Dear 2009:

I am leaving you with a lot of feelings.

Some resolved, some freshly scratched open. Some aired out and blown into the fall and swirl of any day's breeze. Some tucked beneath my ribs, pushing against my heart, growing... sleeping... wandering. Pacing. Aglow. Some: still, untended, brittle at the core. & some have rushed up and out to hang in the air like a haze you don't exactly want to see through.

I already know two things. 1) This could be wickedly long, and 2) parts will be unceremoniously vague while others are clear to the point.

FEELINGS: Despondent. Heartbroken. Confused. Gradients of Sadness & Anger. [All resolved]
Perhaps the biggest chunk of 2009 was The Great Letting Go. Consider the break in November 2008- ripe and explosive before a string of holidays. Perfect! Tack on six months of back and forth, do we don't we, we really fucking should not, but maybe we almost could... until, finally, my backbone recalled itself and said: Fucking no, goodbye. Cue a week's worth of downward spiral including one extreme hallucination and terribly restless nights that led to sleeping on my desk at work. Most definitively not my finest hours, that week. Or, really, the first six months of 2009 = some of the roughest blurs of my 2009-life.

(That is what happens when you give three years of your life to someone who perhaps means well but truly cannot give you any shape of what you need because she is too consumed with her own demons.)

FEELINGS: Bright Spot. Intrigue. Want. [Tucked down for months]
In the middle of The Great Letting Go of 2009, there was February. Mixed messages. Music. The kind of held eye contact that makes your palms sweat. Suggestion. Intoxicated flirting. Growing awareness of the simplest connections. Plain & simple curiosity. I knew I wanted her and didn't have the words or actions to show it outside of a wine-induced comment that fluttered then shot from my ribs, out my mouth, into the air, into her ears.

FEELINGS: Achievement. Forward-motion. Validation. Total Awesomeness. [FINALLY]
March took me to Tampa. Tampa took me to USF. Kate Bornstein. Gender/Sex skews. FC, SW, LP. A very healthy & happy few days of relaxation with B&L. On a whim, my submission "for fun" turned into presentation & future publication. It also catapulted me into reassessing my future in the education world, and where I want to go. I still don't know where I want to go, or how I want to get there, but without this experience, I don't know that I'd have the motivation to change course.

FEELINGS: China blue. Want. [Tucked down for months]
Minutes. Literally, minutes. Less than five. It was the quickest reminder of "Oh, right... want." Thank you, end of May. Circles, and circles, circles again. Circles, and circles, got to stop spinning

FEELINGS: Possibility. Curiosity. Want? Hope. [Here & gone]
Enter several women. My ins & outs of March-September. I thought I wanted each of them more than I actually did. Call it healing, call it fooling myself, call it Time. If I had been ready, for any of them, I imagine it would have happened. I count 5. If we tack on the currently-unresponded-to-email I received today, make it 6. As I type, 2 more linger in the backdrop. I have learned to push like a professional... pusher. There are times when I want to beat myself up over this, but I have learned that it's not happening with these women because I don't want it to. Not a one of them is who I want to be with on any level outside of friendship. I tried. I did. I was entirely aware of what I was doing and how I was feeling. I've been honest and cognizant. But you can't create a spark when your match won't ignite.

FEELINGS: Freedom. The Wander. Love, Life, Living. [Continuing ad infinitum~]
The Summer of 2009 was one of the best summers I have ever had. Point blank; there's no fancy way to phrase that. I was spontaneous, happy, unbridled, and hungry for life. Rehoboth (recall the bruise on my spine from the railing on the deck). Dewey Beach. San Diego. Pine Island. Richmond. Outerbanks. I lived my life. I got an incredible tan, did not work out as much as I should, read books, whittled time away by staring at nature. It was perfection, and I absolutely did not want it to end.

FEELINGS: Rapture. [Tucked]
It had been months, and at first glance, every muscle tightened and I dared myself to look away. But I couldn't. A few weeks later, time was on my side, and while the fire glowed and the marshmallows and sticks burned, I reveled in the simplicity of good friends. My want stayed safely inside. It was the best place for it.

FEELINGS: Absence. Second-guessing. The Final Push in Letting Go. [Resolved]
Fall has never been much on my side. 2009 was no different. Fall beats me up, chews around, spits me out in pieces that I'm left to string together in a semblance of The Real Me. I survive fall. This fall, I pushed so many people away. I just wanted to be alone. Quite honestly, much of October and November are a blur of going through the motions (however, I did run my first 5k somewhere in there) and a few too many Friday-after-school beers. I entered this strange period of self-loathing and didn't want much to do with anything or anyone. There were Bright Spots tangled amid other bouts of confusion, but overall, fall failed me. Or I failed it.

I'm glad it's winter.

FEELINGS: Spinal. Guttural. Rushes to the head. [Loved & Over but Present]
I have a dirty habit of not getting mad, of not feeling or directing my anger. This was pointed out to me somewhere in 2009, probably in its early stages. I got mad about the fact that I don't get mad. How meta. Despite my overabundance of them, I love feelings. To realize that I was not capitalizing on the most powerful of feelings was a good kick in the ass. In November or December, I got really fucking mad. And I unleashed. I do not like it when people do not listen to me, but only hear me. You need to fucking listen to my words. Someone didn't, and someone heard all about it. The surge of anger was tipping my nerves into sunshine, and I felt so goddamn alive. There was no holding back; every last bit came out.

It was the first time I'd yelled in probably years. Perhaps some of the anger was misdirected [Great Lakes never got yelled at, and if anyone should bear the fire of my ire, it would be her but that is a lost cause of imperceptible proportions] but most of it was justified. Weeks later, the same person pissed me off, and my spine straightened. It was fucking amazing, and I am never bending again.

FEELINGS: Gratitude. Safety. Love. Stomach-aching Laughter. [Endless~]
One thing that has been made perfectly clear to me throughout 2009 is that I have amazing people in my life. My family is entirely supportive & loving of all my pitfalls and strengths, and my friends are saints for putting up with my over-thinking bullshit. Having been untangled from a controlling relationship, my freedom to do whatever with whomever (and not have to lie about it in order to avoid a fight) has taken over. My internal hermithood may never evaporate, but I don't think I've ever been this social in my life. And the truth is... I enjoy it. Granted, it makes the lay-low-at-home days that much more meaningful. I do not ever again want to lose sight of the goodness that exists in my life. It can be enhanced, absolutely, but I have no reason to not be happy with what I have. That feeling, that recognition-- irreplaceable.

FEELINGS: Peace. Appreciation. Clarity? Hope. [Here... hopefully to stay]
Continuing from the Gratitude, I think it's important to express the feeling of peace I am at with my life. I've not felt peaceful in years. Part of that is due to my constant interaction with women. Dating, relationships, dalliances, whatever. By the beginning of December 2009, I was wholly unattached and very much at peace with it. Am I willing to explore something with someone? Absolutely. Just don't disturb my peace~

FEELINGS: Want. Surprise. Comfort. Warmth. Curiosity. Release. Hot. [...processing]
Truth: I did not expect to end 2009 in this way. My patience had taken over the best of me.

When you are with me, I tend to lose focus. My tongue takes its own trek with words, and my mind flows over and above the conversation dribbling between us. But I was on par that night. The previous two? Not so much. But that night, yes, I was exactly where I wanted to be. It appears that you were, too. Thank you, winter.

It's a want that has tightened my nerve-endings for quite some time. Fulfilling that want... I don't know that I have the words, but perhaps this will do for now: the strongest memory is my mouth, your mouth, moving together, your head lifting ever so from the pillow. One of my hands in your hair. The other hand meeting your hand, your fingers lacing through mine. That is the image cemented in my mind. There are many other sweeps of recall from that night, and you already know I remember everything (though I admit: parts of conversation are hazy), and I could go on with descriptions and images but I don't want to. I want this tucked beneath my ribs with the surges & sparks that follow the memories. I want to keep it safe. Honestly: I don't know how to write it. I do know that you are fucking beautiful, and my want continues.

FEELINGS: Closure. [AMAZING!]
2009 was, kindly, a learning experience. To emerge from the year without new battle wounds is a huge achievement. I've healed, processed, moved forward. I know myself, now, better than I have in a very long time. And I'm comfortable with who I am. I don't put up with bullshit or crazy. I take care of me on a daily basis. I breathe deeply and completely. While I may never stop over thinking, I at least have learned to better compartmentalize my wayward thought processes. I don't feel the need for anything, but I continue to want. My priorities are (relatively) clear. I have had these incredible bursts of awareness & happiness amid the general peace of my life. I am well.


So, thanks 2009, for all the feelings. You've given me a lot to work with. & as I write this, 2010 looms less than 12 hours away. I'm ready for it; I know it will be good to me as long as I am good to it.

It's Not About You

I said: It's getting better. Stronger, longer, I feel my edges sparking and the world goes blurry. I'm getting older.

You said: It's not about getting older; it's about who you're with.

I thought: It's not about you.

There was cold air around us, always. My heart was snowed in, plowed into a corner by your stick-shift jerks and shoves. It was always winter. We were winter.

It's still getting better. Stronger, longer, tricked with a short blast followed by a languid, shivering crescendo. My edges are thinned and my world is clear-skies. I've gotten older, again.

And it's still not about you.

Scenes from the foyer

Today you are pressed against my closed front door. I am on you like fire: our bodies pressed furtively against each other, mouths connecting in a spreading spark that floods our senses with long-harbored lust.

We are explosive, today.

You are kissing me, moving between sharpness and air, lacerating my thoughts with each flick of your tongue against my lower lip. And I am kissing you. I am drawing your upper lip into my hungry mouth, teasing the tip of your tongue with my own, moving the emptiness away from us and lulling us into the depths of one soul-haunting kiss.

I can feel your heartbeat pumping through the fabric of your t-shirt -- the one I ache to tug over your head. The one I have seen you in countless times before and always, the same thought: too much fabric.

You slow, I follow. Your breath is rapid. Mine is- is it?- cautious. I realize that my hands are rounding your hips and yours are wrapped around me and your head is tucked between my shoulder and my neck.

Your lips are still moving.

this is you- me- lonely

I wonder when my walls will tumble down. Is it something I have to manufacture? Do I need to climb them, scale them to their uppermost perches, in order to rip them down, sheet by sheet of startlingly thick glass?

That's me: you can see me. Anyone can, if they look hard enough. My eyes hide nothing, which is why I fix my gaze on a wall when I'm speaking from my roots. We can all look for as long as we'd like, but you can't touch. You can't get in.

Even if you think you're in, because you think you do, you have to realize that you're not. Yes, I tell you a lot. Yes, I let you see me cry. Yes, you read between my scribbled lines. But you don't always hear me, and that's because I don't speak loudly enough.

The matter of want is still plauging me, twenty-four hours later. I don't know why I'm so fixated on this. (Even my Obscure Object had something to say about it. I'm not sold on her musings, but she is right, in the way that I almost don't want her to be right. So I'll say that she is right in some ways. Not entirely.) I just said, not fifteen minutes ago, that I don't know what I want. I was lying, sort of.

I don't know how I feel about falling in love (again). I love a lot, it's true. Right now, I'm spreading my love like a fucking virus. Sometimes it's a silent sweeper, other times it's a warming fever. [can you hear me?] But being in love? No thanks. It's just not what I want right now. I like feeling steady and self-centered (at least I can admit that I know I am self-centered). I don't want to worry about how someone else feels. I mostly like my life just the way it is. I do feel at peace, I am happy.

Seriously, I just think far too much for my own good. I can't even continue this tangent because my brain has overlapped and my thoughts are too tangled to bother to work through.

The morning I came untethered

You know that feeling? The one where you can feel your heart slide down your torso and drop directly into the pit of your stomach?

That's the feeling you give me. When I see you, hear your name mentioned, sometimes just the simplest thought of you: it falls. & I fall with it. (more than you'll ever know)

I realized something tonight-- my irritation re: the slightly illicit affair that two of my friends are having- with each other- it is a matter of jealousy. And it doesn't have a thing to do with my feelings for either one of them, as I do not have feelings for either one of them. The jealousy comes from the matter of the affair itself. The fact that they are having it. The fact that someone gets to indulge in her straight-woman crush, and languish in the moments they spend together. The escapes. The right-under-the-husband's-nose moments. The fact that they are acting, executing, the very thing I yearn for (though mine is not as illicit, as my Obscure Object is not in a relationship... she's just unattainable and categorically heterosexual)? That is the root of my jealousy.

Of course, I say this and recognize that the aforementioned affair is not the best relationship. How could it be, with the varying levels of deception and sneaking around? I know how/why some people find those things sexy, mostly because I've been caught there once or twice. I don't want that part. I don't want the uncertainty and fear and hurt.

I just want the woman that I want. The simplicity startles me; my inaction and (rational, sort of) fears are what complicate the simplicity.

I'll tell you what, I'll save you the trouble of running away

I had a night full of friends, good food, and abdomen-bursting laughter. Honestly, it couldn't have been better than what it was. I am grateful for it, and suddenly/finally cognizant of the meaning of "want." I want things, of course I do. Who doesn't? But the things that I want are not insurmountable, nor are they permanently unattainable. It's momentary. I don't know when the moment will pass. I don't know how much I care. What I currently have is more than enough. What I have sustains me, supports me, loves me, laughs with me, cares about me. It is enough- sometimes and always more so.

I'm typing with my thumbs still pushed through my jacket's sleeves. It's fucking cold tonight (I love it). Walking the dogs and running with them in the backyard, I still felt the warmth from the previous hours of my night. I haven't laughed that hard in a while, and I've been fortunate to be laughing a lot lately. I could go- I could leave at a moment's notice. Sometimes I train my mind to thoughts of disappearing and reworking my ground somewhere else.

The truth is-- I am not lacking. I am fulfilled. I am doing more for myself than I ever have. I realize I'm happy and keep moving.

I realized today, while listening to Pandora while grading papers, that I am ready to love (again). I retracted the statement not five minutes later, claiming I was kidding, but I'm not. Not really, anyway. I have the love to give. I have the capacity to give it. I have the want. But I know myself well enough to know that I won't give any love until I stop wanting my Obscure Object.

...and I can't say that I want to.

And I can understand, all I need is your hand

Have I ever mentioned that I'm not going to tell you all of this? Any of this? Nothing. No thing.

I breathe around you like it's any air, not yours.

I thought you were going away and leaving my system. I thought my brain and lungs were safe again; the tug and yank of every fiber of my living, breathing body could sit still. Be still. I thought I had myself fooled. (and then I saw you [again])

Oh won't you take the fall / it is me after all

I gave up running a few weeks ago because I didn't like what it was doing to my body. Now I'm restless and sensitive. Porous. That whole time- I was running away to you. Running from you. For you. Despite you.

Can I count days this high, this long? This far into knowing you, and I don't know all I wish I did. I do know: fall is within is, are we falling in it?, winter comes next and I love you in the grey-cold snow-threatening air. We don't do warmth. You seek me when it's cold, and I trip into your line of vision just long enough for you to see a sliver of all of the no-things I'm not telling you.

I do know: I wouldn't change any of this. That chance, once upon a glass of wine? I wouldn't go back and take it (I'd prefer that you don't hate me/you in the glare of dawn). The rushes and lulls? They can stay. That week I thought I was never going to be able to stop thinking about you and couldn't understand what was happening to my heart? That morning I pressed my cheek against tile and exhaled the previous night in fits of breathless confusion? Your indescribable attitude the other week? My stumbling tongue, bathed with or without alcohol? The way my stomach twists, wondering what you'll say next? Your eyes steady against my own searching, the way I worry I'm not holding enough/too much back in a single look that I'd swear could unravel my every feeling?

(I wouldn't change it.)

Instead, we should change our future. I'm ready for you and I thought I'd be terrified to say that because you are more than just you but the truth is I'm not scared. & I thought you should know.

All around me are familiar faces / worn out places, worn out faces

What is it about you, October?

You've brought such extremes to my life over the past four years. In the first, it was sugar-high love, the kind you can never get enough of. But even with the sheen of love, life exploded- mania exploded. I remembered, today, the extremity of the Pumpkin Carving of 2006. One wasn't enough. Nor two. Nor three. I distinctly remember driving to buy more pumpkins because she hadn't carved enough. I thought it was cute. I thought it was good: creative energy. But the carving segued into seed-roasting, staying up late to percolate the house with garlic and dill, cinnamon and sugar. Five or six pumpkins' worth of roasted seeds, and we never ate them all, but I knew, for her, it wasn't enough.

October 2006 was also the month of the minor car accident and my distorted/hopeful thoughts that she would always be that compassionate. It was also rolling over in bed the morning after the car accident and feeling so terribly unsafe but not knowing how to say that without ruining everything. Instead, I cried. I shelved the anxiety and she held me and I felt safe again but that moment was off and running before I could so much as focus in on a mental picture that would pull me, lull me through confusion.

But that night, carving on the wooden floors of my parents' kitchen, laughing and loving and her saying: "You are enough. I have no doubt that I love you. I have never been this happy. I have never been this happy."

Is it a lie when you say something without realizing that you actually have no idea what you're talking about because you're saying you're something that you have no concept of? But you're saying it because you want to believe it: "I don't know what happy is, but if I put air into my lungs and exhale with a word (happy) maybe it will be real and I can say all along I knew what it was but had never felt it until I said it and I said it because I want to be. I want to be happy. With you. I want us to be happy."

Here is the truth: I don't think I ever really was.

I know this because June and July, 2009, I finally opened my eyes to happiness. Each morning since then, each half-smile and sparkle of the eye, each deep breath on Saturday afternoons-- I realize, yes, I am happy.

But in October, I have been notoriously unhappy because I have been frequently blindsided and led astray by extremes. In 2007, Columbus Day gained new meaning and now I refer to it as The Columbus Day Massacre of 2007. She said she'd never forget it, and for a while she apologized a lot for it, but she doesn't have to open that closet door multiple times a day and if just for a moment recall that image, that punched-through-the-stomach-into-the-throat feeling, that complete loss of rationale and understanding. For her, it is probably just another step in her unhealthy journey of attempts to forget herself. But I remember the shaking. I remember the blood. I remember my total and complete lack of movement. What I also remember is the anger.

That should have been the last October- it should have been the last of many things. But despite that, despite the following corrupt months of tension and instability and push & pull, DESPITE APRIL... despite my heart arching elsewhere, aching to bloom in spring but instead being drowned by not tears but by hope: October 2008 existed. And it existed for us.

Two things happened in October 2008: she came here, and I went there. The stretches in between were roughed with knowing the end was near and not knowing how to escape it or embrace it. So I avoided it. Because that is what I do.

When she came here, she left a present of blood on my garage floor. I don't know where it is anymore (I stopped looking for it long ago) but I know it's there. There were demons and manic impulses, there was a clear sign of things being anything but right. I pushed, that time. I pushed hard. But my heart is weak, and in the end, I pulled like hell. I tugged with every ounce of my being until I found myself lying alone in bed, feeling the sinking emptiness of our love streaming out from my pores. It needed to be aired out. It needed to be freed.

There was one night in particular when she packed her things and was ready to go. It was late. I was worried. She'd been slipping in and out of consciousness/sanity and I didn't realize until December that what I'd been so worried about was most likely an act of psychosis, in that nothing was wrong with her other than the fact that she was crazy, knew she was losing me, and yet again was pulling extreme measures to try to keep me. I fell for it, then, but only part of me. The other part was too far gone already. Too aware. Too ready to leave and be safe again.

When I went to her, at the end of October 2008, we were sitting on the bed, she was unusually sweet, I was in a horrible mood, and she said our next step was to get married. An extreme leap, again, to maintain us, to push us forward. Never mind that the logical next step was for one of us to move. Or for us to get counseling, together. Or for me to go. I know I didn't say yes, I know I couldn't hide the look of slightly irritated surprise that shocked over my face.

Marriage never came up again.

It couldn't, as no more than two weeks later, she avoided me steadily for a few days and then we broke up. Finally. And I must have known it was coming, after that last visit. Because in the same moment everything felt warm and I was so, so starkly cold.

Last October, in 2008, somewhere between her being here and me being there, I went to a pumpkin patch. I remember writing about it last year. I recall a particular woman, a lesbian at that, and I remember trying to get her to look up and catch my eye. I can't remember if she ever did. Today, I went to that same pumpkin patch. Today, I found myself sitting on a bale of hay on a trailer attached to a tractor, and I looked up to meet eyes with two lesbians sitting directly across from me. They had an elementary-aged girl with them- the daughter of the taller woman. The women alternated staring at me. I don't know what their motive was. Yes, thank you, I know I'm gay and I don't need you staring at me and getting me to curiously look at you for me to suddenly realize I like women. No, I'm not really attracted to either of you and that's why I'm not staring at you. Obviously. As you are staring at me, for whatever reason and no, thank you, I don't care for an explanation.

Today, mid-fall, I saw fall. I surveyed the light blue sky, alit with puffs of clouds, crushing against the burnished pale yellow stalks of corn. I searched for the globes of orange rolling about the crunch-beneath-your-feet landscape of farmland. I felt the wind whipping around me, through me, taking with it memories and leftover pain. I can see and feel these things, I can hear fall puncture the air around me, because October 2009 radiates with the extremity of absence and of silence.

Why does October always feel so cold? I see the warmth radiating between people, and people in-love. I felt that warmth last night: hour upon hour till all I wanted to do was sleep- and I was grateful every second of the night. I have been entertaining, again, the running (north this time: uncharted territory) but sometimes I simply have to be reminded of how lucky I am to have what I have. I am almost ready to admit how much I want that warmth back. I've touched glimpses of it over the past eight months, but it hasn't been enough. It hasn't been the warmth I crave... or the warmth I need, and I don't say that very often but with this whole happy, self-aware, confidence thing comes the reality and admittance that I do have needs and I don't particularly feel like suppressing them ever again.

I could settle. I know this. I could settle very easily, and the only reason I don't (everything there is pretty great, yes, except: ) is because while there is love, I am not in love, and I'm not going to compromise that. So beyond that, beyond the minutiae of my options (diverse as they are), beyond my lingering affections for the Obscure Object, I wonder: where is mine?

Maybe next October will be different. Maybe it won't be extreme. Perhaps next October, in 2010: maybe it will be mine.

Give me clear skies; I'll tell you a story

Here's something I've apparently just realized: The Obscure Object is kind of a bitch.

Her tone is my least favorite thing about her. Written, spoken, inferred with a look: it is either completely difficult to decipher, or flat-out bitchariffic. I can think of three recent & specific examples of this, and I don't particularly care to regurgitate them here. This is something I needed to realize, though.

Maybe it's me overreacting (because I never do that), but I pick up on tone much better than I do body language. And she and I have, in the past, misread each other's written tones. She's one- if not the only person- of a few people I have that habit with.

I over analyze, yes, and over-think. The perplexion and confusion and hidden/not-so-hidden possibilities don't help calm this over-ing. The fact that I can't seem to have a simple conversation with her doesn't help. Not knowing, knowing too much, failing to see how I can properly communicate this: not helpful.

I don't know where this leaves me, but I also don't know that I care.


I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against
The want of you;
Of squeezing it into little inkdrops,
And posting it.
-Amy Lowell, "The Letter"

Where do we go from here

One of my coworkers ran into me in the hall today. She was on the wrong floor; I rarely see her otherwise, but always, always enjoy our stream-of-consciousness conversations.

When she saw me today, and after she realized she'd gone up an extra flight of stairs, she said: "You know, you should really be on tv."

From there, we talked about vocabulary, lexicon-flexing, teaching English, expressions, immersion, Middlesex, homosexuality, ES classes, epiphanies, influence, change, growth, Dr. Ruth, and so on. I so thoroughly love those conversations, the kinds that spread over landscape and grey matter without effort. Complete ease, unsuspecting flow.

As we parted ways, she turned and called over her shoulder: "So what are you going to be when you grow up?"

Without hesitation (there may have been a slightly abashed shrug, because for as much as I like to talk about myself, I worry that people A) don't take me seriously, and B) see me differently than I see myself because, yes, I can be dense/a little slow on the uptake/silly-excited about the most minute things/and occasionally I think I don't show my intelligence simply because I don't want to) I said: "Finish my masters. Get my PhD. Go teach college level. From there... wherever it all takes me."

And write. Sometimes, all I want to do is write. It's just that the words get stuck on my ribs, stuck in my fingertips, smeared around my teeth and tongue and nothing comes out the way I expect it to. But, I write.

And I write because I generally can't form sense with my voice.

Part of this, all of this, is because of my dirty habit called Over-Thinking. I place too much value in not only the things that people say to me, but also the way that they say them. I pay more attention to tone than I do to body language. It's easier; I hear more than I see. Maybe I pay too much attention. Or maybe I don't pay enough.

impromptu art

The thoughts that we most want to desert us

are the very thoughts that spin, twist,

warp and presuppose judicial thought:

they are the pieces that wreck loose and

unnecessarily. Sense thrusts

where objection smears, where the endangered foreplay

of awkward moments courses over every

pore, every sharpened breath.

I want you more than lines can conceal

and my mind fails to leave this alone. There are few

reroutes, less than six detours to take

and I am left awash in the swell of wonder:

can you hear me?

But love is an afterthought, I think, it seems.

Spatial attraction rips through these cranial torrents

and I think I cannot speak simply

because simplicity escapes me. Simple is not always

easy.

Of course if you were easy:

I wouldn't want you this way.

Where the brainstorm trails, you wander after

and there is always room for your hand in mine,

or: there would be

if I knew how to tell you.

say: yes, yes- anything you want

I spent today in a whirling dervish of thoughts. Quite frankly, I don't know where it all came from. Could be the time of year, the time of the month, circumstance, the wearisome tread of holding back and in, or maybe it was simply my time to feel the feelings. The thoughts weren't unproductive... but I haven't gotten anywhere with them.

What I did do was finally speak to one of my best friends for the first time in far too long. I'd called her last night (after posting something on here that I haven't yet reread in a state of sobriety), thinking she'd be awake since she's clear across the country, but no luck. We connected today and I unloaded and she said: "Wow. I really should have had a cup of coffee before I called you back." I miss her so.

Then I talked to el sótano for an hour, which was also good. She Freudian slipped and said "when" instead of "if" which made me happy. Actually, wait, she said "is" instead of "would" which is sort of the same but not really at all.

I've been thinking about perspective. Obviously, we all have different ones- if we didn't, life would be cruel and boring. What I'm currently stuck on is how much my experiences have altered my perspective, and how I'm continually startled to realize that people don't see things the same way that I do. But of course they don't, because we have different feelings about the same experiences. So just because I don't see the value or possibility of a long-distance relationship doesn't mean that someone else shouldn't, either. I just don't think I could do that again. I've had enough (finally). Then again... you can't pick & choose who you fall for. But sometimes, I think I do.

Someone told me recently that I "do it right" because I tend to be involved with women that live a bit away from me. It's not totally intentional, but I do like to have my space. [Obviously, my next girlfriend will need to respect my space, regardless of where she lives in proximity to me. Wait: the catch is- she will need to have her own life and a sense of independence in order to fit into my life. Yes. That's the real truth.] The distance does allow me to protect my relationship from the semantics of my life, that being the fact that I'm a public school teacher and am out to my coworkers, but not verbally to my students. A handful of them usually figure it out, and I know there are rumors, and I know that some of my former students resolutely know that I'm gay, but I do have an easier time "hiding it" because my relationships tend to take place outside of my city. I don't particularly like this- it's something that complicates my life while it simplifies it. I don't like feeling like I have to lie about my sexual orientation to my students: what the fuck good is that teaching them, really? But I also don't have the desire to deal with the potential drama, bullshit, and discrimination that would almost definitely be driven at me if I were to be out, fully.

And yes, I realize this further complicates my Obscure Object-ing. Obviously, I know this. And yes, it's part of why I keep my mouth shut about that. Selfish as I may be, the last thing I want to do is complicate her life.

Here's what my obtuse reasoning is circled around: I'm goddamn tired of holding in these feelings for my Obscure Object. I realize that she is intelligent (one of the major things I like about her) and that, really, she must have an inkling to, at the very least, knowing I am attracted to her. In fact, she has to know that part. I basically told her, it just happened in a slightly skewed way. And wait, it happened twice. Three times, maybe? Yes. She should know that part; whether or not she's really hearing it is another story.

I don't know how to tell her that I beyond lust after her. Not that I would walk up to her and say, "I lust after you," because most of the time, I'm a little classier than that. I've never been skillful with talking about my feelings when I'm not sure if I'm walking into a safety zone or a potential minefield. The fact is, I am attracted to her on about sixteen different levels. If someone made me write down each of those sixteen ways, I think I could actually make it happen. Listen, levels of attractions are muy importante to a heart-gets-caught-in-my-head girl like me.

Typically, I am able to write about these things better than I can speak them. In this case, though, I'd rather say it. Every time I think about doing that, my heart nosedives into my stomach.

I would like to be able to sit down with her and say: "I am wildly attracted to you. Sixteen different levels, in fact. I think you are fucking amazing, and it's okay if you aren't reciprocating this; I just needed to tell you."

El sótano asked me today: "Do you just want to have a weekend of wild sex with her, or do you want more than that? A relationship? What? What is it you want?" and I couldn't really answer her because the truth is, at this point, the Obscure Object and I just need to fuck and get on with it-- whatever it is.


(...and I can't get a clear sense of it until our lips meet, tentative then not, just as they did in my Riesling-soaked dreams last night.)

Tonight:

All you need to do, now, is send this simple word: Yes.

And if you do that, I will be there in less than 10 minutes.

Shameless because I want you more than I can say, and it's edged into something I can only show. With my hands, my mouth-- my words are secondary, missiles for a steady war of desire. I can't help it. I've tried. I can't.

I want you, you you, want, want: You.

It could be slow. I could kiss you with such sweetness, I could strip your layers one by one, seep into your body and melt into you.

Or it could be fast. (I generally think this is how it would be because I have been holding this in for so long.) Furtive. Passionate. Purposeful. Goal-oriented, and the goal is to fuck you until you can't think, breathe, feel. & all you can see is us.

To fuck you would be simple. To make love to you-- something entirely different, and:

I would be happiest with either.

obscure_object unsent #2

To you:

Have you the slightest imagination as to how much I desire you? How badly I want to simply feel your mouth breaking against my own, how I want the crush of our forms, together, endless?

...how when your name is so much as mentioned in passing, or directly to me: my eyes (so I've been told) alight into sparkles and a smile breaks unconsciously over my face?

How I imagine you, still, somehow, just don't know.

And how I falter in wanting to let this loose into the space between us, directly into your ears, into everything and nothing all at once.

I want you. Terribly.

I thought you should know.

This is our earthquake

Today, you are on my bed. Your shirt is a river drowning my fingers. Your body is moving above me- unusual- and your breath is quick, your lips and tongue snug and searching with mine. I am splayed beneath you, urgent with my own desires.

I want you naked, I know this. I still do not know what remains to be discovered beneath these protective layers: I have seen glimpses, flashes of skin, suggestions, and implications. I have seen the desire trapped between my ribs, sparking from my eyes, masked in curious fear in your belabored glances. I have felt the tremors of touch- and it has never been enough.

I want to ravish you. I want you to come back for more. Again, again, again.

The words & images are so thick today. I can't concentrate. There are thirty-two other things I should be doing right now, but instead I am sitting at my desk, wrapped in visions of no one but you.

...can you hear me?

love was- entire excellently steep

I do my best writing in the car. The road palmed flat before me, windows down rushing in the brink of fall air, words and sounds fleeing from the speakers: maybe it's because I feel free, there, untamed and entirely capable of going wherever, however I want. I rarely do, except for that one time in Florida.

My mind produces more thought than what should be humanly possible. I prefer it over mental stagnancy, but when I can't morph the thoughts into written sense, the struggle overwhelms itself. Today, I was thinking in linear bursts.

Tonight, I had a head-on collision with my filing cabinet.

I was looking for artifacts to take to grad class tomorrow night (stages of my literacy history: I chose my first book- written in Grade One, my second book- written in Grade Seven, though my About-The-Author states/lies that this is actually my fifth book [I lied a lot as a kid; I apologized to my mom about this tonight and she said: "Finally"], and a paper from my senior year of English, where I scored a 3 for writing and 5 for format). I wasn't looking for anything else- I never consciously am- but my hands soon grew heavy with Love & Memories and The Weight of It All.

The Weight of It All is everything non-romantic in my past. Featured, tonight, was The Master Poet, or: one of the most influential people that's ever been in my life, Len Roberts. He passed in the spring of 2007, but not before I was able to workshop with him for a handful of months. It was pure chance, that opportunity, and I still am not sure how I lucked into it. It was there and then that I met G.C. and happened into a few whirlwinds that would eventually reroute my life in ways that, at the time, I didn't imagine possible. I tugged the red folder from my filing cabinet, and out spilled marked and unmarked poems, an envelope, and a few packets. I once wrote a poem titled "Most Days," and I can't remember why it is so named, but Len's comments are what struck me tonight. Three years ago, it wouldn't have made sense to me. Tonight, I understand what he meant by writing "*Rimbaud" in the margin, and "surreal" near the top. Rimbaud. Rimbaud! That's fucking crazy! Now that I've studied Rimbaud, along with Baudelaire, I'm a little shocked/stoked that Len scrawled that very name in the margin of my poem.

Not fifteen minutes later, I found a box of school supplies from my first year of teaching. Sitting on top was a bright orange folder with a Dodge Poetry Festival, 2006 label on it. I have no recollection of receiving this folder; I went to the 2008 festival and have my red folder, but I wasn't at the 2006. I have no idea where I got the folder from, but: I opened it tonight, and the first handout on the right hand side of the folder is of Len Roberts, poems and bio. I had no idea (did I? I can't remember, now) that he read at Dodge that year, or ever. When I went to Dodge last fall, Len was heavy on my mind. I accredited to the simplistic connection of poetry-poet, but apparently the depth of thought runs deeper.

I also happened upon some Love & Memories tonight, and I felt nothing. I thought about removing the rubber band from the stack of France correspondence, but decided I didn't feel like rehashing all of that. I did read a piece of notebook paper littered with red pen that remarked on my traveling to see her, and how I meant "so very much" to her, and that she wasn't going to get mushy in the note; she would save that for the weekend. I don't know when it's from, but I'm thinking the winter of 2007, pre-2008, pre-first significant break-up. It doesn't matter. I read it and put it away.

I don't regret any of it, for the record.
It's become a part of what's happened in my life.
It just is.
Perhaps it just was.
I don't want love like that.

The Obscure Object jolted me out of... something... this weekend. She with the words- I love when it comes out of nowhere. I love when she comes out of nowhere (she always has). I love the taste of chance and happenstance and possibility. I very much like the idea of her finally starting to not just listen, but hear.

this may be interesting only to me

I just hit a new level of letting go: I realized that I don't want her- in any capacity.

I don't even yearn for one last demon-dusted sexual encounter. And I always, always craved sex with her. I can understand, now, that one of the reasons I craved it so much with her was because it was so infrequent. I was absolutely, 100%, wildly attracted to her (and this was a feature in my problem in letting go of her, post break-up). Would I still be, if she were to cross my path now or in the future? I imagine so. Sexual attraction goes a long way for me. Whether or not I want to act on it is a different story.

Truthfully, I haven't "wanted" her for months. That stopped somewhere at the end of spring, and I was filled with a sense of relief in no longer wanting her back as my girlfriend. Once I began to allow myself to see all that had actually gone on in our relationship- once I recognized and labeled my hurt- once I allowed myself to realize that she is surely not the only woman that will ever want me in any capacity- it got easier. There was a shift that ebbed within me throughout the summer: and this summer, it was made entirely of healing, experience, and forward movement. I wouldn't trade a moment of it.

She is gone from my life, and has been been since May. While she still merges into my dreams on occasion, my waking thoughts are focused on other things, other people, other curiosities. I no longer care what she's doing, or who she's doing it with (and I haven't cared about those things for a while). I'm healthier, so much happier, and confident.

The letting go: it has always been difficult for me. I just went through it over the last two weeks with C. It was hard to walk away from that for the simple fact that I knew she wanted me. It's an undeniably good feeling to know that someone likes you. But I wasn't there- and that wasn't fair to either one of us.

With Great Lakes, I never felt safe. I only ever felt wanted in her stretches of needy-mania (typically the pre-self-destructive stages, not the stages of solitude and every other breed of mania that threaded through her) and in the rare sexual encounter. We never had solid ground, and we never found ourselves on the same page. I think, in some ways, the unsteady ride is what kept me hanging on- I wanted to believe it could, and would, get better, and I wanted to be there to see it happen. I always saw so much potential for us.

But potential-- that isn't anything to build a life off of. The here & now is infinitely more important. This isn't to say I don't believe that things can't get better in relationships, whether romantic or otherwise. The measure of betterness comes with the terrain that these "things" are built upon. No one should ever spend so much time being unhappy, uncertain, full of love but with nowhere to direct it.

And the truth is, I cannot fathom driving myself open-eyed into another long-distance relationship. So much of the time that made up my last 3-years-long relationship was spent apart from one another. Had we been closer together, I imagine we would have self-combusted much earlier than we did. Or maybe things would have been different (I doubt that). But I know now that when I enter my next relationship, I want a stronger sense of normalcy, and a much shorter commute to see one another.

Other than that, I don't know what I want. I think that's become fairly obvious over the last month or so. I know what I don't want, and in my case, I think that's more important than its counterpart. Do I want someone who gives as much as I do? Absolutely. Do I want mutually unbridled attraction and adoration? For sure. I want a safe body to lean upon, to rouse from sleep, to nudge into the morning. I want a brain as fueled as, if not more than, mine. I want compassion and respect and laughter and understanding and release and reprieve and excitement and learning and the desire/action to move forward-- together. I want more.

And do I want my Obscure Object? Yes, without a single doubt, I do.

these things

i want you here, to rest between my words
and to arch between my hands.
the weary path of secret signals
threads around the spaces between us.
and there is nothing within
save for passing thought
and the heady complexity
of trespassed desire.

so simple, so finite,
so thorough and thick.
i do not wish to coat this desire
with lies and presupposed suggestion.
i think you should know
this want? this yen?
this tireless repeat of your skin
flushed with mine, wrapped beneath
the lifting air of sunset, sunrise,
midday, evening: everywhere?

you and i:
maybe we should.

To The Ends

You may not understand this, the way my verbs

stick to nouns and decapitate adjectives

as they hurtle themselves up from my throat.

This glitch in communication-

the part where I couldn’t force

ripples of truth from my depths of discontent. Because

I never told you this, and it seems I never will, I can say it

now. Love doesn’t cover those years

but I don’t know what does. I wanted

your body. I wanted you to be

whole.

I wanted to grasp your demons and shatter them,

rip them limb from limb with the nakedness

of my fingers,

the same fingers that warmed the lengths

of your body, the ones that coursed you between

crashes of orgasms, the very fingers

that enclosed your hands

into my palms. And I never managed

to hold you tightly enough. Strapped to me like a bungee cord

and my heart suffered the lurch and drag

of your eclipsed mind from my waning strength, your charred

sense of truth from my hopes

for (our) balance. The stillness of destruction

would not let me breathe.

for later:

"She was certainly the spark for all I've done."

-Iron & Wine

This picture

Sketch the walls first:

the slates of color washed about strips of blank

canvas, unburdened by what may lie in this past

and shielded from what may yet come.

My heart is not like that. It never

has been.

But the walls streamline the scatter of my life

within these boundaries- the flourish of self

locked down by expectations and qualifications.

It doesn't ever matter

because my mind flails like a squid thrown from home.

Space divided by time and conflict; sometimes

I'm glad you're not here.

this is the way I want it:

Today, the scene is a kitchen.

Obviously, there's a level of irony here (where I've come from / where I'm going, if you will-- but also you: you in the wintry kitchen). There's also, you should know, a certain level of unbridled passion hanging over and fueling through this scene.

We are there, alone. Whoever was with us has left. It's dark, late, the season has changed and the warmth around us is a combination of words unspoken and kitchen mechanics.

I don't know who shifts, I don't know which one of us turns.

All I see is the blurred composition of our heads bending into one. Mouths locked, lips intertwined. My hands running the length of your back over and over again; your arms encircling my body with a sear of tentative fire.

It is so vivid today, I can nearly taste it. You. I can nearly taste you.

I'm a storyteller but I'm the worst kind

My muse has escaped me.

It struck me today- midday- because today was Talk About Poetry Finding You day, and there was Neruda with his infinitesimal pinpricks and Giovanni with her no-limits poetic explosion, and there I was: empty-minded.

I wrote because I told myself I had to, because I am trying to be more disciplined with my writing, and mostly because I always promise my poetry class that I will write every time they write. It's a fancy trick, that class. Last fall, I couldn't stop writing. Stanzas were thundering off the margins of my notebook. Theme, purpose, creativity itself deserted me: often, I was more a student than a teacher. I sat in the thick of creation.

But now. Muse? Whipped right out of me. I don't know when/how/why she left me. Maybe she's hiding. Maybe I've accidentally smothered her. Maybe I'm not suppose to know.

(Honestly: I think my muse collapsed into my Obscure Object, which undoubtedly caused some creative complications, and I'm not exactly willing to speak further on that at this moment.)

But a word (or many) about writing + me. I don't know when it began; it has simply always been there. It started full-force circa the age of 12 with highly improbably-set "novels" that I never finished. Then entered the journals, all but one of which are still hiding out in my closet, that captured an unbelievable amount of daily- though never mundane- details. [I forget the simplest things, but my memory is tightly wound and I never forget the things I want to remember.] Somewhere in the last two years of high school, I discovered blogging. My first blog (still alive, at times completely embarrassing, but ultimately totally entertaining- maybe just for me) carries on the tradition of the paper journals: detail after detail after detail. Some coding exists in place of real names, and I confess that I can't decipher all of it. When LiveJournal became "all the rage," I got one. Then a second. Then a third. Over the last eight years, I've opened at least 6 LiveJournals; today just three remain; one is infrequently updated.

Something happened in my transition from blogging to LJ-ing. I lost a part of my writer's voice in the shuffle. It took a couple of years for me to realize this, but I never did anything about it until two summers ago. I then returned to my original blog and brought a modified voice to it: that of someone who had learned the fine art of ambiguity.

But again, something was off. I needed that sensationalized clean slate, so I started fresh with a new blogspot (hello, clean slate). After a significant transfer of posts, the writing started to come back to me. The ambiguity hit a new all-time high, and the coding began again. I took this blog underground last winter or spring, but have since gone "live" once more. I'm still not sure how I feel about that, but I was tired of being undercover. I was tired of letting loose only to pull everything back in.

You can trace all of this ambiguity and vagueness to my Obscure Object- which, admittedly, has taken on a few different forms over the last 10 years. But this is another story for another (blog)post.

Maybe I don't need my Obscure Object-corrupted muse. I generally don't believe that I have one, and truthfully, I'm currently using it as an excuse for my lack of word-flow. Or maybe this is just a concrete representation of how much has changed in my life from this point one, two, even three years ago ----> to how my life exists today. Maybe I need to make more mix cds because I tell the best stories with other people's music and words. Maybe none of this makes sense.

Years ago, at what I now realize was an incredibly important and life-shaping proverbial fork-in-the-road, I wrote this: "...because everything here has been so 'almost.'"

It's true: almost.

this will go unsent.

I won't burden you with specifics, but here's the truth: I'm fucking crazy about you.

I'm not going to belabor my point with citing how long I've felt this way (longer than I'd like to admit) or how it came to be (slow, then with the speed of an undammed waterfall) or what I'd like you to say in response (ok, alright, me too, or not but it doesn't change a thing, it changes everything- for the better, for what we could be).

Years, actually.

Initially, that animal attraction swiped me, cut me. I saw you and I thought: Wow. I'd tell you this, but your reactions to things are so unpredictable, and I can barely say "hi" without stuttering and/or turning a fierce shade of the blush family when I see you, so maybe you'll read this and understand, but I bet not. The reading part. I think you'd understand. You would if you wanted to.

Process(ing)

Yesterday, my Voice of Reason told me that I'm living my life (finally?), and it's clear that the chains that tied me to her (great lakes) have been broken. Busted. Shot apart.

On one hand, I completely agree. I am being spontaneous (ie: trip to San Diego this weekend), social (spending a lot of time with my friends, especially Quack, and even going out), and the truth is, I do feel happy. Happier? Happy. I can't tell the difference, but I know I feel different.

On the other hand, I completely fucking disagree- but only on the chains being broken part. I dream about her (GL) far too often. About twice a week. And in every dream I have about her, we are getting back together. There is always kissing, and usually a segue into sex, if not flat-out nudity and sex. Her mom is almost always there (not during the sex, thankfully), and she makes a point to tell me how happy she is that I'm giving her daughter another chance. One dream, last week, her mom told me that she knows her daughter is doing better, but she's still not great, and she is simply grateful that I'm trying again.

I'm not trying again. There's been no contact since I told her to stop contacting me, and that was at the beginning of May. My birthday went by- no word. Her birthday eclipsed without me giving in. For a while, the fact that she didn't contact me hurt like hell. Some days, it still does. Most of the time, I'm grateful for the clear break.

But to say that the chains are broken... I wish with all my heart that I could agree. 98% of my heart, anyway. There is that lingering piece that still loves her and cares about her, even after all the hurt and bullshit she contributed to. That part, I really can't figure out except that she played such a big part in the past 3 years of my life, and to completely cut off my emotions is quite difficult for me. Don't get me wrong... if I could do it, I would. I know there's no sense in that 2%. It's not a desire to have her back in my life, or a want to pursue her again. It's just feelings that haven't let go.

So maybe the chain has lost its steely bind. Perhaps it's been replaced by fishing wire. Invisible, but it cuts. Those mornings, like today, when I wake up from a dream of reunion? (Last night's took place in my bedroom, but bigger with a sofa, and both of her sisters, and her mom [again, happy], and these weird poster-sized fragmented drawings from presumably the girl that she is with [whether just in the dream, or reality, too]. I ripped up one of the drawings. She then threw both of them away; they were scrawled with childlike writing [ironic] of how much this person loves and misses my ex. After she threw them away, she was struggling to take her shirt off, and she had quite the belly, and I said, "Wow, my love has gained some weight!" And I didn't care, I just wanted her, and we were together. Again.) The mornings don't hurt- they simply weigh heavy on my heart.

But I am moving on. I will see C today, continue to get to know her. I've pretty much dismissed S because of her weird little "I'm not psycho like that" thing, after seeing something that she assumed was something it wasn't. Sounds oh just a bit too similar to Great Lakes.

As for the Obscure Object? I'm at a loss there. My mouth and heart are itching to spill it- especially after what I was told last night, about her spending the least amount of time possible at home. But my brain resists, maybe knowing my heart better than I'd ever thought.

I just hate how I was feeling great over the last week, and today I've got this plague hanging over my head. All because of the tricks my mind plays on me while I'm sleeping.

catch & release

Flash interruption: here and (too quickly) gone. Her eyes were the most crystalline of blues-- and I think they always are, but I've somehow missed that. I don't miss it anymore; ever since she stopped being black and white and edged into this surreal world of piercing color, I can't miss any of it/her. I don't know how she's managed to keep me hooked for 3 years, but my god, the things I still want to do to her: over, and over, and over again.

hallucination.

It may have been a creak in the house, or maybe
it was the churning, squealing repetition of the Pathfinder's fan belt-
a noise I've heard countless times before, a teeth-clenching
screech that eased its deterioration into my ears
starting last spring. April 2008, to be exact,
the dismal aftermath of our first major dissemination,
the time you called me from 300+ miles away
blamed me for your tragic downfall (was this the third? sixth?)
told me you couldn't stand be away from me, but "told"
isn't anywhere near to the synthetic thud of your voice
which sometimes still ricochetes in the most tender spots of my body.
But this time, this night,

one week ago. It wasn't a creak, and it wasn't the squeal
of damaged car parts. It wasn't quite the thunder of your anger
vibrating from miles away. The dining room floor sprawled
beneath my bare feet and my body stilled, tensed, stilled,
drew up its breath and focus. Your voice still lives in this house.
Its plaintive pain-fueled echo

bruised me back to that particular October
the night I couldn't find you
the night you sat on the floor of my closet
legs bent and folded, torso hunched, eyes glazed
and full of calculated surprise as though
you knew I would rescue you, there,
two empty prescription bottles nestled against your thighs
your stare blank and uneven, turning to me
as I pushed open the door
and you didn't even try to hide
the blood, the flashing promises of black and blue,
your gripping hand aiming, puncturing, over and over
into your forearms and thighs, each penetration
depositing life-saving poison directly into your waiting blood stream.
All I knew to do was hold you against the shakes
and endless chattering of teeth, sleight and stutter of tongue,
dire lack of apology or explanation. And while you never

called out to me that night: two years later,
your absence finally clear, your voice let loose
in the skeletons of this house, finally
drawing the ruptured strength from my knees and heart.

prelude to disaster

if that was love, you can count me out. equations
don't mean shit to me anyway-- i nearly failed fifth grade math
and i'm incapable to adding up the number of times
you were good to me
and subtracting that quantity from the number of times
you so severely fucked me over that i couldn't find my legs
couldn't recognize strength to walk out
leave, or
disappear. & you told me: "this is who i am;
i will never change." which i must have thought was endearing
or cute or something that made my heart beat twice its limit
because i must have believed, then, that you were honest.
like the time you said: "i'll never do that to you, i'll never treat you
that way" and i fell for it- because that was thing to do, when you're falling
in love, you fall for everything- but the thing is- can you see this?-
what you did was incomparable to those tedious flits of fuck-ups.
you may not have fucked the other girl
but you let her in, and out, and in and out.
do you even remember how many times
you tried to kill yourself
in the midst of our love-struck wanderings?
do you remember august, in gramercy. the fight
with your mom- how you were "happy" but she pushed you
over the edge and it scared you how everything was good
and you still wanted to die.
or late january, in essex. your dad
wrestling a gun out of your hands. and how you'd begged me that very day
to come up early. and i couldn't. i should have known, or-
that big fight, april?, when you fell away
just to enjamb yourself back ever so slightly to let me know
that yes, you'd had to go to the hospital. because you wanted
to hurt yourself. but you didn't want to talk about it.
for days.
again. and then that summer.
it was always as if i was one step behind you,
never seeing what should have been so obvious.
when you tried to end us in june- because you didn't know how to be happy-
what a fucking cop-out (even though it's true). and the shitstorm of georgia:
the yelling, the mania, the constant fights, the ruin of two summer weeks.
enter october, 2007. someday i'll ship you a prize
awarding you the esteemed award for contributing heavily
to the worst month of my life.
i guess you can't understand (or care) that every time i open my closet
i see you there, cross-legged on the floor, your eyes wide and stark
blood and bruises caking your arms, epi-pen angled toward your veins,
scratches and pin-pricks spotlighting where you'd already stabbed,
empty pill bottles next to your feet. how i held you that night,
my arms a vice grip around your trembling form. we couldn't stop
the shaking: not then, not ever. and then-
no, it wasn't over-
how weeks later you tugged me into your grasp; we were standing
in a door frame, essex again, you said how sorry
you were, and how embarassed
you were. how that wouldn't happen again. and truly, it wasn't until months later-
april again, 2008, when you called me and ranted, bitched,
threw a fucking fit and ended us. then checked yourself into the psych ward
not two hours after that hang up.


that's just it.
those weeks.
that's where
we are now.
not us, but
time. and it
shakes me
to my core.
april-may.
i won't give
you my tears
my heart
my lifeline.
not anymore.
you had
your chances.

Fuck You

"Fuck you" doesn't cut it anymore. They're just words,

language strung beneath the gritty shit

that truncates my soliloquies and tequila-capped one-liners.

FUCK you doesn't tell you what I feel.

The vowels can't reach around their horse-shoed roundness

to slap the things-I've-never-told-you across your face,

and the consonants, hard and thick against my teeth, swing

open-hinged in the bluster of (what I intend to be a) frozen

downpour of tucked-away truths. But honesty never floods out that way;

it sneaks behind years of calm cool steady and fuck YOU

sounds too much like i hate you leave me alone you don't mean fucking

shit to me and these aren't lies, not anymore. And if I had the vocal energy

I might scream and whisper FUCK YOU fuck you FUCK YOU fuck you

over and over again, till my throat breaks raw and danger-red,

till my mouth and arms seize and spasm, and till my nails

snap off clean from clawing boundaries

and barriers, leaving new skin scathed and pale,

but there isn't any blood because blood is red

and red is love

and love was you

and you were blood but

fuckyou is boiling and endless, sworn like a furtive groan-

like a scalded wound peeled open again (and again, again).

Fuck.

You. 

This drops like dead weight, and "fuck you"

doesn't mean anything to me.

Not anymore. 

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 

Sometimes I take the fishing line that is twisted around my neck

and tug a little harder, testing the cut against my skin and I

pick up scissors, weigh them against gravity, slide my fingers

into gaping plastic holes. Open, close. Open, close.

Today I'm thinking about time. Twelve hours
every weekend, strapped into my car. 360-odd miles,
the ones I counted to the music breaking into my wandering mind,
and the ones that escaped me in a mad blur. I don't know what this means:
my drive, metaphorical and not, my pull to your push, the serenade
of touch and go, check your brakes, don't get too close and
why aren't you coming closer. 9:00 or after, picking up my feet
when all I wanted was to drag- the mess of your existence
scattered over every spare space. The dust was intoxicating
and I liked it best when you were awake, reposed
and smiling, your small hands outstretched to draw me in.
Sometimes you slept, your mismatched form twitching
and your mouth slack as I stood in the doorway, listening,
waiting, my inner battle of fear and hope pummeling against
my ribs. We were a tragedy, puppets strung out
in interrupted consciousness, jerking our own strings as the stream of life
passed neatly as though nothing outside existed.

can it make you feel love, love, love, love

Again, in my dreams. You're always there, on a semi-schedule of something like every other night. Sometimes you're laid up in my bed with the flu, and I'm bringing you water with a scoop of chocolate ice cream foaming at the top of the glass. Or you're sitting in my living room, two little sleeping bodies nestled into the furniture, and you're kissing their heads and looking at me. Or we're breaking into each other's personal space, the break-in, the rush, the almost-maybe-we-should. And we have, in my dreams, maybe twice. Mouths pressing into passion at the very least, and I can bring to memory at least one dream in which I fucked you- endlessly, wordlessly, wrapped and bathed in the curiousity that never fails to make me flush when you enter the room.

Last night, you were across the room, sitting on a chair on band concert risers. I was sitting in a folding chair on the floor of the room. Girlyman was there, or at least 2/3 of them: Nate and Ty. They were going to perform, but they had this weird extra band with them, and I wasn't happy about it. Then everyone else there said they wanted Nate and Ty to play Christian rock songs, and I started getting pissed, and I looked at my phone and you'd sent me a text message but I don't remember, now awake, what it said. But I got up and walked to you, behind you, and you turned ever so slightly to see me. I don't know what was said, but somehow, as dreamland tends to do, we were fast-forwarded without motion into my kitchen. We stood at the butcher block island, and the back door was open: the air was spring. You took my right hand and said, "I want to see the wonder," and I showed you what remains of the mystery stress-related mess on my fingers. The one purple dot still puffs on my pointer finger, and you ran your thumb over it in the most natural of ways, then flipped open your palm to show me a small purple circle scar. The same, somehow, but nothing of it. It was then that our foreheads bumped together, pausing within an inhale, the skin warm and smooth but the moment broken by my body stirring awake.

Almost maybe we should.

pinot grigio

here's the story
of rivers and tendrils of anticipation
the walk of purpose trapped beneath
everything i haven't been able to say.
i can do this now, under the wicked spell
of wine and collapsed thoughts.
there are tremors that shake me awake
in the deepest of nights, the darkest
of dreams and wandering chance.
you know probability like i understand nothing
more than syntax and what rests,
shivers, between the finest of lines. these shakes
and missteps filter through the awkward harmony
and i know everything hovering beneath the trespass,
i see the trials and the fears, the daydreams
mottled with sensibility and over-thinking.
i feel, and reel from, the incessant clunk
of arbitrary routine, responsibility, matter-of-fact
quantifiers but that's not quality: that's misstep.
what i know is rhythm and drive, possibility
interlaced with theory and you can fill in the blank
because i've already said too much.

dissemination

charcoaled fine lines dissolve into the background;
dusk's drop cloth of an orange-rimmed sunset
glistens the tightrope that swings between headway
and steady every day nothing.
gently with the rolls of thunder fracturing in the distance
escaping light breaks over interrupted movements-
the armored trepidation of reality- a tender and tenacious crawl
between yes, no, what you think you know, and what you think
you've been able to say without exactly saying.
this double-edged weapon of verbal explosion
illuminates an obliquely wandering path
far past the horizon, beyond promise and doubt, and it blinks
like headlights or maybe it's blinking like one a.m. in union square-
which, while we're there:

i wish i was still in new york city
where these stomping ruminations get caught, dragged beneath
the break-speed whirl of taxis, the tumultuous ease
of rush hour footsteps. and the lurch of the train
disseminates patterned thoughts, driving conscience
from the unspoken script that multiplied and murmured
endlessly. but here, outside the city limits,

this weighted dance swings heavy and low. wrenched
from the ashen strokes of able distraction, these delicate lines
alight and break from their suffocation, heaving themselves
into the careening traffic of my mind. red lights failed me long ago.
and it rushes me back
to the place where notions
can't break into words thrust from my mouth
and i trip over instead of saunter between the lines,
it's just that, to say, to explain:
when i don't answer i'm always
trying to say yes.

making you out of everything

I think I'm ready to write our story now-- the story that exists between the thick lines of my mind, the one that rattles me awake in the sleep of night and the break of day. Write it as we are and everything we could be.

I saw you today, first time in too long I think, and those eyes, that little smile, your hands your everything. I lose it every time. And I mumbled because I was afraid to open my mouth too wide, and then you just stood there and talked to me and we rapid fired yes no back and forth like it was water slipping through river rocks and if we'd been alone, I can't promise you that I wouldn't have touched you. (But actually, I could promise that I wouldn't have touched you because I still haven't seen the blink of the green light, and without that- I sit still.) What always, always gets me with you is the way you won't look away when you're talking to me. Eye to eye, word to word, hidden meaning to supressed wonder.

One solitary finger to finger brush in the passing of a tiny tome of sound. Accidental and beautiful. Miniscule, too. But your smile, your eyes, your fucking everything. I flush into dust the moment you appear. I'm not yet sure if this is good or bad. I'm not yet sure if you've started to realize anything.

Yes, this is floating in my head, chord and rhyme tangled in what ifs. Yes, I am making you a response.

If you were for me, I would never let you go.

what will you wake up and see

Booked my flight this morning. Still have to figure out where I'm staying, but I have an option to fall back on if nothing else pans out, so I'm not worried. And I have to rent a car, but again, not worried about that. The flight was the agent of nerves. I suck at planning, and in the middle of my tab-flipping this morning, I lost the perfect flight for the perfect price. But all's not lost because I ended up with a very similar flight for about $20 more. Whatev! It's done, and I'm getting a mini-vacation out of it since I've decided to fly down Thursday night and come back Monday evening. & the conference itself is Friday night-Sunday afternoon. So I'M EXCITED!

In this morning's madness of planning, I realized that I've managed to lose one of my credit cards, and I cannot figure out how this happened. It has a balance of zero, so clearly it's somewhere in the house, but it's not anywhere where it should be. Got a new account # already, whatever, I'm over it.

But as I was searching for the card, I found a fortune cookie fortune that makes the most fucking sense ever: "No one is standing in your way anymore, it is time to move forward."

HOW FUCKING PROPHETIC IS THAT. Other than how the , should be a ; -- I can look past that and realize that I needed to find this today. After I almost let my ex piss all over my happy fucking parade on Friday, I needed to read that fortune. She's not standing in my way anymore. She was, and I let her, but now... no one is there. The only person that could be in my way is myself, and I'm not willing to do that to myself any longer...

...hence the proactive nature of forward-thinking and planning for this relatively major event. I've obviously never done anything like this before, and it seems that everyone I talk to about it thinks it's a much bigger deal than I do, which is funny because I tend to exaggerate things, but it makes sense-- because if I allowed myself to realize how kind of huge this is, I'd be completely freaked out and I'd stand in my own way. See how I did that? That's what we call PROGRESS.

And anyway. The whole thing makes me feel really fucking smart and, oh I don't know, progressive? Necessary? Validated. I'm still amazed.

all you really want is to be here with me

Love is foreign anymore. It used to come in sweeps complete with rushes of infallability and tiny rips of inadequacy but now, now it's wandering elsewhere. I don't want it to come home anytime soon, and if it does, I plan on being away and/or deaf to the persistent knocks against every tendon in my heart-swollen body.

I wish I could say with finality: I DON'T LOVE YOU ANYMORE. But I'm afraid of lying because I hear it's a disease; I lied a lot when I was a kid, too young to understand the tangles of my own tongue. My mind lies to me, sometimes, but I can't envision reality because I swear it evades me. Kind of like lost stars on a blinking night sky: they move without wind or reason, and I can't touch them no matter how high I reach. My arms have never been long enough, my chest has never been big enough for my whims of infatuation.

Mostly I remember your skin overlapping my own, your mouth crushing mine, words firing between grasps and whispers of nightmares. You were most loving when you were half asleep. You couldn't think, then, with your brain stuffed with sleep. Words came easily, promises flowed without second thought. I love you, I want you, there is no one but you, I've never loved like this.

On the kitchen floor, with the serrations and seeds surrounding us, we aimed for the perfect photogenic kiss. We always disagreed on the best shot. All I ever wanted to do was broadcast our love.

And now, my dreams have bloomed into making out with Melissa Ferrick, which is completely weird but admittedly not a bad dream to have (two nights in a row, nonetheless). You don't need to trail me in my night visions. You are always there in the daylight, shimmers spread over my radar though I've tried again and again to turn off my signal, to shut down, unplug, abscond.

I've never been good at letting go. Never. When I fall, I fall without limits and boundaries. I don't know how to make myself stop. Maybe, I think, this could be a good thing, someday, when I'm ready and when my heart won't need to seal itself up months, years later to edge into the healing (again). And I know what the fear is. I don't know how to believe that there is someone(s) who will not force me to lock my heart and swallow the key. I don't know how to think that love may not always end up hurting me, and that someone(s) might be worthy of letting in.

So I stumble about with my hands taped to my shoulders, arms crossed, heart blocked. I can't breathe in this collapsing makeshift shelter; I wish I'd learned along the way how to run, how to fly.

inside

i could spin you indecent rhymes, the kind riddled
with haunts and maybes, the kind you don't leave behind
but take with you, carry like a second beat in your heart. i want to know
if i dissolve you. unscripted, uncoded-- tell where it is
that i moved effortlessly into you because every time i shut my eyes
all i see is the glistening movement of realizing
i don't know how to walk away.

all I remember / are these opaque conversations

So much going on in my head. So much that I can't seem to get a good grasp on much of anything. Is this what happens when you, three months later, still love your ex and have twisted dellusions of getting back together in living ever after in Happy Magic Land (& totally doubt the existence of said H.M.L.)? When you're still caught in this fierce whirlwind attraction to someone who is nearly impossible to read; someone you've never had more than the briefest of miscalculated/incidental touches and there was that one time it was just a touch more and I swear my heart hit the ceiling; someone who, in all likelihood, is not of your sexual persuasion? And when you're, again, talking/dabbling with an ex from years ago- the one that made your soul bleed, the one that ruined your trust in women, the one that you always wanted because you knew you couldn't have her?

This is also what happens when you go see Chris Pureka in concert for the third time and subsequently cannot stop listening to her music. I love her, it's true, but when I'm in this frame of mind, 90% of her songs make me choke on my own exhales.

Mostly, I can't stop listening to "Silo Song."

Mostly, I'd simply like to grab hold of my life and gain A) perspective, B) clarity, and C) hope. Oh, and I'd really like to hear from the Conference people. I'm not asking for much, life.

love pull your sore ribs in

I'm choosing to look at yesterday as an enormous blip on the radar. I don't know what she thinks she wants from me-- I also don't want to know.

Why, suddenly, she's lavishing me with sweet nothings and calling just to say hi... and then engaging me in a text-a-thon wherein I invariably over-shared and let my vulnerability blaze through... I'm not sure. I can't even tell if it's manipulation or another moment of her realizing what we lost, etc etc.

I wish I was stronger and therefore cared much, much less about the possibility of her sharing her body with someone(s) else. I also wish I hadn't slipped and brought that up last night.

Maybe it's just the human need to know you are wanted, that people have feelings for you. Because letting go is something I am awful at... and even I feel better knowing she still loves me. But I can't shake the feeling that whatever positive progress we made this past week-- I may have blown it last night by sharing so honestly what I think about and how I try to avoid the things that make me think about those things.

Because now, of course, she hasn't responded. And I'm not going to reach out.

where i come from, where i'm going

from my old livejournal : 08.30.04
I never realized how disgustingly hard I am on myself until it was recently brought to my attention by upwards of 4 people. I hate it too, and I know it's getting old, hearing me constantly beat myself up/down. I will try to break myself of it. Truth is, I'm pretty sick of hearing myself talk like that. ... Throwing up my hands.. throwing it in. I'm serious this time. I need a major attitude adjustment. I refuse to be so hard on myself, and I don't want to run my mouth anymore. I want to be better, eventually be good.



Five years later, and I think I'm actually harder on myself.

08.26.04
Why do girls like me? I'm a mess! I was talking with the Cynic last night and listening to myself made me want to cringe. And then later, talking to KH, I seriously wanted to slit my wrists right there. I mean, sure, I've done a significant amount of healing (and realizing what all I "went through" over the past year or so), but there are some heavy, ugly things lingering in the background. I want to be good. I really do. And I'm still working on getting there. I guess it's normal to have moments where you realize how much it fucking sucks, and how bad it can still hurt. But I keep plowing ahead because I know it's not all grey matter... there is goodness, clarity. And I do deserve it. I deserve someone who will treat me well and tolerate my sarcasm and dorkiness, maybe even embrace it. I don't need that person to drop out of the sky tomorrow, but I would like her to appear sometime. Maybe soon.



I had a lot of feelings in August 2004. And the parallels- as far as the necessary healing- to where I am now are obscene. Have I really not made any progress in five years? No... no, I definitely did. But then I got dismantled/I stayed and allowed it to happen. And now I get to heal again. Is that what life is? Falling apart and building yourself back up? Ad infinitum?

08.19.04
I realized then that I'm tired of fighting with and against myself. All actions from this point on might seem unusual for me, a bit uncharacteristic if you will, but I'm sick of holding everything down. What do I have to lose?


I can always, always think of something to lose. But if I don't risk anything, I'll never get anywhere. I just don't think that right now, I have anything to risk.

& I just realized (again) that I date fractured women. Women who need fixing, need to be taken care of. I am so fucking sick of this that it makes me want to punch myself [but as I was punched 3 times Friday night by my idiot friend, I'll abstain from the self-violence]. All of the beauty I've given to others: I want it back. I want it given to me- by someone other than myself.

farewell... to the old me

but there's a catch-- i can't bring myself to see
who i am, and i sense that's because
i'm not entirely sure who i am
these days, especially compared to who i've been
for the last almost three years. and i've come into my own
more than ever, but i've been thwarted and suffocated
beneath layers of lust-fed love (lust that was
flotsam on her stripped floorboards: the first to go
overboard when there was no room left to breathe).
i've been misled and tangled. and she said she lost herself
but she never had herself. i did.
and i haven't relocated the lost fragments yet.

but this is all part of the process and there is space to fall
to realign and trip and repose. i am with no one but myself.
no one's rules but my own. no mind to challenge but my own,
no muscles to flex but the ones i've lately neglected. and the thing is:
i don't want anyone else's anything in my everything. i just want
me.

so the search begins for the roots
of who i am. and strength supercedes the will to look back,
a sinewed stretch forward instead. this is what
i have: mind, body, soul.
education: completed and continuing.
career: a job, multiple certificates, summers off, opportunities elsewhere.
family: solid. supportive. inspiring. fucking funny.
friends: waxy but tangible. some closer, some better,
some here just for distraction and entertainment.
car & home. solitude. space to live.
words to craft, words to refine.
my health.
my will and tenacity. my inherant stubborn nature.
my easy smile and (over)active mind.
and i have my own possibility: endless, unmapped, uncharted, infinite.

i basked in beautiful noise last night. i'd marry the former in a
heartbeat... the curved beauty, incredible voice, obvious and endearing
slightly self-deprecating humor. and she carries a slightly surreal
resemblance to the woman who has blindly carried the pulse of my heart
for close to three years.

there are moments, too few for my liking, where i realize that
i am exactly where i am supposed to be. unattached. healing.
deeply introspective (perhaps too much at times).
rolling in intensity. fumbling to rediscover myself.
aware. awake. shaken, stirred, overflowing.
real. selfish. spiked with shards of happiness
mixed with stripes of anger/disbelief/sadness/hurt.
recovering. breathing. inhale, exhale, close your eyes.
unravelling neatly and retying with each step and signal.

i'll get where i need to be. it may not be where i think i should go
but it will be where i'm supposed to be, and when i'm supposed
to be there.
that's all i know.