Something for me

This is biased.
You fucking jerk, how dare you take away the ONE thing that I have had this whole time, the ONE piece of myself that I have had the luxury of sharing with those I trust and love.
I can't bring myself to change the URL, amphitriti is me and I am her. 
It's my fault, putting my trust in technology that way, believing that I was safe.
This is not perhaps fair of me, I know, blaming you for all this.
But your smug comments make my stomach turn.  I am happy now, was happier last night than I have been in  weeks.  Let me have the space to learn how to trust again.  Let me live. 
He is good to me and good for me.
Let's be serious, I still dream of being published.  Someday maybe you will read a short story about a blue-eyed heartless boy and you'll think perhaps it's you.  That's not what scares me.  What scares me is giving you access.  Here, I am nothing but myself.  Here, I am naked.  I don't want to become a peep show. 
Erica
Adrienne
Jon
Nico
Babs,
they know me and trust me and I trust them.  I don't trust you, I'll never be able to trust you.  So please, just let me have this.  It's one of the only pieces of good that came out of that spring, and I want to keep it for my own.

Betting on the odds

I'm sorry that sometimes I tend to go a little crazy.
I hope I haven't ruined things (again.)
I trust you, more then 80% of the time and that number is getting higher the more you remind me why I fell for you in the first place.  Luckily you tend to remind me daily.
You're still that guy.
I'm still that girl.
Let's beat the odds. 

Love is a tender thing

I love it when you slap me.  In the sharp mineral taste of blood I taste also life.  Vampiric tendencies.  Tonight you hit me across the back of the head with the cordless phone.  You can justify this with the fact that the plastic doesn't crack the bone; it leaves a burgeoning goose egg and a ringing in my ears. I turn my head and vomit.
Brown eyes flashing with anger, you snarl and force a bucket into my hands.  Clean it up.  It's hard to do with my hands tied together.  I clumsily scrape up the piles of sick and slop them into the pail.  You sneer at my handicap; laughing at my efforts. 
Reaching up, you snap out the solitary bulb and tramp back up the steps.  I hear the lock slide into place behind you. 
The basement is dank and smells like rat shit.  Indeed, for a while I could hear the scutterings of my rodent friends at night.  There was a family, they lived just on the other side of the water heater.  I named them, mom and dad and four little ones.  I used to sing to them at night when I got lonely. 
One day you heard me singing.  Came downstairs and saw me rubbing the tip of the mother's nose.  Next day you came back, grinning.  You set the trap just beyond my reach, baited it with a ripe strawberry- my favorite.  Doubly cruel. 
That night I waited, not daring to sing and bring my friends out of safety.  In the early morning hours came the inevitable SNAP.  When you came down to check the next day you showed me the mothers limp body, snout stretched towards the juicy berry.  Within a week they were all gone, leaving me with the less enjoyable company of ants that burrow into my clothes and nip at my skin. 
That's when I started liking the blood.  In my own blood I smell also the blood of my fallen nocturnal comrades, in bleeding we are all the same. 
I have lost track of how long I have been down here.  A week maybe, a month.  It can't have been a year yet because when you brought me down there was snow coming in under the door and now there is sometimes rain but sometimes a warm breeze. 
I asked you at first what I did.  Pleaded to know why you kept me down here, how long you were going to punish me, if you were going to kill me.  Now I stay silent. 
It was after a wedding that you brought me down.  I was in my pretty new dress, green silk on the top with a fitted black skirt.  I said I looked like a modern day Scarlette O'Hara.  You smiled and told me I was silly.  A year and a half we had been dating, and your sister was getting married. 
Funny how I can remember details from that day and not from the rest of my life upstairs.  She wore lily's in her hair, and I had wine colored lipstick that opened in my clutch and ruined the lining.  It was a light spring day; I watched them dance and slipped my shoes off under the table and smiled into your beautiful brown eyes.  After that I excused myself and went to the bathroom.  Standing outside, your cousin; the one with the brilliant green eyes. 
Maybe I smiled too brightly because when I came out he was still there, and then his arms were pushing me behind the stairs and his lips were covering my mouth, neck, breasts with sloppy kisses.  He tasted like jack and coke and I pushed him away, hard.  Perhaps I screamed, but then there you were looking down at me with my dress wrinkled lying on the floor with green eyes telling everyone that I had pulled him down on top of me.  The wedding planner took green eyes away and gave him water and I cried into your breast pocket while you held me on the steps to the reception hall. 
Later you told everyone that you were taking me home early to put me to bed.  I let you lead me into the house and wrap me in your arms. 
Then, my first time. 
The blow took me by surprise and I reeled for a second, cowering.  They came harder and faster, your rings digging into my skin.  I put my hand to my face and felt blood trickling down from my brow, and everything faded to brown.
I woke up in this basement, with a rat licking my face.
I screamed for hours, days maybe, until I realized that there was no one to hear, no one except you.  You would come down more often in those first few days, bringing me water and food and roughing me up.  I tried reasoning and begging and trying to make you see that it was all a simple misconception.  You spat back words, whore and bitch and unfaithful cunt.  Now, I believe you.
Last week, I found a link in my chain that is almost rusted through.  I have been working at it ever since, wrapping it around itself and striking it with the little rock I found in the corner.  Today it broke.
I am waiting, waiting. 
Hours pass and I hear the buzz of the oven pre-heater upstairs.  Another frozen pizza tonight, your favorite.  Finally steps shuffle to the door and I hear the lock sliding back.  You descend and reach up to pull the cord to the light.  In the moment of confusion between light and dark, I spring.  I move with agility, knocking you to the ground and pinning you between my legs with the chain around your neck.  I pull and you kick, bite, scratch.  I pull harder.  Finally, you gurgle and gasp for air and go quiet.  I release, just a little.  Your breath is shallow, but it is there.  Good.
Smiling I wrap the chain around your neck once more.  You cannot win this fight, but neither can I. 
Here we will remain.  I refuse to smother you entirely, but then you refused to put my out of my misery these long days.  At least when we do expire, it will be in a loving embrace. 
There is one rat left, a little baby boy.  He can't feed himself without his mother and sisters.  I will give him the feast of a lifetime. 

Redemption

This is not a sentimental piece.
His eyes aren't as blue as I remember, and his grin is more lopsided.
He's still charming but somehow though I see this it doesn't give me butterflies anymore.
I look at him, not with disgust or anger or hurt, but with a cool calculated assessment.
He talks about you, darling.  He talks about long-ish blond hair and sparking blue eyes.  We both talk about you.  You are my person, but to him you are the one who got away, and always will be.
I think you know this.
Someday maybe, three-five-ten-fifteen years down the road I will be dancing at a wedding, your wedding.  Maybe you will marry that boy, or maybe you will marry the smart sensitive boy you are with now, or maybe you will marry some other one who has yet to waltz into your life.
This I know:
Whatever boy you marry, I hope he looks at you just the same way this one does.  He is broken, we are all broken, but in his own broken way he cares.
This is cruel to write, It's tactless and I should not say it I know.  But.
In losing my own beautiful brown eyed love I have to have something to believe in.
I am glad I saw him, I am glad I have heard him talk about you in this way.
I believe in redemption and I believe in second chances.  Perhaps he is not the devil, but he is not what I want, not anymore.  He is not my puzzle piece. 
Sometimes I wonder who will be at my wedding, sitting next to me as you look lovely in green (blue?) down the line.  Sometimes I wonder who will be next to you at yours.
Either way, I think we both have good options.

I believe in fairy tales, yes.  And we are going to get our happily ever afters.

Happily Ever After.

I believe in true love.  I believe in fairy tales and happy endings and prince charming.  Go ahead, call me naive, I dare you. 
I just know that when you kissed me that night under the street light you sucked out all the poison and brought me back to life with a gasp. 
Life is a fairy tale, except there was a Jeep instead of a pumpkin and I seem to be both princess and wicked witch.
I will have my happy ending, I will have my happily ever after.
When I cease to believe that, I cease to exists as myself at all.
So be my Prince Charming, please.  
Do it soon, before they take me into the forest to carve out my heart.

Public Relations

You fuck me until I cry.  You tell me you like it when I'm scared; tell me that you like the tears.
My lamp is too far away, I think, to reach and bash you across the head.  Even if it was closer, you're keeping my arms pinned behind me. 
And yet, I'm afraid of hurting you.  You're driving yourself deeper into me, grunting with each thrust; I wince and I'm equally scared that if I fight back you'll snap me by accident or I'll scratch you and draw blood.
I love you.  This is a mantra, repeated countlessly as I tense my body away from yours.  I love you.  I love you.  I love you.
You tell me I like this, tell me I'm a whore.  Maybe later I will agree, but right now I am broken and you are keeping my wings clipped.
Tomorrow I will apologize for sending you into this rage.  I will grovel, trying to work out what I did that was wrong enough to make you treat me this way.
Then, I will put on heels and a sundress and affix myself to your arm.  To the outside world I am just what I seem; simpering southern lady, lovely senators wife.
Tonight it's grunting and slapping and pulling my hair.  Tonight is terror and sweat and salty tears.
Someday soon, you will pull my neck until it snaps.  A part of me can't wait.

Emily with the dresses

Once upon a time, if you asked me what the one piece of clothing in the world I wanted to own, I would have hemmed and hawed.  Perhaps a wide petticoated dress, blue silk; it's wearer having declared a blase "So let them eat cake."  I would love the beautiful silk with ivroy button details, but the darker side of me would almost prefer the simple black frock with frayed lace around the neck that has a dried brown place around the neck.

Or perhaps I would have preferred something a little more modern.  Falling to the knees with a fringe, the scarlet is now faded but the strings of beads still have a tiny bit of luster left in them.  Once this was a dress of jazz and dancing and pack upon pack of cheap cigarettes.  A tag is sewn in at the collar, loopy stitches make embroidered letters, "Zelda."  The last night it was worn, Daisy was born. 

Then there is one of my favorites, a white expanse of light cotton with a trim green ribbon for a belt.  The skirt is so wide that no one can approach within a foot and a half of the wearer.  There is a straw had with matching ribbon, and perhaps a stray raven hair stuck to the hatpin.  This dress saw simpering and tears and then was locked away in a Hollywood prop closet, while the world realed from the impropriety of a gentleman who dared to state that he didn't give a damn.

Perhaps all I want is a simple black dress with an aline skirt.  It would fall just below my knees and look smashing with a pearl necklace and a morning bagel, and of course it would go with Tiffany's darling. I would wear my hair pulled up high on my head and throw parties the likes of which this small town has never seen.  In the end however, it would be me and my nameless cat and a bathtub for a couch.

I swoon over these dresses, I would give a year of my life to just touch any of them.  But today, if you asked me what I would most like to own I would answer decisively without a moment's hesitation.  There is an old red sweatshirt with embroidery down the front.  It is at least three sizes two big, I could comfortably wear it as a dress of it's own.  It smells like dreams and warm summer nights and tears; but the good kind where I know I have something amazing that I just don't know what to do with.  That is the softest most wonderful article of clothing that I could imagine, and I would trade in anything in the world to have it again.

You fucking lying piece of shit.  That is all.

I may be a crazy girl.
I may be jealous and insecure and say stupid things all the time.
But you're not alone right now.  You're NOT.
I'm having just as hard a time as it as you are. 
I'm sorry if I hurt you.  I don't want you to hurt, ever.
I'm here, I'm always here.

Three years later

And yet, I continue to let you call all the shots.  I am so sick of you, right now.  So sick of you being a complete idiot about life.  I am here, and god damn it I care about you.  I love you.  You can't even say that word anymore.  Liar.
You don't understand that it's all been done before.  You're not the first person who has decided not to associate with me in public.  You're not the first person to want to keep things "quite" for a while.  But do you remember what happened the last time I was crying about a boy who was treating me like I was worthless?  I let him have everything.  I regret that still.  I'm not going to let you have everything, I've learned my lesson. I'm taking back my heart.
There are men who keep trying to save me.  I tell them I don't need saving from you.  Soon though, soon I'm going to let one of them sweep my off my feet.  I need to be loved, not despised. 
I have done everything I can not to hurt you, but I just don't care anymore.  You clearly have no problem hurting me.
All I want, at the end of the day, is someone to do homework with, someone to curl up with on a rainy day.  Obviously this is too much to ask, from you at least.  Luckily for me, you're not the only fish in the sea.
Goodnight, my brown eyed heart-breaker.  You're exactly what everyone warned me about. 

Touche

What a low blow, even for you.
So mad I could spit nails.
And I was so so so happy this morning.
How dare you, how DARE you step into the middle of that.
I suppose this means all's fair in love and war.  This is going to be a little of both.

I won't do anything "silly," darling.  But I won't forget this either, and if you are allowed to actively stop people from talking to me then I'm going to do the same.

Touche.

They say it's your birthday

Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you...
I want to be there giving you a birthday kiss and your birthday spanks, even though I always lose that battle, since you're bigger then me.
No big presents this year, but you have my heart and I hope that's enough.
Let's make this year a good one.
<3

Star light, star bright...

I wish I was allowed to call you and tell you how sick I feel.  I want you to come stroke my forehead and tell me everything is going to be ok.  I want a bear hug and a glass of water and the true look of concern in your eyes. 
I wish you had called me, last night.  I would have woken up to come give you a hug.  Your hugs are always going to trump sleep for me.
Most of all, I wish I could be waking up in your arms right now.  I miss the mornings when you would bring me close and we could let the world melt away. 
I want to put that damn necklace on, turn my ring around, and belong to you again.  It doesn't feel right talking to other people.  I don't like it at all, but I feel like I have to.  Just tell me you want me to be yours again, and I'll tell the world they can't have me.
I'm getting back to myself.  I know what I'm worth and I know what I deserve.  And I deserve you; nothing more, nothing less.

Polistes exclamans

I like to be up close and personal with my victims.  Some killers like things clean and neat, a rifle through a window, a quick squeeze and away; not me.  I like to taste the blood and feel the organs crush.  There is something roughly spiritual about killing, taking a life force from another even as you see how tenacious your hold on mortality is.  
Today is much the same.  Different house number, scribbled on a paper as I sip my Starbucks and click my phone shut.  The other cafe patrons take no notice of me, just another young woman in yoga pants and a track jacket.  Smoothing my hair I stand and hold the door for a young mother who is flusterdly trying to balance a baby carrier and purse on one arm and a diaper bag on the other.  I return her gracious smile, wondering how much she will bleed if she is the one I got the call for today. 
After dark, I park my minivan across the street and count mailboxes.  One twenty-eight, one thirty, one thirty-four...two more blocks.  Two eighteen, two twenty, two twenty-two.  Target acquired. 
Two twenty-two has the curtains drawn on a pristine sitting room.  The back corner has what might be a study desk, and the silhouettes of bookcases line the right side of the room.  I know this house, it's just like every other cookie cutter construction on this side of the iron gates.  There will be impressive leather volumes on those shelves that still crinkle when they're opened, a neatly swept fireplace awaiting this years yule log; the rooms are currently being permeated with Maratha's fall collection candles.  Just like every other house, until tomorrow, when the neat lawn will be flooded with media personalities and the drapes will be drawn shut against the morbid curiosity of neighbors.  Two twenty-two. 
There is a car parked in the drive, and lights on in the connecting garage.  I look back at the paper, reading the instructions one last time.  Top floor, second room on the left.  Bed under the window.  I look in my mirror, smooth my brows and pat my nose with a tissue to remove excess powder.  Tucking my phone into my pocket, I slide out of the car and jog across the street.
Tap tap tap.  Pause.  Breath. The door swings in, revealing a polished woman wearing a cardigan and a yellow glove, clearly cleaning up the aftermath of dinner. 
"Can I help you?"
"I'm so sorry, I just didn't know where to go and your lights are on and it looked like such a nice house, and I'm really starting to freak out." 
I am gushing, and I can see my panic already wearing down her wariness. 
"What's wrong?"
"Well my car won't start and it's getting dark- I was supposed to pick up my son from band practice hours ago.  I called Triple A, of course, but the tow company hasn't shown up.  I'm getting really nervous and I don't like waiting in the dark, I know it's such a safe community but there has been a group of boys on skateboards past the car twice already.  Would you mind terribly if I used you bathroom and just waited in the light of your garage?  I'm so sorry to impose."  My apologetic air is pathetic, it makes my skin crawl but she is already opening the door further.  She can sense a fellow wasp in distress. 
"That sounds horrible, of course we won't make you wait in the garage.  I'm just cleaning up from supper, why don't you sit down with us for a while.  Would you like a glass of water?  Tea?  Juice?" 
"Oh, no thank you I couldn't impose.  Would you mind terribly if I used your bathroom?  I've been out there for the better part of two hours already." 
"Of course, it's right upstairs, first door on the right." 
I nod my thanks and climb the stair, being careful not to touch the polished white banister.  I wait until I can hear the water running in the kitchen again before flicking on the bathroom light, closing the door, and creeping across the hall.
Second door on the left.  I remove the long thin piece of steel from my sleeve, careful not to prick myself with it's needle tip.  Pushing open the door I brace myself.
There is a bed, under the window.  It's a crib.  Above it hangs a mobile, still playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star In the tired sort of the way that tells me that it's been unwinding for a while now. I creep over, careful not to step on a plastic fisher price monkey or a set of stacking blocks strewn across the floor.
The baby is maybe a year old, clutching at a tattered blanket.  It snuffles and stretches an arm out before settling back into sleep.  Poor child, almost innocent.
I close my eyes and see the old image, hand around my throat, my head bouncing off walls; those beautiful eyes, beautiful eyes, beautiful eyes. 
Open my eyes and plunge the rod down.
It slides easily into the soft flesh, I feel the satisfying *pop* of a lung.  It recalls the childhood joy of bubble wrap in relatives Christmas presents.  These bones don't crunch so much as snap, so pliable still.  I linger over the left side, drawing out the pleasure before thrusting down again.  The child expires with my hand over it's mouth, blood covering the blanket still clutched in it's hand. 

For tonight, at least, I know I am alive.

Trust.

I trust you with my heart, now and always.  Maybe I shouldn't-but I do. 
You're worth a night alone, really. Someday, soon maybe, your arms will be around me again.
For now I'll just keep waiting for the next kiss on my forehead. 

I miss you tonight, as usual.  It wasn't that bad until I had a moment where I thought that just maybe you wanted to see me; it's a million times worse now. 
I just want to be cozy, it's so cold here.  I want someone to hold me tight.
Cliche life.

Maybe

Maybe this time, for the first time, maybe this time he'll stay.
Every single guy I have ever wanted or lusted after has left me for something else, something better.  When I met you, I thought this was different.  You looked at me not as a conciliation prize, but as the person that I am and I think you loved that.  I want to believe you did, anyway.
Now I'm alone again, three years later with nothing but mistrust and a scarred heart to show for it. 
I want to talk to you so badly.
I want you to miss me.  Please miss me.  I miss you so much, and I feel pathetic and unrequited. 
This is supposed to get easier, but every night something else hurts.  I can't let you go but I can't hold you close either.
So here I am, waiting for you to tell me the inevitable.  I'm not good enough.
It's gonna happen, happen sometime, maybe this time I'll win.

The house on Lutz street

Tonight the wind is creeping up the street and blowing in the eves.  Next to me, he twitches the corners of the blanket around my shoulders.  The old house has been abandoned for almost six months, though from the looks of the tattered throw in the corner we might not be the first to use it as a hideout.  The neighbors dog yips faintly from two miles down the road, other then this everything is still.
"I will always love you, Sarah."
"I love you too."
"Will you write often?"
"I'll write."
"It's only for a few months, then I'll be back for you.  Will you wait?"
"Mmmmmm.  Let's not talk anymore just now." 
His kiss is warm and sweet; he kisses the way he talks, with a beautiful simplicity.  He holds me and slowly I let myself fall into his body, resting my cheek on his chest as he strokes my hair and kisses the top of my head.  Outside the first drops are falling, soon there will be a downpour.
"Darcy?"
"Sarah?"  I finger the buttons on his shirt, undoing just one at a time.  His hand closes over my fingers and we are embracing in the blasts of lighting.  We are the tempest, and the tempest is us.

Later, he closes his eyes and I let my hand trail across his naked stomach, pausing as he flinches and pulls it into his own. 
"You're wonderful."  His breath is hot on my neck, his whisper sits heavily in the air pressing down on me.
"Darling."
"What?"
"Darling, Darcy, I can't.  I can't pretend that you're going to go away and in two, three, four months I'll still be here waiting.  I don't love you in that way.  When you leave tomorrow, this will end."
He is looking at me but his eyes are blank, translucent.  His face is frozen but I can see my words hitting his core.  He sways and his breath comes fast and shallow.
"Why Sarah?  I told you I will wait for you, I told you I'll be true.  Why?"
"I just need this, it seems right.  It's been fun, but darling I just don't think I can keep on.  You understand."
"No Sarah.  No.  You're wearing my old ring, my jacket.  You're not allowed to say no.  You're mine.  I bought this, when I gave you these things.  I have you now."
"Darcy, you're being ridiculous.  You can't possibly think I would be happy here, with this, forever." 
But his eyes aren't responding anymore, they have taken on the dull sheen of the dead. 
"You can't leave.  I'm not letting you leave." 
His hands are on my arms and I am against the wall;  something cracks and there is wet on my face and it's blood.  My blood.
"Darcy stop.  STOP.  What are you doing?  Think about this.  DARCY." 
A hand on my throat and I can't breath and he is not even looking at me, just staring at the wall beside my head.
After a few seconds he lets up, and I gasp.
"All right.  I'll stay.  I'm not going anywhere, I love you Darcy." 
He turns to me and puts one hand lovingly on the side of my head, the other carreases my chin.
"No, you won't stay.  Not now."
CRACK.


***
"It's the old Lutz house!"  The boy is poking through the fence with a knobbly stick, the girl besides him looks warily at the fallen in timber frame.
"It's gross looking."
"It's haunted."  She rolls her eyes and he nods with authority.
"I overheard my mom talking about it once to the neighbors.  The dude who lived there snapped his girlfriends neck."
"No way."
"No, totally."
"I don't believe that." 
"My mom doesn't lie, and that's not the worst part."
She glances at him sideways, anticipation and trepidation on her face. 
"The guy, he jumped through this hole in the floor, and there was this big pipe sticking up.  It went straight through his stomach, SQEACH." 
The boy makes a violent gesture with his hands, indicating carnage.  The girl shudders and looks back at the house.
"Is it still there?"
"The pipe?  Nope.  They had to cut it off cause it went through his stomach and his guts were stuck around it." 
The house looms in front of them, she looks up at the crumbles of the chimney.  She looks up at it, curiously.
"How come?  Why did he do it?"  He shrugs, unconcerned.
"Who cares?  I dare you to touch the front step." 
"No way.  There are probably ghosts in there who would get all angry.  YOU go do it."
"Nah, I gotta get home for dinner soon." 
They boy throws his stick and it soars through a long ago broken window pane.  They wander off down the lane together, talking and making up better details for the old legend.
Twilight is creeping over the house as the wind picks up.  Rain moving in.

One day at a time

I can't say all the things I want to right now, so I'll put them here instead.  I can't decide if I will actually publish this or not. 
Wed, Sept 14 2:46 am
I love you, sweet dreams darling.
11:03am
It's freezing outside, you would have laughed this morning at our reading in Theater.  It was all a big long "that's what she said."  Also lots of discussions about phallus.  Come snuggle with me?
12:41pm
I met the freshman who lives in your old room at the house a couple of days ago.  We laughed about the angry wall together.  Side-note:  Do you know the urban dictionary definition of "Spelunking?"  They might want to re-think the terminology. 
12:53pm
Boomer is creeping on me again. I've told him to stop, I've told him I don't consider myself really single right now, and he won't.  I just want to be protected, I am getting kind of freaked out about that situation.  Love you so much.
4:34pm
I'm sorry about the status, clearly I did not think it through.  I love that picture I put online last night of you on Peyton's car, I debated for half an hour whether or not I was allowed to put it up.  I decided that as long as I didn't tag you, it was ok.  My RA brought me a note today- I talked to her last night about maybe going to the counseling center.  She is far more impressed with my "strength" and "courage" then I am right now.  I really want to go to that dance party this weekend, simply because I miss dancing- but I'm afraid you will be so mad if you find out.  I don't want to make you mad or worried right now.  I lvoe you (You don't remember it, but you started saying that to me a little under three years ago.)
7:10pm
I'm not listening to them this time.  Little voices in my ear telling me "He's going to leave you, he doesn't mean it, you know how he will deal with things...."  Unlike the last time though, this time I'm not agreeing.  I'm telling them that no, you looked me in the eyes and I believe you.  You're a good person and we will get through this somehow (I hope.)  I love you, I don't doubt you but I wish I could look into your eyes again and know that I'm right.
7:30pm
Random thought, are you in Greek Sing?  I don't think I can go if you are.  It's too hard to see you and not be able to talk to you.
8:48pm
It's so hard not to talk to you.  I know you're talking to everyone I'm close with, and I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact that I just can't.  I hate this.  So far I have come up with roughly a bazillion excuses to just say hello, but I'm staying strong (so far.)  I just want to say goodnight.  I won't even use the "L" word.  I promise.
11:51pm
I miss you so so so so so so much.  I just want to tell you goodnight.  And also that I gave my one formal dress to a girl to wear for tri-delt pref night...I'm helping the freaking tri-delts (gross.) I want another kiss on the forehead, the one yesterday made me greedy for more.  I love you.  Sleep well.

(to be continued.) 

Resolution

This is good, this is right.  I'm not terrified anymore, I'm just going to be me.  I will still have my moments, I'm sure.  But for right now I am going to read and work and play hard.  I have so many wonderful people in my life, I have so many amazing things left in front of me. 
After all, I'm Scarlette and tomorrow is another day. 
(Cue exit music.)

Dear flattering freshman,
You made my day.  I may be far too old for you, but that you for reminding me that I am still fairly young and attractive and could have a life full of possibilities and intrigue.  I'm going to put on some heels and a summer dress and take on the town.  I'm not ready to look at other guys yet, but I don't think I mind when they look at me.

Sincerely,
Flattered and blushing

P.S. I've missed having auburn hair.  <3

Sleep deprivation

I need to stop hoping to see a message waiting from you when I wake up, it beings the day in utter disappointment. 
But.
Each day is getting a little bit easier. 
Each day I'm letting myself go back to who I was before.
Each day I'm learning that you're not the end all and be of of ME, and the world does not stop spinning without you.
I still love you, yes, but now I'm rebuilding some walls and starting to gather the pieces of my heart back from you. 
All this aside.  It is still taking every bit of strength to stay away from you.
I tell myself that maybe if I can just make it through this week, maybe this weekend things will get better.


I'm closer now, close to being my strong independent self again.  Today I will have some horrible moments of weakness, but I hope that they hit my while I'm surrounded by friends and pass soon.

Maybe next week I can write stories again.


Maybe this week I will go out for a play.


I am about to launch my next campaign against the bureaucratization at this school, with as much passion and gusto as ever.  Yes.


These are the things I wan to tell you, these and also


I love you.

Tonight, tonight.

It's finally hit me, I think.  (can't breath can't think can't sleep can't eat.) 
Mostly I can't keep seeing you and knowing I can't talk to you or laugh with you or love you.
I don't know how to not talk to you yet.  I can't believe that I can't just click on your name to tell you that I love you, or the idiotic things I did today, or how I get to start my new job tomorrow.  In my head you're rolling your eyes and laughing at me, I can remember how you used to look at me like I was the only woman in the world.
I wish I couldn't remember.
I can't bring myself to purge you from my life.  I can't delete the conversations, the photos, I can't knowingly wipe you out of my life. 
I would give anything to hear you tell me you want to be with me. 

I love you, hon, darling, lover, babe.  I love you and I want you in my life.  I hope I fit.

Afternoon

And now it just hurts.  And now I'm sobbing and blaming myself and thinking about all the things I will miss, and how it will feel the first time I see someone else on your arm.  Please don't do that to me, please. 
I still love you so much, I wish I didn't. 
Why did I let my walls come down? 
I'm building myself a castle with no doors and no windows and I'm never coming out.

Medea's Lament

You're the love of my life, after all.  I've been saying it for years now.  Perhaps tomorrow I will be upset.  Perhaps tomorrow I will be angry.  Perhaps tomorrow I will write a bloody scene or two.  Right now I just
AM.

I know more truths now, things that people were afraid to tell me before.  It helps, knowing I was not the only one who kept secrets.  The difference was I told you the truth, in the end.  But now I know.  Even so, through my moments of blind rage and self doubt, I still love you.  That doesn't change.  There is no switch to turn off my emotion.

I thought you were the Last One.  I thought you were my Rhett Butler.  You might still be, I suppose; in some sweepingly brilliant end of a romantic comedy where you realize that YES, I'm the one!  And YES, you can't live without me!  I don't expect that though.  I expect for you to look for solace and love in other places.  I expect you to believe that I am too broken to be fixed.  You don't fight for us, you never have- that's me. 

When you walked out the door I collapsed.  I will apologize to my neighbors tomorrow for my sobs and wild clatter and banging, the poor girls who don't know that my heart is breaking will think I've really gone insane.  Now though, I'm calm.  The man I fell in love with, I can't find him anymore.  I see hints now and then, little smiles bits of teasing.  But mostly you have fallen into a morose mean man that I have never met. 

I don't hate you.  I think you're handsome and intelligent and you will make a wonderful father someday.  I don't hate you but right now, I don't see you coming back to me.  

Please find yourself again.  Maybe, in finding yourself, you will find the love for me that you "lost" so long ago.  Maybe you won't.  Either way, I hope I will have done some good.  As much as I want to spend my life discovering the world with you, I can't spend my life living the way I have been for the last year.  I love you, but I love myself more.  I hope that before you try to make things work- with me or anyone else- you find the truth about what makes YOU truly happy.  Because I don't believe you know right now.

You told me you can't handle my dark and twisty side.  But darling, I was dark and twisty long before you came along.  Maybe more so when there are things to emphasize it, but there is something you don't understand.   I love me on all my dark and twisty days as much as I love me on my best days. I would never harm myself, because I believe that I am worth the fight; even when my mouth is forming the words that I'm not. 

Now, I have to pick myself up and this time there is no one else there telling me how wonderful I am.
  I'm hurt, so hurt.  This will take me years and probably countless dollars in therapists to comprehend.  But if I can do this, if I can move on by myself, I will be the girl I once was again. 
Maybe there is someone out there waiting for me, maybe he's hurting too and he feels just as desperate as I do. 

I know this: I live, love, fight with passion.  I will never give that up.  As long as I have passion, I am still meridith-tabitha-amphitriti.  I love you, with all of my heart, and I do hope you find yourself while there is still time for me to give myself to you. 

But if you don't, I hope you are happy. 

Once again, for old time's sake.

It's raining, and it's three in the morning, and I am awake alone in my dorm.  On some level you could say that some things never change.
But they have.
I'm happy.
I'm not writing men into bloody oblivion, I'm not crying myself to sleep after sneaking back across campus and down sets of stairs.
I just came from my boyfriend's room, my boyfriend of over two years.  He told me he loved me and he kissed me on the forehead and then I walked home through the rain.
I'm not the same girl anymore, longing to be out of the grey grey town.
Bring it, Meadville. 

Brown Eyes

Tonight, for the first time, I saw bright brown eyes fade to a dull lifeless sheen.
It's not the first time I've seen death, I have personally witnessed many blue eyed boys expire, and even some hazel and green.  Never brown though, with their little specks of green and gold near the center.  Never, until now. 
It's harder then with the others, because before all I felt was anger and bitterness. Now I have not only lost my pride and a piece of my heart, but I have lost my future and most of my past.  Who am I now, to go out into the world alone and unchaperoned?  Who am I to believe that I am worthy of searching for such a love again?  I gave everything of myself away, and when it was cast back to me I have found it impossible to gather all the pieces of me back in any logical sense of order. 
It is not my first heartbreak, but it is my first check on reality.  I thought, for some naive reason, that when there came the time that I truly gave everything of myself away, that I let myself go and just fall into happiness, that somehow there would be no way I could fail.  I thought when that day came my future would be carved deep into everlasting stone.  There is no contingency plan.  There is no escape route. 
I will love you until the day I die, this I know.  I will never fall out of love, that is as impossible as it is for me to curb my emotions at two in the morning.  I will love you forever, but will you ever love me?
This is why I saw those lifeless eyes tonight.  It is what I do, what I did, when I felt myself getting too deep into hysteria. 
Fictional murder is infinitely better then the reality of loneliness.
With you though, it is different.  I can't kill without a conscious, without remorse. 
You are my life.  You are my love.  You are a part of myself, and if I murder you I simultaneously commit suicide. 
So, with a flick of an eyelid, I watch those beautiful brown eyes find their life again.  I won't close them forever, not yet.
But please, a concession from you as well.
Promise me, please.  Don't break my heart. 

Someone.

I want to be your someone.  I want to see you grin.
Cheesy, I know, but real nonetheless.
I know you don't need to hear it, but I do love you.

I used to dream of the New York City Ballet.  Not the corps, but the principal, the prima ballerina.  Visions of the grand entrance with my picture plastered outside, me as clara, the swan princess, Juliet.  At the ripe old age of 30 perhaps I would retire, living in a high rise in the Village and teaching an exclusive class for other young dancers.  This dream died when I turned 12.

Next I saw myself on a stage just off Times Square.  Center stage with a spotlight, looking searchingly into the darkened balcony.  The audience would weep as I did, and at the end of every show my bow would come last to a standing crowd who would proclaim "Brava, brava!"  For years I held this, examining it each night before I slipped into sleep, embellishing and fast forwarding through the bitter details.  One year, I got to die onstage.  The house of 300 almost sold out one night; my greatest hour.

Now I have a different dream.  I am standing alone, looking at myself in a glass.  My reflection is wearing white, and I am carrying lilies.  I linger on this thought, because I don't want to wear out what comes next.  You, at the end of a grassy lawn, looking back at me.  You are smiling and somehow things are just right.  I don't know how but I am with you and you are looking into my eyes and I know. Later I will drink and dance and my father will tell me he is happy and proud of me- of us.  The night will spin on and on until we are alone again, and you are telling me that this is forever.

This is my dream now.  This is what keeps me living with passion.  You don't want to hear this, I know, but the idea of living a simple life with you makes me breath a little easier.  I love you, and I won't stop saying it.  I love you, and I want to be your someone.

life.love.regret.

Something from a fellow old soul tonight-and my first guest post.  He captures poignant love and the hurt of losing it with a simple elegance, and without killing any marines.  Thank you James, for sharing this with me and for let me in turn share it with others. 


Before I get started, that's a particularly concise and evocative phrase. Good job, Unbroken.

Three words that have turned out to be a fairly popular t-shirt, if you think of the hardcore punk community as a runway. But those three words have quite a bit attached to them. life.love.regret, perhaps foremost, is a mid-90's genre defining record by San Diego straight edge band Unbroken. Suffice to say they were loud, heavy and wrote songs that turned mosh pits turn into hospital visits. Much more would bore you with description. Tellingly, Unbroken did a cover of Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart.

Now you know what the t-shirt stands for, but I think that phrase is wrong and myopic at best and straight up lying at worst.  The kids who wear the Unbroken t-shirts, are not, at the time of wearing the t-shirt, historically known for being happily married.  In other words, life.love.regret skews young and I'm writing it with us in mind.

Here's the thing. life.love.regret. as a sentence clearly articulates a mindset, that you will live, you will love someone and what comes after that love are regrets, piling all the things you should have done in hindsight on top of you, like a blanket.

That feeling of loss is what life.love.regret speaks so vividly and absolutely about. Maybe loss isn't the right word. The more I think about it, what's more precise or less wrong than loss is the word unpublished. The knowledge that there are feelings and expressions and emotions that can't or shouldn't be accessed anymore. There was something there, but now it's not and instead there is only a conspicuous absence, or a blank spot in the shape of where he/she/they/whomever curled up next to you or said something that triggered your dopamine receptors or however it is that science works and that swelling, headswimming feeling inside you happens and you realize you love them, that's











gone.


life.love.regret is about that. It's memorializing that feeling. Perhaps even worse, enshrining it. Sure, there is haunting and passionate art that comes from that pain, it's powerful, after all. It's also universal. In the previous paragraph, I'm not talking about anything you as a human being haven't already experienced. If you live long enough, this will happen to you. There will be almost primeval volumes of it. It will intoxicate you.

If it hasn't happened already, I can only promise you that it will. And I'm sorry.  But more than that?  You will lie in places where you wouldn't stand, to quote Planes Mistaken For Stars, a band that covered Unbroken.  You might even do worse things afterwards. You'll make mistakes and those will be tragic, stupid or any combination between the two. That loss is rough and in trying to fill that explicitly, you'll fail.

And the loss will not fade, not if you're thinking about it that way, which makes it a dramatic thing to put on a t-shirt.

But if you don't think about it like that? More things happen to you. And as the more things that happen transpire and more yarn is added to the sweater of your life, the less central the loss gets. In 2008, I had my head fucked with, brutally, by people that were trying to protect themselves. That sounds big but it just means the relationships got bad, it got too heavy and they bowed out in ways that were not graceful. Unsurprisingly, alcohol was a lubricant.

I spent a couple months of spring 2009 dealing with the psychic fallout. It was the first time something of that magnitude happened to me. It devastated me at the time, but since then, I've been talking easily about it like ancient history, war stories from a magical time before Twilight, when the conclusion of Harry Potter was the widest collective supernatural event in our recent memory.

That's what life.love.regret. misses. Your life continues, if you let it. Yeah, being discarded with the rapidity and purpose of a filled condom suuuuuucked and was one of those "defining" moments, but you know what else was a defining moment? Getting drunk in November 2010 with the guy who writes Uncanny X-Men. That pain and turbulence from 2008 and 2009 are hilarious stories at this moment. It's not like those stories are any less important or that pain was any less real, but that distance heals quite a bit because I chose not to make those things or those people central in my life.nny

Put simply, life.love.regret. by virtue of its period, dramatically ends the thought. Put even simpler: life.love.regret. means regret is the last thing. Regret is what you're left with. That's not really the end, is it? You must go on. You must keep living. After all, there are classes or you are scheduled for work in the morning. All things pass in the microscopic skirmishes of our daily lives.

And that's good! As amazing as being in love, wrapped up in lust and losing consciousness exhausted in their arms is, the feeling will happen again with a different person. This love is not the final love. True, tomorrow isn't promised and one ought to live accordingly, but live is the important verb there.

Sharks must move forward to keep feeding and the truism's apt. To keep living, and truly, sincerely, living, the forward momentum that life.love.regret. inhibits is crucial.



Thanks, Emily for the space and the platform. I've wanted to write this for years and only knew it a couple weeks ago.

Christmas in the District

She is young, and he is too.  They're sitting on a park bench along side the river, and they're holding hands.  A bird hops close enough to eye her shoelace suspiciously, and she stares back with equal curiosity.  He turns away from her and spits words into the wind.  They snap across the thick autumn wind.
"You're not as young as you used to be, anyway." 
His eyes are roving a group of coeds, squealing on a blanket nearby, fingers frantically texting on sleek bejeweled phones. 
She does not reply, but looks down at her bare knees.  Blue veins pop out and up, distorting the milky skin.  Her hands fold themselves quickly on top of her legs, and she leans out to look at the rippling water.
"I'm not old yet;" it slips out of her mouth as a whisper but he is too intent on a bronze haired lass to notice her slight decent.

The next week it starts snowing.  Just little flurries of flakes drifting from the sky; enough to excite children who are playing with their nannies on the browning lawn.  They're back on their bench, his hands stuck into his jeans and her nose reddening in the frosty air. 
"I don't know why the hell you dragged me out here today.  It's god damned near freezing."
"We used to come to the river all the time in winter, you remember watching the ice break the spring before last."
"Yeah well, maybe one of us has lost a little of their extra blubber."
He eyes her waist, which grows under his stare.  Her jacket puffs out and she looks away, trying to conceal her embarrassment.  There are no young ladies to hold his attention this time, and so he stands and waits for her to do the same.  Her reluctance makes him impatiently scuff his feet.
"You used to tell me I was pretty all the time."
"You were."

They don't come back for two months after that.  The holidays are approaching and the park is frequented by a sole chipmunk, foraging candy wrappers and breadcrumbs.  One day an old woman shuffles down the path and carefully lowers herself onto the cold bench.  Her eyes may have been blue once, but now they're clouded over and sit below sagging lids.  Lines map their way across her face and her neck and chin collapse into themselves in folds of flesh.  A rattling sigh escapes her thin lips,  a hand reaches up to brush itself across the white hair. 
"I am ugly.  I am old."
She speaks to no one in particular, but the chipmunk stops it's scurrying momentarily to stare at the stranger.  She is still.

 Morning papers announce the tragedy: a woman, age 23, frozen to death last night by the Potomac.  Survived by her parents and a grieving fiance.  She was so young, so beautiful. 

Fight for me, damn it.

Two am

What can I say lover? I miss you.

What goes around

Hey you,
with the horrible hair and the penciled on eyes.  Or maybe you're sixteen and have a kid slung across your hip; maybe again you're sixty five and you reach in an over sized purse to take out a carefully tabulated list of coupons.  I'm you're friendly sales associate, and I have something to tell you:
You're not witty.  Or cute.  Or vaguely amusing.  And I don't care about you as a person at all, when I look at you I see is big dollar signs.
Honestly. 

Whats more, I don't care to clean up after you.  They don't pay me enough.  When you're snot nosed six year old daughter rips open a fresh lip gloss off the shelf and starts eating it, don't look at me and glib, "Kids!"  I don't find it amusing.  I see my paycheck, walking out the door on your daughters now shiny lips.

Sometimes I fantasize about destruction.  I would like to go to your house and spill cherry soda on the floor, rip the cloths out of your closet and dump them in a pile, do it all with a holier then thou attitude.  I believe in karma though, and retail karma is one of the best kinds.

Next week when you bring something back, that same glossy lipped girl now in tears about her favorite shirt that shrunk in the wash, I will hand it back and smile.
"I'm sorry.  This item can clearly not be returned."

Go ahead and threaten, but on the inside I'm dying in laughter.  My manager won't care, and neither will the company.  After all, all you are is money in the bank.
The only thing that can save you is kindness and decency, areas in which you are clearly lacking.

So the next time a girl like me looks at you and says "Is there anything I can do to help you?"  just smile and thank her.    Because someday, when she finishes her college degree, she is going to walk into your office, and she is going to be introduced as your new boss.  And then you had better look at her and smile and say "What can I do for you today?"

After dark

Sometimes at night he grabs me and kisses me full on the lips with forgotten passion.  We heave against each other for quiet seconds, searching each other for some answer to all the wrongs. 

He never remembers in the morning.

Last night he caught me up and I was limp, and still he pushed himself against me and caressed me with surprising tenderness.

I wish I knew who she was, that dream girl who inspires him so.  She is lucky to have all of his passion and none of his spite.

Tribute

I used to write for you.  When you said it "just didn't make sense," and that you "didn't bother to read the first part," well that stung baby.  But maybe now I'm free. 
Now I can write all the dark things I've been thinking, it will probably be months before you read them.  By then I will be ready for the fight, ready for you to mope and misinterpret and get angry.  All the reasons I stopped writing in the first place. 
Now if I start killing off brown eyed boys you won't notice.  Go back to your game darling,
I'm writing again.

Born again

I have a new lover, and a new lease on life.  The stage is a fickle mistress (Mister?) but damn it I've missed you theater. 
I think this summer will be an endeavor in auditions.

First play

Last play

Also: Having discovered the new photo formatting tools it will be hard not to over-post photos just because I can.  Damn you blogger, damn you.

Liberal Art's Education, Part II

Part two of Liberal Art's Education

"Hi, my name is Anna and I'm a sophomore English major here! It's wonderful to meet you all. We're going to start our tour today with a look at one of our sample housing accommodations-"
Anna cringed inside. The father was wispy and looked like one good cold would finish him off; his son was round and could have been the poster boy for the "before" acne treatment photos. His mother was short and sensibly put together, it was this that made Anna want to run screaming back to the Tour Guide break room. Everything about the woman, from her sturdy walking shoes to her short practical hair cut and her matching separates pegged her as an Interrogator. Sure enough, as soon as Anna stepped into the dorm hallway the woman started with "How are the bathrooms here, REALLY?" followed by a quick analysis of the RA's "quaint floor decorations" and moving without pause onto a diatribe on how her son's intelligence was far superior to any of his classmates. Anna turned autotron and fired back answers and witty comments, a familiar song and dance that was perfectly timed and executed.

Exactly 52 minutes later Anna collapsed into a swiveling office chair and unstuck her magnetic name tag.
"Bad tour?" A girl with cropped blond hair and square rimmed glasses paused her work at the computer.
"Crazy mother."
"She ask anything fun?"
"Yeah, what we're doing to bring organic foods to the school." A snort of disbelief.
"Better to start with cutting the cases of food poising to under 50 a month."
The girl went back to her CEEB codes and Anna pulled an old yearbook out of her bag. She knew she should really get stared on her paper on the Canterbury Tales, but this personal research was much MUCH more interesting. Back in 1936 the yearbooks had been run not by an administration that was concerned with equal representation, but by the students themselves. There were racy songs and student written cheers, anecdotes about poor freshman girls losing their reputations and boys having unfortunate collisions with drunken sidewalks.
School was, once upon a time, a place for mistakes and learning the hard way how the world worked. Now it seemed things had been sterilized.
She flipped languidly though the pages, mentally rating the girl's hair and the boy's half grins. Turning back towards the beginning she paused. The dedications always interested her, who had done things of enough merit to be mentioned FIRST and FOREMOST. This one, however, was different.
"This book is in memory of Grace Turner, who's bright smile always lit the room and who kept the jazz in her step always. You will be missed."
Beneath a simple black and white photo. Grace was standing by the school gates clutching a stack of books, her head thrown back in laughter. It was a perfectly posed candid, she was full of beauty and life and it was suddenly obvious why the campus had adored her.  Anna turned to the middle of the book where the student pictures were organized by greek membership, followed by the "independents."  Sure enough, there Grace was wearing the familiar little black pin.  She was in the center of the composite, her chin turned up and a pretty poised smile on her lips.
Remembering the note penned on the back of the article, Anna flipped back to the photos of the men.  Tony something, something that begun with a P, Tony...tony...tony... The very last fraternity was Delta Tau Gamma, one that still had a house on campus today.  Tony Parson starred up from the bottom row of men.  He had hair parted to the side and eyes that stared into the camera with intensity.  No doubt about it, Tony Parson was a catch.
Paging forward Anna tried to pick Tony out of other groups, other pictures.  He was on the football team, but this no great accomplishment in a school with a permanently losing record.  Still he looked good in his jacket.  He was also pictured in a candid at the fall dance, which must have taken place in what was today one of the dinning halls.  He had a girl on his arm, a pretty dark young thing who was staring up at him in utter adoration.  She looked familiar, and a quick scan of the Theta composite confirmed Anna's suspicions; they would have been in the same pledge class.  Her name was Rebecca Mallory, she had been Vice President of communications.  It seemed that Tony wasn't a "going steady" kinda guy. 

"Um, hey Anna, you know it's quarter past five, right?"
The girl with the glasses was looking over from her swivel chair.
"Oh damn, thanks Emma.  I'm supposed to meet people at Bunker for dinner in five minutes."
"Better hurry, the lines are going to be forever long by the time you get up there."
Anna swept the yearbook and the untouched Chaucer into her bag and hurried off across campus to the same building in which Tony Parson once attended a fall social.

Catharsis

I do wish, in a way, that I could talk to you again.  Not to curse your name, ask you why; not even to coax a compliment out of you.  For months I couldn't think of you, couldn't hear your name without a wrench in my stomach.  I wanted to talk to you then, to prove that I was worth more and that you would be sorry for tossing me aside, treating me like an old worn out doll.  I thought that if I could make you angry, make you sorry, make you lustful, I would win and that chapter of my life would close.  More then anything I missed you.  For more then a year I had bared my soul to you, treated you as a friend.  I told you secrets, not my deepest and darkest perhaps, but secrets none the less.  You may have been a terrible lover, but you were a damn good friend.

I cursed you for so long,  remembered so much of the bad that it's hard to remember the good now.  I remember you telling me that I was beautiful and wasn't crazy (and yes, you did say these things months before accusing me of being so.) I remember you telling me about the family you wanted and the dog and the house.  You had such a newly minted future then.  The day you invited me hunting was the day I decided I didn't care anymore.  Later my best friend told me on the phone that I would be sorry-I would get hurt.  I knew she was right, but my heart was long gone.

I don't even need to say what followed, except to admit what I vehemently denied then.  hysterically mad.  I was stuck between the school girl antics of my friends and the emotional tilt-a-whirl that being with you sent me on.  I won't say that I loved you, if only to keep from sounding more insane then I have already admitted to.  I did care for you though, deeply, and I didn't understand how you could not care for me.  Perhaps you did after all, I suppose I will never know.

When I met him I was still infatuated with you, but I was just beginning to understand the reality of things.  He held my hand while I walked and cried, and despite what everyone said he was a perfect gentleman.  That is when I should have stopped, when I crossed the line of what is honorable to what is despicable.  Though I have forgiven you, it will probably be decades before I can fully forgive myself.

For the purpose of this testimony that you will never see, what has happened since is neither here nor there.  I'm back though, back to the girl that you met during a waltz who laughed too freely when you spun her.  I am not infatuated anymore, not hateful or hurt.  I am terribly in love with your arch rival, and I would be happy spending the rest of my days with him if he asked me.  I hear you're doing well, and you have the chance to find the same happiness.  She's wonderful.  Love her.  Open your eyes and tell her she is worth the world.  I am sorry for everything I did and said to hurt you, and someday maybe you won't be resentful towards me anymore.  I know that we can never be more then cordial to each other; that we may spend the rest of our lives pretending not to see each other even when we are crushed together in crowded bars.

If I could change it, I would.  I wouldn't erase you from my life, but I would have demurred from your invitations and stayed the naive girl that I was when I met you.  Any power you once had over me is gone now, I think I have finally taken myself back.

You're a good person, the kind of person people want to be around.  Live a good life, stay well, and for the love of god please don't let any of the horrible things I once wrote about you come true. 

Dear "anonymous."

I'm sorry I didn't notice your comment from two months ago until just now.  I wonder who you are.  Do I know you?  James, Michael?  You're not Erica or Zoe I think, or Nico even.  I wonder how in the world you found your way back into my archives; more importantly how did you stomach that much angst?  In reality I don't really want to know who you are.  It feels the same as in high school when Sarah made up a secret admirer and slipped notes into my locker.  In the end it was a wonderful birthday surprise from good friends, but the best part was letting my imagination go before I knew who it was.  Maybe you are Sarah or Elan.  We wrote enough together when we were younger, and I miss the companionship of fellow writers. 
Whoever you are, thank you for your comment, it is a delicious mystery. 

I'm going to stop

asking you if you read these anymore.  The answer is always no.

Slipping

She stood there in the kitchen pathetically clutching an apple and listening to the soft laughter echoing in from the drive.  The pie was on the counter in all it's half-baked glory, a messy symposium of flour and oatmeal and sliced apples (skin still on.)  It was his favorite kind of pie, she thought.  Nine years ago that pie had brought him through a blizzard to her dormitory door; as he shook the ice off his sneakers she had known that he was the one that would make her mounds of student loans worth it in the end. 
He was The Perfect Man, the man of her dreams.  This is what she had told her family as they watched her pack all of her shabby things in the old sedan and driven away with a kiss and a prayer that the car made it over seven states and twice that many hundreds of miles.  When she had arrived they had kissed and fallen into the bed and they stayed there until they were both dizzy from exhaustion and lack of food. 
For the first few months life was a working class fairy tale.  It was enough at the end of the day to come home to a warm hug and warmer words; shared glasses of wine and television shows and playful wrestling matches on the too-small mattress. 
She couldn't say what the first thread to unwind was.  It was the computer, probably.  Every night after work she would pull together food and maybe throw a load of his once white t-shirts into the washer; losing herself in the maintenance of their untidy life before finally falling sleeplessly into bed.  He was there too, headphones on staring at the bright screen.  People talked into his ears, people that she didn't know who shared some bond with him that she could never understand.  Sometimes he would laugh, and when she asked what the joke was he never seemed to hear or that's what he told her later anyway.  Soon all their conversations were about this half-life of his, he would tell stories and smile at things she didn't understand.  She smiled too, because it seemed the right thing to do. 
The sex got shorter and he stayed on that computer longer, and soon the only things they talked about were the Problems that had to be fixed.  His mother, her loans, the car, rent, her mother.  One day on the way to the store she crashed the car against a guard rail at the bridge between their town and the next.  The pleasant police man said wasn't she a lucky one, a few more feet and over she would have gone.  Funny place for an accident too, with no sharp turns and the great weather they had been having and all.  She nodded and agreed, sufficiently grateful to providence or god or good luck for saving her to cook another day.
After that she tried to talk to him, and when that didn't work she tried other things.  She brought a picture from when they first started talking to a salon, a picture that he said he loved.  The hairdresser cried as she cut off her long dark tresses, but she sat stony faced and resolute in the seat.  When he came home that night he flicked the monitor on and then looked up at her expectant face.
"Oh, yeah I was supposed to mail that letter to your mother today.  Sorry about that."  She went to bed and curled her fingers around her new bangs, making one small ringlet at a time. 
Two weeks later she did the most humiliating thing of all.  The local mall only had a few stores in it, the essentials.  She had never been in Vanessa's Vixens before, but she knew the town's elderly ladies liked to sit on the bench across the court and take note of who entered and how long they spent in that pit of sin.  There was just one old bird there that Thursday afternoon, but she still walked around the fountain three times before she had the courage to dart inside.  A sea of lace, reds, blacks, pinks.  A corner seemed devoted entirely to feathers, there was a fantastical fan and duster sitting on a shelf above the register.  One side was full of black shiny vinyl; she felt her cheeks redden as her gaze fell on a woman modeling one of the garments on the plastic package.  Keenly avoiding the salesgirl's eyes she set towards the least imposing rack where silky gowns in plain colors hung. 
"You could really pull off the red you know."  The girl had crept up on her while she was distracted by tags. 
"Not many people can actually wear red, but you're complexion is just pale enough to do it."  She made a noise that was halfway between a cough and a smile, but the girl seem pacified and went away to continue marking down bustiers.   Thrust into the middle of the rack was a little black chemise, satin with a sweet bow draped across the back.  It would hit her just above her thighs, probably.  She brought it to the register without glancing at the price, and signed her name on the slip as quickly as she could.  Tucking the bag under her jacket she fled the store, head bent in a vain attempt to keep the old black crow from noticing. 
That night she straightened her hair and tried to put some makeup on.  It had been years; her mascara was all dried up and she slipped with the eye pencil and so had to start over.  Finally she dabbed some lipstick on and returned to the bed, staring dubiously at the gown laid out so unassumingly there.  She pinched herself, counted to five, and then slipped it over her head. 
She had already finished most of the dinner preparations in the kitchen, the chicken was in the oven and she had been sure to cook the potatoes just the way he liked.  Only the pie left.  She was standing at the counter cutting apples in her black slip when she heard his treads in the driveway.  She peered from behind the curtains, staying out of the line of view to hide her ridiculous getup.  He was there, sitting in his car talking to another silhouette.  It was a girl or woman, she couldn't tell from the outline, but she was laughing and he was laughing with her.  He was leaning towards the figure and they seemed to be caught up in some serious and ridiculous conversation.  She let the curtain fall back of it's own accord and stood there, holding her apple.
Of course, he had worked late tonight.  Most nights he worked late she went to bed in the spare room so that he wouldn't wake her when he returned.  He was usually gone again the next morning before she was up.  This was the way the weekends went. 
By the time the passenger car door had closed with a quiet thunk the black slip was in the trash with the rest of the meal. 
He only stopped to smell the kitchen momentarily, then decided that she had made another one of her chicken microwave dinners tonight.  As he rounded the top of the steps he thought he saw the light go off in the second bedroom but when he opened the door silently he could see her sleeping form on the bed.  He turned on his heel and thought with slight annoyance that she hadn't even had the decency to put out leftovers for his dinner.  

My lucky stars

I promised myself I won't write about that night-not yet.  The terror is too fresh in my mind to make comfortable prose.  Instead I will try to do something you used to beg me for, write happy thoughts.

I love that you refuse to wear khakis with anything but a button down shirt.  Most guys I know would throw on a polo and dash for the door; You carefully match your belt and your socks before you deem yourself appropriate.
I love the way you kiss my forehead.  Somehow when your lips brush my hair it's so much more intimate then a passionate kiss on the mouth.  When you do that I feel so cared for, so utterly loved.   The same as when you wrap one arm around me and rest your face against my neck. 
I love that you're not perfect.  Your hair has that funny cowlick in the front and sometimes it sticks up at the back of your head.  I might laugh and tease but I hope you never win the battle against those few stray hairs.  I like them that way.
You know just what to say to get me riled up; sometimes you do it just for a good joke.  I'm halfway through defending poor Indonesian orphans before I see the smirk in your eye and realize that I've fallen to your baiting.  I think you like to see my passion sometimes, even if it is sometimes as ridiculous as you claim.  My darling, you may bait me and prod me but I will never be anything but a socialist philanthropy loving liberal. 
I love that gleeful defiant look in your eye when you've done something  that you know I won't approve of.  I can always tell, and I wait for you to pull out the inevitable game or gadget or movie.  Most of the time I can't help but to smile too, if only at your excitement for the new toy.  I love when you completely dork out and go off about tangents that I will probably never understand; I sit there nodding and watching the lights in your eyes. 
Do you remember that chilly night in Meadville, the night that the men in the truck started following us?  I was scared frozen but you told me to run, and we ran and ran across cold lawns, me still in my cocktail dress and you pulling me along.  Later you told me that you were doing your best to think how you could protect me.  I knew I loved you then.
Most of all I love it when you tell me that you love me.  Not the way you say it the little times throughout the day when you want me to stop bothering you while you play the game or before class, but when you actually mean it.  When you look in my eyes and use my full name, "I love you Emily Anna Doherty."  You look at me like I'm amazing and I believe it. 

I love you, even when you make me so mad that I want to cry.  I love you even when  I'm being an infuriating diva.  I love you even when there is a silence between us so thick you could cut it with a butter knife.  I love you always.

A warning.

Don't you dare ever do this to me again.  You're way too much to lose.

For the ladies (put your hands up)

I never knew either of you when it counted.  In real life I mean.  I had my little circle which seemed much bigger then, filled with Forever Friends and the like. 

I met the girl with the golden hair first.  "Met" is a subjective term, it was either very late or very early and we were talking across the ocean.  I was crying as the messages pinged back and fourth; shoving my computer away from myself over and over again, only to crawl across the unmade bed to retrieve it moments later.  Through my tears I felt a kernel of resentment that this girl was nice.  She was kinder then she needed to be with me, and it was obvious that she cared.  Damn it.  Why couldn't she be heartless and cold so I could hate her in peace.  I promised to do my due diligence and fade away, and so I tried.  I wasn't perfect that spring, but then none of us were.

The first time I saw he in real life I spotted the purple jacket across the frozen lawn.  Arm and arm with him and laughing I think.  I looked away, crossed the brick walk, went to my room and sobbed.  That spring I grew accustomed to seeing them together, and I learned that it didn't hurt as much as I thought it should.  I was still terrified of her, with her wide smile and her pretty blue eyes.  When we worked in the office together I would go red (a habit I somehow picked up in high school that I wish to god I could un-learn) and leave as quickly as decorum allowed.  She was nice to me as ever, and it became clear that this wasn't he same kind of "nice" that those forever friends had acted.  She actually meant it.

When I left that place forever I thought that would be the end of it.  Months passed, and somehow we kept pinging messages back and forth over hundreds of miles.  Over time we talked about everything; soon the last bit of mistrust faded and I let myself understand that this girl was somehow the only truly Genuine girl I had met in a long while.  She saw me at my absolute lowest, and I don't think she holds that against me.  That is a true forever friend.

The second girl with the raven hair I met just days before I left.  She was talking and laughing with the boy that I finally let myself fall for.  Hugging me she made me promise that we would be friends the next year "when I came back."  I made the promise lightly, knowing that I would not be back.  That is how I remember her, laughing in the sunlight in over-sized glasses. 

I trusted her easily, which is why I started going to her with all the wrongs of my life.  I had no one else at home, and certainly no one at school, that I had any degree of trust in.  She made me laugh from a hundred miles away; she reminded me I was beautiful and smart when I desperately needed to hear it.  I listened to her too, and as lies and truths and heartaches showed themselves in the light we held on to each other. 

We talked about paper cards and fishing and computers and rings; when she called me I could hear the bustling of city streets through the phone and could almost taste the spinach salad she was describing.  One night I called her sobbing and she listened to me until I cried myself out.  She told me I was worth it, and for some reason when she said it I believed her.  That meant the world to me that night, sitting in my car alone at the park. 

They changed my life.  They are smart and kind and sexy and fun, and I wouldn't trade either of them for the world.  They are true friends.  So here's to those two wonderful ladies who keep me sane.  Thanks.

Ashes and Wine

In the waning hours between when the young folk go to bed and the business world wakes up to their espresso in fancy paper cups, I am waiting.  A knock at your front door and you answer, berobed and befuddled at the intrusion that is either too late or too early.  In the days since we last met I have gained weight; ten pounds in all the right places.  Despite this you could still fit both hands around my waist if you wanted to, and as your eyes sweep me I know that some part of you does want to. 
You stand aside, and neither beckon me in nor turn me away.  I slouch into the hall, stepping over the rolls of skin that passes for your old basset.  Kneeling I pass my hand in front of his nose, after a few seconds of pondering he gives a quiet garumph of recognition.  Slipping him a beef offering from my coat pocket, I can hear your slippered toe beating a muffled tattoo on the hardwood.
"He's on a diet you know."
"Poor thing, months left on this earth and he can't even eat what he pleases."
"It's four o'clock in the fucking morning."
"It is."
Pausing we study each other.  You have kept your hair short out of habit; I can see the bits around your temples fading to white.   I wonder if you see the lines around my eyes.  It's too late now for miracle cures and skin tightening cream; I'm stuck with the ghosts of my years of laughter and tears.  
Outside the garbage truck is cling-clanging it's way down the street; in a few minutes it will reach the lone industrial sized dumpster at the end.  In mornings past the resulting cacophony served as my natural alarm clock.  Today the sound shakes you out of your silence. 
"You staying in town?"
"I don't know yet." 
"Need a place to crash?"
"No, not today."
You nod slowly, relaxing now that you know this is not a conjugal visit.
"Well, come on then.  There's a space heater in the living room I can turn on."  The old house has high tin ceilings and planked floors scored with decades of dragging furniture.  You spin the dial on a white heater, the only thing in the room that doesn't have a comfortable layer of dust.  I drag a saggy armchair up to it so that I can rest my toes on the warm plastic; you lean against the blocked off fireplace and continue to stare at me.
"So, it's been a while."
"Sixteen months."
"I thought you might be back for the funeral."
"Didn't think you wanted me here."  You shrug, then turn to stare at the mantel.  A woman stares out of a picture there, a laughing woman.  I remember taking that picture. 
It was the first time she convinced me to stay the night, telling me that I was far beyond driving home.  I slept on the old couch in this room-there was no heater then, and I was shivering.  You came downstairs to get a drink after she fell asleep and saw me shaking.  When you took me in your arms it was just as it had always been, for a while we forgot that you were married and I had found the right one with a ring to prove it.
After that she invited me around once every couple of months.  Soon a decade passed; she was the maid of honor at my wedding and the shoulder I cried on during the divorce and still you and I would find each other wrapped together on the same old couch.  I don't know if she knew, if she did she never said anything. 
When you called me a year and a half ago from the hospital I flew out.  She had already lost her hair in the treatment, but her smile was still there and she still offered me the couch to sleep on.  That night I slept alone.  Two months after that she was put in the ground surrounded by a lot of people who said touching things and left appropriately expensive flowers.  I had work or family or some other good reason I couldn't attend, and when I called the next week I got ring after ring after ring.  You never saw the point in answering machines. 
You are still looking at the picture, and for the first time I see the five years of age between us.  You look old. 
"I finally got my carry permit."  Dragging your eyes away from the laughing eyes you watch me pull glossy metal from my jacket pocket."
"You scared that you're going to get in trouble between your car and my front door?"
"You never know."
"Give it here."
I pass it over and watch you expertly heft it, some of the light going back into your eyes as you slide back the chamber. 
"Nine millimeter?"
"Mmmm."
"If you're going to be around for a couple days I'll take you to the range, could be fun."
"I'm leaving today."
"Suit yourself."
"Carl?"  You look up, I rarely use your given name.
"Yes?"
"Did you ever love me?"  You take a deep pull of dusty air, the light flying out of your eyes as you hand back the gun.
"We've been over this.  You know that I wanted to try things again, but then you met Evan and I found her and..."
"That's not what I asked.  But I guess I know anyway.  I just came to say goodbye mostly."
"You're not coming into town anymore?"
"I am.  Just don't think you will be seeing me."
"You don't want to...?"
I stand and go to the mantel, brushing past you and fingering the frame. 
"She was beautiful you know.  And kind.  You should have loved her.  You shouldn't have- we shouldn't have, well.  I wish you had loved me.  It wouldn't have been so horrible if you had."
I am still holding the gun, I flex my fingers around it and look up into your beautiful dead eyes. 
"You ruined me Carl, for everyone else.  I have wanted to hurt you for so long."  I press the metal into your chest, you wrap your arms around me and hold me there.  We are stuck in some obscene version of a hug; listening to the sounds of the street coming to life drifting in from outside.  In the hall the old dog whimpers, complaining that he hasn't had his quarter cup of diet feed for the morning.  Finally I break away, pushing with the gun until we are at arms length again.
"Goodbye Carl."  You look curiously from me to the gun in my hand, almost expectantly.  I hesitate for a second, then turn on me heel and walk out of the room.
In the hall the pile of skin and bones hasn't moved, but the dog lifts his head to look at me mournfully through watery old eyes.  The loud crack reverberates through the house followed by the dull thud of his head hitting the floor for the last time. 
I leave the house as an equal.  Now we both have nothing.