it's nice to move in a different way. it's nice to spend a minute under skies that are not Chicago's, and to let my fingers walk out routes on a shiny new map.
the twisting pinks and blues of road maps resemble nothing less than the highways they purport to describe, but really who can say anything descriptive about highways? long dumb strips of asphalt plowing through who-even-knows-what country out past the truckstops and the walmarts.
and damn, girl, whatcha doing just walking down my block in chicago with yr dreads up in buns and yr sweet grin i haven't laid eyes on since north carolina and years ago in our somewhat overlapping adolescences. this world is too small and too big and oh man it keeps flinging different pieces of my life into juxtaposition.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Thursday, July 24, 2008
smear sneer
I don't usually have specific tihngs to say about work, but some days...
Today I had to deliver a package to a fancy hotel up north, with something else I had to pick up quick nearby, and the smarmy concierge took five minutes to look up the guest's name, and then wouldn't accept it because his computer said "Jeremy" and the envelope in my hand said "Jerry". It seems straightforward enough to me...but I had to call in and have my company call in to the sender and when we finally got confirmation of the name and came back inside to tell this fella, he just flirted and giggled with some guests while I fidgeted in front of him forever. Finally I talked him into taking it, and set my clipboard on his desk. He filled out some parking slips, looked at something in the desk drawer, kept saying, "I'll just take care of this first..." until I just asked him, pleading, "Could you please just sign it? My other deliveries are going to be late now." and he kind of batted his eyes and scrawled something illegible. Oh geez.
These things only happen when I'm in a hurry...something of the power people know they have over my time gives them some satisfaction, and I've worked enough service industry jobs to know that there are days when it just feels good not to jump and rush (and bow and scrape) for everyone who wants me to. And maybe after kissing up to hoity toity hotel guests all day, it helps him to be able to make me do what he wants, but twenty minutes of wasted time when I have my own job to do...is just a bummer.
What a weird stupid world where we're all trying to get back at each other even when we're strangers, and the only form of empowerment is inconveniencing someone else just to show you can. You know?
Today I had to deliver a package to a fancy hotel up north, with something else I had to pick up quick nearby, and the smarmy concierge took five minutes to look up the guest's name, and then wouldn't accept it because his computer said "Jeremy" and the envelope in my hand said "Jerry". It seems straightforward enough to me...but I had to call in and have my company call in to the sender and when we finally got confirmation of the name and came back inside to tell this fella, he just flirted and giggled with some guests while I fidgeted in front of him forever. Finally I talked him into taking it, and set my clipboard on his desk. He filled out some parking slips, looked at something in the desk drawer, kept saying, "I'll just take care of this first..." until I just asked him, pleading, "Could you please just sign it? My other deliveries are going to be late now." and he kind of batted his eyes and scrawled something illegible. Oh geez.
These things only happen when I'm in a hurry...something of the power people know they have over my time gives them some satisfaction, and I've worked enough service industry jobs to know that there are days when it just feels good not to jump and rush (and bow and scrape) for everyone who wants me to. And maybe after kissing up to hoity toity hotel guests all day, it helps him to be able to make me do what he wants, but twenty minutes of wasted time when I have my own job to do...is just a bummer.
What a weird stupid world where we're all trying to get back at each other even when we're strangers, and the only form of empowerment is inconveniencing someone else just to show you can. You know?
Sunday, July 20, 2008
lamplit
there are things that seem crucial sometimes, like lamplight through dusty screens, like the sound of water falling into the sink, like the soft songs of girls who can't sing.
i'd live out another winter here; i just worry it'd go like the last, and the last before. friendships here don't open up like i'd like them to. people don't relax and smile at you like they should. i am still uncomfortably wearing this big city skin.
i'd live out another winter here; i just worry it'd go like the last, and the last before. friendships here don't open up like i'd like them to. people don't relax and smile at you like they should. i am still uncomfortably wearing this big city skin.
stretch out
catch yr lip on yr own teeth by mistake, and again. forget how to walk through a roomful of sporadic strangers. i try to glue the soles back onto my shoes but they are ornery like you wouldn't believe.
(if i were wolverine, with metal running alongside my bones, i'd have cleats implanted onto the pads of my feet to click in and out as i please. oh yeah.)
these days i feel strong and fast and you keep talking 'bout my legs, which is mostly what i need to feel powerful, but i'm worried that i'll take a job indoors and start feeling sleepy and slow again. portland has such a small, hilly downtown. how do they even have room to stretch their legs?
(if i were wolverine, with metal running alongside my bones, i'd have cleats implanted onto the pads of my feet to click in and out as i please. oh yeah.)
these days i feel strong and fast and you keep talking 'bout my legs, which is mostly what i need to feel powerful, but i'm worried that i'll take a job indoors and start feeling sleepy and slow again. portland has such a small, hilly downtown. how do they even have room to stretch their legs?
Friday, July 18, 2008
the inside lane
My heritage is one part swampy New Orleans and one part sunny southern California, but parental bloodlines aside, it's a multitude of twining stems rooted always in North Carolina soil. And if we move in a few months, like we say we will, back up to a soft rainy city at the farthest diagonal from the place that's left this red clay stuck permanently between my toes, I don't know when I'll ever find the time to make it back home. I need to sink my teeth into the South; I need to spend an autumn pedaling through cooling air and crisp leaves and the desolation and new growth and beauty and sly appeal of these musty green places.
Everything always seems so urgent, and every decision sometimes tastes too sharply of the regrets of every path not taken.
It's too easy here in Chicago to accept invitations and then forget to show up. It's too easy to blame the July heat or the February snow for my lethargy. My sniffly nose and swelling throat trapped me sweating at home this weekend, but for sporadic bouts of alleyway shopping and trips to the garden store to haul soil back for transplanting hundreds of small beautiful basil plants into tires and pots and trays and anywhere they'd fit with just a little more distance from each other. They transplant so well; they shrug and smile up towards the sun, wait for water and jam their toes even more firmly into this new earth.
If only, so many things.
I might quit my job for a month, or more, and ease this need for new skies, for the coasts I'm used to, before we strike out westward and leave it all even farther behind.
Everything always seems so urgent, and every decision sometimes tastes too sharply of the regrets of every path not taken.
It's too easy here in Chicago to accept invitations and then forget to show up. It's too easy to blame the July heat or the February snow for my lethargy. My sniffly nose and swelling throat trapped me sweating at home this weekend, but for sporadic bouts of alleyway shopping and trips to the garden store to haul soil back for transplanting hundreds of small beautiful basil plants into tires and pots and trays and anywhere they'd fit with just a little more distance from each other. They transplant so well; they shrug and smile up towards the sun, wait for water and jam their toes even more firmly into this new earth.
If only, so many things.
I might quit my job for a month, or more, and ease this need for new skies, for the coasts I'm used to, before we strike out westward and leave it all even farther behind.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
reflect
because we know that there is meaning in the mirroring of our cheeky smiles. because there is sometimes life and death or at least breath in the memories of grassy knees and all the relived childhood games we might not have gotten the chance to play the first time around. because every time i stub my toe it jolts me into reality.
& when a crowd of sweet faces on bikes show up at our house so we can ride off to rusty fences, endless train tracks, and treacherous rooftops, that's what jolts me into the reality of what matters most sometimes. i'm sick of being reluctant to make friends.
this is what counts, or some part of it, at least.
& when a crowd of sweet faces on bikes show up at our house so we can ride off to rusty fences, endless train tracks, and treacherous rooftops, that's what jolts me into the reality of what matters most sometimes. i'm sick of being reluctant to make friends.
this is what counts, or some part of it, at least.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
we went to oregon last weekend.
we'll eat saltines and dream of the ocean. (we'll forget to send letters but stock up on stamps.)
somewhere between the high desert and the trees i wrapped my fingers into his belt while we buzzed a scooter around a strange sleepy town. the air was dry and it smelled like pine needles and bloody noses. later, in portland, we revisited all these different months of our different pasts, sipped coffee - good coffee - on a sidewalk in the sun, and left way too soon. i invent regrets. my secret treasure map leads to too many different places at once in paths of deep soft creases from my linty pockets.
but chicago has such a big rumbling heart, and the hot breath of the subway is bursting from the grates beneath our feet. the tomato plants are just coming to flower.
somewhere between the high desert and the trees i wrapped my fingers into his belt while we buzzed a scooter around a strange sleepy town. the air was dry and it smelled like pine needles and bloody noses. later, in portland, we revisited all these different months of our different pasts, sipped coffee - good coffee - on a sidewalk in the sun, and left way too soon. i invent regrets. my secret treasure map leads to too many different places at once in paths of deep soft creases from my linty pockets.
but chicago has such a big rumbling heart, and the hot breath of the subway is bursting from the grates beneath our feet. the tomato plants are just coming to flower.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
crosswords
and my head is swimming brimming with all the mumbling mumbled things i forget to say. there are hopping popping toads at my eyelids, vying for attention. yr leafy wrist is a summons, my bruising feet a warning. i'm daydreaming about bicycles and rivers and longlost curlyheaded comrades who lure me to long nights of adventure.
(it makes me wonder if i should flee before the hot blue skies return.)
my throat is a waterfall and this world is a riverbed. debris is rising beneath my ribcage.
and you know, it's been almost a year since i've seen the ocean.
(it makes me wonder if i should flee before the hot blue skies return.)
my throat is a waterfall and this world is a riverbed. debris is rising beneath my ribcage.
and you know, it's been almost a year since i've seen the ocean.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
twitchy lids
Today I drank espresso, over ice, till my fingers and my tongue jittered and my eyelids peeled open. Today I saw her at the door and backtracked to say hello. She's only been back here a week, she says, but she's trying to figure it out still. I nod. Cities are hard, I say. I love Chicago, and I hate it. Yeah, they are, she says. She looks solid and beautiful and strong, but her eyes are always worried, like mine. Sometimes on my happiest days strangers stop to cheer me up because I look too sad when I squint in the sun.
I worry too hard about all these lost-eyed girls, about these boys who try and drink themselves far away.
I feel helpless without my contacts in because everything blurs and I can no longer interpret the lines in their faces. Sometimes I like it better that way. (Sometimes i wonder which of us is more real. Sometimes I don't.) His hair is a blessing. Her high heels are a disguise. There are black smudges on my calves and my thumbs and my forehead. I am feeling the pavement through the cracking soles of my shoes. I am tiring of block letters and dark sunglasses. Our lists grow shorter; the days grow longer.
I worry too hard about all these lost-eyed girls, about these boys who try and drink themselves far away.
I feel helpless without my contacts in because everything blurs and I can no longer interpret the lines in their faces. Sometimes I like it better that way. (Sometimes i wonder which of us is more real. Sometimes I don't.) His hair is a blessing. Her high heels are a disguise. There are black smudges on my calves and my thumbs and my forehead. I am feeling the pavement through the cracking soles of my shoes. I am tiring of block letters and dark sunglasses. Our lists grow shorter; the days grow longer.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
they say chemicals
i want rollerskates, a tape recorder, and a hammock so i can skate to the park and lie hanging beneath the trees singing soft songs to the breeze.
it's been two weeks since i've practiced and already my fingers have forgotten all the strings. it's been seven months since i biked for hours along the danube, singing with all my might to the sun. seven months! that's so many days between me and where i maybe want to be. i maybe want to be everywhere or anywhere or just somewhere where all my friends won't keep moving away. yesterday everything was a reminder, and i could feel my eyes stretching wide to take in all these places just out of reach. i rode home a new way and found the smoothest-rolling paved alley in the city, & when i looked to my left, through the slats of the fence and across the empty lot, another cyclist was mirroring my path.
i remember the way she cut his hair and then brushed the clippings from his bare back, hesitantly, tenderly.
i remember hands on my thighs from both sides while we piled on laps and sang beatles songs in someone's hallway on a fuzzy early morning.
it's been two weeks since i've practiced and already my fingers have forgotten all the strings. it's been seven months since i biked for hours along the danube, singing with all my might to the sun. seven months! that's so many days between me and where i maybe want to be. i maybe want to be everywhere or anywhere or just somewhere where all my friends won't keep moving away. yesterday everything was a reminder, and i could feel my eyes stretching wide to take in all these places just out of reach. i rode home a new way and found the smoothest-rolling paved alley in the city, & when i looked to my left, through the slats of the fence and across the empty lot, another cyclist was mirroring my path.
i remember the way she cut his hair and then brushed the clippings from his bare back, hesitantly, tenderly.
i remember hands on my thighs from both sides while we piled on laps and sang beatles songs in someone's hallway on a fuzzy early morning.
Monday, June 09, 2008
yellow ink
candlelit card games on summer porches and the soft sweet taste of small smooth onions in my mouth. cinder block confessions, shared cigarettes, crumbling foundations and smudged cheeks.
summer nighttimes sweep by in broad strokes, each illuminating a new depth or a slow fade to misdirection. our small hands - yours with bitten fingernails, mine long and knobby-jointed - our small hands grasp at the few straws of our bareskinned memories while we stub toes on new demands. on door sills and windowsills and rusty screens dangling from their frames. in the summer you are the light of a borrowed cigarette gesticulating toward the dawn. in the summer the sticky air on my thighs brings me to leafy forests and old streets framed in wrought iron. you are the bruise on my gums. you are the damp hairs lying flat on my neck, the irresolute wanderings of fruit flies around our lazy yard.
summer nighttimes sweep by in broad strokes, each illuminating a new depth or a slow fade to misdirection. our small hands - yours with bitten fingernails, mine long and knobby-jointed - our small hands grasp at the few straws of our bareskinned memories while we stub toes on new demands. on door sills and windowsills and rusty screens dangling from their frames. in the summer you are the light of a borrowed cigarette gesticulating toward the dawn. in the summer the sticky air on my thighs brings me to leafy forests and old streets framed in wrought iron. you are the bruise on my gums. you are the damp hairs lying flat on my neck, the irresolute wanderings of fruit flies around our lazy yard.
Monday, May 26, 2008
cities & farms
I know I have all the time in the world to try out different places and different lives and figure out what's right for me, but opportunities always seem to pop up when I can't really take advantage of them, and they're always hard to find when I go looking.
Yesterday I talked to a few of the Biofuels kids about an internship on their CSA farm, over on their industrial site in Pittsboro. The pay is low, but more than enough, especially since housing is provided, and ever since I worked on a WWOOF farm in Ontario two years ago, that's the environment I've been longing to come back to. Working on a farm, or in any small, fairly contained setting where you both live and work, there's a distinct and wonderful feeling of community that has to develop. I like to know what my physical work is for each day, and to do it, and to know, tangibly, that it is done. Working with a small number of other people is rewarding in the same way - you will develop tangible relationships and bonds, and take the time to value them.
I've been trying to live in a collective house in Chicago - we're all trying. My housemates are wonderful, caring, smart people, but we're all so busy all the time, with things in and out of the house, that it's hard to spend the time to feel really connected, sometimes. This is how I feel about Chicago in general, and maybe just about city life. There are so many places and people and attractions pulling us in different directions at any given moment that it's hard to choose any one direction to focus on. There are a lot of half-finished projects. There are a lot of promising friendships that remain on the verge of acquaintance and comrade.
I was talking about this the other night, to a friend from Chicago who now lives in New Orleans but is also visiting family in Chapel Hill for a week (as always, a small world...). Everyone is concerned about community. But everyone I know is moving constantly, looking for new adventure or maybe looking for a new scene that hasn't dried up yet, when maybe what we should be doing is staying put, establishing relationships and reciprocities that will have to last longer than a few months or a few years. Maybe we should stop being so afraid to let our roots latch onto the ground beneath our feet. Nico says that it comes down to people needing each other, and I agree. I've spent enough time fighting with myself about this thing exactly, about whether it's better to be independent and thus somewhat safe & less vulnerable, or to openly, joyfully need other people. I need to feel needed. I know that.
He says small towns are probably the model, ideally, for the ways we will have to live if things become bad enough, in some societal or ecological way, for us to have to start needing one another again, and to be self-sustaining within smaller communities. Yet we're all looking to cities, because they are big and sprawling and beautiful, because in a city I can work and live and bike and grow in community gardens and use public transportation and have access to arts...but what I can't do is be a necessary part of it, because the whole system is too large. We forge communities within it, wonderful communities that overlap with other ones and last for a short while, but we all know that we can move at a moment's notice, that we will not all be here forever.
All I'm trying to say is something about community and human dependence. I spent yesterday agonizing over whether I should stay here and be happy and healthy and focused, working in the dirt, learning to live with a small group of people, or whether I should go back to my big beautiful Chicago, to a similarly tangible job and to a small group of people I could learn to live better with. I'm going back, of course. I have too many plans and commitments and friends coming from out of town; I have way too much love for the long, flat streets and the ability to get around without a car.
I just got new wheels built for my bike, after all.
Yesterday I talked to a few of the Biofuels kids about an internship on their CSA farm, over on their industrial site in Pittsboro. The pay is low, but more than enough, especially since housing is provided, and ever since I worked on a WWOOF farm in Ontario two years ago, that's the environment I've been longing to come back to. Working on a farm, or in any small, fairly contained setting where you both live and work, there's a distinct and wonderful feeling of community that has to develop. I like to know what my physical work is for each day, and to do it, and to know, tangibly, that it is done. Working with a small number of other people is rewarding in the same way - you will develop tangible relationships and bonds, and take the time to value them.
I've been trying to live in a collective house in Chicago - we're all trying. My housemates are wonderful, caring, smart people, but we're all so busy all the time, with things in and out of the house, that it's hard to spend the time to feel really connected, sometimes. This is how I feel about Chicago in general, and maybe just about city life. There are so many places and people and attractions pulling us in different directions at any given moment that it's hard to choose any one direction to focus on. There are a lot of half-finished projects. There are a lot of promising friendships that remain on the verge of acquaintance and comrade.
I was talking about this the other night, to a friend from Chicago who now lives in New Orleans but is also visiting family in Chapel Hill for a week (as always, a small world...). Everyone is concerned about community. But everyone I know is moving constantly, looking for new adventure or maybe looking for a new scene that hasn't dried up yet, when maybe what we should be doing is staying put, establishing relationships and reciprocities that will have to last longer than a few months or a few years. Maybe we should stop being so afraid to let our roots latch onto the ground beneath our feet. Nico says that it comes down to people needing each other, and I agree. I've spent enough time fighting with myself about this thing exactly, about whether it's better to be independent and thus somewhat safe & less vulnerable, or to openly, joyfully need other people. I need to feel needed. I know that.
He says small towns are probably the model, ideally, for the ways we will have to live if things become bad enough, in some societal or ecological way, for us to have to start needing one another again, and to be self-sustaining within smaller communities. Yet we're all looking to cities, because they are big and sprawling and beautiful, because in a city I can work and live and bike and grow in community gardens and use public transportation and have access to arts...but what I can't do is be a necessary part of it, because the whole system is too large. We forge communities within it, wonderful communities that overlap with other ones and last for a short while, but we all know that we can move at a moment's notice, that we will not all be here forever.
All I'm trying to say is something about community and human dependence. I spent yesterday agonizing over whether I should stay here and be happy and healthy and focused, working in the dirt, learning to live with a small group of people, or whether I should go back to my big beautiful Chicago, to a similarly tangible job and to a small group of people I could learn to live better with. I'm going back, of course. I have too many plans and commitments and friends coming from out of town; I have way too much love for the long, flat streets and the ability to get around without a car.
I just got new wheels built for my bike, after all.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
it's a small world after all
...as we all know, as it proves itself again and again in lovely small ways.
I'm in North Carolina, after a pretty last-minute trip based around helping Lindsay and her pop drive a U-Haul down to Richmond to store her stuff for the summer while she travels South America, before moving to Carrboro in the fall. It was a great drive - once we hit the South, the air got warm and the sun got bright and when we stopped in DC traffic, we could smell the honeysuckle by the side of the road.
It's nice to see hills and trees again. It's nice to sit in coffee shops for hours talking to every familiar face that walks in. It's nice to ride my dad's bike through these small-town streets and up the steep hills I'm not used to anymore, to have long conversations with friendly strangers, to spend afternoons on our shady front porch in Bynum with the dog.
This afternoon my mom and I drove out to the Piedmont Biofuels Co-op, past Pittsboro, for their weekly tour. They showed us the process in which the waste oil they've collected is converted into high-quality biodiesel, and all the ways they're trying to become sustainable, using solar power and teaching courses to interested homebrewers, starting a "farm incubator" program where they "grow farmers" - giving new faces a chance to get a start and learn their craft on the land before striking out on their own. At the beginning of the tour, he showed us the large solar panels on the roof of a shed filled with big containers of oil sitting to allow the crud to settle out at the bottom. Half the panels were shaded from the afternoon sun.
"We'd get way more power if we cut down this big tree that's blocking it, but we like the tree, so we're not going to do that," he explained. A big black dog was lying in the shade; a hammock was strung between that tree and another. I'm glad their work towards efficiency and sustainability hasn't yet required the compromise of a shady tree. That seems important.
There are a lot of really great projects going on around here that I'm excited about every time I visit, even though the most I can do is come check them out for a day, maybe hang around and help out and make some friends, and then vanish for six months or a year before coming back to check on their progress. It's a bummer, and it's at least in part a function of not living here, and therefore having nothing but time when I am here. There are great projects that I don't get involved in, in Chicago. If I was visiting there, I probably would make a point to check them all out and get excited about them, and wistful about leaving them behind.
Or maybe it's just that this is where I'm from, and so these are people who seem to speak at my pace.
Projects/Stuff I wish I could stay & get involved with:
Durham Bike Co-Op
Carrboro ReCyclery
Piedmont BioFuels
Bull City HeadQuarters
Paper Hand Puppet Intervention
Nightlight
Chatham Marketplace
Carrboro Comida No Migra (like Food Not Bombs)
and much more, i'm sure
I'm in North Carolina, after a pretty last-minute trip based around helping Lindsay and her pop drive a U-Haul down to Richmond to store her stuff for the summer while she travels South America, before moving to Carrboro in the fall. It was a great drive - once we hit the South, the air got warm and the sun got bright and when we stopped in DC traffic, we could smell the honeysuckle by the side of the road.
It's nice to see hills and trees again. It's nice to sit in coffee shops for hours talking to every familiar face that walks in. It's nice to ride my dad's bike through these small-town streets and up the steep hills I'm not used to anymore, to have long conversations with friendly strangers, to spend afternoons on our shady front porch in Bynum with the dog.
This afternoon my mom and I drove out to the Piedmont Biofuels Co-op, past Pittsboro, for their weekly tour. They showed us the process in which the waste oil they've collected is converted into high-quality biodiesel, and all the ways they're trying to become sustainable, using solar power and teaching courses to interested homebrewers, starting a "farm incubator" program where they "grow farmers" - giving new faces a chance to get a start and learn their craft on the land before striking out on their own. At the beginning of the tour, he showed us the large solar panels on the roof of a shed filled with big containers of oil sitting to allow the crud to settle out at the bottom. Half the panels were shaded from the afternoon sun.
"We'd get way more power if we cut down this big tree that's blocking it, but we like the tree, so we're not going to do that," he explained. A big black dog was lying in the shade; a hammock was strung between that tree and another. I'm glad their work towards efficiency and sustainability hasn't yet required the compromise of a shady tree. That seems important.
There are a lot of really great projects going on around here that I'm excited about every time I visit, even though the most I can do is come check them out for a day, maybe hang around and help out and make some friends, and then vanish for six months or a year before coming back to check on their progress. It's a bummer, and it's at least in part a function of not living here, and therefore having nothing but time when I am here. There are great projects that I don't get involved in, in Chicago. If I was visiting there, I probably would make a point to check them all out and get excited about them, and wistful about leaving them behind.
Or maybe it's just that this is where I'm from, and so these are people who seem to speak at my pace.
Projects/Stuff I wish I could stay & get involved with:
Durham Bike Co-Op
Carrboro ReCyclery
Piedmont BioFuels
Bull City HeadQuarters
Paper Hand Puppet Intervention
Nightlight
Chatham Marketplace
Carrboro Comida No Migra (like Food Not Bombs)
and much more, i'm sure
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
backtrack
remember: the scent of woodsmoke still rising from our pillows in the morning.
remember: blue ink under my fingernails on slow Indiana hills.
i'm forgetting the phone numbers of all the girls i used to love - or, still do, but maybe in distant and parallel ways.
big blue skies & a southward breeze and we passed the mountains long ago.
short hair, dragging feet. gold wristwatches. ghost towns with the most beautiful broken shutters in the world.
my back is turned, but my ears are still faintly straining for the sound of you trying to stop me. i'm the best eavesdropper in the world. i'm the best at sneaking away. i'd forgotten the joyful feeling of my ribs expanding, somewhere in the process of my slow vanishing.
(& sometimes, all answers come down to this:
because he holds me like a starfish when we sleep.)
remember: blue ink under my fingernails on slow Indiana hills.
i'm forgetting the phone numbers of all the girls i used to love - or, still do, but maybe in distant and parallel ways.
big blue skies & a southward breeze and we passed the mountains long ago.
short hair, dragging feet. gold wristwatches. ghost towns with the most beautiful broken shutters in the world.
my back is turned, but my ears are still faintly straining for the sound of you trying to stop me. i'm the best eavesdropper in the world. i'm the best at sneaking away. i'd forgotten the joyful feeling of my ribs expanding, somewhere in the process of my slow vanishing.
(& sometimes, all answers come down to this:
because he holds me like a starfish when we sleep.)
Monday, May 12, 2008
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