Same Girl You Used To Love

Anna sits up in bed at twelve noon, more or less, all three buttons on her Diesel jeans undone, skimpy blue racerback top alternatingly clinging to and hanging off her torso. Her pink-striped bra and the smirking Pink Panther on her thong - thanks, Shelby - are clearly visible. Her stack of bangles is on the floor to the left side of her bed, her earrings to the right. She's slept seventeen and a half hours, recovering from her hectic schedule of procastination, phone calls, and public radio.

She's been reading Vogue, and narrates compulsively in the tone of haute style. "I'd like to try writing as Alex, you know, 'You're so caught up in yourself,' all that rubbish," she says. "I was going to do Victor Hugo first, though. Do you think anyone would understand?"

She rarely brushes her teeth as soon as getting up - that comes after her shower, clothes, and makeup. She arranges tasks in order of decreasing number of body parts involved. This morning, though, she has no real memory of what she may have eaten the night before, and she's guessing she didn't brush her teeth.

She's disorganized mentally, she tells me. She takes off everything before getting into the shower, even the embroidery thread around her wrist. In fact, she's already got shampoo in her hair when she remembers what today's the anniversary of.

She remembers what she was wearing that day - yellow racerback, Forever 21 jeans, green flats. She almost knows what underwear (blue-and-green, Victoria's Secret, perhaps) and bra (same one, she thinks). She may never be quite so enthused about being Irish again.

The White House, 1814
Moscow, 1812
San Francisco after the earthquake
I loved you then as well
The library of Alexandria,
And all of Rome at least twice
And I know this is the biggest blaze
I've ever seen in my entire life

A million firefighters
And ninety-nine alarms
An ocean full of water
I will burn through it all unharmed
I will burn through it all unharmed
I will burn through it all unharmed
For you, you're so beautiful
Goddamn, you're so beautiful
- Bishop Allen, "The Same Fire"