Pretend we've never met our demons, just in case they come to dinner.

I am 6 feet tall hiding in a doll house, dressed like Barbie's hooker cousin and missing how much you never missed a beat, small and my head bent sideways wondering how you could let me go and now bent sideways wondering what is missing here. There's a stuffed dog and a picture colored in from the back of a cereal box and Let Down by Radiohead is pouring from my ears like I am the stereo. I still believe you can hear me when I talk to myself. I wish I knew where that went. But I'm tired now, tired of remembering how much I wish I could make you love me harder and I worry about mixing paints because too many blues and one brown will make ugly. I remember asking myself with lipstick on why we never fell in love, only because he asked me sitting in that chair and I didn't really have a reasonable explanation. That's worth thinking about, maybe.

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there was red wine that i wouldn't drink and people doing illegal things on top of tupac's face and we were rhyming breaths without knowing each other's middle names but i knew we were meant to be best friends forever or at least something more than nothing particular or that feeling you get when salespeople ask you if you're looking for something in "particular" because you're looking but you know it's not in this store or in any store, but hopefully just in store, coming soon. but more to the point i remember the way i couldn't tell the difference between light rain and tears even though I don't remember crying. i remember nikki singing the judy garland song in a whisper with her arms holding amber and me and her crying but not knowing why. i remember the way your voice was collected pieces of things you have read by other older people and a handful of black artists like maybe tupac and maybe one or two of your really good friends. i'm not grateful for a loss but i'm grateful that if things don't work out, i can hold onto this untainted memory when possibility was the thing, was the only thing, is the only thing, is the, the, only is, is only, only one.

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Don't tell me what to do about a broken heart because I know it will never be good again in the same way and that's why I don't care. It will never be the same again even when I am happy again, even when I am not covered in darkness. I am not the type to sit and pitch fits but it feels like now I am clawing my way out of my rib cage because I remember the way you talked to me and don't you remember how at first you were the cold one? I think sometimes we forget where we are. I think sometimes we forget how we are. We remember me being the cold one because it's easier than reminding you that you don't know what you're talking about. I am realizing how cold I am feeling and every inch of me hurts with desperation for something specifically vague, something more than just feeling small in a good way, but more like that way you are next to him, holding back tears because you can't figure out what to be upset about.

Aquarian blood

Sun drops falling like how raindrops would if this were anywhere but this exact place in northern California and I am drowning myself in things I wrote but never said to people I should have just said things to. It's this thing attached to my wrist, says "courage," says try harder, says make an effort, says stop making promises, says stop making yourself so sad or so sorry or so and so's hardest memory. Stop starting things you never finish or finish the things you start thinking about starting but don't let anyone tell you to start or stop doing things you feel like starting or stopping like hand making clusterstuffed pillows with amanda poss as a career. If there's a place I can see myself, it is standing next to you in the pouring rain on a sort of sunny kind of day in the Marina, holding hands, dressed in rented skin and original content. There, and being 37 and running a successful pillow stitching company with Amanda, and knowing you like being around her for a lot of reasons like her sense of humor and knowing she liked your more recent blog posts. Sometimes I struggle finding myself in words I have written and boys I have loved. Hank told me we are cold by nature, Aquarians, piled in this triangle of shoes and stories on and on and how do we even know each other? He told me the only important thing in the world is to learn how to love, how to love is the only important thing in the entire world and I am standing in that shoe department with this person who is somehow a stranger and somehow a friend and I want to leave just because I feel a little bit like crying. The thing about heartbreak is that when you don't talk about it, you have to deal with it and even when you are over things, you still have these little cracks in your heart. I am having these conversations and thinking about how sweet you were in the pouring rain and how when you threw your head off all I wanted was to kiss you with the rain falling on our faces like how my mascara ran down mine the first time I heard/watched somewhere in the bottom of the rain. Water is different, but I wonder if I ever will be, if I ever will be always warm, and if I can learn to love, if i can ever be something more than a hollow chocolate bunny on my favorite day of the year...