river

i find it running dusk away
and in the light it quivers
while downstream thunder drives the rain
into my lonely river
i shed my clothes beside its banks
and wade into the glimmer
above the sky beings to break
and falls into my river
the coldness of whose kiss belies
a reticence that differs
from blue things in my hands that died
and at my touch have withered
upon my back it pushes me
i watch the sunlight shiver
it pulls me downward with its stream
and rises just a sliver
inside my ears erupt the drums
and over me it slithers
i draw the sun into my lungs
and descend beneath the river

here's some stuff

i never want to outgrow my ability to be childlike

everything on this earth is magical and is filled with the ability to do something amazing and worthwhile

i want to do something worthwhile

i refer most miscellaneous things as "ditties" even though they aren't at all musical

i would choose music over food if i had to

you better not make me have to

regardless of as much pain and bitterness i have experienced in my life i still have never associated love with pain

however it is that you feel, there is a Shakespearean expression for it

"listen to the dull and ignorant, for they too have their story"

sometimes i act like a bitter cynic, but only because i think cynicism is funny. it's my inside joke with myself. by the same token, i also campaigned for cthulu as president 08, but i (secretly) think he wouldn't have made a good president. i'm not even sure if i believe in cthulu. but don't tell him i said that. i value my vital organs

protecting the weak and spoiling my loved ones gives me an erection

i know when i'm in love when i imagine myself washing the other's dishes while singing at the top of my lungs

i am the most beautiful person on earth and so is everybody else

and whoever you are out there

i love you

i love you

i love you

twenty years of snow

Twenty Years of Snow

I look out of the window over the headboard of the bed. I’m lying down, incapable of moving, and because I’m upside down the grass below becomes invisible and all I see is the smooth white of the sky, backlit by the sun and blinding me with gray. The trees next to my window are all dead and leafless and the sharp branches beat against the roof like a metronome. Were I to turn over I’d see a warm day, grass overgrown on the ground, patches of blue in the distance fighting against the dominating white clouds, cats stalking each other in my back yard, angry honeysuckle threatening to choke the broken boards back by the fence. But from this perspective, everything all blank and white and cut through by sharp tree-lines, I am staring into a blizzard. One of those so powerful that it obliterates all the noise and the color around it. It’s quiet in the house.

My fingers begin to twitch and shake toward the bottle a few inches away from me on the bed. They move forward and take hold of it. They knock away the note from Timothy taped to the bottle that says, “Prescription for your foot. Gone to movies with Jonas.” They twist off the top and take out one of the oblong white pills inside and put it in my mouth. My mouth agrees, and swallows. I count, four, three, two, one, and my fingers are calm in anticipation of peace, and let the bottle slide away.

My eyes swim away from the snowstorm above me and fix on a picture of Tim and I beside the bed. It’s an old photo. So old that he still has all of his hair and I’m still smiling. We’re both looking directly at the camera. No one could ever catch a picture of him looking at me. So now I have a thousand tiny documents of what his young, grinning face looked like, twenty years after the fact because I have no clear proof of its ever being directed right at me. This one was taken at a concert. We both look happy, excited. Timothy’s eyes are gleaming with the same mischievous light that Jonas has. It’s in the brightest spectrum here right before the drummer chops out his beat and the singer shouts one, two, three, four! and the we scream and dance and sing. I like this picture. The light is there. Timothy always looks so happy, even when he’s miserable.

He never laughed at my jokes. His eyebrows would rise in the middle and come together and he’d give me a half-smile and make some comment about how weird I was. I laughed at myself with all my heart because I knew that this trait derived from some kind of natural reserve rather than from indifference to me. I knew this because I was the only girl whose hand he would hold at the movies. I was the only girl who offered to pay for his meals just for the pleasure of knowing what he’d order. I wasn’t a whore and other people liked me. I knew it because when I asked him to marry me he said he would.

Twenty years pass and the momentum of my own tenacity sees me hurtling forward through our half-finished hallway with floorboards pulled out and nails strewn over the cement. Timothy has a friend outside on the porch. They are sitting, smoking cigarettes. I watch from the window as Timothy watches her with the usual light dancing in his eyes. I had stepped out with them a moment before. I introduced myself, and told a funny story. She laughed with her hair thrown back. Tim nodded at me, began a new conversation with her about Jonas. I walked inside the house without saying anything. I keep watching. She says something to him, low but with wild hand gestures almost like mine. He laughs with his head thrown back. My stomach hurts and I dash through the battered hallway. I see the nails point up on the floor, but my legs decide to keep running over them. Tim finds me staring at my foot, curled up on the floor. When he carries me to the car we pass a mirror. My teeth are showing, stretched out mouth. I almost look like I’m laughing.

Twenty years and two days and I am here and my shivering fingers are stretching toward the bottle again. My eyes are dry and staring and don’t want to look at Timothy’s picture any more. They turn to the bottle in my hand, read the label. Do not operate a motor vehicle. Risk of addiction with prolonged use. They watch while my fingers undo the cap, take out another white pill and pop that one into my mouth. My mouth agrees with this again, swallows again. Four, three, two, one. I will be at peace.

My eyes fall back and continue to take in the image of the blizzard over my head. The black branches are stark against the glaring white sky above me. The scene reminds me of one when Jonas was just a little boy. We went on vacation to Maine one Christmas. He had never seen snow, and we only had on rare occasions. While we were there a storm blew in, and even though it was late at night we woke Jonas to go outside and play. We were all still young. Timothy still had quite a lot of hair. I still believed that the brightness of his eyes was all for me. I still thought that knowing what he ordered at every restaurant and giving up all the space on the bed to him and holding his hand at movies had something to do with love. I thought his reticence was somehow proof of feelings that would outgrow their shell in time and bloom under my care. He smiled. He did laugh, but never with his whole body.

We played in the street in the middle of the night. Dangerous, and cold. We didn’t care. We taught Jonas how to make an elementary snowball and he was so excited that he threw all the practice ones we helped him with right back in our faces. We played tag in the storm with him. I was so full of pride in them both just because they were alive. The light in both their eyes shone in the dark and dazzled me completely. We all giggled like children. We threw chunks of snow at each other when we could no longer shape snowballs. Our noses ran and our skin turned pink and raw. Our mouths dried out because we were laughing all our breath into the sharp air. Jonas took his gloves off so Tim could rub life back into his hands, and he tried to jerk them back on and run back into the street. He fell, and skinned both of his hands on the frozen ground. The streaks of red in the snow frightened him and he started to cry. I was the first one to him. I dabbed his hands with the cloth I used to clean my glasses and kissed them both over and over. I told him that I was going to count back from four, and when I was finished his hands weren’t going to hurt anymore. He looked at me, tears turning frozen and shiny on his cheeks. I held his two little hands in mine and asked if he was ready. He said he was.

Four…

Three…

Two…

One…

I tugged his gloves back on him and kissed his forehead. He turned around immediately and ran back to Tim. I looked at my husband and through the haze of the night it almost looked like he was smiling. Laughing. Right at me.

I hear the front door creaking, doorknob turning. Timothy must be home. From the voices I hear it seems Jonas has come with him. My fingers reach again for the bottle, but it is empty. I feel myself begin to sink into the bed, and panic. My bloodshot eyes search for somewhere to run, but I can’t run. Twenty years of snow. Twenty years of strangers looking at each other through a thick mist. No shell, no bloom. He answered only because I asked. But I will do what I have been doing for the last two decades, and I will count backward to a time when I didn’t know any of these things, and I will continue.

Four…

Three…

Two…

One

supermeme!

1. Which celebrity would you like to meet and why?
uh. hmm. javier barden. james mcavoy. daniel day-lewis. cate blanchett. viggo mortensen. to see where they get their secrets for being amazing

2. What do you do before bedtime?
usually i read

3. What will your dream wedding be like?
i've thought of multiple dream weddings. i now have yet another setting in mind

4. What is the city of your dreams and why?
the city of my dreams is the country.

5. Are you an introvert or extrovert?
depends. i'm extroverted about everythin but what i care about most of the time

6. Which is more blessed, loving someone or being loved by someone?
being loved. loving someone at least in my case isn't a blessing. it's a given

7. Do you trust easily?
no

8. If the person you secretly like is already attached, what would you do?
brood and simmer. as per usual. or i try to be bff with her because for some reason that always makes it easier for me to deal with

9. Is there anything that has made you unhappy these days?
feeling ignored

10. Do you have a good body-image?
more or less. now get me on the topic of my face and i'll start bitching

11. Is being tagged fun?
no. i don't like running

12. What websites do you visit daily?
my two emails, two public profiles, and three blogs...yikes

13. Who are currently the most important people to you?
hard to say. they're all so dear

14. What kind of person do you think the person who tagged you is?
nobody tagged me, i stole this

15. What’s the last song that got stuck in your head?
"it wasn't me" by shaggy hahaha

16. What’s your favorite item of clothing?
my supershorts, when they're ironed

17. What's better: to give or to receive?
give. especially when they really appreciate it. seeing somebody get that slow smile is the best

18. What's the first thing you notice in people?
their face. everything about it.

19: Would you have 100% safe sex with a stranger for $10,000,000?
if it was cool with my boyfriend. haha which i know it would be

20: What were your parents going to name you if you'd been born the opposite gender?
they weren't, i was a surprise

Timeline

I stood on the sun as I stared at the past
Wondering where on the line we lived last
And carefully looking I discovered the place
Where I had sunk into negative space
We stood in the room as the black night drove in
Knowing between us existed no sin
And it was so dark that I couldn't see you
Though I knew that your eyes were the most brilliant blue
Still the shadows crept closer and filled me with doubt
And all I could think of was how to get out
Because I felt sure that I knew what you'd say
Yet I wanted so badly to make myself stay
Ellipsis on your lips as I wished there was more
My heart exploded as I ran for the door
And if I could go back and relive that night
I'd set us afire and bathe us in light
I'd burn away even the deepest of dark
And refine everything that I hid in my heart
But though I stand here and I look at the line
There is nothing in me that can turn around time
Pangaea's been broken and the ocean is vast
Where are you going with those blue eyes downcast

auntie

I am officially an aunt!! Geoff's son was born this morning at 5:20 am. He was 6 ounds, 9 ounces, and his name is Lucian James Simmons! I love the name! So now there is Geoff, his wife Star, stepson Blaze, and son Lucian...it's a regular cosmic family! Hooray!!

lullaby

i know that in the end the last should come first but here i am tangled up in the dirt with the tears running through my hair like little rivers and everyone is staring at me as i shiver because i am pretending that this hard old ground is the same thing as my half-empty bed and i close my eyes as i lock my fingers around my head and try to rub out all the years that i spent wishing that you were here in my bed of earth too and it was never meant to be a grave but a cradle to share and i did everything i could to convince you that you belonged there and i don't know if it was love if only one of us cared but nobody knows how many lullabies i sang as the cries i heard pour from your mouth and your eyes rang out like gunshots in the night and maybe it was the way that i prayed over you holding your body by mine for the times that you weren't a lover but a child and i tried to draw out your pain with my hands but i guess i failed because you were the one that stood when i fell and you left me lying there contented at last with my name on your lips as the one who had plagued you so you opened your mouth and let it fly out and if it ever comes to mind again you'll only push it away yet remember before you go my son that whatever you gained you gained from my love