How do people spend their time?
I've never been able to figure that one out.


I'm trying to write a story every day this summer. YEAH, RIGHT.


__

She wants a cigarette. It's been four hours and she's pissed. She wants some coffee, and a cigarette, and doesn't think that's too much to ask.

This is what she spends her time thinking about: broken skylights. How to use the words "splinters", convincingly, in a story. How to get his attention without throwing herself in front of a bus with his name tattooed on her forehead. This is what she spends her time thinking about: herself.


CONTINUED: IMPOSSIBLE DIALOGUE FROM THE CONVERSATIONS (BETWEEN TWO PEOPLE WHO DON'T KNOW EACH OTHER ANYMORE, BUT THINK THEY DO)

"I used to write about Claire all the time."
"I know you did."
"It was that obvious?"
"Well, I knew you. I knew what you were seeing with her. I knew what you were doing. I recognized her on the page. For me, it was obvious. For others, maybe, it wasn't. I don't know."
"Those things happened to me."
"I know they did."
"I saw her that way. I carried her that way."
"I know you did."
"So why don't I write about her anymore?"
"You don't need to anymore."
"Then what am I writing about now?"
"Me."
"Will I stop writing about you one day?"
"I don't know."
"I think I will always need to write about you."
"Did you feel that way about Claire when you were writing about Claire?"
"I can't remember. I think I will always need to write about you."
"That could be true." Pause. "Are you in love with me?"
"Shut up. This isn't about you."
"Do you think I will always need you to write about me?"
"Shut up! This isn't about you."
"Then what's it about?"
"This is about me giving up on you."
"Did you give up on Claire?"
"Yes."
"Is that why you stopped writing about her?"
"I don't know."
"Are you giving up on me?"
"Yes."
"Are you giving up on me?"
"No. I tried. But I can't."
"Is that because you still need to write about me?"



&


"I want you to come inside me."
"Wait, what?"



&

________

Fuck it. I wasn't really planning on posting this, in case specific eyes saw it and got scared. BUT fuck that. I'm proud of this voice. I'm proud of being able to see these things. And of being able to turn so much shittiness (over which I could be freaking out) into poetry. So fuck you. Just read it.


I said, 'I just keep writing the same story over and over.'
Nick said, 'How so?'
I said, 'There's two people, and something bad happens to them.'
Nick said, 'Maybe there should be three people, and something good happens.'
I thought, 'Yeah, but I don't know how to write that story. I only know how to write the bad thing. I mean, I can't just make something up.'


WHATEVER BITCHES IT'S SUMMER 2009.

Anyway, it's the little things. Like curling your hair, or leaving your socks on. And his arm shaking the stray honeysuckle bough free from its thicket, only because he knows you love it. Only because he wants to bring it to you, even though it's strangling the tobacco.
His arm shaking.
His arm.

He brings it to you, the whole branch, and lays it on the windowsill over the sink. He trudges back out to the field, where, slowly, one heavy section at a time, he's moving the irrigation line. And instead of your morning coffee, you sit at the kitchen table and sip honeysuckle sap from one tiny blossom after another.

Or maybe you just read that in a book. And dreamed it last night; woke up, painfully and with tired eyes, confused. Thinking you were already living your life, in the big house close to the mountains and with children running wild in the yard. Thinking you already knew his arms. Thinking you already had them. That must be it, because as far as you can tell, now, you're 20 and lonely and hungover.
His arm.
His arm shaking.
____________________________
The pink lemonade spills out, leaving me sticky and stuck to myself. In the place where my flesh connects, in the place where it folds over. I need a pen, I need a piece of paper, I need squared pages between black leather binding. I need sticking piano keys and empty hampers. Made of wire.

Oh, oh, get off of me. Get out of me. What are you thinking? I'm pretending it's not you but him inside. I'm pretending not to have noticed the sound it made when Kirk called McCoy. I'm pretending that whistle didn't knock the wind right out of me. I'm pretending not to have laid awake at night pretending the pillow was his back, pressed up close to mine. I'm pretending she doesn't exist. I'm pretending I said everything I needed to. I'm pretending I said it all to his face. I'm pretending I didn't just waltz into your beautiful apartment and fuck you. I'm making shit up. I'm not thinking anything.

It wasn't them. It was me who hit him in the face. Why would he lie? Why would he say it was a group of kids? He was embarrassed and blood-stained. He was hurting.

This isn't about you! This is about America! This is about America! This is about how much I love my country and how hard I'm willing to work for her. This is about how I hate what's happened here; this is about going back to the soil (going back to the goddamn fucking earth we built this nation on) and ploughing it up, ploughing it over, ploughing it under. This is about perfect breasts and luscious lips and, and yes, this is about unbelievable sex. This is about America.

You get told: you have a problem.
You get told: you are the problem.
You get told: you are what's the matter with me.
You get told: I'm leaving.

Do the telling! Do the telling!
I am not the problem, say.
I am perfect, say.
Go, say.
Go, say.
Go, because I am a better man than you will ever know. Say it. Say it. Yell it, for fuck's sake. It is truth.

Say it. Say, I am not a child. Say, You cannot treat me this way. Say, If there is one thing I have learned, if there is one thing that always holds true, it is that no one, no matter how much you love them, has the right. Say, You cannot do this to me anymore.

Instead, you unpack her boxes of shit and you make her a place in your home. (I wish I wasn't writing this). Instead, you move her into your life again. (I can't help it, though). Instead, you kiss her cheek and watch her play with the dog. (I really can't, it just pours out of me). Instead, you grab her chest and sigh loudly into her neck. (I hate it! It makes my blood curdle, spoiled milk!). Instead, you tell her how much you missed her. (I'd be crying if this were about you so shut the fuck up). Instead, you fuck her. (Shut the fuck up!). Instead of being you, you are being beaten, and I vomit at the thought.
Pussy-whipped.


Claw up! Claw up & out! You want to be better? Be better! Just be! Be shining and free! The land of the brave spread out at your feet, and you cry because she's drunk and God-knows-where? You cry because she tells you to? We are straight up promised liberty and justice. Go out. Get yours. Claw up.


I'M COMING BACK FOR THIS ONE. THIS ONE'S LYING WOUNDED IN THE MUD, AND I HAVE TO KEEP MOVING RIGHT NOW, BUT I'M COMING BACK WITH SOME GAUZE LATER, I PROMISE, I PROMISE, I PROMISE.

LISTEN, BOY.
LISTEN TO ME BEFORE I RUN OFF.
this isn't about you, you think it is, it doesn't make sense that it wouldn't be, given that i reference you all the time, but listen to me, all i want to say to you is, chin up!

chin up, boy.

To whom it may concern:

There are no Great White Sharks in the San Francisco bay. There are some who live around the Farallon Islands, about 30 miles off the pacific coast of San Francisco. While they may occasionally travel close to the mouth of the bay, they rarely (if ever) spend their time in the water between the city of SF and the East Bay.

Do your research.

Yours,
Liz Wachtler

whatever you're doing, don't stop.
it feels
really
good

hi. i put you on my teeth. let's recreate two weekends ago

note to self:

abraham

I have dreamed about you every night for a full week.

Are you okay?

You and I tried to recite the alphabet but fell about laughing.

Something for the Brothers (who are currently positioned in my line of sight)

I will lay your broken sorry heads on my bosom, where they may splash wherever they like. And your simultaneous glances will open wounds of my own, for you to lick clean and sew together. And your laughter in the hollows of my joints. And you hand on her back as if you knew her, or loved her. And instead of looking into you

This is how it feels to meet a poet. I took his hand in mine as if it belonged to me and glanced up at his face for a moment. And I am sure that his eyes remained on mine, but I stole a glance downwards and as my left slipped with a mind of its own over your right, so that I sandwiched you with my sweaty palms, I took in the sight of our hands entwined, because that's all I've ever really been able to look at, honestly. Suddenly there was space between our skin (so sudden I'm not sure I even noticed it as it happened). And I told you, there's something I want you to know about. And I told you, I'd like to write it down for you, so you can look at it, and do with it what you will. And I said, I don't know if I can do this, my hands are shaking. So with a deft, smooth movement, you relieved me of the weight of the small black notebook with its perfectly-sized pages and said, I will write it for you. So I told you all you needed, and with your own pen you wrote me down onto the squared page, which you tore out and took to keep.

Later, I sat out in the sunlight watching you and your brother move in circles and speak. I rubbed sunscreen onto my burnt shoulders and felt sticky. And the sunscreen smelled like summer. And for a hot second I was filled with poetry, but it dried up in the grass like spilled water. I remembered that I wanted to tell you that I'm teaching myself quantum mechanics, and that I wanted you to ask me why. I wanted to be able to tell you that it's so I can write truer things.

after you left.


je me suis endormie. je me suis levée. j'ai fumé une cigarette. je me suis endormie.
À 10h, je me suis levée à cause d'une bruit sur la porte.
C'était un homme. Il était fâché contre moi. Je ne comprend pas pourquoi. J'ai quitté l'appartement.

making the beast with two backs

I'm making predictions,
I'm foreseeing your fate and it's this:
We're talking in unison and identically dressed.

I learned a frightening fact and it's been buried under me for weeks:
Two people out of every hundred
Wait before I continue and think about this with the entirety of your brain
Everything in your skull needs to concentrate on what you are about to read.
Two people out of every hundred are hearing things
And the tiny bones in their ears don't vibrate.
And they are taken in by those who are jealous and ready to believe
And they live in constant fear
And they are convinced.

we are all constantly participating in a set of increasingly brilliant triumphs

a list of words strung together that i want to remember

It concerns our genetic material

He wanted a picture of my teeth

Things dry up

that which i saved for you! i want to be sunlight on broken boughs and honey glazed, jasmine roasted. i will pull and push and pull and be There with you. I will let you play with whatever you want. I want to read to you! In my own voice, booming and full. I never want to forget what you look like. Je vous aime, je t'aime- formal, informal, whatever you think.

i am in motion

i have a bubble in my chest
pop!, damnit!
(i don't mean a burp, i mean an explosion of emotional capacity; i can fix anything; i am going to be in love with everything for ever; i am going to go to moon; i am going to crunch on gravel! ON GRAVEL! i learned to ride a bike on the hill outside my grandparents' house, my cousin taught me. he was relentless, made me get up every time i fell and do it again, and when i finally fucking got it, it was beautiful! it was a gravel road, and debris was coming out of the scrapes i sustained for weeks, but it was so fucking worth it- the next week, there was a hailstorm and we rode in circles around the driveway until the stones got so big they were dangerous, golf balls plummeting. chester i love you.) we rode in circles.

I think this is actually a short story; but it came out this way first. I'll come back to it.

out in the green fields
pulled on poppy leaves, doing it wrong
he said: watch me jump.
we removed ourselves, and drank sweet tea from a sauce jar,
the lid still stained orange and smelling like
dinner.
he said: watch me jump.

i found his hand, later,
severed at the wrist, palm up & fingers
curled towards the blue sky, waiting for something to hold.
i wanted to put something in it
a bouquet
or a pebble (rounded by seasons of wave crashing,
and smooth and cool and burnt-red)
or a list of reasons and errands.
its architecture explained everything,
the creases on the knuckles spoke in latin and-
the ground newly plowed &
littered with seed;
in the distance, marking off the property line:
a fence, and behind that, the new irrigation ditch.
birdsong and summer like rocksalt, the sun just so
& burning my skin.
at the table, head in his hands, dripping onto the dinnerplate piled
high with breakfast,
his brother said: I never saw him
and I'm not an inattentive man
I shoulda heard him.
and his mother from the kitchen
up to her elbows in salty, too-wet pie dough:
Don't beat a dead horse.
I put the hand on the mantel & pictured it coming free
tossed
by the teeth of the plow
arcing up into the sky (& grasping for it)
and landing, finally, at the side of the road.

i like the idea of pouring salt on the ground.
last summer, i emptied the icecream churn out on the lawn
rocksalt everywhere.
my mother said, oh no.
the next morning there was a circle of dead grass
next to where the picnic table had been.
i wanted to do it again, but instead i let the water evaporate out of the can
and scooped the salt out,
put it back into the bag.
i wanted to crunch on it-
this isn't going anywhere, ill come back for it

what do you hate?
nobody, nobody; it is just beside me.
i'm angry with both of us.
what happened?
what did you feel, besides the responsibility
for all of it?
i thought these things

i don't believe in leaving things to chance
i believe that things are extremely complicated
oh! i want always to be imprinting these collections of letters
i want to imprint them on you
on your mucus membranes
eaily damaged but readily repaired
i want to write freely
free associations
cut up neatly on the desk
on the mirror
ingested.
perfected.
why are we not
inside each other
with no emotional meaning to that all i want to say is that your body fits with mine.
it fits!
perfectly!

i pushed into you
without knowing
how brittle your ribs were.
do girls ever tell you that you look like
a photograph they saw
once
a long time ago
last week.

anyway
i'm writing again
do you want to look away.
o!

in the dream,
you left a message on my machine:
you said my name
and paused before laughing
the laugh meant: you stupid fuck. you poor, stupid fuck.
so i knocked some of my own teeth out
and drew on my face with paint
and put on jewelry
and braided my hair with ribbons and feathers, and danced under the moon
an ancient ceremony i made up for this occasion.
and i tried not to think about running into you
your face and the way my hands trembled
did you know that they trembled?

my father called this morning
sister's going in for neurological tests
to investigate her bouts of shakiness.
i said, father!
and i paused before laughing.
the laugh meant: you stupid fuck. you poor, stupid fuck.
delerium tremens,
the technical term.

i wrote this, december 18 2008
it's about you, nicholas.

Let me tell you- how much I have come to love you over the course of our entire relationship- these past two weeks.
I love you in a lot of ways. I love you when I see you in passing. I love you when I send you pictures of things, and these pictures I send you are really just ways of saying: I love you. Because I need you to know it, and I need you to know that you are lovable in every way. Because I need to remember that I am capable of loving, it has been so long, even though I have been loved. Oh, you!

Here, with the sun in my eyes, I cannot remember a time when I did not love you. I remember a time when you were absent, your absence being the manifestation of my love for you, your absence being the underneath consciousness of my ability to love you despite your goneness. here, with the sun in my eyes, I recognise that I knew I was waiting for you to arrive, I recognise the feeling of your absence as my waiting to begin loving you, and through that, I realise that I am waiting for many more people to arrive so that I can begin loving them, I have been waiting to be conscious of peoples' presences rather than their absences, I am waiting, where are they? where were you?

i am slowly waking from a long and tedious sleep. a sleep from which i had convinced myself that it was impossible to wake.
and oh i have
missed the most
beautiful things
i have been so
totally empty
for so long and

and now i am filling up.
i can feel myself appreciating things.
and i am so so so
scared, I am terrified
and elated beyond
anything i have ever (striked out)
many things.
I feel as though I am going to do something drastic and brave.

twelve red ants climb the ladder in my stocking.
they punctuate my leg, pincers pincing.
i wish i had known the violences you have
what it means
a bicycle chain against my face or
whatever it is you saw.

i wrote a story about coyotes.
it starred the boy i thought i was going to marry.
he plays rugby now,
and he's bigger.
i wrote a story and in it
the coyotes found us kissing in the sandbox
and broke my collar bones out of jealousy.
do i remember the day the bear came to our back yard?
or did i make that up, too?

and what was her name,
the girl with the elevated palate
whose grey matter popped.
annika.
annika my first conversation was with you.
i named myself, can you remember?
propped up against the pillows,
eyes open, but did you see me?
you wore a red dress with a white lace collar,
i was three. i asked you,
how is it spelled?

My Autopsy

by Michael Dickman

There is a way
if we want
into everything

I’ll eat the chicken carbonara and you eat the veal, the olives, the small and glowing loaves of bread

I’ll eat the waiter, the waitress
floating through the candled dark in shiny black slacks
like water at night

The napkins, folded into paper boats, contain invisible Japanese
poems

You eat the forks,
all the knives, asleep and waiting
on the white tables

What do you love?

I love the way our teeth stay long after we’re gone, hanging on despite worms or fire

I love our stomachs
turning over
the earth

—–

There is a way
if we want
to stay, to leave

Both

My lungs are made out of smoke ash sunlight air
particles of skin

The invisible floating universe of kisses, rising up in a sequinned helix of dust and cinnamon

Breathe in

Breathe out

I smoke
unfiltered Shepheard’s Hotel cigarettes
from a green box, with a dog on the cover, I smoke them
here, and I’ll smoke them

There

—-

There is away
if we want .
out of drowning

I’m having,
a Gimlet, a Caruso, a
Fallen Angel

A Manhattan, a Rattlesnake, a Rusty Nail, a Stinger, an Angel Face, a Corpse Reviver

What are you having?

I’m buying
I’m buying for the house
I’m standing the round

Wake me
from the dash of lemon juice,
the half measure of orange juice, apricot brandy,
and the two fingers of gin .
that make up paradise

—-

There is away . :.
if we want
to untie ourselves .

The shining organs that bind us can help us through the new dark

There are lots of stories about intestines .

People have been forced to hold them, alive and shocked awake

The doctors removed M’s smaller one and replaced it, the new bright plastic curled around the older brother

Birds drag them out of the dead and abandoned

Some people climb them into Heaven

Others believe we live in one
God’s intestine!

A conveyor belt of stars and saints

We tie and we loosen

Minor
and forgettable
miracles :

four birds.

I am not myself.



Talking to those boys, I could only make them smile by swearing. So, I cursed; swore like a sailor. By the end of the hour I had them all in tears.
The umbrella I was carrying made a shadow the size of the sun; and underneath it, as I passed by windows and looked into them at, I looked like a smaller version of myself.
That's the kind of shit you can do here! (The tall one in the Raiders jacket caught my eye and I wanted to teach him things).
At the end, I sat them all down in the room and looked at all their faces and knew I hadn't said a word they'd remember. Well. My hangover began to reappear, and I waved my goodbyes. When I walked back out into the rain, having left the umbrella in the closet inside, I cracked my knuckles all at once. It made me remember that this body isn't mine.

They know that time does not exist, that it is a man made concept constructed to account for the way our bodies age. The decomposition of flesh is measured in abstract, meaningless units. As civilized beings, we’ve used these measurement for as long as we can remember. We built our very language around them; to perceive the world, and to acknowledge it, is to accept the concept of Time as a tangible and governing entity.
Through their pasts and their imagined futures, they’ve realized: Time’s function, when it comes down to it on this human level, is to destroy.

1.
She's cutting butter into flour for biscuits; she's making him breakfast. It's just 7 o'clock, the sun barely over the horizon on this mid-May Saturday morning. He'll sleep for another hour or two at least, reveling in the leisure afforded by the week-end, but she gets restless lying in bed. She hates watching the day disappear behind her, feels it necessary to get up and move with it. So, on this endless Saturday mornings, she finds herself here, in the kitchen making breakfast. She's got the bacon warming to room temperature on a plate by the stove; bread dough rising in a bowl on top of the fridge; bananas cut into medallions, ready to be added to the pancake batter; oranges halved and waiting to be squeezed into the pitcher in the draining rack next to the sink; eggs in the refrigerator door; milk in its gallon jug sitting on the counter, ready to be poured; last night's boiled potatoes, chopped and frying in the skillet.

She works deliberately, each stage of the meal coming together slowly under the weight of her careful hands. When he finally steps into the kitchen, running a lazy hand through his messy hair and giving her that look, she's just taking the last four pieces of bacon out of the pan and getting ready to crack the first egg, sunny-side up into the skillet. She takes a dinner plate from its place in the cupboard, piles it high with pancakes, hash browns, a buttered slice of warm homemade bread, bacon, a warm biscuit, flaky and light, and finally the egg, and sets it on the table next to his glass of orange juice. She sets another egg to frying in the pan, this one for herself, and sits next to him while it cooks. She watches him eat.

Generally speaking, their relationship is simple. Any of their friends would be able to tell you that they’ve been seeing each other for about 8 months now, but they refuse to acknowledge this. They spend time together, and they talk, and have sex. There have even been occasions on which they have cried on each other’s shoulder. They go out with friends, and they drink and dance and get rowdy. They are typical twenty-somethings. The important thing, for both of them (because both have been hurt in the past, by the way relationships grow and are shaped by the time put into them) is that there is no passing in the time they spend together. When they are together, time is stopped. The sun goes down and comes up, their hair continues to grow, their clocks still advance at the same tick-tick-tick pace; the world continues around them in the same way it always has and always will. But they do not accept any of this as Time. To them, time is not a governing entity. They do not let it tell them where they should be with respect to one another. Though they haven’t spoken about it, each of them understands that time between them will not pass. This allows them to be what they are, to eschew the confines of what an 8-month relationship would mean.

So there is that; spending time together without letting that time pass. But there is also a glimmer of something else. They don't live together, but when she sleeps over at his place, which is often, she makes him breakfast the next morning.

These breakfasts. It's when he walks into the kitchen and sees all the work she's put in for him and his stomach that he gets this feeling. It's as if she's teasing him, showing off this little, insignificant inkling of the passion she's got hidden away inside her. As if the breakfasts, if he looked hard enough, could tell him the story of their life together, were they to have one. In that moment he can imagine what it would be like to be with her permanently. What it would be like to live his whole life with her. To make her his wife. As he eats, time unfolds in front of him, and the course of their lives becomes tangible. They move in together, finish grad school. They are married, down south on his parents' land, in the same hay field as his grandparents. They buy an apartment together, start their own family; and their kids! Their kids are spectacular, and as they reach school age, they all move to a bigger place in a nicer neighborhood. And every morning they all sit down to breakfast together- that is how he'll measure the course of their lives, their breakfasts. As the months pass, he'll watch his family across the kitchen table as they blossom and bloom. His wife will become full to bursting with child (a son, a daughter, another daughter, another son), and slowly her hair will be streaked with salt-and-pepper; she'll cut it short and grow it long again; the lines on her face will deepen and the skin on the backs of her hands will begin to reveal the networks of blue veins beneath. His sons' bodies will begin to look like his own, lean and strong and sun-browned; their voices will become progressively deeper, their polite demands for more bacon or syrup sounding more and more each morning like the demands of men; and finally they will start shaving, and being absent for breakfast more and more often. And his daughters: he will watch their hair grow; he will watch as they start paying attention to their appearances; as they change their attitudes, and as they close themselves off and open themselves up; and he will watch in amazement and wonder as they being to resemble their mother, as they begin to learn from her how to make breakfast.

When he’s finished eating, he does the dishes. He cleans the kitchen while she gets dressed. As he’s putting the plates into the dishwasher, she comes over and pats him on the back. She means to say, I’ll see you around. As the door closes behind her, she’s suddenly transformed into the timeless version of herself, with whom he does not make plans. The future closes in on itself and ceases to exist; the tick-tick-tick of the clock on the wall carries on, as meaningless as it was the night before.

I said this to Nick already
and yes, before you ask, this is me talking (usually it isn't, truly, though I know you don't believe that)-
And I hate this kind of writing, as I've said here before (but I deleted that post, didn't I, because it was this kind of writing)
But the point is- I am so totally filled with this feeling--

It would be so easy for the feeling to be expressed as: Or, I'd hit myself in the face for all the stupid fucking things I've done.
Because I would. If I wasn't so lazy. Because I have done so much stupid shit, and I hate it, I hate remembering it; it feels like watching a video of myself doing something embarrassing, and not being able to laugh about it. And all that stupid shit, it's lead me here, and I'm not really sure if this is where I want to be. In fact, I know it isn't. And that's what I write about, here and everywhere else: about where I would be if I hadn't done all the stupid things I've done, and if I could just hit myself in the face; and about where I want to be, or where I wish I wanted to be, or where I think you are. That is what I write about. And I do it seriously. I take it seriously; and when I write, I am intentional. I know just exactly what I'm doing (which is part of what I mean when I say: I eat what I slaughter- but not at all the full extent of it).

Anyway that's not at all what I cam here to say.

What I came here to tell you is that I made a choice. I made this choice a couple of months ago, and I'm just now realising that it means more than I thought. It sounds stupid, it sounds like something a lost-in-the-clouds fuck-up would say to herself on her 15th birthday, but the choice was as follows: I feel like I have been presented with all the things in my life, spread out on a table for me to look at. And there were two feelings to be had about it. Either I hate it, and hate myself, and spend my time hitting myself in the face; or, I rejoice. So I chose rejoice. I chose.

At the time I first said that to myself, I thought it just meant, working harder to be happy. And that is part of it, a huge fucking chunk of it. But it's more, too. It's: living. Because I haven't been doing that. I haven;t been living- I've been sitting in my room looking at the internet. I've been tricking myself into thinking that I've been enjoying my time, but I haven't, I've just been bored. I now see that choosing rejoice means deciding to live, to really do it. To spend my time, not waste it. I want to spend every waking moment doing something, I never want to check my facebook or fucking hipinion ever again. I want to spend hours upon end at the library. I want to get my shit done, and then when I'm not working I want to be either taking pictures, or writing, or drawing, or having sex. I never want to be doing anything but using my energy in this passionate, intense way I just discovered. I want to go to bed feeling fucking exhausted every single night. I want to know, to really fucking know! that I haven't wasted a single fucking second. I want to expend myself, spread myself thin and spring back up on you, because I can, because I have chosen. Do you understand? You don't. I'm not being very good at explaining anything right now. I want to do drugs with you, and be fucking glad all the time. Okay? Don't answer that, I don't need you to. I'm just going to this; something in my fucking chemistry has changed, and I dont need you at all, I know now that I never have. I can get off on my own fucking excitement. I just want to do this right, because this is the only chance I'm going to get and I'm not going to fuck it up. Or rather, I'm not going to keep fucking it up. I'm going to fucking do this. I haven't really said anything that I want to say here, but I'm going to post it anyway, as a reminder to myself that I want to start living, even though I haven;t defined that the way I really want to, and as a reminder to you that I am fucking perfect, and that you're never going to meet anyone with like me ever again, and that I am fucking perfect. You don't get it, you never will, but the thing is: I'm more, and better, than anything or anyone else. I didn't know that, not really, until right now, this very second. Too bad I hadn;t fully decided not to be so lazy until just now. I was just being lazy before this, you know, sitting around, not moaning and groaning, not saying anything, not really caring if I came or not. But now I do care. I really fucking care. I'm done being so lazy; fuck that. Fuck that. I'm on fucking fire, I'm burning the fuck up.

"I don't know, I just feel like I live in an envelope."

I want to tell you a story.


Today we took pictures of my brain. I had to hold very still.
Three Teslas of magnetic energy.
You could think of it this way: all the blood in my body slightly pulled.
I want you to see the pictures we took- I want you to see the architecture of my thoughts, and to know what that means.

This time I'm not fucking around
I want to ask you: WHY CAN'T I BE YOUR FUCKING FRIEND.

Hi, I got a Flickr. Look at it!

If there's something there that you want me to take down, just say the word. They're images I captured, I like looking at them, and I want the people in my life to be able to see them whenever. Also, it feels like a more professional forum, so that I can put there the things I wouldn't necessarily put on Facebook. I've also been taking it pretty seriously- I've been really earnest in the "Profile" section, and all that information, which is not how I normally treat those features of sites like this.

Anyway, as I said, if you see yourself there, and feel uncomfortable about it, I apologize. Just let me know and I'll fix it. Not trying to step on anyone's toes- just trying to create yet another creative outlet for myself. Dunno why. I just seem to have this exhibisionist itch, and the internet is the easiest way to scratch it.

remember these things, liz
shake the disease
this is the house
enjoy the silence.

IN FACT: watch this.

in a perfect world, i spend my time this way.
with my hair done up just so.

(edit: in fact, if you can understand that, then you know everything about me, i think.)

The word: Pioneer

"That's the price we pay for standing upright, Dad. I'm sorry, but it's true."
She means so much by this.

"I am listening to your heartbeat across the ocean."

- N. Feder (2009; contemporary American Poet, b. 1988; pioneer in his field).

"He's doing the Unnecessarily Profound Thing," he sighs into the phone.

I laugh.


.

Or, I'd hit myself in the face for all the stupid fucking things I've done.





One time, I projectile vomited in the dining room of a fancy hotel. I was seven, and it felt like the end of the world.

I get that feeling often these days. Not the nausea, but the aftereffects. It's like my brain remembers the physiological and psychological effect those few minutes took, and replays them in acute detail every time I fuck up. The post-puke shakes. That feeling- like my insides have been ripped out and the empty cavity filled with greasy vinegar. The seeping guilt, the shame.

Some words bring it on; some kind of sick Pavlovian response I've trained myself into. Instead of salivating at the ring of a bell, some specific combinations of letters give me the feeling described above.

For example: "Ugh"; "Hey buddy!"; the term, "all the way" as a euphemism for sexual intercourse. Those are just three that I can remember off the top of my head.

Some images do it, too. But I try not think about those.

Sometimes when I stub my toe, or something like that, I just burst into tears. That never used to happen.

I can trace all of this back to one particular moment: June 16th, 2008, 3:45pm- I am about to open the passenger-side door of her car, and for whatever reason I incline my head a couple of degrees and notice the little round carton on her passenger-side seat, and the door handle gives me an electric shock. Let me explain.

My favourite flavour of ice cream is, always has been and always will be: Pear. I had it once, when I was eleven and in Greece with my dad (father-son-bonding trip, ill fated. Memorable quote of the two-week fiasco: "David," my father slamming his glass onto the table and standing up, "I'm sorry, but it's just not possible." This sentence ended a two-hour conversation we'd been having regarding whether or not he and I are biologically related.) Anyway, the pear icecream was, for sure the only good thing about that trip, and it was delicious, and it was like the world was saying to me, David! It's okay! There are some good things in this world, regardless of who your father may or may not be! Enjoy!

And what do I see in her car that June afternoon?
One pint of pear ice cream.
And what happens when I see it? I get an electric shock.

Actually that may not quite be the defining moment I like to think of it as.
The defining moment may have been when she told me she didn't want to see me again.
Fuck.

or, i'd hit myself in the face for all the stupid fucking things I've done.

to those of you who know where this is from, i apologise.
but truly- the realest shit ever to come off that fucking board:

it hasn't all been done before. you know how i know? think about what music was like before the Beatles, before Metallica, before Dr. Dre, before every pioneering band that did something that people didn't even know was possible. who knew back in rthe 60s how gigantic an impact a simple group of boys singing love songs would have on the world? as much as I discredit Metallica's ability, they still made a huge wave in heavy music and it's still being felt to this day. Dr. Dre took Star Child and made Let Me Ride, who else would have thought of that? have you thought about how sick that beat is? and the bassline? what if dre had never done it?

what if I PUSH MIRACLE WHIPS had never done it? yeah people will laugh if you say straight out that you're going to change the world, but fuck, what does any of that even matter? people who can't be bothered to try and do anything 'meaningful' want to say that 'meaningful' is something for dreamers who end up working minimum wage? and the former becomes what? nothing less than the meaningless trinket of a human they idealize the 'real man' to be, yet unsatisfied. well shit

all i know is i have a really strong feeling about something, i don't even know what. it's making my stomach hurt and i'm scared of it being too much. too much what? idk. maybe it's still just traces of praranoia, maybe i'm getting ready to explode. i realize i've never looked up what makes a star go supernova or black hole, maybe it has to do with pressure or something

but yeah i'm really glad i'm being made to prioritize my thinking and to rationalize all of it, though. i already got the whole 'feeling' thing down better than most, and i'm pretty confident about that. so much so that it causes me physical pain to think of loving someone at the very moment, when nobody is there and I'm still torn apart by whether or not it's in my best interest to have love interests, or if i should just die alone for the sake of art and all mankind. when i tell riff-raff that he's doing the 'unnecessarily profound' thing i grin really hard. IM GONNA BE THE FIRST NON-RUSSIAN COSMONAUT AND IM NEVER GOING TO DIE

and of course i keep thinking about Alice and when our paths will meet again, because they will. i feel strongly about that too, and i don't doubt it for a second. sometimes it's sad to think that nothing will ever happen there, other times it's melancholy but 'okay' to accept that maybe she's finally found someone, and it makes me gleeful to think that she just made another mistake and will realize it with time and also realize THAT I AM THE ONLY~~*~*~ AHAHAHAH. yeah i wish that relationship ill, as much as i want to be all ghandi about shit, i still can't help that. it'll be a while before i can, i never doubted that. keep on truckin. i had a dream about her 5-years-too-late clone and it was oneo f the most pleasant dreams i've ever had. i woke up feeling good as hell. all we did was talk

suddenly and without warning----

let's just say they couldn't fix the ribs she broke.
how did they break?

I've been thinking
And what I've been thinking is that, a) I have some things I need to write about, and b) Efraim Långstrump may be the root of my father-figure issues & what i desire in a sexual partner and/or long-term-mate
...he's a pirate, he's a cannibal king, he's strong as FUCK, he provides for his daughter in straight-up treasure (ie. gold!), and he's like, never around because he's off fucking sailing the seven seas. And Pippi? His daughter? The coolest bitch around.
I definitely have some things to write out.

prenez mon cœur, qu'il soit sauvé!

"...One autumn night, five years before, they had been walking down the street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a place where there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moonlight. They stopped here and turned toward each other. Now it was a cool night with that mysterious excitement in it which comes at the two changes of the year. The quiet lights in the houses were humming out into the darkness and there was a stir and bustle among the stars. Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalk really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees-- he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder.

His heart beat faster as Daisy's white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.

Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was reminded of something-- an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I had heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man's, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. But they made no sound, and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever. "
- F. S. Fitzgerald

i've got half a mind to start writing again.

this: http://forums.hipinion.com/viewtopic.php?t=244903&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

i used to be really proud of myself for all the things i'd made
but i deleted them

i've just got such heavy boots.

i need to write about him

it's okay, you are the only person who reads my blog, too!

what i was really trying to say earlier is that putting yourself out there is the most important thing about this activity. for me, anyway. writing in a journal is totally different because it's secret and shit. this is public. it's horrifying. and yet, so cool; why write if not to be read? so that, in conjunction with what i said to you earlier, is why i need to read your blog. this is something we do for each other, this reading.

I wrote about Abraham, but it was shit. I'll re-do it, and this time he'll be better. I'll be better.

iloveyou

When I woke up the morning after, I cut all my hair off, which was a shame, probably.

Then I ate breakfast, and in my head, I had this picture of me that was taken the morning after my senior prom, and in it I look like some kind of animal. I think so anyway. In the picture, I'm eating cereal and I have this look on my face, like I'm about to do something wild. But really I was just hungover and thirsty. That how I imagine I always look. That picture's usually in my head, to be honest. It's how I picture my self when I do things, like when I'm at the gym trying to visualise how I must look, all sweaty and exhausted, in my mind I look like that wild animal eating cereal.

When I got to work there weren't any comfortable chairs left in the student space, so I took a black plastic folding chair from behind the door. I sat down and stared into space, because there isn't anything to do there anyway, and this way I'm proving my father wrong because, basically, I'm getting paid for sitting on my ass. So, fuck you Dad, I am getting something for nothing. I noticed that it smelled like beef stew, the good kind that my mother used to make when I was a kid. I think they pump the smell into the office so make all the employees feel at home.

Marcy and Dale stopped by the student space, of which I am coordinator, to say good morning, and to ask me why I was at work. You don't have to be here, they said. It's summer vacation. No students will be in their space today. I replied with a look which implied dedication to my position. They said, what did you do to your hair? What a shame, they said. You had such pretty hair.

Well, I broke the bottom button of my favourite jacket.
This always happens to me. And then I bought an italian soda at the cafe across the street from the dentist's, and the soda was so cold, and so sugary, that it fucking hurt when I sucked it through the straw. I dropped a quarter down into the gutter when I was running for the bus. I needed that quarter. Without it, I only had 75 cents, and that isn't enough to do anything or go anywhere. Not anymore. My dad remembers when cigarettes cost 50 cents though. Now they're nine dollars in the city. Fucking ridiculous.
And a teenaged boy called me a dyke as we passed each other on the sidewalk. I knew flannel was a terrible idea with this haircut.

"That wasn't a very good movie."
She spat her gum out onto the sidewalk, and I stepped in it. I noticed again how perfectly she fit into her dress, and I shuddered, because my body'd never been carefully considered the way I considered hers. And that's what makes us feel lonely, isn't it? The fact that the people whose flesh we treasure above everything else have never even noticed the colour of our eyes. God damn.

In the taxi, she went on to explain just why exactly that movie hadn't been very good, and while she talked I imagined what I would do if I wasn't stuck inside myself all the time. I'd hit her square in the face. And then I'd kiss her, and then she'd love me. Or, I'd take her back to my room and get her drunk. Or, I'd get out of the cab at the next light and change my phone number.

The cab stopped at a red, and that rising feeling of rule-breaking began to expand in my chest, making my fingers itch. My vision went dizzy for a second, exactly like the second before I yell at my sister. But I sat still. Anyway, my phone number has a nice ring to it, 690 990 9906. Easy to remember.

Or, I'd hit myself in the face for all the stupid fucking things I've done, like telling Jean Fisch I had a crush on her in the seventh grade.

What happened was she stopped the taxi outside of Yogurt Park, and we got a large vanilla frozen yogurt with gummy bears on top. We shared it sitting on the bench outside her building, and when she got a brain freeze, we threw it away. Then she put another piece of gum in her mouth, which means Don't kiss me, and I hated her but told her I'd call her tomorrow.

I'M TRYING TO WRITE BUT INSTEAD I'M JUST LOOKING AT THE FACEBOOKS OF PEOPLE WHO DEEPLY DISTURB ME. IT'S LIKE SEEKING OUT GLORIOUS AND HORRIFYING CARCRASHES TO WATCH FOR HOURS ON END.

i was walking home from a party
i was walking home and a man with a gun came at me
he had a gun
and i said, before i knew he had a gun, i said, i'm sorry: i don't speak swedish.
and he said, oh. (i was crying, because of the reason for which i usually cry when i am drunk, which is, no one will ever love me the way i want to be loved)
and he pointed at the corner of his eye, and he said, i'm sorry.
and he said, i lied to my family.
and then i said, i'm sorry i don't understand.
then i pressed the code on the door. and i said, i'm sorry?
and then i opened the door. and he put his hand on the door. and then i was afraid. i said, no.
he had his fingers on my side of the door. he had his fingers in a place which meant i would not be able to close the door.
i said, no.
then i looked. i had adrenaline in my blood. i looked, and while i was thinking, this is not happening, this is not real, i recognized the gun. the gun was in his other hand. no, no, no, no. i peeled his fngers from the door, i said: no. i saw the gun. i have never seen a real and true gun before. i have never seen a gun that was not in a movie. i said, NO. and while i was saying that, i was peeling his fingers away from the door, and i pulled the door into myself, so that it was closed. i closed it as hard and as fast as i could, because i had seen a gun.
then i ran. as i was screaming NO, i was running, and i pulled all three doors open and then as closed as I could.
and when i was in the apartment I closed the door silently and locked it silently.
i waited a minute.
i listened.
then i took off my jacket.
then i let tears fall on my face.
then i tip toed to my room.
i pulled the blinds closed.

well, it was hard for me to formulate a real answer when you asked me why this has been stressful. but here is the answer that comes closest to an approximation of the truth.

-it's complicated, but a lot of it has to do with the relationship i have with my sister. that simplifies things a lot, but for me, that is truly at the heart of it. and a lot of things stem in this complex web of confusion and upset from the fact that she and i do not get along like so well- or, more honestly, that i am still so angry with her.
i have been able to live with all of this in the back of my mind for a long time, and coming together like this, as a family, makes it impossible to ignore it. or, being in such close proximity with everyone makes me feel even more guilty about living without thinking so much about the way she and i treat each other. or, about the way i treat her; about the way i have been treated by her.

and i'm so tired of all of this shit.
and i want to be selfish.

and i'm so over the way my mother handles a lot of this; the way she acts. she becomes a child, and i want to treat her the way i would treat a child who behaves with me the way she does. but i can't, because she is my mother.

this entry sucks a fat dick. this blog is not about this real bullshit and i apologize for posting this; i'll take it down, probably, but, you know, sometimes i want to say these things but i almost never do. allow me this one infraction.

the way of all flesh

I saw him as I came down the escalator and noticed that he had become older.

"Abraham," I said and stepped across the arrivals hall. I smiled at him and as I got close to him I exhaled so that I could breathe in his scent. I had been missing that smell for all the time we had been apart, and I was ready for it.

As he put his arms around me, I buried my face in his neck and pulled in his smell. As soon as it hit my nostrils tears sprang to my eyes and that was when I knew that it had been too long. He smelled older. I should not have been surprised. I hadn't seen him in over a decade. We'd been 15 when I had left. He smelled like someone who knew that they were doing, whereas before he had radiated the scent of his adolescent self.

I let my fingers slip into the notches of his spine, which were coated in a new, heftier layer of muscle. He drew breath with the same ferocity that I remembered, and that comforted me.

"Abraham," I said again, pulling away from his body to examine his face. He looked happy. He looked like someone who knew what they were doing. I envied that. He smiled at me and said, "I know what you are thinking." He probably did.


We drove home in silence, the space between us filled with the years behind us.

Finally, when we pulled into his driveway, and he killed the engine of his car, and we sat in silence as the ticktick of the engine cooling resonated around us, I turned to him and opened my mouth to speak. I said, "You need to tell me why you left her."

That was a lie. I knew why he had left her.

He nodded and got out of the car.

___


We lay naked in the bed on our backs. We were careful not to touch one another, as afraid as we had been the first time, half my life ago. I slowly turned my head to look at him, and in the dark his face looked exactly as I remembered it. I inched my hand over to his side of the bed. I placed it on his hip bone. I was sure I'd be able to feel his freckles, but of course I couldn't. In my mind his body was smaller, his skin thin and taught and untouched. Under my hand, though, it was thirty years old; adult. When I realized this, I was washed in chagrin. I was embarrassed to notice that in my mind he was still 15. I was embarrassed to to picture the 15 year-old body he must be expecting from me.

He leaned over me, and kissed me, and looked into my face for the first time since I'd gotten off the plane. He sighed a long sigh and his hands considered carefully the age of my body. He placed his palms everywhere, comparing the feel of my anatomy now with the impression of it stored in his muscle memory. He was thinking exactly what I was; that we had gone, and would continue to go, the way of all flesh.

A good friend of mine walked across the united states, from San Francisco to New York. Before setting out, he swam in the Pacific, saying, "It'll be awhile, salt water". His name was David, and he looked like a painting of himself, always, but especially when he swam. He bought me a German dictionary once, after my brother committed suicide. David said, "You're going to need to know how to say 'bridge' in many languages". He believed that it was impossible to truly express grief in just one language. He believed that I'd go everywhere some day and that I'd tell everyone I met about Jonathan and how he jumped. He believed that because he still had hope, then. 

It was a grey day, the day he set out. I drove him to the beach, and he got out of the car, wearing only his shorts, and walked straight into the water. I thought he'd never come out. I sat in the bed of my pick-up and smoked cigarettes and watched him splash around. After a few hours, he came up and stood next to the truck. I handed him his backpack and touched his forehead. I said, "Call me, David. Send me pictures." He nodded and then he walked towards the Atlantic.

He did call. He called me from a pay phone in Illinois. He said, "It's me," and I burst into tears. I put my hand over the receiver so he wouldn't hear me. He said, "It's been awhile, huh? How's that salt water doing?" I stopped crying after a few minutes, and I said, "David, it's time to come home." I could hear him nodding. He just nodded and nodded, and then finally he said, "I'm in a little trouble."

When he said that, I knew why he'd called. "In a little trouble" was code for, "I got into a fight and my face is all fucked up, and I had to call, because I did this so that I could call you about it. So picture it, Elizabeth, picture how fucked up my face is. I haven't even washed the blood off yet." I have known David a long time. I said, "David."

He said, "I know."

He said, "You never saw his body, though. You never saw what'd happened to it."

He said, "Listen, Elizabeth, you needed this."

I hung up. A few weeks later, maybe a month, month and a half, I got an envelope in the mail and it was filled with pictures. He'd been right, I had needed that violence. I put those photographs between the pages of the German dictionary and put that under my bed. The picture on the page, Bean to Bright, was of David in the Great Salt Lake. 

ok, see that, there, below this text?

that's the past two months, and it sucks, but i need it to be here.
because i need you to know even though i don't want to tell you.

ps. those which are very sloppy/ in french/ make no sense were written drunk, and are more heavy-handed than they should be.
also, i can't figure out why they're not in the right order, just, whatever. y'know?

it's been a while since i've been here

Hi.
This is about last night.
-- I have not been well. The past two months have shattered me, and I am recently feeling like it's okay to start putting myself back together. A lot of things have gone wrong; but also, a lot of things have been going right in the past two weeks. And none of this belongs to you, none of this has anything to do with what you have done. But when I get drunk and I spread it, honey over a coffee table, molasses into you hair, it becomes about you. And I'm sorry, because it's melodramatic and unnecessary. And I'm ashamed, because I talk a lot about how to be direct and honest and good- and, when it comes down to it, I am not that way, myself. But know this: I am trying. I am trying so hard you can't see it.
I need you to know that last night was a mistake. I need you to know that it means that I trust you, finally. But it also means that what I have been saving from you between the black leather walls of my journal is beginning to leak out, from my lips and from my tear ducts. It has been leaking for a long time now- and I have decided to put it up. Finally.
Why now? Because before this, I didn't feel okay with you knowing how much I had begun to hate myself. Because before this, I was worried about losing you before I even had you. But I know now, I have realized by now, that if I let this go on in the squirreled, curled up and secretive way that it has, I will loose you, too. And I'm sorry but I feel more loved by you than by anything I have ever had before- and I need that. Which is selfish, and you have no obligation to any of this- but maybe you have a right to know.
Come back here in a little while, and it'll be up.
Thanks.
Liz

this is narrative, right?

The truth is, I don’t care anymore, she said, pulling her jeans up over her ass. I closed my eyes and lay back on the bed. I imagined how it would feel to buy a revolver. I pictured myself handing over a stack of bills and taking the gun in my hands for the first time. When I opened my eyes, she was gone.

I got up. I walked around. I looked at my apartment with the eyes of a stranger, and I realized that I hated it. It wasn’t where I had wanted to live. I tried calling her, but she didn’t pick up, which was a relief. I didn’t know what I would say to her, anyway.

My phone rang. I picked it up, thinking it might be her, but it wasn’t. It was Dave, inviting me to a party. I said, Yes, I’ll be there. He said, Good. I haven’t seen you in weeks.

I lay back down on my bed, on top of the comforter, not between the sheets- because, between the sheets it smelled too much like her, and that scent made me embarrassed. I imagined myself shooting the revolver. I imagined the sound, and the heat on my hand. I stared at the ceiling and breathed. For a long time, I took air in to my lungs, and then I let it out, slowly, again and again.

When I got up, I put on my clothes, and jacket, and shoes. I went out, to the store on the corner of my street, and bought a fifth of whiskey. When I got home, I poured myself a tumblerful, and sat on the floor at the foot of my bed, drinking. The phone rang, and I let it go.

When the sun had gone down, I filled an empty water bottle with the whiskey and went outside. I walked to the bus stop and, after a short wait, got on the bus. I sat, I drank, and I waited to arrive.

When I got the party, I felt lonely. Dave started to introduce me to everyone- I knew no one there. It seemed as though Dave had made all these new friends since I had last seen him. I didn’t understand why he had invited me. I said stupid things to these people. I hated them, and I let them know it. I threatened to break bottles over their heads. I took of my jacket and rolled up my sleeves. They laughed and talked among themselves. Dave stopped introducing me to people, and I felt superior.

When I had finished what was in my water bottle, I walked home. It was a long walk, and when I got home my feet hurt. I took off my shoes and lay on the bed. I imagined the feeling of metal against my temple. I stared at the ceiling and remembered what an asshole I had been.

I’d told her I wasn’t feeling so good. I said, I don’t want to talk about it, but I have not been feeling so good. She pressed- she is always pressing- and I barked. She took off her clothes and climbed under the covers with me. She put her hands on me. I didn’t want them near me, I said, Don’t. She said, What am I supposed to do? I told her to fuck off. She said, I miss you, in a quiet voice. I’m right fucking here, I said. How can you miss me?

She got up, deliberately, and put on her shirt and socks and underwear. The truth is, I really don’t care anymore, she said, pulling her jeans up over her ass. I closed my eyes and when I opened them, she was gone.

The truth wasn’t that she didn’t care anymore. The truth was, she was tired of working so hard. I knew that. But the way I saw it, she was the one pressing. I hadn’t incited her exertion. She put herself through it.

I didn’t really believe that, though. I knew I’d been making her work since day one.

I fell asleep thinking about these things. When I woke, I drank water and left the apartment. I looked like shit. I got on a bus going downtown. I wandered there awhile. I found the place I was looking for. I went in. I browsed. When saw it, I knew it was right. Grey barrel, white enamel butt. Embossed on its underside with the American flag.

I put my money on the counter and the shopkeeper put my choice in my hands. I took hold of, and it was heavier than I wanted it to be.

I buried it in the inside pocket of my jacket, and I took it home.

I sat cross-legged on the bed. I put it up to my skull, just to know. I pulled the trigger, and it clicked in my ear, like a cracked knuckle. Then, I put it down on the sheets in front of me. I stared at it.

I got up and retrieved my toolbox from the back of the closet. I brought it back to the bed.

I opened the toolbox and took out everything that looked like it might be useful. I unscrewed screws, chiseled away at welded joints. I deconstructed the gun completely. I laid each piece of it out in front of me on the bed. I stared at it and I breathed.

These need work. I want Celia to decline, slowly, over the course.
I think my writing teacher will hate it.
But I hate her, so whatever.

Julian,

I waited as long as I could before writing. I don’t know if you remember how to read, but I hope you do, because I recently remembered how to write.

I woke up the morning you left. It was too cold to get out of bed, so I stayed there.

Yours,
Celia

___________________________________________________
Julian,

I have a stomachache and it’s getting me down. When I close my eyes I see bedbugs and dust mites. They live there, under my lids. I think they are slowly slowly traveling closer to my brain, which is full of cotton and dust.

Julian, where did you go? We have many things to teach each other. I can teach you about geometry. I know formulas that would change everything. I will draw you diagrams and label them in the correct order, clockwise from top right.

Julian, we have a lot of books to read. I would like to run into you at the library some day. I will pause and look you in the eye as you speak to me. And then I will pull a book from its place on the shelf and open it. And inside it will be nothing but dust due to the cohabitation of literate bookworms and their beloved letters.

Yours,
Celia

_______________________________________________________
Julian,

I have had an idea. We will go to the edge of the world together. We will walk until we reach the very brink. I think the place I speak of is in the arctic. It is Iceland, and it is tundra. We will set out in winter and when we get there we will wait months for the sun to come up. And in the early morning we will gaze at the clear frozen snow around us.

Julian, I’ve missed you. As the weather gets colder, it become harder and harder to drag myself out from under the warmth of my bed and into the day. But the days, when I get to them, swallow me whole. The sun doesn’t set until 6:54 tonight.

Yours,
Celia

_________________________________________
Julian,

You really do think the brain is not filled with cotton and dust. You said it was neurons and electrical wires. Yours- maybe. Yours is clinical in a way I don’t think mine is.

Clinical. What a stark word, conjuring empty, shiny hallways of tile. Is that what the recesses, the folds and overlaps of the tissues of your brain, is that what they look like? Tile? Tiles crunching against each other, breaking against their own brittle and, yes, clinical bodies. Yes, that is the sound I hear coming from your temples when you think.

Julian, are you coming home soon? I have decided that Iceland is an imperative. I have been thinking about the whales and the wolves. Tomorrow, I think, will be my new year.

Yours,
Celia

________________________________
Julian,

Everyone around me is making decisions. I have decided on some things, too. It’s been a long time, Julian, and I ache for your face.

I remembered what you said about the wolves and the whales, and I think you are right. Whale’s blood is so thick with iron and oxygen it’s almost black.

Yours,
Celia

_________________________________________________
Julian,

I looked in a forgotten cupboard this evening when I got out of bed. There was dust in it and it reminded me of you. I swept all the dust right up and put it in an envelope, which I placed on the windowsill. I like to imagine myself in a long skirt pouring you out, into the ocean from the brink of the earth, the wind whipping around me and carrying you off.

I’m just joking. But today I went to seaside and ate sandy things. I made a list of things that are salty: crackers, French fries, sweat, the base of my spine after a long day, the sea. I asked many people for directions on my way. I do not know my own way to the sea, as they say in folktales. But I have often felt that the sea has visited me at our home.

Julian, I think you should know that I have stopped waiting. Instead, I have begun to live our life together. When will join me? I have many things to whisper in your ear. For example, I might say your name, to remind you of it. But I think mostly it would be to remind myself.

Yours,
Celia

______________________________________________
Julian,

It is time you start telling me the truth.

Yours,
Celia


Julian,

I am, as you know, at my most honest in the early mornings on the tundra of Iceland. And that is, coincidentally, where I find myself now. So here is the fact. I have forgotten what you look like. And this terrifies me.

Continue to write to me. Continue to confuse and beguile me. It keeps me open and awake to the world, to have such pages to struggle for and to be always aching for your words. Do not forget that whatever we may have built, though it may not be what I would like to resemble, is in fact real, and tangible, and that it is an ocean of ink in which we float and execute the butterfly with precision.

Yours,
Celia

_______________________________
Julian,

I understand that you have left me for good. Your friend, in the uniform, told me this morning over the phone.

I would like for these letters to be cremated with you. This correspondence is something strong and formidable. Do not disregard it, do not throw it away or forget its existence- ever. To do so would be to forget possibility and excitement and longing. And poetry; because what we have built in these pages is nothing but poetry- letters on a page deftly arranged to scare and to comfort, to dissolve and inspire.

Please write back quickly, they need to know what to do with your body, and I feel that I might die if I don’t hear from you soon.

Yours,
Celia

all that muscle flying through space

That was the night she got her first black eye from his throwing arm, pulling his fist into her skull as it traveled through the bedroom. He throws 98 mile fast balls, and the crack was substantial as skin cleft from bone. Tears welling, she put her hands on his face, leaning into him as he made his way towards her, kissing his mouth the way she’d seen it done in movies. He wiped blood from her puckered skin and kissed her back. The turnaround was so quick; blink, and you’d’ve missed it.

I’ve got twenty-eight bones in each of my hands. I felt absolutely sure there was something wrong with my hands; they never worked the way I thought they should. All my life I had dreamed of hands I could use. I wanted to hold people. I wanted to build fires. I wanted to go swimming. But with my big, clunky hands, I couldn’t do any of those things. I sat at home. I sat on my hands. I waited for the extra bone to fuse with its neighbor. It was, of course, wasted time.

So I fixed the problem myself. I opened up my hands. I split skin from muscle from fascia. I peeled each hand, like slaughtered bananas, and once the bone was out in the open- and let me tell you, bone is not quite as pearly, smooth and glimmering as you would imagine, in fact it is grey and spongy. And there, right below the metacarpals, was a large flat oval, gleaming in its superfluousness. So I pulled it out. Like cracking my knuckles, I pulled each finger’s support from its socket, and lifted the extra, nameless chunk of calcium out of its pocket. Then I pulled the muscle and skin back up over my fist, trimmed the extra skin and sewed it all back up.

Slowly, over the past few years, she has completely lost the ability to walk. Since that first slip and roll on the ankle, the cartilage, ligaments and bone down there in her foot have been crumbling, slow and steady, until finally they were absent from her gait. Admittedly, she could easily have replaced them with marvels of modern medicine, and in fact she walked for a few weeks on that empty bag of muscle (those bones literally just melted away, leaving the remaining structures of the foot relatively intact), but when she finally opened her eyes and let herself limp- it didn’t stop at limping. She fell. And in falling, she realized it was over and that never again would she walk. She stayed stock still.

root canal

I performed a root canal and blind-sided you with it,







and still you loved me. As you writhed and as I held you down next to me despite your enamel’s sound of deference as it cracked between the metal prongs of my pliers, I could see it in your eyes, the amber freckles of remaining love that let me know you would still love me even after I had ripped this tooth from your skull and replaced it with lead. The thought made me detest you, made me want to rip not only enamel from you, but then to scoop with my bare fingernails the pulp from the cavity- I will not stop there! I will heave each and every vertebrae from your spine, one by one, until your body matches your mind.

big hearted

I’m going to find someone with a big heart. 500g or more, at least. And when I find him-

Did you know that I have inhabited each of those four chambers? I have made my home within the red cushion of cardiac pressure. I built a bed on valves, on which it was impossible to sleep, next to the mush and rush of the constant bleeding. I traveled freely, opening doors to atria and ventricles, burrowing deep into those muscular walls, pulsating with them as they force ichor to where it is required. But I have never traveled with that gore. I have remained, like a stagnant drip of rot, violently affixed to the myocardium, a parasite you are too star-crossed to notice.

have you any idea?

This is the fluid mosaic model of the inner ear canal filled with the leaden heavy breathing of a familiar musculature. Watch the tiny bones within me quiver under your voice, watch them waver and final break, like a bough in a hurricane, leaving me deaf and dumb. And when you finally reach your loudest, I will revel in the following silence and the fact that soon your heft will be lifted from me and I will once again breathe for myself.

You are not allowed to touch me like that, with your hairy appendages brushing away my self security. You are not allowed to let me touch you, because we do not fit together, and as soon as you are on top of me I will want you off, and not only off, but as far away as possible. As soon as you are off me, I will run for my life into the shower to soak away, and dissolve like soap in the hot, sterile, tiled, solitary flow. I will run down the drains, staining the sewer with my shame at letting myself be touched by cave men from all ages.

My throat aches from the heat of your thoughtless spewing. No matter how much boiling water I pour down my gullet, those proteins will not denature, and I am left with the growing, squirming sensation of being your verb- an unwilling participant in the heat of alcoholic nights. I see the way you look at me in the dark, and I know that because I am talking to you this way, because I am putting my hand on your there, you are thinking that I agree with this and with you. Have you been so blinded by the preceding months? Have you really been able to convince yourself that this is possible? That it is possible for me to actually want your skin against mine? You are kidding yourself, you lunk. You ape.

YOU'REBROKEN?I'MBREAKING!

My muscles ache from the effort of lifting my heart from the ground. It fell right out of me when I realized that I no longer exist. So I stooped down, back bent to the shape of supplication, knees crooked and crackling, and I curled my fingers around the pound of flesh lying seeping my sour liquid into the grass, feeding the earth nutrients I can’t seem to make use of.
When I tired to life the slab of muscle, the gristle, it appeared, had rooted itself deep into the earth. The tendrils of tendon and sinew had felt their way deep into the ground, mingling with the roots of the plants. The grass around me began to wither- the roots of my heart were suffocating the green.
Try as I might, the heart was stuck, and I couldn’t life it. My spine began to snap, vertebrae popping out of their alignment. My muscles tore, myomeres rending from their neighbours, pulling away from the bone. That’s when I fell. You can’t stand without a heart. You can’t stand if you don’t exist.

May 13th 2008

Last night I disappeared. With a click and a wave of my hand I was gone. It felt like falling into the cold atlantic from the deck of some ship that didn’t want me. It was as though some shipmate had found me hiding in a barell- a stow away finally discovered and cast out. What could I do but walk the plank and dive right into that cold salt water?
So yes, I dove, and in diving I discovered a thousand things I wanted to do. I wanted to use my lungs in harmony with my vocal chords to produce the sounds reseverved for dark bedrooms. I wanted to touch my skin to yours again. I wanted to write on your walls. I found myself swimming instead, in water too clod for even the whales.
I disappeared last night. That must be why you can’t see me; I’m underwater.

I like to think of you as ancient.

I like to think of you as being ancient.

For that brief second during which I was encased in the rock and weather-worn stability of your body, the world disappeared and what became truth was the concept of time. For that moment I was ageless, and you were more and stronger than anything I have ever seen or heard of before.

No.

I like to think of you as being ancient. For me, you have no name, no age, no limitations. You are a monument, an idol, a celebration of the human body and its glories. You were constructed from flesh countless years ago, and the pace of your mechanisms will never slow to that halt we all fear. You will never die as long as you are running, your muscles and sinews pushing and pulling the way they were built to.

No.

I built you. I created the way you move and I forged you from the fire burning in my lungs.


No.

This is the only thing I want from you: your empty mind and your perfect body.

That is a lie! I want your heaving and crushing and words. I want to spill out of you like waves onto a beach or into a cave. I want your hands. I want your hands and your eyes, and I want them to push me and pull me. I want everything from you. I want the way you pulled me into you, I want the way you told me to stop and then start and then stop again. I want your hands. I want your hands and you eyes and your voice, and I want them not because they feel good, though they do, and you know they do, but because they belong with me. Did you know that I have been carrying you around in my ribcage for years? I made you a home there, and you have been crouched, stuck and waiting, in the shelter I built for you out of bone, blood and muscle. I have been feeding you, waiting for your arrival on the scene. I built you out of my own sinew and tendon and I kept you quiet, but since then I have grown a set of lungs. And they are begging to be put to use, and now I am using them to call out your name the way you never once called out mine. I am using those lungs to draw breath, and to scream, and I will never stop screaming at you. So emerge! Emerge from the dark of the depths of my body. Emerge from the beat of my heart and the drowning gushing of my capillaries. Come out of there, finally, and, for once!, carry me somewhere the way I have been carrying you all these years.