Happiness

It’s high school.  Senior year.  Amidst bathroom tears and teenage years, AP exams come and go like emergencies, right upon you and then marvelously and miraculously move into the past.  Meanwhile, I cling to emo rock like a life force, shutting myself and my good grades and perfect AP scores inside an airtight box where its sounds can echo around me, only me, and no one else.  People don’t understand that I call this happiness, the sounds loud and thick as ocean water around my entire body, vibrating in a closed safe space, seeping into me, osmotic and cool, vivid enough to begin my blood to stir.  This is the only place I am content, and wearing a true smile on my face, the only place my heart isn’t empty and floating, instead sinking into the waters around it, the holes filling up like a beautiful titanic. 

The girls who seem to be my friend only when it is convenient for them, remember that they are supposed to tell me about upcoming concerts they are attending; this because the last time they went to see Carolina Liar, met the band, chilled with the band, got their pants signed by the band, and conveniently failed to mention that this band, one of my favorite bands of the time, was coming to our humble city Columbus Ohio, they failed at keeping it from me.  I found out about it later.  Facebook can be a dirty place for teenage girls. 

I’m seventeen years old and the only thing that moves me is music.  A thirty dollar ticket to celebrate the AP exams end.  Cut forward to Lifestyles Community Pavilion on OSU campus, a packed outdoor’s audience, and enough beer to keep the college students on their feet, or off them, depending on how many beers they choose to consume.  Cut past the opening band, though an experience in itself, and the inane chatter around me, into the moment when Fall Out Boy enters the stage and the lights fall onto them like angels of red and green and blue and violet.  Cut to the moment when Patrick Stump opens his mouth wide and Joe Trohman strikes the chords of one song, then another, perfect moments followed by more impossibly perfect moments. 

Arms rock back and forth, night sky stretching over our fingertips.  Nights are peaceful things already, making lovely blankets of dark warmth over our vulnerable human bodies, a womb to our lonely adulthood.  With music like love sheltering us in a warm sound, a layer of harmony spilling like liquid gold into our ears, we travel together moved as one spirit, rocking gentle and urgent to the sounds of Fall Out Boy.  I don’t even care that my friends have left my side, and I know not who these people are, these tens of thousands of people surrounding me, where in their lives they find themselves, why they are here; I don’t know which of these smiling girls cries in their beds at night, which one finds on occasion a blade to slice their skin, which of these young folk just fought with their parents, their spouse, their lover, and which one just got the job of their life, a golden light sparkling, a door wide, a path long, a heart full;  I just know that tonight I won’t fill the my bed covers with tears, won’t find that blade to slice my skin.  This is happiness, whatever this is, and alone, for once, I don’t have to be afraid.  I wish this could last forever.  Maybe then I would not feel the need to right love on my arms, or to run through the streets of Columbus at one am, when the sky is dark and hiding me from the world, when my stomach is small, is beautiful.  When I am beautiful. 

"he loves me"

            The letters fall to the floor before my eyes.  The words, her words, drift slowly….time you called  to her my eyes brightened.  She talked about you a bit but didn’t

There was Kyla, sitting on the seat of the bus talking to her, and I was looking at Kyla, calling to Kyla, and she is invisible beside her. 

            love how you know and say what I think.  To open my mouth and share would

            She thinks that I think like her.  She thinks there’s a connection between us. 

            see your face.  I love your face.  It haunts me at night but it

            Every time she sees my face she flushes.  I’ve stopped looking her. 

            time you called to her my eyes brightened.  She talked about a bit but didn’t

            I’m tired of this.  I don’t want to see these words. 

I’m not even sure who you are because you never talk to me, but you’re always looking out from under those long dark bangs.  God it annoys me, that gentle flow of tears I see emerging from what must be the eyes that exist underneath.  You think I’ll pity you?  You think those songs you sing and those stories you tell under your breath, under the covers, in the dark, late at night will reach my expectant ears?  I cannot see you.  I do not notice you.  You don’t exist, except as a blubbering, blundering annoyance. 

It was your birthday, and I wrote on your wall because you practically begged me to, what with your teary eyes as you sat by yourself at lunch.  I mean, it’s your birthday for God’s sake and there were like seven people that wrote on your wall.  Seven.  And nobody cares about the meaning behind facebook birthday wishes, anyways.  I mean, for all I knew it wasn’t even your real birthday.  

I put that effort in, even though you’ve never talked to me.  Anyways, don’t expect this again.  You can’t expect my attention and you can’t expect me to acknowledge you exist.  These things must be earned.  And you have put no effort into earning them.  Into earning me.  You don’t deserve me. 

Watch carefully as my lips say these words.  I want you to retain both the visual and the auditory memory of this moment.  Ehem.  

I am not your savior.  I am not your lover.  I am not your friend.  Don’t look at me like that.  It’s creeping me out. 

see your face.  I love your face.  It haunts me at night but it
These letters fall before my eyes and I’m disgusted by them.  Why do you show me them?  I don’t want to see them. 

time you called to her my eyes brightened.  She talked about you a bit but didn’t

Yes I know.  Kyla Ciranni.  Eighth grade.  I’d had a huge crush on her and everyone knew it but she didn’t like me back. 

            love how you know and say what I think.  To open my mouth and share would

            I don’t.  I don’t think like you.  What with your stare and your tears and your--

Ok… you’ve stopped.  You’re different somehow.  I catch your eye at its corner when it thinks I am not looking, but it darts away before I know if it was really ever there.  Is that a smile you’re giving him?  Are you smiling?  You… You betrayer.  You said it had to be me.  You said so, I heard you under the sheets, in the dark, your words loud for their lack of face.  I’d owned you. 

I mean, you think you have my attention?   You think I’m watching you in your nonchalance?  You think that proud stance, those hands on your hips and spite on your face will sway me to bow to you.  I own you. 

            “You own me?” she says.  “You own me?”

            She stands before me, more mature looking than I’ve ever seen her.  It seems she has makeup on.  She thrusts a pile of paper onto the floor, and it scatters, loose leaf and lined, covered in once heartfelt scribbles. 

            “See these words?” she picks a handful of papers and waves them at me.  “These are my letters.  These are the reasons I deserve you.” 

            I don’t want to look so I cover my eyes.  Through my fingers though, the words are larger than I’ve ever seen them.  

           
            see your face.  I love your face.  It haunts me at night but it

            back and forth they wave

            grand the way your eyes melted for a moment.  She didn’t know but I knew.  I always

            and then a few seats a way you awkwardly sat down.   Kyla was right there and she didn’t

            I can’t not look. 

            time you called to her my eyes brightened.  She talked about a bit but didn’t

            your name down please,” I’d said.  How foolish of me.  I never apologized for

            Oh right.  Ha… I remember that too.  

            “wow, so fancy. What’s the occasion?”  How could he have known?  I didn’t blame

            So long ago.  This girl is crazy. 

            And then she picks up a few papers, aligns them, and carefully, despicably, exaggeratingly rips at their center.  Every rip and my laugh fades just a bit more. 

            She rips at it again. 

            “You don’t own me,” she says. 

            “I know.” I’m not smiling now.  But I’m happy. 

            “You don’t care about me,” she says. 

            “I know.”  I’m not smiling but this is what I want. 

            She’s falling swimming in a blurred fuzzy fury.  She’s tearing the papers frantically, as I falter again. 

            This is what I want. 

            “Say it with me,” she says.  “You don’t know me, you don’t own me, you don’t know me.” 

            “I don’t know you don’t know you don’t own you…” my voice is echoing.  I’m faltering.  I’m fading. 

            “care I don’t care I don’t care I don’t—”

            The letters scatter about my feet and my face and there I am on the bus to Washington DC and there I am sitting next to Kyla.  Now I’m complimenting her outfit, now she’s asking me to write my name on our group project now I’m tired now I’m falling now I’m--

            She’s back in the sixth grade and from her finger tips fall petals; She’s thinking it because she dare not say it aloud, crouching behind the wilted bush where they found the dead bunny that once.  She thinking it as hard as she can, willing it, like those stories she would tell, those songs she would sing, and those letters she would write, under the covers, in the dark, late at night. 

            He loves me, he loves me not he loves me he loves me not he loves—

            2 petals left. 

            She tears the last two petals from their home and steps on them, saying, as if a dogma.  A vow.  A reality. 

            “me.  He loves me.” 

            And then I fall, into the letters, asleep and in their comfort. 

Ari

Diary Entry

August 31, 2009

Maccabe Arts Fest

Orange County, California

We united over Coldplay, the way every romance should start, him sitting comfortably behind the piano, fingers on keys, effortlessly playing out the chords that made up Lost, and myself, eyes peeking up from behind my music folder and bangs, meeting his own and muttering, quite simply and perfectly,

“Coldplay.”

--

Day One:

We sat in a circle around the classroom, I on one side and him directly across.  When my turn came I shyly announced that my favorite color was green, my favorite ice cream cookie dough, and my musical experience nill, except for the singing I did in the shower and the lyric writing that stayed in my notebook with their accompanying tunes only in my head.  I couldn’t play an instrument, I admitted, but was just beginning to teach myself guitar.  And then a ways around the circle of 26 teens, we finally arrived at him—

— “Ariel Joseph Tuckachinsky.”

Slouched in his chair.  Unruly dark hair.  What is he doing here, I thought.  Aside from the sad truth that guys and cool people don’t really do Vocal Music section, this guy just looked out of place at this moderately religious festival. 

“I don’t really have a favorite color,” he said.  His voice was soft spoken, rough.  “And—uh—I don’t really eat ice cream.” 

“I like this guy,” I heard someone mutter across the room. 

“And I’m self taught piano, drums, and guitar,” he finished. 

My interest peaked. 

He’d seemed like a druggie so far, what with that cool vacant look in his eyes and all, but I had to give it to him.  A guy with talent like that really stood out.  I was curious. 

And he was hot. 

--

After that I’d sometimes lose focus from the choral songs we sang, and as I spaced out  my eyes would drift lazily to his face, his rugged hair, his too-tight skinny jeans and rough fingers.  Occasionally, I’d focus in for a second to realize his eyes had locked with mine.  Then I would casually look away, drifting them around the room as if it had been an accident, as if it were just a coincidence that it was in his easy direction I was staring.  He was so unreadable, so stoic, and I wanted to know just what he was thinking in that bored looking head.       

Does he wonder the same things?

Does he notice me?

I am a helpless love-at-first-sight kind of girl.  I fall hard and quickly, and if the earnest flames of my passion are fed with even the smallest baby carrot, the most wilted leaf, they become wild, obsessive, and uncontrollable, lasting sometimes for years on end. 

And so, when my seat moved across the room to the tenor section due to my low voice, which once had only been embarrassing but was now starting to look a huge perk, Ari—sigh—, Alec—that kid with the Jew fro, and Yosha—the fourteen year old boy whose voice hadn’t completely matured and who had daily love affairs with his candy bars, became my new friends.  Or rather, we sat next to each other and exchanged the occasional word.  This was as close to friends as I expected to get with any guy, as I was shy and didn’t even talk to the other half normally.  And as far as the three sentences I exchanged with Ari, I was in no position to put a stopper on this developing intrigue. 

And so it continued.  Day two was Lost.  Day three, and I heard the gentle and beautiful notes that were The Scientist. 

B minor 7.                                       

I looked up.  So intent, those eyes. 

G major. 

Should I say something? 

D major. 

Probably not.  What good would that…

And on D major suspension 2—eye contact. 

“Scientist,” I said, louder than I’d expected. 
                After that, it was sealed.  I watched as he slowly built up the courage to speak to me.  Cool?  Ha.  Just shy, even if I was the only one who noticed.

 But still,

darling. 

And so I spoke.  Me, the one who thought she never could.  I asked about music, and about his preferences.  I mentioned Muse, and when he told me that it was his favorite, I wasn’t surprised.  I was, however, impressed.  A fellow alternative rock fan is hard to come by. 

White stripes?  An acquired taste, yes. 

The doorbell song, I responded.  This I know.  This… This—music—I can do. 

Death Cab For Cutie?

Heard of.  Okay. 

Hmm…

Weezer?

Beverly Hills?

Haha….yeah, I suppose, but not my favorite. 

Break over.  Back to our seats. 

But wait. 

“I’ll bring my ipod tomorrow and show you Death Cab for Cutie.”  Was I speaking these words?  It seemed so. 

Two days later, he promptly labeled them a “girl band.”  He asked, “Is this one of those bands you have to listen to the lyrics and stuff?” 

Um.  Duh?

Anyways,

--

“Draw and picture for me.”  I demanded of him.  We were sitting outside on a break, munching on fruit rollups by the wall in the hallway. 

“Your such a girl,” he’d said, followed by

“You like details? You’d be horrible at chess.”

I suppose that was insightful.

“tsk tsk.  Such a girl.”

Yeah, definitely an insightful person. 

--

(Official Definitions:

Defenestration:  The act of throwing someone out of a window. 

Defenestrapetion: The act of raping someone while throwing them out a window.  There is no one specific way to defenestrape.  Creativity in the matter is a positive thing. 

Reverberation:  My favorite pastime.

Reverberapetion: Doubly great.)

--

The kid was inappropriate and took pride in that. 

--

And when he quietly told me, suddenly and wonderfully, that I should be a night club singer, and with my abilities consequently turn every guy in the room on, my heart lurched. 

--

“It’s so hard to draw pretty people,” he said on the hill outside while repeatedly drawing and erasing my eyes. 

--

Day Four: 

At the swimming party, as I removed my towel to reveal my swim suited body, he looked over me, from my head downward, pausing for a while at my legs, saying, “yeah!  Show us those legs.” 

So enthusiastic, he was. 

He told me that I had a lovely delicate little thrust I did when I got really into a song.  It involved my hips moving forward and one of my legs bending.  I’d later knock against him at the party trying to get him to stop mocking me, though I really didn’t want him to stop.  When he mocked me it happened to look both hilarious and sexual, and my protests only caused him to continue further. 

               

                --

               

                End of Day Four:

                Now we were here, at the rock party, and music blared loudly and unprofessionally all around us.  Here he was, laughing at my attempts to rock out and there I was, wearing his sunglasses.  “They aren’t safe on me,” he said, jumping up and down, arms in the air, to prove it.  “And they look good on you.  You look like a movie star.” 

                Miriam assented, jumping up and down beside me, as well, to the beat. “You two look like a famous couple.”  I looked over at Ari in his jeans leather jacket and perfect messy hair.  She was sorta right about that. 

                Ari interrupted my thoughts.  “What do you think about that girl with the dread lockes?”

                “Who?” I asked.  Oh no.  Shoot.  What?

                I was confused.  Firstly, did he like another girl?  Secondly, was it the girl across the room he was pointing to that looked like a guy?  She had given Ari a message earlier and I’d thought she was a man. 

                Miriam clarified.  “That tall girl there will the long dark hair.”

                “Oh.  Message girl,” I placed together verbally.  “Seemed nice enough.”

                “Well, she just asked me if I wanted to hook up.” 

                My mouth opened. 

                “Huh,” was all I managed. 

                “What did you say?” Miriam asked. 

                “Yes Ari,” I repeated forcefully, jokingly.  “What did you say?”

                “Well I wanted to ask what exactly she meant by that.”  He took in a deep breath and looked intently at me.  “But instead I just told her I was tired and sweaty and not in the mood.” He huffed, annoyed. 

                “Must be a hard life,” I nudged him on the soldier and my fingers felt weak and electric from it.

                When I moved around he followed me, and when I walked away from the stage, there he was, beside me. 

                “I don’t like hugging people,” he told me in conversation once. 

                But when we said goodbye that night, he held me tightly and for a long moment.  He was wearing my spare t-shirt because he’d sweated off his other one.  And as he touched me through it, I didn’t want to let go, didn’t ever want to stop the electricity and desire and…

                It was done. 

He stared into my eyes, about to say the only words he possibly could in a moment like that. 

“Ok.”  A determined look passed over his features.  “Last chance,” he seemed to tell himself.  “Would you freak out if...” He paused.  “If I told you I liked you?”

“No,” I blurted out too fast and awkwardly.  “Um I’d be embarrassed but I wouldn’t freak—”

But before I could finish myself, before I could say anything in response, a conclusion, a good bye, a “me too”, he was gone, down the steps.  Out the door. 

But wait, here he was again.  He’d forgotten his stuff in the theatre and so had I and we were waiting for the door to be on locked and it was a second chance it was perfection and it was fateful more so than anything I’d ever felt or experienced. 

He’s holding my hand now.  I’m leaning into his face, the magnet is pulling me forward.  The light from the street lamp above us separates us from the world and as our lips touch he doesn’t attack me.  He doesn’t thrust himself at me or push himself onto me.  We’re apart before I realize we’ve touched. 

“That was officially my first kiss,” I murmur. 

“Really?” He’s surprised. 

                I lean into his body and rest my head on his shoulder. 

                “My heart is beating like crazy right now,” I admit. 

                “You know,” he says.  “For a low voiced singer, you’re absolutely adorable.”  I take this to be a loving insult and ignore it, smiling. 

                “They’re waiting,” I say, beginning to walk away.

                He goes in the other direction.  “When will you be in Boston?” He yells on the dark street, stepping further from me. 

                “In about a week,” I say. 

                “I will find you.” 

                And now he’s gone. 

               

                --

Ari is immature.   He’s two years younger than me, a young sixteen to an old seventeen.    I over look these things because I have to.  Sometimes it’s all you can do to get through it all. 

Ari isn’t real.  He’s in my head, my head being a little town called Holden, Massachusetts and if you go there you won’t find him.  There isn’t a Tali, his cute little sister, or a small house where they live, and in the school the people he swore were his friends won’t have heard of them.  Go on face book and he’s not on my friends list and he never was, I swear.  Ignore those mutual friends just don’t look at them.  But you’re looking anyways, aren’t you.  Miriam Geiger.  My best friend what’s she doing there?  He doesn’t exist I swear it. 

Ariel Joseph Tuckachinsky. 

I wish you hadn’t gotten my number from Miriam and called me that first time, after the end of the story, after the “I will find you.”  And when you lost me, like the chords of that song, alone and lovely the first day, it made me wish that you had never looked over at me, never locked eyes with me, and never said my name in the night, under the isolating streetlamp.  I wish you’d never looked for me in Boston and never found me.  I want to be lost.  I want to float alone in the sea like I used to but I can’t.  Because of you, I never shall. 

Silence (edited)

Lately, she's been quieter.

She'd always been quiet, so mysterious and lovely, in the mousy blond head of hair that contained the beauty within. When I'd stroked her finger tips she'd tremble and shed a tear. I didn't mind though. Tears were a lovely thing, a wanted thing. I'd felt... consoled.
And when she didn't talk the fist day, the second day... I'd understood. There was no need to say what we both already knew. The specialness in the air need not to be verbalized and owned, to lose its actuality, the beauty that it was.

She'd smiled at me, hair flowing into backwards space, and inside, it almost hurt, this desire to make her safe and happy. Her full lips parting, and I was numb, and it not need spoken, or anything, or anything. I was paralyzed to the look in her eyes, distant and vague, yet piercing, alluring. Her hand in mine, a simple walk was like nothing else, before or after, any place and any time. Hair thrown backwards, messy and perfect in one. It was the perfect silence of a movie on mute. There need be no dramatic music or happy tune to effect the emotions that stood on their own.

But lately, she's been quieter, scrunching her nose, latching on to the sights around her with those cloudy eyes and heart. You see her own them in the reflection of her eyes, obscured by her crumbling demeanor, her eyebrows melting lower into shapes of pitiful... judgment, almost. And you wonder. Wonder but never ask. There is no need to form the words that will only echo oddly around our intertwined hands, almost more real than that which around it spins and scoops. And then where will I be? You and I will loose ourselves to a reality more stark than the one in which we live. We'll fade away. And I don't want that.

I like where I am. I don't want to loose this place. This cell.

And so the words she wants to speak are merely muffled, muddled, incomplete. Her lips move but no sound comes out. There's something wrong with her. There must be. Sometimes, it seems like everyone's crazy except me.

And I remember those eyes, so confused and deranged, that mad man that girl, when I tried to tell her. All I wanted to do was tell her. But if I did, I knew that like our intertwined hands, we would disappear, surrender to the reality that was greater, more real than us both.

I'm scared of her. Those understanding eyes are too wide to be real, a part of the uncanny valley that haunts my dreams. She isn't normal, I think. She isn't... I can't... describe why I'm haunted. What is this feeling, this fear. I'm scared she's...

I'm stroking her fingertips. I'm tracing the bend of her arm, her warm bony shoulder. Up her slender neck, I trace, which is tensed from the intake of breath that reacts to my cold hands. It's hard to contort my hand this way, like licking my elbow with my own tongue, and when she reacts in surprise, fear, to my touch, its like the shock of waking up to something cool and soft touching the palm of my hand and realizing in horror that just me, just my finger, go back to sleep. And i do as I stare at the concrete wall of my cell.

Where are you? I whisper.

The lips my fingers glide over quiver.

What are you? I ask more sternly, my finger entering her mouth.

There is no response.

Who are you!? I yell, grabbing her slender wrist with my other hand, her legs crumpling beneath her. She attempts to recoil, but lies whimpering on the cold concrete, almost reflective though, from sweat and grime, and as I squeeze tighter I get angrier.

I fall to her level and secure her hands down, my fingers cuffs to her weakness. Her eyes are squeezed shut. Her right hand shakes as if to escape and then I see the ink, smudged like backwards letters onto the palm of my hand. I wrench her by her bony hand forward and stare.

Atop the paleness in spread ink it says:

you are good enough.

I pause for a moment, as there is nothing but the words ringing in my head sloping downward to force out of my mouth but I cannot open my lips I cannot open my eyes I cannot where am I where am I where am I

I begin to pull her up of the floor. We stand there, me on both feet, touching the sweat and grime floor beneath me, and her, in a limbo of space that traces sideways along the floor as if a reflection of me.
And there is silence.

I wait.

And then a voice, weak and lovely, saying, "Why do you blame me?"
It's tangible and echoes thusly, softly, trespassing outside its source, outside of me.
Her eyes are wide and as empowered as I've ever seen them. "I'm... I'm trying," she continues. An unnoticed tear drops onto the floor. The power dissipates with its fall.

Why can't you be strong? I need you to be strong. You have to fight back but the more I crush you the smaller you become. You don't have any fight you don't have any spirit you don't deserve you ca--

I let go of her wrists, and she flies back down onto the concrete.

"I blame you," I say, as I realize that this whole time, the quiet one's been me.

Prompt: Ten Sentence (/line) Excersize

She's here again, smelling of pink petals of so many kinds that drift down from the trees like mist.
Haunting me like she does, she always did, through the graves that I walk.
She follows with crushing sounds of leaves in my wake.
"You don't want me..." Her voice is detatched. "Leave me."
I shiver as she rushes past my bare shoulders.
"You never wanted me."
Never wanted your smile your smell your breath your gentle...
Breath that's now snaking, dripping down my skin,
Like a bottle chilled wine pouring, that's how cool and wet you are.
I think I'll just bottle you back up, maybe drink you one day.
If I'm ever lonely, thirsty for that pain again.

Prompt Success: positive?

My name is Astrenada Gamsey...

Prompt: describe Astrenada Gamsey. 

My name is Astrenada Gamsey and I am nothing without you. 
    What was I before?  I cannot remember ever feeling.  I recall the things, embarrassing, disheartening, repulsive, but those experiences seem bare and lifeless.  And so I wonder, did I feel, the day you sheltered me from the rain and those...people, did my gratitude effulge like it should have, from my trembling finger tips into your warm hands?  Did my tears resonate inside my hollow shell, mimicking, terrorizing the pulsating ache in my brain, like it does now as I recall.  Your voice is nothingness in my memories.  I only see your lips moving, but the words that emerge are my own feminine but deep tones, attempting to cover up the flaw that is my mind.
    I'm trying not to cry, hoping that the deeper I press my hands into my eyes, the less the chance the tears will come, and you will see, and you will judge.  But you'd never looked at my face, catalyst to their taunts, only holding my hand and staring down,  and it burns my inner skin, furry and pain crawling on the under-surface, cheeks reddening, because you can't even look me in the eye. 
    My name is Astrenada Gamsy and you... You have ruined me. 

Prompt Success: Negative. 

un-wonderful

Hardly a day goes by
that you don't look at me
like that
and I don't cry. 
I'm not staring at your back, while you
don't glare at me
like that
and we don't exchange those words,
and I don't threaten,
don't try
to end it all. 
They think I'm melodramatic. 
I know I am. 
But I don't want this--
not here
not now
not with you. 
What I want is a careless not-stroll,
you're hand isn't holding mine,
as I don't smile-shhhh-
and you don't laugh. 
The wind isn't whipping around the edge of my skirt
and you're not beginning to shiver.
You don't take off your jacket as you look at me
not lovingly and the fabric isn't warm against my shoulders.   
This not love is more un-wonderful than I've never dreamed it to be. 
I never wanted it to be.  Never.  
And as we don't walk into the theatre I am unhappy.
More unhappy than I've never dreamed of, so much so
that the corners of my lips aren't curling upwards
as my heart doesn't palpitate. 
I don't stare deeply into your eyes,
don't try to get at your soul
or lack there of. 
And as you hesitate for that look of no fear
or desire on my face, I want to say

Please don't stroke my finger tips,
please don't kiss my lips,
I don't want to feel that softness that assurance.
The streetlights go on
and we don't exchange those words,
and I don't threaten,
don't try
to end it all. 

Emergency room vacation. 

Driving even when the holiday’s begun. 

I’m not as scared as I should be,

The hairline is disappearing,

And I’m crying. 

While you laugh on the beach/ or clear out lazily on your snowboard. 

Weird how winter works. 

It’s different everywhere. 

Everything heals where I come from,

As the candles burn and my feet ache. 

Matzah meal dishes settle into my stomach

The meds make it calmer but… they don’t help grow back what my little sister is horribly missing or

Make it easier to look at her or give my family, my siblings,

my parents , the unity it never was supposed to have from that first moment

when they stepped on the cup and broke the separate, lovely hands

that were loneliness

and happiness. 

 It doesn’t die away my father’s anger

Or cool my sweaty head.

It doesn’t hold my hand like a best friend would,

like my empty palm yearns for. 

And lacks.

silence

Lately, she's been quieter.

She'd always been quiet, so mysterious and lovely, in the mousy blond head of hair that contained the beauty within. When you'd stroked her finger tips she'd tremble and shed a tear. You didn't mind though. Tears were a lovely thing, a wanted thing. You'd felt... consoled.
And when she didn't talk the fist day, the second day... You'd understood. There was no need to say what you both already knew. The specialness in the air need not to be verbalized and owned, to lose its actuality, the beauty that it was.

She'd smiled at me, hair flowing into backwards space, and inside, it almost hurt, this desire to make her safe and happy. Her full lips parting, and I was numb, and it not need spoken, or anything, or anything. I was paralyzed to the look in her eyes, distant and vague, yet piercing, alluring. We skipped that day, to school, her hand in mine, and it was like nothing else, before or after, any place and any time. Hair thrown backwards, messy and perfect in one. It was the perfect silence of a movie on mute. There need be no dramatic music or happy tune to effect the emotions that stood on their own.

But lately, she's been quieter, scrunching her nose, latching on to the sights around her with those cloudy eyes and heart. You see her own them in the reflection of her eyes, obscured by her crumbling demeanor, her eyebrows melting lower into shapes of pitiful... judgment, almost. And you wonder. Wondering but never asking. There was no need to form the words.

So why are there no words? The first was the last, and after that, nothing.

I'm scared of her... She isn't normal, I think. She isn't... I can't... describe. why I'm haunted. What is this feeling, this fear. I'm scared she's...

I'm stroking her fingertips. I'm tracing the bend of her arm, her warm bony shoulder. Up her slender neck, I trace, which is tensed from the intake of breath that reacts to my cold hands.
Where are you? I whisper.

The lips my fingers glide over quiver.

What are you? I ask more sternly, my finger entering her mouth.

There is no response.

Who are you!? I yell, grabbing her slender wrist with my other hand, her legs crumpling beneath her. She attempts to recoil, but lies whimpering on the cold concrete, and as I squeeze tighter I get angrier.

I fall to her level and secure her hands down, my fingers cuffs to her weakness. Her eyes are squeezed shut. Her right hand shakes as if to escape and then I see the ink, smudged like backwards letters onto the palm of my hand. I wrench her by her bony hand forward and stare.

Atop the paleness in spread ink it says:

you are good enough.

I pause for a moment, as there is nothing but the words ringing in my head sloping downward to force out of my mouth but I cannot open my lips I cannot open my eyes I cannot where am I where am I where am I

I begin to pull her up of the floor. We stand there, me on both feet, and her, in limbo of space.
And there is silence.

I wait.

And then a voice, weak and lovely, saying, "Why do you blame me?"
Her eyes are wide and as empowered as I've ever seen them. "I'm... I'm trying," she continues. An unnoticed tear drops onto the floor. The power dissipates with its fall.

Why can't you be strong? I need you to be strong. You have to fight back but the more I crush you the smaller you become. You don't have any fight you don't have any spirit you don't deserve you ca--

I let go of her wrists, and she flies back down onto the concrete.

"I blame you," I say, as I realize that this whole time, the quiet one's been me.

tense and inward glowing

The way she holds herself is
tense and inward glowing,
pink cheeks from the cool rain,
frayed hair that touches the slight
short smile of her lips,
wrinkled jeans and dark attire.
I always catch her when her
eyes dart away.
She drones lovingly over careful words,
attempting carefree ease, careless smile,
and always succeeding.

in happiness

I attempt to write in happiness, not cynicism of life as I usually do,
but all that comes out is a contemplation for what cannot be.
All I see is negativity. It is comforting in response to my happy soul,
Rain pouring softly on my neck and down my spine, falling in puddles
at my feet.
I cannot stomp, satiated, into dry grass.
Only when it bubbles below my pressing toes and desire, rising up at my will
can the words be owned as I command.
There is a safety in sadness. Here I cannot fail.
Here, expectations like hope disappear, and every twisted stomach
can relax into deflated desperation; find true solace in the pit-fall that is life.
My eyes open staring at ground to which I long ago surrendered,
finding muddy dirt at their brim, stinging. It is painful here, where all the trees began,
though easy.
Only hands can help me up, but my own are dirty and immobile.
So I lie, cringing, and try to sleep, eternally.

the pretty dresses

I always drew the pretty dresses because those were never the ones I had. I drew the pretty girls because my face was so plain, and clothed my barbies in scant promiscuous clothing made of stupid stapled felt because I never could find the courage to venture outside my baggy masculine pants. I wanted so badly to wear red because that was forbidden, even after I'd received a bright pink hand and a sour tongue, the result of painful soapy scrubbing of both fingernails and mouth. I drew charming princes taking blushing girls' hands because I couldn't open my mouth around boys, and girls with bright hopeful eyes because mine were dim and cloudy. I always drew the pretty dresses because those were never the ones I had, and I always drew the smiling girls because I was always crying.

In the sand I drew the figures of laughing children, as that was all I saw around me at recess... The stick people disappeared twice a day when the whistle blew and my school mates drug their running footsteps across the sand to get to the teacher. I drew the figures and my fingernails gathered dirt and my mother, oblivious to my pitiful state of lonesomeness, merely sighed. I sat by the kitchen sink, knees bent on the metal frame of a chair as she stood over me, gently dipping my hands into a tub of hot water. At least it didn't hurt this time, I thought, recalling the red nail polish incident, closing my hand tight into a fist in the water. She said, "it looks like you've been playing in the dirt all day..." as of course I had been, always drawing the smiling school children. At least it didn't hurt, I thought again, eyes closing around my tears.

At least this doesn't hurt.

It didn't hurt all the way through elementary school when the boys called me names and pulled at my baggy clothes. It didn't hurt come junior high, when my leg pants got too short on me and I pulled my arms tighter around myself. It didn't hurt when I passed the nail polish I couldn't own or the pretty dresses I couldn't swirl around in or the makeup I couldn't wear in the store front windows on my way home from school, not hurting even more when my face started to break out in horrible pimples that I couldn't hide, that of course defined me as a person, not worthy of the time of the beautiful people in my drawings. It didn't even hurt the day my mother cried because my nieces and nephews were being taken away from their mom. Of course it didn't hurt when I broke down in the shower, crying because my mother was supposed to be strong god damnit she wasn't allowed to cry. Not when my tears that I couldn't stop were indistinguishable from the water on the wall, and not when I wrote a note to God begging him to kill me. Of course it didn't hurt when I found the blade, when I sliced open my skin and further, the blood dripping down the tile wall. When the water accompanied and it swirled soft into the hot, wet drain. it didn't hurt when I realized the pretty dresses wouldn't cover up the scars on my wrists, nor when I realized I would never wear them. The pretty dresses were in my head and now they were fading because I no longer cared about them. I didn't need them. I had the beautiful red I had wanted instead... It had been inside of me all along.

where has the good gone?

You hadn’t seen anything special in her. You’d seen the same things everyone else had seen. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that caught just your eye. What had caused you to turn in your walk from your general path of ordinary passage to class that morning had been what caused every other male in the vicinity to do the exact same thing. It was her beauty, it was her confident stride, and it was the way that suddenly, everything made sense just from the certainty with which she looked ahead, knowing that her future was one of hope, but one not to dwell too much on either. It was the present, it was her rapture, and it was a forever changing now. But that now was nothing new, caught like a butterfly pinned upon a display, pinned by every metal assumption, every stick and every tool. You knew what you had seen, and for this you were crushed.

You traced her body with your mind, finger moving slowly and unconsciously in a slight hourglass formation, tucked away from the world in the pocket of your corduroy nerd pants. Alas, their ends stopped several inches above your ankles, and this even though your mother had let the hems out last spring. For this reason you cursed your very sight, your very luck to glance her way, you cursed literally and under your breath and loud enough that her attention was caught, as always it had gone. After all, the present was where she was living and now you had just become a part of it, whether you liked it or not.

After a scan that trailed your head to your hairy, bony ankles to the whole at the front of your shoe that was your big toe, at the same time taking in the library behind you and the hill that trailed into the nothingness of a sunken world, she walked toward you and took something off your sleeve. You froze at her touch as anyone would have and you thought your heart would stop working and, naturally, you would die, but as the hair fell from her fingers to the sidewalk beneath you realized that you were still unfortunately alive and this you could not be happy with. You wondered silently where the good had gone, even as she gestured with her hand toward yours, even as her smile shrunk her eyes upward, the lashes uniting over her irises for the moment that her laugh came out slight and beautiful, even as you shook the hand and stopped breathing, thinking that though you could not control your homeostatic instincts of flight or fight, these reactions to a situation your dreamt nightmares of every night, would perhaps be the end that you wanted.

But you were not original. You only saw what the world saw.

A sunken chest whose burial dirt could only be the dirt that would be your end. You saw this as your eyes closed soundlessly and you did not let go, holding on to the only hand you had ever taken. The hand was harsh though, the skin not soft like you hand imagined in those first seconds of unconscious intrigue. Where had the good gone, you thought when you realize that softness did not always follow suit with assumption. You were let down as you always were, and as you opened your eyes to match level with her own tear stricken ones, you realized that you had ruined everything. You hadn’t seen anything special in her. You’d seen the same things everyone else had seen. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that caught just your eye. She could not believe that you had assumed. You saw this in her eyes and in her now and in the silent way she dropped the only hand you had ever taken. As you let go the mask fell off and the pin dropped and splattered its cushioning water on the glass that surrounded us all. You saw her grotesque face and her pleading stare as around us the world stood attentive and critical. Around us, the world cried.

how I made you.

Little bits of floating fluff upon a summer’s day,
I catch you with my earnest grasp, you cannot fly away.
Gently like a butterfly, caged with finger-bones
But sitting, brushing on my palm with plain choice of your own.
Little bits of floating fluff upon a winter’s day,
Cold enough to bring the snow, but warm enough that it can’t stay,
I lick at your sharp center as the blood begins to flow,
I could not bruise you if I tried for if I did I’d let you go.
Whiteness is the purity of ownership and owned.
Freedom as we fall away, away from those we’ve known.
How I made you with my hands is still a mystery,
Perhaps I merely caught what’s there and let it sing and let it breathe,
Words upon a page, pretending innocence of youth,
Coming from my heart-- I only try to speak the truth--
Coax me into thinking that I’m something more than me,
Make me think there’s something more than just a girl that bleeds.
But these few words are merely those that I found lying there,
Words that had to come together, this one here and this one there,
Floating all around my head, more with passing days,
White like blossoms, white like snow, white like gentle haze.
And even when the words begin to turn to gentle songs,
Taking on a new found meaning, internally longed,
Notes that flow the circle of my mouth and circled breath
Ride the wave of my tongue’s changing syllables to death,
That place they reach at their one end, when life begins anew,
The life I breathe into your mouth, the only thing that's true.
I know that you are something more once I have had my way.
Still it’s hard to think much of my carefree, child’s play.
When words are beauty in my ears, howling, strumming, soft
I want to own them, make them, mold them,
Want to beat them till they cough
And if they start to bleed
I give them sympathy
But there are prices all must pay, anyone who disobeys,
Anyone one who cannot see when looking back when, free, we flee
And it is me they must obey,
me who disciplines,
Or maybe it’s just me that blames the words, the world, for my own sins.

hold me.

weezer is epic.
i am bizarre.
weezer makes music,
i strum my guitar
weezer is haunting
in all the right ways
i am a stalker
haunting your days
i only can write well when i am in pain
for pain is the beauty
pain is the game
weezer is sadness in joy and in heart
i am the sadness of red paint, black dart
maybe its true that i've gone through a lot
felt love for people who deserved naught
but I close my eyes and only hear you
pelting rich melodies, faceless and new
every-time tears are the kind that i love
listening slowly to angel's above

confidence

I'm not the gray stain on your shirt.
I'm not the girl that makes you hurt.
I'm not the one that cannot cry.
I can look straight in your eye.
I'm stronger every day that's born,
Smarter every day that's worn,
Wiser than I was before,
Not a loser, not a bore.
If you can't see that I am me,
That I'm all that I want to be,
I know my skin and know my tears
I know my hopes, my dreams, my fears,
Than maybe you should leave me be,
Watch me while I walk the streets,
Your quick stare and jealous smirk
Can no longer make me hurt.
Say your words and I will smile,
I am strong, you're in denial.
Take my hand so you can stand,
I have no heart to push you down.
I'm all that I want to be,
I can do and I can see.
Take your hand and I'll caress,
Gently on your soft pink flesh,
Comfort in the form of take,
Confidence is for your sake.

reality

its dark inside,
muffled light sneaks in through glass
i'm smiling to myself as my hand
reaches up and touches,
and snakes through
yours.
your light is cast in a shadow wavering like distant night
and your eyes are closed, but the thought of you
makes me shiver. i trace the outline of your nose and how it drapes the
darkness over your mouth,
ever moving from the fire in its place.
and i know.
i know, this distant cabin,
and the snow on the mountains
the image leaking into the wooden frames
onto the dusty table that just sits there, waiting for the morning,
and your face that brings the feeling of tears painfully behind my nose
will remain here in my mind,
calming me.
for now, i will bank on this, because...
pictures are better than reality
and reality hurts like hell.
i'm sorry,
i'm running away.
but really, to where does one run
when all I can see
is snow,
covering mountains
and tree barks and ferns
falling into the distance that is this world,
and my desire, a blank exhausted
now.
a forever.