Saturday
For W.S.
I was overcome with a sense of loneliness
And the belief that, without someone to share it with,
Beauty is meaningless torture.
Now, as I read the words on these pages,
Crafted by a mind so gifted, yet so alone,
I am reminded of this sensation.
Your life a solitary walk among
Falling leaves
And choirs of Seraphim;
An appreciation of mere air
Capable of making my heart stop.
It occurs to me that beauty often exists in solitude;
That it is, in fact, born from it.
But without the reader
To drop tears of shared wonder and appreciation on these pages,
That beauty still means nothing.
It would merely survive in a vacuum of nothingness
As if it never existed at all.
So I remain alone
On that bridge,
My chest bursting with awe and wonder,
Confined in utter impotence.
Sunday
the witness
I am reminded that such small gestures feed the souls of humanity
Like so many wretched mouths
With palms upturned and eyes that plead
For a glimpse of what is in this seemingly stark room.
Washing your lover's back gently
As he lies, confined in sickness,
These four walls contain the only truth that matters
And my own heart is healed for having witnessed this.
Tuesday
the optimist
instead of choosing to worry and to seek negativity,
the optimist's path is more noble.
he sees hope where others see only shadows
and finds beauty all around him,
especially where others see none.
i connected with him when we both admitted that there should be no guilty pleasures:
if you like unicorns, you should wear a shirt with a unicorn on it, and hang unicorn posters
on your wall, and apologize to no one.
he tells me that i am beautiful because of my scars, not despite them.
and admonished me gently for covering my mouth when i smiled
because he loves my crooked teeth.
he loves what others label "faults"
because those are the qualities that make us who we are;
therefore, we should embrace them.
i even saw the optimist laugh when i thought there would be no more humor in his world.
he danced while baking cupcakes in his kitchen, causing the room to fill with light
and my own sadness transformed into laughter.
he believes that the only moment we have is right now
so we might as well say "i love you" to the people we love
and stop being so afraid.
the optimist wants us to reach out from our loneliness because
there is nothing to lose
except our isolation.
Saturday
Anxiety
I’ve never lived anywhere cool
Like
New York,
Or a loft in San Francisco.
I wasn’t raised in Philly
Or brought up on the wrong side of the tracks in
I’ve never been to
Or
Or even to a decent rave.
I don’t knit my own scarves or crochet bikinis.
I don’t know how to solder,
Or construct corrugated cardboard coffee tables.
And when I flip through the pages of trendy magazines,
I feel anxious.
Apprehensive.
Less than adequate.
I wonder if I’ll ever live the kind of life I see in glossy print:
Urban Retro,
Shabby Chic,
Feminist Marxist.
If I could tolerate the bands they write about,
Or even find that cool hoodie
With the graphics of cassette tapes
In nineties-neon colors on a white background.
And this anxiety wells up inside me
When I think about how short life is,
And how I can never fill this void with
Super cute handmade monster sock toys,
Or kitschy stencils of birds and cherry blossoms.
Until I realize that I could bring back cool
In the form of Midwestern girls
Who are comfortable being themselves,
And wearing clothes they buy off racks,
And listening to bands people have actually heard of
And simply not giving a fuck.
Tuesday
the net
of features i adore, and all the traits
that reel me in until i can't resist
you would have caught me with your shameless bait.
and i, proverbial fish caught on dry land,
left stunned by your combination of wit
and kindness, only flail under your hand
while you admire my queer scales and sit.
so here i writhe and twist under your spell
caught in this net between heaven and hell.
Sunday
compromised
i do not cringe at the sound of your laugh:
genuine, deep and throaty.
instead it makes my soul leap with pure joy.
the small creases around your eyes are
emblazoned on my memory
along with your perfectly straight smile.
i don't find find the belts you wear overtly bourgeois,
and your taste in music,
drinks,
and writing instruments
only endears you to me more.
and i realize that even if
this cannot last,
you have taught me that
people like you really do exist,
and that i need not compromise myself
anymore.
fiction for busy people
Without knowing it, she stepped out of her front door as herself for the very last time. Unchanged, unmoderated, unadulterated for the majority of her adult life, she could not return to the threshold of that reality again. Looking back on it now, the she - she was to become would have caught the nuance of a leaf falling from the sky onto her head at the exact moment her key turned in the lock of her car door, the only moment of the day she spent in utter silence. Before starting the car, she stared at a scrap of paper, an index card torn diagonally to replicate an inverted triangle, writing covering every millimeter of it with blue scrawl scribbled by a furious hand. Sighing, she turned the key, forcing the engine to obey her command and turn over.
In the near-silent hum of a white room, he arose to a calm and quiet mind. Bare walls reflected his resolve in all its grim starkness, and the room's transient air stood perfectly still. He stood gracefully, his feet planted solidly on the floor immediately upon waking, the world beneath him rotating around his feet with all the determination of refined subtlety; superior centrifugal force asserting itself in such a way that only someone quiet enough to hear it might feel his breath catch momentarily. Looking at the man through a window, a neighbor might have chuckled to witness the time when, each morning without fail, the man paced his flat with the onus of adulthood on his shoulders. He lived a quiet life, good and productive, but today would be different. He felt it in the air but could not quite identify it. Today he would wonder if the path he had carved out so carefully for himself really mattered much at all. A neat list positioned on the corner of the counter top reminded him of all the day would require of him and for a sharp, passing instant he felt the weight of it all; the endless patience and the simple calm he alone could bring into any room he entered, the decisions affecting those in his care made with a stoic, rational mind. Normally, he took pride in his responsibilities, gladly shouldering burdens too overwhelming for most with the peaceful assurance that he made a difference in this world. He stopped feeling this peacefulness briefly, though, and it was replaced with a sensation he would feel again when he first saw her: the serenity of his halcyon existence disrupted ever so gently, not altogether inharmonious or unpleasant, but enough to signal him that the solitude he treasured as precious could no longer fulfill him.
The rain fell then, soft and cool and carried by the summer wind so faintly that only someone who lived in the region long enough could detect it; the way the still, stagnant air began a slow movement so benign that only the faint smell of honeysuckle arose from a blanket of red-clay earth into an invisible wisp directly into the nostrils of passersby too consumed in their own lives to care much. That's the thing about small towns: despite a real sadness behind everyone's eyes, well-mannered people prefer to dwell within the guise of white cotton dresses and madras shorts endearing only to those with the specifically acquired taste and clutch their umbrellas in harried resentment through the unbearable weight of specifically southern summertime air as the rain slowly beats down harder, its force insistent. Years later, it was this insistence they both remembered most clearly.
The man and the woman had both felt this, each running through the rain into different doors on opposite sides of town, but neither had been too concerned with what such an insistent pounding could indicate. It was rhythmic, though - there was no denying that - and they were, in fact, the only two people in the town to notice it that summer morning; she, briefly disarmed by the rhythm's melodic thump-thump on her bare forehead, reminding her of a low rolling tympani or the soft, unsettling meter of a trochee, so much so that she was glad she had, once again, forgotten her umbrella; he, surprised by the laconic measure of the rhythm, its gentle thumping alluring precisely because he had never stopped to notice the sound of rain before. For the first time in his life he lowered his sensible, black umbrella and felt the soft rain on his face.
Eventually, she was confronted with silence at the most inopportune time. At her desk in the space she considered sacred, surrounded by the objects she loved, her music abruptly and inexplicably stopped. At first she didn’t notice; she continued writing, absorbed in thought and the indescribable joy of the motion of her hand flowing fluidly across the page, but when she paused for thought, the quietness was astonishing. Suddenly, she realized that for one very brief moment, her thoughts were completely still: no words ran through her mind, no rhythm tapped out from the back of her consciousness through her leg and down to her foot (which could generally be found drumming out a soft beat at any time of day)… no nothing. Initially, this was disquieting to her when she became aware of it; the small, silent space became sharply suffocating, the books on their neat shelves creating a wall around her, the page in front of her filled with carefully meted out words that honestly amounted to nothing. This absurd nothingness consumed her and she felt that sinking feeling again, the esthesia of water rushing around her as she gasped for oxygen that simply did not exist. She felt very small and very alone until she realized that for that fleeting moment, her mind had been absolutely blank. Bewildered, she immediately felt a weight lifting from her shoulders, a lightness she had never known. Her mind had been clear, silent; the sensation was ethereal, albeit brief, and for that instant there had been nothing but her and her nothingness which, for once, was not disconcerting. She would not know this sensation again until she saw him for the first time. Of course, her thoughts began spinning at once, messy synapses connecting at random to string seemingly unrelated thoughts together, and her moment of cerebral liberation passed more quickly than it had come.
He, on the other hand, had become quite adept at compartmentalizing things, and it was this skill he credited for surviving his humdrum daily routine. Recently, he had become aware that his existence was passionless; without something to really live for, his days blurred together into wake, work, home, repeat. Frustrated by this thought while driving home from work, he swiftly jerked the steering wheel and pulled his car into a parking spot in front of a small cafĂ© in an attempt to thwart the monotony of entering his own front door. Pausing only to flex his fingers and shake off the apprehension building within himself, he exited the car and walked toward the door of the building. It was then that she exited, her own fingers flexed around a stack of cold, white papers piled haphazardly at skewed angles that contrasted against her soft hands; it was these hands that initially caught him off guard, the way they wrapped around the preposterous pile of precariously perched papers with an awkward confidence, but in the quick moment it took for him to look from her hands up her arms and into her eyes, the morning’s sensation returned and he was taken completely aback both by her surprised look and by his own immediate need to reach out to her from his solitude. His breath stopped and his heart raced as his thoughts reached a crescendo, all white noise and scrambled static, his neatly arranged plans swimming through his skull like so much nonsense. She, startled by the encounter, merely broke into a wide smile and laughed nervously. The flood of hurried thoughts she had become accustomed to was silenced as she looked into his eyes and again that calm, weightless sensation permeated her every cell as she experienced the exhilaration of thinking nothing but feeling everything with absolute clarity. Without warning, one warm wind swept softly then, and the scent of honeysuckle filled the air as two blank pages fluttered slowly to the ground, landing at their feet while the couple stood facing each other, their small solitudes colliding in one harmonious moment.
Tuesday
the cynic
if what you say is real, sincere or true,
but i will listen and abstain somehow
from judgment or concern for your virtue.
at times i think this game is more than we
can possibly conceive of or deny --
a mirror held up between he and she
content to fake a smile; doubt, cold and wry.
you sit across from me and try to draw
me in with wit and wisdom and your charm;
your timing flawless, practiced -- never raw
my guard prevents your attempts to disarm.
yet i participate because i must
for without this there's nothing left but trust
Monday
la lingua
Saturday
stranger
my elbow grazes the walls
and the weight of my hips shifts sideways so that i can pass you.
for one brief moment
my breath catches --
your scent reminds of of a place and time i don't wish to revisit.
like 40 days in exile, i slide my back against the wall
and this encounter merges with my memory.
two places at once, suspended in time;
and i make something out of nothing
and the wheels begin spinning,
but my face remains calm.
i wonder how wide a rift can exist between two people
lying side by side
because i imagine a chasm from which you cannot return.
two six pound weights come to mind
as i am thrust back into reality
and i return to this moment
to watch you walk away.
Wednesday
inadequacy
to the point that it makes me crazy,
burning with envy
admiration
indescribable awe
at the workings of your mind. unafraid to confront
what is ugly,
ignoble,
ordinary and unsatisfying. it feels
like diving into a pool with my eyes open,
the water rushing into the soft, sensitive membranes
causing them to burn,
yet i cannot
flinch.
this is what life is about: this is that sweet,
rough
realization that the most meaningful
connections occur when we realize
how disconnected we are from one another
and from ourselves.
Monday
the devil never sleeps alone
i fight off mediocrity like a loyal thane fights for his lord. the hollow faces of happy, youthful women on magazine covers mock me as i add a fifth tablespoon of coffee to the white, flower-shaped filter. furniture that is mismatched in a decidedly unhip manner frustrates me, and a pang of remorse stabs at me for this moment of ingratitude. adulthood isn't supposed to be like this. i resist the urge to turn on the television. the thought of watching people live exciting urban lives instead of actually living mine brings my mind to its knees. i bow out gracefully and choose to return to my bedroom, its white walls and empty air a reminder of all i lost.
funny how things can make you feel as if you're worth something, as if this void could be filled with beautiful bookcases or bedlinens or baking sheets. i try to look at these white walls as possibility instead of a constant reminder of my shortcomings as a woman, a wife, a lover. it would be easy enough to paint over them, a fresh, smooth surface glossing over the emptiness and making everything bright again, clean again, alive and new.
potential. latent, tension-filled potential sleeps beneath my sheets and crouches in the corners of this room. the bright colors i imagine exist somewhere, and i will reach them, even if it kills me. in my world, there is color and light and earth to walk in, feet bare, soil soft, the taste of salt on my lips and a heart that expects nothing. in that world, my mind is calm and empty and i can think clearly; sentences do not run together and tangle like a ball of multicolored yarn, but instead they flow from salty lips and consume the listener, engaging and enthralling and transforming me as the spool that produces the colors of thread, light and easy and simple and clean.
abandon
that which is forbidden to me.
everything i stood for
seems to fade into the background
and something else takes over each time we meet
time stands still
and wrong is eclipsed by right
now
guilt stands aside
and need draws a curtain around reason
while fear and logic watch in wonder.
i close my eyes and nothing seems as real as this;
alive again
body and soul unite to make me whole
i went into this with eyes
opened: dove in
and let it wash over me
without hesitation
powerless to stop the flood that consumes me still.
yet when i surface,
another reality confronts me
and i am left alone
empty handed
with only a memory to sustain me,
to fight off a guilty conscience
and justify this overwhelming assault on my mind.
carousel
i got off a long time ago
but apparently, you're still on it
you tell me that i am
genuine
real
beautiful
and i think about taking your hand
stepping on that platform for another try
but no matter what
it will always just go in circles
and end up where it began
so i remain
standing
alone
and sleep with a clear conscience
because i have known who i am all along
and you are just discovering that
ghost
and drift out open windows
cross each doorway
and fall
over
me
so that i
may be rid of these
ghosts and the memories that
possess me once and for all. no more.