Worth

I can't believe I found this! I thought it was gone forever. It's not very good, but I wrote it a long time ago for someone really special to me. Ah, nostalgia. =] This is my first Dez and Lia story. Dez (sometimes called Carmilla or Carmella) and Lia (sometimes called Kit) are reoccurring characters in my writing. 

Once upon a time there was a very pretty girl whose hair was made of gold.  Though she was more beautiful than any queen, the girl came from the poorest family in San Quirico, a tiny town outside of Florence. Signora Guinizelli, knowing that she would eventually be forced to give up her youngest daughter, named her child Desideria.

Something Like Belonging

I forgot that I wrote this story until I opened the most recent issue of ReVisions and saw that it was the first story published in it. I don't even like this story, looking back on it. I think I was trying to be Miranda July. 

The doctor exhaled deeply as he leaned back into his seat. 

“I’m in a field of petunias.  I’m fishing at Lake Tahoe.  I’m at home in my Sleep Number Bed.  I am relaxed,” he thought.  Really he was hundreds of miles off the ground in an unsettlingly uncrowded plane, and this fact made it impossible for the doctor to relax.  He discretely reached into the pocket of his khakis, wrapping his fingers around a little plastic bottle of Xanax.  He looked around the cabin to make sure that no one was looking at him, but just as the doctor was about to twist the lid off of the bottle, he noticed a woman staring at him from a few seats over. 

Her Secondhand Smoke

So, now this story has gotten me a reading at 1718, a spot in ReVisions, a Dawson Gaillard award, and a free place in the English Honor's Society Conference. :) I have to present it next week, and then again in May. Reading in front of people makes me nervous! Bah! 

My grandmamma always tells me that a sigh is the sound your soul makes when a little piece of it dies. My grandmamma is a chain-smoker. I always thought that her wheezing sounded more like death, but now I think I know what she was getting at.

I used to play this game with myself. I called it, “The Sighing Game,” or that’s what I would’ve called it if I’d ever talked about it. Technically, it wasn’t only my game; Jess was a part of it, too. I just didn’t tell her she was playing.

Hunger pangs

Have you ever been really hungry but had nothing in your house to eat, so you just periodically check you cabinets, knowing that they're bare? That's basically the story of my love life.

the nest the heart the home

An octogenarian, a psychic, she'd met at Starbucks came to Thanksgiving dinner.
He told me that his favorite ex-wife threw a grandfather clock at him. It was an antique, an heirloom, and she hurled it at him as punishment for waking her from a nap.
He told me that he knew all about lesbians. He'd come upon sobbing bull dyke, and they'd danced until dawn. He said that he was the first man she'd kissed with tongue.
He told me that a woman named Cassie was writing a book about him. He wanted to fall in love with her because he had a soft spot for mean women who spent his money.
He read my cards (all queens and swords) and told me to keep doing what I've always done. It'll work out eventually.
He told me that my eyes are windows and I must resist the urge to look away.
He said he'd teach me to use my energy to read people. He said I had that power, my windows told him all about me.
He asked me to take his picture.
He told me that I am an artist and a teacher and that I have a scar on my right knee (I do).
And that's about when he set the carpet on fire with his napkin. The hostess's boyfriend put out the fire, and we waited outside for the smoke to clear before coming back in for pumpkin pie.

Gewehr

If love is war, this love is World War II. Her heart is a Nazi officer, stationed in this relationship to guard mine, to be sure that it does not escape. Her heart kills mine slowly, brutally, relishing in its suffering, nearly starving it to death, feeding it only enough to subsist on. A scrap of caring every few weeks, a morsel of attention here and there. My heart is frail. His ribs are showing. His entire spine is visible. He is shrinking. He curls up alone and shivers himself to sleep. Her heart threatens mine into submission, beats him bloody, laughs in his face. Her heart takes away every comfort, makes mine forget what life outside of this was like, makes mine believe that good days could exist in this place, makes her forget that there is something outside of this. But most importantly, her heart keeps mine alive, doles out crumbs of hope to keep him going, makes sure he doesn't die before someone gives the command.

What I've learned in school

1. Philosophy isn't so hard. Anyone who's seen a dysfunctional relationship can understand Hegel's master/slave dialectic.
2. I am an emotional whore. I love too much too easily and give it out to the most undeserving customers.
3. If I were a well-adjusted adult, I would just develop a drinking problem and get over it.

A bouquet of lavender between friends

I buried my mind 

in her body and left 

it there to rot or 

maybe to blossom

She sunk her broken 

heart in my warm waters

and never asked for it back

never spoke of it at all

We went on breathing

in each other's vanilla

and being mistaken 

for sisters like always

A girl washed up onto the shore

It was not until then that I realized that nothing she'd ever said was to be taken at face value. She wasn't killing herself, she wanted to drown the part of herself that I knew, the part that loved me.
I'd been reading her like a book, when all along she'd been begging to be read like a poem. I'd mistaken metaphors for sloppy desperation, subpar theatrics.
And not only did I fail to save her, I'd unknowingly given a nod to her suicide. She was dead, far beyond reviving, and I'd once considered my attempt successful. I thought that I'd done it; I'd thought that it was possible for me to save her, never once wondering why it had been so easy.
If not for the ring on what's left of her finger, the ring she'd sworn she'd cast into the river, I may not have believed her at all. The flesh of the girl I'd known has rotted away. Some has been eaten by whatever creatures she encountered in the river's muddy water. She doesn't look like herself anymore, she doesn't look like anyone.
I gather her bones for burial and slide the ring onto my finger.

Tivoli (i lov iT)

In my dreams you work
at a movie theater, an old one,
and I go to see movies by myself,
hoping that you'll be the one
standing in the back of the
theater, while I sit in the last
row and pretend not to notice
that we are alone.

frictrice

My Babydoll used to be a rogue

called herself a gunslinger

called herself Queen Androgyne

she's died dyed dark dead

all lipstuck up and rouge 

pronounced the French way

learned to mock talk walk like a lady

learned to laugh like something's funny

My Babydoll used to be a rake

called herself a skirt-chaser

called herself gentler than a man

her toes bruised black and

she likes it, loves it, will do it again

for the way that it grows her 

gazellian limbs and kneads her 

ass into something fine

My Babydoll the neuromancer

now calls herself the romantic

now calls herself whole, soulmated, full

she's singing slizzer slurring calling
it devotion, fool for fatuous love
mixing up mania and admiration
she taught herself to stand upright
and look her infanta in the eye

My Babydoll wrapped in slacks, slick top hat 

taped her tits to her chest and passed

today she wears a different mask

she smiles with tiny pearls

gloss glided, plucked, primped

bones wrapped in a new soft, plump

knowing her infanta wouldn't sleep 

with my hand-me-down playthings

velvet, powder, silk, cream, lace,

she made herself a brand new face
mortar, plaster, tar, rust, lime

pretty things decay with time

The Wife (Kate Chopin Pastiche)

Alberta having looked not very long into life, had not looked very far. She put out her hands to touch things that pleased her and her lips to kiss them. Her eyes were deep brown wells that were drinking, drinking impressions and treasuring them in her soul. They were mysterious eyes and love looked out of them.

The first person to take Alberta by the hand was her mama, who was not really her mama. Alberta’s mama often collected stray creatures and brought them home to keep her company while her husband was away. When he was gone, the thought of him alone dwelt in her mind, and his name and none other was on her lips.

singles/ad

Unwillingly inevitable participant in Hegel's master/slave dialectic seeks same.
Join me for candlelit dinner, and after we can head to my place for a bit of emotional blackmail.
We could take long, moonlit strolls together in the part as I regale you with my sexual history, and you pretend not to be revolted.
We could vacation together in Montauk, where you could verbally abuse me, and I could pretend not to notice and then quietly mutilate myself while locked in the hotel bathroom.
We could grow old together, grow bitter toward each other together.
Strong, capable, outspoken (read: bitchy) emotionally unstable female seeks soulmate to spend cold nights with, engaged in fiery hurling of insults (and occasional inanimate objects).
Seeking male or female, preferably with some sort of mental imbalance.
Seeking male or female with self-esteem just low enough not to leave me.
Seeking male or female capable of unfavorably distorting my self-image and persuading me to contemplate homocide and/or suicide.
(Roles flexible.)

thirst

(the way the alcoholic's lover pours his gin on the floor,
only to watch horrified as he laps it up from the puddle at her feet)

all my profound is poured out, licked up, drying,
gone gone, squandered on loving lesser beings, boys
with scratchy skin, hungry eyes, ungrateful grins, boys
burned black by sick sick, sorry attempts to keep warm.
I have no more to give, nothing nothing nothing left.

noir

feelings fermented,
he left me to be
a thin glass bottle
of chilled apathy

control this world

out of the corner of my eye,
there are serial killers/rapists
(possibly a combination)
lurking, tapping on my window
ready to grab snatch or stab
but looking straight ahead
there's nothing but trees
with dead leaves What is it
about the night that makes
a sane person so stupid? Maybe
it's a hologram trick with the
streetlights and the stars to
make us feel just a little bit
luckier to be alive

Escape rope:

I wish that I had one,
and that reality was Pokémon,
and that you were Mt. Moon

the ring that went missing from your finger

every time I make an effort and you sigh at it,
every time I lean in and you don't look up,
every time you leave without saying a word,
I lay in your bed, trying to think of something
that might sting you as you so effortlessly sting me,
but I can never manage to think of anything close
to the same calibre of cruelty as your thoughtlessness

Ace of hearts,

Ace of hearts, you used to be the suicide king, you used to be such a fool for love.
You were of the same suit, but you had a sword through your head and a crown on top of it.
You were part of a full house but moved out upon realizing that the deck was fixed and not in your favor. I think I told you that I didn't want to play anymore, either.
Ace of hearts, tell me, is it good not to be king? A king means little without some sort of pair, but aces must get lonely, too.
Life as an ace is unpredictable. In some games you're most valuable, a hot commodity, everybody's after you. But in others you're next to meaningless.
In any case, this is to say that I like having you in my hand.

The kind that consumes,

He was at least seven different
people at once. Most of them did
not like me, but one loved me so
much that he set fire to my mattress
and made sure that I suffocated in
the smoke. I loved at least one of
him back, though I had reason to
believe that the other six plotted
against me quite regularly.

Dear Anyone Listening,

I never want children.
I could never tuck my babies in at night, knowing that someday they would have to grow up and stop being afraid of the monsters under their beds, and that, of course, someday they would begin inviting the monsters into their beds.

How to fit your lover into a shoebox

1. Find a shoebox.
2. Decapitate, dismember, and disembowel stuffed animals. When the stuffing blows away in the wind, pretend it's dandylion fluff, and you just made a wish on a rather large dandylion. Wish to show no mercy. It'll come true.
3. Shred all love letters with your teeth. Bitterly spit on each scrap until all paper is sufficiently damp. Mold scraps into papier-mâché bust of your lover's head. Let dry over night. Set on fire in the morning.
4. Drag mixed CDs against concrete until the pavement plays your song. Crack CDs in crescent moon halves. Stomp on them until the sidewalk sparkles with shards of love songs.
5. Take scissors to all clothing items. Cut into strips roughly the width of your lover's conscience. Tie all strips together, making sure to double-knot. Saturate in grape juice. Hang in place that you don't mind attracting insects to. Let the moths take it from there.
6. Paste pictures of more attractive and emotionally equipped people over all photos of your lover.
7. Sob hysterically with regret.
8. Repeat step 6.
9. Repeat step 7.
10. Remember that this started with a shoebox. Fill shoebox with stuffed animal skins, papier-mâché ashes, CD dust, remnants of sticky moth-eaten rag, and improved photos.
11. Dig a hole so deep you can barely see out of it. Climb out of hole. Leave shoebox. Replace dirt. Stomp on the grave, if you didn't get enough stomping in step 3. Spit, if you didn't get enough spitting in step 2.
12. Walk away. Don't look back.

Higher Education

I wasted four
years scratching
his back with one
hand, writing her
poetry with the other

bhakti

I saw the black ink shrine in her mind

singing the polecat with technicolor hair

as she reclined with heavily painted eyelids

I saw the sensuous scene etched on the screen

preparing to be flecked with bright wet brushes

as she touched her tongue to the tip to begin

I saw the bible with soot-smudged pages

banging against the blinds in her bedroom

as she rubbed the canvas with a black rag

I saw the spill of shimmering viscous liquid

dripping down the tips of her stained fingers

as she shuddered at the sound of the shatter

I saw the string of shining prayer beads

resting softly on her cigarette paper neck

as she kissed the canvas

  "i won't let her good body go to waste"

Unwrapped,

I am nothing more than a gray
tangle of half-formed dreams
a headache induced by breathing
in the smoke of my own cigarette
a junkbox of thoughts belonging no
where that may be needed someday
thus spared from a garbage can funeral
though I once told her I was god
and she felt no need to refute it

A blond nun with black lips

My wings were made of unsturdy words, and I sold you cheap smiles in exchange for your services as a backbrace. To me, you were the most gorgeous medical device. The prettiest piece of lifesaving equipment I'd ever laid eyes on. You held me in place for how long was it? You made me feel strong enough to stand up straight for once. And then you rusted, leaving my spine zigzagged in the most unfortunate contortion, which forced me to sit, stuck, gnarled and staring at the floor. It's been how long, and I still can't help but default to looking downwards.

wherever she wandered

(she feathers when it freezes)

Evie never thought she needed an identity
she looked in mirrors and fantasized about smashing the glass
Evie always loved a good smashing
when she couldn't get the words to come out right
Evie broke bottles and fed them to her skin
it made her feel warmer sometimes
Evie was cold cold cold lonesome shivery
she had never shivered by herself before

(with wings like a bat in summer)

To my ink-stained darling,

You were made of bones

only thinner, like thread

only tougher, like leather

only brighter, like branches

only loud, like love,

but you were not 

any of these things, 

not really. 

I was made of plaster, 

only thicker, like blood

only fragile, like feathers

only whiter, like paper

only soft, like love,

but I was not 

any of these things, 

not quite. 

We were made of hope,

only thinner, like tethers

only fragile, like lead

only lighter, like blindness

only ugly, like love, 

but we were not

anything, 

not anything at all. 

Dear Lia,

Lia, I am writing because our stories are gone. They were erased in a shameful fit of sanity, but now that I'm mad again, I need them.
I know that our stories can't come back because you've erased every trace of me, painted over me with thick, white acrylic to make room for something with fewer flaws.
This leaves me to tape up my mouth and bind my hands. This leaves me to chew my tongue and scar my palms with half-moon grooves. This leaves me to bite my nails 'til they bleed, just to keep my hands and mouth too busy to signal something significant.
When it gets dark, I light a candle to you; I wrap my arms around my body straightjacket-style and try to remember what came after once upon a time. The things I remember are better than the things we erased—no grabbing for gold, no accommodating the enemy, no star-crossing, just lovers. And this is the way that it should be. A soft madness cradles me to sleep.

Always,
Desirée

Dear Kit,

I know you're gone gone gone, dead and reborn as someone else's Robin Hood someone else's Cyrano someone else's Paolo someone else's Lancelot. The two of you rode off into the sunset, and you're still honeymooning. I know you told me once that your kind doesn't get happily ever afters. "Watch the movies," you said. "We always die in the end." 

And everyone is dead. They've been reborn in the same bodies, but the people I loved aren't in there anymore. They're all hermit crabs, and I'm in love with the shells. 

I know this, that you're gone. I tell myself that my Kit is dead dead dead and not coming back. I tell myself Kit's a new person happily ever after in the same old body, and I say to myself, my Kit is a shell made of watercolor and cotton and fragmented thoughts that lives in a box dead dead dead and buried in my mind. 

I know you can't come back. I could play Frankenstein or wish upon a monkey's paw, but you'd still be all wrong. I know this. I know this. I know this, but knowing doesn't stop the wanting. 

Always, 

Carmilla 

Dear Kitten,

I think that we are mad, and we will never stop being mad. 

We will never stop because once you've tasted madness, nothing else tastes as good. 

When we reach for our keys, when we go walking, when we wake up in the morning, we think, "Maybe today," when we should not be thinking at all. 

Nothing feels as soft. Nothing smells the same. Nothing makes me cringe like when I'm mad with you. 

We are meeting, laughing, talking, writing, dressing, talking, talking, too much crying, sleeping, holding, laughing, writing, reading, breaking, leaving, crying, crying, crying, together, alone, writing. 

We do this in real time, setting fire to each other's insanity again and again, timed like a circus act. 

We are most alive in the back of our minds. It feels like home to us. 

We make our beds of memories and we lie in them and lie and lie and lie, too afraid of the dark to wake up. 

Dear Jinx,

If I had the audacity, I would cover your life in yellow roses. Every day I would litter your walkways with fresh flowers to trample. I would dissect a perfectly good posy just to pile the petals onto your bed, make you a nest of something soft and alive. I would keep myself a secret. I would learn to make masks out of marigolds and morning glories. I would learn to be two-hundred different people, and all two-hundred of us would spend all 4,800 of each day's hours knitting you a brighter life out of daisy stems.  We would learn to hide under rocks. We would learn to thrive in shadows. We would learn that transformations are easy, if the weather allows. We would live and die weaving you a sunflower dream from behind a fat oak tree, watching you read on the bench nearby. We would use up our 6 trillion breaths on sighs so that you never had to waste yours because I know that you've spent a lot of time sighing already. We would do all of that for you, the one, the only one. I would do it for you. But I won't risk it on the all-too-likely off-chance that you'll pick up all my yellow rose petals and piece them back together in the shape of a mask that perfectly fits my face.

Synthesthetic Adolescent,

Is your insanity bright orange and does it smell like fresh paint?
Is your neurosis a red six in Times New Roman quarreling with her neighbor, the chartreuse 13 in Helvetica?
Is your raging self-deception flavored like Flinstones Vitamins (the purple ones, NOT the pink ones, which taste like keys clacking on a typewriter)?
Is your estrangement from reality a capital letter Q, an ampersand, and then the letter Z, merrily sharing a plate of lasagna, which sounds like a car starting when it hits your tongue?
Is your psychosis Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 2 in buttered praline minor?
Is your plight simply that the magenta will not stop singing?
Or is it that the radio will not stop turning your walls magenta?

Dearest Dearest,

Your name is the lowest of low blow insults in this home. Your words are something we crowd around to laugh at. Your desperate lunacy makes up the for the fact that we do not have cable.  Your lies are the punchlines of our favorite jokes.  Your theft nourished our nerve endings, made them grow like vines, now completely wild, our bodies overrun, unable to escape.  We thank you for the entertainment. We sincerely believe that it's brought us together, and for that, we cannot express our gratitude.

Dear Artist,

Your kind is the hardest to leave and the hardest to love. They're the hardest not to give a fuck about and the hardest not to fuck over. You are the hardest to understand. You are the messiest. Yours is the kind that will leave smears of paint on a mattress, with no care for how the owner will respond. You will stain a ceiling with charcoal so that when someone like me lies awake at night all we can think about is the little smudge, wishing it had been something more beautiful. An artist wouldn't leave handprints on just anyone's possessions, but it would never wash out, if she decided to. Not even with bleach or baking soda and toothpaste tricks. The artist will drive those around her to hunger when they'd rather starve. Your kind induces vomiting. They will make someone like me so sick that her ribcage shows, and once she's cured, she will ache for the pain of illness. And someone like me might think that the smell will never come out of her hair, but once it does, she will miss it more than an artist could ever know.

Dear Everyone,

I don't know how you do it. I don't know how you can bear to contribute to society. I don't know how you can bear being with your kind.

It's only been three minutes.

I don't understand this culture. This breed doesn't make sense to me.

I want to laugh, but I want to crack open like a jawbreaker and forget about the mess and who will feel hurt and who will gain a petty victory.

It's only been six minutes.

The door is being broken down. Now walked through. Now slammed.

I don't understand the dramatics.

The windows are being broken through, and I can feel it, but I can't hear it.

And I feel sick to lay next to someone who says it's love, though everyone tells me that I should feel happy. I'm fucking blessed to have someone obsessed with my presence because no one wants to be alone.

I felt fine by myself.

At least all I had to measure up to was my latest best. And I think it made me feel prettier. And less stupid. And less cruel.

It's much less stressful not to participate.

Dear Everyone,

Beware of girls who wear red lipstick on Mondays.

Beware the short flitting hems of their hiked-up skirts that you'll never get up.

Beware of their vanilla black-netted legs with steel on the end of each ready-to-kick foot.

Dear Girl,

I will always love you

was the easiest

lie I ever told

I'm so happy

to see you again

was the hardest

Dear Me,

The complexities of everyday life are growing into something big enough to swallow you. Why is it so difficult to keep it simple?

Dear Pichouette,

As I attempted to cut you out of me, I caught my reflection in the mirror and noticed that all the color had seeped from my skin into a pool of blood on the tile floor. I know how badly it must have stung when I sliced through that first bit of flesh; I felt the same sting.

Now I know that you were never any kind of parasite here to infest me and starve me dead from the inside. You were never any sort of virus here to destroy my body and decay my brain. You were never any type of predator, hungry enemy, here to drag me down and devour me. You were me all along. I have been working all this time on tearing myself limb from limb because it is no longer possible to tell where you end and I begin. If I stitch it up now, I know it will scar, but I think that will be easier than killing us both. I don't care how bad it looks. I just want it to heal.

I am so sorry.

Dear Customers,

I am sorry that none of you are able to accept "I don't know" as an answer. I am sorry that my best is not satisfactory because I am new and there's no one around to help and you don't get that or remember what that kind of frustration feels like.

I am sorry that my manager is an ignorant fuck-up, and after nearly a month of working here, the only things that I have been sufficiently trained in are bagging ice and cleaning the parking lot with a broom and a bucket of water, neither of which will help me resolve your issues.

I am sorry that this obviously false smile is becoming increasingly difficult to force, and when I say, "Have a nice day!" what I actually mean is "Burn in Hell!"

It would probably be best if you reported all further concerns to someone who gives a fuck and just left me alone.

Thanks. Have a nice day!

Dear Nobody at All,

I just kind of wish someone would need me.

Even a little bit.

I guess maybe what I'm trying to say is that I need someone because I'm alone and it hurts, but I'm currently chained to this spot by some heavy pride. I don't want to say it out loud. I don't want anyone to know that I'm disappointed in the people who can usually make my day, for fear of offending them and making them leave me even more alone.

So I'm just here, by myself & not really okay & not really able to put my finger on why but definitely making things worse, just like I love to do.

Dear Girl in My Old Dress,

I hope that the hand-me-down love is worth it.

I hope that his feelings hold out longer than the attention spans of the other assholes who got sick of fucking you and moved on.

I hope that you manage to grow the fuck up so that you can experience something that lasts longer and feels better than sex with a semi-attractive stranger in the backseat of your car does.

I hope that when the two of you kiss, everyone can forget about how I stained both of your lips and your hearts, and you can just pretend like I never even existed.

I hope that it's that kind of good.

Dear Writer,

I don't know how to tell you that I am not brilliant. I am just a piece of shit like everyone else. I dont know how to let my pen whisper to your ear, "DEAR WRITER, I AM NO ONE! DEAR WRITER, I HAVE NO ASPIRATIONS TO BE SOMEONE BECAUSE BEING SOMEBODY DOESN'T MAKE YOU ANYBODY, ANYWAY!" I am nobody just like you, and we will always be nobody because the people who start thinking they're something special only think so after they sell their souls for some talent they can snort & wash down with handfuls of whoknows & cold swallows of idontcare.

(By the way, I'm sure I'll feel differently in 5 minutes.)

Dear Citydwellers,

The rain is here to wash me and my stupid sorryformyself all down the streets & into the sewers where it'll run into the rivers, seep downstream, all the way down stream, & I'll break the levee like the force of nature hurricane that they all call me to my face & make the whole nation cry with me over second chances & reconstruction & floods that keep on coming & coming that are unstoppable, rising up over everyone's stupid sorryforthemself skulls & grabbing hold of the hearts beating in their caged chests & squeezing until there is nothing left but the hollowed, hallowed vessels that stink to high heaven with mangled mugs that can barely be called faces because everyone was so hard-pressed to get to the top, to get to the pearly gates, that no one bothered to watch where they were stepping. But don't worry about the stench, the rain will wash that away, too. We won't have to remember a thing. It's just a matter of time.

Dear World,

The air is hot and heavy, I can feel it pressing down on my lungs but I am not afraid. The sky is dark like it's ready to explode into thunder & lightning, and I hope a bomb goes off somewhere soon because all of this lack of fear has kind of got my hopes. Don't you see? Can't you feel it? In my best sweat-stained dress with a fresh pair of nothing on underneath, like the prettiest whore in town, who is still nothing but a no-good fucking whore, I'm ready to go. I think maybe I've been ready since the day I was born.

I don't want to love anyone, and I expect everyone to love me.

I guess we'll see how this works out. 

The dead girl on the movie who was alcoholic-unloved-upclose-in-real-life said to me though the screen in black & white: "I've always wanted everyone to love me, and now I love someone and it's so easy."

I want to believe her.

I wish I believed in black & white or love or anything at all.

I wish anything was that easy.

Dear Fokkusu Makuraudo,

I want you to come here and make everything okay, but I have no reason to believe that you will do that...So I am counting down these last two hours until you are free to go, just to count something, just to have some sense of time. I know that you are going to come here and not see me like I want. I already know I need too much. I'm sorry.

I want to invest myself in something before I destroy myself because I can only keep from picking at my imperfections and pulling myself apart when I am attempting to unravel someone else, but then once I do I have to move on. I would like to set to work on your so that I don't kill myself accidentally, but I can't see how it would be worth anything.

I am always betrayed & betraying & sick & stupid & seldom sorry, but beautiful & ready to fuck at any given moment, even when I want to disappear or die, even right now.

I am different but the same. I'm always changing but not seriously. You'll understand if you want to.

My teeth look clean when they are not. I chew a lot of gum. Drink a lot of water, never alcohol. Sometimes I don't need to eat because I am too good for food, but I am never too good for water. Sometimes I don't deserve anything and feel sick to my stomach.

I get away with a lot of tricks, some dirty, some clean. I am always very amused at my own cleverness after this happens.

When I'm quiet I am either soft & sad or very mean & trying to keep it secret.

I make plans in my head and forget that the people I love don't know how to read my mind. I get mad, especially when I'm tired, when I realize that they still don't know how to read my thoughts. They will probably never know.

I like to wonder if I know what love is. I think about love more than I think about God. I think about dying a lot, too. I think about the past and the future when I have to, which is more than I would like to.

I know that you're not going to want me like I will want you to. Maybe you will fuck me, and maybe you will like fucking me and then you will keep seeing me, but why would you ever want someone like me? Why would someone ever want a fuckup like me who just needs & needs & takes? I would give everything I have, but I would take it all from you first. Things you can't get back.

I don't know what love is. I just want someone to kiss me on the head. Tell me it's okay. I really do want it to be okay.

Oh, je t'aime.

I love too much.

Dear Jack-o-lantern Mouth,

Thank you for always being my friend, even when we didn't talk. I'm sorry that I probably take you for granted. 

I still think you walk on water.

Dear,

You have no soul. That's what I loved about you for awhile, but I don't love you, anymore. Goodbye.

Dear Cousin Who is Not Really my Cousin,

I am sorry for making the dogs bark.

I am sorry for never saying "sorry" when you deserve it.

I am sorry for being such a bitch when you are just trying to help.

Dear Girl at the Store,

I wish that you would wipe that terrible look off of your face. 

Why is it that sometimes when you know someone and you see that person you don't acknowledge that you know her at all, even though you recognize her, even though it is unmistakable who you are talking to, even though there was never an ugly thing between the two of you that should make you want to be strangers? Why is that? I'm guilty of it, too; I was just wondering if you had an answer because I'm struggling to find one. 

I swear I don't hate you even though you kept on scowling and looking disgusted, maybe shocked at my presence. Were you under the impression that I was dead and never coming back?

I just don't know sometimes.

Dear Nobody in Particular,

I don't need you. I don't need you. I don't need you. I never needed you.

I don't need anyone.

People are dispensable.

Fuck up, crumple 'em up, & start again on someone fresh.

People are fucking DISPENSABLE.

I will puke all over this couch right now & get up & crawl away just to prove to you how much you never meant to me.

I have youth & I have health & I have heart, god do I have heart, & I've got beauty and brains & I've almost got sanity, & I'm pretty sure almost counts for something, it's more than some people got, & I got the clothes on my back & the shoes on my feet & I got the feet inside the shoes that will walk me wherever the fuck I wanna be & that means I got FREEDOM. I don't have money, but I've still got my soul, which is better than most people. I got 2 Parliaments, 6 cigarillos, & 2 exotic cigars & I don't even smoke. 

I may as well have it all, honey.

Dear Someone in Particular,

There's an ache in the right-hand corner of my mouth reminding me that even when I sleep, I'm thinking of you.

Dear Relentless Optimist,

I feel like a liar because really, I hope I die before I get old. I hope I die soon.

This has been long enough of this life for me.

My mouth, my fingers say something's gotta turn out right, but when I get hold of a pen I start using it to chip away at my own skull in order to unearth my unbridled belief that everyone may as well drop dead right now because life is the same piece of shit story skipping like a goddamn scratched record & you won't get a moment of peace until you die.

Dear Boy I Know By Heart,

Hello?

It's me. My car is dead & my phone is gone, too. It's getting dark, it's always getting dark, & all of the doors to the buildings are locked.

Yours is the only number I have memorized.

Yours is the only number I know by heart.

You're still the only one I know by heart.

You are the only one that I have to call when everything dies. I'm sorry for bothering you every time everything dies. It's still all I know.

I know I've said it before, but I just wanted to apologize again about last time.

...I'll understand if you don't come running.

I get it.

It's fine.

It's just, I'm all out of change, too.

Dear Girl,

You have betrayed me.

...For what reason?

Now I have done the same to you. I am not sorry. Do not be angry, it would only make you hypocritical, & no one likes that.

Bad character.

I'm one to talk, right?

I'll always love you, though.

Always.

To Whom It May Concern:

I got butterflies in my stomach when we kissed. I cannot think of another time when this has happened.

The rest just made me sick.

I don't want to forget or remember. I guess I never thought it would hurt; I never thought it would mean the most to me.

I can't tell you this because what I'm trying not to say is that I'm in love with you, & it's going to ruin everything. We are young & stupid; I'm already sorry.

I am trying to act cavalier, and I'm doing a terrible fuckup job so far. Maybe I should disappear. 

Do you think absence really makes the heart grow fonder? I really wish it did, but somehow I don't think we'll ever know what love is.

Dear Friend,

I would puke all over your shoes if I had the guts, but instead I'll probably just curl up & fall asleep. 

I only wanted you to notice.

Unrequited Everything

I have created this blog solely because of the large number of letters I have been writing lately that I will never deliver to the people that they were intended for.