To 213

You know someday we will meet,

We met across words, the way magic does

We already have...

I won’t live up to your hopes and dreams.

And I hoped for dreams

I can't recall what wasn't there

I’ll be an imperfect fantasy,

That would rewrite my imagination

I hold to my memories

That would make me almost as sad as

And change my perceptions

I couldn't bear to have you sad

Never meeting you would.

The way meeting you did.

We'll meet again. Promise?

To 118

I’m the boy of no one’s dreams,

I dreamed I was flying

I wanted to dream about you

Unless they only have nightmares.

Then I opened my eyes, and was falling

They were never nightmares

I have more faults then you know, or

I wanted the boy with no name to save me

I know you--isn't that enough?

I think I do anyway, and I have more scars

The boy with the smile that hurts my insides

I think you're perfect as you are

Than you’ve seen, the emotional sides

The one who burned himself into my skin

Even if I've never seen emotion in you

Of the scars are hard to find.

He's all my scars.

And scars are only skin deep.

10/28 Shorts

I

She was wearing pink

and green

and glasses

and she smiled

the way a fearful dog might

while begging for its life

at the hands of a violent owner.

Dumb bitch.

If she were my dog,

I'd kill her.

II

Two men walked into a lunchroom

and sat down.

Usually it's a bar.

And a joke.

This time it's real,

and there's nothing funny

about them.

III

Four math majors sat down

at a table. They talked about

parabolas and equations,

algebra and calculus,

radicals and imaginary numbers

until the English major

ran away. Then one math major

turned to another.

Have you read the newest

Harry Potter book yet?

IV

I stare at words

until they start to bleed

and I think I begin

to understand, except

when blood actually

touches the page.

Then the ink blurs.

V

A young man stands by a table,

announces that he's lost

and leaves.

The girls at the table titter.

All the boys are silent.

He left his food,

one finally says.

VI

You are a trace of nonsense, nonsensical

in a nonsense world

dedicated to dreary past times

like breathing.

No one needs that much air.

VII

Sometimes I stare at beyond the glass

windows and wish I had wings

so I could fly

instead of falling.

But those are only the days

when suicide sounds like a waste.

They're getting fewer

and farther between.

VIII

I dreamed

a professor (my favorite)

killed my roommate (who still talks to me),

then himself.

I wanted him to be alive again.

And I dreamed

a professor (still my favorite)

came to kill me (in my room)

but he didn't.

(We fucked instead.)

IX

I was a small child, once, and

I told my stories in pictures, back

then. I told my stories in pictures

done in marker on the bed sheets

until my mother made me stop. Then

I told my stories in colored pencil

on the floor until my father took

those away. Then I curled up

by the white walls until both

parents asked what I was doing.

With a crayon in each hand, I

said, Telling the truth.

X

Every moment is a reminder

to me. That being alone forever,

even with people,

is so very,

very possible.

Makes me want blood.

Maybe theirs.

Always my own.

Because then, at least...

I guess I'm not hurting anyone.

Dear Memory.

Dear Memory,

We're done. I can't take the past anymore. It colors my present in mud. There's no joy anymore. No happiness. And damn you if you dare say anything...

I want to forget happiness and true laughter. I want to lose the smiles and the fun times. I don't want to remember anything from myself. Just want to see the world from fresh eyes, unclouded by your touch.

You've stolen the details that made the past worth recall and left only a general outline, like brush strokes trying to recreate a pencil sketch.

It doesn't work.

I'd say I'm sorry, because I haven't been the most faithful, the most reliable. I haven't exactly held up my end of the bargain either, but wanting you to go is so much more than just my fault.

There's blame on you too, for not being straight with me from the first. I learned the hard way that you like to misplace things, and I thought maybe we could live with that sense of deja vu, sometimes. That I could get used to having holes where understanding used to be.

It's not that you blanked on the chem exam in my junior year, or that you keep a stranglehold on the time in kindergarten when pants were uncool.

It's got more to do with recent events. April, for example. Let's talk about April, and how you won't let it go. Every time I sit down to write, April is the first memory you supply for inspiration. Every time I let myself relax a little, wander a little - April.

It's not that you're holding onto a failure - it's that you don't know when to give it up. You poke and prod and examine April until I can't focus on what I'm doing. Until I'm lost inside the reincarnated events.

April.

What a fucking joke.

I might even have been able to live with that, to forgive you if you managed to cling with such desperation to this summer. May, June, July and August are failures of clarity, and that's your fault. The moments I'd rather drown in are whispers, if that, and you're killing me every time I ask for a sample of the past. Always out of stock, and you'll never oder more.

Sometimes it's enough to make me want to hurt you. I've learned how. I know how to open the knives, now. J taught me how to kill with them. I'm still a student to Death.

You won't find me writing any breakup letters to her. She and I understand each other - she does what's expected of her. And she's not mine, either.

It's not an affair, and hell if I'm leaving you for someone. No. I'm leaving you for what you are, and what you've done (or failed to do).

I needed you, once upon a time, I thought. But fuck that now. Unless you've got the guts to make it up and try one more time, we're done.

(And even if you do, we still are. Just on a more friendly note. Possibilities, y'know?)

It's like this.

I can't recall

Ever wanting to

lose as much

as I do

with you.

this is just a story

I want to tell you a story, about a boy who sits in the grass in front of a brown house, in the green grass, with purple burns on his pale arms, and warm smile on a cold face framed by blond hair and blue sky. This is a boy who wants to know things, and I don’t always know why he wants to know, or why he feels he needs to know, but he does, and it's refreshing, it's sad, it's too many things to accept so I have to begin to deny them. Pretend I don't know why. Just accept as it, end of story. I can't tell this story. I need someone else to do it, I guess.

Lifetime Shorts.

I
They sat in health class laughing nervously when the topic of human sexuality arose. No one even stopped to consider the power for destruction contained between Tab and Slot. These were just diagrams and little paper models that teenagers could imitate better with their own hands. Paper leaves cuts when attempting orgasm. Maybe the girl curled up in the front row could explain it, stretched out across her binder, head down and eyes shut until the teacher poked her awake for an answer she never got wrong. The best birth control is still creativity, if you can justify it.


II

But that's still nothing like coming home to do laundry and picking up your daughter's clothing to realize there's still blood on the inside of all the used bras and not daring to ask why. Some things a parent is better off not knowing, especially if it's not life threatening. Breasts are just close to the heart; not like she'd bleed out from there anyway. Besides... The last time you tried to talk to her about anything was when she was eight and still rooming with her sister upstairs, and you hit her. And she hit back, with a whispered promise to kill you if you dared touch her again. Even now, when she's almost graduated from high school, you still ask permission to give hugs. She rolls her eyes and says nothing, and when you lean in to touch her, you're both stiff as cardboard because you wonder if noncommittal silence is the same as saying no.

III
I suppose I'd be jealous too, if I were you, but that's only because you're on the football team and you can't imagine being overshadowed yet again. Bad enough that in three years your high school will celebrate it's thirtieth anniversary of losing the homecoming game. Maybe worse that the other team will make a delicious cake to congratulate you. Definitely worse that in the middle of gym class you landed on the wrong side of the handball game and an upstart freshman gave you a black eye when she went after the ball in the bleachers. Definitely worse that your coach saw the whole thing and told your team and brought your captaincy up for question. The worst now that she's got posters with her name in the hallway reading, "Dear Football Team: At least we can beat Peru. Love, the swim team." I bet that burns.


IV
You'd probably remember it better if there hadn't been three of you. Four, if you remember she existed, and that little black notebook she pulled out whenever something went wrong. You thought about stealing it and reading all the entries aloud over campfire to the other girl scouts, but she always kept the damn thing with her, and it wasn't worth the trouble to get it. Just taunt another thirteen year old about her obsession with one of the college-age camp counselors; a lifeguard named Star. "You must love her," you said once. She got a strange look in her eyes, then, and smiled, that smile that scared the shit out of you and your two friends if any of you were alone. "You like girls. You're sick." She laughed, but that look still didn't leave her eyes. That night she was driven to the hospital, unconscious concussion. You weren't there, but I saw her, rocking on the edge of the bunk bed, murmuring that this would hurt. Two eight year old scout-lings caught her; otherwise there'd have been no use for an ambulance.


V
Standing in front of class every day is hard enough; try it for three hours. That's why you put breaks into the schedule. One break and cookies at the one and half hour mark. The cookies are as contagious as the creative spark running through the front quarter of the classroom. It started out at one desk and spread until there were too many arts projects going on to properly call it a mythology class. She started it with knitting, then moved to cross stitch. You sent her an email, hoping she would get the hint. Next Monday, she thanked you for the link to mythological patterns. Maybe I should have warned you; she doesn't do subtle.

Your fault.

You made it happen, and I'm so sorry. So, so, so sorry. I didn't mean to...but you made me. I didn't want to kill you.

Sin and Shame.

I dreamed that you were inside me. That things were the way they had been. We were together, and we were in a white house, and there were other people there, but you were there, too, and that was all that was important. That you could touch me, and that I could feel you, and that you would still mold your body with mine.

It felt like sin to wake up, and like shame to realize that I still want you. Please...

Inner self.

This world is small enough that I know you inexcusably well. Better than your last lover, or your current one:

I know what makes your skin shake, and those words aren't it; soft kisses annoy you, but she doesn't know that; dry wits get your humor while wet ones fail; and maybe they know about your views of redemption and hell, but was murder ever pillow talk for one of them?

Forgive the smallness of a small world. I know you better than you know yourself. But maybe only partly, and inside, not out. Because I can make you cry, but the tears don't fall; they just fill your words. Threaten to break.

You know.

Reason being...

I did it for the same reason I do everything--to hurt someone. Just turns out that this time, I was hurting myself. Funny how that works, isn't it?

Mentality Shorts.

I.

It was only a song and there existed no reason for that to hold her. It was only a song, he said, and she agreed. Only a song, she said, but when they walked away together, his hand held hers, and her mind held only the music.

II.

I wanted to taste blood but it couldn't be my own. It had to be someone else's blood. I knew my own too well. My blood was like oil. My blood was disgusting. I wanted to taste blood. Real blood. And I knew who to find it in. Her name was Amy.

It only hurts when your eyes are open.

You can see the carpet, and you can see your hands in front of you. It's not a dream, and it's not lucid, because then you'd be in control. Instead, you can see your hands, but they clench and unclench without your approval. You move and your elbows hurt from digging into the carpet, but you're not doing it. You only feel it when your eyes are open.

If you close your eyes, it doesn't hurt anymore. You can't see your face in the mirror, and you can't see the way your hair falls down. It's getting longer now. You'll need to cut it soon. But even those little thoughts are still there, still thoughts and they go away entirely if you close your eyes. Then it doesn't hurt anymore.

You can't feel anything if your eyes are shut.

He never does anything with the lights off, but you never ask him to. You'd love to. You want to. The lights are too damn bright, too damn illuminating of everything that's wrong with you. You want to be able to just lay there, and let him do what he needs to. But he keeps wanting more. He tries to kiss you, and your mouth opens, but your tongue feels like lead, and it won't move. You let his tongue into your mouth, and the taste is sweet, but too much so, like old apples.

When you're on your stomach, the carpet rubs against your skin with every jerk forward. You'll burn. Your hands are trying to hold onto the rug. He mistakes it for passion. You're just trying not to think. You are trying to forget what you do to your body, what you do with your body.

Right before he cums, he kisses your back.

But your eyes are closed, and you're somewhere far, far away, where unfaithfulness to yourself can't hurt you. You're hidden, somewhere else. Behind closed lids is your sanctuary.

Disclaimer.

Do you swear to tell the truth,

the whole truth,

and nothing but the truth,

so help you god?

I swear not to.

How, Why, What, When, Where. Who?

This is what we didn't realize when we were young:

how people fall
how people see us
how people fail

This is what we didn't question when we were young:

why people love
why people hate
why people are

This is what we didn't know when we were young:

what people needed
what people thought
what people created

These were the times we didn't get when we were young:

when people yelled
when people left
when people died

These were the things we wanted to know when we were young:

where people went
where people hurt
where people came from

These were the things we couldn't know when we were young:

who people chose
who people cheated
who people were

Q & A

Someone asked me what I write about.

(That's a lie I wish were true.)

I had to think.

(If anyone ever did ask, I would have to.)

Everything, I said.

(But that's a lie I don't wish were true.)

Everything, she said.

(In a dream world, I can pick; it was a she.)

Everything, I said.

(I guess I know what perjury looks like.)

She walked away laughing.

(Even my dreams don't always agree with me.)

All right, I said. So maybe I write about nothing.

(She didn't come back.)

Afterglow.

After we fuck, I can't wait until he leaves so I can get his smell off me. My body likes the way it feels - the afterglow might be there, even. I just can't take it in my head. He doesn't smell right, doesn't feel right, doesn't do anything for me except make me nauseous.

I fuck because it reminds me I'm human. Because it's the one way I can still hurt myself without blood. Because it's an addiction to pain inside that I won't give up. But no one hurts the right way. They aren't violent the right way.

It's all make believe, let's pretend. No one actually knows what to do.

They don't get that there might be something there.

Then again, maybe they get off fucking a girl who just lays there, eyes closed and silent. There are a lot of necrophiliacs around campus, then.

I miss you.

Caged shorts.

Written in the style of John Cage.

1

I was walking down a riverbed in the middle of a forest. It hadn't rained in days and the riverbed was empty except for rocks and a pair of boys pretending to drown. The tall one was wearing jeans; the short one, khaki shorts.

"Let me go!" Shorts said. He was standing on the river bed, reaching into the empty air.

"No," Jeans said. He held Shorts' sleeve.

"But I have to save him," Shorts said.

"You'll die," Jeans said. "Would he have wanted you to die for him?"

"Yes!" Shorts said.

2

The fan blew smoke in my face while the chair hugged my body and the boy over me slowly pressed the air from my lungs.

Pot smells like incense, at first. Then it starts to smell like dreams. Then poison.

"Are you okay?" the boy on me asked.

I couldn't breathe, but there wasn't enough air for me to say so. Eddie Izzard's screen-time audience laughed on the TV. Fuzz and Sophia wouldn't look at me. Thaniel's fingers touched my throat. I began to breathe again.

He said everything would be okay, but his breath was like incense, and his eyes were all pupil.

3

We sat on the pier watching the schoolchildren wander on the grass. Then teachers showed up, and they ushered the children out onto the pier. Thaniel pulled out a knife and played with it.

A blue-eyed girl in pigtails watched.

Thaniel smiled at her. She smiled back.

The teacher saw and pulled the girl away. She looked back over her shoulder to wave.

Thaniel waved back. To me, he said, "She could have been dead by now." He put the knife away.

"Yeah," I said. "I know."

4

We stood on the pier watching two guys share a cigar and I felt Thaniel holding back. "Go ahead," I said. He looked at me, then at his friends. He took a drag off the offered cigar. His eyes closed and he blew rings of smoke.

John said, "She texted me again."

Thaniel handed over the cigar. "What'd she say?"

Jay took the cigar.

"Three little words," John said.

Thaniel whistled. "Bitch," he said.

John didn't say anything. Jay puffed on the cigar and handed it off. "That one new?" he asked.

Thaniel put an arm around my waist. "Enough," he said.

5

When it started raining, I wasn't ready to go back inside. I wanted to stay outside in the rain. Puddles reflect, but they aren't as accusatory as mirrors. The rain fell on my head, and my hair fell wet around my face. I walked by his side and our hands were slick.

"I already have plans," I said. "Elizabeth and Will."

"Oh?" he asked.

"Yes," I said. "Elizabeth's the more outgoing of the two. Will's kind of shy."

"You sound prepared," he said.

I said I was, and he let the topic drop. I didn't bring it up again. I walked along in the darkness, in the rain. His hand worked its way out of mine, but he put an arm around my shoulder. His armpit was superheated. His arm was just warm.

6

I was walking in the mall when I texted the boy in the hat to ask him if he minded being used. It took him a while to get back to me. By then, I wasn't as depressed. But when he said he didn't mind and asked
why, I told him what I had meant to tell him earlier. I was feeling down, and needed to hear someone - anyone - say they loved me, even if it wasn't true.
He said he loved me.
He never stopped.

7

The boy in the hat was sitting next to me at the conference while the poetry slam was going on. He commented about how some people presented and how others didn't, and he approved of some readers while not of others. I listened to his commentary, agreed with some but not with others, I disagreed out loud when I had to, and told him to shut up when necessary. He was annoyingly self-assured. I gave him my phone, the way I wanted to with Dan, and told him to give me his number.
He gave me his name.
Thaniel.

8

While we wandered around the book store, I mentioned Thaniel to Tom. Like a good older brother, Tom's hackles went up at once. He wanted to know just about everything, from who and where to when and how. But not why. I think he saw why in everything else.

I just wanted to flirt a bit, get used to having someone interested in me, again. I hadn't had anyone interested that way since my last boyfriend. And Tom was too good a soul to be anything but concerned for my well being.

I told him, sort of off-handedly, that I was thinking about fucking this kid I'd met at the writer's conference.

Tom wanted to know everything. And when the total of people Thaniel had slept with was beyond counting, Tom wanted to keep me away. Even more so when mentions of drugs and alcohol came into the mix. Tom was straight edged, almost more of a ruler than a human being. He was in love with the law.

For a time, I guess I was too, though, so I could forgive him. I could forgive myself. It's just a phase; at one point, Thaniel was in love with law too. So it all works out. No full blooded delinquent among us.

9

I still don't know how to answer the questions that come up from my young swimmers who are too innocent to realize that sometimes people hurt themselves on purpose. Injury to them is something accidental. Injury is when you fall off your bike or trip over the sidewalk and scrape your knees. Injury is breaking your fall on your palms and getting rocks wedged into tears in the skin. Injury is something that goes away, eventually.

And the scars from injuries are small, and don't have shapes.

Except mine do, and I don't try to explain to anyone that these were done on purpose, because they don't take kindly to the realization that sometimes it's something beautiful, and everyone who sees the badge of purple across my leg still asks how I bruised it. I still lie, too, and tell them I fell down the stairs and it was a bad fall but I'll be okay eventually. It's strange how many of them still believe me, and I laugh on the inside, except I'm not really laughing because I don't want them to believe me.

Too many people believe the lies I carve with my lips.

I want someone to look at me and tell me I'm lying.

10

We sat on the pier, and this time we were alone. He smoked a cigarillo—green apple flavor. The temptation to ask for a drag was strong. Instead I asked him for a favor. He had a collection on his skin and I wanted to begin one of my own.

He held my hand right before and right after, but the during I can't recall. He pressed the end of the cigarillo into my palm until the smell of burned skin reached my nose. Then he lifted me off his lap and said I passed out. He might have kissed me. My palm hurt.

We walked together and a blister raised over my burn. I ripped it open; let the juices drain. Burns were more fun than cuts, I told him. He only laughed, and his shirt sleeves didn't disagree. They were pulled low to hide his arms until he healed. We were both wrecks, healing on at our own pace.

I think I said I love you to him.

One last time, a dozen times.

Each time I called the last time.

I think we both knew it wasn't. Not until I was in college again, and my palm was healed, and then I stopped talking to him. People keep asking. He's just imagination, I tell them. I invented him, the same way I invented my summer.

What about your palm, they ask.

What about it?

Isn't it burned, they ask.

Look close, I tell them. All the lines are there; there is no injury, and never was.

3:17 am

I want to look into your eyes until I no longer recognize the man inside. I want to stare into your soul until I forget that I used to know who it was, in there. I want to be torn up until I forget what it was to be whole, and then eventually just forget entirely.

Because I still can't bear the thought that maybe I've lost you to another world. That'd be like losing myself, since I don't exist the same way anymore.

Repondre A: Homme de Lunar.

I've seen these lies break stronger men than you,

like pretense could ever save you;

Let your guard down and me inside.

I'm stronger than you'll ever be.

10.4.2010

You were my first taste of sky.

I never knew blue could be so addictive.

Photos.

I've walked these streets so many times in person that to see them in photos makes it seem like they were just dreams. Like my memories are falling apart again, and that I can't really reach all the way there. Like there's something just beyond, and that hurts. S'why I don't go through photo albums anymore. That's why I can't touch people, anymore.