Friday, February 13, 2015
stream of consciousness
All the days I've missed you, dear one. The house has been too dark for too long, light switches flicked up and all. The weight might be too heavy but I will carry it by myself, letting you wander ahead looking for a light I cant find. If you find the light, I'll carry the load. If you open the doors Ill squeeze my bloated body through them. If you find a space, Ill fill it with my weary presence and my wasteful presents. Where you lead, I will follow, falling and rising and rising and rising. When you go I will wait. When you leave I will stay. When you close I will break through your rusted, ragged wooden walls. When your skin breaks I will put it back together again. When your smile cracks I will bask in it. When the bows break and the dam rushes and the trees bend and the sky splits, I will post up beside you, barefoot and bruised. I will lie in green grasses, burrs sticking in my skin, so I can breath in the sun with you. I will stand in Windsor rain and baptize myself in the grace of you. I will blaze across your dark sky, slowly burning through your atmosphere, my sights set on your steady waves, your deep oceans, your rugged mountains, your hills and valleys, peaks and ridges. Your plains. Your simples. Your complexities. The grit in your teeth, the dirt under your fingernails, the stars in your eyes. I will sink into the softness of you when I need rest. I will sharpen myself against the hard edges of you when I need strength. I will breathe you in as you breathe me in, flowers blooming across our skin and sun spreading across our faces.
the physical illness of mental illness
Last night, I went to sleep at midnight. It's not a particularly early bedtime but for a Friday night, it was something different for me. The boyfriend and I just got a new mattress, one that is supposed to feel like the epitome of cliche. Like "sleeping on a cloud" or as James put it, "like angels were carrying me off to sleep while playing harps."
This is not what falling asleep felt like to me.
The sheets were suffocating me, wrapped so tight around me I feared I would stop breathing right there in my bed, with James in the next room, never knowing how I was suffering, being pulled under and out of sight as if I'd never even been there. The sheets were too loose. There was too much air billowing in all the extra space, it was filling me up and pushing me around and the sheets were bunching up, rubbing against my legs and I didn't like how the wrinkled fabric felt against my skin and I was going to go out death by cotton.
It was too hot. I was sweating and constantly reaching for the bedside table, where my cold glass of water was growing more and more empty, warmer and warmer, unable to quench the driest throat I'd ever had. Then, it was too cold. It was snowing in my room and no matter how far I cocooned into my comforter, the flakes soaked through, freezing the hair on my arms and making my teeth chatter.
When I finally fell asleep, I fell hard. I fell into worlds of tornadoes and wars and the world ending and screaming and screaming and too much screaming. Nightmare after nightmare of terror and heartbreak, all night. And I never woke up, all night.
I woke up this morning at noon. My entire body ached, especially my neck and my shoulder. My body felt like a hundred pounds, my back clenched with every movement. I dragged myself to the shower where I nearly suffocated, again, on the steam. My head swum in the heat and my stomach lurched as I grew dizzier and dizzier. When I finally managed to get out of the shower, clothed, and onto the couch, I fell asleep again....off and on, for the rest of the day. When I was awake, my mind was all over the place, I couldn't concentrate on one thing for more than five minutes. My motor skills were barely functional. As I sat on the porch, watching a sunset that my brain could barely even register, my thumb struggled to move against my cell phone screen no matter how hard my brain told it to. I fell asleep sitting up in my chair.
Dinner tasted bland. It was spicy Indian food.
As I watched television, still struggling to stay awake, I became angry at everything every character on the screen did. Why did that character just make that face? Why is he talking like that? His face is so annoying! I HATE THIS SHOW. I just want to go to sleep.
It's 11 o'clock. I'm in the bed, again, and I could fall asleep for the night right now.
This is not what falling asleep felt like to me.
The sheets were suffocating me, wrapped so tight around me I feared I would stop breathing right there in my bed, with James in the next room, never knowing how I was suffering, being pulled under and out of sight as if I'd never even been there. The sheets were too loose. There was too much air billowing in all the extra space, it was filling me up and pushing me around and the sheets were bunching up, rubbing against my legs and I didn't like how the wrinkled fabric felt against my skin and I was going to go out death by cotton.
It was too hot. I was sweating and constantly reaching for the bedside table, where my cold glass of water was growing more and more empty, warmer and warmer, unable to quench the driest throat I'd ever had. Then, it was too cold. It was snowing in my room and no matter how far I cocooned into my comforter, the flakes soaked through, freezing the hair on my arms and making my teeth chatter.
When I finally fell asleep, I fell hard. I fell into worlds of tornadoes and wars and the world ending and screaming and screaming and too much screaming. Nightmare after nightmare of terror and heartbreak, all night. And I never woke up, all night.
I woke up this morning at noon. My entire body ached, especially my neck and my shoulder. My body felt like a hundred pounds, my back clenched with every movement. I dragged myself to the shower where I nearly suffocated, again, on the steam. My head swum in the heat and my stomach lurched as I grew dizzier and dizzier. When I finally managed to get out of the shower, clothed, and onto the couch, I fell asleep again....off and on, for the rest of the day. When I was awake, my mind was all over the place, I couldn't concentrate on one thing for more than five minutes. My motor skills were barely functional. As I sat on the porch, watching a sunset that my brain could barely even register, my thumb struggled to move against my cell phone screen no matter how hard my brain told it to. I fell asleep sitting up in my chair.
Dinner tasted bland. It was spicy Indian food.
As I watched television, still struggling to stay awake, I became angry at everything every character on the screen did. Why did that character just make that face? Why is he talking like that? His face is so annoying! I HATE THIS SHOW. I just want to go to sleep.
It's 11 o'clock. I'm in the bed, again, and I could fall asleep for the night right now.
my best writing
My best writing doesn't come on paper. It doesn't flow out of the tip of my pencil and roll over the lined canvas of my notebook. It doesn't bleed from my fingertips and weave through the interwebs to settle on the computer screen. My best writing has never been read by anyone else, not even you. My best writing is never even written at all. My biggest words and my beautiful allegories and my blossoming hyperboles come when I least expect. The perfect description of your beauty builds up in my brain when I stare at that scar on your cheek. A metaphor for your pain plays out in my mind as I kiss the scar on your knuckle that I can only eloquently describe as a "blob" right now. But then it was the shape of a newborn baby, grasping for just the slightest sense of something familiar. The way your voice sounds in the morning and the look you give me when I poke you, a look that says you find me frustrating and wonderful all at the same time and you don’t know how, form in the veins and stream out of the pores of my fingers splayed out on your arm and soak into your skin and you don't even know. My best writing isn’t written on paper. It is written under your skin, where only I know where to find it.
my mother's fingers
My mother gave me long, skinny, piano playing fingers to get tangled in my hair and for rings to slip off of.
When I was little, I would climb up on the player piano, its opaque shine nearly blinding my young, fascinated eyes. I’d glide my tiny hands over the ivory keys, feeling their perfect smoothness under my rough, playground marked hands.
I would listen for the sound of my mother traipsing through the house. If I timed it just right I could jab the player piano button right as she edged into the hallway and by the time she walked past the living room door I was bouncing my fingers around in the air above the keys as they played themselves. I would try to hide my satisfied giggles as she would walk by, stop and trudge backwards to see her little, six year old plunking out “Beethoven’s 5th” with a look of pure professionalism plastered on her face. She would stay there for the entire song until I finished in a dramatic flourish then bust out in applause as I hopped off the bench and bowed my head all the way to the floor. She would call me her “little Mozart” and then escort me to the kitchen for some ice cream.
One day the player piano broke halfway through my song. I paused there, my fingers still in the air, and stared down at my friends that had abandoned me during the climax of the song. I heard my mother let out a slight gasp from the door as she waited for me to make my next move.
I turned to her, fingers hanging and my face holding extreme poise.
“I seem to have forgotten the rest of the song, Mother”. Mother sounded like something piano players would call their mommas.
Without hesitation, she glided across the room, swept me up into her arms, sat herself on the bench and plopped me right down on her lap. She motioned for me to put my hands on top of hers and then we played the rest of the song together, right where the player piano had cut off. We bowed to each other after then shared the rest of the ice cream with two spoons.
The player piano was magically fixed the next week but I never “played” it again. Instead I would wait on the piano bench for my mother to walk past the door. I‘d call out to her that I couldn’t remember the song anymore and needed her help again. My mother and I played the piano together every day for a year until my sister was born.
After that, I’d wait until my mother lay down for a nap to sneak my baby sister out of her crib. I’d carry her into the piano room and situate her on my lap at the piano. I’d guide her baby hands over the keys and help her use her chubby fingers to plunk out mismatched chords that created a song that sounded to me just like the glorious tune my mother and I had played together.
To Caroline, sister #2
You are a painter. You are a baker. You read chapter books that are too old for you while drinking cups of coffee too strong for you. You are growing up too fast. You paint a mask of what you think is perfection on your face yet I see more beauty in your cheeks still holding baby fat, the freckles spattering your nose, and your bright, unlined, emerald eyes. You dig your sharp elbows into my ribs and swing your size 8 feet (yes, I know they're bigger than mine) swiftly at my head. You scream, roll your eyes, stomp away and I love you even more. You filled two years of your life throwing quarters in fountains, chasing shooting stars, blowing out candles and kissing clocks all with the same wish. Your wish came true. You dream about wolves and teacups and meadows and clocks. You talk in your sleep. You have a straightener and a curling iron in your drawer. You wear bows in your hair and boots on your feet. No one understands you. You are always right. I don't know what I'm talking about. If that's so, you are not a singer. You are not a dreamer. You are not confused. You are not searching. You are not beautiful. But I do. And you are.
zombies
Sometimes you turn up in a dream out of nowhere. One moment I’m chasing zombies through New York City and then you appear. I spot you in the crowd of blood-thirsty undead and everything else falls away. As I jump into your embrace, zombies collapsing in on us, the shock of your skin and the softness of your lips is enough to make me believe that this is real. I believe that you are here to save me and that you will do so by kissing me in the middle of Fifth Avenue. I believe that we are the only two humans left alive and that’s how it will stay. We will hunker down in the subway and live off the food we find in vending machines and abandoned lunch boxes. We will sleep under benches and spend our days wandering the tunnels in the darkness, chasing rats and playing Marco Polo. This all races through my mind in the split second I have of your lifelike hair and mouth and nose and hands before I burst awake, my body on pins and needles and an array of colors mixing together in the dark canvas of my room.
a love letter
the day you etched your name
on my heart and my neck
and the inside of my eyelids
with a dull, rusted knifewas the day i swore
i’d steal that blade
and carve what you did
on every bench
and treeand lamppost you walked by.
on my heart and my neck
and the inside of my eyelids
with a dull, rusted knifewas the day i swore
i’d steal that blade
and carve what you did
on every bench
and treeand lamppost you walked by.
To craven, sister #1
You drive on the wrong side of the road and cross the street without looking both ways and walk through life with your shoes untied. You trip over your own feet and walk into walls and burn your fingers on the flames that are too pretty not to touch. You don't talk about your feelings. You cry over dead birds and laugh at your own belly up fish. You were built to be a battleship yet live as a sailboat. you wish you could be a canoe. You paint your nails and your hair and your words but not your face. Never your face. You point at the sun and dare it to outshine your big, blazing, beautiful brain and we all laugh because we know that it never could. Sometimes you close your eyes when you sing and sometimes you close your eyes when you dream and sometimes you stare too long at your own light and burn your eyes. Questions litter your lips but your tongue fills with the answers before I can even wonder. You are always ready to learn. You can tell me who the eighth Czar of Russia was and how cheetahs can run so fast. We don’t have the same eyes, nose, hips, knees or feet. But the way your voice fills the empty space of a room and the sparkle in your eyes when you stumble upon a book you haven’t read reminds me of the way I was before I learned to lace my boots, ready to run from the cars careening towards me head on. Don’t ever learn how to tie your shoes.
i am a novel
My pages have the permanent lines of dog-eared memories. Pages 43, 76, 104, and 199 are missing. I can't find them anywhere. I haven't looked too hard. Page 14 is stained with spilled Coke and my cheesy fingerprints dot 88 and 89. A friend of mine ripped one of their corners once; 72. They stayed up all night taping and gluing and wishing it back together when they could have been filling 73-84 with words. Those pages are blank.
My timeline is fragmented beyond repair. My sentences are not quick, to the point, or simple. Words I don't even know the definition of hide themselves in the confusing run-on's of my story. Adjectives are misspelled; commas are misplaced; punctuation isn't necessary. My font changes from word to word.
I have doodles in the margins. I am underlined, highlighted, circled, crossed out. I have grammatical mistakes and misspellings and-- I don't think I even proofread a few sections. My editors are annoyed with me. I'm confusing; I'm incomplete; I drone on and on. There is always something I need to fix or something I can do better. I am a constant workshop. My editors can't get enough of me.
I start off slow. I spend three chapters just describing my family history. I bore people with minute details. But I surprise them at the end of every chapter. I keep them turning the pages; looking for the buried treasure, searching for the missing diary page, waiting with baited breathe to see if he'll show up on my doorstep or not (spoiler: he won't). I introduce everyone to Sam and Andrew and Brandon and Thomas and Jeremy and TaylorWilliamMaxCharlesRob (I think those were their names) and the one I keep going back to. I take away Sam and Andrew and Brandon and Thomas and Jeremy and TaylorWilliamMaxCharlesRob and FINALLY!!, the one I keep going back to. I erase grandparents from my pages and let their spaces remain unfilled. I write everyone's favorite characters out of my story and don't apologize when they whine about it. I have a conflict, climax, resolution; another conflict, another climax, another resolution; another conflictclimaxresolution. I build myself up then pull the rug right out from under myself.
I get lugged around in the bottom of bags. I am torn, folded, bent, beaten up and broken. They break my spine and complain when I fall apart at their hand. I gather dust under beds after I'm tossed aside. I blend in with others when I'm stacked in the corner. I disappoint and soak up tears and get thrown out with the junk and skeletons from the closet.
But sometimes. Sometimes I am held tight to the chest of someone as they sleep at night. Sometimes I am scribbled on napkins. Sometimes I am whispered across classrooms. Sometimes I am put on display in the front windows. Sometimes people pick pieces of my story to share with others. Sometimes I help. Sometimes I comfort. Sometimes I am just there to tell a story. Sometimes I bring smiles and laughs and tears of joy. Maybe my story will be made into a movie. Maybe I'll become famous. Maybe I'll make the papers. Maybe I will bring glory to my Author's name. Maybe my name will not be forgotten.
But maybe it will. Maybe the crowds might not remember my name or ever even hear it. But I am a novel. And someone will love me. Someone will keep coming back to me. Someone will find joy in the torn pages and the folded corners and the missing sections. I will change someones life. Someone will cry with me and laugh with me and turn my fragile pages gently.
My timeline is fragmented beyond repair. My sentences are not quick, to the point, or simple. Words I don't even know the definition of hide themselves in the confusing run-on's of my story. Adjectives are misspelled; commas are misplaced; punctuation isn't necessary. My font changes from word to word.
I have doodles in the margins. I am underlined, highlighted, circled, crossed out. I have grammatical mistakes and misspellings and-- I don't think I even proofread a few sections. My editors are annoyed with me. I'm confusing; I'm incomplete; I drone on and on. There is always something I need to fix or something I can do better. I am a constant workshop. My editors can't get enough of me.
I start off slow. I spend three chapters just describing my family history. I bore people with minute details. But I surprise them at the end of every chapter. I keep them turning the pages; looking for the buried treasure, searching for the missing diary page, waiting with baited breathe to see if he'll show up on my doorstep or not (spoiler: he won't). I introduce everyone to Sam and Andrew and Brandon and Thomas and Jeremy and TaylorWilliamMaxCharlesRob (I think those were their names) and the one I keep going back to. I take away Sam and Andrew and Brandon and Thomas and Jeremy and TaylorWilliamMaxCharlesRob and FINALLY!!, the one I keep going back to. I erase grandparents from my pages and let their spaces remain unfilled. I write everyone's favorite characters out of my story and don't apologize when they whine about it. I have a conflict, climax, resolution; another conflict, another climax, another resolution; another conflictclimaxresolution. I build myself up then pull the rug right out from under myself.
I get lugged around in the bottom of bags. I am torn, folded, bent, beaten up and broken. They break my spine and complain when I fall apart at their hand. I gather dust under beds after I'm tossed aside. I blend in with others when I'm stacked in the corner. I disappoint and soak up tears and get thrown out with the junk and skeletons from the closet.
But sometimes. Sometimes I am held tight to the chest of someone as they sleep at night. Sometimes I am scribbled on napkins. Sometimes I am whispered across classrooms. Sometimes I am put on display in the front windows. Sometimes people pick pieces of my story to share with others. Sometimes I help. Sometimes I comfort. Sometimes I am just there to tell a story. Sometimes I bring smiles and laughs and tears of joy. Maybe my story will be made into a movie. Maybe I'll become famous. Maybe I'll make the papers. Maybe I will bring glory to my Author's name. Maybe my name will not be forgotten.
But maybe it will. Maybe the crowds might not remember my name or ever even hear it. But I am a novel. And someone will love me. Someone will keep coming back to me. Someone will find joy in the torn pages and the folded corners and the missing sections. I will change someones life. Someone will cry with me and laugh with me and turn my fragile pages gently.
a girl who writes
Find a girl who writes. Find a girl who has no idea where she is going in life because the only thing she understands about the world is that sometimes if you put one beautiful word beside another beautiful word you can create a beautiful sentence that melds into beautiful chapters of beautiful books that might change at least one person's life. Find a girl who lives for that one person, the one person that will read her beautiful words and feel a sudden lightness on their shoulders. Find a girl who works at a job she hates so she can do the thing she loves. Find a girl who knows sacrifice.
Find a girl who makes it hard to love her Find a girl who demands the best because its all her romance-riddled mind can comprehend. Build her a castle in the sky, move a mountain for her, smile and nod when she tells you she wants to run away to find the wild places that still exist in the world. Take her hand and lead her. Lead her through deserts and cities and forests until she grows homesick for a place she never even called home. Watch her as she takes in a sunset. Watch her lips move and her brow furrow as she fails to find words to describe it. Wrap your arms around her from behind and whisper in her ear that maybe this once words have failed her and that's OK. Let her cry into your jacket as she is overcome with the vastness of the world. Offer to drive home so she can stare out the window as the sound of her favorite indie band you've always found depressing rolls through the car. Give her space when you get home so she can lock herself away in a room, still trying to describe the sunset that will forever beat at the back of her brain, demanding beautiful words. Walk in to find her asleep at her desk. Clean up the paper that litters the floor and wash the ink stains from her fingers. Know that this will never pass. Accept that the sunset will never leave her and learn to be OK with it like she will have to.
Have her make a list of cliches she absolutely hates. Listen to her rant about the unoriginality of it all. Watch her hands move through the air in a fury as she tells you how kissing in the rain only leads to pneumonia and throwing rocks at someone's window usually just brings broken glass. Go back through her writing trying to find one. Fail. She has never written one. And never will.
Kiss her in the rain. Throw rocks at her window. Send her a message in a bottle. Tell her you were a different man before you met her. Give her flowers on Valentine's Day even if she tells you that the holiday was made up to sell greeting cards. Lie down in the middle of the street to look at the stars. Have a picnic at the park. Candlelit dinner. Win her a stuffed animal at the fair.
Watch her head cock to the side and her nose crinkle the way it does when she's happy but doesn't want to admit it. Watch her roll her eyes. Pretend to busy yourself with opening a champagne bottle but really take in her face. Watch her eyes roll over the scene as she tries to burn every detail into her brain. Watch her lips move and her brow furrow as she fails to find words to describe it. Wrap your arms around her from behind and whisper in her ear that maybe this once she has failed to find the words to paint the scene that has been painted over and over before.
Find a girl with a vocabulary. Find a girl that knows metaphor. Find a girl that tells you what you want to hear in a way you've never heard it before.
Accept that this girl will never forget an ex-boyfriend, or an old friend, or a childhood home, or a family pet, or the grief that stole her away once before and will not fail to take her away again. Accept that her heart forgets nothing and the only way she can soothe the ache is to bleed. Make sure paper is never scarce. Make sure pencils and pens litter the kitchen counters. Get used to the clicking of computer keys at 3am.
Build this girl a bookshelf. Build her another. And another. Build her bookshelves until she is too old to read the words of her favorite books then continue to build them. Stack these shelves with the things she has written. Fill the shelves with her published work then keep going. Track down every essay, every short story, every novel, every poem she has written. Find unfinished manuscripts she's kept hidden in a box in the attic. Stumble upon story ideas on napkins. Fill the shelves with every beautiful word she has let bleed from her fingers to paper. Fill the shelves with her life and the lives of the people only she knows.
Lead her to this shelf. Tell her that she has done it. Tell her she has put together beautiful words to create beautiful sentences. Try to describe the feeling you get when you wake up next to her every morning. Try to explain what it is about her that you love. Struggle to find the words that have somehow gotten stuck in the empty spaces of your brain. Accept that for once, words have failed you, not matter how simple the words you use are. Settle for this simple you know so well. Tell her that there is a lightness on your shoulders. Tell her that her beautiful sentences have changed your life.
Find a girl who makes it hard to love her Find a girl who demands the best because its all her romance-riddled mind can comprehend. Build her a castle in the sky, move a mountain for her, smile and nod when she tells you she wants to run away to find the wild places that still exist in the world. Take her hand and lead her. Lead her through deserts and cities and forests until she grows homesick for a place she never even called home. Watch her as she takes in a sunset. Watch her lips move and her brow furrow as she fails to find words to describe it. Wrap your arms around her from behind and whisper in her ear that maybe this once words have failed her and that's OK. Let her cry into your jacket as she is overcome with the vastness of the world. Offer to drive home so she can stare out the window as the sound of her favorite indie band you've always found depressing rolls through the car. Give her space when you get home so she can lock herself away in a room, still trying to describe the sunset that will forever beat at the back of her brain, demanding beautiful words. Walk in to find her asleep at her desk. Clean up the paper that litters the floor and wash the ink stains from her fingers. Know that this will never pass. Accept that the sunset will never leave her and learn to be OK with it like she will have to.
Have her make a list of cliches she absolutely hates. Listen to her rant about the unoriginality of it all. Watch her hands move through the air in a fury as she tells you how kissing in the rain only leads to pneumonia and throwing rocks at someone's window usually just brings broken glass. Go back through her writing trying to find one. Fail. She has never written one. And never will.
Kiss her in the rain. Throw rocks at her window. Send her a message in a bottle. Tell her you were a different man before you met her. Give her flowers on Valentine's Day even if she tells you that the holiday was made up to sell greeting cards. Lie down in the middle of the street to look at the stars. Have a picnic at the park. Candlelit dinner. Win her a stuffed animal at the fair.
Watch her head cock to the side and her nose crinkle the way it does when she's happy but doesn't want to admit it. Watch her roll her eyes. Pretend to busy yourself with opening a champagne bottle but really take in her face. Watch her eyes roll over the scene as she tries to burn every detail into her brain. Watch her lips move and her brow furrow as she fails to find words to describe it. Wrap your arms around her from behind and whisper in her ear that maybe this once she has failed to find the words to paint the scene that has been painted over and over before.
Find a girl with a vocabulary. Find a girl that knows metaphor. Find a girl that tells you what you want to hear in a way you've never heard it before.
Accept that this girl will never forget an ex-boyfriend, or an old friend, or a childhood home, or a family pet, or the grief that stole her away once before and will not fail to take her away again. Accept that her heart forgets nothing and the only way she can soothe the ache is to bleed. Make sure paper is never scarce. Make sure pencils and pens litter the kitchen counters. Get used to the clicking of computer keys at 3am.
Build this girl a bookshelf. Build her another. And another. Build her bookshelves until she is too old to read the words of her favorite books then continue to build them. Stack these shelves with the things she has written. Fill the shelves with her published work then keep going. Track down every essay, every short story, every novel, every poem she has written. Find unfinished manuscripts she's kept hidden in a box in the attic. Stumble upon story ideas on napkins. Fill the shelves with every beautiful word she has let bleed from her fingers to paper. Fill the shelves with her life and the lives of the people only she knows.
Lead her to this shelf. Tell her that she has done it. Tell her she has put together beautiful words to create beautiful sentences. Try to describe the feeling you get when you wake up next to her every morning. Try to explain what it is about her that you love. Struggle to find the words that have somehow gotten stuck in the empty spaces of your brain. Accept that for once, words have failed you, not matter how simple the words you use are. Settle for this simple you know so well. Tell her that there is a lightness on your shoulders. Tell her that her beautiful sentences have changed your life.
cherished
His palm feels smooth against the fist I didn't realize I'd formed against my stomach. It sits on a knot that won't go away right below my left set of ribs. The knot twists and turns under my clenched fingers, telling me I've done something wrong again. I've caught a stray bread crumb in my soup or misread a label. His lips drift over my hair and he whispers secrets I already know in my ear to drown out the screaming of my old friend below my ribs. His fingers uncurl mine and he kisses each one. He's shaved recently, his cheek scratches against my skin, leaving a red trail across my knuckles. His hair is starting to curl under his ears and I wonder why he hasn't said anything about getting it cut. My fingernails are chipped, small patches of hot pink stand out against his tan chin. He pulls me in and my nose is cold against his warm neck. A mug of hot tea, three sugars for my southern blood, slides between my hands and the dogs sleep at our feet and the rain slips down the drain and the candle flickers and I am cherished in his arms and I have forgotten about the knot.
my favorite voice
The way my name sounds floating around in the air after he lets it flow out of his mouth, tumbling through the hot air the same way the smoke does. The way his jaw clenches as the C and the H mix together and his tongue wraps around the L before pushing up against his teeth to let an S escape. The way his lips purse around the P and the O's before his tongue flicks against the L again. The grit in his throat and the slight twinge of a foreign home, a voice he pushes deep down in his lungs and hides in the pockets of his cheeks, letting it rise up for me, jumbling my own words and stealing my breathe.
His eyes are brown
His eyes are brown.
His eyes are lost. They are looking at his grandfather's house in England once and staring out over his apartment balcony to the Hong Kong street below the next. The gold flecks in his eyes match the yellow leaves we crunch into the ground, autumn leaves he hasn't seen since Paris. That's my simple answer.
His eyes remind me of that time my sister got lost at Disney World. We searched and searched and looked under tables and screamed at strangers to tell us where the four year old with the monkey backpack was and when we found her she was sitting on a bench staring at a bird that was munching on a bread crumb at her feet. My mother cried into her hair and all the time my sister looked around at us as if to say "haven't you been here the whole time?"
His eyes look like the first time I shocked myself and felt a jolt of static spread through my finger like a zap of lightning lighting up each vein in a bright yellow road map under my skin.
His eyes are the movie I saw where the guy doesn't get the girl at the end but we flash forward a couple years to see him happy and content with the life the screenwriter gave him and even though the audience is screaming at the movie screen for this horrible bout of misery this poor man has been forced to fictionally live with he just stands there with his arm around some girl who is probably a huge bitch and is definitely not worthy of him because she's NOT Amy or Jill or whatever boring name the girl he was supposed to end up with had.
His eyes are yes, brown. But they are more than that. They are chocolate. A chocolate that you find in the back corner of the pantry when you are hungry in the middle of the night. They are a full Snickers bar on Halloween from that one house that you always hit last because you know that even if the whole night was a drag, you can always rely on them to finish the night off strong with a FULL SNICKERS BAR, PEOPLE. They are Valentine's day chocolates that everyone knows are so cheesy that you can't help but love getting them. They are the Hershey's kiss that somehow ended up under the bed while also being the fudge brownies that soak up all the tears you inexplicably shed for no reason though lets be honest, you're a girl, everyone knows what the spontaneous tearage means.
His eyelashes are long and his eyes crinkle around the edges and if you look close enough you can see your whole life story hidden in there because he's listened to every story and remembered every detail whether he'll admit it or not because he's a writer and you are interesting to him in a way that no one else is.
His eyes are brown. But his eyes are beautiful and they are the stuffed Dalmatian I slept with when I was little and the railing that caught me before I fell down the chapel stairs and the ocean I drowned in and the hands that pulled me out and the air I breathed in.
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