Nick & Nora, Sid & Nancy.

You say that this form of love is the best
because it is violent, because it takes your heart
into the backyard and shoots it out of its misery.
This form of love is ours,
we carve initials into the skin of our backs like tree bark
and clench our teeth together
and you still want to know why I spraypainted the side
of your mother’s house with red paint
but that’s not the point.
We are the bits of sand left at the bottom of bathtubs
in hotels along the northwest coast.
We are shooting up and shutting down
and sticking our heads out of sunroofs yelling
obscenities at passing trailers
and the sun beats down overhead, underfoot.

let me buy you a soda.

You don’t know anything about me.
You don’t know that I once didn’t eat for two weeks and didn’t sleep for twice that. Come back when you can talk to me about the flannel sheets and the chapped cheeks and can you even speak English? Can you even talk?
(You have brown eyes but in my head they’re green like mine were supposed to be.)
I have a scar that stretches across me but no one ever sees it. That sounds like it should be a metaphor but it’s not. I also have a tattoo and no one sees that either but it’s there, trust me, let me tell you about it in my cursive voice and block letters that stick in your ears. (I would ask you to tell me about yourself but you can’t even get the words out.)
Do you know anything about women?
I believe in homicidal ghosts but I don’t believe in you.

she told me to do it.

Sometimes I think of all of the different ways a person can die and it becomes a game in my head, like what if you leaned out of a twelve-story building to see all of the little people on the sidewalk below you and you see someone with a Santa hat on and you lean more so that you can see better (after all it is October; people don’t just wear Santa hats out in public quite yet) but you lose your grip and fall and all you can concentrate on is the loss of feeling in your fingertips from the cold air.

When I fell asleep on my bed the other night I was still fully clothed. The last things I thought about were that the elastic on my socks was pinching my ankles and that you find me funny sometimes. I am generally not a funny person but I am a nice one, just so you know. The bed bobbed under me like the time I read Elizabeth McCracken on the pier and watched the father and son pull starfish from the ocean, my pockets full of honey sticks and chrysanthemum petals. I think that I might have thought about you then but I didn’t know you then so maybe I am just being silly now.

Sometimes I fall off the pier. Sometimes you wear Santa hats.

in plastic bags and milky bottles.

when I think about things that are sad
I think about being asked to ask that you are asking
and whether you like spare buttons
that I keep in a drawer in case one falls off

and when I think about things that are sad
I think about how I didn’t get to see you today
or yesterday
or the day before
even though I put that leaf under my pillow
like I was supposed to

she told me that’s what I was supposed to do

the greatest sadness
is being sad
and thinking about it

like a diary, only less personal.

Today I drank a bottle of pink wine all by myself and no one stopped me.

Some days, I get so frustrated
putting your follicles in alphabetical order
(like decimal points)
that I forget to record that show on the History Channel.

Does that make you uncomfortable?
Does my deep-rooted sense of tunnel logic throw you off
the scent?
Today I let you braid my hair and I got the shivers.

it’s been too long.

When I was sixteen
my mother told me that I couldn’t wear my flowered dresses anymore
because they were too fancy for the grocery store
and what would people think

When I was eighteen
my father decided to stop salting our food
because the family was bloated enough
and how would that look

Sometimes I put smooth stones between my toes
just because I like the feel of it
and not for any other reason at all

people must think I am weird

…

(this is my 100th post)

like that dashboard guy.

Right now I am twenty and I have a hole on my second toe from when I stepped on a paper clip earlier and I wonder if you are sleeping even though it’s not yet nine. Today is Cinco de Mayo and do you remember when I stayed home that one year and cried about it? Do you remember coming home drunk the next morning and asking me why I was wearing my pajama pants with the hedgehogs on them, the ones I wear when I’m sad? Do you remember?

Right now it is late and today is Thursday and I spent two hours today organizing my files into labeled folders on my computer because the idea of having unorganized files seemed so ridiculous that I needed to do something about it. I titled one “confessions from mozambique” but I thought it was insensitive and I’ve never been to Africa so I just called it “folder 3″. It doesn’t have a password on it.

Right now it is loud outside on the main street in town. People are yelling and I am getting pity calls from family members and I still need to know something from you.

a moment of weakness.

“please, no lewd behavior of any kind”

and I have been sick for days
(or at least that’s the story I’m telling everyone)
with my books shoved under the bed

red-eyed

I don’t even know.

my parents forgot about me this week
which was freeing
in the same way that sleeping in and not showering
is freeing
but eventually the novelty wears off

stubbornness is genetic but so is mental illness
(and I’m not sure if there’s too much of a difference)
and when I poured myself a glass of milk today
I ended up dumping it down the sink
but to be honest, the milk deserved it

I was supposed to be asleep two hours ago.

my toes curled around the bar of your futon
because it’s colder than the rest
and I need cool temperatures to sleep like my mother
was a polar bear and I can’t stand
the crochet blankets she used to heap on top of me
when I was tired or sick and needed
saltine crackers and soda water
as if being sick means being poor
but I am both, you remind me, you sad and crazy fool

blue like the inner soles of your running shoes
always damp inside and you wonder why I’m always looking
for coolness. where I used to live
it was rainy and cool always
and no one used umbrellas or wore appropriate footwear
and I slept so much easier
which makes it much different from here
because I don’t have enough money for anything other than
saltine crackers and sleeping on your couch