See It Now

I'm not sure if we're supposed to talk on air, so I'll keep the loving piece in peace and quiet. I eat red onions I cooked in hot sauce because I go in for the little thrills, play Death Cab loud because I'm soft rebel.

Tomorrow night I'll tell the story to Jen, who spent summer on trains with me and listened to everything that never really happened. Jen is a superheroine, just to tell you; she understands teeth in the mirror, shows me to wear scarves, reads literature, talks philosophy and in French, turns Rubik's cubes like nothing, knits sweet fuzzy disasters, rips up cords from Lacoste, writes poetry and changes underwear without taking off her pants. When I'm through telling her I'll telephone and then I don't know what will happen.

I can't wait, can't imagine, can't think what else I could do. Jen and I are there for the planning and the tickets. You and I are together for the asking and the affection. I'm all affections, in the sense of airs and acts and Pride and Prejudice pretenses (I read that on summer trains too). I think you see through them, see something I can't, saw it then and see it now. I think you told me you liked me since you found what I'm about, in those words, "since I found out what you're about". I think we share a wavelength and I think you'll look like Edward Murrow someday.

And I do believe it's true
That there are roads left in both of our shoes
But if the silence takes you,
Then I hope it takes me too
So, brown eyes, I'll hold you near
Because you're the only song I want to hear
A melody softly soaring through my atmosphere
- Death Cab For Cutie, "Soul Meets Body"

C'mon Eat Your Covers

The world's shrunk horizontal, into empty endless high times. I take happiness so throughly as to never leave myself anything to say. I'm a bundle of nerves and a parody of rationality. It exposes my fear, caution, and artifice. If you can love the self-restraint of shallowness, the early-spoiled secrets, the semblance of single-mindedness, the self-conscious shut-in, all's more to you, sweetheart.

This instant connection is faster than the gravity, paranoia, and orders holding me by the way it goes. I can't wait for it all to be new tradition, old hat and I hope it takes us as damned long to fall apart as we took putting it together.

My baby loves me, I'm so happy
Happy makes me a modern girl
Took my money and bought a TV
TV brings me closer to the world

My whole life
Looked like a picture of a sunny day
My whole life
Was like a picture of a sunny day
- Sleater-Kinney, "Modern Girl"

Beauty Is A Sin, Oh God

I want to be hit in the head and pass out dramatically more than I really want to play volleyball. I try to imagine the tape lines and the net without the sneakers and fat idiots that play with them, but I haven't got nearly the wherewithal to avoid it all. Clearly I'm too goddamn pretty for this and it breaks my heart.

Lauren breaks my heart. She's 'round for Christmas and I assume our eyes might have met. I hope she's keeping all in, going to chapel every school morning. You can wonder if she'll keep the lie or let it grow out, faith or unbeliving, and how deep it goes. As deep as how we were friends in June. She deals with what is necessary and I'm not.

That's the mindset that makes me cry. I'm not sad, not suicidal, not even really upset, just alone under that crazy swaying leaky roof.


Friday was warm and thin like the oldest flannel nightgown, three hours of the sixties in school and all afternoon invisible in bed. It's hard to turn me around when I think I'm good for being up to nothing. My fear inspires me to imitation and I could never really pass you up. I spent eight minutes trapped at a red light that wouldn't let me go.

We went shopping, which is mostly shoplifting anyway. (You're the magnet of my cheap moral compass, dear; sometimes misdirected but attractive nonetheless, not to mention worth the price paid.) Kurt Vonnegut hates semicolons, which I use a lot. I talked and talked. I don't know what I did all night really; there was discussion and dinner, prayer and jealousy, ice cream and sleep.

I got disoriented in my dreams and woke up to see them broken like the unbreakable are, spider-webbed and unshattered, car glass in a cellphone screen. Oh, you know. Someone else kissed someone and he happened to be the regular boy you would have liked. It happens. It happens to me all the damn time and I find out in typescript and the middle of the night.

"How goes it?"

It goes by too fast, I suppose. It's just too late in the year to complain about summer and summer before.

So I heard it's no good to run,
But it feels so much better, now that it's done
And tonight I have to leave it
Yes, tonight I have to leave it!

So I heard you know how to write it,
Does it mean you're good at putting things on paper?
And rumours say that you're very sorry
Oh no, you're not sorry, no you're not
- Shout Out Louds, "Tonight I Have To Leave It"