The One In Which I Forget Completely

Press play then read.

Jónsi – Sticks & Stones

“I don’t even remember going there.”

She fingers a saved ticket stub and replaces it carefully back into the faded shoe box.

“I hate when I forget.”

Even with a physical anchor to the world our memories break free and float away. It’s this I think of when I look to the sky and part the clouds, when I open my mind and empty my heart. I leave the cage door open and beg them all to fly away.

“Fly.” I give my memories a stern look. “Fly.”

I jiggle my head from side to side, hope they will be unsteadied, hope they will take a fluttering step to the door. They don’t.

“You’re free. I don’t want to tether you anymore. Go. It’s time.”

The memory of his beard against my cheek cocks its head at the memory of my barefeet on his dashboard, quizzically. As if to say, “Bitch be crazy.”

“Look,” I say. “You’re fine and everything, great memories. You’ve served me well, kept me warm on cold nights, made me giggle for no reason, kept me going back and going back and going back again but enough is enough. I don’t want you anymore. I don’t need you anymore. You need to leave. Learn to fly. Go.”

The memory of our stolen kiss hops from one foot to the other.

The memory of his fingers strumming a guitar turns its back to me.

The memory of our laughter tucks its head under a wing and fakes sleep.

“Goddammit!”

Eyes fly open, there is nervous chatter.

“I said I don’t. Fucking. Want. You. Any. More.”

I shake my head violently. I screw my eyes shut. Fists and tears and the sky.

Only my hollow voice echoing against the clouds.

Agony.

Then sobs.

Hiccups that fade quietly, swallowed up by the air.

My forehead, defeated, in my hands.

It’s his nickname that takes flight first.

Followed by the dimple in his right (or was it his left?) cheek.

Our inside jokes, one after the other, begin to block out the sun.

Bird after bird after bird circle the skies, crying.

Leaving me on my knees, eyes wide.

Empty.

Palms open collecting black feathers like rain.

Breathe Deeply

The dream is always the same, always arriving when my defenses are lowered, always when I’ve begun to move on.

It’s late night and I’m walking through the empty city streets. I recognize a gait, the back of his head, he’s wearing a shirt I’ve never seen before. He begins to jog across the road and he’s almost across when a voice that is not my own calls his name, rising up and out of my chest, thumping from the very hollows of my heart. He stops. Waits to turn. It’s the side of his face that excites my blood, when every muscle tenses and the world pauses. My breathing slows and then seems to reverse as though every breath is an inhale and my lungs never stop expanding. I’m fit to burst when his eyes finally meet mine.

There are no words exchanged. No excuses or explanations. He moves through my dream towards me fluidly like two water droplets joining. He picks me up and I wrap my legs around his waist, bury my face in his neck, inhale inhale inhale his scent.

He carries me.

Sometimes for hours, sometimes minutes, once in awhile just for a second or two.

I always wake up the same way, unrested, blinking my eyes into a blank stare, exhaling heavily as though all night I’d been suffering, as though all night long I was holding my breath.

Andrew Bird – Cataracts

Off The Wagon

I told my friend I was swearing off men. We made a pact. Three months we said, no dating, no flirting, no men of any kind, just life empty of all the needless complication. No waiting by the phone. No wondering. No needing someone else to validate you. Enough is enough. We pinky swore and chased the promise with vodka cocktails. It’s time to grow up, we crowed. It’s time to learn to be so perfectly alone. I was already halfway there, purging my heart of weakness and keeping them at arm’s length. No more. We were high on the freedom of blinders, the ability to look straight ahead. I danced and I drank and when I sat down to rest a friend introduced me to him. It only took a five-minute conversation before I thought, “Well, shit fuck damn.

I tried.”

These Roads

I wrap the elastics around my wrists absentmindedly and forget about them until suddenly, hours later, they are cutting into my skin, a noose for my hands. Often, I don’t know I’m carrying something until it leaves a mark.

I stop wanting. I make myself stop wanting and instead open my heart to the world. World, I say. Bring me what you will. I’m ready. I’ve got my boots laced and my gloves on. I’ll go out swinging.

I laugh more. I stop worrying what a touch might mean or if I’m asking questions implicitly, with my fingertips and lips. I don’t care.

I say, World, keep me warm. You’re bigger and stronger but I’m wily like a fox and even fantastic foxes need to rest. I could slip out and run off or we could learn to coexist. Scratch my back, World. I’ll scratch yours. My nails aren’t as long as you think they are.

I drink up the people around me with great gulps. Cool, clear, levelheaded. Drinking for nourishment not for thirst.

I didn’t even realize I was dehydrated until my throat ached and my tongue dried up. Just like I didn’t know I’d stopped missing you until you started missing me.

It’s funny the places our feet take us when we stop counting the steps.

These roads don’t move, you’re the one that moves.

Ben Gibbard and Jay Farrar – These Roads Don’t Move

Her Hands

I remember the skin on the tops of her hands. Thin, as though she’d rubbed them too many times. Too many times warmed. Too many times washed. Tissue-paper thin and yellowing beneath the freckles.

I inherited her long fingers, her cheekbones, her tendency to laugh generously. Not loudest or longest but as though it were the only laugh that mattered. Sincerely, like she understood a part of the joke that only ever hovered above your head.

Her laugh was a club you felt honoured to belong to.

Her laugh was a warm cup on a bitter day.

A woman to be sipped and savoured, not gulped.

There are things I know and then there are things I fabricate, hoping they ring true. I know her second toe was longer than her first, like mine. I know she desperately wanted to be published. I know that she saw the good in everyone.

I hope she was clumsy. I hope that these stumbling feet and wild arms were her’s once, too.

I know she once punched a guy because he deserved it.

I know she once ate hot peppers to prove a point and only proved that hot peppers can make you violently ill.

I hope she knew. I hope she knew that when I stopped coming it wasn’t because I loved her less but because I loved her more, the most.

That I intended to return. That I was on my way.

That I was only three minutes too late.

That I didn’t believe what the nurses were shaking their heads and saying as I sprinted down the longest hallway ever made.

That I was too young to understand but old enough to know better, to be better.

That I’ve spent each day since running down that marble corridor,

just to hold her tissue-paper hand.

Angus & Julia Stone – A Book Like This

The Calm Before

A night takes a turn for the worse and my fingers find the buttons. He picks up after the third ring.

“Hello?”

“Hey.”

“Hey, you.”

“Can I come over?”

“Now? Sure. Is everything okay?”

“Uh, yeah. Bad night. I think I need to be held.”

“I can do that. I’ll leave the door unlocked.”

I do my best thinking while walking. I relax into the rhythm of steps, like breathing, my thoughts follow the rise and fall of my chest. As though with each lungful exhaled I rid myself of one more negative thought. One more mistake.

When I get there his door is ajar. Tiptoeing up the stairs I make it to the landing until the vodka sends me sideways and my flailing hand finds a picture on the wall, sending it crashing back down the stairs.

His face appears around the corner and I only have a second to register his tousled hair, the boxers, a worried look and then a smile before I am the sheepish little girl again, hiding my mess, perfecting the puppy dog eyes.

“I broke it…”

“No, it’s fine.”

He hangs it back on the wall, righted. I say I’m sorry but immediately want to smack it down again. Give me something to bruise, I think. Let me leave a mark.

I fall asleep in his arms. That’s the easy part.

The hard part is waking up with my contacts glued to my eyes. The hard part is the walk home, the memories that crowd my mind, all my setbacks. The hard part is needing to get out as fast as possible, racing the sun, before we wake up together. Before we eat breakfast.

Before I start to get used to him.

Fool me once, shame on me. Or however the saying goes.

Later, behind the safety of a screen I tell him I’m sorry I smashed up his house.

“It’s okay,” he says. “It’s how I know you were here.”

I smile. Close my computer. Look outside and watch the skies darken.

A storm’s coming.

The Great Escape

(photo via theotherway)

By all accounts the night went perfectly.

The music wasn’t too loud or too soft.

The crowd wasn’t pushy or sparse.

The whole city seemed to be throbbing in time with the beat of his heart,

and when he reached for her hand while walking down Main

she didn’t pull away.

She laughed delicately when he orchestrated the kiss

just as he’d planned

with the fountain backdrop

misting the sides of their faces

and was sure to tell her how beautiful she looked

in the moonlight.

On the street.

In the lobby of the hotel.

Like a Neruda poem, he said.

So, maybe the sex wasn’t perfect.

It got quiet in the middle when he whispered her name

heavily

dropping it on her like a weight

startling her back to immediacy.

He had hoped she was closing her eyes

in ecstasy

though, now,

in the harsh light of day

after turning back to the bed,

ladened room-service tray in hand,

he had to admit

(if even just to the empty room and fire escape)

she may have been falling asleep.

The One Where I Lose Faith

My eyes are swollen with too many wakeful hours. I can’t breathe deep enough, can’t manage to fill the length of my lungs. I sustain myself just long enough to stumble home and fall into bed, a click click click and then darkness, the sleep is never enough. The sun always rises and with it responsibility and obligation. I stumble into each new day off-balance and wild-eyed, searching.

I line up the pills that whisper promises in my ears, take them by the handful with my coffee, wait for the caffeine and confidence to kick in. When my stomach growls I tell it it’s not hungry. I drink water flavoured with lies and look to the ceiling, imagine the sky. The different shades of gray that all feel the same.

I stop answering.

These are my tentacles retracting. This is me condensing, fitting myself into the smooth belly of stone and shell. Soon, all you will see are the whites of my eyes.

Soon, I will be pressured and resized into polished pearls.

String me up, not out.

Let me rest at the pulse of your throat.

I’ve been waiting all this time, just to decorate your neck.

I swear off men. When the last line from the last time was a flickering neon sign:

“Don’t worry, give it time, you’ll figure it out.”

“What? Life?”

“Yeah.”

“Have you? Figured it out?”

“No. I guess not. But, I have faith.”

The welling up of emotion, my heart struggling to strike blindly from my chest, needing so badly to sink its claws into something; anything.

“Faith, huh? Yeah. No. I don’t have that.”

Closing the door on his saucer eyes.

My life in doors closing, in lonely walks home, in learning to sleep spread-eagle in a double bed.

All the lessons I never wanted to learn. I take notes for you, tattooed on the inside of my arm, at the crook of my knee, behind my right ear. I whisper my wisdom like nonsense, like drug-addled monologue to the streets, and wait for your red-penned corrections. Your bleeding criticisms.

Your gold star.

Sucking on rocks just to fill my mouth and searching, searching, searching for a place to pause.

A halfway house for my heart.

Autumn Boukadakis – Trees

The Hotel

"The Dark Forces of Symmetry" by Brad Kayal

(Photo via withayou)

I check out half-way through.

Sheepishly, almost.

As though smiling, you hope they won’t notice

the missing robe or extra pillow.

You take these things, not because you need them,

but because they are just sitting there,

maybe unused or reused.

Neglected.

Objects you want to give a home to,

lay rest in a drawer ooooh—

That embroidered towel

or branded stare—

your reflection in a sliding door.

Welcome home

to the silence between forced moans.

Unread Bibles

that line the walls of my gasping throat

and if you lean in too far

or just far enough

we can tumble dry in this rabbit hole.

Live at the bottom of a well; underwhelmed.

Well-payed in neon.

While the clock hammers nails into our coffin.

The tick tock

tick tock of loss.

I sit here, restless leg syndrome,

wishing that the second-hand would stop,

the minute-hand might pause,

the hour-hand will rest

against

them both.

Reunited at last.

And I know it won’t last.

So, I check out early.

The sheets we slept under

wrapped toga-style

beneath my jacket.

And he asks if I enjoyed my stay,

and I say yes,

sneaking after-dinner mints into my pockets

and wondering

if you’ve woken up yet.

The Tent

"Tent at Night" by Karl-Petter Åkesson

(Photo via Karl-Petter Åkesson)

No.

No, I won’t apologize anymore.

Not for loving too much or too fast or for too long or for not long enough.

Not for bleeding my heart into these sheets while you are sleeping and making the bed over the stain.

Not for trading in the currency of my skin and then going bankrupt at your touch.

No.

I will not apologize for the way I make you feel and the battles you wage internally.

Your defenses like state lines. The boundary invisible, contrived.

No.

I will not apologize.

I will camp on the outskirts.

I will bide my time,

practicing pathetic and

staring at my share of the stars.