Fragile

When I was 5, I saw a kid fall off the monkeybars at school.I remember the sight of his arm bent one too many times, and how my deeply analytical child-self thought distinctly "Huh. That must hurt."

The memory is silent, like a dream of rabbits jumping through star-lit clouds, long since forgotten. I wonder if it actually happened. Memories, like monkeybars, can be tricky like that.

My mother loves to tell stories about me as a child. 'When you were small,' she'd say, 'smaller than you are now, we would go to the park every afternoon. You loved to go down the slide. It was so cute, you would climb the little ladder with the backs of your wrists, so you wouldn't get your hands dirty. And you would pitch a fit if I wasn't at the bottom, waiting to catch you. You were so cute, you were afraid you'd slide right off the end and land in the dirt and get your dress all dirty. So cute."

My dad was the one who taught me how to ride a bike. He tried to, anyways. See, he was always trying to let go too soon, pushing hard  and then backing off before I could compensate for the fact that he was even there. That, coupled with the fact that I've never had good balance anyways, meant that I formed a swift, abusive love-hate relationship with the concrete.  I outgrew the scars on my knees and elbows, and my blood is long-gone from that stretch of sidewalk, but I still carry the scars my father left on my heart, in my mind. They are realized and reopened in every boy I have ever dated and let touch me and promised me forever, until I learned to leave, like my father taught me.

[Update]

Sorry about all this, folks. I know I said a post a day, and I'm not following through on it--although I am, in fact, writing something for each day's topic. The trouble comes from transcribing said entries from my notebook to this site.  It's just that I've been busy with some family-stuff and some other projects, and (of course) new romantic interests. It's all great fun, but things are starting to slip away from me, things like time, and this blog. And sleep. X_X

So, while I do plan on catching everything up soon, I do apologize for the lapse in time between now and then. Best wishes, hugs and kisses!

Laziness

In keeping with the prompt, I decided not to write today. Thank you all for bearing my sense of irony. <3

Colossal

For Laya

You were born on the day that I got my first job. When I called to let my mom know I'd gotten there alive, I could hear the groans of your mother in the background, escalating smoothly into the screams of a woman whose body could no longer contain you. I hurried through the interview with her shrieks echoing through my head, reverberating images of alien infants with too-big heads and spindly limbs, of women's sexes being ripped to pieces, of blood and gore and breastmilk.

I can't remember anything they asked me. if they hadn't called me back, I would never have shown up, never spent the next nine months learning people and how they work, and how to work. I would never have grown as I did, fuller, more than I was on my own.

I remember holding you when your age was measured in hours, and your face flicked through more emotions than I could show in a whole week. I remember how impossibly small your fingers were, your nail no more than a ghost of a thought--and yet you held my finger like it was warmth, breath, knowledge and pleasure and everything you would ever need from this life. You slept in the crook of my arm--my arm, small and weak, but supporting this tiny being of flesh and hope. You shone like starlight in your sleep, dreamed dreams of everything you had yet to learn and all that I had forgotten. You were the smallest live thing I had ever touched, ever smelled, ever seen. And you were born so much bigger than me.

Narrow

You said that I was too BIG for you, that you thought that was why we 'didn't work.' And at the time, I had to agree with you, nod smile and walk away. But what you didn't see behind my eyes when I turned around were these words, writing themselves in fire on my tongue:

Are you kidding me? Are you abso-freaking-lutely KIDDING ME? I mean--have you looked at me lately? I am no taller than the base of your neck, no broader than the span of your shoulders. If I am big, you must be a mountain for me to climb up, climb around you, map out the caverns made by your veins, long dried out. If I am big, you must be a universe, unknowable, for me to travel out into blind and lose track of everything I know now. You would suffocate me with your very vastness.  

If I were any smaller, you could tuck me into the hollow behind your ears, twine me around your fingers, curl me up in the crook of your elbow, crush me between your perfect teeth--swallow me all down--incorporate what you can of me into your system. You want me to be some slip of a woman, some girl-child with hips like brackets and breasts like pimples, simpering behind technicolor eyelids, black varnish on bitten nails, bubblegum spine and Barbie doll identity. You want someone/thing to fill in the spaces you feel are empty, someone who 'completes you, makes you feel whole.' I am not a filler. I curve too much for that, all hills and valleys where you've worshiped too many times before, spilling forth seed offerings, hymns of praise, sweet sacrifices.

Is it my laugh? I laugh like the first breath of air after you thought you'd drowned, like lightning striking sudden and loud and reverberating through ever hair on your arm. Before you'd seen me naked, you said that I laughed the way you wanted to love; after, you said it reminded you of how I sometimes held my breath when I tip-toed up to the edge and peered over, and the sound that carried me all the long way down. You loved my singing too, how it burst out of me at random, which we figured was a by-product of my long-standing addiction to Disney. I had a bluesy, soulful sad voice that you thought was too big for my tiny frame, like it came from the earth beneath my feet. Like the poem I wrote then, awkward, trying to paint the spectrum of my feelings with too few too small words, pinpricks of ink on a desert of a page. I am already too small too thin too narrow too little for myself.

And you would carve off the parts of me that I have fought and bled and wept for, so that I can fit you.

You want me smaller.

Nostalgic

I have walked these hallowed halls so many times, I know them like the typeset of my favorite book. Each twist and corner, every narrow place, every shadow, each stair, I could map them in my sleep. I drift through them, a long-forgotten ghost, and each step brings new memories. Here on this step, my first kiss; I first heard my favorite song in that classroom on a winter morning; if you look at the base of the tree, you can find my initials twined with those of a boy who has since died.

Other ghosts lurk in every crevice, and I relive them until I am not sure when is now and what was then and who I truly am. We were so much younger then, so innocent, so enthralled by life. We starling gods among a mortal world, masters of this domain, eternal, about everything and bigger than even we knew. We were here. These halls were ours, for a season, before we were sprung fully-formed out into the greater world, so much less than what we'd made it from within our own Olympus.

I wonder, in a shade's vague impression of thought, if the chaos of this world has swallowed them, battered them, pulled them beneath the river--or if any of us have found our way back to the mountain, to hang among the stars.

Smokey

"Smokey Joe, you're calling at the station/ If I kill him there are complications/ I did not ask for this/ 'Oh but Love, yes you did.'// Maybe it terrifies me/ This quiet siege/ Maybe it terrifies me// It's too easy/ It's too easy to wish you harm" ~Tori Amos "Smokey Joe"

From the first time I saw you--blue-lit and smokey, older than I, unfazeable under your vintage fedora, as traveled as your worn-in jeans, showing good abs and two pierced nipples--from the first, you were a bad idea. I knew in that instant I should never touch youshould not have wanted to. I should never have followed you home. Two months later I was still there, tracing your tattoos, leaving nail marks like love notes down your back as you tried to love me. And when things at home got rough, when I was out all hours with you, when I had turned in and away from people who loved me like sunlight seeking dark corners to caress, I should have known better than to run, suitcase in hand, to that space along your side you said had been curved out just for me. I wanted that then. I ran back into your dark, into your bed, your smoke filling my chest with every inhalation of you and stayed cloying, clinging, burning in my lungs as I sighed your name, like a prayer, the night you came home too drunk to her my silent screams to stop, no, don't touch, don't please, get, don't, please, no, until I couldn't breathe for all the smoke in my lungs, so much of you inside me, choking on you, hot tears bursting out as you stop, drop, and roll away from me, and I ran.

I ran for the next three years trying to get away from you. There are still wisps of you hiding in my airways. Sometimes breathing still smells of you. In the right darkness I can feel the marks you've left like cigarette burns, healing over with tender new skin, reflecting the light.

Bold

You were bold before I knew you, before I knew any other thing about you. The first thing I noticed was how bright your scarlet lips were against the black-and-white palette of you, beckoning bold stares. You blew into the room like a petal blown to the sound of the wind in the trees, like you were dancing to the light in your wineglass. You ignored my hand, touched my shoulder, flashed a sweet secret smile and glided off. You flowed with the conversation, twirling through rooms, taking partners for moments at a time before leaving them dizzied, listless, lost. I did not speak to you again, I could not dance, but I stared boldly, eyes caressing what hands could not see, trailing you like the scents of musk and peach wine, clinging hopeful to your hem. I remember just before I left, you pressed your lips--no longer so red but still more bold--to my ear, breathed light and song and life into me, left your scent in my hair and, before I could think to show you what you'd done, you had disappeared, like smoke in the darkness.

Textured

Sunburn tends
to bring out the texture
of things:
the sundress that floated
feather light before
you asked to see me on the sand
now chafes, rubs
flakes of me falling,
summer snow.
Driving over, I had blossomed
open, face tilted
up, smiling, into the sun.
I loved what now burns
stings, scorches, shines too hot
to hold my gaze.
Burning has changed
your touch too. I
remember so many nights,
stolen touches burning softly
over hips, my raw lips
bruised and raw from kissing
you, too hot to hold tightly
my face turned up to yours,
smile blooming sweetly.
I remember.
Your hands are rough
abrading abused shoulder skin.
Do not hold me now.

Power Animal

I would just like to say that, however good the idea might seem, writing while drinking is not something one should do often, because of results like this. Also, I think this topic was ridiculous. That is all.

I wish I were more like a cat. Who doesn't want to be a cat? Cats are sexy.  Cats are cool.  They slink. They strut. They sashay. Seriously--how many animals can sashay? Cats can pull it off, and make it look damn good, too. Cats preen like the starlit girls sitting at the end of the bar, checking their shiny lips in little jeweled compacts and not caring who sees it. Nothing fazes a cat; they watch the world with eyes that have seen ages, brief and bright like dancing flames, snuffed out by the first stiff breeze.  Cats are all muscle, though they look soft and smooth as liquid glass.  They fight for what they want, cutting claws and flashing fangs, leaving sometimes losing blood, but always sure that every battle matters and neither side is left unmarked. And with such grace, such boldness, daring, charisma, beauty--who doesn't want to be a cat?

I, however, am more of a turtle.  From their birth, turtles are soft and dull and wrinkled. Their babies are born so much older than they are. Turtles develop their shells early in life. Each turtle's shell is unique, like fingerprints, their singularity forming a barrier between their soft skin and the surrounding world, even from other turtles. This is home, solitude, a place where the turtle can retreat into himself whenever he feels the need. Turtles are careful that way. They seem to know, instinctively, when danger is near. it is this intuition that lets them grow older than most animals, even when domesticated. It is this instinct they must learn to listen to. Turtles are humble animals; when mother sea turtles crawl ashore to lay their eggs, you can see the ditch from where their stomach drags the ground. Turtles love like this: deeply, protectively, wrapping unborn children in sand and shell--almost smothering, but not. Mother turtles will then return to the flow of the ocean and wait, with all the confident patience of true wisdom, for her babies to join her. She worries, I'm sure, for the ones she knows won't return to the sea she is replenishing with hot salt tears. But she knows she cannot always save them all, has learned this lesson from her mother, the hard way, as her children will learn, will learn to be careful, learn to love, learn to live and to grow into their ancientness, learn to be--just a little--like her.

Scary

They told me you've lost ten pounds since Monday. It is Friday. You are asleep in your chair.

I am tempted to walk around you, inspecting, to see where the weight came from. You are already so small, smaller than I am, shrinking back down and in after eighty years of growing strong and hard and forward. You are so small we could lose you in the looseness of a size eight blouse that you still insist on wearing.  You loved it, you say, for its color, like sunlight through the stain-glass of cathedral windows, coloring the pews we sat on every summer Sunday. I was six; you kept toys for me in your purse, and made me fold my hands each time we prayed. Sweetheart, you said, always make time to pray--for yourself and for God, and for me. You used to sit, silent, for hours at a time to pray. You would curl your hands around each other, your head bent low over them, catching the wordless whispers in the unseen softness of your palms.

Your fingers can't bend like that anymore. The chemicals they have filled you with--ten years' worth of man-made solutions, each one promising salvation, each bringing more sickness, more weakness, and a hint of the promised healing from the death clustering seething breeding inside you--those chemicals have stolen that from you. They have robbed the feeling from your fingers, stiffened neck like iron hands wrapped around it, snatched the breath from you lungs and every hair from your head.

You have lost ten pounds since last Monday. You are asleep in your chair. It is now five o'clock Friday evening. It is nearly ten years since they found the first lump. I have not prayed in three years. I have not slept in three days.

I am scared.

Transportation

Diverging from you is like getting T-boned by Wonder Woman's invisible jet: I just didn't see it coming. All I saw was the same day-to-day traffic I've seen every Monday through Friday for the last 2.7 years, same traffic patterns, same holding patterns, same red-light-green-light-switch-lanes-exit-here-idiot-drivers as ever. Slow down, blinker on, prepare for lane change, aaaand---

WhoahloywhatthepissinghellsoditallwasTHAT.

I see nothing new. Same cars honking and going around--though if I'd looked carefully, I'd see faces full of concern through rear windows trying to see if DAMN, was I alright?

I see nothing new, no signs of the accident that knocked the train from my thoughts and the glasses from my face, spilled my drink all over the floor. No sign, except for the wet floor mats, twin aches in my head and hands and left knee, the spidering of two windows, the odd new smiley-shape [ironic? maybe] of my car's frame.  And I am thinking "What did I do?" and "Who's fault was that?" and "How am I supposed to get to work now?"

And somehow, somehow I drive on--the car lurching on battered wheels and fueled by sheer shocked determination to just keep moving, it will fix itself, just move--without seeing if your brains were splattered against the inside of your invisible windshield, or if you lived to crash again.

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!!!!

A friend of mine posted a photo-a-day challenge for the month of August, with a different topic each day. Personally, I'm no good with a camera. So he's made a special concession for me: I'm to write a little somethin' somethin' for each topic.

Naturally, I'm doing it.

So here's what you can expect me to be writing about for the next month-or-so:

1. transportation
2. scary
3. your animal power
4. textured 
5. bold 
6. smokey
7. nostalgic
8. narrow
9. colossal
10. laziness
11. fragile
12. stacked
13. your gadget(s)
14. feminine 
15. foreign
16. your hidden talent
17. tranquil 
18. bizarre
19. something you collect
20. clever
21. makes you proud
22. cliche
23. essential
24. silhouette
25. askew
26. in a row
27. summertime
28. sharp 
29. now and then
30. up close
31. futuristic

I can't guarantee that these will actually be up on the date they're supposed to--point in fact, I've already missed the entry for the first--but I will hit all of these, and in order, and hopefully before the end of the month.  But we'll see. So, dear reader, stay tuned!
~ <3

[Move]

I couldn't sleep last night, so I ended up watching a lot of spoken word. I came across one by Andrea Gibson called "How It Ends" that moved me to a moment of silent reflection--a reaction that, in me, is stronger than being moved to tears. That poem, along with the quilt I'm (still!!!) working on and that magical time in the earliest morning wherein all my thought take on a poetic feel, all worked together to formulate this.  It doesn't have the right title just yet, or the right ending, and I've left all the 2am typos on it. But here you have it. Enjoi.


When you left, I started sewing, because there was nothing else to do.
See, i'm the kind of girl who has to do something.  Always on the move, always going places, my pistures are always a blur of mtion because i'm always going by. and for 17 months + change, you were my goings and comings and doings. You were the sneakers i wore only because they fit so well when i ran. you were the band on the elliptical in my living room and the thump-thump-thump-thump of my feet falling on it, the rhythm that matched our hearts when we pressed them, bare chests heaving warm excited with the forbiddenness of this, together. and you were always there for me to run on, even when i had to put you off and go on with my life, with my classes and the crappy job i keep, you were there to call every night, right at nine, calling every half hour until i decided i could pick up the phone. you were therre to hear about the boss from hell and less-than-sane co-workers and not being listened to--much less valued--much less cared for--much less known. you were there to take some of my muchness, the very bigness of the life in me that i could never fit into this tiny moving body ,and that I could never quite burn off the way i did so many pounds that one spring. you were there.
and then you weeren't. i had no smiles to taste, no arms to holld, no shoulders to ride on, no skin to love. i had nothing, to keep me warm those sultry summmer nights, but your voice in messages that i still can't think to earse, and sense memories of your arms around me, always holding me too tight but damned if i ever said so because i loved it. i had nothing to move me anymore. i didn't have to go pick you up, be nice to your friends, check my makeup for you, make your coffee, read your books, wear your shirt, come when you told me you missed me, come when you told me you wanted me, i didn't have to move anymore.
But see, I am the kind of girl who has things to do. I got up the next morning and went to school. i went to work. And I Needed something to keep me warm, because you were gone. It has taken me almost five months, but i am finishing a blanket that you have not yet seenm not yet lain on, not yet covered in the scent of you and I and our loving. I am moving again, and this time, I will keep moving and stay warm.