The One In Which I Go Hungry

The mouse hovers over your name. I think about letting my finger drop but what would I say? So, I don’t. I click the screen closed and I turn the music up.

The city is amazing. Everything I could have hoped for. I master the transit system, almost. I walk for hours until the balls of my feet ache from my cowboy boots. A white peasant skirt rustles against my bare knees and I feel pretty when strangers smile at me. I settle myself in Pioneer Square, freshly squeezed lemonade by my side. I am careful to keep my knees together and let them fall to the side. I gather my purse in my lap, prop my chin on my fist, and flip to the earmarked page in my book. The prose is overwrought and decorated. I get lost in it and have to retrace my steps, pick up the plot line and follow it again. I look up occasionally, take a sip of my drink and chew on the straw. A guy crosses the square, staring at me. I watch him wondering if he is the person I am here to meet. Double take. No. I feel silly so I turn back to my book as he climbs the steps next to me. I am determined not to be seen.

He finds me like he said he would. He introduces me to the Yellow Line. We ride and he watches my face as I ramble on somewhat incoherently. I am nervous to make a good impression. I am out of my element. He traces the train line on a transit sign and explains something I’m sure would come in handy later, if I were paying attention, but I am too nervous to hang tight enough to his words, they slip between my fingers and then he is smiling at me and I am chasing the end of his sentence. His face is built for smiling. His eyes crinkle at the edges. Below the nervous energy buzzing in my ears I begin to feel at ease.

He takes me to a coffee shop. The space reminds me of tree houses we used to build in the woods surrounding my childhood home. When we would collect abandoned furniture and wood. Haphazardly constructing a club house lean-to. Rope ladders and protruding nails. I feel like I could tell some secrets here. Far from prying eyes and gossip. I order a cafe latte and he pays. He gets a strawberry soda and I laugh at him until he makes me try it. Fizzy and delicious. I feel my mind storing this memory away. I know that any taste like this in the future will transport me back here. It makes me smile.

We settle ourselves in the corner and it’s weird and it’s a little awkward but it’s also exciting and fine and perfect. He keeps track of the time and when it gets close to three he says we better go, better get me back to the square in time. I feel like Cinderella, just a little. We walk and he finds me a city map. I unfold and fold it up again. He takes me back to square one and we sit together waiting for a green or gray or blue truck; I can’t remember.

He makes me laugh even though I think I’m being stood up. My phone is dead. I wait for a half hour and then I give up. He suggests a snack and I say pizza and I’m thinking how maybe everything is working out for the best when a black truck drives by and the bubble bursts. A hasty hug goodbye and I am climbing in the passenger seat.

Driving to Vancouver with a fuming man beside me I think how great that slice of pizza would have tasted.

Jay-Z – Empire State of Mind (feat. Alicia Keys)

The Addict

I am an addict. Chills run through my body in want of endorphins. My mouth is dry. Sitting here, knees to chest, I lean my cheek against bone and swallow back nervous fear. A hand that shakes quietly as I type. I am an addict. I am an addict and the drug is love.

I am no good for anyone. I am in repair, reconstructing my heart from the bits and pieces he left behind. The work is tedious and I lose interest more than once. Bringing myself together, arranging myself into a cohesive whole, it’s a journey that spans lifetimes. I should be focusing on finding myself in the patterns on the wall. I should be growing accustomed to the sound of silence, the rise and fall of my own chest. Falling in love with my reflected smile in a darkened store window or the jokes I crack to strangers as they prepare my coffee. Holding my own hand late on Sunday mornings, the comic section in pieces across the bed. Kiss the soft skin of my shoulder, just because.

Still, just when I think I am making progress, I have a day like yesterday. Yesterday everything seemed to fall into place. We laughed and we shared the same taste in music. We never lacked for something to talk about. We drank Mexican beer over tacos, chips and salsa in a little neighbourhood that felt like living in a gallery surrounded by art. The sun beat on my back and pearls of sweat gathered in picnics on his brow and I strained to see his green eyes behind the shade. I balanced a quarter on his forearm and he laid one rest on the fleshy skin of my hand between thumb and pointer-finger. Our knees brushed against each other under the table and when a black Labrador Retriever found our little table in the corner we scratched it’s grinning head until it covered both our hands in slobbery kisses. Saliva high-fives!

Driving home I slipped Dispatch into his cd player and cross-legged in the passenger seat I drummed out the beat on my shins. I stole tiny glances at him out of the corner of my eye and laughed heartily as he spewed road rage onto the blacktop before him.

“Sorry. I’m kind of an asshole.”

“I think that might be one of the main things I like about you,” a pause. “So what does that say about me?”

A smile spreading deep into his cheeks.

Arriving home he followed me upstairs and used three remotes to maneuver the dvd into submission. We watched Eastbound & Down and nerded it out on my tiny computer. There was a moment, sitting by his feet, both leaning over the screen, when I turned my head to ask him something and he was so close. I could almost feel his hot breathe on my skin. Almost feel fingers tangled in hair. Almost see our bodies sweat glistened against sheets. My heart jumped into my throat and the moment passed and we turned back to the T.V.

So much the better. It’s friendship that I need. Friendship that my body is screaming out for in the loneliness of this big city. He offers it up willingly. Still, my brain is an addict’s brain and these lips are an addict’s lips. I push down the tumbling in my gut and I repeat a mantra in my head and when he hugs me goodbye I try to remain satisfied with the sobriety of this love life. And I am. I think that I am.

The Little Ones – Lovers Who Uncover

The Rescue

I make it to Portland out of breath and feeling as though I’ve run here full-out from a nightmare. The flight was purgatory, a sausage elbow jabbing into me relentlessly until folded up like a pretzel against the window the sky offered scraps of comfort. A plane flying in the opposite direction trailing a line of straight white cloud. A patch of ground. The tip of Mount Hood. Life.

Navigating the airport was easy. I’d been here before. I followed the flow of disembarking passengers and when I saw him, even before he saw me, I felt all my worries drain out of me. I saw my father and it felt like catching a glimpse of porch light late at night between trees when lost in the woods you were nearing panic, not sure which way to turn. Relief. A direction home.

“Lindsay-girl!” A cheek-stretching grin.

He didn’t demand an explanation. He didn’t pry or judge my actions. He bought me a vanilla latte and let the words spill out of me unencumbered. I shook my head as I told him the story, attempting to shake something loose, perhaps. I told it wryly at my own expense and I made him chuckle and then laugh obnoxiously in the crowded baggage claim. He put his arm around my shoulders and I stood there for a while leaning against him, at peace.

Whatever the last week has been, whatever mistakes were made or things said or hearts broken, it offered up a fragile silver-lining that could be easily overlooked. It allowed for a rescue. A chance for a father to swoop in for the very first time, gather his daughter up broken wing in hand, and carry her home.

When It All Goes Wrong Again…

Life hasn’t been good to me lately. This is fact. What do I do when things aren’t going my way? I make a mixtape to equal parts wallow in and pull me put of my funk. This one is shorter than my other mix tape that I made when I left for Europe this summer. It’s filled with a butt load of bands that I have only just discovered and fallen in love with. All of the songs on this list are being played on repeat in my head. So if you are having a rough time of it, pull up your chair, throw on some headphones and lets jam out together, yeah?

When It All Goes Wrong Again: Birdykins Mix #2: What To Play When It Ends

(I haven’t got Photoshop on this computer yet so no pretty graphic here. Click the title to preview/download the mix on mixable.net)

1. Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin – Some Constellation
2. Ben Lee – Kids (MGMT Cover)
3. The Avett Brothers – I And Love And You
4. Junior Brothers – Dull To Pause
5. The Dodos – Fables
6. Ohbijou – Thunderlove
7. Seabear – I Sing I Swim
8. Earlimart – Before It Gets Better
9. The xx – Crystalised
10. Uh Huh Her – Explode
11. KiD CuDi – Pursuit of Happiness (Ft. MGMT & Ratatat)
12. Say Hi – Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh
13. Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin – Think I Wanna Die

The One Without Tears

He takes a pillow and retreats to the couch. Now would be the time to say something if there is something to say, I think. But, my voice is hoarse from disuse and I can’t bring myself to leap from this skin to his. To reach out a hand and pull him in. So, I brush my teeth roughly and look those eyes in the mirror while I do. Spit and lean my head against the glass. I’d cry tears for him, for us, if I had them in me. I’m dry as the desert around us, parched and crumbling. I’ve got nothing in me to give. There will be no flowers here. My body—in what appears to be an act of self-preservation—has numbed all areas surrounding my heart. I am blue in the face from struggling to turn this empty ache into something tangible. Just one damn tear, please.

Nothing.

My skin is brown again from the pool-side rays. I’m afraid that if I walked into those sandy mountains I might disappear. Lay down and fade away. Become one more rock on the hillside or turn to dust as the wind scattered my ashes beneath the indifferent sky. Maybe. Or maybe I would be just as lost up there as I am down here—blinking stupidly into the sun.

He tells me to remember. But, my memory is already doing what it does best, censoring and blurring and locking the pain away into tiny separate containers stacked high on a shelf somewhere in my mind. I feel like he needs me to cry. As if these tears—dry behind my eyes—will bring new life like the rain. Maybe they would. Maybe all I need is for tears to kiss that burnt soil inside me and offer it some relief, marry it in promises of hope for a green and fragrant future. But, the sky offers no opinion and the clouds obscuring my vision stay pregnant with disbelief.

I struggle and I toss and I turn and I reach blindly into the empty space beside me and the tears? The tears never come.

The One With All the Uncertainty

I knew him first by words and then by voice and I built the rest of him in my mind with patchwork. The hands that tentatively trace patterns on my skin now are not the phantom hands of my imagination. They are real and attached to what feels like a stranger and for this I punish him by pulling away.  I punish him for crimes he has yet to commit and for circumstances that were beyond his control. I am broken. I am pulled apart at the seams and shedding stuffing slowly and for this I am no good for anyone.

We are awkward and at odds with each other, always. We bicker and when he teases me I chafe and turn away. We run out of things to say and we walk in tense silence and I can taste our mutual disappointment heavy in the air like smog. I am not how he wants me to be. I was closed off before I walked into baggage claim and accepted his thoughtful flowers. I don’t remember the last time I received flowers, let alone from someone who took the trouble to remember my favourite kinds. They begin to surrender to the heat almost immediately and I take one of the red-orange tulips and preserve it in the Elizabeth Hay hardcover he presented me with. I am collecting memories already because I have purposefully attached an expiration date to this exchange. I have my escape route planned and I try not to hurt him, this man that I care so much about, until I absolutely have to.I balance my heart and his and I sacrifice the one and then the other and I take no prisoners and keep no regrets.

We have lost our footing and our sweet banter and our silliness and we are wrong all wrong but for a handful of moments here and there which make me wonder. Which make me question if I have acted in haste or for the wrong reasons. He will read these words and twist them in his long fingers and bring them up quietly with a hopeful look in his bright blue eyes and I will hurt him more by not knowing what more to say. For giving him this uncertainty and weighing it heavy on his tender chest. For admitting to this hard empty ache in my own and knowing there is no answer and no solution and no redemption for us here in this soulless city.

We are strangers in every place but one. When I place my glasses carefully on a lounge chair and wade into the turquoise water. When our hands meet underwater and fit more carefully into the other. When features blurred the world is quilted in softness and I feel at ease again. Here we craft a fragile world together. He cleans it daily with a pensive look as he watches me or stares into the depths or into the space behind my head. Sometimes he smiles and I live for these moments when he comes back down to earth and meets me in our playful sea. When he entertains me with a redneck monologue or he laughs at my jokes or he listens to my stories or he admits that maybe just this once I might be right. When he catches my feet underwater and pulls me toward him and I slip away even though I don’t want to, really. But, feel I should. I watch him from the corner of my eye when I’m sure he doesn’t notice and I worry at how skinny he has become. I worry that he isn’t eating and I worry that he won’t have anyone here to remind him to. I worry that leaving him this early will damage him, and I, and both of us together. The choices that we make and the consequences we live with as the water dries slowly on our skin.

So, I tell him all the things he doesn’t want to hear and I keep him at arms length and I prepare what I hope is the softest of all possible landings. For him. For me. For this fledgling relationship that vastly underestimated my issues and the restlessness that I can’t seem to escape. I look toward a long road and another plane and a great open field and I am terrible and hateful and worthless and guilty but for the life of me I can’t help but feel above it all, everything else, a crippling sense of relief.

I don’t know. I don’t know and I like not knowing. I’m sorry, don’t hate me.

The One in Which I Can’t Remember

My whole body aches from a night I still can’t remember. I pop another pill combo of liquid Advil and Reactin allergy pills chasing them down with overpriced bottled water purchased from Hudson News. It feels weird to be in this airport so soon after my last trip. It feels weird to be traveling alone again. Across from me sit two senior couples dressed in various gradients of beige. They are the kind of people who have been together so long they begin to mirror the other’s movements. They chew in sync like cows in a field. I feel sick and have to look away.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I wasn’t supposed to be covered in wounds, bruised and battered from a night that fades in and out of my memory. I feel like I blinked and I missed it. You hear stories about this sort of thing and you know a friend of a friend who woke up once in an abandoned apartment building with no recollection of the events that led up to such a tragic end. You hear it, but you never think it can happen to you. That you could be another black statistic on a white page. The thing is that you are perfectly okay until you just aren’t any more. A cute blond in glasses and a blue shirt buys you a drink and you don’t think to keep your eyes on it and you don’t think what happens so often to others can just as easily happen to you.

I have three memories post-drink. I gather them in my arms and pin them to my bulletin board and I go over every blurry detail and I want to be sure that nothing happened but I can’t because I just don’t know. My mind is a drawer of random bits and bobs shaken heartily and then dumped into a bag and stolen. What’s left? A torn pair of jeans covered in mud and blood. Running and falling off a fence and losing my shoes. Sitting alone in the rain and crying. Head stunned on the pavement watching the rain blur the stars and thinking I could sleep now. I could rest, now.

Waking up naked in my own bed and not knowing how I got there. Trying to reconstruct a night that feels like the worst bender I’ve ever been on but with no hangover. Just disoriented, dizzy and confused. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

The flight begins to board and a little girl of six or seven watches me as I type. Her round face is wide-eyed and innocent. I want to brush the hair out of her eyes and protect her. Preserve that innocence for awhile. I was a little girl once, that’s what’s hard to believe. You collect these experiences like tokens, line them up on your mantel and try not to look away or forget, try to learn from all your mistakes. But, what happens when you don’t remember? When the token in question is a ball of clear glass that falls smashing on the ground? How do we go about collecting the pieces? How do we start making sense of it all?

For me it begins by boarding a plane and leaving it all behind and it’s not running away if you don’t know what you’re running from.

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin – Some Constellation