2004
pablo neruda has sat by my bed now for weeks. neruda who i loved for his passion, the way he could mold words around your tongue, Entre los labios y la voz, algo se va muriendo. Algo con alas de pájaro, algo de angustia y de olvido. Así como las redes no retienen el agua. and the way you could feel the ecstasy as the words wrapped around the page, in a moment you could see neruda hunched over writing, wet ink mixed with the smell of sex and the wetness of the woman he writes of this time. so much sex Quiero hacer contigo lo que la primavera hace con los cerezos. and love in every page. neruda who was always falling in love, so you put him on a shelf for so long, with everyone else who could do that sort of thing, like love.
i am this timid girl eager to discover every thing, and yet i hold back. i found this space in the world, but i don't fit, and i want, so badly, without accepting what i (still maybe, a hesitation) can't have.
i want to sit you down ask three thousand questions because i don't understand where the hate comes from. i don't understand how you put together those words in that order to say the most hurtful hateful angry things. i don't understand how you're making sense of this in your head. i don't understand the sadness and isolation lack of self or love that must be rotting away inside you.
the distinction should be made, however, that i never saw these rules as a surrender of control, but as a way to regain control forcefully taken. i was in control the whole time.
i believed in love like i believe in fairy tales heaven the decency of human nature and a reason things happen those all being things i need to believe in regardless of truth. so this this is like saying cinderella became a princess, ashley's looking down on the president who's doing his best and they all lived happily ever after.
backtrack to being that girl:
hang up the phone, take death, and roll it into a cigarette. smoke. and leave. say good-bye. leave. drown in school. leave. repair the cheap fairy that broke in three. leave. cancel these online accounts with no borders. and leave. leave. leave. and leave again.
failure.
realize:
that girl died with a swan dive. and jumping was easy and falling was fun. twelve stories to the sidewalk, shivering and stunned.
there is no going back.
and bitterness fades. becomes your best friend, holds your hand. makes you a better person.
charcoal on my hands, perhaps for the first time since she died. i missed that. the black shadowy mess suits me well. that girl may have died but there is something to be said for rediscovering who you are in moments like these.
sometimes things just happen despite your meticulous planning of the way things should be. fists clenched against this formation of time and events is futile, and although you would search for the rational truth or explanation, none would be found for years to come, because truth needs a larger context in which it can be nurtured and grow. my hand in yours just happened this way without respect of the purpose you defined. i never intended these moments lying next to you, and even though it would demand a reordering of principles, to refuse would be to turn my back on the radiance of the setting sun for fear of the dark of night which inevitably follows.
your fingers whisper softly across my skin, relishing each imprefection until all in turn felt perfect, bringing forth a wet river of heavy breathing and a racing heart, which in the interludes, hesitatingly (and yet without hesitation) opened itself to you as never before. my heart, which so often gave the perception of open- ness, knows it has been shielded, alone. it builds a window, but your fingers, experienced in these things do not want what's inside. my heart wants recognition of the window, because people actually had to die in its construction. "look at me" it cries (silently) and with pride, but your fingers do not hear. they are preoccupied with finding the answer to life, and my heart could only answer for itself.
my wings torn off so that i might never fly away and miss another moment, i would ground myself out of necessity. i would lose the ridiculous fantasy that i might save the falling after i couldn't catch her. prove that i am not any one thing or moment. torn to break my association with the world where i couldn't contain or appropriately direct my anger. i might live her life four times over, but i too would never fly. wings torn off so that i might believe i once had wings.
what am i if not easily explained orientation comes in a drop-down menu select a single word and no disclaimer or justification explanation allowed. how will i understand my self in the narrowing down of important moments to a single page profile? of the available options i selected lesbian because it fit how i see myself, not because i wanted to fit your cookie cutter single-size stereotype. every word scrawled on pages worn from re-reading every piece of clutter decoration in the space where i actually exist is me, what word would possibly fit in the multiple-choice select-the-best-answer drop-down coded to put getting -to-know-you on a page.
allowing myself two steps forward only to take three steps back in precaution was still a negative progression, just like how with movement to the side you could never really move on.
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i developed a rational formula for calculating panic, an irrational occurence that can't be contained, only to find that divergence from the formula itself would cause anxiety.
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i wanted to be the girl who didn't hold anything back, so i learned to give that impression without really letting go. i would still ration truth and trust in bite-size morsels that you could never really sink your teeth into. it would take the patience of years-after-the-fact before anyone could understand, yet mostly i filtered everyone out long before that time. and just as my family never really stood a chance in the wake of a grandfather, my friends would never stand a chance in the wake of someone for which i now realize i have no title.
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this year i've come out in more ways than just the obvious, sometimes just by staying in the moment or really being seen. and just as i find myself grown up enough to go home, i've also discovered how to hold on and find it difficult to let go.
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a habit is born out of a single occurence and its result, despite the weakness in the causal logic. in anger i refused to use my last name, and when my life was saved i wanted never to be identifiable again.
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i frequently end sentences with prepositions. that's something i can know.
were my argument to be deserving of merit, it should be because it was never my own. i consistently walked away without allowing for reconsideration, yet when the tables turn, how forcefully i would demand you hear my case, which comes as an outpour of every sentiment i once denied. as fair warning in an unfair game, you should know i lose poorly.
i squeezed a little harder, thinking i could choke you off in this anger, but found nothing remained. what had i been holding on to all this time? and how long had my hands been empty? i thought we had been alone but when i lifted my head you were nowhere to be found. just a sea of faces and i find i am only 17, consumed with a self-centered paranoia, and i think their whole ocean will come crashing in on me. just as quickly i close my eyes and forget even those faces which offered everything and would receive nothing in return. later i would say there was this girl. there was this boy. and everything they had offered would be reduced to a sex. all i had seen was that vast ocean and even in my best moments i could never bring a face into focus.
this is about the way a familiar face looks foreign when shown in a new light, the way your vision blurs while your eyes adjust to the revelation. this is about the assumptions made in the moments before the picture is clear, the way you cling to those beliefs despite conflicting details now in sight. this is about the applause at the end of a show, commending your brilliant performance, it's about the way the actors drop their costumes to the floor. this is about coming out from whatever closet has sheltered you, it's about the saturation of the new light and subsequent lack of clarity. this is about me.
i'm sitting in a diner, alone, but surrounded by middle america. middle income, middle age, average intelligence, overweight, bad hair, and nothing original to say.
the waitress says 'excuse me again' on repeat. i find myself wishing i didn't have elbows just to save her the trouble.
middle america assumes they're better than me, it's evident in their stares that my presence is disrupting their average dinner in an average life.
how different can i be, if i, sit here, staring, knowing i'm better than this.
i'm sinking slowly into a pit that oozes a slimy, sticky version of self-pity, thinking i'm alone and disjointed from all the clean dreams of what i want. alone in the way that hits you when you're so constantly with someone else, never able to discern your self in the void of self-inflicted doom. like how on thursday and sunday i slept with a boy to my left, friday and saturday with the girl to my right. (the use of indirect or directness has no meaning, these are empty words that beat my insides until i gave them rest on the page).
here it is, 4:23 on the day of my 24th birthday... ...4 hours earlier, i sat at a bar, stuck in indianapolis, but surrounded by hollywood, and therefore somewhat at home with the strangers surrounding me. i want to always be this girl, trying new things and laughing in the company of new friends, even though i never found the one i was looking for, i knew she existed, somewhere out of my view. when i wake on my birthday, i'll cancel the party i thought i wanted. the new party is familiar and repititious of earlier events, except for the bright pink pants, which are the only reminder of the girl i so wanted to be earlier in the day.
i deconstructed my self on the eastbound train, then scattered the pieces across miles, no one would know the whole story.
the degree to which i am hating all this books and words and thinking critical analyses is depressing me, if only because it's reminding me of why i came to hate this, which is only you. worse than that is the lack of sleep, sitting at my computer for hours on end and with the monitor so far to the left, directly in front of me are seven versions of you. do i blame the schoolwork that once defined my self, or the lack of sleep, unbalanced chemistry, the question knawing at my consciousness, or do i blame those pictures of you, staring through me, saying i told you so i told you so i told you so in all i knew but never said
do i believe bringing her back would make things right, or that it would make me right? fix the shame of becoming a much better person because she died. she becomes my personal savior, carrying and dying on my cross.
at first glance i knew she was the most beautiful girl in the world but she kept walking and through the bagginess of her burgundy t-shirt i saw every seam of the training bra as it clung to her skin my second thought about this - the most beautiful girl in the world is that she's dying i wonder if she knows then i wonder if people looked at me and thought the same things - not the most beautiful, but the part about dying would they have told me? and should i be telling her that to be perfect, she'll have to die? but she's gone already perhaps she just died. i'm left alone, studying the way my new pen leaves ink on the page i liked the pen i had to replace better the way i liked the body i replaced better but it too would have died i'd rather one that leaves too much ink on the page
what's so wrong with talking about the weather? it's real and always changing.
afraid that their world would end, the mexica climbed into the skin of their sacrificed victim. i say this now, as a reminder to myself and my world, that relatively, i'm not so far off.
let me go back to another time, another day, and start over. there have been too many tears, at twenty-three my well is running dry. too many loves, too many introductions, good-byes, too much packing, unpacking, too many memories in storage. there are too many unread books, unplayed c.d.s, pictures in boxes, too many faces i remember only when reminded. too many numbers: 714. 949. 805. 661. 219. 317. she doesn't live here anymore. change of address, times sixteen. and who could keep up? maybe that was the point. and while i may have been sincere, i shorted every one along the way. i was looking in so many directions, my mind racing with so many thoughts, you could be two feet to my right, or two thousand miles to my left, and i would still be in a world of make-believe, where
a single thought on repeat, "it isn't supposed to be this way," implying there is a way it's supposed to be, implying a power greater than us. but on reaching that conclusion, i instantly question if i got there out of need, which soon enough, will justify belief in itself.
you needed orange juice and i needed a friend, because in the sea of faces i used to call home i didn't quite fit, and the orange juice was stale. those twenty minutes, relatively meaningless before, now become all i've ever had. you were just laughing, so how can that girl that was you disappear overnight? the girl in the hospital isn't even you, just your body kept alive by machines, forcing me, once again, to redefine death, because it's hard to say you're alive even while your heart beats. but we were just laughing about intimacy, and you said you'd find the source of the 'rumors' and let me know, but then you disappeared.
i would never remember because this black, this box, was never the face of repression, but the memory itself. in a sense you never existed because there is no room for you here, only that in my childhood i constructed painful boxes engulfed in black.
time never slipped. it was this sticky oozy mess, inconsistent and sometimes rough on the skin, always leaving a slimy residue in its wake. slippery implies we couldn't grasp time, yet how we would hold on to those moments for years to come, how we would put time on display of how we'd been broken and remade again.