The Local Language

"bouquet de fleurs" marc chagall

the Dark Away

This kiss as deep as any ocean,

down far and wide upon forgotten rocks

down far among fish who bubbly murmur

about their business of being beautiful and unknown.

This you the sun's beams whose reach

to inkiest water feeds strangest creature.

and you're just across the lobby

my father is in your face

i see your young softness

it scares me, you stranger

i want to run to you and cup your cheeks.

hold those eyes always

on the horizon, hope for later

hurt you never.

oh, dadoo.

9.28.2010

To Jacob Miller:

where are you now?

where were you then.

there is a cold space where you were and

emptiness where there wasn't

excepting yours--heart so lonely.

jacob. there is a world left without you. and none know what to make of it.

Kissing the Sun

I always come here for the same reason: I need a little bit of therapy. I'm so burnt out and haven't had time for much of anything but obsessing over schedules (which, it seems like, how can I possibly be scheduling this much and not really actually getting anything done? Whatever.) So, the point is, life's losing its vitality, there's just been a lot of keeping my nose to the grindstone, but I have had a few moments of respite. Here are some things that have flit through my mind, just in case you're interested:

the way i felt on wintry nights in texas when we'd go out. the cold air went on forever and stark'd the stars and that's what i remember best. and it hit me today that what i had time for in high school were feelings and i miss that.

it's exhausting to be conventional and the moments i'm freest are when i'm thinking about things that don't even make sense. happiness hits you when you describe the things that you want.

crying in the shower is right in a way a lot of things could never be. it's intimate and it's warm and it's release.

does life really make sense all of sudden when the nurse places the newborn in your embrace?

all new yorkers are ancestors of fishermen and sailors. their ghosts surround us. i only wish scaffolding and taxis didn't make it so hard to see them, it seems like they have a lot to say.

oh hey! dreams and wishes and desire. yum yum.

musk is the fragrance of creation. i never knew that but that makes me want it in bushelfuls.

"he loved her with his heart."

a professor that smells like flowers stained by light is an impressive thing, indeed.

you've opened me up so please, i don't want to shut back down.

man walking down street looked like my idea of a man.

So it goes.

No More Rain

Outside the window people walked, but they all looked like angels.

The sun shone around them, something I'd never seen before.

It was like the sun wrapped them in wreaths of her light. They were all so beautiful, that was what was beautiful about it at all.

I felt relief knowing there was no more rain.

In My Bathroom

I thought of you the other day when my knee was bleeding

and my back leg was bleeding and my womanhood was bleeding.

All three bleeding all at once and I thought

wow this is a lot of blood to be coming

from one person all at once

but im still kind of relieved because it seems

that all these molecules

turning from blue to crimson

say what i mean even though

i dont know how.

They're dribbling: scary and a lot. Scary, and a lot.

This Much I Know is True

Well, well, well. What a whirl, what a whirl. I moved back to New York a few days ago and I'm really quite frustrated with the number of emotions I've experienced. Initially, I dreaded leaving home and getting back in the grind. While we were in the air, I started to get excited, remembering that distinctly newyorky rush I get when I'm walking around the city. Then, I spent just a little bit too much time on how happy I was, and started to get nervous. I started remembering that being in New York really meant that I wasn't going to be at home with my mommy and sisters and friends and the hard-leafed trees and soft, wide sunsets. Aggh!

When we were in the taxi and driving up through Brooklyn into Manhattan, panic truly set in. I felt nothing but remove and could not remember why I used to love this place, which now felt as if it had come back into my life much sooner than I wanted it to. It seemed so greedy. I had only been able to leave it for two months and now I had to come back, and in order to be there, I had to recondition myself to toughness and patience.

Then, of course, spending the day in and around the Hudson and all of those neat little stores you found scattered all about, my rush of New York love swelled within me and I felt so happy to be back, knew I could live here forever. That lasted until the next morning and then dread set in and then happiness and then remorse that I had to leave my mama again again again and then, upon moving-in, elation at how perfect my apartment turned out to be. And then dreading the next day, when she would have to go back. Home.

I could (can) never really settle on one emotion. Do I hate New York? Or do I love it? Do I want this independence? Or do I just want to stay at home, living life the way I love to lead it? Why do they both feel right at times and so wrong at others? Frustration. Frustration that will continue on into the next few weeks until I finally find my inevitable groove. This is who I am, and how I work. I dislike it, but it's how I process.

The most beautiful and frightening thing: I realized that the greatest gift my mother ever gave me was allowing me this much fear. I don't know what to do with it, but I have it. That's my beginning.

Freud Didn't Tell Us Anything We Didn't Already Know

If you can't write what you think, then what's the point in writing? If you can't say what you mean, then what's the point in speaking? These questions, which I just a moment ago realized how to say, make life difficult. Where is the point if it's not where you want it? No direction home kind of thing.

Of course there's a reason and it lies in the fact that those things I can't describe keep me going. They give me something to live for. I wouldn't want my life if it came mystery-free, sans aches. Those questions point to insurmountable challenges. And as long as a challenge is insurmountable, there's always something to hope for.

There's my superego and my id when I think, when I write, when I live. There's the way I could say things that are clear and incisive and people-friendly. There's also the way that I could approach life that is distinctly my own. It'd often be meaningless to passer-by, incomprehensible. Hell, I wouldn't even know what I meant. I would just know that it's what I wanted to say. I think ids are far too easily beaten down by superegos. Who's to care if we speak garble or say things the way they come to us? We're given information from our brains in a raw, beautiful form, I think. We repackage it soon afterward so that it can be presented to others. Maybe what we need is a little bit more intellectual selfishness; people can figure out things as you say them or not.

Even this piece has yet to be examined by me, the writer. I'm sure tomorrow I'll see that it's full of logical flaws and morally reprehensible. For tonight, though, I'm saying these words as they come to me. Freud would probably say these paragraphs indicate that there's something blocking my own consciousness and that senseless paragraphs are a means of escape. That's a thought.

And the funny thing is I don't even much subscribe to Freud. I think he didn't tell us anything we didn't already know.

/Fragments/

A loose leaf in the wind's whoosh

floats above streets where mommies

push strollers and daddies rake leaves.

After sighing upon birthday cake with breath much fraught,

we nearly burned the table to death.

Did then we see pieces of eternity? We'd know now, as eternal as

we're likely to see.

Rapunzel hung upon her hair a sign that commanded "no tress passing";

it didn't stop her from finding happily ever after.

sometimes leaning against the kitchen sink it feels like someone loving to hold me and i forget about my face's red

Bad Day Remedy

http://www.yogatothepeople.com/stories.shtml

Happy Things

shall we dance?

Ellis' Island

Ellis could skate across forever,

sometimes scraping.

Ellis felt it with his hand,

rosied by a spangle of sterling stars,

overflowing with tinkling.

Ellis thought that if he could manage things just so,

he could remain in tandem with forever for always.

Ellis was a smart man and saw the world around him.

People were chests of gifts,

velveteen'd love.

(The sky was the continuation of that,

as was the sea and the soil.)

Ellis was warned: they were not stars, but nettles.

there was not velveteen, but burlap.

the sky was only water

the sea was only sky

the soil was only people.

Ellis thought they'd proven his point.

Because I Was in the Mood

We're in Houston and not sure what that means.

We're on earth and not sure if we want any of it.

***********************************

Last night, I slept in a seven-dwarf-like bed with a tiny four year old girl, at her request. She tucked me in, she tucked me in again, she briefly picked up my hand and stroked it and then gently returned it to my chest. I scrunched there next to her and I could feel her baby skin against my arm and it was then that it struck me that this was a precious moment in my life.

I just finished a tupperware of really, really good mac n cheese and desperately-desperado want some more. The way the noodle gives out under my teeth, you know.

I think it's a miracle there's a world beyond my own self. Thank God. (Now, if only we'd been given the tools to experience some of it without our selves present.)

A lot of the food that I like, my sisters don't. A lot of the food they like, I don't. Kind of like a genetic clique or something. It's strange how I literally feel left out when they enjoy their steak and roast potatoes.

In one of my classic "now I feel super smart/what a great insight I have for life" moments (which means that these moments make me cringe later on down the line), I realized that the reason I want so badly to be in love is because I have an unconscious idea that love of the soul-pouring variety blankets all the hurt, like it never existed, like I don't need to think about it anymore just because I'm in love.

True?

***********************************

Here, I get absolutely exhausted by the thickness of heat. Because it means sweat no matter what I'm doing. That translates to a lot of showers, whose steam make me sweat more, til I'm frosted in it, if that makes any sense.

But sometimes, there are days, such as this one, where all it does is rain. The heat lifts off the ground and I'm finally comfortable. I feel like my name could be Rupert and that I'm just barely avoiding wetting my British Indian Army uniform, the eaves of my canvas tent caving in with all the water. I'm cupping a travelogue to my wife, Betsy, so that the ink doesn't run down into the mud. Signing it, "Yours, R. W. Sanford." So formal, Rupert.

The one good thing that I have to say about PCs: they, at least, have that handy 'delete' button, where you can erase forward, as well as backward. Metaphor not intended, although I appreciate the poetry of it.

***********************************

If Freud was in the room with us today, he'd tell us that there are things we want that we don't even know we want. I'd buy that, plus it makes me feel more exotic.

Things I do know I want: eventually, a sweet little baby who I can just hold and hold and rub his/her little nose, and look at those barely fingers forever and kiss the soft little daffodil head. To sing at a coffeehouse, although this is slightly abstract as I don't know how to play the guitar or anything--I can only sing. But it's something that I know I'd love. Also, "ageless, timeless, lace-and-fineness, every young boy's dream."

Things I conceivably could want but don't know it yet (does this make this paragraph senseless?...): Somebody in my life who is something that I could have never known to wish for beforehand. A poem written on a scroll 15 yards long, signed by me, written in crushed petals. To be a fondant baker. To run away and live like a bear. Brambles and trout all around. To be Jewish. Or Buddhist, or Muslim, or anything other than Catholic (not sure about this one...how do you leave what you know? and love.) Also, a screenwriter or a stay-at-home mom. Maybe just a stay-at-home person.

***********************************

Like Johnny Cash always said:

"And you could have it all,

My empire of dirt."

Lighter

You're gathering.

Collections of pressure

Holding back, just so above my head.

Randomness groups itself

in pigeons, through clouds, about bacteria.

All holding back, just so below my head.

I implore you: explode onto me

I need the rain-- clean, soggy peace

I need infectious deluge.

I need movement

even if it is bereft of purpose.

Reasons I Left

Excuse the sort of semi-poem/semi-essay form of the following. It's a work in progress, to say the least!

If you think I'm going to take the long way,looping unnecessarily,

and if you think it's because you're sitting there on your bench, stark-eyed,you'd be right.

But it's not because it's you, it's really just that I got excited by the idea of granola bars upon reaching the new world which meant that there was no room in my mind for making friends which really just meant that I hid behind mom when girls with popsicle-stained lips giggled.That's where it started.

It continued and included skorts with buttons too tightly sewn, which really just meant that I felt unfree in the home of the brave which made me realize that I walked with a duckish gait which caused me to shrink deeper inside the buttons and plaids, frantically trying to walk like a normal-born girl.

Well and then I was too folded to unfold and nobody had the patience to help me so I remained, useless origami (origami's exotic and complex and might be pretty to look at, but it's no fun to be.)

And meanwhile there were rulers and a divorce and then movies with incest

which brought up whole new and unfounded reasons to fold.

And so here, do you see? A duck-origami girl shrinking around still thinking about unhelpful things such as damsels, particularly not in distress but in love,

and then mean things started.

From mean things, of course,tears hot as blood and thoughts mangled as muddy prints.

Ridiculous, really, but that's how it was.

Oh, and did I mention all the handshakes,the how-do-you-do's? They teach you these things will help you succeed,but for me, it was one more way of cutting off breathing.

So, eventually retribution came, I 'discovered' myself, like that could make up for still secretly being a piece of paper not in its natural state.

Do you see now why it's not you and your bench?

It's really granola bars and all that came next.

Suspended

Standing in that junebug darkness, there was lack of movement--

unless that hollow wind which blows sandpaper down to its dry dry shingly self counts as movement.

It's clear now how the well felt the day Snow White called down it: nothing.

A Very Forgotten Gem

Catullus 2

Passer, deliciae meae puellae,
quicum ludere, quem in sinu tenere,
cui primum digitum dare appetenti
et acris solet incitare morsus,
cum desiderio meo nitenti
carum nescio quid lubet iocari
et solaciolum sui doloris,
credo ut tum gravis acquiescat ardor:
tecum ludere sicut ipsa possem
et tristis animī levāre curās.


Sparrow, the delight of my girl,
with whom to play, whom to hold on her lap,
to whom, greedy, to give her finger tip,
and to arouse sharp pecks—she is accustomed,
when it pleases her shining with my desires,
to say in jest something dear I don't know
and her own pain's solace,
so that heavy passion is relieved, I believe.
I wish I could play with you yourself like [him],
and lighten the cares of your saddened mind.

Special hello to Sister Mark and your ever sunny classroom. I miss you!

(Unfortunately, all Latin has since flown the coop, so to speak. :) Got this translation from Wikisource. Many thanks.)

Also, photo credit: (c) 2009 Gianna Leggio

Hmmmmm(feel my heart)

Let's collect all the little pieces of me:

the things I think,

how little I know.

So first there's release of body

on cool surfaces,

something real-undisputed-

among everything else.

then the magic lists begin,

endless, my canyons of discrete infinity

(i wish i saw them such...)

a felted apple-dome skull,

after being in the office's corset for hours,

seasick heart-to-heart,

you fickle tide, you glowing sister.

also, imaginary:

tucked in a tucked away village

rapunzel's tresses on a muslin'd maid

and her prince among firs--

there's a castle beyond with a banquet hall

full of baked apples and silks.

don't worry.

an apartment in london, pick a decade:

thick & heavy turn of the century,

organized & sentimentalized 40s,

just give me your voice

of rolling masculine desire.

thames along with me please.

or being born maasai

grinning in the hard heat

knowing all from simple simple let's keep it so sweetly simple kind of things.

and always always:

being held as i sob my guts out

my inner lining falling away

in your arms

being held.

tight and strong.

hmmmmm.

Just Like Poor Man's Ditch

hey, there you are!

grandma and uncle and sarah jane (maybe?)

i love you guys.

you seem ever-multiplying, never the same one twice really.

except for the girl, trapped at thirteen

(you've got to be at least my age now. no?)

so anyway i see you (all)

it's been more than a decade now

and you're always there

pulling things from windows

and creaking trucks crammed in

a garage not unlike my own

really it's quite concerning the way you live

but you touch me like no other

your resilience--

you seem so defiantly alive--

your never-aloneness

when i see you, i grin.

you weren't a part of the plan

but,

hey,

there you are.

when i see you, i know i'm almost home

my timeless time markers.

you're you.

'You' is the Very Loneliest Place to Be

Well I don't know what to say

This thing's left me feeling real empty and scared:

Cracked worse because it always was.

O God take me away from here

To a land of rock candy skies.

An avenue among the tulips would be nice--

Safe in my flowery crevice.

(O God maybe I'm just a loser,

wishing always for what can't happen)

So what I'm saying is, take this anger;

so what I'm saying is, fill my cracks

please. please--emptiness is no good.

Fill these little cracks with good red clay

and some good kind strength.

Cause what I'm really saying is

fuck you to myself.

And I was raised right,

and so I know better than that.

'Dread is Drowning' and 'Unidentified'

Dread is Drowning

The dead girl felt herself drowning:
sinking, sinking, sunk.

Panic, terrible and thick,
Caught on the tip of her tongue.

A beautiful world bubbled bright above her,
Her eyes could no longer blink.

To take in all that beauty--
well, there was nothing left
to do
but
sink


Unidentified

Things I lack:
sweet dreams don't cut it anymore.
Instead, all I feel is
cut cut cut.
Cut up, cut out, cut cut crazy.

So hollow,
masking something scary swollen.

Harboring Gollum
was a place I never wanted to be.

Complications: Lines, Etc.

Where do we draw the line?

They all seem so intent:

one must be drawn

somewhere, somehow.

There's pride from

layers of history

too ancient to be stripped.

There's hair, and how to treat it.

There's family: gone or glue.

There's running the risk of erasing

essentials

in being lineless.

Yet these lines, lines,

they net,

confuse and prostrate.

They seem so silly to me

But I know they mean something to you:

you (oliveskinnedburkad)

who have something to lose,

and me (blondeblueeyedamerican) with nothing to.

________________________________________________________

My ancestry doesn't sizzle.

It doesn't scorch when touched

Doesn't recall ancient hollows

from gallows.

My ancestry doesn't create longing

Never had to fight for it

So never had to fret.

Your pain is a current event

Newspapers haunt and stir you

To action, frenetic and frantic.

While my identity stretches back, static.

Beginning to Pray

Here I am God

This is me:

Standing on a curb,

calling out an unknown name.

People come and go before me

look left, look right.

Dreaming of touches, curled

and days without sky.

I watch conversations flow

instead of geese fly

I see my fingers move

though they're not sure of what they write.

Here I am God

This is me:

your intrepid seeker

your muffled mapper

and unsure friend.

Thoughts' recycled ebb & flow

wears

No, this isn't it.

In my mind, there are worlds where

thoughts are thunk and

sleep is slept;

I explode

and we connect.

Here I am God

This is me:

my secrets gone

before you,

my heart a decipherable tome.

I like to think of it as cluttered,

I like to think of you as home.

When What is, is What's Not

The other night, I saw a prophet and had a thunderbolt revelation. As I tried to hand a homeless man a bag of food, truly from the depths of my heart, I realized my hypocrisy and my ugliness. Shame washed over me: I saw that there was nothing that I could actually do to help this man. I saw that, cruel truth though it may be, in attempting to help him, I was doing many unhelpful things. The very act of charity degraded the essential dignity of this man...as a human being who is past childhood, it is an unnatural thing to be fed by someone else. My attempt to give him a dinner, while perhaps kind, highlighted the fact that he is not respected enough by society to be able to feed himself. No, more than that. My charity was symbolic of our society's rotten foundation. I never felt more helpless than at the very moment when I tried to help this man.

Another thing that resulted from this crazy night was a heart, sickened, unable to console itself, unsatisfied with the way things are. My heart beat, disgusted at itself because it was this night that I realized that I am just as much accountable for the way things are as those people who actually made the world this unfair by virtue of existing within the system--I am what makes the system unbalanced, girls like me who have every advantage in the world and no real worries. I saw in a flash of horrible insight that all the things I was doing that night were more about making me feel better about the plight of the masses. Charity all of a sudden became revealed for what it is: a way for the "us"es of the world to feel better about the way things are.

I withdrew that night, losing my usual optimism. I'm not sure how to describe this to you. Really, it was the kind of night that I can't talk about because in so doing, it becomes about me again. Which would be untrue the story. The story's about me realizing how little of this is really about any of us, we the groomed and fed, even as we have a created a society where it's only the "us" that has any value. It's about something that for once did not have any sort of subjectivity and was simply just what it was: the truth.

I do not know the name of the man that I approached. I do not know his background or how he came to be standing on 9th Avenue, right behind Port Authority, or who had affected his life up to that moment. All I'm sure of is that there was something in his voice when he answered my own ridiculously, patronizing and politically correct question of "Do you know someone who might need a meal tonight?" was frustration and weariness. When he replied, "Yes, I do. That man over there [indicating a well-dressed person] or how about that woman [a lady similarly well-dressed]? Everybody in the city needs food." He was so frighteningly honest, so frighteningly unafraid to look me full in the face with his golden-brown eyes that were so surprisingly void of emotion or accusation, those eyes that just looked straight into my soul, that he shocked me into realizing that I know nothing. None of us do. We assume, we take advantage of, we project. And I realized that we are the only creatures who could have created a world where an act of love could actually turn into a selfish one.

I'm sorry.

Addison Rd.

When I loved you,

Peace came easily.

Sunshine lit my vision

Almost as if my heart

leaked through my eyeballs.

Summer was endless,

a state of mind only I knew.

The future, frozen.

I felt scooped up, cherished and whole.

Everything I said was funny so I knew I was best.

When I loved you

Peace came easily

(and life was held at a painless distance.)

An Observation on Searching

We're all looking for climax,

the high point in our stories.

There are bursts of moonfire every day.

It's not yet, you say. Wait for it, you murmur. Wait for it.

Meanwhile, life happens, trammeling or trumpeting.

Haunted Hotel

WellhowisitthatItellyouaboutthatonetimewhenIwasinaroomsofulloflovethatIfeltimmobileat itspassingsuffocatedandsurroundedbyafeelingofmemoriesandtvshowsandknowingthatroom wasemptynowbutstillfeelingtheimpactofhappiness?

It's called haunted. Haunted by love.

Parabola

When life is sinking toward a sine,

Making a deep and swollen pool,

Threatening to undertow,

And you can't breathe for the

Pulling,

Remember this:

that its curve is,

naturally,

Up.

Demon Days

Realizing I begin a lot of phrases with "maybe" and "so"

as if I don't have the conviction

to set my sentences free on their own

And seeing that life

is one exhausting process

because it's never knowing

what comes

next.

How could you?

And perhaps not knowing

could give us strength

if we wanted it to

but it's more usually

a crutch for weakness,

a soft place for my "maybe"s and "so"s.

Help Yourself (to a Cup of Beauty)

Below are lyrics from a song used in the movie "Up in the Air". It's called "Help Yourself" and it was written by Sad Brad Smith. I thought I'd put it up here because the poetry in this song is gorgeous and it really puts into words feelings that I think a lot of us go through...being too hard on ourselves, not loving who we are enough. This is for you and for me, a reminder that we are beautiful in all ways, always. Love you, love, me.

Help Yourself

by Sad Brad Smith

I know you'll help us
When you're...
Feeling better and we realise
That it might not be for a long, long time...

But we're willing to wait on you
We believe in everything that you can do
If you could only lay down your mind

I want you to try to help yourself

Take the time to take apart
Each brick that sits outside your heart
And look around you
There's people everywhere
No they don't always show
They're just as scared
And we'd be more prepared
If we pulled on through...

I want you to try to help yourself

Oceans of water underneath our feet
Terrible design
Dusty rooms you cannot sweep
Clouding up your mind

I know you'll help us when you're...
Feeling better
And we realise that it might not be
For a long, long time...

But we, we lend the weight on you
We believe in everything that you can do
If you could only lay down your mind

I want you to try to help yourself...

Marshallito and the Law of Love

So, Marshall. You want to pinch me, eh?

You want to give me a dragon bite?

Want to see how much it hurts me?

You're aching for my face to twist?

Oh, and you're pretty stunned that your older cousin doesn't even flinch when you go in for the kill?

So, you're going to squeeze my skin even harder between your fingers, eyes expectant?

And still, nada?

(Let me tell you, that was some damn good acting on my part.)

And you know what?

I'm going to let you.

Because you're seven and because I love you so much

And because I really, really miss you.

And so that now I have a tiny brown bruise

On my forearm that I can look at and smile,

A bruise that no matter where I am,

Reminds that it's true that you exist,

A sweet albeit wild little boy.

One look and I'm home again with you and sunshine.

Maybe being a pushover has its perks.

A Quote I Liked

"To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern, that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with finely ordered variety on the chords of emotion—a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge. One may have that condition by fits only." --Marian Evans (George S. Eliot)

What's a Friend but This?

There was that time on the subway. I was feeling quite disillusioned, really lonely, stupid tears bubbling over the brims of my eyes. On the other side of the car diagonal from me was an unusual pair, an Asian woman and a typical "downtown" man. The "downtowner", in my definition, is that man who, upon sighting, immediately brings to mind New York. He's shortish, with graying curly, curly hair, most likely a nose on the bigger side, and lots and lots of lines on his face. He mostly wears all black. He's usually someone that you could imagine being heir to a bagel kingdom (or, at least someone who you'd imagine to have a diet that's heavy on the bagels, don't hold the schmear.) So, here's our downtowner deluxe having a grippingly intense conversation with the Asian lady, who has a sweet, open face and is wrapped in layers of coats, although somehow she makes it look comfortable to be in so much bulk. That's what I mostly remember about her.

Anyway, these two are engaged in some sort of conversation; from what I could ascertain, they were discussing the creative merits of different people they knew, the way these friends in their lives were able to influence them. The image I have of that day is the man, face so deeply lined that it had shadows, rubbing his face in the effort to listen to this woman. So complete was his attention that he was physically straining to become one with their conversation. His mouth was slack, his eyes focused on an indiscriminate point, eyebrows furrowed. He was literally leaning his ear toward the woman's quick-moving lips. Again and again, he rubbed and re-rubbed his face, completely taken in by her words, accompanied by a frenzied nodding of his head. "Yes. I see you. I understand you." is what his actions seemed to be saying. It occurred to me then that there are people out there capable of really listening, capable of giving and not just taking intellectually.

I'll always think of that day with mixed emotions; a bit of sadness, I guess just because that's how I was feeling at the time, but also wonder, wonder and excitement at the friendships that I have seen with my own (bleary) eyes are possible.

More stories to come!

Lake Song

by Colette Inez

Every day our name is changed,

say stones colliding into waves.
Go read our names on the shore,
say waves colliding into stones.

Birds over water call their names
to each other again and again
to say where they are.
Where have you been, my small bird?

I know our names will change one day
to stones in a field
of anemones and lavender.

Before you read the farthest wave,
before our shadows disappear
in a starry blur, call out your name
to say where we are.

A Little Night Music

I have a confession to make: for a long time, longer than I'd like to admit, I've been wanting to be somebody else, somebody else specifically.

I'm alight with relief today. Because I realized this: I'm not her, I will never be her, and most importantly, I will never need to be her. I don't need to be her. And for all the reasons that I will never understand, he picked her, out of all the girls in the world. Their lives intersected. Honestly, she's too good for him, from what I can tell. Which makes me kind of smile to think that he always did have better taste in friends than in his actual self--maybe some sort of complex to make up for what he knows he lacks, all those things that he's too weak to change in himself. He surrounds himself with excellence to feel excellent. But he can never be excellent if he doesn't spend some time with himself, first. Associating with isn't the same as actually being, sweet one.

Anyway, back to the point at hand. Today, it hit me: I'm me and will always be me. When did I stop embracing that? Or, really, why? WHY. It hit me like a ton of bricks, except that I felt light after impact. So, this is isn't about her, really. It's about me making up for lost time, time lost on thoughts of you two. It's an apology to myself, really.

And I've come to tell you all the things that you were never a careful enough handler to see: I'm a girl whose imagination inundates everything with sparkling, which is why I moved to this fairy tale village of a city. I'm a girl who thinks with her heart and then desperately tries to justify it with logic because somewhere along the way it became apparent that heart-thoughts don't take you very far in this world. Which doesn't really work out, somehow, and which is probably why I'm unhappy so much of the time. And also why I write so much:it's the place where logic can make sense of the inside. I'm a girl who would linger over everything if I could, things like life (you want specifics?: conversations, hugs, kisses, books, walks. Dessert, but you knew that.) I'm a lingerer, always was. I linger in memories and in music. Two words to define me (they couldn't, not even close, but here's something that predominates my consciousness): music and memories. Or like, memories that music retrieves for me and sometimes just creates (yeah, a lot of the time, that's what it does.)

I'm a girl who thinks it's wrong to judge, unless of course, that judge is me. Oops. But I do have a certain amount of empathy for all things, people and bugs and trees, something you never did. I live inside my head (my heart, it's all one and the same in there for me.) I get a thrill when I do math problems correctly, so much so that I always think "If only all math problems came this easily to me, I would be content to spend my whole life figuring over equations." I love them because they fit together so perfectly, make so much sense, a foldable puzzle that I can unfold and refold again and again. Semi-addicting. And, I'm a girl who describes out loud like none other, it's a certain talent of mine, an audible flowing of beauty, bestowed. You never saw it that way, I fear, more just like "wordy, talky girl, dreamer." Yet you surrounded yourself with yet another one, I will never understand. Probably she's there to make up for the imagination you lack, no?

I'm a girl who worries--maybe that's the part of me you knew best, because that was the one place where you could have some control: "shh, you worry too much, sweetie." Very easy to take that versus confronting (or, maybe, rejoicing in...?)the magnitude of greatness hiding behind all those fears. But yeah, concern's a part of my daily diet. It's how I roll. Maybe it's my way of expressing my love for things, by trying to game things out all the time and realizing that I never could, not even close. Worry about my mom, like who she is and how come I never got to know her and maybe it's too late or maybe it's just the beginning and who will she allow herself to be since she always puts us girls first and who was she back in the hills on the Pacific and my guilt at being the reason she's not really there anymore even though it's not my fault, technically, that's just the nature of motherhood, anyway, but yeah, here's this person that I never thought to get to know, this person that I never thought to get. Any sadnesses there that she couldn't share, or that my sisters couldn't share, locked up tight and alone...

Or how the hell do people sleep out in this cold and how come not everyone worries about things like that or what about the hell on earth that is Haiti or the kids in American schools that are such an unrighteous joke or the fact that it seems the colored person always gets the perennial short end of the stick? And worry about the fact that maybe there's nothing real that I can actually do to fix it.

I'm a girl whose roots reach back as far as the freeways of Los Angeles and the peaks of Mount Baker and the sands of dunes and the gulf and camel poo and hot hot heat. All of which you know, nominally, but you never got the significance, the absolute hold these places have in my heart and in the way that I see things, which is, there's a lot of beauty, rush in with arms wide open--something that I stopped doing with you. Another big fat oops. I'm a girl who never felt safer than that one secret moment, a moment you will never know about now, because it happened after our paths permanently stopped crossing. My own moment, of joy and relief and safety and something sort of musky sweet, maybe fabric softener? It was the imprint of a dream, come true. God, that was great. Gentle and strong simultaneously, took my breath right out of my body and turned it into a sigh of peace. And, no, I'm not talking about sex.

I'm a girl who is a pirate at heart, just like mom always said, but for more than just the reasons she gave. Yes, it's my rambunctiousness of spirit, my love, absolute craving for adventures and surprises, my predilection for sparkly things, it's because I'm no weakling (I don't like shit going down, never have--the dude, in this case, does not abide,) but it's also because I'm a girl who can see the soul, constantly. In all. And I just can't let it go. I'm both haunted and enamored by the life and the love that just doesn't seem to leave my eyesight. My ideal man? Lloyd Dobler. I'm right here and waiting, waiting for your honesty and goodness and genuine interest in the things you love. And your loyalty, well, it's to the bone.

I'm a girl who thinks that life might be more fun as a boy, but I figure 1) not much I can do about that now and 2)girls have more fun superficially, no? We're the ones with the curvaceous bods and the boobs and I figure, there's a certain element of excitement there, the ability to dress up and look pretty, and to also be strong anyway. I'm a girl who would love to be a humanitarian, but man oh man, is there a certain connotation that people have when you say things like that, which has nothing to do with why I'm interested in it. I'm not interested in bringing people to see one way of life as better than another, I just want them to have that back, a way of life in the first place. I love them (whomever it is) and want them to be free, not because I'm free, but because it's the way it should be. I think that man is the most beautiful, complex, incredibly fascinating thing there is out there, and while I may not be alone in thinking this, I am definitely someone who finds satisfaction when there is a problem as scary as poverty staring me right in the face and the fact that there could be a way,maybe, to make whole the 'un'. We're messy, messy creatures and every fiber of my being screams "HELP THEM"

I'm a girl who loves her friends to a fault, but who never seems to be able to actually connect with them, except on rare instances of tandem. Which is so weird, but I really think it has a lot to do with me just absorbing who they are and not getting any of that in return; I don't take care to ensure that they know who I am, too. It's like there's so much good conversation and fun to be had and I'm always trying to figure how to attain it, when it was probably--in most cases--sitting there all along (if I had just let it be.)

I'm a girl who really is a broken record, at heart, but I'm so in love with the grooves of said record that I just have to keep replaying it and replaying it, moving my hands over the well-loved and worn, reveling in the new details gradually becoming apparent. That's what my life is, actually: a broken record (myself) played to a different audience every time (you, them, whomever.) And it's great, actually, because it's the audiences' reaction that makes the song worth listening to, the nuance they take away from it that you didn't even notice. I'm not saying I'm not open to change, it's just that the fiber of my being is essentially the same throughout. So, that can be boring at times, don't get me wrong, but it's also really nice to have an assured foundation. I'm a girl who is afraid that the tone of this piece is all wrong, not my real voice at all, and entirely too sing-songy. Which fucking sucks, just to let you know, but I am trying to write things as I think them. Hmm. Guess you wouldn't know the difference, though, because one thing that we never did and should have done a lot more of was exchanging who we are with each other, and writing's a good way to do just that.

There's more, so much more, so much that I should have been brave enough to show you. But I'm hungry and have a midterm to study for, which should be considerably easier now that I have all of this off my (tiny) chest.

I know what you're thinking right now, "oh, feisty girl, feminist, so overbearingly self-righteous" but what you don't get is that this is the love letter that you should have been writing me every day, if you had only paid attention to what you had.

Did you know that was me? Did you see?

I realized what was bothering me this whole time and why I had to write this ridiculously long who-knows-what: I never set the record straight. For her. For you. And by doing that, really, just for me.