LINKS
"do you take me for a fool? this fool is through..."
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Sometimes I feel like I don't fit in anywhere. At least not at school or in life... which, contrary to belief, are not one in the same. In life I'm just this person who wanders down the streets of downtown like some sort of lost soul, and at school I wander hallways, strange to everyone.... even myself.
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I don't really want to fit in a group, and I don't. We're standing on our own. I looked around yesterday and realized no one dresses like us...
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Everyone thinks I'm a freak, ditz... all I do at school is observe. I try to stay out of people's way, not make contact with people, just observe.. I hate people talking about me. I just want to observe, suddenly all these rumors start...you're saying that you aren't in charge of them and that you try to stop them, when in reality you are at fault just as much as everyone else. We are all set up though.... this entire thing, life, is a setup.
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"you'll always know the truth, even if you can't see it.....remember that"
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I just wanted to inform you that I am not the creep you seem to think I am. The only thing I've done is observe. All I do is write, and yet you seem to single me out. You think I want to be a part of your group, without knowing how untrue that is. I don't want to be a part of your social hierarchy. I just want to be left alone, observing things. I don't see how my quiet observation should be bothersome to anyone, but somehow it is. Somehow I annoy you to the point where you must single me out and make me feel like shit. You think that all your hurtful words don't affect me, or is it just that you don't care that they affect me? I think it's the latter. I don't know if it makes you feel better about yourself, or if it's just something to do. You should really get a new hobby. Maybe I should get a new hobby other than writing and observing, but I'm building characters. What are you doing? Working on destroying lives? Good luck. Have at it. You don't know half of it, and you never will. Even those of you who think you know me, you don't. I'll never let anyone know me totally. That's how people get hurt. "you have to open up to allow yourself to love" Well that's how you get hurt as well. I would really rather be all alone just observing things than be in a group of people. I would rather just be out on the side, the outcast, because I know I will walk away from the experience carrying a lot more than I would if I was in it. Sometimes there are times it's better to be in on the action to gain a greater understanding, but you all scare me. I don't want to know you, don't want to be a part of what you are part of. You don't understand and you never will, so I just allow you to go on badgering me. I hope you get some joy out of your ignorance.
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I keep wandering these same halls in silence, looking for some reason to be here, some vague reference to my existence so I can be sure I am truly alive.
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I left a copy of my shredded dreams on your answering machine, shaking out sobs and shivers.
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I'm just waiting to drown, waiting for this room to fill up with water, a loss of air, loss of life. I walk down my old street, trying to make sense of these rows of houses, concrete barricades. The cars are broken down, a highway collision...I'm trying to decipher sandscript but it's a little bit too worn. A little bit too old for starting out again. Starting over just isn't an option. There's a butterfly in my dream that's flying....I'm not flying, I'm falling a little bit more each day, another floor, another balcony passed, another chance to hold on is gone. Someday I'll be that butterfly.... but for now I'm waiting to drown, waiting for this room to fill up with water, a loss of air, a loss of life. I walk down my old street, trying to make sense of these houses, rows of concrete barricades....
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"I知 better out there, all this talk of getting old it's getting me down, like a cat in a bag, waiting to drown, this time I知 coming down.... now the drugs don't work, they just make you worse but I know I'll see your face again...if heaven falls, I知 coming to, just like you said....you leave my life, I知 better off dead...now the drugs don't work, they just make you worse but I know I'll see your face again..."
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I知 tired of having the same conversation, it's like a CD on repeat, this routine.
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Good morning sunshine... happy birthday, wherever you are.
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This is all just masked emotion. I want to stay here all day when the brutal reality is I only have a few more moments. A few more solitary moments to breathe, before being force fed reading material based on worksheets. The sun is warm but everything is temporary. It will go behind a cloud in a second, and a chance meeting on the subway won't equal fate.
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All these fucking memories parading ... some polka dotted maniac circus in my mind. All these colors engraining themselves in slivers of the moon, stomach churning, everything is spinning and I am so gone. I just want to suck in, smoke circling inside charred lungs, burning slightly. My eyes are watering, leaking salty faucets that are rushing, corroding metal. Soon enough the burning will evaporate. Sucking in sharply, I'll soon be gone.
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what happens when it's all routine?
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Outside the clouds are clumping dark gray piles in the sky. The rain is coming down in sheets, flooding out the concrete. It's been cold for days, and every day the graven faced weatherman comes on, blurry from the bad reception, his bald spot reflecting 60 watts of light, forecasting in a monotone voice tomorrow's weather; 70 degrees. It never is. The sun comes out and the earth is still cold, frozen. Everything is gray. Even the snow, cinders mixed with ice crystals, is turning up gray, even falling gray in places.
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The water hangs, hardly convincing on the narrow whitewashed tightrope. Rain is dripping down from the gray sky unconvincingly; hardly methodic, in sporadic spurts.
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He ate his poem packet later that year in English. His poem was about the stink of piss. I've never seen him be sarcastic. I've seen him shy in a way, although at the same time being incredibly straightforward, with a high IQ..the sort of kid that teachers complain doesn't apply himself... but it's not that he's just book smart, he has intelligence level that far surpasses that common paper and pencil sort of thing. He reads a lot......and in an article he said that he is self-conscious. He has a different sort of beauty; it's not the kind of one-dimension beauty that a lot of people have. He rarely washes his hair. He has the type that looks better after about two days wear, straight. Nice skin, although I haven't really looked at it much. I'm usually looking down at my ragged converse too much to notice his facial expressions or much else about him... he has a soft voice. Once I was up late, writing, thinking, I heard him typing ... just the click-clack of the keys. It was strangely comforting. Sometimes I get tired of reviewing the facts, going over them endlessly in my head. Everyone thinks it's sexual, but it's not that at all. No one really understands. He's like a statue. People go to visit, and they stand about in this mouth-open gaping awe but no one can reach it. Men will die but the statue will live on well after they are gone, this marble remembrance of eternity.
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It's another day in Hickman High School. The halls are dotted with people. Everyone has the same generic look, converse, sandals, athletic shoes, all paired with American Eagle tops, Hollister jeans, and the oh-so-generic smile plastered on their made up faces. No individuality, and no one dares to erase the elasticized smirk off their faces. I walk with Pynchon pressed against my chest. Awkward is not even a word to describe it. All these groupies, I feel so strange, out of place. Headphones on, out of place in vintage polyester, trying so hopelessly to blend in. Instead ending up sprawled out over a vat of boiling oil, expiration date already passed, the meat counter taking applications. No account for actions, they are all programmed, lesson planned.
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My stomach is pinching together, nauseated, I lay on the tile in the bathroom, stale piss smell engrained in my dingy jeans. You lean over me, smelling of sweet smoke and b.o. One eye cracked, I wish I could melt into the concrete. Wavy, you are reaching down, a thousand fragmentation痴 in my mind all going at once like home movies, each on different screens. A thousand memories, most of them not even mine, are scattered on the floor. Holding a cup of chalky-mineral water, you stand observing as I vomit into the greasy toilet, studying the yellowed rim where the water laps at the ceramic bowl.
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I'm hyperventilating in an orange-red vinyl booth. Katie's picking at the paint on the wall while I nervously chew on my middle fingernail, an unconscious message to the rest of the world. He has on a white shirt and blue-gray pants. My first urge is to slip under the table and bolt out of the metal doors. I don't follow instinct. One step ahead of me, Katie has seated herself on the outside of the booth, caging me like a rabid animal. They walk up, she's smiling and I'm forcing it, hoping I don't look like I'm constipated. I'm fumbling with a marble in my pocket, attempting to scratch the circular glass with my fingernail. In my mind I know I need to relax, but like an old man that has lost bladder control, I have no control over my actions. His hand is out and some primal instinct reminds me of the customs in this world. His hand is soft, colder than my own, which has been sweating from nervousness and by now is clammy. I want to give some sort of explanation, make him understand I'm usually not concentrating on mastering the in-out breath technique and can think up conversation topics, but I sit there like a pimple on a teenager's face. I know he takes me for a fool. It's not as easy as stealing chocolate eggs or breaking into people's houses, I can't break into his mind, steal what he thinks of me, replace it with something a little more pleasing. I can't even know what he thinks of me. He's so self confident, so juxtaposed to my own self confidence at this time, which has been ground in the dirt where I left it. He asks if he's lived up to my expectations and I mutter something resembling a positive remark, realizing that I never set up expectations in the first place, so in reality he has far surpassed my expectations. He asks if I want to go with him and I don't know whether to stay with Katie or go. I'm wondering if he really wants to hang out or if he feels sorry for me, the blithering idiot sitting across for him in the corner booth. I keep looking at his face, the way the smoke curls up toward the ceiling, this slight film across his face when he takes a drag. I'm holding the pizza box for him, trying not to let my hands shake too much and his fingers brush mine. I keep trying to think of things to think about, not to hyperventilate, and I wonder if I look like a deer in headlights. Midafternoon is not my best hour. I try to search for some clever words to string together, but anything intelligent I have ever thought seems to have evaporated in the past twenty minutes. He seems like an incredibly interesting person and I'm suddenly left wondering what the hell I'm doing here in the first place. I feel like I'm trying to live someone else's life and continue wondering if I should perhaps find a cave...... but then remind myself caves probably don't have vodka. Damn. I'm thinking how much more relaxed I would be if I was drunk, but know I can't depend on that. My mother thinks I will become more depressed if I continue to drink, when in reality it lets me escape depression for awhile. Makes me happier, calmer. Then I'm wondering if he'd know if I was drunk. Then I think to myself that it would probably be a bad idea to show up to this arranged meeting drunk. Then I知 wondering what people would say if you showed up to your wedding drunk... not that I am sure I will ever get married at all. He's staring at me with those piercing eyes and I snap back into reality, realizing he's asked something though I haven't been paying attention. Soon the conversation shifts again and he's left with the question unanswered. It registers that he asked about Pynchon five seconds later, five seconds too late, but he doesn't seem to care. He's polite, and hell, he even looks clean. He says he gives it two years before I'm a bitch. I can't help but wonder if I'll even know him in a week, much less in two years. He's probably noticed my complete lack of social skills, dorkiness, and I look like a complete idiot next to Katie's brown eyes and slender, subtle curves. I leave telling him I'll call, unsure of how the night will end.
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A man sits in a stained office chair, his meaty arms crossed across his protruding belly. He reaches up to wipe beads of sweat off his brow, flashing yellow pitstains. His chest heaves as he wheezes heavily. The petite office assistant looks over, her drawn on brow furrowing. She looks concerned but makes no attempt at conversation. The metal hinges creak under his weight, the rust spiking off in flakes similar to dandruff or instant potatoes.
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They walk up and down familiar streets, tracing cracked concrete with their footsteps. His voice isn't forced and although it's by no means monotone, it does not contain a variety of tones. His head is cocked to one side as he reaches up to pull bayberries off a nearby tree. He peels the spheres apart, digging his fingernail into the meat. It stains his dirty fingernail green. He glances down at it and runs the ridge by his teeth, picking at the soil. His hands are worn, his fingers cracking around the edges of his nails. She's got his hands memorized - their touch, smell, the tingling sensation that travels down her spine when he runs his callused fingertips across her skin. He's watching her watch the sky - eyes turned upwards. Her mascara is clumped, framing her green eyes. It's been clumped since the day he met her. She applies three coats a day - two in the morning and a third at 11:50. She's got a schedule she never seems to falter from. It's him that has the spontaneity. They are lying on a piss stained mattress in his apartment. He has his fingers in her hair, entangled in the dirt and grime of her dreadlocks and she's lying still as a corpse staring at the ceiling, counting the rivets in the white drywall. He leans over, whispering some crap about how they should escape to Albany tonight. The sunlight is streaming in the window through the makeshift shower curtain nailed to the window. She rolls over on her side, her back to him. He is quiet, unwilling to break this silence that seems to divide them. She sits up suddenly, sliding into her white cotton underwear, wriggling into her tight denim skirt. He sits up fast, his head connecting with the headboard. She glances over with an almost bored look, raises one eyebrow and goes back to dressing. She disappears underneath a sweater, and he wonders if it would be better if she was like this the entire time so he would never have to look into her unforgiving eyes. "I'm leaving." Her voice is muffled under the weight of the sweater, but it snaps him out of thought. He doesn't say anything, not knowing what to say, not wanting to beg her to stay, but not wanting her to go. She stares at him, her glass eyes piercing every part of him. She turns on her heel, stalking to the door. The door slams shut, slapping against the door several times, caught by the wind. He presses his chapped lips together, tearing at the skin with his teeth.
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101 reasons not to be me
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You're sitting with your legs crossed, holding loosely onto an amber colored beer. I'm looking off into the distance while you're conversing, laughing softly along with everyone else. People seem to appear out of nowhere, sharpened figures from behind the crumbling brick wall, half drunk, falling on each other. They cling to each other, tight jeans and short skirts and skin all blurring together with one more sip of the strong whisky. It tastes like rubbing alcohol mixed with cologne but I swallow hard. Your face is still in focus, though it's growing gradually dimmer as the minutes pass. Your hand grazes my shoulder as you reach for another drink but all I feel is pressure. I remember your hands, unsure suddenly of how I know them, how I can remember only your hands - soft and dry, juxtaposed to my own clammy hands, always warm. We walk along, taking short steps, even as the police are yelling at everyone to exit. People meander, loitering around the door. The sharp reprimand of a police officer snaps me out of my observations and we plod up the blacktop, halfway between sobriety and drunkenness. People scream at each other from across the parking lot, the silence of the night disrupted as it has been since dusk. The dialogue is said hurriedly, unannunciated. "Whe you goin?" "duno, whe YOU goin?" the speech is slurred, barely decipherable. The interior of the car is uninterrupted by human speech. Loud music is blaring over the sound system with a steady base line. No one attempts to make conversation, and the base line drives a steady beat onward through the twists in the road, the narrow lines squiggling. Squinting, he bends over the steering wheel, the base hammering in my ears.
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My own eyes are heavy - drooping as I slump over the hard oak table. I walk to the living room, my feet shuffling across the cold linoleum. I curl up on the fat paisley chair, still clutching the cell phone as my eyes close. The harsh ringing and vibrations jolt me back to reality. I answer in what I know is a half-hoarse voice. "Asleep?" "mmmm". I hear him an hour later, climbing the creaking stairs. I've been folded into the cotton blanket, decorated by dancing sailboats and unsure drawn on tufts of wind. He smells of strong liquor and stale smoke. The weather channel shows rain, swirling green areas fringed by red orange.
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I'm lying pulled against him, my mind wandering to his hands. The clock is blazing florescent red - three thirty five. He says he will sleep if it rains. His hair is greasy from pomade he put in Wednesday. His skin is warm, exposed after tossing and turning freeing ourselves from twisted covers and rough 210 count sheets. His sweatshirt is hiked up a half inch, exposing skin. We don't kiss, bodies brushing against each other, our own escapade innocent - undiscovered by sexual desires. The rain begins at two forty, hammering against the rooftop. It tapers off at three fifty two. Our conversation presses deep into the night. I drift off to sleep, my rest uninvaded by dreams. The alarm starts in at seven in the morning. I roll over, our eyes level. Half smiles. The covers make a tent and he drags me under where it's darker. The room is cold, uninviting. Our hands brush and he pulls at my cheeks. The house is quiet, darkened by the clouds blanketing the sky. He pulls on his shoes slowly, then tips back onto the bed. I drop my head onto my chest and he runs his hands through my tangled hair. We lie on the bed, time passing without caring. I forget and leave quickly, never favoring goodbyes. I'm halfway to the bathroom to start the shower when he asks if the cat can come in. I turn around and walk most of the way back, not wanting to crowd the doorway. I watch him walk down the steps in crumpled clothes. The steam in the bathroom is almost unbearable, suffocating. I take a hot shower, warmer than usual, going through the motions of the morning routine. Half my clothes are laced with his smell. Half smoke, half skin.
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He pulls his bony knees to his chest, resting his head on his knees. His green hoodie is worn down, cotton fibers stretched to the max. Half of the hood is torn off, pieced together by a string of metallic rusting safety pins. The entire piece of clothing is what his mother calls an eyesore. Last year she threw it into the trash on top of a rotting banana. He rescued it from the trash, wiped off most of the banana, and hid it under his bed. He stuffs it into his backpack each morning, transporting it to school secretly. Half the time he's in school he's staring out the window. The other half of the time his head is down on his desk and he's sleeping. On average he gets about five hours of sleep. He thinks in numbers, letting them filter through his mind. He counts the tiles lining the hallway - all one hundred and twenty four of them. There are bags under his eyes; reminders of constant sleep deprivation. He bites at his lip, pulling at the loose skin. His fingernails are worn down. Often he pulls the cuffs of his hoodie over his hands trying to shield the world from his bitten down fingernails and torn cuticles. His hands are smooth, unworn. One of his fingers is missing, cut off by a lawn mower accident when he was four and a half. He was always a curious child.
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WITHOUT YOU the rain beats faster against the Plexiglas, rivers of glass swimming toward black metal wind the streams along the blacktop the fragile netting ripped from its chiseled sanctuary, smooth against callused fingertips. Rivets among paint, peeling, curl their way towards the swollen sky.
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It's 6 pm when the phone rings, the phone is plastered to my head and I am waiting for you to answer. They say you're gone, somewhere out there on your own and you probably won't be back for awhile. I'll kick back, run my finger along the trim on the blanket, tracing the highway with my fingertips. It's a brilliant tense, this empty sound. The air is too silent, too melodramatic and these half hour high school episodes seem to be disrupting my sleep. Your sarcasm runs a little bit too deep when I'm just trying to breathe. Chests heaving, burning, nouns and verbs are running with no real direction, stringing together uncombined sentences. It all sounds wonderfully unplausible. We're preparing for the weddings to come in June. Another summer passes, another fall and winter lagging behind, losing the race. I lost your letter when the train lurched forward. I think it's beneath my lunch. Too many shots have proved a little bit too harmful as I'm crouched in a tiny lavatory. I walk down the hallway and I know it's all an act, this face I paint on each day. All the smiles, the laughs, other people's lips are moving, keeping you away. A choking display of bruises but I'm hidden somehow under this cloak, and I don't think I'm getting any better. I'm thinking some pretty awful things, I'd think you would notice, but you stand off in your corner, bottles your only consolation. Just crouch a little bit; rest your tired eyes.
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"Ignoring the phone, I'd rather say nothing, I'd rather you never heard my voice"
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Spine curved, you're hunched over in an abstract ball of bruised flesh. I went out in the rain yesterday, imaginary walks in the rain. I walked along the highway, people driving by looking at me strangely, wondering if I'm some stranded motorist or escaped mental patient. Mascara lines streaking my cheeks, I'm trying to kiss the rain but missing. You're mistaking the tears for rain and maybe that's the way I wanted it to be. Adjacent gravel cinders, mudslides, littering debris across the painted sky.
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The mirror shatters, glass shards lining my legs. It dries crusted red. I glued it into a sculpture. Snippets of life. The scissors slipped and cut the thread above the knot, unraveling the hem. It's wearing off, and it's leaving me with everything I'm trying to put behind. The bottle is calling out a little more each day. Undone and unexcused. I try to sneak past you plastered.
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Oil cemented somewhere inside a tireswing I remember from childhood. It's not a victory.
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the door is swinging on its hinges as I'm committing social suicide. I never was one to fit in. The recess bell would ring and I would resume my post, perched on a stained wooden bench underneath a warped oak tree. A barricade, dead weight. I read through Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and all the American Girl books in the same year. Hamlet was hard for a second grade mind to comprehend but I managed to wade through unscathed, taking with me a little bit of the meaning. I would sit silently in the lunch room most days, watching everyone eat from behind my sticky fruit roll up. I was the outcast. I'd like to believe I gained insight. I'd like to believe all the taunting was some pay-off for a later date in life where I'd come out better off, but it never really happened. Elementary school faded into middle school, where self conscious friends came, aware of the fashion trends and wanting desperately to be a part of the "in" crowd that bought Adidas pants and matching running shoes at 80 bucks a pop, expensive for a middle income family piecing together monthly payments. Middle school came and went, Junior High followed, full of attempts to tan my pale skin in harsh sun. I turned into a lobster that summer, a deep red cherry slathered in aloe vera. In high school I tried self-tanner, an orange hue that not only looked unnatural, but wouldn't stay on if I washed my body with warm water or shaved. Concealer and waterproof mascara became a necessity, and I applied both liberally, forgetting to take the mascara off. It was too much trouble, needing oil and almost always the vigorous scrubbing at my eyes meant they would be bloodshot for a day. High school. I got to be best friends with one person, then we grew our separate ways. Endless arrays of boyfriends ("What the fuck, do you have a bad time sensor? Are you trying to ruin my life?") and bruises. ("It doesn't hurt that bad") and excuses. Lots of excuses.
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You asked me why I did it, and I stared at you blankly, trying to conjure up some words to make you understand. "Promise me, promise me you'll never do that again." I could have lied. I could have promised you I would never do it again, that as long as I live... promises are too often broken and I didn't want to disappoint you. I never wanted to disappoint you. Your brown eyes are piercing into every part of me, and sometimes I get so fucking scared. Scared that I feel safe, because I know that humans aren't a safe race. Humanity has free will, and when given that responsibility, humans fuck it up. I was never good at those trust games - falling into someone's arms. "I'm not going to drop you, just fall." What could be so hard about falling? I never fell. Even though you've held me up and defended me countless times, I still can't trust. Call me paranoid. I'm scared that you're becoming some sort of sanctuary because I know that nothing lasts forever. They say live each day to the fullest and tomorrow doesn't matter. They say, he says, she says. Who's making this up in the first place? I'd like to believe in some God up there, watching over every single person, fulfilling some sort of master plan. I don't like thinking in those terms. It's like when someone dies and they say it makes you stronger. Maybe, but you'd think if God was as great as we think he is, he'd come up with some other way for us to get stronger without killing people off. The truth of the matter is probably that I'm selfish. I don't want to end up hurt and most of the time I feel incredibly vulnerable around you. So, what, you're the protector, the hero, that comes to my rescue? When I was little I dreamed, like all little girls, of some knight in shining armor to sweep me off my feet. As the years pass, I have come to realize that a knight in shining armor isn't a knight if he stays with one person. So what happens when you're living after the fairy tale? What happens when the castles have crumbled, the city has been martyred and blood of everything I believed in is running along the crevices on the cobblestone street?
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She wakes up with his fingers in her hair, smoothing it down. Their fingers find each other in the dark, interlacing. Her eyes are searching the dark. They don't kiss, unlike every other relationship she's been with, which have always been hurried, racing against the clock, a mixture of tongues and Southbound hands. The disparity of this silent sanctuary in the dark is almost suffocating.
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A minimal amount of blood.
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Shallow breathing is echoing off concrete walls, the alleyway is thin. Steps are slick ice, smooth uncharted land in places. I'm almost expecting there to be some refugee camp at the end of this shadowed retreat, but it is just concrete wall - a continuation of the sides, wrapping around in some unclassified phenomenon of a hug that is strangling me. The right wall overlooks a lighted parking lot, elongating empty shadows. People pass at the far end and I go unnoticed, holding my breath slightly, eyes widening slightly, still adjusting to the dark. Slip out of this cave, across the street, pull my cap further down until the rough edge sweeps at my eyelids, and walk. I walk head down, like some hunchback. I know I must look like I have a direction while I'm wandering a little too close to the edge of the street, pulling in the exhaust from the cars.
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You don't look at me anymore, your eyes constantly studying my bandage. It's been on for nearly four days and almost feels like an extension of my skin. You are constantly telling me "You look prettier when you smile," as if somehow that will make my mouth curl upward. Ever since I've met him I've lost all desire to smile. Most of the time it's a cover up. I'm actually quite happy, which I try to convince her of, but she shoves my explanations to the side. My mother thinks I'm crazy. I smile in the dark. Sometimes I wonder if smiling in the dark is somehow more special. If I know I am happy, why must everyone else? Sometimes I wake up in his arms. I called him the day it happened and he came within thirty minutes. He had on a suit and polished shoes. I wear his tie sometimes. It's too long. He seems to be really worried about me. Everyone seems to be really worried about me. "Are you alright when I'm around?" I answered yes, but didn't go into detail. I didn't tell him that it's the only time that this doesn't happen. He says I'm too quiet, but sometimes it's in the silence that you get to know a person best. You say I'm too quiet. Maybe the rest of you are just too loud.
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