Feel it in my bones

There was never a tomorrow to begin with, only ever the one moment at a time, one foot through one pant leg as the other one was already one foot out the door- but it was never a bad thing, really. It only feels bad these days, when thinking of how easy that would have been, to just sit down and say, hey what about this, just forever. And I don't think it would have made me happy the same way, but it would have made me. I think sometimes about my refusal to write, when I know I could take things seriously, but I am armed with hurtfulness. This is maybe my gift. I am still trying to figure out what it would mean to be gifted, just in general. Leslie is always saying that, "just in general" and its always applicable. I'm still searching for my catch phrase, feeling like it is more of a catch all of the things one doesn't want to bother saying, something for me like, I'm never going to be quite good enough so how about I just do as much as I can and worry about inadequacy and that way we never have to talk about how you aren't exactly ever giving me the credit i deserve. And this I mean just in general, not you or you or even YOU, but just for everybody kind of and I feel like I'm dissolving or disproving or disarming my mentors by making us all softer because quite honestly thats the world I would love to live in, always apologizing and hugging and maybe lots of crying and lots of warm soup all the time and happiness too of course, and trembling close to you and soft laughter, or no laughter just constant fake stories that crack us up after the joke has been over and I just don't know what the difference is really sometimes. You're far away now like the way I talk about my dad being drunk. It's funny how we remember things and funny how I have a hard time remembering anything at all. Sometimes I just miss coming home to the sound of Matt screaming old cowboy music and how soft it felt to have a sort of brother and how even in the lonely moments I was not very lonely in that house, ever. Me and the cats and the cockroaches and our Matthew and it was like a real family abandoned by our psychologically upset mother who is really just another girl our age who wears very nice dresses and I love that heart, the heart in that home and those memories and all our visitors and especially one or two very important visitors and the cold cold air that killed Steve's snake and nailing blankets across doorways without doors and the way it sounded when I remember living quietly. I'm happy now or something closer to it. I am thinking of this and thinking of making good food and thinking of being someone's mother without having to take care of anyone or much of anything at all. I want you to know that no matter how much it doesn't seem like it, i'm always up to something, always writing something, always carving poems into the sand that you won't pay attention to and I am always filling my pockets up with rocks and I am always going to love the way it sounds when I am close to the ocean, asking for waves and depth and the promise that tomorrow sure as hell won't be any easier if it comes at all. I just wanted to say that in the morning when the sunlight crept through flimsy haunted windows, there was you and me becoming something before I ever met you, long before you came to California, long before I creeped your livejournal or watched your fingers dance along guitar strings, long before your hair grew longer, long before leaning on tree stumps in the backwoods of a Lawrenceville I'd never been to before you, long before you figured out that this wasn't about anyone in particular, it was just me, a little girl version of the same girl now, crossing her fingers and walking across the street to see if her friend was playing dead or really was dead, wondering why I could never be so brave. A flair for the dramatics and a kiss on the cheek. Just tuck me in. I'm tired now...

It's not your fault if they can't love you.

"Blessings! Blessings on you, one and all! I blessed the trees, the birds, the dogs, the cats, I blessed the flowers, the pomegranates, the thorny cactus, I blessed men and women everywhere, no matter on which side of the fence they happen to be. This is how I like to begin each day."

-Henry Miller

Wild lilac and lovely lupin and driving to the point where the signs finally say we are there, yet and Big Sur is here and where Bibles are printed in neon jackets with members only scratched out on the horizon because my mom always told me growing up that God doesn't care what you wear to church because he sees you naked in the shower. The last time I dipped my toes into the crystal ocean, I gave forgiveness a big hug and told it how sorry I was and let my new polka dot bikini be my blessing shouting out to God that I love Him and I listen to gangster rap because it makes me feel anointed and I cry often when I am alone because it is when I feel most affectionate with words and it is overwhelming to know exactly how you will die without knowing any gypsies to fool you into thinking otherwise. I will tell you this: I may never know how to let you love me, but I will share my pizza with you, and I will always ask you what you want, and I will always keep trying to figure out how to spell my name in stars so you will always look up and know you don't need loneliness and I will always want to hug you so big that your last heartbreak forgives itself and I will love you so much that God may be proud of me and I will thank him for teaching me that it is blessings all of it blessings and i will thank them each for their contribution to my spectacular formation of loving and i will raise my hands to the sky to thank the boys who loved me because I am sure now that I want to love you if you will let me. They asked me between stories about the Holocaust and being 21 if I was going to marry you and I felt overwhelmed by sadness and swordfish. Irregularly aware of why people make harsh divorces I just don't know if I am your one, but I am one at least, at least one year of knowing you were important and you only sometimes telling me otherwise. With words, I am better if written. With words, I am clumsy. With you, I am sure, sometimes. I look out the window after fish and hear my favorite song buzzing through the wrong voice and I see you glowing at me from the tip of the airplane's wing and I am lost in eternity with you, I am dancing naked alone with you, I am reading Harry Potter for the first time with you, I am drinking an entire bottle of Simply Orange: No pulp with added calcium because of you, I am crying on my birthday with my ex boyfriend because of you, I am delicately arranged silverware at a grandmother's birthday table with you, I am everybody's least favorite Beatle because of you. I am happening in outer space to the rhythm of something dirty and patient somehow. I am loving you even if I am the only one because at the end of the earth, I will be unending like God's love, like hard days, like sky fall, like breathing, like miracle, like all the good things etched in a kitten card in poor handwriting. I will be there in the earth unending loving the way you say the name you've given me.

I feel good about the way it sounds to exhale.

don't look at me that way

Drawn curtains and hoping to hear of someone else's heartbreak and using the same letters to spell different words over and over again until the letters dance up and form something incredible and I think about all the things you say every time you say anything at all and I think about how I don't know how to do it again. I don't know how to escape you sometimes but I remember that I have been here before, similarly, just not as much. When Sam was tutoring me on triangles, he said the way I think about things in crooked, and thinking about triangles, I'm not sure I trust myself enough to let go of straight lines. I don't know how to draw and being this terrible at math, I know I will always be alone. I think about how long it took for my heart to break yours and how uncomfortable it can be when ventricles become triangular or something different from what I expected at all. There's this thing I do when I'm crying in front of somebody I love where I can't look them or myself in the eyes and I wonder who I get that from. I wonder who taught you how to love and how to unlove and if you only unlove and never quite fall out of it, how old does that make our devastation? Is this math? is this a problem? is this something adult or something more like holding hands on swing sets?

When the fog clears, I promise I will have the answer.

Tell Me You Love Me.

In the bridge in my brain is where I met God, my hand taken over by my right brain after a broken attack, clutching my pen to approve of my left hand's behavior. Shut up to my mind, while I'm icing your crayon, waxing your cranium with apologies and memory. I miss green beans with you but nothing else, except most things. But I'm off topic now. Here's what's really going on...

I am wrapped up in you, curious of what you got me, searching the waves between us to find where in your mind I am, given the situation. I am crying underneath an apartment made of blankets and a severe lack of criminal activity. Here, I am safer than I have been in my entire life and I can't handle the suspense. What happens when people begin behaving is that sometimes they become boring. I remember cradling in the corner saying at least we weren't that. Now I am cradling into you like you could save me from trying to save everyone else. I am crying in the corner tears of joy or chopping onions, but not depression. I cannot find where I belong in the sea of something similar because this is something different. In the midst of memory, I am your lost goat, I am your cream cheese and lox, and I am good for you in a way you haven't figured out yet. See, you and I fell in love the same, based solely on hope and heartbreak, but it is not something I regret. Based on you, I am figuring out that nothing ever goes away- only sits there in your brain like a dormant volcano, waiting to explode and kill everyone you know and care about. My panic has been seeping out of my pores like a bad sweat, completely out of somewhere but the roots are uncertain. The only thing I am sure of is God and panic, breaking and entering, and breaking and entering and breaking and breaking and breaking and tight fists clutched in fear inside the bathroom at work, mascara reminding everyone that you are just a litttttle unstable. I want you to know that I would not trade anything in my life for something complex ever again. Repeat how sorry you are, repeat how different you are, cry to a boy who doesn't owe you understanding, let him know more about you than you should, give him a chance to prove that he is more in love with you than you knew before, remind yourself that this is good love, that there is nothing to fear but the unimaginable grips of panic and depression, and that the truth is, at the end of the day it might be your own hand you hold but he will still be trying, curled up in your love waiting until you come home and realize you're beautiful.

Truth destroys prison walls.

-Ram Dass

Sometimes when I reread something I've written I cannot recognize myself in it. I always feel like I am a teenager again reading posts by Kate Gervais and sometimes feeling better, always feeling understood, being two of the same person just to have somebody else to talk to.

I feel these blues happening and trying to drown me but I forget how to do that by myself--- which I think is good. Still don't know how to talk about it which is not as good. Everything was good except for me. If Peter lets me through the gates, I think I will just hug God and tell him how sorry I am for not loving myself. I thought about that in the car when everyone was worrying about somebody else's problem... but the difference is I've never had anyone else to pretend to blame, maybe.

I'm talking in circles because I need to talk to somebody and I'm realizing the only person I really know how to talk to is myself. Where does that put me?

I'm always talking about myself, even when it has nothing to do with me.

Nothing more than moving my bed and the purr of Cat Power's vocals matching my sadnesses, all it takes for me to cry you a river. I'm worried over nothing. Starting to get bored because I'm not moving any mountains. And this damn song has played like four times in an hour and I just feel like you're all following me in a dream and we're holding hands screaming insecurities and crying together. I've been with one man for nearly 8 months and haven't seen him cry once and to me this resonates as failure. I don't know where I am right now... I was just sitting here so mad that my room smelled bad and I ended up pushing everything around and shoving my bed and crying over nothing and maybe a lot of things and remembering that for the last week how heavy I've felt and how I don't know who to talk to that would be appropriate. I feel like I'm crushing myself with concern and I tried to tell you without saying anything and I remember how that never works. And I kill myself wondering why they never read my writing or why the cat decided to pee on the only thing I feel like I wanted to save forever (even though it was under a bunch of other stuff in my room. I feel like I can't keep doing this kind of crying because I am always alone and I feel like that's not what this is for. I don't know what my problem is.

If I'm being honest, I'm not unhappy. I'm just so overwhelmed of never telling people things that actually matter. Even when I was playing therapist, I don't feel like I was telling you anything. I just wonder if it is me indeed or if people don't want to know me that way? I know its not anyone else's fault. It just feels like I've really written my whole story so wrong. And I just want to feel like I'm really loved for being the person I am and not for being this half person all the time.

I just don't know what I'm supposed to do about it.

I feel sad, and like there isn't much I can say.

Jibba Jabba

These are last year's songs. These don't have the same words anymore, though it feels like they do maybe.

At some point, he looked at me and told me not to look at him like that. I asked "like what?" even though he knew. And he told me that I already knew, but he knew I was going to ask when he said it. He said he'd been good. I knew what he meant, but I didn't say anything. I am two people on one swing. I am three people scared of how to talk to one other person. I am a small child screaming into the sky wondering why I was born alone. I am staring into you and reading your heartbreak. I am your number one believer. I am sure we'd fall back in love if you came too close. I am a million years away from being loved. I am scared of good people. I am happy when I don't have time to complicate my life. I feel good dancing in your shadow, but feel embarrassed and unoriginal. There are different versions of me crying myself to sleep. I am sitting in the back of the Oldsmobile writing poetry and wishing you would miss me. I am smelling something I hate talking about. I am getting out of jail free with this orange or green card, but I can't remember which one. I am older. I am dreaming that I am having a lucid dream where I am forcing myself to write down this one dream I had last night in the dream. It didn't remind me of the word inception until I told someone else about it outloud and felt unoriginal. I think about Matt Sherling every time I'm grooving on poetic wavelengths. I write that down. I am praying to God. I am scratching my arms. I am yelling in sync with orphans and circus clowns. I am laughing. I might still be crying. I am learning differences. I am worried about passionate love and dutiful love and named my cat Clarissa because I am justifying my life. I am offended. I am smarter than these girls so I tell you I may come around in time, even though I am just watching three hours of tv I don't even think I like. I am dreaming of naked girls. I am listening to time pass, in case it has a good soundtrack. I am singing along to this Justin Bieber song while Neil Young reminds me of independence. I am loving the sound of fingers on keyboard. I never meant to betray you. I'm still not sure if I have. This is the first I've thought of you during this moment. I still feel guilty for things you did wrong. I am not sure what that says about me. I want to have homework. I wouldn't know how to be a wife. There are ghosts in my hair whispering on my neck about beauty and disgrace. This is coming home. This is terror or glamour. Man made divinity.

I could do more.