while she’s touching you just by mistake accidentally do you say my name

poem written for a future lover

I’ll take you to lunch
to five guys
we can wait for our cheeseburgers and eat the free fries from the paper cup
I’ll get you a soda and put in whichever kind of flavored syrup your heart desires
cherry, lime, vanilla, whatever
even seltzer water, they have fountain seltzer water there, this isn’t a dream.
I’ll gently place upon your lap
their quilted paper napkins
the kind of paper napkins your mother would buy for her own kitchen
the grease from your cheeseburger will heal all past and future hangovers that may threaten to break you
and in that way I shall protect you from harm
the cheeseburger makers will call out the time it takes to build the burger
2 minutes, 2 and a half minutes
a jarring rhythm like our wild heartbeats
and it might be true that I will love five guys more than I will ever love you
but I would never
have sex with a cheeseburger.

Image

since we found out that anything could happen

***overly-sincere blog post alert***

but I’m serious, is there anything more uncomfortably/humanly real than Craigslist missed connections? Of course it’s full of pathetic and crazy, but it’s like, basically people who cannot reach their object of desire for whatever reason and so they are writing a letter into this open space because they need to believe, somehow, they are being heard.  Reading through them feels like listening in on a prayer or a confession.

Naturally the W4W section has the most the gems, because no one can build the wild rollercoaster of dramatic emotional heights quite like the lesbians can.

tumblr_mik9w1kGnT1r8eh24o1_400

My favorites from last night:

I drove to your work today – w4w – 43 (Missing you)

I drove to your work today. It’s not the first time. Once a week, you head to worcester to fulfill your obligation for your fellowship. I think I know your car, but it’s not unique. It could be anyone. I want to see you, and I know it is not smart and I know it is not right. But it has been two years, and I still think of you more than you can imagine. I don’t know what seeing you would do. I miss you and it would hurt, but I also want to know where you are in life and I want some closure. Maybe you do, too. Someday…. Please let me know when you are here. I want to take you to dinner. I just need to see you again and hear your voice.

*

I am not trying to hurt you – w4w

Before I broke, I believed you were making fun of me for months. Nobody wrote me to tell me that I am wrong, that I am running off of something inside my head. I don’t understand that. I got a bunch of abuse, which I also got prior to my break. If you played no part in that, I am sorry. Do I believe you cared about me? No. Chalk it up to my disorder and pardon yourself from responsibility without considering my side of things, but I won’t be demonized for not believing it. Not on my time. Shout from the rooftops that I am the devil or whatever. Just don’t expect me to fall at your will if that’s your course of action. I have it in me to be brazen, and I have it in me to take on the world’s wrath, but not if I’m giving myself away to people.

PS: I have met demons. They crack your soul like its a walnut. I will prevent myself from thinking anything about you, although you shouldn’t be privy to my thoughts.

*

Embracing the pain – w4w (irreleventville)

You have whispered this phrase to me many times in our short lived romance. Your blue eyes would twinkle as you said it, lifetimes of practice behind them, and I would shrug it off, afraid. Interestingly, in this deadly cold silence, it is all I can do. There are no traces of you, save that god awful febreeze spray and tapioca, and yet the days and nights are filled with the memory of you. I am left alone embracing the pain…waiting for comfort where there is none.

Rebekah Decrees A Judgement On Some Things

I was going to title this post irrational biases, but perhaps our biases come from a real/intuitive place?

Here is a list of little things that, when a person does, I am pretty sure indicates I will never like them very much:

-wears a phone headset in casual social settings

-dyes their hair a weird color

-has a Facebook cover photo that is of themselves and only themselves

And to avoid being solely negative, here is a list of little things that, when a person does, I am pretty sure indicates I will like them:

-is excessively nice to animals

-has lived in California at some point in their life

-is a smoker/ex-smoker

-had acne as a teenager

I am sure there are exceptions to all of those things. Last night my roommate was making fun of me because there is this woman we worked with, I will call her A, and my roommate likes to remind me, “Remember when you first met A, and you were like, ‘ugh, A is so awful!’ And then a few months later you were like, ‘hey, you know, A is really hot!’”

So I am probably just full of it.

ugh I hate most poetry but I copycatted confessional poets for several years and then gave up so whoops

A breeze off the lake–petal shaped
Luna park effects avoid the teasing outline
Of where we would be if we were here.
Bombed out of our minds, I think
The way here is too close, too packed
With surges of feeling. It can’t be.
The wipeout occurs first at the center,
Now around the edges. A big ugly one
With braces kicking the shit out of a smaller one
Who reaches for a platinum axe stamped excalibur:
Just jungles really. The daytime bars are
Packed but night has more meaning
In the pockets and side vents. I feel as though
Somebody had just brought me an equation.
I say, “I can’t answer this–I know
That it’s true, please believe me,
I can see the proof, lofty, invisible
In the sky far above the striped awnings. I just see
That I want it to go on, without
Anybody’s getting hurt, and for the shuffling
To resume between me and my side of night.”

“Foreboding” by John Ashbery

when you tire of all the bright lights, haste that’s killing & you’re willing to stay home nights, when your feet are back on solid ground

At 2:50pm yesterday a moment of silence for the Marathon victims was held. Where I work, we aren’t really near downtown, but many still gathered outside, maybe 30 or 40 of us. I know it might have been wrong, sort of invasive, but while we did it I looked around at other people–people I work with and care for. They looked serious and thoughtful, but more than that it was grounding to see the faces of these people who I knew. Not to sound cheesy or preachy or anything, like I have any wisdom, but that’s something I think we could do more of–we could look at the people we know.

I hear it’s nice in the summer

Oh my goodness, what a strange week it’s been.

It feels like an earthquake, the ground shaking underneath you–I mostly mean the city’s shut-down yesterday, and the violence/looming threat of violence, and a few other more personal things that have been going on with me. Weirdly I have not felt a desire to hold onto anything or anyone in particular. I want to watch familiar dumb TV shows with my roommates and stare at my purring clueless cats in my bed, eat cookies, write more stories, and hug my loved ones. I guess that’s what I mean, I was a little scared of course, and feel a vague sense of sadness and loss for the people in my city; I also feel a heightened sense of appreciation for my life and what’s in it at the same time I am aware of its transient nature.

Most of all I hope spring and summer will bring something new, something good.

the boston marathon – things I am thinking

My reference point for the bombings in Boston has primarily been my roommate. She was at the marathon. On Monday one of my coworkers said “…there were apparently explosions at the marathon” and I texted her asking if she was okay; I tried calling but the lines were down. She texted back–she was okay, she and her boyfriend were at a bar when it happened, but she was scared. She wanted to get home but couldn’t.

Different people here in Boston have had different responses. I think for the most part I am on the milder end of the trauma spectrum. I worry about my roommate, who still seems rattled after a few days have passed; I got scared on the train, on Tuesday, when it was delayed a few minutes; today I called my mom, just to hear her voice, to be reassured of something.

And like everyone else I have been moved by the love we show in this hard and guarded city–we want to help each other. We are nice to each other. We are notoriously rude to each other on public transportation but now for  a few days we are not so rude. The bus driver told me “thank you” when I tapped my card to pay.

I am trying to identify my pervasive feeling(s). Like I said I worry most about my roommate. She believed in a certain kind of safety, and then that was shattered for her.

It is/was also painful to have to wonder about my loved ones, speculate if they were harmed.  I texted several people asking if they were okay. My brain ran through possibilities of these people being hurt, in a way that was not illogical. It sucked to have to run through those hypotheticals, to have to imagine the worst. In that way it was very real.

I am also so angry at the person who did this. I want to celebrate the people who are good/have done good in this nightmare, of course, but I also want to avoid trying to make meaning out of this. There is not meaning. This is not okay.  Whoever did this, whatever dude decided to ruin this happy day, where people were cheering, and kids showed up, and the sun was out, and it was this beautiful day and the city was excited… fuck you so hard. I don’t understand the desire to hurt people viciously. I hope this person has a special place in hell. They should not have done that. It was wrong. It seems somehow dishonest  to bypass that.  I hope they find him. I hope he is punished.

I know I make a big to do about relationships, relating to other people and understanding them . But I feel strongly we should not reconcile this. I want to talk about how this is not okay.

With my whole heart I believe most people are good. With my whole heart I also believe there are people in the world who are not.

I mentioned earlier in this post that I called my mom. It was this afternoon, when the sun was out and it was 65 degrees and I was walking to Dunkin Donuts to get an iced coffee. It is hard to explain the way we talked to each other. Nobody cried and nobody was very viscerally emotional. We talk to each other in such a way that we both have this understanding that the world is not safe, has never been safe when we thought it was. We had put our faith in very different things, and it is/was a source of conflict between us; still, we had put our faith in something and then it got broken, so I think we share that. We went through my dad being sick together; we came out different and sadder people. I tell her, “I read the other day that safety is not a condition found in nature” and she understands.  I don’t know what there is to say, how to make meaning out of things. Like I said I don’t think we are supposed to be making meaning out of these things. I do wish right now she was next to me. When I sit with her I hear her stomach growling, these quieter and low disruptive noises.  I put my faith, sometimes, in how much I love her.