Saturday, April 29, 2006

I Can't Act Blanche

Despair makes me see coincidences. The phone woke me for the second time this morning, and you and I know you did this before. I left my iPod on "Don't Look Back In Anger", and now the song I want is "Don't Speak". It's raining. I just hate how you don't realize that this is what I was most afraid of.

Last night I drew the fangirl Pete Doherty injected heroin into as she lay unconscious on his floor. In my sketch, six strings stretch from her joints, cross a fret, and sail off the top of the page. The caption says, "i'm afraid even paper dolls and marionettes are loyal." It hurts me now to admit I love you still. It hurts me to admit that I wish I were that girl, that not-so-innocent creature on her idol's kitchen tile.

My friend told me you were on heroin. She was exaggerating. Worse, worse, it's worse. You don't know I know. I need you to, but I can't tell you. What could I say? "You shouldn't boast to people who actually do care about me." "You should have known better than to have introduced me to her." "The first time, I believed you were sorry." "Here's your Sufjan Stevens back." "What the hell were you thinking?"

I'm not afraid I'm going crazy - I'm afraid I've been crazy all along. Look at the psychos I've fallen for. They way they've sucked me in, convinced me they're all the earth. The way the Ex-Guyfriend dropped me hard again and again. You're not planning to conquer Africa, but are you just subtler than that?

Either way, just thinking about you today, you've won me back. I won't steal your CDs. I'll put your socks in with my laundry. I won't tell anyone how bitterly we fought about spontaneity or how sincere you sounded when you said I was the most adorable thing in the world.

Or maybe I will. Maybe I'll call up that girl you kissed last week, the girl who agreed it could go no farther. Maybe I'll put on my rhinestone tiara and sit up all night. After all, I'm crazy.
I dreamed I was dying, as I so often do
And when I awoke, I was sure it was true
I went to the window, threw my head to the sky,
And said, "Whoever is up there, please don't let me die."

- Stars, "Calendar Girl"

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

I Can't Believe It

I suppose someday I'll get to say, "I ran out of church on Easter." By then enough time will have passed that it won't matter that the service was technically ended a second before, or that I didn't full-out run until I was down the front steps. Time fuzzes out details, and important things, too. The reason I sat through that service was hope there would be something said I could run out in protest of.

So hey Mom and Dad, let's make a Crusade date for next week. Let's do it all again: carry me out of the house, drag me into the building. What do you mean, they won't think I'm pagan? Unshowered, hair not combed, wearing a seven-year-old boy's striped button-down shirt. A female in pants! To them that's a man who cooks, a Goth, or anybody gay. You can be Dick Cheney and I'll pretend to be a lesbian. How could you overlook that? People show in their details.

You and I, all we share is this house and mistrust. I tell you my dirty lies because I hate you. You tell me your religion because you love me. "Think deeply please" - there's a reason I wrote that on an Easter egg. But there's none for why you hid it in the rain and let God brainwash the sincerest one I made.
'Cause institution's like a big bright lie,
And it blinds you into fear and consuming and fight
And you've been in the desert underneath the charging sky
It's just you and God,
But what if God's not there?
But his name is on your dollar bill,
Which just became cab fare

- Jenny Lewis, "The Charging Sky"

Sunday, April 09, 2006

"From 12:57 Until 5:27", Say the Green Digits

I'll never forget that noise, my awakening and fear. I wish I could see you smiling when I sat up in bed - on the edge of my seat, as it were. Your dark outline, blacker than the night - why, it could be anybody. It's so far in the cold - you're out of your mind. You steal me out of my mine. You've done it many times before.

Bang, thwang, says the screen. Crrreak, squeeeak, creeeak, says the crank. "You amaze me," says I, and kiss you. It will be the first of so many. I'll sleep and wake again and taste you still.

It's hard now to believe that you were here, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen hours ago. I knew it would be. It was such a relief to me to find your belt on my floor just after you'd left. I picked it up and coiled it around my hand, hung on to it as the sun rose and I went back to bed.

I'm glad you got back okay. I'll bet you're even more reckless in crosswalks when I'm not around. I'm sorry you got in trouble. I hurt half my fingers replacing the screen. I couldn't call you in the morning because they took me to church. They hope it will be a rekindled first of many times. There I am wearing the same skirt and legwarmers and only you and I know. "If they take you back again, we'll walk home," say my sandals. You'd be proud of their spontaneity, and I would be, too. Now I almost want to, many times.

But we notice that home is because we're together. "He was here," say the 40ยข from your jeans pocket on my closet floor when I found them. From Thursday, right? That's simply amazing.

We're not like a pair of socks. Imagine if right and left didn't even matter. That's ridiculous. We don't fit like a zipper, only working if we're facing the right way. That's snobby. Maybe we're more like buttons and buttonholes. We match in all the important places - and together we cover it all. It's so good to have someone real to believe in.

Monday, April 03, 2006

Status Quo

I kissed his name where he wrote it for me on in the back of my notebook. It tasted like paper and graphite and I knew I needed to be home. The radio's crackly and the water's bitter. The sky's gray, the air's cold. Lying and sobbing in boredom can't do for long. I was sick for so long I hardly believed I'd be well.

I used to pretend the grandest things to get me through miserable weeks in the country. My bed was a bunk in a ship that was sailing somewhere I dearly wanted to go. I was trapped in a castle's furthest tower, communicating by pigeon through the window. This time it couldn't work. I was too ill, too hungry, too tired. The wind was howling too hard to believe I was going anywhere. Or perhaps I had simply spent the week before too cheery to ever pretend.


So picture the place in front of the the hardware store where the Amish tie their carriages, with Donald Trump strung up next to it, plastic half-circles fluttering in his suit. The field with the winding creek and the pair of mares, full of rusted crap and a sunken old teal car. The railroad museum, honoring the reason for the town's birth, and silently questioning the reason for its continuing existance. The front yard of the old-fashioned white house, sloping down to the narrow sidewalk, all mud and tufts of brown grass, choked with pinwheels, garden balls, and flamingos.

I'm so happy to be back. He's right, I am wasting my life here. But I have a door to shut and lights to turn out. I have a whole day's worth of things to do.

There's a window of time, you're in the nick of it
You look at the view and you're sick of it
You get the urge to throw a brick in it
Go ahead now

- Brendan Benson, "Spit It Out"