With Rings On

She

Fell asleep with her rings on,

Fell asleep with her guard down,

Fell asleep with her voice gone.

She

Never told you what you needed her to say,

Never said things would be better this way,

Never promised what she couldn't keep.

She

Dreamed of Christmas morning,

Dreamed she drank the ocean through,

Dreamed the dog came back to stay;

...She dreamed of you.

XOXO

The Last Time

The last time,
Our eyes caught

In the early morning haze,
And locked,
A gray-blue and a bright green,
As you touched me,
Deliberate.
For an instant,
One drawing in of both our breaths,
One moment of stillness,
One last time you saw me,

For real.

The spell broken,
As I looked down
And closed mine,
Out of shame.

XOXO

Short Words, Big Feelings.

For the first time today, I did not go directly out and have a cigarette after seeing the evidence of your indiscretion uncover itself, strewn so completely out in front of me like a particularly gruesome triple-homicide.

I waited three hours. Then I sucked two down in a row.

Shaking in the numbing night air, I opened up my mouth and felt the wind rip it straight from my lungs. And for the first time, I could actually feel it killing me.

XOXO

Blips On The Radar

I eat the words in galloping gulps, as fervently as a fish sucks in the water around itself. This is the stuff my life is made of, a dissembled alphabet strung back together again in random and beautiful sequence. Nouns and verbs and adjectives and never, ever truly the same.

To me, you are the greatest novel. I want to read you, to flip open your pages and expose the stories within to my hungry eyes. Voracious.

***

"It's basically like going to war to come back home, blissfully alive, and find that your baby's moved away. Moved in with someone else. Shot the cat. Sold your clothes and given your favorite armchair to your most hated enemy. That's what this feels like."

***

I miss you like Christmas mornings and hot black innertubes floating in ponds in the summer sun. I miss you like first phone calls and piggyback rides and movie nights. I miss you like high school sleepovers and all-night ragers and how Cheech misses Chong.

I miss you like midnight margaritas and 2 AM chats sitting on kitchen counters. I miss you like a partner in gleeful crime, like spontaneous dancing, like Sunday football, beer, and chicken wings and cuddling on the couch, and like a hand on my head. I miss you like 3/4th of my days, like roadtrip videos, like beach bums miss summer.

I miss you like plaid flannel shirts and cats I could actually pet. I miss you like sunny hardwood floors, full bookshelves, and warm beds. I miss you like long conversations, early morning music, and name-calling.

I miss you like my other half. I miss you like every bad day turned good; like nowhere else I'd rather be. I miss you like early, early mornings, and late, late nights, and over 6 years of my life. I miss you like a heavy head on my chest, like warm breath making wet pockets on my shirt, and like a heartbeat I know as well as my own.

I miss you like a constant song in my head, the soundtrack of my nights here.

***

Brief Conversations With Hideous People:

Roommate Conversation: “Is it normal to bleed when you blow your nose?” “No, I don’t think so. I mean, not unless your nose is raw.” “Yeah, it’s not like I’ve been doing massive amounts of coke lately.” “Yeah.” (Exit.)

An Interaction In A Crowded Marketplace (otherwise known as, All The Functional Italian I Know): “Ciao! Un etto? (Point a finger and nod.)” “Italian Italian bella Italian.” “Si! Lo prendo. Quando costa?” “Italian Italian Italian, bella. (Pushes receipt across the counter.)” “Grazie. Ciao!” “Ciao, bella!”

“But it ends in an E. Why isn’t it feminine? Don’t all feminine objects end in E’s?” “Si. But this is different.” “Why? How am I supposed to know?” “It just is. You learn from experience.” “So if that question had been on a quiz, I would have gotten it wrong?” “Si.” “That makes no sense.” “There are no rules.” Under breath: “I like the French more now.”

“Get a boyfriend and go into the countryside, and WALK,” instructs Giancarlo. I wonder if this is what he said to his had-been-an-American-student wife. Sound advice, it seems.

“Please. My dead body could feed a family of six for eight weeks.”

“Seriously, when I handled E pills, this is what they looked like. See this? Screams hand-pressed. You can tell how good or cheap or what it’s made from by the press. When the stamp starts to fade off around the edges, that’s when you know shit’s cheap. And this is supposed to be keeping me from getting pregnant? Thank god I’m not planning on having sex here, because I DON’T THINK SO.”
"Q."
“If I wouldn’t take this if it was E, do you really think I’d take it as birth control? Seriously. This looks like some meth-head distributor’s side project.”

***

I am sitting the the corner bar, watching a guy talk to his girl back home on Skype while I know full-well he's dating and sleeping with someone else here.

It is obvious he loves her-- just by the way he talks to her, his facial expressions, how upset he is that the screen image isn't perfect and the sound is sub-par. He's worried she's seeing other guys. Meanwhile, tonight, he will go out with another girl. He'll sleep with her. Tomorrow, he'll come back down to talk to Miss America again. He'll count down the days until he comes home-- he told her 70 today, he'll tell her 69 tomorrow.

I have a lot to learn about men.

***

XOXO