in the space of a breath
you've overthrown me
cast me in to the unending perils
of my fast moving imagination
forced to fight against the tide of
self doubt and loathing
breaking to the surface
for moments of lucidity
just enough to survive me until the next wave

i've swam these seas before
been plunged to thier depths
and resurfaced
reached the shore near lifeless and panting
but still alive and breathing

i'm strengthened by endurace gained
treading for my life
empowered my the knowledge gained
by living beneath the surface

still

it was in the moment that i stopped
arrested by the silence of the stillness
of the world waiting to happen around me
but not with me.

i press close to the moment
spoon and wrap myself around
in humbling expectancy
of a call that never comes.

i linger in the moment alone
and full of desirous possibilities
of what could be just beyond the reach
of this silent still.

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i lay my heart between your hands
you lay your hands between my thighs
how quickly i combust
beneath your flame

i allow your eyes to smother me
lose myself behind your smoke screen
so easily you burn me
leave me breathless

i will conjure fire for you
when you place your torch within my hands
let me fuel you
keep you lit

so i've been a little down lately. i managed to get wrapped up in a tizzy over an ex who is dismissive and aloof. who could either be playing games with me, or just not care.

i asked a dear friend about it. she knows about by old trouble with p, and i thought she might have some advice for the thing with v.

what i got, i loved, and wanted to share:

"I'm sending you a reply while I'm drunk cuz i just read your message...perhaps i'll send another when I'm sober. my answer to your problem is this:

1. Never play games...life is far too short.
2. If someone wants to play games...they're too retarded for someone as beautiful as you.
3. Have as much fun as you can without hurting yourself or anyone you care about.

The rest is candy...and you should suck it up and enjoy it! "

Thanks honey!

what comes from wanting? a clearer image of what you don't have. the realization of emptiness. attention called to the hole. that's what comes from my wanting.

each time the possibility is entertained, the possibility that the desire could manifest, the desire for what isn't there... each time it's followed by a crash. painfully sudden or painfully slow, there's a crash.

it's the friend's voice of truth who says, "it doesn't mean anything. it boosts his ego." it's the empty inbox time and time again. it's the stuttering dial tone of voicemail, a hang-up or a credit card company. it's the scratch down your back from last night's mediocore encounter you don't care to revisit but lingers as reminder of what it wasn't, who it wasn't.

knowing that the person you're thinking of isn't thinking of you, doesn't think of you. the one you wrote to who won't write back. the one you wrap yourself around in dream who doesn't dream of you.

it's being 12 hours and a million miles apart.

my hands tremble now. the energy i keep inside to not scream and wail and thrash unbridled, it's evidence is trembling fingers over keys. tiny shakes that belie the intensity within. if tears began they would drown me.

i'm still. his life is vibrating with accomplishment. something amazing has happened to him, for him. i know because i dreamt it. i know because of a comment intercepted through a stranger. and i don't know because he hasn't told me.

if you would run to me, i would always be there. i would celebrate with you. i would commiserate with you. i would die those little deaths beside you. i would satisfy you. i would encourage you to find your wholeness elsewhere in the needs i couldn't meet.

if i could run to you, i could be stronger. i could push myself to reach for goals. i could strain against falling flat with the knowledge that you would lift me. i could wake up and stay awake because having you in reality is better than in dream.

for now, i sleep. i tremble in an empty bed and wrap myself in sheets rather than you. i sleep to see you near me. i sleep to escape your distance from me. i sleep so i don't hear the silence of my house and the phone that doesn't ring.

others love me. others reach out to me. others bask in the attentions i give them. others come to me with problems, tears, joys, anxieties. but not you. how are your needs so different from their's?

i'd never hurt you this way. and i'd never tell you how i hurt.

so i'm still.

wanting.

waiting while i crash.

from "One Hundred Years of Solitude"

"Intrigued by that enigma, he dug so deeply into her sentiments that in search of interest he found love, because by trying to make her love him he ended up falling in love with her. Petra Cotes, for her part, loved him more and more as she felt his love increasing, and that was how in the ripeness of autumn she began to believe once more in the youthful superstition that poverty was the servitude of love. Both looked back then on the wild revelry, the gaudy wealth, and the unbridled fornication as an annoyance and the lamented that it had cost them so much of thier lives to find the paradise of shared solitude. Madly in love after so many years of sterile complicity, they enjoyed the miracle of loving each other as much at the table as in bed, and they grew to be so happy that even when they were two worn-out old people they kept on blooming like little children and playing together like dogs."

you are my deadliest sin
behind distant brown eyes
having breathed you in
i am unpardonable.

i ask only your redemption
and not to be absolved of you

you are my greatest transgression
against my own heart
pitted between frozen hell
and fiery rapture.

in your wake you drown me,
i grasp to be pulled by you--
on your path you dizzy me,
my position, your tandem--

i see it all second
if not blinded by you--
less air to my lungs
if not consumed by you--
less sun on my skin
if not eclipsed by you--

i will emerge, surpass
i will transcend you--
strengthed by the bits
you thoughtless cast behind--
empowered, pull out from underneath you
and you will fall aside.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRR
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGG
GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
GGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


i really just needed to scream today.

better now.

i came across this on toothpaste for dinner and just loved it.

tag

she picked up the receiver and was met with the staggering tone of a voice-mail alert. not expecting anything more than the usual "This is Bank of America" or "Please call ____ when you receive this message", she readied her finger over the 3 to delete quickly. the first two were as she thought, companies wanting their money back. if she had it, she'd give it to them, just to make the calls stop. but she didn't, so they continued, and she deleted. third call was to confirm her date and directions to his house. easy enough. she skipped over it quickly, jotting down what she needed and moving on. 4th and final, ready again at the '3', her body stiffened before the voice even began. him. he'd called. a month of no calls. weeks without word. nothing more than a two word text message in all this time. him. he'd called.

she had sort of set it up that way. asked in an email that she was sure he wouldn't read if he'd commented on her live journal. the smart guess was no, but it had his biting tone. it had his arrogance. and she missed him just enough to tie those two thin threads together. so, he'd called to say it wasn't him. he'd been busy. very busy. (he always is.) "call or drop me a line" was how he'd ended it. did the irony of that not strike him? she'd been doing that for a month and never a word in return. she'd all but begged for him to answer her.

it was the polite thing to say at the end of the message. sure comes off nicer than, "fuck off and die", she thought. but wasn't that really what his absence, his silence, his indifference had been saying? or was this a game of "who can care less and make the other want more?" the only game she played was 'connect four', so she wasn't in the mood for a round of emotional battleship. he'd already sunken everything she had put out there. he'd demolished her fleet of good intentions and kind words. what more was there to kill? her heart? her soul? her tenuous grip on reality?

still poised over the 3, ready to delete, she didn't. she backed off a button, hit 2, and saved the message. why? this flabbergasted word spit visibly from her lips. did she plan on dissecting the call, interpreting his voice and modular changes in tone? was she going to play it over and over and over for hidden meanings? was this just to preserve the sound of his voice in her head?

she isn't this girl. she isn't the girl who has to sit by the phone and wait for a call. she could call her lover. one of them. she could go to a bar and be in a stranger's arms within an hour. so why, why was she allowing this slight man to slight her? he'd been less than a memory not very long ago. and his lackluster return to her life was one should be able to simply put aside. he should have been forgotten the moment he left her house that day.

it was the game. she had somehow succumbed to his game. and his game had started the day he had left. before closing his car door and driving away he had said something about "playing hard to get". and from that moment on she had been losing.

she is their secret. they come to her with open mouths and eager hands, searching for seduction. and she can cater to them or demand her own desires met. and she does.

with one, she is the romantic older lover, and he is tender. he fancies himself don juan, and she is his willing and submitting prize. he is indefatigable with youth, but easily drowned in alcohol. he plays his guitar for her, and she plays the swooning patron of his arts.

with one she is a loving friend and the safe hands in which he lays himself. with her he is free to detour, to experiment, and to go home more well versed. and with him, she trusts herself to be free, to speak the words she chokes on otherwise. they have a mutual fascination with all things yet untried.

with yet two more, she was virgin territory, a secret the two shared for one night. they'll return in one month's time and she has yet to determine how this will play out. will she entertain herself with both again, or break their bond and see just one?

and now another in the fold. another pair of hands and lips. another seduction, domination, submission, experiment, experience. what she lacks in comparison of years, she makes up for in events.

she is their secret. they come to her.

she could see him, even from this distance, waking to the sound of the third snooze alarm. he sets it deliberately 24 minutes before 7 so that he can get those 3 rounds of 8 minute sleep before finally rising. his routine is the same every morning, so much so that even if she couldn't see him, she could walk through it with him in time and be exact.
wake.
cigarette while coffee brews.
coffee.
paper through section 3.
more coffee.
shower.
pull back hair.
socks. boxers. pants. shirt. shoes. (she never understood the socks first.)
gather laptop and paper.
coffee to go.
7:52 and he's out the door.
and he doesn't speak to anyone. she could be there next to him and barely get more than a grunt or smile. it isn't that he isn't a morning person. it just isn't in his routine to talk in the morning.

she wants to drive with him this morning. to have him drop her off at the bakery not too far from his turn-off to the highway. she knows better than to drive with him on the highway. he requires such intense focus (mostly due to the merging morning traffic, not his driving) that she feels not invisible, but problematic. as if the mere breath she expels could be an unwanted distraction from the task at hand.

she loves to watch him drive though. his left hand always on the wheel in nearly the same 10 o'clock position, his right hand fluttering from the air conditioner to the radio to the gear shift to the brake where it finally rests, like a hesitatant butterfly before lighting again to the wheel. his fingers are thin, almost feminine, but powerful. she remembers their strength as they grabbed her hair in a thick knot and pulled, turning her face and lips to his. there is violence and passion in those hands that thier appearance belies. those fingers wrapped around the steering wheel remind her of his fingers wrapped around her hair and she quivers excitedly.

8:35. he's pulling in to his normal parking space, even this does not depart from routine. and now another cigarette as he walks to the door, balancing coffee and nicotine and laptop, his three major food groups. his sustinance. the last draw on his winston is pure sex. and he'll languish in the afterglow of exhale. if he could stretch that moment out a lifetime, he would live in it forever.

9:02. he's done chatting with his boss. friendly and familial. there is laughter that she never hears in the morning. he's on his way to checking email, business first then personal. not the way she would do it, but he's just that... responsible. his hands move over the keys with such precision it's as if it's his invention. there is no virgin fumbling, no missed keystrokes. he is precise. he always is. it's a pride issue for him. even last night, his hands moved over her like she was his creation. he knows her intricasies, her buttons. the right pressure, the right time. he does it all exactly. not routine now, just exact.

she can see him. she can still feel him. she can almost hear him, but his voice is what she forgets the most quickly. she had saved a voice-mail from him once, just to preserve the voice. it was kind then. not that he ever means it to be unkind. it was just kind, then.

and now she'll wait. wait for him to finish. wait for him to return. wait for him to speak again, touch her, grab her, confound her. because for her, that is pure sex. and she will wade in the afterglow of his attentions until they come again. she'll hold on to them through other lovers. other hands. she'll wait because she knows what she is with him, what she could be with him. and that's when she likes herself the best.

walls

i push against walls. and mostly, i expect them to move quite willingly. i expect them to suddenly see the error of standing fixed and solid in place. to see the beauty of fluidly following water or breeze or me.

i scream at walls. i wail and bellow and beseech. it seems i do this at a decibel they don't hear though, because not one wall has yet to answer me. if those walls would just hear me, hear the loving song i've composed for them, well, they'd no longer be a wall.

i comfort walls. i place satin sheets over them, stroke their rough surface and smooth over the year-worn dents and abrasions. i speak as soft and warm as autumn sunrise, consoling them to strength. and all i feel is the chill of stone against me, and the wet of my tears returned to me by the unyielding surface.

i write letters to walls. i hide the notes in crannies that i'm sure they'll notice. i jest, i play, i swell with pride at having found them and i coo at the chance of loving them. i tuck the note quietly and run away, like a child on may day leaving treats for a friend. and i'm always disheartened when i return, to find the note where i've left it, unopened, unread or wet and smeared by falling rain, my words lost and draining.

i love the walls for how they are, strong and protective, loyal and defining. they allow me the boost to see from new vantages. they hold back the terror of storms. they silently adjust the landscape and break the monotony of green and green and green and green.

for all the reasons i love the walls, i hate them just the same. and i surround myself with them, building unhearing, unmoving, unloving fortresses around me. i pray one day i see the beauty of their way, or they the beauty of mine. walls and girls just don't play the same way. i think it's lonely for both.

answer me

do you want me to leave you alone?

is that what you're silently asking?

have you read my thoughts and been frightened?

i've forgotten if i've given you the key.

have i overwhelmed you by my presence?

or are you just to busy for me?

would it make a difference if i wasn't so much like her?

though since i was first, it would seem she is like me.

its quiet, and i'm tired. not just now, but most of the time. sleep is my best diversion, my best distraction from banality. it's there that i can float and swim and be enchanted and loved. sadly, it is also there that the demons surface, clamor on my back and rein me by the hair to their depths.

but i do dream. i've stopped dreaming during waking, stopped planning and pursuing. i wait till sleep to unfold my desires, keeping my rational mind a great distance. when i dream, i want to see the beauty that harsh light takes away. i prefer the dim glow, the shadows and light's reflection. i don't mind the view inside the cave reflected on the wall.

don't get me wrong. i do find beauty in the world, just not usually where human hands have been. or where human voices are. i see it in the bursting waves and the changing sky. i see it when i'm alone. i see it when no one else is looking. sometimes i see it in the eyes of others when they are seeking acceptance so purely.

i didn't recognize myself today. it's a strange feeling to catch sight in the mirror and not realize it's yourself. to have a moment's hesitation before, ''oh, that's me". it isn't all bad, it's just strange.

i can't find strength for myself, but i will be solid for others. my dear friend j is hurting, she has begun to feel defeated and tired. and i will be her strength until her own returns. i care too much for her to see her pulled in by the pettiness and ignorance of those around her. those who have never felt pain and loss and despair as uncompromising as she has and still endured.

e- i'm okay. i'm weighted down but not drowning. i'm just very much alone, and not in the way that i most days enjoy. i'm alone at my soul's core. i'm feeling the innate separateness a little more strongly than i like. i'm too aware of things not happening around me. i'm too sensitive to affections not given. i'm too needful of things that will not come. i want to shout words that i can't whisper. but i'm okay.

if after today i never again see your face
i will press my hands to heaven and kiss god upon the lips
the futility of loving you is of magnitude i've never known
it's gravity on my heart rivals that which holds the moon
i can be held in this orbit no longer
but i don't know how to break your pull
acknowledge me or release me
anything else is cruel