lost

Sometimes I wonder if you still think of me
…or miss me
…or love me
and then I remember you’re with her
so I think probably not.

Sometimes I wonder about the action of breathing
…and how hard it is
…and how much effort it takes
and then I remember that fish drink air through gills
and I wish I was one of them.

Sometimes I think I feel like steam
…and how its heavy and unseeing
…and how it doesn’t have anywhere to go
…and how it doesn’t feel anything
…and how you can’t touch it
and then I remember I’m just a girl on medication
and I need to refill my prescription.

You, Me, & Her

I remember the music—I could feel it. The rhythm was beating into your body so that your heartbeat matched it. The mob of people was moving together. We were all this big group of colors, arms waving in the air, alcohol being slopped down girls’ backs, and lights that flashed every few seconds illuminating the chaos all around.

What I don’t remember is you being there next to me. At some point in the night you left me. We had been dancing, our bodies shaking next to each other; my grin was reflected back at me in yours. And then you were gone.

I knew it was a risk, you going out there with me, but you said you would be okay. You just wanted to dance. You begged Mom and got Dad on your side. I knew it was a bad idea. You had just gotten back, but you were already prancing around in your new black dress, the one with the silver chain clasp in the back and you looked happy. I hadn’t seen you happy—I hadn’t seen you at all—for such a long time, so I argued for your cause to come out with me and my friends. Your smile lit up, and you grabbed my hands, and jumped up and down pulling me with you.

You ran to the bathroom and finished doing your make-up. When you came out the dark circles that usually haunted under your eyes were gone, and your thin lips were painted red. You tried to get me to wear your lipstick, to be more like you, but I didn’t. Your eyes stopped shining for a second, did you know that? I didn’t know it meant that much to you that we do things together, that’s why in the end I stood there in the bathroom, looking at the caked foundation on your face—the one that used to look just like mine—as you carefully traced my lips in candy-apple red lipstick.

Afterwards we stood and looked at ourselves in the mirror. Two girls that once looked so much alike. Mom used to dress us in matching pink outfits, remember? Of course you do. Our hair was long and brown, straight as sticks. Our eyes are hazel, but you have freckles in yours, and I have a small mole beneath my left one. Now you have short black hair that makes you look like a pixie or fairy. You have on red fishnet stockings, and a bunch of black bracelets on your wrist that jangle whenever you move them. I am wearing a short blue dress, though not as short as yours, and I’m wearing traditional panty hose in a neutral color. My still brown hair is in a pony-tail that just brushes the back of my neck—the place where your skulls tattoo is on your neck.

When we were in the car I should have lectured you. I should have told you to give me any cash that you had on you and I shouldn’t have told you that I Mom had given me emergency money and it was stowed in my wallet. Instead I whooped and hollered in the backseat, yelling at my friends in the front to turn the music up. I wonder if what I’m saying is that I shouldn’t have trusted you. Or that I should have listened to all those psychiatrists and doctors who said that you needed to stay away from those types of places. I wonder if I’m saying it was all my fault.

But like I said, once we got there all I remember is feeling the music, and not feeling you next to me. You are still mostly all angles from when you were living on the streets for so long. I used to lay awake in my bed wondering what was so amazing about the high that you chased and why was it so much better than lying in the bed next to mine whispering about your newest crush like you used to? When I stopped feeling you next to me I didn’t panic at first. I thought maybe you had gone to the bathroom or gone to get some water—it was so hot in there I wouldn’t have blamed you for approaching the bar for just water. I didn’t think to go to the coat check and make sure Mom’s emergency cash was safely tucked in my purse. I also didn’t think to walk over to the bar on the floor above us where the cute waiter whose name I now know is Sean was working, busy pouring drinks, and too busy to notice whether or not you were wearing the green bracelet that meant you were old enough to order any alcoholic drinks. You weren’t.

The music started to pound faster and there were so many bodies pushed up against each other, and some guy’s hands were wrapping themselves around my waist, and I looked up to find you—I knew you’d pull me away from him—but you weren’t there, and I couldn’t remember the last time that you had been right there next to me, and that’s when I started to worry. I began turning my body around in different directions looking for you. The guy who was grabbing me thought this was an invitation to grab my backside and hug it close to him, and I let him just long enough to see that you weren’t behind him, and then I turned around and walked away.

I headed to the stairway that led to the next dance room, and there you were, except it wasn’t you, it was other-you. I could tell right away because normally you look like me, but different, but other-you doesn’t look like me at all. Other-you moves much more quickly than you do and she gets irritated with people much more easily. Her movements are really jerky and she usually waves her arms funnily in front of her face, listening to music that her black bracelets make, and when the bracelets separate from each other you can see red lines that have slashed into her arms and if other-you has been out a lot then her arms are covered in scabs as well and her veins sink into her skin, and her skin is wrinkly and old looking. Other-you is so skinny, and a lot of times she smells like smoke, dirt, and something else that kind of makes me want to gag, but it also kind of makes me want to hug her really close to me and tell her it’s all going to be okay and that I’m going to do whatever it takes to make her better.

That’s what I’m thinking about doing when I see other-you clawing yourself up on the rail of the stairway that I was headed towards. When other-you saw me, other-you started waving frantically as if other-you were excited to see me. I asked other-you where you got it but other-you couldn’t hear me and other-you didn’t want to listen to me anyway. I started pointing up the stairs and other-you agreed to go with me. I pulled other-you behind me because other-you were having trouble walking. Other-you kept giggling into my ear and I just tugged other-you harder, pulling other-you towards the exit sign that I could see, bright red, in the distance.

The lights were so bright. They were all I could see. There was a whirring sound and men’s voices. There was glass, and blood, and pain. I couldn’t move, I was too tired to move, and I hurt too much. I don’t know if I was able to scream. I know now that you weren’t. I could see tiny shards of glass poking out of my arms. My face was burning. One of my legs was stuck under something—it felt like when you wrap a rubber band around your finger for a really long time, and it’s a prickly type of pain, but you know once the rubber band comes off the real pain will start. I didn’t want the real pain to start, and I had a feeling that it had nothing to do with my leg so I just lay there and tried not to turn my head in any direction. I could feel tears falling out of my eyes and they just made my face burn more and I really just wanted to hold your hand and have you tell me that everything was going to be okay like when we were kids and I’d fall of my bicycle, but I didn’t know where you were.

When I woke up I had a tube sticking out of my nose, and another stuck in my hand. Machines were bleeping next to me, and everything was white and smelled like Lysol. Whenever I moved a little in my bed I could hear plastic rustling underneath me. The walls were white with pink trim, and when I looked out the window that was in the room it was bright outside. One of my legs was in a large blue cast, and I had red scabs up and down my arms, but I couldn’t feel the pain. Everything was sort of fuzzy and I just wanted to go back to sleep, but I couldn’t.

You weren’t in the bed next to me. Mom was crying and Dad couldn’t say anything. He just kept shaking his head, and rubbing my hand in his. The doctor came in dressed in more white. He checked a clip board that must have been hanging from the end of my bed, and patted Dad’s shoulder awkwardly. I tried to ask him where you were. I tried to tell him that you weren’t you, but other-you, but all I could manage to say was your name, and it hurt to say that much, and then Mom started crying more and she shuddered, and Dad had to hold her for a few minutes. The doctor gave me this look, it was pity, and sadness, and guilt, and the same look that most people look at me with now. You would laugh at the look if it were you or flick them off so that they knew better than to feel sorry for you. Other-you would be somewhere where the looks couldn’t find her, hidden in some alley, pushing needles into her arms, but I’m not really sure how she did it because you never talked about it to me when you were home safe again. You always said you didn’t want that part of you to be something that we shared, so you never did, and it’s now just one more thing that we never will say to each other.

When I got you into the car I wasn’t sure where to go—who to trust with you. The doctors at the hospital, your therapists at the treatment center, Mom and Dad. It wasn’t hard to steer the car though because all of them were down the same two-lane highway. I think other-you knew that. I think that’s why other-you started screaming at me. Were you scared of which one I would take you to? Other-you started whining for me to pull over, but I wouldn’t. That’s when other-you started reaching for the steering wheel. I kept smacking other-you’s hands off, but other-you would just smack me back and pushed the wheel—you pushed us—to the wrong lane of the road.

I saw the lights coming forward. I heard a honking horn. I tried to reach for other-you’s hands and push them away, but other-you was screaming so loud, and then other-you wasn’t screaming at all and neither were you.

Apples to apples,
dust to dust,
of all the things in this world,
you are a must.

or maybe:

Satin to apples,
laughter to dust,
of all the things in this world,
you are a must.

High

You used to put
your fingers on my thigh,
and next thing I knew,
I was flying high.

i know this is a totally random web page, but i love fashion. i love clothes. i love pretty things. and you know what? i’m a girl so its ok to have a web-page devoted to vogue. : )

“Nude Interrogation” by Yusef Komunyakaa

“A Story About the Body” by Robert Hass

Books& Poems & Authors I Want to Read:
“The Portable Sixties Reader”
William Faulkner
Margaret Atwood
Anne Sexton
Gjertrude Stein
Gjertrude Schnackenberg
Flannery O’Conner
“The Waste Land”
Ezra Pound

Pickles the clown fish
swims the deep blue ocean,
fishing for the newest bottle
of cognac
flavored cologne
wishing, kissing, twitching,
like the eel
that passes by
on its way to the movies,
its date a sting ray
who is meeting him there
wearing a purple sash
in her hair.

“I can’t see”
said the little girl to the stranger.
“It’s okay” he
whispered in her ear
twirling the satin ribbon
wrapped around her pretty curls
in his hands
much like he would later
wrap her fingers
around his very un-satin like
curls.

Birth is not for me,
I slipped between my mother thighs
bloodless, bold,
and already spilling my lies,
you love me,
you hate me,
your ears open up
and words form
falling from my lips:
abortion,
birth,
cumming,
death
and somehow i already knew my ABCs,
and you never questioned why,
but i tell you its
because, birth is not for me.

Perhaps I am a poet, perhaps these are all just little twists and turns of phrases. Perhaps I am useless and no one will ever see what is me, what am I? And what do I have to say anyway? What are my themes? What do I write about, what will they study, if they ever do study me?

love, sex, abortion, misscarriage, birth, young relationships, drugs, alcohol, things that poke, thinks that bite, sisters, women (and here i thought i did not care about my sex/gender that it is all a big hype, but maybe it isn’t, maybe its a part of me no matter how little attention i pay it because i seem to dwell on it incessitanlty anway), death, rape, molestation, touching.

Sylvia Plath
Anne Sexton

My tired body was shaking. The linoleum was working to cool myself down. Coolness always helped when I had a headache. As a little girl I had discovered that lying on the bathroom floor was the only safe place to sleep when I was sick. Usually I would take a hot bath. I would slide my aching body into the hotness and float there, moving where the water moved, my legs bent at the knees and poking outwards like white icebergs in the North. My belly and tiny breasts would be submerged and rocking with the water against each side of the tub. Normally this motion would be like riding in the back of a van and making me motion sick, but because my stomach was doing a sort of rocking of its own this motion seemed to make everything equal and I could just lay there in the water pretending that I was the tiny drops that streaked down my thighs, going faster and faster until they submerged with the bathwater and they were home.

The linoleum that I lay upon was yellow. It’s coolness on my face felt so nice after the hot water that I had just been sitting in. My cream colored towel covered parts of my lower body, just enough so that if someone came in to find me lying on the bathroom floor, I would be somewhat decent. My hair was a tangled mess of curls; it was strung out upon the floor each tendril its own master pulling my head down further into the yellow ground. Water droplets were running down my body and pooling on the tiles; with each tiny splash a bit of steam could be seen rising up and I wished with all my ravaged body that I could feel the nothingness of turning into steam.

I had been like this for almost twenty-four hours straight. My body had spent its day heaving over and over again into the toilet and though I had nothing left to give I still felt raw inside. My insides were at war and my intestines were the battleground. I did not want to keep fighting—I wanted respite, I cried for aid, and when it was delivered to me in the form of a pink liquid, my body rejected it and refused to surrender.

And so here I was lying upon the floor clawing at the water drops that rolled off my skin. I tried to count them as they pulled away from me, but they moved too quickly and my vision was blurring together from the pain. Tears were starting to fall from my face onto the floor and I could not tell them apart from the bathwater. I could not recognize the good healing fluids from that which was pouring from my warring body and I wanted to so bad. I wanted to be able to feel the hope that I could move away from this room even if I had to crawl naked back to my bed, but I couldn’t.

She tripped over the branches littering the ground her breath catching in her throat and nearly choking her. Crawling the rest of the way to the river twigs tore at her knees and left hand. In her right hand the cold piece of metal had left imprints in her palm from where she had been holding it so tightly. Her sobbing voice came out from between her lips as a howl, the sound reverberating off the water creating tiny ripples in the blue stillness.

Looking out over the bank of the water she could see herself reflected: her face was red, blotchy and tear stained. Her pink dress was torn and her hands were bloody. She left the metal object on the ground and splashed her hands in the water trying to get the reddish-brown liquid off. The wind played with her hair and the sounds of the reeds rustling around her began to calm her. She had always heard that bathing was a cleansing ritual in some religions. Perhaps this river water would cleanse her. The cold stung her fingers sending a tiny prickling sensation like a safety pin’s poke on the back of her hands. The blood began to wash itself off and bits of it could be seen in the iridescence of the moonlight that shown from the half-moon. She pulled her hands out of the water wiping them on the grass trying to remove all traces from them and leaving them. The river’s water seemed contaminated where her hands had been. All along the bank were stillness colored in crystal blue except for a small area of ripples right below her.

She picked her free hand up from the ground and wiped the streaking tears from her cheek. This gesture left traces of mud on her face. Her reflection showed her matted hair mixed with tree branches and leaves. The steady rhythm of the water reflected her guilt back to her. The stillness contrasted with the rash movements her body had just performed. The river’s placid quietness seemed surreal to the screams that were echoing in her ears.

Could the world really not know? Could a whole ecosystem of underwater creatures not care? Could life go on moving forward just as this river lazily moved the same drop of water never being in the same place for more than a moment, yet seeming to never move at all?

“Flustered”

Good girl, keep laughing. That’ll make you seem cool and no one will notice you’re sober.

My back was hurting from the wooden chair that I had been sitting in for the last hour. I kept shifting my legs—right over left, then back again—trying to get more comfortable. I was failing. If I had been drinking I might not have cared, but I wasn’t so I did care. I hadn’t been able to feel my ass for the past ten minutes while sitting in Will’s house watching him and a bunch of his drinking buddies play “Kings” for the last hour.

I wasn’t even supposed to be there. I was expected at a party twenty minutes ago but a part of me didn’t want to leave. It was the same part of me that kept glancing at Will to see if he was looking at me and wondering what each inebriated smile he sent me meant.

The game played on, each player becoming more intoxicated, the smell of Coors Light becoming so pungent I felt it seeping into my skin. I was sure that the sweet stink was engulfing both my body and mind making me as drunk as everyone else there.

I had better not get pulled over when I leave or sure as hell the cop will think I’ve been drinking. That’ll be my luck. The only sober person to leave a party and I get pulled over by a cop. Sheesh.

Eventually, I began to make “I really have to get going noise” noise—getting my purse and looking for my keys. Will offered to walk me out to my car. As we headed out the door, I could feel his heavy body next to mine as we walked towards my little red car. My fair skinned face was illuminated in the light of the moon, but his beard covered most of his leaving him unreadable. Will has always one of those very boisterous people who filled the void of silence with some sort of white noise: the radio, his voice, his phone, or the exhaust pipe on his car. This night he was strangely quiet. I savored the idea of being someone he could just be quiet around.

I know his hand reached out, and opened my car door. I know his hoarse voice told me to be safe as I drove home, and to text him when I got there, but I don’t remember it happening. I just remember him looking at me. I remember his eyes, green, looking back at me from behind his short square glass frames in a way that I had never seen before. His lips were pursed yet looking soft, rounded, and inviting. It was as if he were trying to keep himself from whispering something in my ear. His gaze was intense, boring into me, and somehow I knew exactly what he wanted. Me.

Unfortunately, I also knew he wouldn’t go after it. He had pursued me long enough to realize that we were just friends—nothing more.

The scary thing was that this time I wanted him to purse me. I wanted him to kiss me. I wanted him to throw me upon a white stallion, lead me off into a setting sun, while a white robed church choir sang about our everlasting love in the background. The look on his face, the gaze in his eyes, told me that in that moment he wanted a happily ever after too.

After realizing that I wanted him to kiss me I freaked out—in my head. My blood-pressure shot up, and I silently thanked God it was too dark for him to see my cheeks flame up like fire. Instead I flashed him my best winning smile, got in my car, turned my music up and thought:

OmyGod,OmyGod,OmyGod.

Idiot! Why didn’t you do something? Sheesh.

I don’t know if I was yelling at myself to kiss him or yelling at him to kiss me. Either way we missed our chance. Will tapped my car door twice and began to head back up his drive way. I could hear his feet crunching on the granite rocks. I breathed in and out rapidly and put my care in reverse, slowly, shifted into Drive and accelerated.

Looking back, I might have accelerated a little too quickly.

My tire wheels were no longer on the hard, slick concrete. They were eating up grass. Realizing that my depth perception had momentarily died, I slammed onto my breaks.

What the hell? My car’s not supposed to be closer to that guy’s house than his mailbox.

I then proceeded to say the only two words in the English language that were able to fix the situation:

“Shit!”

“Wiiiiiiiiiilllllllllllllll!”

I heard his crunching footsteps suddenly coming up behind me, footsteps on grass, and mumblings of “I’m coming, I’m coming.” It was funny the flat tone that his voice took. It was as if he wasn’t surprised by the fact that I had just driven a small red vehicle into his neighbor’s yard at all. If anything he sounded exasperated as if I did this all the time and it was just one of those never ending things that happen that he just dealt with, and then shook his head at wondering “will she ever learn to not put cars in my neighbors’ ditches? I mean really…”

I heard him rustling at my door, felt him pulling me out, and depositing me onto solid ground, and heard his red-headed friend Matt standing on the front porch in a drunken slur asking, “Dude, is she alright?”

“She’s fine. Get your truck, man.”

I don’t remember what I did in the interim. I’m sure Will made jokes to make me laugh or told me it’s going to be okay, or maybe he asked me questions about my car. I’ve no idea. My head was still trying to wrap itself around how I wanted to stay and be with Will and way my body ensured that this would happen at least for another half hour.

After a few minutes, Matt—and everyone else for that matter—came outside carrying a large, yellow cable cord to pull my car out of the ditch. Will’s neighbor, the one who owned the ditch that my car was currently French-kissing, appeared out of nowhere and kept questioning me like a robo-cob whether my car was automatic or manual. I had no idea what the hell he was talking about.

Well, I guess its automatic ‘cause it’s not like I use my feet to manually make it move like in the Flintstones…but he has to know that. That can’t be the right answer. Can it? No, wait! That has something to do with the gear shift. Automatic means it moves…well, automatically. And manually, well that means by manual labor. Well, I manually used the shifter to go from reverse to drive so does that make it manual. I thought my dad said something about it being automatic. But I definitely moved the shift myself, and that is manual labor.

I stared at him stupidly.

“Her car is automatic” Will says.

Ok, good to know. My car is automatic.

Will’s mom was standing next to me now and she pulled me towards her getting me out of the way of the men. I latched myself onto her as if she were a life-preserver and pushed myself further into her hug. She smelled faintly of fresh laundered clothes and some sort of cigarette smoke, Newport probably. It was comforting and reminded my slightly of my own mother’s smell.

Maybe I should call my mom and tell her that my car is now residing in a ditch.

Images of my mother screaming bloody murder at me, Will, the ditch, and the Ford Motor Company popped into my head.

Maybe I’ll just tell her tomorrow.

I wasn’t sure that I could remember that speed-dial number that she was just then. I shook, and Will’s mom soothed me telling me it was all going to be alright, Will and his buddies would take care of everything.

A drunken Matt tries to pull my car out with his old Explorer while a drunken Will tries reversing my car out of that damn ditch. The yellow cable cord breaks under the weight of my car.

Sure, everything’s gonna be just fine.

Will begins chuckling to himself at this point and shaking his head every time I get up the nerve to meet his eyes. Will’s mom has a smile on her face, but tries to hide it for my sake. Matt jokes, and hooks up a stronger chain from the back of my car to the tow-hitch of his truck. I am going to die of embarrassment.

Oh my God. I leave a party—the only sober person!—and crash my car into a ditch. A bunch of drunken guys are now trying to get my sober ass out of this. How does that happen?

The chain breaks.

My back dumper now sits about ten feet away from the rest of my car.

I groan. Will and Matt look surprised, but laugh it off.

Somebody puts the bumper into my back seat.

The back bumper of my car is now in my back seat. That’s can’t be good.

Time passes, and finally a nice big chain is wrapped around the bottom of my car and attached to the truck. Lots of jokes are made about how they hope the car’s frame doesn’t break. I poke Will on the back with my finger; “Can the frame really break?

He shrugs his shoulders and nods his head. I’m not sure what that means but it isn’t reassuring.

If the frame breaks, and we have to put that in the back seat too, am I still going to be able to drive my car home? Maybe I can get Will to drive it for me…He’s only had like six beers…that I know of. How sober do you have to be to drive a broken car anyway?

Dirt sprays us, a lurching noise is made, and my car comes out of the ditch. Everyone cheers and drunken applause can be heard down the street. I can see a few heads peak out behind window blinds of the nearby houses.

Great, now even the neighbors know that I crashed my car in this guy ditch.

I just want to cover my face in humiliation. Will’s parents are going to follow me home he says, and passes me my car keys. I nod my head up and down. He hugs me, tells me it’s going to be okay, and to call him when I get inside my house. I nod my head up and down some more.

You know, Snow White didn’t have to put up with this shit to get her first kiss from her handsome prince.

I had the weirdest dreams last night. In the first I was trying to run away from my dad’s house and catch a train to either O’s or Val’s place. I was in my truck (I don’t know why I didn’t just drive there instead of having to ride the train) and as I was waiting and getting all my luggage out, this old couple showed up and kind of creeped me out, and then this older guy came up and he was trying to catch me and then he caught all of us in his car, but it was really a set up to catch and rape me, and I was defending myself from him, but I wouldn’t let him go because I wanted the police to get him, so he drove off with me and the other couple with him and I was yelling for the police, but they didn’t come.
In my second dream I was dressed in all white and I was in a mental institution. I was walking around it was kind of set up like a mall, but I was still there for some reason. I think I was vaguely aware that I was there for an eating disorder, but that might not be true. I was talking to someone there, I don’t know if it was someone who worked there or if I had made a friend (kind of reminded me of that book that I read (Impulse) where the girl falls in love with another patient there. I don’t remember getting help there or anything, I was just kind of nervous that I was there.

Once upon a time…
a little girl lived in a world where Death
ruled the land freely.
He would sit in his throne
built of gnarled tree-limbs,
each branch woven together
with the feather’s of crow wings
and recite the laws of land:
Thou shalt commit sin
Thou shalt die from it
Thou shalt not be saved
For Thou are not worth saving.

And the little girl beleived
that she was worthless, as
did all the souls in the land.

Their sin overwhelmed them:
cheating husbands whose
lusty loins plunged into unwilling women,
cuckolding wives whose wombs filled
inexplicably often,
cheaters and thieves ruled the Night Kingdom
acting as guards for the Prince of Darkness
and demanding worldly treasures as forfeit
for their souls,
selfish gluttons cared not a whit
for the poor and famished feasting
instead upon the poisonous fruits
of Eve’s favorite tree,
murderers played with blood
in the streets
decorating themselves in their victims’
worthless fluids.

And over all this did the High King
look down upon from his
darkly decorated throne
and sigh in his accomplishments
for no one could rescue
his people from him.
They were stuck,
praising his name
with each sin that they
committed and each
prayer of forgiveness
never leaving their
unopened lips.

It passed the fuck out during twilight.
It empties itself into a steel bucket.
It swallows men for dinner then
sucks down mint-chocolate chip ice cream
for dessert.
It sits atop the house wearing
nothing bur rain boots
squiggling designs into the clouds.
It sings to the cat at
two a.m. songs from the 1950s
like those of Chuck Berry and
recites passages from Raymond
Chandler novels to the telephone
pole across the street as if he
cares what it has to say.
It says nothing worth
listening to
without a couple of beers being
shared between friends first.
It stuffs its nose with white
powdered candies and whistles at fly by
headlights.
It sleeps in the
bathtub next to the goldfish
swimming in its own filth
like the goldfish.