Invincible

Love makes you so invincible.

I walk through walls with you in my head.

I defy death and all its cousins.

I am powerful, not in spite of me,

But because of me…

Because of you.

Ask Me to Fall in Love with You

Ask me to fall in love with you. I will. Not a hint of hesitation. Keep tabs on me. Get jealous. Strap me to your broken psychology and all the things you’ve never believed about women. Give me presents and then suddenly stop doing so for years. Try my patience. I couldn’t give a shit less. Ask me to fall in love with you, make it as difficult as you want, if you want, but the truth about me falling in love with you, darling, is that I already did.

"Should I Start the Car?"

You are too tempting and I am too vulnerable. My makeup is too dark and I had a horrible day. But I’m still driving to you, every mile a new anticipation. I want a kiss. I want all your attention. I’m hoarding these small moments. I want it all, YOU, everything I don’t feel like I can have. Keys in the ignition. Here it goes.

Nine Days

Nine days didn't open me like a flower, they opened me like an atomic bomb, your hands ripping through the pages of my soul's diary unintentionally and without direction. It isn't fair to think this way, but at least I don't put you on a pedestal.

I don't expect anything from you at all.

Loveaholic

I could get high off of you all day. Snort you off a mirror. My time with you is like a speed ball. Crack and heroin on a foil? I'm serious. I'm so wired when I'm in bed alone, big pupils, little trains of thought, but I could lay on that couch with you holding me while I laugh for twenty years and feel the supposedly wasted time slide through me like sand through a sift. Couldn't give a shit less about pills anymore, even the pills in your drawer, 'cause I'm happy if I'm high, and I'm high if I'm yours. I'm a low-maintenance woman, and you're just my brand of I-don't-give-a-damn.

Couch Surfing in my Brain*

How many licks does it take to get the center of your universe? And when the hell are you going to vacate my brain? I invited myself over for dinner. I didn't invite you to take up residence in my psyche and stay a while. Maybe you've been sleeping on the couch in there since we were thirteen and I just started being alerted of your presence again. You're raiding the fridge and shit.

I'm just saying, I'm not supposed to be thinking this much about nothing.

How many ticks does it take to get to the center of your time bomb?

Or am I imagining that blinking monitor on your chest?

I imagine a lot of things these days, boy.

You had better fucking set me straight before you get evicted.




*alternate title: Mr. Owl, How Many Licks Does It Take to Get to the Center of Mr. Jones?

I Turned a Dream I Had About You Into a Little Song Instead of Into a Reality

So we laughed a little laugh
And we drank a little wine
And I sure did have a good time
And I got a little tipsy
And you carried me to bed
And I couldn't stop singing in my head

I was singing...
Oooh, I never thought you'd be
The one to break my heart
And who would've known
Every time I see your face
That pieces of me start coming apart?

Sunday Dinner

I marinated my heart in the fucks I didn’t give and then fed it to you, which I now morosely regret.

I Asked You

I asked you to treat me like I was delicate, and you said, “Wish not granted.” Your reputation precedes you, an ice sculpture, beautiful in every physical way and desirable to your core, but it doesn’t seem the core is any different than the surface.

It’s frozen.

You follow the traditions of all the dynasties that came before you. They were human men, just like you, and they were fallible, just like you, and they were careless, just like you.

When I was a little girl, my mom told me I was a princess. And I believed her.

But you don’t.

I asked you to be careful with me, and you said with a cold breath, “But I’m selfish.” And when you look in the mirror, somehow you see justice, but when I look at you, I break a little every time.

You, the Addict

I.

We met at a coffee shop. We caught each others' eye and smiled. We exchanged first name for first name.

This should have been an easy story to tell.

II.

You loved me and left me, loved me and left me, weaving in and out of my life like a sports car in medium-to-congested traffic. Sometimes you would leave my apartment and I would realize that my shirt was on backwards. You did things to me that I didn’t understand. You took my snowglobe world and shook it to see the pretty colors but you didn’t realize that I bled every time.

III.

You became my friend and I became your friend. I think it was when you started smoking heroin around me that I realized that I could officially call you “friend,” because you don’t do that in front of someone you’re trying to impress. You weren’t trying to impress me and all I wanted to do was impress you, I the tortured genius artist with the big boobs wanted to impress you, the junky.

Go figure. What a waste.

I would watch you light a flame under the foil and suck the fumes rising from the penny-colored paths through a rolled-up receipt. I would try to catch your eye but you wouldn’t want to look at me. This became customary and I fell in love with you despite it, because of it even. I wanted to save you from everything, including yourself.

IV.

One autumn came, one winter, one spring, one summer, and another autumn, another winter. They all left. One year and one half after the day that you waltzed into my life and began to cut the corners off of it with Little Fiskars, I began to waltz around, floating, with a dreamy glass covering the forest floor of my eyes. I was finally able to claim you, call you mine. You said the words “I think I love you” and I took even your ambiguity to be the very words of God. I clasped your promises, few and far between and small that they were, in my frighteningly cold hands, and I prayed that these promises would grow to become a life. Because I wanted a life with you. Me, the young writer with so much promise, me, I wanted a life with the addict.

I thought a lot of you back then and I guess I still do, even lying here on this floor watching you kneel over me screaming, “Oh my god oh my god oh my god,” as you shakily try to dial 911.

V.

When you left for the detox center on a random Tuesday evening in February, you were wearing that purple tie that I always wanted to use to pull your face closer to mine. I never had the bravery to do those kinds of things with you.

You left me a Marlboro box stuffed full of folded up foils. You said, “I’m getting sober. I’m getting clean. I’m trying to be a better man. Will you dispose of these for me? I don’t trust myself to do it.” And then you drove away.

VI.

It’s been a while since you left for the detox center on a random Tuesday evening in February. There is a thick silence between you and me. There is something unrequited. And that’s why I’m here.

I’m laying on the floor surrounded by crumpled up foils, their copper trails singed to a black the consistency of tar. My room holds the acrid stench of drugs that kill, and they’re killing me. I smoked nine foils in three hours. It’s a lot more than you used to smoke, and you had been building up a tolerance for years.

I’m laying on the floor with my heart not really beating, just murmuring, just whispering, just telling me that everything will be okay in a few minutes through my blood that is sluggishly moving along. I’m lying on the floor with my lungs not really breathing, my chest movement undetectable. I called you when I was halfway done with all this just to see the look on your face. You’re kneeling over me screaming “Oh my god oh my god oh my god,” as you shakily try to dial 911.

I say, “I’m trying to tell you a story.”

I say, “I’m trying to tell you our story.”

I say, “I’m trying to remember the important parts.”

You’re kneeling over me screaming, “Oh my god oh my god oh my god!”

You’re kneeling over me screaming, “Don’t die on me don’t die on me don’t fucking die on me! I love you!”

And I smile to myself. That’s all I wanted to hear.

To Each Their Own Path

When I was thirteen, I started to read this really spiritual magazine that talked a lot about meditation. It talked about sitting in a quiet place, preferably outside, with your legs crossed Indian-style, your back relaxed but straight, your palms slightly open to the sky to receive your blessing. It talked about opening your chakras from the base up until your crown chakra opened in a flash and you were suddenly communing with your higher self. It talked about healing and finding your purpose through right meditation.

I remember my mom finding my stacks of these magazines with articles that had names like "The Passing Age of Pisces"" and "Understanding the God Within."

The stack was under my bed. My mom was a fundamentalist Protestant with no tolerance for the devil's work being allowed in her house, so she threw the magazines into a dumpster behind the grocery store and told me she'd ground my ass for a year if she ever found that witchcraft in my room again.

My favorite article from all of those magazines had been called "The Art in Loving Your Neighbor."

My second favorite, "To Each Their Own Path."

The Blind Lead the Blind

The blind lead the blind

Closed eyes, open mouths

But our bodies are covered in Braille

Read me in the dark

Take it off, leave your mark

But we both know we’ll fail

We both know we’ll fail

Cheshire Cat

He came to me in broad daylight, his Cheshire Cat grin not heeded as a warning. I thought, “You have a remarkable smile.” He thought, “Just wait until I disappear.” He was gentle, cordial, mannerly though not in a Confederate sort of way, and I should have known that his sweet nature must give way to a thorny maze of BULLSHIT, because he was a LUTHERAN and a LIBERTARIAN and no one should be allowed to be both.

            If I’m being truthful, I wouldn’t have ever actually guessed that beneath the conventionally beautiful and widely admired shell, there was a BIG FUCKING EMPTINESS that one could feasibly compare to the space under the floorboards in the home of a sociopathic serial killer before his first murder.

            Because he wouldn’t hurt a fly.

            Or was he just waiting for the chance?

The End Is Coming

Wake up. Squint into that grey, 6.30 kind of light. Hit the snooze button once, twice, three times, but never fall back asleep. Chide yourself for this useless laziness. Propel yourself out of bed. The nausea will immediately hit you.

It's day you-lost-track of your misery, and you're in survival mode. Here we go.

Get in the shower. Deliriously squeeze way too much shampoo into your hand. Lather, rinse, don't repeat. Does anyone actually repeat? You don't have any time to do anything with your hair. Grab your shit, hold it together, power walk out the door to your car. Get in the car. Grip the steering wheel. Try to get a grip on that lump in your throat.

Walk into work. Smile and wave. You faker. You hypocrite. Sit at your desk. Don't look at the pictures that decorate your cubicle. Let the florescent light steal your sunshine and trap your little complaints in a box below the floorboards. Forget who you are. Stare at the cold blue screen.

Stare blankly into space on your smoke breaks, your lunch break. Don't think about it, whatever it is. Him, her, someone died, someone left, someone failed you. Or did you fail?

Forget your failures. Machines fail by way of design flaw.

Go home in a daze. Eat your supper in a daze. Watch TV in a daze. Read in a daze. Turn the lights out in a daze. Roll over and cry your little cry to the wall. Walls always listen.

Dream your dreams, your nightmares. Toss and turn. Sweat through the sheets. Your mind has run loose, broken its leash. You see it before you, his face, her face, their failures. Or are they your failures?

Hold tightly your failures. They will make sense, one day.

Wake up. Squint into that grey, 6.30 kind of light. Hit the snooze button once, twice, three times. Wonder when this will be over, when you will be uncrippled, unbroken, unchained.

Look in the mirror. Look yourself in the eyes. Somewhere in there is the strength to get you through this. Somewhere in there is the reason you keep getting out of bed.

Keep moving. The end is coming.

A Good Man

He was a man, just a man, but he was a good man. He paid his taxes, his cars were insured, he was a hard worker, a loving husband, a doting father. He did not smoke, he did not swear, and he attended church every Sunday without fail.

            Yes, he was just a man, but he was a good man.

            It was a beautiful summer day, this man sitting on his porch, holding hands with his wife, soaking in the sun with a lazy smile on his face. His eyes, which had been closed with contentment, suddenly flung open as he heard someone ascending the stairs to his front door. He nudged his wife when he saw the visitor, a cop in uniform, an ominous grey look on his face.

            “Good afternoon,” the intruder said.

            “Good afternoon, officer.”

            “I have some bad news, sir,” said the officer, and the man’s wife covered her mouth.

            They had thought their daughters, ages sixteen and fourteen, were together at a church lock-in the night before. In fact, they were at a party, the kind of party in a big brick house with no parents home. They had both gotten in the car, intoxicated. The car veered off the road, running into a pole, killing them both.

            He was a man, just a man, but he was a good man. He cried day and night as he planned the details for his girls’ funeral, the pink lined caskets, the music they liked. He tried to comfort his wife, his beautiful wife, but she was removed from him by her shield of grief, and would not let him touch her.

            The day after the girls’ memorial service, the good man’s wife put a gun in her mouth and blew herself away.

            He was a man, just a man, but he was a good man. Even with his firm faith, he could not find the ray of hope in the darkness of that valley. He could not get out of bed in the morning. Too many months of withering excuses, and he lost his job. Soon thereafter, his car was repossessed. Then his home went into foreclosure.

            He is a man, just a man, but he is a good man. He sits between two skyscrapers, the lowest of the low, in a grimy flannel shirt and ripped-up jeans, his beard overgrown. At night, he cries to himself, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and during the day he asks the passerby for change, but you just wave your hand at him and think, He got himself into this situation; he can get himself out of it.