trace

lakefront

that elusive point

on the bus, the open mouths, the quiet hum, the shuffle of bodies pressed against everything but flesh, the avoidance of dirt and all things human

on my way to him, my friend, with his unwashed self and his breath and I love it that he's human around me and we have no shame.

over and over again I see the world recoiling from each other, pretending we don't exist, only to seek out that affirmed company we are familar with

defiant, I smile at them all, I nod hello in the most pleasant way, I even sometimes exchange waves with complete and total strangers who meet my eyes and search for something in them.

there is no end to the people I cannot love and the love I have to give.

like minded

landmark

mini madeliene madness!

he loves me through food:

he loves me through food:

glance

There are so many years between them that I can tell she speaks in just a glance. I recognize her angry face, because I've felt it come on mine so many times for the love of my lifetime. She has nothing to worry about, despite how it looks between her husband and me, he loves her, he loves her, he loves her undyingly.

So I steal the moments I can, without guilt, with pleasure, delicious giggles waiting at my throat, delighted smiles, furtive glances in his direction, I give him my whole undiluted self, and he gives me himself in return, even in her presence, with her leering eyes projecting such admonishment, because it is too much fun to rile me up and too much fun to stop.

She punishes me with pasta, my least liked food and it twists my stomach into knots and cramps and she knows it.

and I wonder why she has him so completely, and what it might have been like if he and I had happened across each other in another life, in another way, before they cemented themselves in children, but I know that there are just not enough things that line up, that even though we enjoy each other's company to the point of lack of oxygen from sharing the same hiccupy giggle, that is not enough to build with.

I linger over thoughts about his lack of a brother, just one would be enough for me, or the bad timing, which is really a lot of years to explain away, and finally, how she avoids my curses, or perhaps bus drivers are driving better these last few years.

I sense her feelings as if she were shouting them at me: she is left out of the fun, she never meant to be a boring house mum, she was supposed to be the "cool" one, what the hell is happening?!

Try as she might, I can never muster up the sympathy for her litany of complaints or the enthusiasm for her jilted attempts at humor. It is simply too late and I am completely smitten by her husband.

My attempts at downgrading this enchantment continuously fail. All is well until I see him again and all my mental blockades come away; like a skilled hurdle runner, he expertly handles me and it is over before I am aware that the race has begun.

I have spent some months resisting him with some success, when I realized his playful banter was present with all the other women in his life, but there was no enjoyment between us. Also, I spent those months hating that he had chosen a woman who took no more pleasure in what he so obviously enjoyed, and I wished the both of them a happy life in hell. And, as he escorted me home so many many times, it only served as a painful reminder of just how awful the other important relationships in my life were.

He wins me with compliments, both deserved and flattering, his attention, which is a combination of precise observation and referential jokes (my favorite type of humor), and his playful demeanor.

He was supposed to be gone today, and I felt the surprise and joy in myself rise when I saw his smile and I knew he was smiling for me. It felt like an awkward moment in a Jane Austen novel, his wife staring at me, me staring at him, him staring at me. I tried to suppress my glee, but I don't feel bad any longer for enjoying his company.

He is hers and she is his. And I know I am just a peripheral part of their lives.

goodbye Amos

open

three mesh screens and the urge to climb are all that keep me safe in my apartment. The voices of people on the sidewalks come inside. Their conversations float up to me as they pass. I hate them and I love them.

I could close the windows.

but it reminds me that I'm alive, that I'm not alone, that something else exists out there outside of myself. even if it is the beep of a cop's walkie talkie, and the voices scream expletives, and sometimes I wonder how long it will take the gentrification wave to absorb the ghetto building, and if anyone else cares.

in the morning, the birds slowly begin a constant chattering, a conversation brought closer by tree branches outside my window, and it is a steady chatter that pauses only for the lawn mowing equipment noises.

tonight, the windows gave me a group of people singing and playing the guitar. I hated them for singing so loudly so late, but I loved them for being together, walking down the street, singing a song.

when he is here I feel safe and content and sleepy and when he is gone it is impossible to find sleep, the voices outside scare me and I long for the quiet streets I knew.

thunderstorm

taste

strand

They stretch across places I go late at night: doorways, fences to trees, the darkness; I feel them, the strands, clutching at my skin, they are small and dainty and strong. I feel like Goliath in their wake. I feel bad for ruining what might have been. I wonder how long it took that spider to swing out and connect that long line of web, which clings to the hairs on my arms and falls at my feet.

In my bathroom I have noticed a bunch of them, clusters of dusty webs that have pinpoints of black in their centers, but I don't sweep them away. He tells me to, but I argue, and they remain. A week later they are doing the suspected and hoped for job of catching other bugs, what look like ants with wings. A week later they are empty.

His arms, his bed, his smells and I am stuck there again, so easily, what feels at the time so permanently, until some time goes by and I am pushed out of his web.

Obligations pass with a sense of relief, I am not attached to anything that does not bring me joy, and so I will step away without destroying myself in the process of trying to become free. the jobs, the people, the things I must do, the world.

The connections I have made sometimes surprise me. When they are broken it is a choice to begin again or try a different way. It is interesting what I will give my attention to and what I will work on the most.

The spiders in my bedroom prance around my papers looking for mites, and I love that they have found me.

not so happy camper

As I endeavor to make nice nice with one Mr. Burnham, I find it hard to maintain my shiny veneer, the shellacked version of myself that I trot out for mostly everyone (except for family, in which I feel it is fine to be myself in all my bitter glory). I incorrectly assumed that since I'd been working hard at being this upgraded happier version of me for the better part of a year, I'd have no problem giving him this new improved glossy me.

For a while, I blamed him, feeling that when he takes a seat next to me, I become a console of buttons that he freely and gladly pushes. I branded him a button pusher, a finger pointer, an instigator of angst, and tried to go along on my merry way.

The hardest thing to admit is that I am simply not happy. Sure, I'd like to be. I see other people being happy and it looks like a good time. I've always wondered what it would take for me to be happy. I had it like I had to have all my ducks in order, everything perfect and then I could be happy. It never occurred to me that it had nothing to do with what I had or didn't have, or if all was right with the world, or if my immediate safety wasn't threatened.

I don't like feeling miserable all the time. Being happy is an effort for me. Being unhappy is like breathing. Thankfully, I'm not much of a complainer (probably because I work out a lot of my grievances here), and I'm pretty diplomatic, so spending time with me isn't so awful, but I'll admit it, if you're looking for cheery, delighted-by-life company, you won't find it here.

A lot of things bring me joy, a lot of circumstances illicit gladness, and the friends I spend time with are good ones, people who stoke conversations and model the ability to find happiness in a fucked up world. Externally, if the things I deem as pleasurable surround me, only then can I be content.

What I've come to understand is that part of the reason I'm not happy is because I'm not happy with myself. All of the things I thought I'd be by this time in my life haven't happened. I got stuck somewhere along the way and now I feel like I am constantly excavating myself and retracing my steps, and searching for that fork in road where I got lost. In doing so, I've regained some semblance of normalcy and recovered some confidence in myself that brings me some happiness.

The work of being happy involves many ducks: ace-ing the GRE, editing my manuscript, applying to grad schools, getting my apartment in order, maintaining my physical appearance (a grueling chore) and having a job I don't hate doing. I realize that this approach is almost like the guy pushing the rock up the hill. I can't disagree. I do these things because I know that they are external things that bring me some sense of relief, some sense of duty, some sense that I am trying to do something with my life. This is the blueprint of happy I was given and it is all I know, and I know that this approach seems to work some of the time.

And then, there are some moments when I let go, when my smile comes freely and I am happy, when being happy is just something I slip on, like a pair of sunglasses with a pink tint and the world appears not so harsh and blinding.

rooftop