, whether we were bottling or cellaring, he'd be drinking. It started early. 9 or 10 AM and continued until late in the evening.
I dreamt of being back in the brewery, I could smell the mash. It permeated the air a mile from the brewery. It was strong inside, warm on those snowy days. It was comforting to walk in, see the brewer over the kettle, steam rising above our heads.
It was still early, or late. Dark, though. The doors were slightly open, letting in cool, fresh Colorado air, filled with dirt and pine.
There, over the lauder was jake. Of course, there was Helmet playing. He loved that CD. It was always on, and i'd fill my ears with orange plugs that would scratch my sensitive ear canal.
I walked further to the switch on the wall, and the flourescent lights slowly flickered on to reveal our beloved bottling line. There were bottles still tightly wound in plastic. I looked over towards the cellar and it was GW with big brown boots and an orange hose that he was dragging over to my tank. He looked at me and said, "I do love her, I always have. I'm just not good enough. She deserves better. I chose it over her." I turned away.
I woke up with that feeling in the pit of my stomach, cool breeze on my face, and a man lying next to me in the same t-shirt that GW was wearing in my dream.
I rolled over to face the dresser, the closet mirror in the dark reflected the ghost that i held inside about not being able to surpass that power.
And i remembered every time someone chose something over me, and my ears were filled suddenly with the soundtrack that perforated my skin, my heart, every crevice that i failed to protect.

stitched to my heart

As i watched the sun actually peek out over the city this morning,
through the windows on the 14th floor of the municipal building,
i realized that i needed to take five minutes out to tell a few people how incredible they are.
Ft. Collins, Chicago, and SF--(you all read this ridiculous drivel) you all know that this was one of the most difficult weeks that i've ever had, and you stood with me, felt that pull, looked that shit in the face, took every second you could out of your days for me, took my hands, and never told me that this was a conversation for another time, never left me alone for a second.
There were some moments this week where you really had to work hard to keep me off that ledge, because it was close, and you knew it.
So thank you. Because of you, i live another day to create endless charts and graphs for "the man."

Spies like us

"Here are the shackles for us: we fear success because we spent our whole life being told we were failures, but we fear failure because there is no net. So... we are somewhat paralyzed with fear, in a lot of ways. We can't go too high or too low. Just under the radar... not to be noticed."

I was an easy birth. A quick, painful birth. Like a gunshot wound. My mother said that i came out with my eyes and fists clenched so tightly, and i didn't open either of them for an entire day. As if I was already fearing what lie ahead, already fighting.

It's the "borderline" between neurosis and psychosis.
"At least you've finally achieved some balance in your life."

I was born during a time when clothes were uncomfortable. They didn’t breathe. Nothing breathed. The entire nation was holding it’s breath under an ill-fitting, stuffy suit. I was born, and in my hospital picture, I was a strange green tint. I looked uncomfortable already.

well, i guess we can call that conversation over.

"I think that if you can imagine [the person you love] dying without you being there for them, then you aren't willing to pay that price."

silly girl, i'm in love with you

"I want to be the boy you trusted and cared for."

There was a white phone on the kitchen wall, a rotary dial phone that my mom bought so that she could put a padlock on it to prevent me from making phone calls.
The only other phone in the house was the one she had hidden behind her bed.

My flesh was barely touching at this point. I watched it peel back, separate, and for a split-second, i watched the bloodless halves fill and spill over onto the floor.
Then it came very quickly and my daydream was shattered by not droplets, but pools.

I broke the lock on my mom's door, found her phone and called you.
i slid past her in the kitchen, sitting in a hard wooden chair, with my sister at her side, coddling my arm like a baby, hiding the blood with my black hoodie.

You put the Descendents tape in. We drove to your house.

"You need to go to the hospital."

I did. I needed my arm sewn back together.

You ask me now why i called you.

find it

I was reminded of those moments that no one knew.
In the basement of the bookstore downtown.
The bookstore. I never entered again.
I always thought maybe those boys who were working that morning
Listened to our conversations
Spanning four floors
Of replicant novels, forgotten books,
Old magazines in the basement, so yellowed i could barely breathe, itchy from my scarf
and from the collar of my P-coat.
Or guilt.
I was watching a movie
and someone mentioned Baudelaire. And my eyes cast downward, sighed heavily with sudden wet tears,
scanned the room
for someone who knew those verses as well.
Flowers of Evil, indeed.
The capture of a truth in plain clothing
Smelling of the dirt of the streets,
Scratching at my neck
Feeding on the filth that gathered under my collar.
There was one photograph that I did not burn.
Hidden in that bookstore, on the second floor
Between the crumbling pages of Rimbaud.

displaced

"Did you have an overprotective mother?"
I've seen overprotective mothers. That was not my mother.
My mother was busy with her own life.
We're on barstools, with gin.
We're talking about art, talking about the past.
"There's a lot of my life that no one knew about."
He turns his head and says, "I figured that was true."
He talks about his string of girlfriends, girls he cared about, girls he didn't.
We psychoanalyze my track record.
I admit that his findings are without a doubt true.
Order another drink.
I have no place to go.
This, here, now. This is the only place I am.
Barstool, couch, bed.
My home is not my own. Even when I am there, I cannot sleep.
This, now. This cafe in Capitol Hill, watching typewriter man eat butter out of a single-serving container with a plastic knife.
Watching rain fall, still wondering where I lost my bus pass.
Debating whether to stay to go.
Another break-up letter.
Written, torn up.
And he asks me about you, "you seem like a couple."
And in fast-rewind, my head spins into all of the days since new year's eve.
i count each one of them.
i contemplate sending a text with the same amount of words, but there are no such words.
There are never such words.

pandora

“Eat your chocolates, little one!
Eat chocolates!
Know there are no metaphysics in the world but chocolates.
Know that all the faiths don't teach more than confectionery.
Eat, dirty one, eat!
If only I could eat chocolates with the same veracity you do!
But I think, and when I lift the silver paper of a leaf of tin-foil
I let everything fall to the ground, as I have done to my life.”—Fernando Pessoa

"you like mentioning how i don't pay attention.
i would like to point out however i did very much pay attention to your response..."

And everything falls to the ground.

dharma map

i crept up the stairs to the anne frank room where you had moved all your belongings.
our bed, the red-painted table, a chair.
stupidly, in my bare feet, i slid across the plank floor
dirty,rotting wood slightly emanating attic-dwelling rodent excrement
i'm looking for a book.
a book i know is packed away in a box
a box that you packed when i told you i was leaving
even though i didn't actually leave.
it must be at least ten degrees colder in this part of the attic
and i feel as though i should leave you some arsenic-laced donuts
to set beside the day old coffee
and the lid to the ice cream and the half-bottle of red wine
and i look at the studs that constitute your walls
interlaced with substance that fills the cracks, it leaks out over itself, forming hard globs of grey matter.
on the wooden posts
i see with colored tacks
are pictures
black and white photographs.
they are arranged in a time-line
a spiral.
and i picture you squeaking around on loose floorboards up in that drafty attic
wringing your hands in despair
looking at us all through the fingerprinted lenses of
your German watchmaker wire-rims.
where did we go wrong
where did we lose touch with you when you lost yourself.
and what have you to gain
as you willingly give up everything
in an attempt to cleanse
to purge.
to pick up pieces
and assemble them neatly into your next life.
how will we all connect
when there was no road to lead us back to each other?

tuesday

I pictured this ending with something more dramatic than a limp rubberband
lying on the dirty brown Berber carpet, waiting to be stretched, wound-up and shot.
I pick it up and throw it in the trash. Dig it out, twirl it around my index finger and stretch it around my hand.
Place it on the desk and stare at it, contrasting with the grey-white desktop, smothered by old brown rings, reminders of morning.
Consider rekindling and firing this rubberband at you. That would defeat the purpose.
Instead, I stretch it to its limit and it snaps, reddening my skin with a sharp slap.

idaho or "i have a layover in Salt Lake City"

it's not real. none of it is real.
but all of it is very real. isn't this real life anyway? we go to work, we go to the gym, we eat, we fuck, we sleep. isn't that all very real?

i'm just leaving it all and all of a sudden there is talk of possessiveness.
There is talk of possessing. there is talk of i am yours and you are mine.
and then i am not supposed to take it personally.
i am taking it all personally.
none of this is real. none of this is real until it is real. i have no idea when it is real. but it is not real now. it is not real. it is not real. none.of.this. is. real.
cancel the trip.
i talk to myself in circles
i want to leave it alone.

Two weeks later. House-sitting. Playing house. Watching someone else’s life, on someone else’s television, with someone else’s dog, cat, fucking in someone else’s bed, and waking up to someone else’s sun at the wrong angle.

i got to thinking on my run today about the conversation that we'd had

i was thinking about you...and i took our coversation too far.

it was all in metaphors.

hardest.press.send.ever.

Sea-Tac. 4pm. Southward bound to San Diego.

I bend over, stretch and reach for my phone.

Reread the messages in my inbox, reread them and don’t delete them, yet. Not until we land.

Easy to tell which nights I slept at home this week, a multitude of messages from him, always ending with, “sweet dreams, love.”

It’s the same phrase I respond to when we’re lying next to each other.

The same voice to which I respond, in kind.

I wasn’t sure what to do with it at first, except to answer it as honestly as I knew how.

No questions, no holds barred.
“Do you want this?”
“I want this. I’m past wanting this. I already have it. I feel it and now there’s no turning back.”

How could I feel this with so much truth and joy in my heart? I spent the last five years lying to myself about being happy, fulfilled. That there was something that could replace the emptiness I felt.

Nothing.

Nothing except food could fill that void for me. I turned away from him years ago. And he was right when he said I never looked back. I never did. I ran.

As many times as I could, I ran. I had one foot out the door that I had left propped open, that I would peer out of every once in a while to see if maybe I could live again.

And when I knew I could. When I’d reached a level of security and confidence that I could handle, I bolted from the frozen tundra of the Midwest back to the mountains of Colorado. And then I hid for six weeks.

I’d been hiding for so many years that I’d forgotten what I looked like.

Now, as I undress, I peer into the mirror, pore over myself. I still have no idea what they see, but it is obviously more than I see. I slide my rough hands up my thighs over my new hips, up to my new breasts. I look down at them, still not used to the idea.

He comes up behind me, and he’s incredibly sexy, looking into my eyes through the mirror, takes my hands and says, “you’re beautiful.”

Our skin is the same color. There is no distinction in our flesh. Pinkish-flesh. Flesh colored flesh.

I thought of it the other day, as I was walking in the rare Seattle sunshine.

I thought of the way that my ex and I fell for each other.

Even that was not easy. It was painful and poetic, nondescript and it was always between a monster and a girl. It was never between two people who loved equally. It was one or the other doing the loving.

For a time, in the beginning, it was me. I would partly chase, then when he turned to grab, I would run to another boy. This continued for quite a while—a year, two years. It was heartbreaking. It was pushing and pulling. It was pulling hair and then it was quiet.

It was not. This.

This, even here, 30,000 ft in the air, somewhere in the pit of my stomach, actually in my heart, and not just in my head, I know. I’ve always known because I’ve always been here.

We have an ocean view from this hotel room. I catch a glimpse of him in against the cloudless sky, leaning over the railing with a smoke in his hand.

When I read the quote to myself, I knew. He knew.
“I do have some anxiety. I don’t know if I deserve this kind of happiness. I can’t let myself have it.”

If you’re not ready now, you’ll never be ready.
“I knew when we were together, that we were already at that level. We were already at the next level without even knowing it.”

That we were.

With one simple question and one innocent interaction.

The text from Neumos. I waited.

And then I saw him. And we never let go.
I think we just had the most perfect nap ever. There we were, lying on this perfect bed, having these perfect moments. I suddenly had the urge to get up and run. I suddenly couldn’t handle everything that was in my heart in that half-sleep, listening to the ocean, hearing him breathe. I suddenly knew that it was terminal. I knew he’d die. And I would be left without him.

hi, remember me, we used to be in love...

(radiohead)
"15 years later, a man and a woman debate the details of their teenage love romp..."
it began as innocently as any teenage love affair begins.
a ride in the backseat.
"you sit next to him. he likes you."
a phone call.
a friend of a friend.
plans laid. best laid plans.
when is it worth it to look back and feel the strings of attachment still tugging
silky, sticky cobwebs
clinging to the back of your head
when is it time to shake them
shake off the disconnect.

saturday

6pm
beer. hockey. nap.
i'm watching this from the life that i want.
watching intently, despite irrational fear dragging me by my feet into the other room to be in the body that really exists.
i'm watching this happen to a boy
and a girl
but i don't know if they know i am watching.
they are on the couch, she is in his arms, i can hear the puck glide across the ice, i can hear him breathe.
and i can hear what he whispers into her ear as she sleeps against his chest, pressed close to his heart.
i don't think they know that i am watching.

west seattle isn't like real seattle

it's a monthly ritual.
"poetry submission deadlines"
newsletters appear at the forefront in my inbox.
browse through them, read a bit about them, about the judges.
sometimes they seem fitting, most times, i cringe at the thought of even submitting another round.
"read the winning entry here:"
the winning entry. if it's a woman, it's about abuse, it's about mislaid plans, unrequited love, about feeling trapped, running away from the trap, it's native American, it's African American.
it's not me. i never seem to fit within your confines, guidelines.
i'm a working-class white girl of Mediterranean descent. i have an office job that supports me until i make it big on the scene.
I struggle to not let the joy in my heart reflect in the pools of blood that spatter onto these pages.
For anyone who glances at their shuffling feet, to come across the inky red splotch and see my joyful little heart on the pavement would be devastating.
People only know me by my small, coal-black heart and the soul i sold in another life.
I wonder if that deal still holds.

fell in love with a girl

I was thinking about writing about how much i hate valentine's day,
or how i'm sitting here on the couch and i can't figure out how to turn the tv on because my right hand is stuck in a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
"but you're doing something with your life."
I go home and dig around in the basement, searching for something gone long ago. Looking for ribbons. Reminders that this all actually happened.
These ribbons meant that we existed, once upon a time, that I was doing something with my life.

pillow

This ravine of feelings eludes me and i shove them back into a cold, Spanish-tiled recess and remember reading about in books and i read something today that was interesting.
she talks about not handing a child a copy of Crime and Punishment before they have learned to read.
this is what happened.
i had no doubt that this is what happened.
i was given the manual to myself and did not know how to read or decipher it. i started with the hardest reading and had to then go back to learn the alphabet. it only comes back to me when i smell that smell.
it comes from the kitchen.
and i know that smell. it smells like toasting frozen waffles and cheap syrup and butter that her mom used to microwave in a coffee cup so that it melted all over the frozen waffles. it smells like those cheap brown vinyl chairs and teenage boys. it smells like dolls and toys and shag carpeting with dirt and chlorine ground into it and ripped wallpaper and basement. there are posters on the walls and his sister was born the year before me. her room was very orange-pink with frilly curtains and valances, porcelain nick-knacks, one for each year of her life.
rotting fruit, sweat, and chlorine, the smell of his room.
i was seven or eight; he would invite me into his room to listen to his 7" collection.
and to test the pillows on the bed.

one step back

I learned today that there is a fine line between vulnerability and need.
Between openness and "open"
At this very moment, my phone is in the other room on "silent" because i want it that way. Because I'm distracted with banter.
Distracted.
By conversations that are about me, by me, yet don't include me at all.
They wonder what they'll do next.
Which road do they take now that they are sated?
I figured out why I suddenly dread waking up in the cave and it has everything to do with warmth.
The phone is on silent because i'm avoiding answering any questions that might arise.
It's on silent because I suddenly cannot play outside. Because rain is falling right into my heart
and i know that sooner or later i will be in my room, with my turntable, listening to scratchy vinyl.
i will be on the bed, craving the warmth and comfort that i denied. that i pushed away.
now it is too silent, and i have to turn on music to cut through the misplaced energy, bouncing from wall to wall, cell to cell.
waiting to be fed.

when i get to cali, i'm buying you a bff necklace

"I knew, within 3 times of hanging out with him, I KNEW that if ever there was someone I could commit to, it was him, and that if he felt the same way, we were done. I knew..and I knew because I had never known before."

i didn't count on this

I have so many stories that begin and end in airports.
Not a story line, just thoughts scribbled on the faces of models in magazines,
between the blank boxes of unfinished crosswords.
I don't write in journals anymore.
My brain works faster than my thumb and forefinger.
Settling it down into the inky point of a pen onto paper would mean a grandiose loss of information.
It would mean less conscious soliloquy at 30,000 feet with my head against a thick cataract window, watching mountains stream below.
My calmest moments are spent alone in an uncomfortable row of greasy airport chairs, staring out at the tarmac, not quite with my head on straight, take-off, landing.
Eyelids collapse onto themselves and the flicker of white candles on the ledge ring my periphery.
Tracing outlines with a silky, slippery finger, still my eyes are closed, inhaling the sheets, cognizant of the cocktail that saturates each thread.
Simplicity of an indigo woodblock print, uninhibited by cords of stained umbilicus
leaking out of my inky pen onto paper-thin skin.
"Everything in our lives has led us to this."
I stare at my hands.
They look older.
Six years older.
I notice a trickle of blood as the arid cold wind constricts vessels and skin stretches taut, separating from the nail.
It is still snowing.
"Come back to bed."

He and I stripped ourselves to the bone from the beginning.
We imposed upon our bodies, these conditions, forcing ourselves to live on the bare minimum.
This is what was expected of us. We were hardcore. There was a stigma. This is where we should have been, it's what all the magazines said.
We stripped every ounce of carnal joy and when we had nothing to eat, we ate ourselves.
There was no meat to our relationship,
so we sustained ourselves on each other's psyches.
I called it Vegan.
I called it minimal.
I called it reduced calorie, living longer and stronger.
Training for the marathon.
He snuck food on the side. I binged and purged and starved.
We deprived ourselves living in a dark, post-communist nation, surviving on bread and potatoes, and what little vegetarian treasures we could find in Sofia.
We called it enlightened.
I hit a bottom. I hit bare bones.
I hit androgyny. This is when it was real. When people would tell me i looked gaunt. Now he looks gaunt and I have finally hit puberty. A real woman.
The tables have turned and we are weaker for it.
I am not strong enough to resist.
"Don't get caught up," he says.
There was no snare to get caught up in, because there was no line cast.
No net to trap me this time, left to sink, gnawing at my limbs to be free.

Is that my copy of Lolita?

It's me and you, Futon of Death. We sit here alone in the room, sans rug, and torture each other with our inability to be forgiving.
Why submit? In hopes that maybe I'll be discovered on the diner-stool of life, in some obscure Seattle hideout, belting out my life story on a MacBook.
I don't even have a Mac. I'm not part of that club, either.
So, what do i submit, then?
More cliche notions of how I got to be so fucked up and jaded? How about some random story about how my life ended up with me sitting in a cubicle next to "sullen CAD guy," plotting our next rubberband-slinging session.
Once in a while, I catch him looking over at me.
I wonder if he's judging me, if he's thinking about how he could possibly push me down the 10 flights of fire escape without getting caught.
Here's my life. Here's me without my words, without my saddle, without my subtlety, still listening to records alone in my room, me and my thin futon.
So, what do I write about anymore?
Do I write about the divorce? It wasn't my intent to be jaded.
The rug hasn't quite been pulled from under my Allstars yet, so maybe I'm still standing, firming my grip on the fringe.
My books were packed for me. Was it because the collar of my coat was scented with aftershave?
"New Year's Eve. Something changed. I noticed it. Sure, you'd just snorted a bunch of drugs, but something had changed."
"What?"
How could he possibly know this. My heart is never on my sleeve.
"I think someone kissed you on New Year's Eve. It wasn't me. I think someone kissed you and you knew, then. You knew what was coming. You knew."
"Maybe I did."
Rewind.
Three hours earlier I had, indeed walked into that party looking for someone.
That someone ended up not leaving my side. That someone is literally, always
at my side.
So what do I write about?
"Womanhood suits you."
Fifteen years later I hear this.
Fifteen years after we tried to stand so tall against skyscrapers we would never move, not even in our Doc Martens.
We stood facing the exit door, clawing at the night air with our bare hands, tearing it away from our faces.
We couldn't grow up, not now. We couldn't not live this moment.
We couldn't leave until we heard those songs.
Now, I hear those songs in my sleep. I hear them speaking under the guise of breath, from across the room, from the MacBook of someone who never left my side.

emasculation

January is never pretty.
Even less so on these days,
When we sit across from one another
Contemplating our level of honesty over afternoon coffee
as droplets of rain fall onto the numbered tops of city buses,
carrying our dirt down the side,
dropping it in front of our faces.
"Everyone knows."
If everyone knows, then I might actually be achieving what I set out to achieve.
If, after so many years of guarding myself, hiding myself
thinning and shearing myself,
i can let go and still be able to look into the mirror without Sonic Youth boring into my skull, i can drop the tunic.
i can drop the act. and nothing is broken except our hearts,
but i never looked back because i knew what i'd see.
I'd see the judgment, the "what did you do now?" slapping me in the face.
"I trust that you made the right decision, even though I hesitate to believe it.You always did have a hard time committing."
I cringe at my failure.
Anyone else would have silenced that thought in midair.
"So, what happened? What did you do this time?"
It rolls off his tongue so easily, and i feel my neurosis rising from the place where I last left it.
"I guess marriage is not for everyone, including you."
And yet, I am still listening.
Watching myself in the mirror, being tried for my apparent failure as a daughter.
The difference is that this time, I don't actually believe it yet.
Black Shoe. You're a figment.
This time, I click the phone shut and my limbs aren't glued to my sides, numb and resistant. I move around the room.
I find no residual. I look under the rug. Nothing.
I shut my eyes and recall his words.
They morph into something much worse than he realizes.
"You can't ever be truly happy."
I pick the tunic up.
At my fingertips.
The phone maddeningly alerts me with a message.
"Sigh"

More

Three hours of sleep.

Two-and-a-half if you count the interim that I was half-awake, debating whether or not to throw the alarm across the room, watching its digital guts spill across the hardwood floor.

“What are we doing here?”
I felt the sick rise from the bottom of my stomach.

Wall of innocent flirtatious security, ether-thin with the utterance of five words. Broken apart.

“I—don’t know. Do you need me to leave?”
“No. I just. I don’t. I know that we’ve been more attentive to each other lately. That’s all. And now you’re here.”
“I am here.”
I am here. I am here on your ex-girlfriend/still-girlfriend’s black leather couch, inundated by the usual soundtrack of our words and Isis.

It works.

I am here in a house I have never been in before. I’m here on this couch. I’m here with a glass of deep red Chianti in my hand. I'm here, watching the transgression from the stairs.

I miss trash TV.

We draw closer. I don’t know what to do with it, yet.
Don’t look like you want it. Don’t give it up.

Don’t pretend like you can’t hear it, smell it.

Later.

Lyrics stream through my head like silky ribbons. There’s a scent on his sleeve and I cannot tell what it is, at first. I know, though, what it is. I know where it came from.

Part of me urges myself to grab my keys and escape, pretend like this never happened.

The others inside of me allow me to stay and play this game. I am no good at this game. This is illogical. I am no good with these things.

How do I make a move? How do I move? Where do I move? What counts against me?
How do I score this?
Is she still watching us play?

bright red snowflake

"So you're a cutter, then."
Run. Fucking run. Now.
Flash of disappointment.
Lie.
"Sometimes the pain is fucking unbearable and there is no other way out. Sometimes my heart beats so fast and the tears burn so badly that there is no other way. Sometimes I hear the disappointment in their voices, and it sounds so much like home and I walk into the bathroom with the X-acto knife I keep in my drawer. Usually, nothing happens. I just need to know it's there."
No. I didn't say that.
"It's fine now."
This is what I said. I could hear those words forming before I spoke them. I had to visualize saying them because they were so untrue.
There was nothing more I could say.
My throat was oddly raw, although all the screaming was inside, well-hidden.
To divulge such an esoteric need would be freeing
Allowing you to bruise my wrists, grasping at what panic remains
until the adrenaline has run its course through burning, open veins,
this is the violence that has ravaged my heart.
Don't. Let. Go.

Super 8

Every morning, I finger each strand of my hair, straightening the stiff, black edges, in a steamy mirror that i wipe down with my shirt, on wet, towel-littered tiles.
Cold, cracked tiles, stuffed with smudged grime and dirt, ages of dead skin sloughed and pounded into forgotten mildew pores.
Ceiling tiles, I tilt my head upwards to examine the water stains, rust-colored rivulets.
She edges closer to me across the slick, salmon-colored, soapy counter top.
"You didn't ever like anything. You never liked anything except for music and books.

I want to say that it was not always this way, but it was. Pensively monitoring the world with distrust.
There is a neglected universe outside.
I watch my family disappear. I watch their grainy, film-shattered eyes fill with laughter and scotch in my grandparents' drop-ceiling basement.
Trailing off, I hear their voices as I turn away from the screen.

I want to run after you. Tugging on your coat.
But I have learned restraint. After years of being smacked away.
Years of being followed, I learn to shrug you off.

Mall. 2pm.
He cannot possibly have just said the words, "Orange Julius and hot pretzel."
I stopped breathing for almost 60 seconds. I doubt he noticed.

"I can't backtrack. I can't say that there won't ever be temptation."

Again I watch the old movies, backdrop minimal. I scan for signs. I need to fight that urge. Fight the urge to look for an indication that I felt. At all.

Bed. 8am. Eyelids slowly part as I brush the hair from my face. I feel an unfamiliar swell in my chest. Tactile. Cast my eyes up towards the window, grey snow melting in midair, tapping at the pane.

Bed. 9am.
I should get up and go for a run, but I cannot move. Is it fear or contentment that keeps me wrapped in layers of decorated flesh and warm blood.

It is better not to know where the blood originates.