this was her life, this was a little girl in a magical place and this was a young woman in a dreamland and this was an old lady trapped in a different era, looking back on all of these things. this is the saddest that you'll ever get - wrinkled and brown and hairy in places you shouldn't be, eyeing the oldoldold photos of a straight porcelain nose and cheeks that blush in a way poets called 'prettily'.
but the poets are all dead, the poets are born dead inside, that's the way we write and that's the way we see and that's why we can't smile like the rest of society. we don't fit in right, we don't mesh on the edges - we have eyes and brains and teeth and legs and arms like everyone else but they all are programmed so simply, so rigidly. party tonight and trust given to everyone and appearances are everything and we poets are stuck in the back of the room, staring at the ruins of what was once a human girl or a human boy and is now just a slut in everyday clothes.
and we stare at you and we judge you and i judge you harshest of all because i am a person, not a girl, i am a person with nothing left to live for. i have lost hope and i have lost passion and i have lost fuel and there is nothing driving me now. i am coasting on empty. i am on auto-pilot, some days go better than others and some days are worse, some days hurt more than anything i've ever experienced and all i can think of is the brown eyes that never closed even after the life fled from behind them and i think of my own brown eyes and i wonder how soon the life will be gone from behind them and i know it's not long, not long now. i have been feeling the emptiness for days for weeks for months for years and years and years, since the first pair of brown eyes closed.
brown eyes like my father's brown eyes like mine brown eyes like my girl's and brown eyes like shit like dirt like fallen leaves and fucking autumn and nothing good ever comes from brown eyes. the heroines of all the best books are blue-eyed. green-eyed. some are majestic some are more than anything some have silver eyes and gold eyes and some call it hazel and some are obsessed with pretending their stupid plain eyes are something better than what they are but we all know, at the end of the day, they're just fucking brown.
Monday, October 13, 2008
last night I rode bareback during a lightning storm in the pitchblack summer winds and I felt alive
The sky is black but the clouds are rolling in gray waves over the west, and the flash white-blue of lightning streaks behind them like a sin. I can't help but smile in this moment, and this is everything. Florida summers feel like torture, the way the afternoons melt by, honey in the sunshine. The way the mornings disappear in a heat haze of barely opened eyes and blankets kicked off and sweat behind your knees. But the summer nights in Florida are something else entirely...
The way the breeze blows through your hair, you feel naked. It's a warm breeze and that changes everything. And Florida is so flat, you can see everything, the way I can see the lightning in the distance like it's a picture-book held under my nose, it's that close.
My hand traces down your mane, braided tight and black against my favorite shade of copper brown. No saddle tonight, just your skin, that perfect coat, against my cheap jeans. It feels like we're together, now, the way we were together when the judges decided we were the best in the nation in your specialty. I remember the announcer, remember the way I fell onto your neck, because gravity was nonexistent and the sense had left the world and oh my god, it was just you and me and we did something impossible.
We made a dream come true. My dream. Our dream, maybe. But maybe I've had it wrong this whole time, my little sparrow. Are you a Jinn, perhaps? Hiding your flaming eyes somehow? How else have you given me dream after dream, with so little in return?
So last night, let's call this an abstract dream, let's call this being alive. Because that's how I felt, my lungs actually moving and my heart beating, wet and strong and this. is. everything. And sometimes I forget that I've taken riding lessons for years, and I forget that you're by far the most well-trained horse I've ever ridden, and I realize that if I just let go, we're fine. We move without thinking and we agree on everything and there is nothing better than being with you. Nothing.
The way the breeze blows through your hair, you feel naked. It's a warm breeze and that changes everything. And Florida is so flat, you can see everything, the way I can see the lightning in the distance like it's a picture-book held under my nose, it's that close.
My hand traces down your mane, braided tight and black against my favorite shade of copper brown. No saddle tonight, just your skin, that perfect coat, against my cheap jeans. It feels like we're together, now, the way we were together when the judges decided we were the best in the nation in your specialty. I remember the announcer, remember the way I fell onto your neck, because gravity was nonexistent and the sense had left the world and oh my god, it was just you and me and we did something impossible.
We made a dream come true. My dream. Our dream, maybe. But maybe I've had it wrong this whole time, my little sparrow. Are you a Jinn, perhaps? Hiding your flaming eyes somehow? How else have you given me dream after dream, with so little in return?
So last night, let's call this an abstract dream, let's call this being alive. Because that's how I felt, my lungs actually moving and my heart beating, wet and strong and this. is. everything. And sometimes I forget that I've taken riding lessons for years, and I forget that you're by far the most well-trained horse I've ever ridden, and I realize that if I just let go, we're fine. We move without thinking and we agree on everything and there is nothing better than being with you. Nothing.
Indiana
it's the earliest hours of the morning, the seasons crushing between unending summer and an autumn that could never really matter... summertime in florida means a fictional kind of heat pushed through water, always water, always moving. and here i am. here we are.
i'm nineteen years old, wearing a ballgown and a corset and the black leather boots that have always played a part in my worst decisions. the noise the rain makes when it hits the roof is painful. it hurts me in a way i can't really describe. it hurts me everywhere. the feeling of the rain when it hits my hands, when it falls into my cupped palms, it makes me think of love. the strangest thought comes to me, then. "who would ever want a girl whose hands are full of rain-water?"
the door opens. enter stage left, enter you with your whiskey and water, looking at me with the rain. you ask if i'm okay. i am, sort of.
this conversation is going to take a while. and it's a long time until i can finally say, can finally voice, "okay. cards on the table. how do you feel about me?"
and when we realize we're at a dead end, when we realize something would have to change ifwhenif...
you put your arms around me, and hold me against your chest, and i... i love this. i really do.
and then we sit, and i twine my fingers through yours and you brush your thumb up and down mine. and just sitting here next to you, legs against legs and my hand on your hand, this feels right. it feels close to right, anyway. you put your arm around me, and you call me "my dear". you tell me a hundred things that feel like confessions, things that push you farther and farther into my heart.
and - the height of this - you put your arms around me a second-to-last time, the last while we have this stolen time between us alone, and you press the lightest, chastest kiss against my lips.
before i leave? you hold me again, in front of everyone, and in the tightest space with the most telling of companions... you kiss my hair. it feels like a felony.
(i love you.)
i'm nineteen years old, wearing a ballgown and a corset and the black leather boots that have always played a part in my worst decisions. the noise the rain makes when it hits the roof is painful. it hurts me in a way i can't really describe. it hurts me everywhere. the feeling of the rain when it hits my hands, when it falls into my cupped palms, it makes me think of love. the strangest thought comes to me, then. "who would ever want a girl whose hands are full of rain-water?"
the door opens. enter stage left, enter you with your whiskey and water, looking at me with the rain. you ask if i'm okay. i am, sort of.
this conversation is going to take a while. and it's a long time until i can finally say, can finally voice, "okay. cards on the table. how do you feel about me?"
and when we realize we're at a dead end, when we realize something would have to change ifwhenif...
you put your arms around me, and hold me against your chest, and i... i love this. i really do.
and then we sit, and i twine my fingers through yours and you brush your thumb up and down mine. and just sitting here next to you, legs against legs and my hand on your hand, this feels right. it feels close to right, anyway. you put your arm around me, and you call me "my dear". you tell me a hundred things that feel like confessions, things that push you farther and farther into my heart.
and - the height of this - you put your arms around me a second-to-last time, the last while we have this stolen time between us alone, and you press the lightest, chastest kiss against my lips.
before i leave? you hold me again, in front of everyone, and in the tightest space with the most telling of companions... you kiss my hair. it feels like a felony.
(i love you.)
Of maple leaves and dirty knees.
"How long have you been apart?" asks the Samaritan, his eyes lined, his features careless.
"Three months."
Do you know what can happen in three months? Do you know how a stranger can tell that two people have been without one another for that long?
There is an answer.
Let's pretend this is wartime the way you know it ought to be - some demon of a man behind a podium bearing Hell's own colors. He preaches and the crowd jeers and they love him for every bead of sweat on their foreheads, for every moment of their lives that they give to him and his cause. They move as one, they think as one, and they are all of them his children.
On the other side of the wall, there are others. Others who are too dark to show their Anglo pride. Too dark to blend in although they are allowed at the edges, usually. It's just that the words they speak are never truly theirs. It's just that they are the ones who have seen ghosts, who have heard the angels speaking in a language they could not understand.
So when this power moves like thread, like blood in water, the way it infiltrates and snakes in and around is permanent. One heart to another to another and unbreakable as an airplane, unforeseeable as a tragedy.
What I'm saying is, stand by your own. What I'm saying is, I'm a teenage girl in dirty blue jeans with the kind of voice that makes people nervous, and I just want to see your fucking eyes again.
"Three months."
Do you know what can happen in three months? Do you know how a stranger can tell that two people have been without one another for that long?
There is an answer.
Let's pretend this is wartime the way you know it ought to be - some demon of a man behind a podium bearing Hell's own colors. He preaches and the crowd jeers and they love him for every bead of sweat on their foreheads, for every moment of their lives that they give to him and his cause. They move as one, they think as one, and they are all of them his children.
On the other side of the wall, there are others. Others who are too dark to show their Anglo pride. Too dark to blend in although they are allowed at the edges, usually. It's just that the words they speak are never truly theirs. It's just that they are the ones who have seen ghosts, who have heard the angels speaking in a language they could not understand.
So when this power moves like thread, like blood in water, the way it infiltrates and snakes in and around is permanent. One heart to another to another and unbreakable as an airplane, unforeseeable as a tragedy.
What I'm saying is, stand by your own. What I'm saying is, I'm a teenage girl in dirty blue jeans with the kind of voice that makes people nervous, and I just want to see your fucking eyes again.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Sie sagt, Ich weiß nicht wo mir der Kopf steht. (The beginning)
feel like I'm drowning. Like it's happening in slow motion, and no one is stopping to help me. There are no hands reaching down through the fishing holes. Just me, trying to find some air trapped between the ice and the water, just me.
It's hard to balance the apathy I feel with the passion I used to have for everything, for everyone.
I think about killing myself often. It's not that this is a new thing, of course. Just that I've started to contemplate it in ways I usually prevent. I used to only consider things that I couldn't actually do - put a loaded gun in my mouth. (Where would I get the gun, figure out how to load it, how could no one hear?) Now it's simpler. Now it's - just try something. Now it's - just take the pink plastic safety razor and break it open. Now it's - make it hurt, make yourself bleed, and let someone else pick up the pieces.
I don't even want to die. Not really. (But maybe a little. I know that life doesn't end here. I guess you could say, I've heard things that you haven't.)
I just want to get out of here, get out of this life. I'm so tired of the monotony. I wake up everyday and I feel terrible. I go through the motions and I feel nothing.
I want to lose myself. In fiction, maybe. I miss that.
I need help. I need to straighten my life out. I need to see a professional about all of this. I keep saying, At least I realize I have a problem. I keep forgetting that it doesn't matter unless I do something about it.
It's hard to balance the apathy I feel with the passion I used to have for everything, for everyone.
I think about killing myself often. It's not that this is a new thing, of course. Just that I've started to contemplate it in ways I usually prevent. I used to only consider things that I couldn't actually do - put a loaded gun in my mouth. (Where would I get the gun, figure out how to load it, how could no one hear?) Now it's simpler. Now it's - just try something. Now it's - just take the pink plastic safety razor and break it open. Now it's - make it hurt, make yourself bleed, and let someone else pick up the pieces.
I don't even want to die. Not really. (But maybe a little. I know that life doesn't end here. I guess you could say, I've heard things that you haven't.)
I just want to get out of here, get out of this life. I'm so tired of the monotony. I wake up everyday and I feel terrible. I go through the motions and I feel nothing.
I want to lose myself. In fiction, maybe. I miss that.
I need help. I need to straighten my life out. I need to see a professional about all of this. I keep saying, At least I realize I have a problem. I keep forgetting that it doesn't matter unless I do something about it.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Build my walls and tear them apart. (Verse two)
Two a.m. in Florida where it's never dark, you know, and the strangest of friends are sitting on the concrete excuse for a porch.
"People change, my dear."
Your voice is heavy like wool over my mouth and I don't have anything coherent to say. I twist my fingers in yours more thoroughly, I watch the way your thumb traces mine. I want a sip of your whiskey and water. I spilled my drink and really can't be trusted with another.
We tiptoe like children around the biggest things we want to say. I don't mind that you're half in love with me.
You're right, though. Everyone changes, or is supposed to, or does without realizing it. Maybe that's what has happened. I feel like I've grown into the eloquence I always hoped for. I feel like I've lost the part of me that knew how to love. I feel like I can't stop loving the people I already do. I feel like I can't express it at all.
When I was fifteen, I thought I was going to marry into an Italian last name and I thought I could never love anyone more than the boy who I kissed on a city bus and fucked in the back seat of a used car.
When I was sixteen, I thought of nothing but Clayton until I had him and then we were inseparable and dangerous and madly in love. Somedays I feel like he's a bull in a china shop. Then, I wanted to be a rodeo queen.
When I was eighteen, I spent one single night awake instead of asleep, breaking foundations like bones and falling in love with someone else. (I said I wanted eternity and you promised, and the way it felt when I was with you... I could feel the electricity in the air the way I could feel my heart catch in my chest.)
Somewhere in between all of that, I fell in love with my friend, a little, too. I try to keep that quiet. He knows. I know. I damn his dark honest eyes every time we have a moment that I can't overlook. So there you go. At nineteen, a boy kissed me in a way I've never been kissed before. He kissed me as though chastity mattered. (Which is why he's my friend, you see. He's every temptation I've ever walked out on.)
"People change, my dear."
Your voice is heavy like wool over my mouth and I don't have anything coherent to say. I twist my fingers in yours more thoroughly, I watch the way your thumb traces mine. I want a sip of your whiskey and water. I spilled my drink and really can't be trusted with another.
We tiptoe like children around the biggest things we want to say. I don't mind that you're half in love with me.
You're right, though. Everyone changes, or is supposed to, or does without realizing it. Maybe that's what has happened. I feel like I've grown into the eloquence I always hoped for. I feel like I've lost the part of me that knew how to love. I feel like I can't stop loving the people I already do. I feel like I can't express it at all.
When I was fifteen, I thought I was going to marry into an Italian last name and I thought I could never love anyone more than the boy who I kissed on a city bus and fucked in the back seat of a used car.
When I was sixteen, I thought of nothing but Clayton until I had him and then we were inseparable and dangerous and madly in love. Somedays I feel like he's a bull in a china shop. Then, I wanted to be a rodeo queen.
When I was eighteen, I spent one single night awake instead of asleep, breaking foundations like bones and falling in love with someone else. (I said I wanted eternity and you promised, and the way it felt when I was with you... I could feel the electricity in the air the way I could feel my heart catch in my chest.)
Somewhere in between all of that, I fell in love with my friend, a little, too. I try to keep that quiet. He knows. I know. I damn his dark honest eyes every time we have a moment that I can't overlook. So there you go. At nineteen, a boy kissed me in a way I've never been kissed before. He kissed me as though chastity mattered. (Which is why he's my friend, you see. He's every temptation I've ever walked out on.)
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
What do you call children who grow together, from one stage of life to a completely different one?
"Two little girls, growing out of their training bras
This little girl breaks furniture - this little girl breaks laws
Two girls together, a little less alone...
...You were always half crazy, now look at you baby
You make about as much sense as a nursery rhyme...
...So now you bring me your bruises so I can oh and ah at the display
Maybe I'm supposed to make one of my famous jokes that makes everything
Maybe I'm supposed to be the handsome prince who rides up and unties your hands
Or maybe I'm supposed to be the furrow-browed who thinks she understands"
- Ani DiFranco, "Two Little Girls"
We met in November of 2000, if memory serves me. Her birthday is the thirtieth of July, mine is the thirtieth of May, of the same year. We were eleven years old.
We both have brown eyes, though hers are wider and larger and prettier than mine. We both come from a mixed Italian/Irish descent. We both have a love for all things equine, and that's what drew us to one another originally. We're both eighteen years old now.
She writes now, a near daily blog for a nationally-renowned magazine. It's wonderful to have such an insight into her life when we don't always have time to talk to one another. And as I was reading her latest entry, I was struck by something - almost a mirror image but from so long ago.
She wrote, "If you're wondering where that came from, well: I'm actually blogging from my laptop outside, sitting on my mom's rocking chair on our porch in the beautiful 70 degree weather."
A sentence without poetic merit, a simple statement of fact. But in my mind's eye I saw a much younger girl, a girl she had described to me... twelve or thirteen years old, wrapped in a blue blanket that smelled of vomit, scared and shaking on the front porch. A mind far too sensitive, a child entirely too observant of the world around her... yes, this is how we became disturbed. This is how we became different from our peers. We were disordered in every sense of the word, and likely still are. I can tell you every single calorie that I have ingested today, but if I did that, I wouldn't be able to hide the shame. I don't want to end up with my fingers down my throat tonight. The scars crossing over my arms have faded, have healed over again and again - but I'd go through razor after razor again if I thought I could hide the marks.
I wish I could say that we've grown into mature, healthy, happy young adults. I can't say that. I can't even come close to saying that.
I love my life and I know she loves hers. But sometimes... sometimes the days echo one another so loudly and sometimes I can't help myself from returning to that time when everything was so different. So much freedom and will lost with age, that I can only hope we'll be able to get back.
So when I laugh and say that one day, they'll think of us as Sylvia and Anne, you know, I'm telling the truth. When you tell me that I can't kill myself because I haven't written my masterpiece, I know you're only looking out for my best interests.
"Two little girls, growing out of their training bras
This little girl breaks furniture - this little girl breaks laws
Two girls together, a little less alone...
...You were always half crazy, now look at you baby
You make about as much sense as a nursery rhyme...
...So now you bring me your bruises so I can oh and ah at the display
Maybe I'm supposed to make one of my famous jokes that makes everything
Maybe I'm supposed to be the handsome prince who rides up and unties your hands
Or maybe I'm supposed to be the furrow-browed who thinks she understands"
- Ani DiFranco, "Two Little Girls"
We met in November of 2000, if memory serves me. Her birthday is the thirtieth of July, mine is the thirtieth of May, of the same year. We were eleven years old.
We both have brown eyes, though hers are wider and larger and prettier than mine. We both come from a mixed Italian/Irish descent. We both have a love for all things equine, and that's what drew us to one another originally. We're both eighteen years old now.
She writes now, a near daily blog for a nationally-renowned magazine. It's wonderful to have such an insight into her life when we don't always have time to talk to one another. And as I was reading her latest entry, I was struck by something - almost a mirror image but from so long ago.
She wrote, "If you're wondering where that came from, well: I'm actually blogging from my laptop outside, sitting on my mom's rocking chair on our porch in the beautiful 70 degree weather."
A sentence without poetic merit, a simple statement of fact. But in my mind's eye I saw a much younger girl, a girl she had described to me... twelve or thirteen years old, wrapped in a blue blanket that smelled of vomit, scared and shaking on the front porch. A mind far too sensitive, a child entirely too observant of the world around her... yes, this is how we became disturbed. This is how we became different from our peers. We were disordered in every sense of the word, and likely still are. I can tell you every single calorie that I have ingested today, but if I did that, I wouldn't be able to hide the shame. I don't want to end up with my fingers down my throat tonight. The scars crossing over my arms have faded, have healed over again and again - but I'd go through razor after razor again if I thought I could hide the marks.
I wish I could say that we've grown into mature, healthy, happy young adults. I can't say that. I can't even come close to saying that.
I love my life and I know she loves hers. But sometimes... sometimes the days echo one another so loudly and sometimes I can't help myself from returning to that time when everything was so different. So much freedom and will lost with age, that I can only hope we'll be able to get back.
So when I laugh and say that one day, they'll think of us as Sylvia and Anne, you know, I'm telling the truth. When you tell me that I can't kill myself because I haven't written my masterpiece, I know you're only looking out for my best interests.
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