March 28th, 2008

what excuses can i make for the mistakes i have made? it doesn't matter how my skin stretches, the tear of my youth, as long as it delivers what it was made for. but what if it doesn't, like it didn't that night? what if i stopped it, like i did? i don't think it would matter because we'd keep trying, and i'd keep throwing away the promises i made to my psyche or my friends or my body. just like i tried with him, a different time, both before and after you. both above and below you, where you stay, where you perch. where i silently apologize and beat myself up over my actions or my consequences, my betrayal or my loyalty. i think it's all the same now once i look into those eyes of yours, that color i can never remember, but i'm convinced that they're blue. we'll be side-by-side in good time, but i don't think that matters to you, and that makes it matter less.

January 2nd, 2008. Short Story.

a small brown eye peaks open. It's her eye. She owns the eye that is now looking at the person sleeping next to her. She can't decide yet if this person, this man that is now next to her with the scruff on his face and a little pool of drool on his pillow, is a stranger or not. She hypothesizes that he probably is, but not in an everyday stranger sort of way. She lets both her eyes peak open and she slowly props herself up on her elbows to lock closed eyes with the man she's been with for a year. She thumps her body back down, because even though she was pretending that she didn't want to wake him up, she does.

She rolls over onto her side and lightly kicks his feet. This is her way of telling him that he should roll over in his sleep and put his arms around her, press his stomach into her back. This is a test. He fails it. The light is all over the room, it's eating more of the room than she has probably even lived in. She shimmies out of the end of the bed because it is pushed against the wall and she doesn't feel like being an acrobat this morning. She forgets that she only has her stranger's boxers on, so she opens what her mom sometimes calls a "chest of drawers" and takes out a shirt that she got in the seventh grade, when she was miserable. She hates that her mom calls her dresser a "chest of drawers" but still loves her anyway and doesn't tell her that it's really stupid that she calls it that.

The kitchen isn't as bright as her Stranger's bedroom. She thinks about making breakfast for the Stranger in his kitchen but decides she would want to eat it, and doesn't really think breakfast is a good idea. She sits on the Stranger's counter top and thinks about what she should do next. She wants to take a shower but she figures that the Stranger would be disappointed that she did that without him. She really wants to wake him up now, but has to fight the urge because she knows that he can't sleep. She wonders if it's because he is still doing drugs. She decides that that isn't the reason anymore, because she believes in everybody. Especially him. She considers this her biggest vice.

She looks out the window, the snow is melting in the Stranger's backyard and she hates the hole where his pool used to be. She gets really angry looking as this hole, and wants someone to fix it. She decides she'd like a cigarette, but remembers that she quit. She walks into the Stranger's bedroom and he is now cuddling his pillow. Her body, starting at the knees, fills with jealousy, resentment towards that stupid fraying pillow. She wonders why she couldn't be that pillow. She wonders if it's because she's not as small as the pillow, but she decides she should stop making excuses and realize the Stranger doesn't love her anymore. To get back at him for falling out of love with her, she takes four cigarettes out of his pants pocket and opens the window to the roof outside his room. She takes the blanket that was twisted at the bottom of the bed and wraps it around herself so she doesn't get wet or cold from the dew. She smokes every cigarette and looks at him with each drag because she wants him to know that she hates him. She knows she could never hate him, and this makes her hate him more.

As she is climbing back in the window the Stranger wakes up. He asks her how long she has been awake. She throws him a cigarette because she knows he'll want one. She decides not to answer him because she thinks "3 hours" is too long to talk about. The Stranger is sitting on the edge of his bed and she is standing in front of him. She keeps her mouth shut tight because it helps her keep her tears inside. He grabs her by the hips and pulls her closer to him. He kisses her bellybutton. She hates that more than anything. She resents the bellybutton kiss more than she resents the "chest of drawers."

He is still holding her hips but now he is looking up at her. She looks down and into his eyes. She remembers what he looked like before he started cutting his own hair and instantly feels superior to him. She is disgusted with herself and thinks that the Stranger probably knows that she is better than him, because that's what he tells her everyday. She wonders if this is part of the reason why he stopped loving her. She knows she isn't better than him, really. She knows how she treats him, but she doesn't want to think about it anymore.

She kisses his forehead and starts the shower. She only takes showers in water that could boil eggs. She feels better about him loving her after their shower, but only because of the way bodies react. She doesn't want to have sex after the shower because sex, with anybody, makes her feel unclean and used, like a dunkin donuts napkin or the seat of the desk in her 10^th grade biology class, where she first wrote notes about the Stranger to a friend she doesn't really miss. But she lets the Stranger fuck her anyways. She hates herself for it.

The Stranger gets up and starts to get dressed. It is 2 PM. The stranger announces that he has to go to work. He says this with a look she has seen before. A look that says he is lying. She knows he is lying only because she reads a lot of body language books for the specific reason of detecting his lies. The Stranger gives her a kiss goodbye that she wish she didn't accept. After she hears the door to the garage close downstairs she climbs out the roof window with the pack of cigarettes that the Stranger doesn't know she took. She knows he will be frustrated because he will need more but won't have any money. She watches him go down the street from where she is sitting in the roof. He is driving the opposite way from work. She inhales from her cigarette and begins to leave him, but knows it is impossible.

Undated Short

For every step backwards, there was another step forwards for her. And she always used her various pairs of crutches to navigate her steps on the pavement, with the black hardened gum pressed into their concrete like tags of graffiti. Some unknown source was behind that black gum, and they silently reveled in the mark they had left there. She knew people thought like this. This was the mark that she secretly looked at and wished she could avoid.

She knew it was pointless and stepped there anyway, throwing change into a cup for a bum with a witty sign. It was more than blustery outside and she felt she couldn’t have worn enough jackets. Even though the sun was out, she thought its presence pointless. Blinding her eyes, a nuisance, like a small child at her ankles, grabbing for the outlines of her face. There were certain things about her mind that she didn’t mention when she paced the perimeter of Washington Square Park, she knew there were certain things no one mentioned about their mind. Because it was theirs, and everybody is selfish. Even Mother Theresa. Even her.

She chose a bench with the least amount of people on it. Sitting near strangers made her nervous, she considered them intruders, even though they were there first. She wondered all the time if everybody thought the way she did about personal space. How she can never get too much of it. She felt arms all over her, covering her. In the sunlight, she saw it was a girl she knew but barely knew anything about, a girl who lived six floors up from the park with big white windows and a tiny little bathroom. This was the part of her story that she always waited for. When she wouldn’t have to be alone. When she didn’t have to walk in circles to make up for her immobility.

March 9th, 2008

there is nothing as sinful as my back on the hood of my car. 30 degree weather, stars that blur 'cause i left my glasses inside. smoking cigarettes, i feel like you must have felt when i stomped inside. i could go for another, but i've got nine left since yesterday and i'm at the point where i told myself i'd never be. and i bet you did the same thing. but i guess, who cares now? i'm ready to face you and let my humors spill out and it'll all just be some settled horrific nightmare that no longer occurs every night. i want to leave you behind.

February 18th, 2008

but is anything normal in my mind of disconnection and discontentment? i guess that's where the sleeping dog lies under your bed, where it sags in the middle with the weight of your pelvis, occasionally the sweat of some faceless girl next to you drips down through the sheets and the mattress. she thinks she matters like atoms connecting in the universe, but i know that your heart really sleeps in the cracking pavement of my driveway; our stage. i don't suppose you know anything about space and time, but i do, and the fact of the matter is this: quantum physics means nothing when you're lying next to me. my hands, my feet, my arms, my torso: murphy's law. your eyes up at mine in the pale and unforgiving summer sun, the eve of august, when footsteps were all that mattered. what happened to every secret we buried in the sand? well, all knowing third person narrator, you omniscient sole, DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT IT TAKES TO STAND THIS TALL?

December 19th, 2007

i have made a really good decision about what to do when it comes to looking at your hands. i'm going to cry more tears over this dialect of dejection, more tears over someone who doesn't have your name. your disposition. your memories. your plans. who came years before you, in waves of cocaine and brotherhood. who had the possibility of loving me, keeping me, monopolizing me, but didn't. and thank god for that misguidance. thank god for unpinning my wings. thank god. thank, you, god. thank the god i lost faith in when you threw your fist too close to my nose. thank you thank you thank you. thank you for always punching the wall, next to my left ear, every time. thank you for tearing it apart when you threw it all at my ankles, thank you for always burying me too far down, thank you for deception, thank you for nose-games, thank you for choosing white mythology over me. thank you thank you thank you, thank you for the lines, the sweat, the sorrow. thank you for never touching me with those hands. those filthy fucking hands. the hands you put through your television set when that electricity died. my bloody knuckles. my bloody fucking knuckles.

November 17th, 2007

there's been a breach in our bedsheets, and in the middle of the night on my first night, we made contact. radios crackled and it's time for you to start regretting me. you say, "no no please, deny me and offer me, the battle below my belt burns our fire stronger, don't you see? don't you see? don't you see? offer it back to me with the grace in which you took it."

i keep my silence inside and i keep my mouth sewn to prevent. you. me. our lives. you ask for answers and i give you only what i can---my misunderstanding. i'll keep dancing circles and you can complete your creed, or decide what it is you must say to make the glow in me less real. demoralize me. destroy me. take me out to breakfast. remind me what it is like to be up on that cross. you know only you can.

November 4th, 2007

it's a struggle to regret it every time you open your mouth to try to force it, or to shower and cry in disappointment with yourself, with who you've let yourself become. how much you've gained, how much you could be losing, and the differences you've made between a hospital stay and this minute of the day. it's a struggle every morning and every night, compounded with school and you and them. your friends read books to understand the difference cortisol levels make, but they can't and they won't. i envy their inability to grasp.

October 16th, 2007

i've smoked nearly two packs in the last weekend. granted some were given away, but they're burned up and on the sidewalk, in ashtrays i can never seem to reach. in bed with you is a hole i can't fill, a void that won't close, and a fond memory of what it was like to have stomach to back contact. i never appreciated that feeling until last night.

i've got the stars aligned just right in order to meet you this afternoon. and, if i don't, i guess you'll say it's my fault, it's always my fault. i woke up this morning with stress in my neck and i can't hold my head high, how's that for symbolism? i'm going to smoke my last 8 cigarettes and let the tar fill my already crippled lungs, and i'll remember nights in your car, driving with your knees.

September 6th, 2007

i'm paralyzed. the days are passing, the chances are lost inside our bellies, and the last call of my 3,500 mile escape plan is ringing in my ears behind your backyard. sep erat ed by land and passing time but connected through miscommunication, storybook mishaps, deception and a crippling fear of what could be, had i tried a little harder. i wish i could grab you and kiss you and tell you the truth, but i can't, it shakes my bones out through my muscle. you gave me my space but you closed the door, so i'll just wait outside with all of our possessions and bottles and messages, maybe you'll come outdoors to give me my brains back. those eyes and those hands, those scars, those memories; they rape your childhood and take you far from where you wanted to be by now; living your life through the dialect and rhetoric of mavericks and gunslingers, the steve mcqueens of our generation, the muscle cars and the silhouettes, do you remember when i saved your life? you were burning alive in that barn, but i broke your door down, and we made it through the tar without scaring our lungs. somehow we caught fire that summer, and our hair ignited in the chances we gave each other. if i could open you up, calculate your mistake, solve your problem, i would, i would be there holding your hair in bunches while you vomited up your honesty into my lap.

give me the words you've been waiting to tell me.

August 22nd, 2007

i love you i've got you i love you i've got you i love you. it was so cold under the mountains where we kissed, our hands shook with each blow to the belly, but we made it out okay. all of our secrets and our controversies, those minutes we spent underneath are legends to our friends. years we spent on hold, ripping our hair out at every backwards step to every party we ever went to. i remember pink bottles in your medicine cabinet, how they kept your mind at bay, when you drowned yourself in them, drank yourself to sleep. you missed her but you didn't let her hold on too long to your coat tails, you kept your lies going, the separation made it easier. you lost weight, what weight? you lost friends, you lost your mind, but you kept me, we kept each other inside boxes, no return address. the classes we skipped to dance under the stairs, all of your beauty and silver eyes made it easier to live under you. we took turns and we skipped spaces and cheated our way to the end that we thought was coming sooner, but it never came. it still isn't here. looking at you from illegal angles i know now that our bones were too big for our skin, we weren't supposed to be suspended from wires above eachother like those years told us. your hands and mine don't fit and our abandoned board games are under your bed where they belong, with our clothes and shedding skin and thinning hair. you're clawing at my brains and i've got you here, whenever you feel too ugly to step inside.