whispering, second person stories (you-ish)

Leaning in; whispering. My tongue flicks against the back of my two front teeth and it's contact pops off the roof of my mouth. My mouth clicks and hisses with spit and teeth and I think about how close we are. Suddenly I become less aware of what we are saying and more aware of how it sounds. You stare at my mouth like it is already yours to kiss, and you haven't yet. I could be thinking about Milk Duds for all you know. But you stare pensively and without regret (or much other thought, for that matter). I don't like you yet. So I sit relishing your attention unknowingly. Weakened by stress and the volume I have consumed, probably. I think about how empty I am and how you serve me no purpose other than these futile, irrelevant awarenesses. I close my eyes and let you kiss me. I let out an addressless sigh that saunters about in the darkness waiting for an ear.

He asks what it is and I say nothing. He says he knows it isn't and sits staring in the dark like he can really see my expressionless face. I know he says what he says out of habit and not out of translucence and I sigh again. I adjust my top and bottom as a reaction to the premature assumptions and I wish he would go away. He says I am something else, and I smile forgetting he can't hardly see me. So, I say thanks, roll over in the carpet, and I keep wishing.

August 3rd

It could be 7 am or 8 am. Or it could be 6 pm or later. It could be any time. I am on the porch drinking some drink. Maybe gin or maybe coffee. It could be any day. I am watching the way the angle of the sun is elongating the shadows of the fence posts and trees along the ground. Looking at them like they should be moving faster. Those shadows. They are going one way or another, but it’s all the same to me, because I sit there thinking about people.

Who I'd like to meet:

Someone who wants to introduce me to old music that I’ve never heard, not new music that no one has ever been moved by, someone who hung the moon, someone who understands the varying purpose of affection, someone who’s head is full of thoughts and phrases, whose eyes dampen when they should, dry when they should, someone whose heart is stitched together with forgiveness and not caught up in the past, someone who will take me fishing, someone who’s not perfect, someone who rattles me, someone who makes me think of anything at all, someone who I could live with, someone who listens and is never dogmatic, someone who understands when to stop, someone who values silence.

shit, yo.

I miss that feeling; drunk and fleeting.

I can’t follow her; young and needing.

Her hips drip honey; they move so sweet.

I’m a loser, a sucker, and she can’t be beat.

I’m sorry I’m not her. I can’t be first.

I would love you like you were the last drunk on earth.

Lemon Tree

I am lamenting some unforgotten actions and wishing they would disappear, like I always am. I am wondering about the unsaid and wondering if there are things worth saying. I am wishing I was a lemon tree, so that I would be productive - prolific even - every minute of every day. Smelling sweet of lemon blossom and providing with fresh fruit. Feeding minuscule creatures whose importance we don’t even talk about. Giving shade to someone. Giving someone a proper view if they had the audacity to climb me to the top and stay a while.

Mama's thoughts.

Noon on a tuesday in Barcelona, Spain (Catalonia, if you prefer), and I’m thinking about my mother’s words. She taught me that there is a good and a bad side to everything. It’s the decisions that YOU make that bring the balance that you need. Like, the balance between contentment and laziness. A place where you can be grateful without being sloth-like, and you can be pensive without sabotaging yourself...I consistently seek that balance. Or I hope that I do/am.

Brothers and Sisters:

Time’s passage grows more obnoxious with each day we are apart. The hours pass like sand in an hourglass; say that sand were molasses and the obligatory passage smaller than the eye of a needle. And it drip, drip, drips; like some brave actor - acting out in cowardice. My feeble ruminations are true, all be them less than explicit, for there are no words or phrases to conduct this symphony of misery in my heart of hearts forced to exist without your word and thought.

It is hard to create joy and to record memories without you here. The novelties of my fleeting and mostly lost youth are not nearly as entertaining without our shared commemoration. Our shared laughs. Our shared griefs. Ours shared tears.

The tea kettle howls at me from the other room. I am week from it’s hissing and howling, and only wish I had the ferocity to throw it across the room at the window. The window is open and the noises of the street sound mundane and are not unlike every other place I have been. Only, I know it is different here and I exist differently within my means.