i drink my wine, i listen to the melancholy songs that fill my soul with longing and echoes in the emptiness. you sing: i'm afraid of everyone. i don't have the drugs to work it out.

i try to forget. forget my dreams. i am already forgetting your face. i am already letting you go, join the flood of the past. it was as i had always known it would be, in the dusty corners of my forgotten heart, too good to be true. too lovely to be real. so much more than i could ever hope for, though exactly as i have always wished. and you, you.

if only your ghost would leave me to suffer in peace.

i fell down a well of hope
when the winds picked up
and swirled around us
you just stood back and watched it all
dissolve

i need to fill in these empty spaces
distractions to kill the time
the voices inside
start a war

but the dreams are so real
the beautiful trees in bloom, cherry
grass oh so green, late afternoon
and the wings we grew
violent

it will bring you
bring you to the ground
and i will leave you
on your knees
a face to taunt my heart dark
forever

lose it, loose the knot now
the static that tries to hold you back
the world that would pin you down
escape escape

this is your life.

a while ago, he told her: life isn't ever going to be like a movie, why can't you understand that?

she will always hold a secret hope in her heart that someday, she will find the perfect life.

he doesn't return her calls anymore.

she buries herself in distractions, books, the television, technology. short and meaningless conversations. she dreams of light streaming through her eyelashes, making shadows of cliff faces, sun-burst bright behind the hair of a man's head, making a shadow of his face, knowing that there is laughter.

i want to play piano and dance ballet. i want to write beautiful prose and live underwater. in the warm caribbean sea i move with grace, truly free. someday i will fly down the mountain's face, at cj's. and at the bottom i will find what i have always sought... peace.

i dream of horses. being borne away with elegance, with power. radiant in the afternoon sun.

'ça suffit.'

it is not the holidays yet, and i am already into love actually, amelie, and sliding doors. oh, and pride and prejudice too, the one with colin firth (i love him). i guess its never too early to wallow in hopeless romanticism.

secretly, i hope this is never seen. but i pray you read my mind.

i let my love go, i let you fly free into the open air of the miles between us. if you think of me, remember me. if you stoop to take my hand, i will curtsey appropriately and hide my eyes, until you dig my heart from my bloody chest and warm my blue fingers with your breath. everyone can see how little i deserve you, your undying affection - i am but a poor sailor upon the seas of youth/despair/financial insecurity. and you are so, so much my superior. how you have charmed me, and i believe. and god knows how i love you so wholly. fuck timing! it has nothing to do with anything. if things are meant to be they will. this world is only a few miles wide when we have things like aeroplanes. this life was made for spontaneous pursuits.

sure i want all this shit. moneycarclothesgold. but i want the best. a tt, it has to be silver otherwise you miss the impact of the black grill and it looks so good like that. and custom leather knee-high riding boots, black and chestnut two-toned, and the skinny legs that are prerequisites to boots like those. i want white gold and i don't give a shit about diamonds, but gimme watches and bags and shoes. give me the sunnies and hair and the body to match, please. glamour. its all this city craves.

all i have to offer is angst.

remember that time we danced in the doorway? i don't know what song it was, something about clouds maybe? it was such a silly moment but it is one of those that comes back to me when i think of you. god, how disillusioned life seems after everything. all i want is to get on my bike and ride down to the road, just past the beach. the empty stretch where you can always steal a moment alone. contemplative and cool in the east wind, looking out towards the lighthouse across the harbor. that water. nothing could nurture me more. it quietens my disturbed soul. i am realizing now what i always suspected to be true, that my time underwater was what made me. meditation. and now i am trapped in this glass and cement cage. i saw the sea today, only the turgid water of the bay. there are too many people here. if i cannot be with you i want to be with no one. how impossible to escape, this modern world.

here's to hoping this last glass of wine and my favourite new band will enfold me in catatonic arms and let me sleep in peace. no more dreams of your face distorted, disappointed, unloving. no more waking to the reality that you are gone and i am alone. if only your body was cocooned around me in this cold. if only i could go back. i am here, but my {xxx} is with you still. with these songs i attempt to fill in the spaces. like sea water through cupped hands, my heart runs out.

 i am with you.

*Can't help myself but count the flaws/Claw my way out through these walls/One temporary escape/Feel it start to permeate
We lie beneath the stars at night/Our hands gripping each other tight/You keep my secrets hope to die/Promises, swear them to the sky
The bittersweet between my teeth/Trying to find the in-betweens/Fall back in love eventually/yeahyeahyeah* {Young Blood}

until, now... happy.

things turn around.

everyone but  you.

silence.

the garage:
no less than six bicycles, two motorcycles (possibly functional), one motorcycle (boxed), two pairs of cross-country skis, a gas grill, five cases of beer, a box of sprouting tubers, our old kitchen cabinets, a folding boat, several vacuum cleaners (probably nonfunctional), pieces of at least three home-gym machines, a basket of dried gourds, a table saw, a bookshelf, two cat carriers (one circa 1970), what was at one time a workbench now piled a foot high with stuff, tools, ladders, a sack of onions, tires, a machine i don't recognize, boxes of photos, three coolers, two fans, boxes labeled "garage," bags of plastic recycling, bags of stuffed animals from our childhood, rakes, brooms, fishing things, gardening things, cans of paint, an instant canopy "64 sq. ft. of shade" never opened, an old tape deck radio, strings of christmas lights, a saddle, pieces of wood in all shapes and sizes, old suitcases, folding chairs, a broken chair, and a roll of white mock-tile linoleum.

just outside of the garage sit one 1962 triumph TR-something (was last functional when i was about nine, nineteen years ago, and has rarely been seen outside its blue tarp wrapping ever since), six rubbish/recycling bins, two stacks of plastic chairs, and a section of white picket fence.

it is one of the great tragedies in my life, that i was born an american. (another, that i was born half-chinese, without the blonde hair, blue eyes, and long legs of my distantly-german-scottish-french mother.) my soul, i have always felt, has resided in britain. in the ragged cliffs and angry seas, the rolling soft green pastures with their hedgerows and sheep, the sturdy ponies and muddy wellingtons, ancient stones and viking burial grounds. the romanticized country pub with its fire warm in winter and dark beer and simple food. charles dickens and j.r.r tolkien (though his history was mostly invented, i always wished it was real), mary poppins and most of all jane austen. spencer and chaucer and milton and shakespeare. king arthur and sir gawain and beowulf and once a novel about a girl-paige with violet eyes who could wield a sword better than a king. what history could stand up to that? certainly not a history full of stuffy old men putting things in writing with plume-pens and those stupid pants. i was never very much beguiled by the vast expanses of unexplored territory: The West. i have been raised in the west, and it is lovely, but never so romantic as the unknown lands of the old country. even the native americans, whom i do admire, especially in their wisdom regarding the earth, and animals, and their quiet reverence of all things, have never held my heart. i feel more connected to my other ancestry (though it is not by blood, as far as i know), of the ancient polynesian explorers. the native hawaiians who were strong, dark, of the land and more so of the sea, who sang in a beautiful language and believed in mischievous menehunes and the power of the waves. they were warriors, they were royalty. they have eleven letters in their alphabet, only the letters that make the most melodious sounds. and the others -- the maori, with tattooed faces and violence and enduring art. those who were great navigators, ship builders, sea farers. i feel my soul borne on the same winds. i will find your stars to guide me, but never home, because home is nowhere. home is so many disparate places; the tops of mountains and the bottom of the sea floor, a ship, a forrest, a heart that will never stay still.

it was just a bad dream. reality wasn't like that. we were good. you loved me. i guess the ghosts of the past still haunt me sometimes. they come in sleep to punish what fortunate time i've had. i will never let myself go.

i am torn in two.

i need distractions to keep me from facing this reality. please lie to me and say everything will be okay. these things that used to be mine, in a past life. it was all so familiar now alien and strange. the future presses against me, tomorrow so close, so bleak. this is not my world, i have no need for these things. these people that are not mine. what do i do with this?

there are some things that scar your soul forever.

as we all stood there, waiting, holding our collective breath, he could not wait any longer. death is a merciful shepherd. he could not even speak. i do not know if he even felt us there anymore. we knew it was coming, that last slow shallow breath. and then we were there without him. a body is just a shell, a loose cage. i wanted so badly to run, to never stop running. but i could do nothing, just stand and hold on, to my mother, my sister, his sister, his mother, his brother. i was twenty-one in 2004. he was almost twenty-four. almost. twenty-six days later, i got my first tattoo. it was going to say “never forget” in latin, in a banner underneath, but that would have been superfluous. i will never forget who it is for.

--

we were in the hallway. at the foot of the stairs, outside my apartment door. i think there was a carpet on the old draughty wood floor. i froze. it is what i am most ashamed of. it caught me by surprise is all. the fierceness of his grip on my shoulders. the look in his eyes. he was not then the man i thought i knew. it was nothing, but it was everything. was that the same night he locked me out? that jon stayed on our couch, when we figured out he was crazy?

xxxxx – the other night, thursday, when we got home and i undressed, two small marbles fell out of my bra (haha, weird). i vaguely recall receiving them from somebody in tranqs, as if they were a personal treasure, so i put them in the only place i could keep them since i had no pockets. i can’t remember for the life of me who they came from. but i wanted to keep them and now i’ve left them in my abandonded room. i miss you.

i am going back to an empty room and a narrow bed, the same i’ve had since childhood. it is all the same and it is unfamiliar. it is all empty. a bleak wintry desert road punctuated by a hopeful turning in the distance that will be a visit from you.

i watch lightning from the black window. we are above it, above the clouds, above the earth. we are somewhere between where you sleep and where i will set foot in my country for the first time in fourteen months. i wish it were not so soon. i wish we could go on like we had been. forever and forget the world. when we kissed that was the only existence i could fathom. the universe collapsed into your lips. your hair beneath my hands. a caress. i never want to open my eyes. i explode into stars. just our atomic particles streaming into space. sparking light in a dark dark world.

i cried on the ferry as we left the island behind. i watched the cays recede and disappear. i’ve left my home, again. i know so much about that place. it is embedded in my soul. the world beneath the water is as familiar now as anywhere. it is more intimate and secret than anything spoken aloud. what is waiting for us there. if we hadn’t turned in just the right moment that manta would fly as gracefully behind us with no thought of what we’d miss. i know this happens all the time. the creatures that surround me unseen i am comforted somehow. just the fact of their existence is enough. its enough. i always think, if i am patient, if i relax my mind and my eyes, the sea will share with me its secrets. what am i without the sea? i do not know anymore. i cried for leaving her.

utila is my home and so are you.

i am shaking. in fear of your indifference. i want to ask you, but i won't be able to bear the weight of no, maybe, you're a cool girl but...

its like punching in a dream, breathing life into the nightmare.

its all i think of these days. i can't eat, can't sleep. oh wicked time, why won't you stop my beating heart?

this is the same.same but different. i don't even know you! i love you! but i am just a crazy girl.

so... i hope this doesn't sound strange, but despite not really knowing you, you seem cool and i'd like to hang out sometime. even though we are vagabonds living in different cities, different countries, what is there to lose?

i admit, all i ever want is to be embraced, adored, essential. and is it so wrong of me to want to go where you are, to let you see that i feel for you. there must be a strength in the way you hold onto me. even if just for a whisper, a lie, a blink, it must be something. if it is not, then what is the point of living?

sweet... disposition

in that moment, it was decided. a moment of... we talked about the song. the song was all we could say. our hearts swelled. a dream, a laugh. and i could not even look you in the eyes as we parted. no, it is not better that way. i wish there were more moments to follow, moments frayed into eternal time, space. there was something there.

ah, such a dream. it is difficult not to fall in love every other day. and if i chance to chase you, would you be pleased?

this is the part where you should shut your eyes. this is a series of bad decisions. this is going under the break, sucked back into the wave. echoes of strange voices with robotic tones and throbbing bass lines, darkness and coloured light. i am not too -- for experimentation. i remember what you told me last night, i wish i would have known back then. but its too late now. and its better this way, anyways. sometimes friends are just that.

and now he's gone, and that's good too.

i thought of you* last night, and i wonder if i made a mistake. there would be regret edged into your* memory either way. but i'll see you* again, that i'm sure of.

lose losing lost

adrift.

the better i begin to know myself, the more i have come to realize that i am partially insane.

(you may be right, i may be crazy, but it just might be a lunatic you're looking for...)

embrace what we have been given.

sometimes i wish i could fill in the blanks, the negative spaces and black holes surrounded by memory. fading in/out like some scratchy radio signal in the middle of the desert. i see your face, i know the color of the shirt you were wearing. you were surrounded by darkness and engulfed in sound. i hope you smiled. i hope i didn't say anything too stupid or revealing. i suspect you are too young, but its the summer. lets listen to best coast and watch the sun set over this island. we could hold hands. i could lean my head on your shoulder. we could stretch this moment into an infinite memory.

i want to change lives.

i want to change lives with someone else.

how was it last night, with no strings attached? was it everything you ever dreamed it would be?

random hearts

my oldest friend in the world is getting married. we were friends even before we were born. we haven't always been close, but have always had an easy friendship. we were once mistaken for twins when we were kids, even though he is blonde.

the first toll of the bell.

you may be the coldest person i know, but i am the cruelest by far.

random hearts that beat for each other, random hearts in a cruel cruel world. (p.s. it was that friend who gave me this song, how coincidentally these disparate thoughts collide)

its the bliss that's missing.

again, again

i chased an eagle ray on a single breath of air the other day, and it was better than flying. the silence, my estranged friend, met me once again. disco fish and other small wonders among the lettuce corals. what dreams are made of.

one evening i dreamed that rays shifted shapes with sharks and we were standing on the bridge of atlantis. you are still shifting shapes. it is a different grin each time we meet, sometimes soft sometimes sinister. i have an uneasy feeling that we are making enemies again.

it is beginning to sound like a record on repeat. it is beginning to feel the same. again again again. its not you. its not me. its both and nothing and everything at once. its this mindset. i am resenting this place. 

royal blush

watching the wedding the other day it seemed so ridiculous. i was never one of those girls. dolls are creepy and so is commitment. lace and flower trimmings and churches and and vows cut into diamonds. i have mixed feelings. for so long i never thought i would ever...but now i am beginning to think it is something i will one day want my life to be. not the in the eyes of god shit but the forever part.

and she is younger than i and who wouldn't want that? thousands, no, millions, screaming your name and to be young and beautiful and powerful and famous. a prince! who wouldn't want that?

sleep is for the weak

this place is a whirlwind of chaos drunkenness laziness. i couldn't sleep if i wanted to. maybe if i was drunk. it is fantastic and at the same time i am weary of this life. no, not this life. certain elements of this existence. there is so much vacuousness sometimes. how can you not feel the pull of the emptiness? to stuff cotton into the wound is all. the temporary fixes plug for a bit but never clot the blood. sex and substance.

fucking german keyboards all backwards. fucking israeli boys. i will never sleep tonight.

in the eye of minor storms i am lost. oh tornado pick me up and twirl me into the air into oblivion. find for me the passion i so desperately crave. find for me a face that will mirror mine in the light in the eyes. i know that there will never be one that can know every nuance, but is it not right that there should be one that will try?

if this is heaven

i think i died last night. my memory is a big black hole. my lungs are sore. my ribs ache. my stomach, well...

i had dreams that i wanted to write down when i awoke but those faded from memory as soon as light touched my eyelids. they were dreams of you. and you. and you.

love is not blind, only ignorant. or really, more likely, it knows exactly what it is doing, but turns and laughs in your face as it reaches groping hands out to the wrong man. love is shallow and it is not blind because if it were, i would be okay with the good boy with the less handsome face. and i have not yet learned to close my eyes.

to all the boys

watched the sun break the dark of night from the bowels of the bar after nineteen hours straight of work, oh wait i went home for one hour, so not nearly but close enough... the worst thing was being sober. i don't know why red bull and rum makes me feel ill but a pastelito and a joint at six am was good to get to sleep.

the weather has turned so strange these past few days wind on the water fog and no sun to be seen but feeling the humidity. its waiting coiling to spring into a fury of gustiness or oppressive heat. i want to leave. i need a change i'm chasing a feeling i need to move to breathe

the shadows of my life are shifting swirling while i stand and observe. its not enough. so i'll let this wind lift me and carry me your way even if only fleetingly. we'll see.

your face in my mind in my memory