Chronological Nonsense and a Moment of Fall

I dressed for mid-October, though it is mid-November, and I’ve found myself in mid-May. I have excused myself from my desk – a place where seasons have no meaning except during those first and last two minutes of the day when we add or remove layers – because my walk to the train indicated an opportunity to sit and read in the park. And so, here I am. Sitting in the park, autumn sun filling me like water does to a parched sponge. I think of you because I always think of you and because I am warm, a feeling I have come to associate with being in your arms.

For the last couple of weeks, I have been reading a love story, of which my opinion wavered in and out of favor. Today, warm and reading the final chapters, I am immersed. The story has become inseparable from our own. That a year ago today I was taking in the same sounds of crushed leaves and the same spectrum of burnt fall colors, and also the first taste of you, the first feel of your arm holding my frame to your chest, the first blurry gaze of you asleep on my pillow, probably has a lot to do with why I can’t stop imagining this day as if you were by my side.

I am calm for the first time all month. Blissfully calm. Stomach-completely-pit-free calm. I am outside of myself, hovering above everything, detached from my life and my worries and my uncertainty. I am both wholly present and wholly absent. I sit and observe my surroundings, breathe them in, bear witness to life unfolding. I am lost in the beauty of the scene – the soft afternoon light filtering through the not-yet-bare branches and reflecting off the wake of the ducks and geese eager to rescue crumbs and crusts from their certain drowning.

Storms, Fairy Tales and Moorings.

We craved a storm so extreme our insides would finally find relative peace. In watching naked destruction fall upon our road, our trees, our power-lines, we hoped we might watch something succumb to the same fate that had been ravaging our hearts (rubbed raw by our ribs with each overpowered beat), our lungs (worn down by whispers and wails) and our brains (overheated and undernourished). Instead we found scattered twigs and torn leaves and took refuge in TV marathons and video games.

In another form, in another situation, I'm sure I have felt the same heaviness, the same scorched chest, the same tendency toward tears and small corners. I have been a girl pouring over lyrics, fairy tales, and old movies, and I recognize my senses now filled with the same uncertainty that was once scrawled on crumpled paper and whispered into starry skies. But it is different to feel this way with you. It is different to feel both so utterly afloat and so completely anchored.

You are the only one who sees what I'm feeling, through the muddy water I hide beneath, and makes me feel it. Though sometimes to stop drowning and start breathing feels like simply drowning in a new way, you are the only one whose arms can make the mess in my head subside for a moment. I have never known laughter like ours. I have known no hands, no arms, no lips, that make me feel as safe. Wild, alive, and safe.

“You’re Letting HIM Post on Your Blog?” Tour ’11

I'm Peter. Laura was kind enough to host me during my meandering guest posting tour. She gave me "The moment you know you're in love" as a writing prompt. I hope you enjoy what I did with it.


anyone can get it up for a sunset
but
those that just
know
the true beauty
lies
in what happens
immediately after
the colours are darker
richer
the night coolness
shyly introducing itself
to you
to us
it's always
the right after moments
i think
as the echoes of passions shared
and created
fight to continue to be heard
as our bodies are held together
magnetically
a soothing heaviness
coats
us
as our brains recap
the words
that reached escape verocity
shared moments of delicious shyness
wash over
the back of my hand traces your hip
goose bumps follow
with no regard
to keeping
a safe distance
as flashbacks
collide
with anticipation
you know
as i whisper
my lips caressing
barely
your stomach
riling up
the butterflies
once more
you whisper

Electrical Currents and a Lucky Fifty Words

It was something she needed to say, something she should say, and probably, most importantly, something he needed to hear. She knew this. She knew all of this, and so she sat, impatiently clicking her pen as the thoughts traveled in tiny and incomplete electrical currents, readying themselves for her fingers but not yet making any sense. The pad of her thumb cradled the shape of the end of her pen, and as she saw her body adjust to the lag-time, she worried that the words, if they ever came, would be but crude and rehearsed shells of themselves, stumbling along the pale blue line like a wounded animal. She peered to her left toward a pile of scrapped drafts, the words of which were too clichéd and too impersonal, too vague and too elusive, or simply too much, which made them sound insincere even if that was not the case.

She closed her eyes and took a breath and tried to create an image that depicted the emotion, as emotion on its own is not concrete enough to grab hold of a heart and make a difference, but the emotion of present was too overwhelming in its power to force into something so confining as an image. By luck, her mind chose to carry her through her memories, to return her to a place where the words were not so hard to come by, where she feared never gaining in place of fearing loss. It was a much easier place to be because what she feared was what she had, what she knew, and what she wanted is what she had been or at least had hoped to be moving toward. But now she was happy, and what she feared was going back to place she knew to be not as happy. And so the image came.

I picture myself before you as a stool with one leg slightly shorter than the others – a little wobbly, pretty uncomfortable, giving the illusion of balance but never quite achieving it. That means you’re the little wooden wedge that my short leg now rests on. I feel solid with you.

What she said in those words to him meant more than he would know because what she said in an abstract and indirect fifty words could be said more accurately in six: he was a part of her

Saint Valentine Probably Had a Temper

Sometimes, my heart beats so fiercely I have to hold my hand over my chest to prevent the whole thing from exploding in some violent bloody mess. I think it’s feeding something, like a vampire tree readying itself to burst through my skin, taking root by crawling through my body like cracks in concrete, reaching toward my fingertips in ribbons of gnarled wood, bending and arching like arthritic fingers stretching after an extended grip.

I know I should be dreaming in butterfly wings and streams of bubbles reflecting the sun in patchy rainbow squares, in kittens yawning or the tickle of furry creatures nuzzling my neck, but it doesn’t feel quite grounded when I compare something with depth to something that rides the wind so effortlessly, or something with strength to something so sweet and vulnerable.

It’s not that it’s painful (although I’m not sure would go so far to say that it’s painless considering how hard I fight for words only to find that they come when I don’t want them, like razored lightning: violent but fleeting), but it doesn’t feel like open meadows and fluffy clouds. It feels like the satisfying final breath of a wild exploration that ends in dirty sweat and blood-stained skin, probably because years of wrangled thoughts and caged emotions have turned my love into something like a steep rock-face soaked in equatorial sun, and we’re left gripping with our toes, laughing at the elements for thinking they have a chance.

Heart Rhythms and Sawdust Memories

In a room filled with sawdust,
each fragrant inhale is a pleasant reminder
of something being created.
If the light shines
in the right spot,
it can be hard
not to get dizzy
from the way the dust rides the air,
the way each particle
adds texture to the moment:
everything's blurry,
slightly out of focus.
The colors blend a little,
painted by
the settling sawdust,
and the balance of hues
creates an imbalance in heart rhythm –
an intoxicating moment of peace.

I could fall asleep.
The safeness I feel,
here in this room,
smelling the textured air
now painted with memory as well as debris,
it's never been quite so easy to slip
into my dreams.
The walls were never so welcoming,
the details never so unimportant.
(My yesterday had a flickering light,
reflecting off of and back into the room.
Maybe that spot is covered now
with the film of
those pieces of things we broke in frantic creation,
maybe all the new details
 have diverted attention,
but it doesn't bother me now.)
 

Undeleted Nonfiction

These are words I wouldn't want to say to walls.  These are words I'd rather swallow and have rot my organs than hear come out of my mouth, or out of my fingertips, but I suppose I'm not supposed to do that anymore.  I'm not supposed to pretend to not feel.  I'm not supposed to go back to numb.

But I could. I could pretend like it doesn’t still hurt. Like I don’t remember your face and hear your voice in that moment and clench my fists, digging my fingernails into my palms until I draw blood. Know that I could. Know that I'm so good at pretending like it doesn't hurt, you wouldn't know the difference.  

I wish I could blame you for my needing to say this, but it’s not entirely your fault. Because what I said to you to make you say the things I'm now reacting to, the trigger to everything, wasn’t completely true.  I answered a question in haste, in a nod of a head, ready to accept any answer you offered. Maybe you deserved more.  Maybe you didn't, maybe you shouldn't have asked, but maybe you deserved more.

The truth is I have never told this truth before. I have told the full story in half truths or half the story in full truths but never all of it and true together.

I have it, though. I have it, emotions and all, if you want it. I think you’d like that part of it, that part of the truth. The truth I’ve never told.  I don't. To me it's like a dirty secret, buried under a floorboard or tucked into the carved out pages of an old encyclopedia, because though I'm sure there's beauty in feeling what I felt, in the humanness of it all, feeling that kind of human was more shameful than beautiful. There's is no liberation in looking for meaning, only the feeling of being a receipt crushed into the tread of construction worker's boot as he braves the slushy sidewalk corners to avoid the crowd.

Water Buffalos and Spiderwebs

The flames behind us made our shadow shape-shift like wind to a pile of leaves, scattering the form across the room with a complete disregard for traditional notions of aesthetics. Our shadow cast a shape on the carpet that looked something like a water buffalo. Or maybe a hippopotamus.

There was something cohesive about the way we sat, our fingers intertwined, our necks curving gently into each other, eyes unfocused in the same direction, as though we were caught in the same daydream.

It had been the kind of day that was too easy to disregard. Nothing so exciting that it would make cocktail party conversation, nothing so riveting that another generation would hear about it, but simple, easy joy found in eyes and smiles, elbows and sides, toe wiggles and head scratches, and the quiet feeling that it didn’t get better (but knowing that it must, or else we would end up like Enno and Eva, looking back on better times with “opaque” expressions on doorsteps), an unintentional high that left our eyes bright even with our heads backlit.

I broke out of the spell and freed myself from the embrace to face him because I wanted to see him, to have a visual for the memory because the feeling would only carry for four days, and I needed seven, and for a moment we looked right through each other, each stuck in some kind of orbit. Again I broke out of the spell and freed myself, this time from the trance we couldn’t help but fall into, to fall back into the same unfocused stare in the same enrapturing daydream because seven suddenly felt heavy, like shadowed forests and cold nights, like bitter winds, like walking through a spiderweb, and I needed the feeling. The memory would have to wait.

Doc Brown Could

I watched the feelings unfold like a flower in stop motion.  She walked into the room with a slump in her shoulder and a crease in her forehead, and it broke my heart.  She looked tired.  Not just didn't-get-enough-sleep-last-night, or had-a-long-day tired.  She looked worn.  Slowly threadbare. Then she looked up and there was this moment of honest relief, and when I felt her arms around me it was as though I was anchoring her to the moment, keeping her from remembering whatever it was she had been going through.

As we sat, her head on my lap, my fingers in her hair like always, I watched her face slip in and out of that same fatigue.  I asked because I had to ask, but never too deeply because that kind of tired only comes when talking about it on anyone else's terms has stopped doing any good, so mostly I sat and waited because silence stopped being an absence of communication between us a long time ago, and I couldn't say or do anything to make it better.  Make it fixed.  Doc Brown could.  I could only say the things like, "Give it time." But what good would that do? She can't very well actively make time pass.  "Things will get better." They might.  They might get better.  They don't get better for everyone.  Sometimes they get worse.  Sometimes people don't recover.  Probably, for her, they would get better, but who am I to tell her what things would happen? I didn't predict this.

So instead of empty words I gave full attention, and we sat –my fingers in her hair, her head on my lap – staring at the ceiling, waiting for the silence to become oppressive.

Finding a Moment Among Conversation Gaps

I sit across from a familiar face at a familiar table and have a familiar conversation – a commentary on shoes and late night television programming and a strategy discussion on awkward social encounters (exchanging tactics and horror stories).  The conversation is buoyed by jokes and words that are more fun to pronounce than useful to the discussion, and I watch the gaps in conversation fill and wonder when my moment should be, wonder if there's a not-awkward way to steer the conversation, because her not asking isn't necessarily a product of her not caring.

I'd like to tell her everything even though she probably doesn't want to hear it because telling everything is the only way this will all make sense.  I have previously given bits and pieces and walked away feeling misunderstood, and this is too important for her to misunderstand.

I want to tell her it rained on a Friday night in October. I want to tell her that I begrudgingly left a blanket-nest in my apartment to find a substitute comfort in cheap beer and conversations with near strangers, and that my watch refused to lie and let me believe I could leave without questions, so I paced and rotated through the people I knew until a conversation became a little bit interesting, but before the conversations grew distracting enough, my reason to leave walked through the door: a reminder of everything I hadn't figured out, everything I wasn't doing right.

I want to tell her how I didn't leave.  How I froze.  How I sought sanctuary in the fading crown molding and how I buried my head in the shoulder of the only person in attendance who understood, but that beer had made that person distract-able, and the story was stale and not keeping her focus, so she passed me off onto the next person. I want to tell her how I let a stranger be my sounding board.

I want her to know that it took me a few minutes to make eye contact, that I don't actually remember what it was he said that made me turn my head toward him except that it was a challenge in some way, it was something I wouldn't expect a stranger on a couch to say, and it wasn't the familiar empty house-party banter that leads to more drinking and less talking. I want her to know that at some point in what had evolved from my rant to our conversation, the stranger and I made the kind of eye contact you have to recover from and that after a few twists and turns of the evening, we found ourselves on the front porch with uncertain smiles and sideways glances.  She already knows that the empty street once had meaning to me, standing as I was across from a house filled with a bumbling series of mistakes, but I want her to understand that as the stranger disappeared into that same street, I lost my thoughts and my balance.

She knows he's not a stranger anymore, but I want her to know that his kisses separate me from reality and his arms keep me from losing my mind, and that even when phone calls get tripped up by awkward pauses or we unintentionally hurt each other, it feels like we've figured it out, like we're doing it right. I want her to know that it's not the familiar story to tell at the familiar table amongst familiar jokes and familiar conversations, but I'm in a world with a whole new concept of familiar, and I'd kind of like her to be part of it.

What Feels Like A Failed Series of Metaphors

I’ve been teasing you with cloudy tidbits about the past and the future, embedded in my cryptic speech and my tendency to say everything except what you want: cold, hard facts about us; painted in glossy, white letters against a matte, black surface. Because then you’d know, without a doubt, that my head was in the game. They would be there: words. As if strung into the air by a wave of purple, shimmering light: words to the thoughts of this … strange girl.

I’ve been ready, waiting, watching the words fall into place, one by one, trying not to lose my mind because where are the priorities, after all, in a brain that manages the perfect adjective for the electrician, but fails to conjure up anything beyond a measly pronoun for the consuming thought that’s hasn’t left since it took to nesting a few weeks back? And I’m finally at the point where I’ll just take my brain in whatever capacity and do what I can because sometimes… sometimes when you kiss me, I want to cry because it hurts how perfect it feels, and every time I look in your eyes, I want to run a little faster to what we might be, and even though I know that means that if I trip, it will hurt more when I fall, I’m still running. I’ll keep running till you say stop.

Obscured Lines in the Sand

The wind carried the sparks off into the dark sky, teaming up with the smoke to take a moment of brilliance away from the stars.  The six of us lay on the ground, he with his head on the sand, I with my mine on his chest, and for the moment we weren't worried about the grains of sand seeping into our socks and waistbands. We stared reverently as the silhouette of the bonfire shivered against the night, glowing like a spotlight on a dark stage.  I changed the grip on my beer and shifted my weight to my elbow, eager to see everything the evening had to offer: the way the waves took turns giving us a new look at the moon, the glow of the horizon inviting our thoughts to dream with a little more risk.

"We need a soundtrack."

Cue headlights, someone's fingers fumbling over the dashboard, and an Atmosphere song making its way around the windshield of the Jeep. Our feet jumped across and dug into the cooling sand, our arms swinging without direction. I could feel his eyes follow me as the shadows from the bonfire made shapes on my face.  It wasn't the first night of obscured lines of friendship, and it wouldn't be the last, but it was always contained in day-lengths, encased in memories not spoken of, just replayed like the best verse of a forgotten song, almost as good as we remember it to be.

Further and Further Away

The water was cold, tearing across my feet like the ocean was trying to suck out my soul through the beds of my toenails.   It was September.  The sun was high in the sky, but it was starting to feel like fall, and the water was cold.  We stood in a close circle, and you handed me your piece of paper because your sentences kept collapsing with the weight of your tears, so I took the wrinkled pages from the fading strength of your fingers  and started to read.  Calmly.  Steadily.  Rhythmically.

I heard my voice empty out into the air, and it felt as though it were just lying in a stagnant puddle, pooling and festering, suspended level with our chests in order to soak us in its stench.   I sounded like a sociopath. I tried to conjure the images that made me human, tried to remind my brain to care, but it took every muscle in my chest to send my heart back to a place where it could break because... my heart had been broken.  And broken.  And I wanted to feel, but every time he choked, and every time he fell, and every time he couldn't prove that there was life behind his eyes, that he still existed behind the frozen façade, I gave up just a little more feeling because it hurt to feel. You could see him, you could see him trying fight, but the disease was crushing him. He was being wrapped in cellophane, and we couldn't help.  We couldn't reach him, we couldn't save him. We just stood there, and watched as he disappeared, as he suffocated.

I wanted to remember his stories.  His sense of humor.  I wanted to remember the way he teased us when we hadn't brushed our hair, or the look in his eye over cocktails as made those elegantly crude innuendos.  I wanted to hear him laugh us off as we ridiculed him for donating his leather couch to his pampered dog.  But I was just an observer back then, waiting for my turn to take the stage and garner more valid attention than cooing or polite laughter.  I never let him engage me because I didn't feel like I could prove anything to him. And by the time I was ready to stand my ground and be the contender he always had seen in me, he stopped seeing.  He stopped absorbing.  All he could do was struggle to hold the ground the disease hadn't taken from him yet.

So, as though my wrists were cuffed to a damp cellar wall, I watched him fight until there was no fight left, and every time his breath got heavier, I felt my heart harden just a little more: this might be it.  This might be the round that kills him.  And he'd make it to another round but he'd fade just a little more and I was further away from him.  And further.  And he had been so far away for so long that it just didn't matter any more if he was there.  Because he was already past saving. He was already untouchable.  He was already gone.

So I watched my voice stumble and land with a tickle upon unwelcoming ears.  And I ushered in the water as it ate away at the sensation in my toes.

Betrayed By His Right Sock

That’s what I’d tell him. That’s what I’d tell him if I could bring myself to look him in the eye and tell him I’m leaving. Tell him the weather here, the absence of the crash of waves outside my window, the packed subway cars where people barely make eye contact, it’s driving me crazy. I’d tell him that I envied the comfort he took in seeing the yellow cabs whip past his toes, but if I skirted death by taxi one more time I’m not sure my heart would recover from the beat that it skipped. I’d tell him I’d miss him. I’d tell him I love him.

I watched him, with my back pressed into the wall behind me. The elastic on his right sock had weakened and refused to stay in place around his ankle, choosing instead to bunch up around the middle of his foot. He twirled his foot probably hoping he could work with gravity to get it back into place, ultimately knowing it was useless but not yet driven to the point of taking his shoe off to fix it properly.

I watched him lean his elbow into the not-comfortable-enough armrest of the chair and cradle his head in between the thumb and index finger of his open hand. The door opened, and for probably the 15th time in 20 minutes he raised his head to meet eyes with … not me. Then he left.

The air outside was finally just cold, not bitter or painful, and the only trace of snow was the odd mound of dirty ice pressed into the curb. The sky seemed to mute every sound except that of the grit underneath the soles of my shoes as I moved my toe back and forth across the stone of the doorway to crush my cigarette. I didn’t smoke until I came here.

I watched him throw his hood over his head and shrink into the distance. Then I walked in the other direction.

Just Words

They’re just words. God, if only they were just words. If I could speak and not feel like I’m losing a part of me every time a syllable falls out of my mouth. They’re not just words. They’re never just words. Attached to every combination of letters is this deep, entrenched meaning and when you write them on the page they say something specific. So fucking specific.

They’re just words, and you throw them around because you don’t know what they mean, but I pour over my letters and cross them out and rearrange them until they get as close as I can make them to what I want them to say. They’re a part of me, so if I’m going to let them out to breathe or put them on a page, they’d better say something worth saying; they’d better be ready to stand out there fully formed, not just whispers and fragments like the pieces of dandelion in the breeze when you wished for heartbreak to end last spring.

Days when they come out quickly are hard and days when they come out slowly are harder, and sometimes the days I don’t try to make them come out are the hardest of all, like somehow I’m neglecting the best part of me. Maybe it’s not the best part of me. Maybe it’s the worst part of me. Maybe everything that makes me enchanted with the sounds of the keys clicking or disgusted with the image of the cursor blinking is less the picture of the brilliance than the spiral of madness. Maybe I’ve created a personal hell that burns itself more space with each thought I dissect and each conversation I replay.

But words, at times, are all I have – the only thing that keeps me rooted in whatever twisted form of reality I find myself in that day. So let them be just words: they’re mine.

Words Change

My words were going to be so much different. They were paintings of open fields and open eyes and being both aware of my fear and liberated from it, like the moment right before you jump off a diving board for the first time. They were going to be excited. My words were going to be pleasant. Like a toddler who has found a litter of puppies and just falls into their fur and their kisses and she’s nothing but smiles and giggles. Because puppies never give you a reason to be anything but smiles and giggles. Puppies will never break your heart.

My words were not going to be a vague reference to anything because I promised they wouldn’t be. They were not going to be a story stolen from the pages of my journals, written about no one and nothing, and I was working so hard to make my words be about something different entirely. Something completely unrelated to the thoughts that had been running through my mind all weekend because I wanted to let you read something that didn’t feel like a public display of a private moment.

But the moment doesn’t seem quite so private anymore. It feels disposable.

I’m wiping the slate clean and letting myself be as easily convinced tomorrow as I was last week that I don’t need these walls. Because puppies are wonderful, but sometimes you need something that will talk back. Sometimes you need someone even though they might break your heart. Because it turns out the diving board is more like a cliff, and it turns out that the cliff is just a little rockier, or a little higher, or the waters below are just a little murkier than you’d like them to be. And giggles and smiles are great, but you’re not a toddler anymore.




Less eloquent post here, if you please.

Dissolving and Devolving Situations

There’s a comfortable layer of sweat on my nose and cheeks that catches the breeze at opportune moments. It sends a smile across my face, which sends a smile across yours, but it’s too hot to touch, so we sit more than a few inches away from each other, staring out over the rooftops, in a trance of disbelief. For a moment, I become transfixed on a bird, building a nest in a nearby church steeple. As I watch, my head fills with stories (imagining the eggs she’ll lay and the patience she’ll have as she warms them and cares for them just thinking of what they’ll be), and you stand up, kiss my forehead and disappear.

I lean back into my wicker loveseat and imagine that we’re 35 and our 2 kids are playing together nicely, for the moment, and we’re doing our best to enjoy the few calm moments.

You return with two bottles of cold beer and pop them open with your teeth. I cringe, but am far too grateful to say a word. You see my restraint and smile as you hand me the bottle.

“To Sundays.” Clink. Sip. Pause.

I stay sitting, and you stay standing, and then you kiss me, softly. You pull away, but I kiss you back, just a little harder, but then it becomes you kissing me and me kissing you and the situation devolves and our quiet moment dissolves and the heat and the sweat is all we crave and want so we fumble pathetically to put our beers on the table and start using our hands for more interesting things.

The Little Things

The blue carpet seemed a little grayer against his loaders, and the kitchen a little further than he remembered. His face fell into shadow – the silhouette from the setting sun outside the window seemed all too hopeful that evening.

His eyes dropped to the unfinished crossword puzzle sitting on the side-table. She would have known 17-across.

He pressed his sun-spotted hands into his forehead, moving his wire-framed glasses onto the top of his head. Even a little blurry, the embroidered pillow on the other armchair sent him into a melancholy smile.

“I’d rather be golfing.”

She never did get around to trying golf.

The apartment was immaculate, mostly because he had started to get rid of things. Ironically everything he had fought to keep all those years stopped seeming liked they belonged if she wasn’t there to whine about them.

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t known it was possible to lose her. The diagnosis last spring had called for some reality checks. But he didn’t even know what the rhythm of his breath was without her.

It was little things, like making coffee for two this morning, or looking for spare sheets and finding spillover from her shoe collection, that sent him into the armchair at night. Just for the night. To be alone with his thoughts of her. To let the remnants of her scent from her favorite chair rub off onto his sweater. The one she bought for him for Christmas last year.

It seemed a little grayer, too.

We Go Together Like...

I’m dependent. If my mornings start without you, the day always takes a turn for crappy around mid-morning. So I seek you out, and we sit in perfect silence: I hold onto you for salvation’s sake, and you warm my hands and sit there, smelling pretty. And if I want to do anything productive after 3 p.m. (which I do. I always do.), I go and find you in some cozy hole-in-the-wall, and we’ll sit across the table from one another, just staring at first (the heat is almost too much to bear), and then you fill me with your not-quite-sweet nothings that make my breaths a little deeper, my eyes a little brighter.

Of all my vices, I love you most. No one seems to notice that you’re no good for me because no one would ever love something so deeply if it were doing her harm, but I’m not so naïve to think you’re not the reason I toss and turn on those nights when the streetlights taunt me because they turn off so automatically, while I watch the cycle from start to finish wishing I could do the same.

I’ve tried to give you up, but the days without you are longer, colder, and my enthusiasm bottoms out and sends me into a nest of blankets with closed blinds. The sun’s never as sunny when I don’t get a taste of you. I’ve even tried replacing you a couple times, trysts with lesser souls – if they don’t lack the strength, they lack the joy, and none can quite match the feeling, so I can only go without you for so long.

Balls of Yarn and More Interesting Details

It started with two more beers than I was planning to drink, for strength to “handle” an unexpected an encounter.  And by handle I mean avoid.  Avoid and hide on the couch.

That’s when it really started, I guess, the story I’m supposed to tell.  Bolstered by my beer and the catcalls of a creepy man or three on the walk through the rain, I got to talking with a boy with beautiful eyes. 

Except I didn’t notice the beautiful eyes at first because he was an unknowing victim of a necessary rant. And when ranting and beer and I join forces we become like a dropped ball of yarn… just keep going until we hit a wall.

He nodded along and let us roll through unnecessary detail after unnecessary detail (beer likes to unveil unnecessary details), and I glared across the room and let my fingers curl and my eyes twitch, and then just before we got dizzy he threw a wall up.  So beer and I took a moment to collect our thoughts and let rant go off on its not-so-merry way. That’s when I noticed the eyes.  And the smile.  

The ranting turned into blushing, the finger-curling into nose-scrunching, the eye-twitching to lip-biting in valiant, if failing, efforts to cover the smile eager to appear on my face.

The rest of the story has the more interesting details, I suppose, but sometimes being so careful with my words means that none of them seem appropriate.  The words will form at an inconvenient time (like in the middle of a complicated coffee order or an important detail about an upcoming assignment), so they’ll get scribbled on the back of my hand or scrap paper and give you an ending more satisfactory than this.  But to save you the wait, I’ll tell you as much as I know: the story’s not over yet.