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

Firenze Sempre

Those were
(Quelli erano)
The golden days.
(I giorni d'oro.)
The mornings where sunlight
(Il mattino dove la luce solare)
Looked like dust filtering through stagnant air
(Considerata come la polvere che filtra attraverso l'aria stagnante)
And
(E)
The heavy weight of jewels.
(Il peso pesante di gioielli.)
The evenings on the coast when warm breezes
(Le serate sulla costa quando brezze termiche)
Carried
(Eseguita)
The clean smell of
(L'odore di pulito)
Cacti
(Cacti)
And
(E)
Sea salt
(Sale marino)
On them.
(Su di essi.)
Monuments
(Monumenti)
Rose like memories in the piazzas,
(Crescere come ricordi nelle piazze,)
And
(E)
Buildings
(Edifici)
Loomed as tangible as the passing of time around them.
(Profilò tangibili come il passare del tempo intorno a loro.)
A back alley in Firenze
(Un vicolo in Firenze)
--Only the Italian names for places—
(-- Solo i nomi italiani per i posti--)
Via dello Studio.
(Via dello Studio.)
I am late on my way to a friend’s apartment,
(Sono in ritardo sul mio modo di appartamento di una amica,)
But walk
(Ma a piedi)
Slowly,
(Lentamente,)
Rewarded for my patience when,
(Premiato per la mia pazienza quando,)
Above me,
(Sopra di me,)
Piano
(Pianoforte)
And
(E)
A woman singing opera
(Una donna di canto lirico)
Erupt from open windows.
(Scoppiare dalle finestre aperte.)
I stop
(Mi fermo)
On the cobblestones
(Sul selciato)
And listen,
(E ascolta,)
Knowing this is a moment I will remember fondly
(Sapere questo è un momento mi ricorderò con affetto)
For the rest of my life.
(Per il resto della mia vita.)
Nothing has changed here
(Nulla è cambiato qui)
Since 1482.
(Dal 1482.)
I hope nothing changes
(Spero che non cambia nulla)
Upon my return—
(Al mio ritorno--)
A 20 year old shadow of me,
(A venti anni ombra vecchio di me,)
Left wandering the streets here,
(Sinistra per le strade qui,)

Forever,

(Sempre,)

With
(Con)
Part of my heart
(Parte del mio cuore.)

XOXO

Hiatus

You said "hiatus" like there was something to tie me to the same place, the same space, the same point in time. Like you can tell a dog "stay." Like there was something worth staying for or coming back to.

I wanted to look around and see the same strange universe you live in so I would know what exactly you were thinking. I wanted to tell you, "I may love you, but I don't love you enough to atrophy." I wanted to believe that you were bipolar, as it seemed to be the only explanation for the abrupt Harvey Dent two-face turn.

Instead, as time passes, so do the reasons, the possibility of explanations, and even the desire to linger. In some places, a "hiatus" is nice-- Maui, the Virgin Islands, Fiji. For others, a break only means that things have now been broken. No traction, no ICU and no splints and bones.

XOXO

Perfect Strangers

I don't know what made me look up just then, so suddenly, like emotional whiplash. Maybe it's just because I'm used to having you around-- you still show up on my radar, a bright blip.

But instead of where you would have come over before, instead, you looked away.

Just like we were perfect strangers.

You're just another handsome guy in a Red Sox cap. I'm just another girl pretentiously reading in the corner. If we were perfect strangers, I may try to catch your eye. I may smile. I may run a hand through my hair so you could better see my face. But after our combined history, I know better.

Just like how, as an imperfect non-stranger, I know your Cassiopeia constellation of moles, and how you smell, the way you take your coffee, and the unmistakable sound of your first signs of smoker's cough. And you know too much about me.

I can't pretend we're perfect strangers, so I pretend to ignore you as you walk slowly by, instead.

XOXO

Tiny Wakes

Dock. Cattails. Dog. House on the hill. Barn. Field. Dock. Cattails. Dog. House on the hill. Barn. Field. Dock.

As my feet make tiny wakes in the still pond water, algae floating in random spots like the ubiquitous Snickers-bars-in-public-pools of urban city kid's youth, I find myself thinking, very hazily, that this is pretty much the life. That right now, right here, this moment in time, spinning in tight circles like a buoyant top with my wet thighs sticking to the black inner-tube, digesting a peppermint stick sundae like the same ones I've been getting since 7th grade, and the gentle splashing sounds of Nora, 10 feet away from me in the pond, rollicking like a young otter in, over, and around her tube, both of us higher than a pair of kites-- that this, this is it. I've stood in the Colosseum; I've been in Carnivale; I've watched freighters and cruise ships sail across the infinite blackness of the night's horizon from the beach as stars fell from the sky overhead. But none of this still compares to being home in Vermont. I would not pass up this feeling of bubbly joy and dizziness as I watch dock, cattails, dog, house on the hill, barn, and field flash before me for another pair of heels; not now, and not ever.

These were the moments I missed the most; the small, the mundane, and the entirely trivial. I missed morning jogs underneath trees with leaves so green and bark so dark from the rain. I missed the noisy buzz and crush of Church Street, and the humidity of packed house parties. I missed the tricky shift from first to second gear; the heavy weight of Saph's head on my chest and damp hemlines from where she breathed onto me. I missed the mountains, and the water, and the storms. My entire 4 months in Florence, we only had one thunderstorm. I missed them just as much as I missed blood-red sunsets over the lake, small psychotic cats, familiar hugs and faces, and buttermilk ranch dressing on Wings Over's honey barbecue boneless wings. Like I said, it was the little things that I wished for. In Italy, I got out of the habit of great big, grand wishes, because I knew upon returning, they would probably remain just that-- wishes, and not reality.

But here, this lounge in a pond-- this was more delicious than any wish I could have come up with, not in my most wild and romantic moment. It beat being spirited away to Bobcat. It beat being met at Logan. It even nearly beat that first American kiss back.

Those 6 things-- dock, cattails, dog, house on the hill, barn, field-- and the feeling of the water lapping at my heels in a way that seemed far too velvet and far to solid to really be water, ushered me back in to my life more surely than anything since the 18th, and I knew it then, that this was not a dream. This was the life that I had left, and the one I had returned to. The simplicity was beautiful, and staggering.

A storm rolled in at around 4:30 in the morning. I woke up to watch it, and went back to sleep with the sound of thunder still crashing in my ears. Some wishes are perfectly harmless and easily answered, after all.

XOXO

Small Packages, a Work In Progress.

Totally subject to changes at any time, massive edits, further writing, and general construction.

---

Small Packages

He had been working there for 13 years, and he still hadn't opened a single package. Bumble & MacAlistar International Shipping, despite one of it's unfortunate founding partner's last names, and maybe because of it, prided itself on both their faithful, reliable employees and fast service, and Marty was no exception.

Marty Strong (Martin, on his blue and white nametag,) had started working for B-Mac, as it was fondly referred to among the people who shipped and recieved packages through them, and the NASDAQ, upon graduating from high school. Now 31 years old, with a wife, a dog named Bear, and a house that's monthly mortage was $900, he was starting to feel a little restless with life. No college education-- Pop hadn't believed in sending his only son away to somewhere where there was something called a "quad" and smoking pot and playing the guitar in a shirt you dyed yourself seemed like the extracurricular activity of the time. 'A good, blue-collar man is worth his weight in gold,' he used to tell Marty. 'There ain't nothing you can't do with your hands that some fella can do with his big brain.' Marty's mother had drunk herself into an early grave, so she had no say in the matter. If she still had been around, maybe she would have tried talking Marty into taking a job in the men's wear department of the local Sears and Roebuck. But in any case, she wasn't, and so Marty found himself applying as a "Handler" at Bumble & MacAlistar, and there he still was.

It was the sort of job that allowed you to let your mind endlessly wander, and Marty liked that. After his first six months, Marty got used to the lift, shift, carry routine, and now, muscle memory controlled him on the job, years of repetition and well-honed biceps doing most of the work for him. Despite his Pop's words of wisdom, Marty actually had a lot going on inside of his brain. There was his wife, Kate, to consider. They had been married for six years, and Marty was still constantly mystified by her. Just the other day, he had come home after a late shift to find her still sitting up, waiting for him, in their living room. 'Marty,' she asked him calmly, 'what if we never get out of here?'

'But we just bought the house four years ago,' he said to her. 'We're going to be paying the mortgage for the next 30 years!'

'Not out of here, Marty-- out of this rut we're in.' His Kate had ideas, she did. She was two years younger than he was, and therefore, two years even more reckless. At 29, she still felt young. She saw her girlfriends moving to the cities-- New York, Boston, Philly-- and she was starting to feel like maybe teaching seven year olds how to write in cursive was a dying lot in life, wheezing its last death-rattles. Marty, in his daily routine of lift, shift, and carry, was a creature of comfort. The thought that his wife-- his lovely, exhuberant, frustrated wife-- was starting to get antsy made Marty get antsy, too. She was trying to shake things up for them. First there were the open issues of Cosmopolitan that she left lying open to "101 Ways To Spice Up Your Sex Life!" and "8 Hidden Spots That'll Drive You BOTH Wild!" That he could deal with fine, but just the other day, she had brought home kits of finger-paint, five of them, and tried to convince Marty to join her in re-decorating the bare living room wall behind the sofa. He had refused, out of princepal-- what sort of person fingerpaints in their own living room?-- but now, delicate little handprints and arching finger swoops in red, green, blue, violet, orange, and yellow seemed to creep over his shoulder as he watched the Tonight Show. You could just barely see the little bump around the base of the second finger from the left of the left-handed prints, but Marty knew it was there, and Marty knew it was the band of the very adaquate wedding ring that his very adaquate yet very lively wife wore, and it made him sigh. There was even a pawprint by the baseboard from where Kate had dipped Bear's front right paw in fingerpaint and then pressed it to the wall. Privately, he thought that being surrounded by children all day in her second grade class didn't help her any.

Between that and the mortage (another thing Marty could spend endless hours contimplating how he was ever going to pay it back on a Handler's salary-- Kate's elementary school teacher's salary went nearly exclusively to paying for the groceries, gas, and her inexplicable shoe collection; how many pairs of high heels does one woman need, after all?) Marty could amuse himself for hours. He was a simple man, while still not being what society would consider a "simple" man. He had very few desires in life-- a few beers after work with his buddies; to please his wife and one day be able to read her mind so he would be able to stop having to guess at why she was mad at him and what she wasn't telling him; to pay the mortgage on time, and maybe, just maybe to have enough cash left over at the end of the month to buy a new set of golf clubs. (This was a new desire he'd been thinking of for the last three months, mulling it over more and more frequently as the weather got warmer and warmer and the opening day of the local golf course got closer and closer.)

---

That's it for now. I haven't written fiction in, oh...a quarter of my life, so any feedback, comments, suggestions and edits are appreciated.

XOXO

Things That People Never Tell You

If feels likes sharks slipping past in the night. The music marks you as guilty, but never has Jaws looked this appealing before.

Cat people thrive on rejection. Maybe, it's the whole feeling given off of "I'm-not-quite-attainable-and-some-of-it-is-partially-at-times-when-you-have-no-fucking-clue-where-I-am-and-find-yourself-fervently-hoping-that-I'm-not-throwing-up-in-your-shoes-to-spite-you-because-you're-not-quite-sure-if-I-really-like-you-or-if-I'm-just-using-you-because-without-your-bed-I'd-be-homeless" way that some women seem to have, too.

Dear Clinique: I am writing to you to report a fallacy in your marketing of your Lash Power Mascara Long Wearing Ultra Waterproof Formula. When my now ex-boyfriend of 2 years broke up with me for another woman with a perm, that shit ran like the Nile.

"I don't tell fairy tales much."

"Please? Just this once? Mommy always tells me fairy tales before I go to bed."

"I didn't birth you, so I don't think those rules apply to me."

"C'mon, just this once. Please?"

"Did you hear the one about the princess and the frog?"

"Yeah."

"Nothing is original these days. Fine. There was this--"

"NO! You have to start with, 'once upon a time'..."

"FINE. ONCE UPON A TIME there was this princess who had really shitty taste in men. I mean, like, forget shining armor, these dudes were lucky if they had a frickin' pair of clean boxers. There were no white horses, no roses, no jewelry, no surprise spontaneous serenading and choreographed dancing, no boom boxes under windows...nothing that every single movie or story themed at girls that you will watch or hear for the next 25 years of your life have. Because that is not real life. That is a fairy tale. And in fairy tales, Prince Charming does not give you herpes. Because as our princess found out, it's really hard to sleep with a lot of douches and not contract something that makes you itch where you just shouldn't. And while he lives happily ever after, spreading his gen-hep-2 to the rest of the female population stunned enough to have sex with him, she did not."

"...you don't ever need to tell me a fairy tale again."

"I warned you. And so you know, Valtrex can only do so much, and stay away from artists. They're like, the power-hungry magicians of the not-fairy-tale world. You'll never be able to find that pair of underwear again. Under their bed is a black hole, and a genie. And your three orgasms were his three wishes, tricking you into feeding, clothing, and blowing that sad little excuse for a Jackson Pollock."

"Goodnight! GOODNIGHT!"

"Goodnight, sweetie. Sleep tight."

XOXO

Of Aliens, Achilles' Heels, And Joints.

My thumbs still crack as much as they used to, tightening and cramping with about as much regularity as you exhibit. In the cold night air, first five wet, clicking snaps go off, starting with one abrupt sound, like a tree branch breaking underfoot in the middle of woods devoid of birds or any other small, noisy creature--then, more hesitantly, with the rasp of skin on skin as the appendages are pulled back manually, the other four fingers go. Crack, snap, click, pop. Then the other five on the other hand, in descending order, an arpeggio of joint, fluid, and bone.

There are people who will tell you that cracking your knuckles like this will swell them up like soft flesh balloons in your old age, penitence for years of self-abusement. People also tell you that you'll go blind from masturbating too much, and that you cannot lick your elbow. Well, I can, so I'll continue on being That Person who does it as a nervous reflex, a self-calming ritual as soothing as sucking your thumb, yet still publicly acceptable at nearly 21. Plus, what if they crack themselves? What if they elect, on their own biological and anatomical accord, to freeze up and crack? I have never had to force my thumbs to release like the trigger of a gun. I have never had to wrestle with them in a pantomime of a singular thumb-war and get them to give and function again. Instead, they always do it on their own-- a tightening, followed by a reflexive bending, at which point the spine of the thumbs give way like the spine of last year's biggest best-seller-- a fictional account of one passively-aggressive, neurotic man's triumph over the impending doom of intergalactic space invaders come to rid the world of it's inhabitants and bring back all the Fluff to their planet of Doom and Fluff-less peanut butter, which has since been opted for a movie, like War of the Worlds but with less Tom Cruise-- as the heel of your foot pushes down on it where it lies, spread-eagle on your bedroom floor, now broken, eternally open to those two pages detailing the struggle between the main character's desire to turn his back on his world and wallow in his own self pity, or to climb through the alien spaceship's air duct and kick some E.T ass, and you look down at the face of your former lover on the back cover's flap, trapped somewhere yet still smiling thinly under your Achilles and you think, "Well, if that isn't fitting?" and then you smile, and mash down on it just a little bit harder, because, you know, you're alone in the privacy of your own house and bedroom, and no one else is around to see your quiet-yet-clicking moment of vindictive triumph about something you should have rightly been over nearly six months ago, after they traded in a huge second book deal and a Lamborghini for your relationship.

After all, life can be stranger than fiction.

---

The thing that I love about writing fiction is that it never ends up ANYWHERE near where I thought it would when I started writing it.

And who knew War of the Worlds stayed with me so intensely, bad acting and all these years later?

XOXO

And P.S-- Yes, I can really lick my elbow.

Hell Is A Place Called Not Knowing

It always feels like someone is leaving. Mostly, because someone usually is. It's like trying to have a relationship with an opening and closing door-- most of what you get is the breath of cold air right after the feeling of someone who has departed. You see the words "Enter" and "Exit," but they both start with "E" like "Ecstasy" and "Epiphany" and "Enabler" and "Excommunicate," and so you are confused and stay put, dancing from one foot to the other, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Apparently, the grass is always greener on the other side of that door, or so they say, so while some graze contentedly-- or, at least, pretending to be contented, like a woman exiting Barney's with an arm full of shopper's remorse and a decimated credit line-- that must mean that others are still waiting on the other side of the door, tapping their feet and checking their watches, waiting for the people who Just Can't Say No to come back.

D.A.R.E seemingly did too good of a job in some rural elementary schools-- at least, with the rigid refusing part, if not with the saying no to two of life's most fundamental and key elements to any sort of personal happiness. Because, after all, what is a good story without copious amounts of alcohol and a little weed? Boring, that's what.

And so, there's this little waiting room like something straight out of Purgatory for the people who are too sure that absolutely nothing is wrong to sit in and cool their heels and wait for an explanation to come back through that door; any sort of explanation will do, as long as it's not half-assed and holds more of the truth then most people are willing to give. It's a waiting room like that of an oral surgeon's, or a podiatrist, some office where lots of poking and prodding goes on and you know, you just KNOW you're going to be in a lot of pain, full of a self-righteous silence that barely covers the underlying tension of "Oh god, what have I done?" and "Oh god, what have YOU done?" And you're left staring at two words, two maddeningly heavy words weighted with implications that are far too large for you, you in your hurried, semi-frantic, holier-than-thou martyr's state to really even begin to understand...

So will it be "Enter," or "Exit"? Do you want off this ride, or are you going to wait one more turn of the merry-go-round before you finally decide to scrap it all and jump off? Or, are you ready to finally throw all your baggage (not, as was said with such fervent feminine finality, "it's not just baggage-- it's like excess luggage with the overweight fees and carrying charges,") down onto the floor of that place everyone is looking for called Home and announce, "Honey, I'm Home"?

Because this is not an endless revolving door. Someone who lets someone else who's not supposed to really be there in too many times is called a Push-over. And the next thing you know, Security is breathing down the back of your neck, saying, "Did YOU let him in? Did you really think this would end well, you poor stupid shit?"

And all you can say in response is, "You always go and I just wanted you to stay."

Ok. So I'll bite. What did I do?

XOXO

In Absentia

It's one of those mornings where it feel like marionette strings are pulling me awake and out of bed.

Girl like painted doll-- pale skin, blue eyes lined in black, pink lips. A blink and a small pick at a zit and the illusion is shattered in the mirror, a thousand fragments of life and reality falling to bounce on the tile floor.

I cough and my body clenches and unclenches, throat screaming in pain, wet globs on the sidewalk making a path to where I have been and where I am going like Gretel with tuberculosis. As I sit in class, the ghost of questing fingers creep along the inseam of my jeans, and my skin crawls, bile rising and threatening to revolt. The dust in the street whips through the air and against my cheek, and it feels and tastes and smells completely foreign to me.

Craning my head around to see his face, I realize I am looking for a dead man everywhere, but looking never brought anyone back to life.

I look at the invitation. I consider, carefully, both sides of the response. The weight of a “yes”, the finality of a “no”. Wonder about propositions. Wonder about lies. Wonder about what “having coffee” really means. I have been reading long enough to become excellent at reading in between the lines. Wonder where “coffee” ends and “something more” starts. Wonder where and when the time for explanations is. Wonder about how much sway resemblance has. Wonder if flattery will help. Wonder if I really am that sort of girl. I make my choice. Wait five minutes. Find myself back again, looking at those words. Reconsidering. I leave again. Come back. Decide on one thing at the moment—I desperately, desperately need someone to listen. I realize even as I navigate away that I will accept. Not now, but sometime soon. Sometime soon, I will be back, still needing an ear, a shoulder, some reassurance, a sounding board. Actors have stand-ins; why can’t we have stand-ins for life when the leads come down with something? Isn’t that what’s already in practice? Leading lady; leading man; understudy; stage manager like magician. I feel the tug on the invisible marionette strings again, dragging me across the stage. The audience claps. A brilliant performance. Red and white flowers sent. Red lights flash like strobes. Roxanne without Sting to validate her. No red dress, not tonight. You don't care if it's wrong or if it's right.

The first sob startles me. There's momentary wonder and glances around to see if the sound really came from me. The next thing I know, I am pounding the sides of my fists against the cold tiles of the shower's stall, the weak trickle from the showerhead flowing down my back as I plead with whoever will listen to me through the tears that fall, unnoticed, down the drain with the rest of the water. "Please, please, don't let me shut down again. I don't want to. I don't want to!" The voice is uncanny, desperate, someone speaking from inside of me whom I didn't know existed. She sounds small, scared, exhausted. She sounds like she has something to live for, but no idea how to fight for it.

I have always held that crying in the shower doesn't count. Then again, I've always held that crying is something that shouldn't be done at all.

I listen, even though I have absolutely no answers. If I could do something for you, believe me—I would. If I could afford to lay down enough for both your life and mine, I would. If I could be the kind of girl who runs hot and cold like you do, I would. And if I could somehow reassure you that actually not being afraid to pick one or the other and run a steady temperature won’t end your life or wreck your unknown future, I WOULD, if I had the slightest idea how to go about fixing you.

Broken people don't know how to fix each other any better than a shoemaker can fix a broken camera's lens. It's all about perspective, and if you aren't willing to see it from mine, then there is absolutely nothing I can do for you, no matter how badly you want someone else to do all the work and excavating of your buried skeletons for you. Scars and substances and smoke and mirrors aside, trying to play with your shards like a puzzle yields absolutely nothing but bloody fingers and a bad taste in my mouth-- Colgate and Camel Lights.

Walking away and waiting are pretty much the same thing. Both are about an expanse of time as tangible as miles and walls that need to be hurdled. A phone that doesn't ring is still a phone. It's not like a tree falling in the forest-- it still doesn't make any sound. Effort expended is a life-lesson in physics-- what you give is what you get, and I'm tired enough to not get out of bed anymore on my own accord. The Peroni on the nightstand and the ashtray on the balcony keep track of the fact that I am still alive. The shape under my sheets suggests I am not.

The alarm buzzes constantly. No matter how many times I paw at it, it doesn't stop keeping track of time slipping by. The numbers on the display mean nothing anymore. 7 at night and sleep. 4 AM and awake. 2 and full sunlight and waking up for the first time.

You need like a newborn child; like a ravenous baby; like Romulus and Remus searching for the she-wolf to suckle them, mortal women no good. The mirror doesn't lie well enough to me; the constant checking reaffirms it; the pain and the weakness cinch the deal. Mortal, mortal, mortal. It rings through me like a death knell. There is absolutely nothing I can do for you, if you are not willing to do anything in return.

“In absentia” is more than a role-call response.

XOXO