For Billy

Tripping over legos
In the middle of the night
After giggling until it hurt.
Helpful trees and stolen paint
In the summertime.

Undercooked french toast
Sunday morning
Without waking dad.
Sewing, drawing, writing in
The backyard under lilac
Trees that made me sneeze.

Screaming and yelling,
Hair pulling- you’d bite me ‘til
I bled.
But if someone else tried to hurt me
You’d jump to my defense.
If something broke, we’d
Fix it.
And if I ever had a nightmare, and
My teddy bear could not coax me back to sleep
I always knew you would.

You love others
But cannot love yourself.
You’re beautiful when you smile
But grimace too much,
Beating your fists against iron walls
You’ve built around yourself to
Keep out
A warm embrace or a kind word
Woodworking frames around
Kurt Cobain
Worshipping a man you never knew
Hating yourself because you think it’s
What he would have wanted.

The Photo Album

It was bound in a blue leather-like material. Twice the size of an average family photo album, it was beginning to split at the spine, cracking in places and exposing the brown of the cardboard beneath. The young man opened the book and flipped past a few pages. He found the page he was looking for, dated in scribbled marker at the top, 10/14…
The first picture was taken at a park. There was a young woman in her early twenties pushing a little boy on a swing. It seemed very sunny out, and the woman shielded her eyes with one hand as she looked up the little boy who was casting a shadow across her. She was wearing an autumn colored sweater, clearly indicating the cool temperature of the day. The little boy was bundled more heavily, in a winter coat and a hat. There were leaves scattered on the ground around the swings and underfoot.
A picture on the opposite page had, in its right corner a large black dog. The foreground, however, appeared to be a large red fence, against which a large pile of leaves had accumulated. The dog was panting, unaware of the photographer, and instead looking off to the side at something apparently more interesting to the left.
Below the dog was a close up picture of someone’s gloved hand against a fence. Beyond the fence was blurry, but the focus seemed to be on the hand’s entrapment behind the chain link.
Another photo seemed to have been taken at an Asian restaurant. It depicted a set of hands pouring sake from a small carafe into a cup. The hands seemed to belong to an older man, showing some signs of age, but still balanced with grace.
The man sat back in his bed, stuck in a pensive moment of his own construction. He thought back to that particular day, bringing himself back to the sunny cold middle of October. There was a particular feeling in the air that comes with that time of year, where clothing changes daily in New England from tank tops and skirts to sweaters and leg warmers. Sometimes eighty-degree days are decorated with pumpkins and littered with apple cider. He tried to capture this on that particular day, passing pumpkins on porches and piles of leaves, taking pictures of kids in leaves and tiny, gloved hands.
Over the course of his day he encountered women in scarves and boots with sunglasses, shivering in the cold while shielding their eyes from the blinding sun. By day’s end, some coats had been shed, and the lawns of the nearby campus had begun to fill with lounging students, grasping to a final day in the sun.
He looked around at his surroundings now, the beeping machines and monitors, the IV in his arm, the hospital issue sheets, and was eternally grateful for the opportunity to capture so much life on film. He was glad he’d had the foresight to compile this collection to comfort him in his final months. Now, alone in his hospital room he though about the little boy, who might be starting kindergarten this fall, and the dog, who might have had puppies. It made him a little bit happier to know that he had some sort of connection to the world outside, besides a small obituary column saying his name and that ugly word… cancer.

A Letter from Home

James tossed his backpack onto to the bed and kicked off his worn sneakers. He looked around the room, discerning whether or not his roommate was back from class or not. This missing towel and shower caddy from the other side of the tiny dorm room indicated that Hans, the stranger with whom James had been cohabitating, was in the shower. After two weeks they still had barely spoken two words to each other, and James was beginning to wonder if in fact Hans did not know how to speak English, or perhaps did not know how to speak at all.
James reached into his back pocket and retrieved from it the Wisconsin postmarked letter that he had received that morning. He hadn’t heard from home since he left for school. He hadn’t heard much from his mother at all since he decided he was going away for school a few months earlier. She never said it out loud, but she felt like he was running away. The look in her eyes the few times he’d seen her over the summer was the same shame and disappointment she’d tried to conceal when talking about his father. James, Sr., never too clever to live up to clichés, went out for a loaf of bread when James was 13 and never came back.
The letter though, was not from his disappointed mother, but his best friend and cousin Benny. Benny had recently decided that he was just plain Ben. Unlike James, formerly Jimmy, he did not have the luxury of starting over in a new state to rid him of his childhood pseudonym. James sat down on the edge of his bed, dutifully ignoring the naked Dutchman in the corner. He unfolded the scribbled letter and began to read.
Dear Jimmy,
So it’s been two weeks now and Mary Ann still hasn’t returned my calls. I think she’s still mad at you for setting her up like that. No wonder you said you didn’t care if I dated her when you left, there’s no way in hell she’ll talk to anyone who knows you as long as she lives. I’m sorry man, that was rough, but seriously, you shouldn’t have gone after her in the first place if you knew you were just going to leave her at the end of the summer. Enough lecturing. Shit man, I miss the hell out of you. I’ve been having to hang out with that lame ass brother of mine. Johnny says hi, by the way. So does my mom.
Met any hot college chicks yet? Man, I gotta come out there and visit you sometime. You’re coming home for the holidays, right? I’ll tell you Beth got back from the summer camp last weekend and damn did she grow up over the summer. Me and Johnny went down to the bonfire last weekend. He went out for the football team this year… and we thought he was bullshitting, right? He’s second string, but he fuckin’ made it man, can you believe it? He’s going to get all the chicks we always wished we could. Anyway, Beth went with us. She’s going to the community college with me and Rosie next week, so I thought it would be cool if I started hanging out with her some more, you know?
So we get down to the fire, and there’s all those kids, and all us guys hanging back just kind of drinking beers and laughing at ‘em. Then over walk, get this, Artie Warren. The guy got out last week. So we’re all catching up, and he tells Beth how he got arrested after the State Finals for stealing his dad’s VW. Turns out his dad didn’t send him to military school after all, he fuckin pressed charges, and he’s been serving 8 months over in County. Who knew, right? I never thought Old Man Warren would snap like that. But anyway, so he tells us about this place his cellmate told him about. It’s this hole down in the quarry. It’s pretty well hidden by the rocks from above, but pretty easy to get into once you’re down on the level.
So we go down to the quarry with Artie, right, at this point it’s just me, Artie, and Beth. Johnny stayed at the rally with his new girl (more on that later). So he’s all “sshh, sshh,” and we’re telling him to shut up because his fuckin’ hushing us is worse than the whispering we’re doing as far as the echo, you know? So we go down to this hole in the quarry, a cave really, not even knowing why. I mean, we’ve got a couple in us, right, so we ain’t thinkin’ too straight but he hasn’t even told us what is in the cave anyway. So we go in and there is, get this, cocaine EVERYWHERE. He tells us that this is where some of the cops at county stash what they steal off the perps. No one is supposed to know about it, but it’s actually not too well kept a secret. So anyway, we end up doing a couple lines and Artie goes stumbling off into the woods talking about the fucking squirrel that stole his favorite socks. I have no idea what he’s talking about but I figure it gets me some time out with Beth, so I let him wander off.
I probably shouldn’t have just let him wander off like that, in his condition, but you know-- I’m not much better off. So he goes off and me and Beth are out on this rock overlooking the water, and we’re just talking and then she kisses me. I mean, I know you’re thinking I made the move, but I swear she kissed me. So soon we’re just tearing each others’ clothes off and making out. At first I was looking out for Artie, hoping he wouldn’t find us there like that, but then she started giving me head, and I stopped thinking altogether. So then we’re going at it, right there on the rock, and eventually we both just pass out.
When we come to it’s light out and our clothes are all over the place, we couldn’t even find her underwear. So we get dressed as best we can and we start heading back to the car. We figured we’d find Artie on the way. I had the worst fucking headache. It was like a hangover times fifty-five. I felt like crap, but I started getting worried about Artie. So me and Beth start screaming: “Artie, Artie!” But we couldn’t find him anywhere. So I start thinking maybe he fell into the quarry, and I’m fucking panicking. But then we get out to the road and we can’t find his car either. So then I’m pissed, I’m thinking the bastard ditched us. So we start walking down the road, and about a half a mile up there’s Artie’s car, plowed right into a tree. We start freaking out again, and we run over to the car, but he’s not in it. So we’re looking around, and ten feet from the car, there’s Artie—bloody as hell, and his arm is hanging off the side of his body. That’s all he was man, a body. It was the freakiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Anyway, I gotta run, but I’ll call you sometime this weekend.
-Benny-

posted novel

I was cleaning out my old computer and dredged up a quasi novel i wrote last year, sans editing.

http://abjectreality.blogspot.com

Strange Amalgam

I used to watch A Little Princess a lot when I was a little kid. I liked that Sarah had this whole alternate universe that she invented, and that she would share with the other girls. I always thought that if I was in solitary confinement, I'd do okay. I'd just sleep and get good songs stuck in my head. But if I didn't have a pen, I think I'd talk out loud a whole lot. Maybe that's how people go crazy... they're just trying to keep themselves entertained. I have a whole host of characters that I make up to keep myself entertained. Mostly, I think I just like dialogue better when I get to write both sides of it, so I'll take bits of things that have already happened and explore a different route. This is a recent amalgam of stories I’ve either been told, overheard, or thought about doing myself.

Elizabeth had been engaged for two months, but still the ring had not become a comfortable addition to her hand. In the third grade she had a claddagh ring that she bought at Cape Cod for two dollars. She wore it on her ring finger everyday until she was 17, when it fell down the hotel drain after the Junior Prom. She'd felt at the time that it was a physical sign of her own betrayal. Something precious was taken away from her because she'd broken the rules. She didn't have sex again until after she'd dropped out of college.
When Henry had proposed to her, she felt redeemed. He wasn't like the guys she dated in high school, or slept with after college. He was a nice boy, at least that's what her mother said, when she'd called to tell her the good news. She'd hoped that the ring would fill that void on her hand, meld right into place and be that thing that she'd been missing. She was waiting for something to complete her, as people are often bound to do, and expected to know right away that this was it. Elizabeth was never given a rulebook, but she knew that what she was doing was against the rules. Sitting in the rundown diner near the last exit to the Pike, she twisted her ring on her finger, waiting for the familiar roar of the 1987 Elefant. She wasn't going to sleep with Jeremy... at least she wasn't planning on it. But when her ex-boyfriend had called her to say he was in town and needed to see her, her catlike curiosity got the better of her.
He was already 20 minutes late, but that was to be expected. He was always late. Except for the one time that he'd made her late, and that was the last time she'd seen him. She turned out not to be pregnant, and he said that the job out of town had nothing to do with her, and that he wanted her to come with him. This was days later, when he called from Minnesota to see how she was doing, and to make sure that she wasn't pregnant. They'd been 22 and 23 at the time, and two years had passed since then.
She'd barely heard the engine in the parking lot, when the door to the diner breezed open and in walked Jeremy. He hadn't changed at all in the two years that he'd been away. His hair seemed lighter, and his hands aged beyond twenty-four by manual labor. But his eyes still held the gentle expression that had always tricked Elizabeth into believing that his intentions were honest and good. She found herself on her feet and in his arms before she was aware of herself. He pulled away when he felt the cold metal of her ring on his neck.
"Wow, Lizzie...congratulations," he stammered, staring at the modest stone on her left hand. "How long?"
"Almost a year," she lied, knowing that the truth would be easier for him to ignore.
“Wow… You look great.”
He looked great. He always did. Even as she was at the free clinic, silently cursing his existence, she wanted to be on the back of that bike, blazing down the highway. She sat across from him in that rundown diner, that had, when she first came to this city been aglow with possibility and romantic notion of late night coffee that had now faded into its shabby actuality. She had come to terms in two years with the fact that ripped jeans and quarters for coffee was not always worth its novel appeal, and had even stopped carrying the copy of Howl in her back pocket that she kept with her in the first couple of years following her abrupt exit from college life. He seemed to be riding that same take each day as it comes wave that is so easy when the blinders of adolescence haven’t yet been removed. She missed those days.
After they’d ordered, he paused for a moment and studied her face, almost as though taking a picture of her in his mind. She wondered what he saw, having always wanted to be “the girl” in a song or book or poem of some lasting quality. Without thinking, she touched her own face, only realizing what she’d done when he reached out to pull her hand away, resting his own atop it on the Formica table-top. It took her too long to pull away, straightening her self upright in her seat.
“So what have you been up to? It’s been ages.”
“Odd jobs. Construction, worked on some bikes for a while in Minneapolis.”
“Where are you living now?”
“On the road… I’m heading down to West Virginia right now. A friend of mine just started a shop and he needs a mechanic. He thought I might like to give the south a shot for a while.”
“Settle down on a plantation?”
“We’ll see.” He paused again, thoughtfully. “I didn’t realize how much I’d missed you.”
She didn’t know how to respond to that. So she didn’t. Eventually they moved on to more small talk. In the two hours they spent chewing on overcooked hamburgers, sipping fountain soda, the conversation never stopped being awkward. It was a strange kind of awkward that comes from knowing someone too well. The problem, of course, was that they knew a two-year-old version of each other and neither had expected the other to have changed at all, despite their own growth.
As the summer sun began its long descent, they exited the tiny diner to the parking lot. Elizabeth walked with him to his bike, pausing just a few feet from it. He pulled her close to him, and it was the kind of hug that you savor at the beginning of a relationship: just too long and just too close, breathing in one another’s scent. She clenched her left fist, fingering the inside of the ring, and forced hersef to pull away.
“Elizabeth… Lizzie… I’m going now. I’m not staying here tonight. I’m not staying at Garret’s tonight. Garret doesn’t even know I’m here. I just came to see you.”
“I…” She didn’t even know what the next word was supposed to be.
“If I asked you to get on the back of this bike and come with me… what would you say?”
She hesitated, but not long. When she spoke, she was surprised by her own words.
“I… I have to work tomorrow.”
His look wasn’t disappointed or startled, but more amused. He chuckled, despite himself, shaking his head.
“You need this.” He looked around him, taking in his surroundings. “You grew up, Lizzie. You left me behind. Isn’t that funny? I left. But you left me behind.”
She couldn’t even muster a response before he saddled his bike, and literally rode off into the sunset.

found this in my old blog

im sick of myself, not just now but from a year ago, and six months ago, and everytime i look at myself from maybe even just 2 weeks ago, i'm kind of disgusted with who i used to be, and so probably even who i am right now. anyway, i decided to never look at my old blogs again, and instead just post selections that specifically highlight who you should be glad you don't know right now. this is number one, from before my life got tipped on its side and then back upright about 9 months ago. im bruised from the fall, but what else is new?

 


Oh, probably because I hate you... that's right. And another thing, you can take your fancy blue books and multiple questions and shove them up your short answers. That's right bitch.

Yes, I have been not studying all night for two midterms tomorrow that I am entirely unprepared for. Things that I have done instead:
went to Deerfield Press
went to Duffy's and bought 4, count 'em 4 boxes of Tazo Green Teas
went to the Bean Counter TWICE (once for an iced latte and Jean and I went for a walk, then once for an application and a raspberry mocha, of which i forgot to get soy instead of regular milk so i felt kind of sick all evening)
went to Target, almost bought Blondie's Greatest Hits, but decided against it, almost bought a cute sweater, decided against, almost bought a dress, decided against it... bought nothing
watched a half an hour of "Slackers" (i think that Jason Schwartzman is going to propose any day now)
went to dinner with my dad, jean, and melissa after an unsuccessful apartment showing. hopefully friday will be more fruitful in that regard.
got officially hired for my new job
participated in a CUFS meeting (showing up late and leaving early seems to be my style... im the worst co-director ever)
made out... i mean hung out with chloe in the WheatBread office updating my blog and talking to sarah and jean and waxing philosophical over vanilla djarums. i've become such a privelaged college fuck. That's about it for now.
*hugs and kisses*

Short short story

Dear Alexander,

Considered what you said (stop) Do not wish to continue conversation (pause) in fact wish to never speak to you again (stop) Do not try and contact me (stop) It is better this way (end)

-Celia-


What is this about? I don't know, I'm just sick of writing about postmodernism on television and Aristotle.

-c-