March 2 - Falling, Next to Love

What is a caress supposed to feel like?

I imagine sometimes that I can feel it.  Glancing at an empty wall and wondering what transpires in the apartment next to mine.  The one that sounds like love on new-moon-black nights and the one that sounds like lust on midsummer.  My lower back tingles when I imagine that I might feel someone care enough to run their fingers across my bare skin in the morning.  And I know I am not just warm because of the heat of a tropical summer in a temperate climate. 

I imagine sometimes that it is the languid stretch of a cat.  Are you there? It asks.  In much the same way that I Am Locking You In solidifies and confirms the fact that you might love me enough to stop the psychopathic Chatty Kathy that might walk by.  You always feared talkative people more than murderers.  Sometimes I think to myself that that is a more reasonable fear, but then I think that I can handle talkative people but not a murderer.  I can handle many things, but you know how I feel about pain.

I imagine sometimes that the softest touch might be deeper than the ocean.  A friend asked me to check her face for stubble burn once.  I looked at her cheek for redness but saw nothing but the beauty she refused to see.  Interest is a funny thing.  I can never tell when to stop hoping that something might happen.  Even if that something is a definitive end.

I am falling next to love.  Whether I have been in love is a question for the people I have known.  But I have been next to love very often.  And nothing is more torturous than the happiness of others.

March 30 - Indigo Woman

Indigo blue light casts over a blond woman, her arms crossed in a practiced indifference.  Quietly a lightning bug - flashing its unique Morse into the night - lights in her hair.

It shares its glow with her momentarily illuminating the specter of a smile.  Compromising her Williamsburg nonchalance and betraying her joy at a child's smile.

March 31 - Explorer Pad

A pad with which one explores,

or

A pad on which one explores?


and what would one explore?
On a note pad from Yellowstone emblazoned with a wolf?


Are you that lone wolf?
Marking the pages with spindly letters that mean anything only to you?

or

Does the wolf watch?
Wondering at the futility of wondering?

April 1 - Super Glue

"Quick grab, quick dry." It makes me wonder how soon after closing a nearly full tube of Quick Grip super glue did it begin to seal itself shut.  It's super strong superior quality has ensured that I will never use it to fix anything again.  Not that anything yet needs fixing as I pack up the bottom drawer of my bedside table.  It's just a thought.  And it seems a shame to waste evidently high quality super glue because my hands are not strong enough to make it useful again.  Me parece un pecado.

April 2 - Anxiety Attack

It's raining now.  And I'm meant to be asleep.  I'm thinking about all the girls I once knew and knew and all the guys too.  Fittingly I'm injecting these words into my arm in black ink - druggie that I am - so that it will not look like the veins in my too pale skin and so that maybe I will remember this in the morning when things are important again.

I'm in that nowhere place not quite over the rainbow.  No blue birds fly here.  This is the domain of anxiety attacks and too real nightmares.  The ones that come before lucid dreams that are grounded in my real life fears of growing old and alone because the boys sequestered in the school down the street think I'm a lesbian. I'm not.  I'm bi.  And those aren't the same things at all.  I simply love.  I am not closeted and I am not a whore as I'm sure the mother that is terrified of seeing a black boyfriend accompany me home at Thanksgiving would say.  No, I simply love.

And as it rains, I think about what I would do when push comes to shove.  I'm running out of room on my arms.  These last lines will have to join the "Lucky You :)" I scrawled idly on my breast even though no one will see it before I wash it off unintentionally in the shower tomorrow morning.  It's raining now in America.  At my house which is not my home.  Home is when I'm alone with you.  A you that I do not know, yet whom I love. Whom I will marry in a January.  Who will kiss me where I wrote "Lucky You :)".  With simple love.

April 3 - Blank Canvas

I found a blank - still plastic wrapped - canvas from when I was a child and thought I could be an artist.  16" x 20" pure cotton tripled Acrylic Gesso Primed, Suitable for Acrylic and oil.  I wonder what I thought I could make with this tabula rasa? Now I would joke that I would paint something like the Copy written Blue canvas hanging on its own wall in the MOMA that I first noticed on an 8th grade trip when I was looking for something to make fun of because art wasn't cool and because - even though I had my membership card with me - my chaperone would not let me go up to the special exhibit alone. That would be the joke anyway.  But awhile back - 4th grade - I probably thought I would put on some music and paint the colors it make me feel.  That's a thought I remember thinking one summer.  But I am not a synesthete and I do not feel color from music.  So now this canvas - 16" x 20", trippled Acrylic Gesso Primed, Suitable for Acrylic and oil - will find another person with artistic ambitions through Goodwill, Big Brothers Big Sisters, or perhaps the Salvation army.  Hopefully this amateur will act instead of simply looking lovingly at the canvas.

March 1 - Hallway

They told us to write about somewhere that hasn't changed.  And how that shows that we have.
I would have to pick this hallway.  With you quitely - or not so quietly as you curse at a particular tab - playing guitar.  Yes, this hallway has a wonderful way of not changing.  And I do not.  When we were freshman I told you about a guy I liked and you smiled.  Now I speak in the same tone about my ex-girlfriend and you continue to smile.  Though not in the same way.  Now you look uncomfortable, and I feel bad because that is the last thing I want.
Yes.  This hallway.  This is the thing that I must write about, but not the thing I want to.  I want to write about somewhere important to me.  Somewhere where I spend my time.  Not this hallway, which in the grand scheme of things means nothing to me.  Not the place where I happen to meet you in the morning (although that does seem to bring a brightness to my day - but I must not think of that).  Perhaps I ought to think of the guy I think I like and not the girl I know I do.  But that is off topic and I am meant to be practicing a college essay.
Somewhere that hasn't changed?  Yes, it must be this hallway.  With it's chattering freshmen and our music.  Yes OUR music.  You might be the one with the instrument but I sing...  and I watch you play.