walking by.

1:27 am.

taylorrness — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 06:27:18 +0000

and on the eve of the second night
before the third day of the red moon
she swore she would never leave yarn trailing out of her door corners again

“I will tie the ends up like tunnels” she yelled
as the streetlights called the double numerals filthy names
and three tops swayed on three bottoms
pointing up at the sky

“tell me what to do” though he is not talking
to your underthings or your room shadows
any more

I might as well.

taylorrness — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 03:34:40 +0000

rest areas

the plane is delayed until the morning
she said
with six inches between her head and the clouds
but I can’t remember the last time
I counted how many people
are sleeping in stiff-backed chairs
their faces drooping on their hands
or the shoulders of the person
next to them
seven

still in the periphery.

taylorrness — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 04:29:12 +0000

sometimes I call your phone and listen
to your answering message like I am listening
to the inside of a shell
“please leave your name and number
and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can”
–if I pour sand down your throat
will it make your voice huskier,
will you know that I have your number
saved as “Dorian Gray”,
will you look in the mirror and see
the red tips of your ears, do your palms
itch?

I wake up with lines of Scripture in my head
like they’ve been whispered in my ear
while I was sleeping, like I am
the shell and you are just a figment
of my ever-expanding universe, whispering
the names of girls you met once
and liked once
and can’t remember the name of now

Nick & Nora, Sid & Nancy.

taylorrness — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 03:30:47 +0000

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.

taylorrness — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 02:15:02 +0000

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.

taylorrness — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 03:35:34 +0000

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.

taylorrness — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 03:48:43 +0000

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.

taylorrness — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 04:30:02 +0000

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.

taylorrness — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 03:42:32 +0000

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.

taylorrness — Fri, 06 May 2011 01:46:13 +0000

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.