December 2010
22 posts
4 tags
Spec(k)tator
The lights on the highway always seem to line up. I like to imagine that the traffic at nighttime is my own fingerpainting. A black canvas and my fingertips dipped in red and white to dot either half with as many headlights as will fit. And sometimes I can paint backwards when I lift my fingers and watch the dots disappear around three in the morning where the night has streched too far.
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Every Other Girl's Lover
Every other girl’s lover is present. There he is now by the punch bowl. Look, there he goes through the corridor. Didn’t you see him at the window? She asks him to see if the taxi is here yet. She puts her hand in his. Every other girl’s lover is here. When you ask me where mine is, I tell you, “I’m not sure”, and that is a lie.
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Let's go to the park.
They’re taking my childhood down outside my window. I watch a boy walk around in the ruins of the park where I learned about fear, where I learned how to be brave. I wonder if he has grown into a man when I see him bring his cigarette to his mouth. I think of cigarette butts and pieces of broken glass literring the ground under the see-saws and wonder if he ever skipped around them like I...
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I want to see you more than once every two years.
I had no chance at all from the very start because you were there with your blue eyes — eyes like miniature blue earths set in between your eyelids. Those blue eyes and a hammer in your hand as you were mending the white picket fence. The way you drove that nail into wood like a toothpick into butter announced that you were the sort of boy who liked to choose sides. And suddenly all I wanted...
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Few ever touch true darkness.
You are the light at the end of the tunnel and she is at the other end. You’re calling her but she isn’t coming. You’re going to go after her and turn to charcoal inside the cave. You’ll give yourself up to the darkness and grow phantom limbs.
When people flip coins, she and you are back to back. All is well while you’re spinning in the air, but the landing is never...
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No Lightning
It was not all sparkles from shattered glass like you had said it would be. You had written it out to say that it would dazzle in a way that only contradiction could. A smile under the widow’s veil, a tremble in the ribbon-cutter’s hand. But there was no shaking. There was no grief over some lover or another out in the streets without a jacket in the winter. There was the simple sound...
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Hearing
I hate the way your name sounds inside anyone else’s mouth. They don’t know how to hold the syllables properly. They don’t appreciate the weight it carries. It shouldn’t be so easy to roll it off your tongue, whisper it through the corner of your mouth. I want to tell them to stop saying it. But instead in the waiting room I am flipping through an old copy of the New Yorker...
speekeasy asked: your words are so lovely
emeraldblaze-deactivated2011050 asked: I am deeply fascinated. Inspired. Reading you is like reading what I've always wanted to write. Thank you.
Also it makes me quite curious about you. Who are your favourite writers?
Also it makes me quite curious about you. Who are your favourite writers?
4 tags
You wrote me an anthem.
It’s all cheap tricks and a light show. I could make you shadow puppets all you want. But the truth is that I’m the closest you’ll ever get to poetry. Get some clothes on. Get in the fast car. And if you want to die, I will take you to buy the handgun. A silver handgun. Your eyes are not the answer. Shut them up, tape them up. Stop looking, stop talking. I hear the alarms...
“I have scars on my hands from touching certain people.”
– J.D. Salinger (via elisus)
4 tags
Five Minutes
The man who lives on the corner of Church St. and Berry St. gets up every morning at 7 o’clock. But every night he set his alarm to 6:55 AM because he enjoys lying in his bed for what he feels are an extra five minutes. These five minutes are the most victorious part of this man’s every day. He spends these five minutes doing nothing other than staring at the ceiling, or anxiously...
“She was bored. She loved, had capacity to love, for love, to give and accept...”
– Faulkner (via aetatis)
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Ends within ends (and no means at all).
Clutching our talismans when we should have torn them away from our necks. The ship was sinking. And in between the waves that took us over, we swore our homes were inside each other. You were like coming up for air. I was like the answer to a question.
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Lately, I wake up in places I don't recognize.
Early morning sunlight stretches every shadow — long like dark ribbons rolled out every which way. It is always the same dream. You are middle of the football field, laughing. You are gold like the brand new day. And I run as the sun rises. I want to tell you that you were right the first time.
I wake up with tangled feet.
I wanted to tell you that your blue eyes saw mine before I knew...
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How the sparks shot out of his eyes
There was frost on my window
And his lips were warm
On the other side of the glass
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I went to see the dancers.
We were all girls running through the streets after dark. I watched headlights play across everyone’s faces — racing shards of light swimming over cheeks and bridges of noses. On the bus to the show it smelled like peppermint, and I thought about how I’d never had any, wondered about why they would make it into a perfume. Later in the line for tickets there was a boy with...
