If I Was Wrong About Paris

He told me I was wrong, that Paris loved them. He found a city block filled with guitar stores that were all closed. They stood in the Louvre and smiled, whispering, “we’re in the Louvre.” He told me he liked Mona Lisa’s smile. They made friends with fellow travelers and stayed up all night wandering foreign streets, he showed them my picture, he said, and they admitted I was beautiful. That we were beautiful together.

They missed a train, lost a reservation, got kicked out of a hostel, got lost, forgot the direction home. They climbed to the top of a deserted monastery, got drunk in the corners of the world I’d missed completely. In Belgium there were more raves than chocolate. In Amsterdam it was the red light district and we lost contact.

I went to work and fell back in love with my city. I went to lunch with a new friend and reconnected with an old one. I emailed people that are better left alone. I wrote in calligraphy and licked all the envelopes closed. I stayed up late watching bands play, propped my chin up in the morning. There were nights I felt like taking up smoking. Mornings I felt like retiring. There were dark circles and pounding hearts. Veins and bottoms up and getting soaked through. New sheets and broken plans. A snake.

He said no comment and that there was a party to attend to.

I didn’t hear a thing. He told me he was coming home early. I thought, if I was wrong about Paris; I could be wrong about everything.

The Wrong Day of the Week

The snow turns to rain. Side slanting, leak into your boots, plaster your hair to your face, turn your thighs red, cold cold rain.

I skate to work cursing, spend the first 5 minutes wringing my pants over the sink and the next hour holding a space heater above my legs.

It should have been a Monday, because this isn’t usually how Thursdays go.

At lunch I do my laundry and carry it folded in a sack on my arm.

Sometimes, the week is timid and yielding to my touch. Sometimes I can take time and warm it like clay between my palms. Shape it. The way you might edit a story the first time you tell it; erasing words even as they spill from your lips.

Sometimes the week is a stranger that just up and slaps you in the face.

Stinging tears and angry cheeks. Irrational.

I move my stuff in piece by piece and the apartment begins to feel more like my own. Except, I do the dishes right away and I straighten the towel in the bathroom after drying my hands. I tidy for an audience and when I lay my head down at night and close my eyes I half-expect applause.

It’s okay if you leave, just lock the door behind you.

 

 

Waiting for Postcards

There’s so much wide open space between us, a million telephone poles, but only one uninterrupted wire. I miss your fingers and how you like to share my mitten so you can hold my hand, they stretch, the threads break. I buy new ones for you to rip apart. It’s worth it.

I think about all the time we spent clothed when we should have been naked. The days when we didn’t get anything done, except each other. How you say I’m too loud, sometimes.

Hear me.

Your days are half over when mine are just beginning and I leave cups around the apartment with tea half-drunk and they don’t disappear anymore. It’s an exercise but I don’t know what I’m learning.

The days countdown and I carry unfinished ones in my pockets. I cross out the wrong answers. I lie to my journal even when I’m telling the truth and we are all just different faces of deceit. This one’s smiling.

I wish I had more sense for you but rational thought is too expensive on one income.

I almost stole a bag of oranges but instead I paid and when I got home I cut them the way your momma taught me.

Unseasonably juicy. Sticky fingered. Waiting for a postcard.

Fruit Fly Memories

The orange juice was too expensive. The orange punch was on sale. Only the rich drink vitamins, but we’re rich in dreams. I mixed it up in a stolen beer pitcher, I liked it more than I thought I should. Orange drink. Mmm.

It’s the middle of winter but we still have fruit flies, so we leave the window open to periodically freeze them out. They always return. Little thoughts that breed memories like nostalgia. Disgusting. I slam the lid on them, out of sight.

One followed me to the living room, flew too close to the sun. I stuck my finger in the glass and it crawled out slowly, saved. Punch drunk.

I squished it against my palm and then wiped it on my jeans.

I felt bad, but only for a moment. Life goes on.

Until it doesn’t.

Twenty Eleven

I like the characters that come out after dark. The people who wrestle with demons across from you in Emergency, slouched against walls, jaws hanging open. You wait for hours just to hear your name. The excuses they make to start a conversation, just to talk about their pain.

We keep our eyes wide open, filling in yesterday’s crossword until 5 am when the next paper comes. I fall in and out of sleep on his arm.

7 hours later the doctor sounds our false alarm. We cancel New Year’s and sleep until dinnertime. Chinese food. A puzzle. Movies. Goodbye, 2010.

I make plans in my head.

Dear 2011,

I have great hopes for you. In 2010 I fell straight down the rabbit hole, this year I will be climbing back up. I’m finding myself around street corners, in conversations with strangers, on the walk to work.

I have promises to make. In 2011, I resolve to say yes more than no. To write every day and to post twice a week. To spend time alone. To open myself to new experiences, new people, new opportunities. To draw again. To start submitting my work. To use only natural products on my skin. To keep up on my correspondence. To eat local, to eat well, and to finally complete Couch to 5k. To take steps toward selling cupcakes at the Farmer’s Market. To drink green tea twice a day. To love harder, clearer, and with more thought than I ever have before.

I’m looking forward, not back. Up, not down. It’s a new year, a blank slate. Here’s to 2011, may it be our best year yet.

Love,

Lindsay

Goose

They called her Goose because her hair looked like feathers and her skin was soft as down. Pretty as a picture but with this honking laugh that should have belonged to a steel worker or maybe a lumberjack. Some bearded man. She made it like a song.

She had long fingers and I would watch them with a damp cloth wiping down counter tops, nails nipped to the bud. To be that linoleum. To be those jagged nails. She was absent-minded but nobody seemed to mind, it was an excuse to talk to her, to remind her about the coffee you ordered or that you wanted your slab of meat well-done. Rare. She’d laugh and you’d laugh and for a moment it was as though the whole world shrunk down to fit inside the peeling walls of that restaurant.

It’s funny how you make stories up for people. How you edit out the parts that don’t fit. She had a ring on her finger but we didn’t like that so we ignored it. We ignored it so when it disappeared leaving a funny little white line behind we had to ignore that too. She was our sunshine. She was our hour or two of escape. It wasn’t because she was particularly funny or surprisingly kind and if she had brilliant thoughts or opinions she never shared them with us. But, there was something in how she listened, head cocked slightly to the side or chin propped in her hand. Her “mmm hmms” or the way her eyes widened when you got to the good parts. You forgot the roles that were assigned to you, customer or waitress, and you remembered the way it was once–crouched down next to someone, hands cupped around an ear, whispering secrets.

It’s easy to remember what we took from her, what we kept coming back for. The bell on the door and her head popping up to find your eyes, being recognized. I whittled her down into the character I needed her to be and she played the part the way, I suppose, most bartenders or waitresses do.

Still, when she left. Well, she left. They hired someone new. Dora. She was nice enough, she called you Hun and Sweetheart and always remembered your order. She smelled like stale smoke and wore orthopedic shoes for her plantars faciitis, she said, from all those heels she wore when she was my age. She’d laugh and I’d ask for the bill.

I don’t know about anyone else, I never see them anymore, but I stopped going. It broke my heart to see someone else in her apron, someone else chewing on the end of her pen. It wasn’t Dora’s fault but she was just too happy or too plain and no one ever went there for the food.

I walked by it the other day for the first time in years. It had been renovated and had a new sign on the door. Reality offices or some such thing. I’d have to look it up.

I still remember her leaning on the counter staring into space. A far away look in her eyes. I’d say, “Goose.” Sort of softly and only if I needed to be somewhere. She’d smile right away and jump back into character. Never startled or surprised. I think that’s what I liked best. How I knew she was dreaming but I never managed to wake her up. How we all liked to try.

Holding You

There’s not much that I’m afraid of but those things that do cause me pause are the big things, the things that do more than go bump in the night. The fear of failure, commitment, public speaking. The fear of opening up and becoming vulnerable. Fear of abandonment. Fears that allow the rest of me to appear fearless, reckless, confident, brave. Often I feel like I’m walking a tightrope of identity with this long net stretching out below me of who you all want me to be.

And whispers, “fall, fall, fall.”

I don’t often do poetry and I have as of yet never recorded myself in spoken word but lately I’ve been inspired to do more, try more, push myself. I’m scared, and someone once said that’s how you know you’re moving in the right direction.

So, here it is. Be kind.

Holding You by Lindsay Rainingbird

[edit: in print as requested]

I told you I’d hold you

but I only meant in words

cradled

the language we don’t have

the search and you

the taste of every ill-placed comma

the way you were

only ever just—there

on the tip of my tongue.

How we reach outstretched

to fill up the blank spaces

to make the H

stay silent

to find a way to explain

describe this

giant abyss this

crack in communication

that we tiptoe around.

I said I’d hold you but

I meant in the palm of my hand

delicately

like a robin’s egg

still warm and heavy with life

purpose.

How a hand closed

becomes a fist

(how a fist is a measure of the heart)

how our hearts were clenched

too tight, our fingers locked

our love arrested.

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