Jabberwocky

I’ve made you into a fairy tale monster. Mythic, horrific, contained.

All these years you have existed separate from my reality. You became a bad dream, half forgotten in the morning light but still lingering behind, springing forth when I closed my eyes. You became the shadow in the bushes, the half glimpsed stranger, the eyes felt watching.

I reconciled myself to what was lost because I built so many beautiful walls to protect what was left.

Like a naughty Alice, I could not resist what is through the looking glass though; always searching for the monster I was afraid to find. Peering wide eyed through the mirror as though I believed that knowing where the monster was would keep him at bay. As though believing if I could not find the monster, he had ceased to exist.

Then, there you were at last. Again.

You have not evaporated into mist, after all. You have, in fact, married, fathered, befriended.

I have only one question for you now;

Have you truly changed or have you simply gotten better at hiding your fangs?

Innocents

It's summertime and we have completed our chores. The sky is the sort of blue that breaks your heart and the neighborhood smells of fresh cut grass as lazy bumble bees buzz the tea roses that climb the trellis.

We are in the backyard, licking melted red rivers of Kool-aide Popsicles from the sides of our hands in the shade of the pear tree. Gram would say we've joined the Blackfoot tribe, with braided pig tails and freckled shoulders, the soles of our feet filthy from games of Freeze Tag and Statuary and Mother May I played barefoot across all the lawns on our side of the street.

There is Heather, sprawled out across the bench and there is Gennie perched on the railing, Stefanie beneath her feet in danger of getting kicked. And here are we; three peas of sisters, side by side on the steps. In the fall the Big Girls will go to Junior High and trade in Sardines and Red Rover for Maybelline and Loves me not. But today, we are children. Today we are innocents.

Report

Officer Mustache is tapping his pen on the edge of his notebook, already bored and thinking about breakfast, or doe season, or his truck payment. The red and blue lights flash disco ball glitter on my tears stained face. Officer Tightpants is writing down what I say, disinterested as her partner, but deceitfully engaged.

Dispatch crackles in the background confirming that I am in fact who I say, and for a moment I am taken with the urge to laugh. As though I would lie. As though I would claim this mess I call my life if I didn't have to. But instead I choke it back as a hiccoughed sob and Officer Mustache looks for a minute as though he is present.

Well, Tightpants says We have everything we need. She hands me the carboned report and the card for Domestic Disturbance at the Gallatin County Court House before they climb into the cruiser and leave me alone to watch the bushes for the eye shine that means you were serious when you said you would never leave me alone

Hope

We are in the bed room, long past when we should be. Half dressed in the half light, we are close enough to touch, but only our hands do. The air is heavy with thought of the future and effervescent with its promise.

A single finger traces the line of my cheek. You are so beautiful you say and I half laugh, derisive and unbelieving. No, you say, I mean it. You are so beautiful on the outside, but on the inside, you are so luminous it almost hurts to look at you.

I am quiet for a moment and then lean in to kiss you. I am luminous because you give me hope.

See

I am sitting on the kitchen counter and you stand between my knees. Talk to me you say but I stare over your shoulder. My eyes skip from the worn spot on the cabinet where my hand has opened it a thousand times to the wonky headed black construction paper cat with the yellowed scotch tape tacking it to the door of the cabinet adjacent to it. You get angry because I am ignoring you, but really it's just that I do not want to look at you for fear that I will begin to shout and not be able to stop. There is power in self control that I dare not let slip.

The phone rings and Charley tells me something that doesn't matter and then scolds me for having gotten out of the car the night before to pump the gas as you sat in the drivers seat, ungallant.

How many times have I done that? How many times have I balanced a dozen bags and unlocked front door to bring in the groceries as you sit on the sofa and don't acknowledge me? How many times have I folded the laundry while you complain that I am rolling the socks incorrectly? How many times have I rushed home to do your bidding and how many more times have I called someone other than you when things go pear shaped, because you can not be bothered with me?

This is what I want to say; You don't see me. I know you won't hear me either and so I let my eyes focus on the dust that swirls in the breeze of the fan and say Nothing is wrong even though we both know it's a lie.

Mine

You are shouting in the next room. I can hear you rage, everything that comes from your mouth horrible and meant to hurt. I am beyond tears and still they flow, dropping furiously onto my shirt.

Handfuls at a time I stuff what I grab into a bag. This is mine, this is mine, this is mine. I stuff clothes that don't fit and single shoes on top of damp towels and lid-less hairspray. Bits of jewelry, hopelessly tangled, balled into socks and crammed into jacket pockets fight for space with the cord to the lap top and the birthday card my grandmother sent.

This is mine, this is mine, this is mine; I chant as I cram what is left of my life into a bag meant for trash.

The bedroom door doesn't sit right in the jam and I am lying on rumpled sheets, the scattered contents of my closet half unpacked and piled on the floor in haphazard ruins of a fight surrendered hours later as you sleep peacefully beside me.

Inside my heart the naked thing that guards my soul from you whispers this is still mine.

Away

We are lying on our backs. There are a million stars around us and the river whispers from just over the crest of the hill as it rushes away to join the Snake just beyond the mountains. Behind us, the car door is open and the scratchy radio buzzes country songs from the 50's.


You roll to your side, head propped on your hand and look at me as I look away. There's Orion, I say; but you don't look.

There is a bottle of cheap wine that will give me a headache tipped over and seeping it's last pink drops onto the corner of the moth eaten wool blanket.


A breeze ripples the edge of my skirt. I hear you sigh and I know you are sighing because I am already gone. Whipped away on the breeze like dandelion fluff, I spiral unable to control my rise, unable to prevent my fall.

Divided

In the hazy moments of not-quite-sleep I can feel you there behind me.

The breath of the fan becomes yours, warm on the sleep damp curls at the base of my neck and the weight of the blanket becomes your arm draped across my chest.

In the world of near-dreams I know that the slightest movement would find you there with me, my back to your chest, flank to flank all the length of our bodies. You would pull me closer, touching your lips to the spot just behind my ear where the perfume of satisfaction mingles with the scent of dreams to spin it's magic of one more minute.

But one more minute comes and goes and I know the distance between us is far too great to be crossed by hope and so I roll face to the wall, alone.

The Underside

The problem with explaining the reason that I posted the quote earlier this week is that then I will be telling not just the glossed over part, not just the Disney-fied public consumption version of the truth, but the actual truth. The parts of the story that are ugly. The parts of the story that make me ugly.

Therein lies the rub.

I tell you guys a lot. Everything, it would seem. But do I really tell you anything at all? I wonder sometimes. The truth is, it’s somewhere in between, I suppose. Somewhere between what really happened and what makes a better story. Somewhere between the truth and what makes me look least like the really horrible person I probably am. What I post here is likely to be heavy on sitcom and light on Lifetime Movie of the Week.

I’m just not good at that. While I have zero problem with you knowing that I was thrown out of a bowling alley as a result of my cleavage or that I suck heinously at Pilates or even that I once wound up kissing my neighbor when he used a shovel to save me from a lizard, writing about the time my kid almost died isn’t going to be the first thing I go to.

I tell myself that it’s not why you guys come here. I convince myself that y’all expect profanity laden high-jinks. But that’s not entirely the truth either.

The truth is I don’t tell *myself* the truth, either.

The truth is I prefer the candy coated version of what really happened.

The truth is I prefer to forget.

The truth is supposed to be cathartic though, right? You’re supposed to feel great weight lifted from your shoulders. You’re supposed to let it go and move on, right?

Well I guess we’ll see.

Here then, my friends, is the candy coated version;

Once, I had a boyfriend. And another besides. BF1 never knew about BF2, or perhaps he did and looked the other way.

I did it because I was young. I did it because it was exciting. I did it because I could.

Even the candy coated version is sordid, but not nearly so much as what lies beneath. The tarry smear, indeed.

For that, I suppose, it’s best to start at the beginning.

When I was 19 I had a baby.

When I was twenty I lost my shit.

I lost my shit in the kind of epic way that makes a good coming of age movie. Only instead of the plucky heroine triumphing over adversity with a weepy realization and an uplifting soundtrack, I left.

I walked away from my job. I walked away from my home. I walked away from my boyfriend, my family and my friends.

I walked away from my child.

I walked 785 miles away.

Well, to be fair, I drove. But either way, I left.

My best friend from college gave me a couch to crash on and a friend of a friend found me a job. Weeks went by and I remember none of them. I woke, I ate, I worked, I slept.

All through the winter, it snowed. Each blanket of white insulated me from myself. Each frozen breath lulled me closer and closer to the edge. The farther I moved from my life the more I believed that my life didn’t really need me.

I swallowed a handful of pills with a 1/5th of Gentleman Jack.

I did it on a weekend I knew I would be alone. I didn’t want to be stopped.

When I awoke cotton mouthed, my head was pounding and 39 hours had passed. I had vomited in my sleep. I couldn’t even master suicide.

Days passed and weeks followed them and I marched blindly through them.

Until one day.

It’s funny how, in memory, things take on a new light, isn’t it? It’s funny how, in retrospect, you can pin-point. HERE. This is where everything changed. THIS was the fork in the road. At the time it just seems like Tuesday.

I was alone in the shop. Alone with my thoughts. Alone, completely.

It’s not that he was handsome. It’s not that he was charming. It’s not even that I liked him. It’s just that he was. It’s that, right then, that moment, a tiny crack appeared and he walked right through it.

It’s that, I suppose, I was ready.

The second day, he brought me a rose in a cheap grocery store vase.

The third day he brought me a sandwich.

The fourth day I fucked him on my kitchen floor.

I remember thinking that I should pull out the fridge and clean behind it.

Three or four times a week for the rest of that winter and spring he would come to town with a trinket or a wildflower or a sly, knowing smile. Three or four times a week I would look up and see him standing in the door brushing snow from his Carhardt and kicking it from his boots. Three or four times a week, I would smile. Three or four times a week I forgot that I wanted to die.

Then, one day, I realized living didn’t suck.

Not the sort of AH HA! realization that you might think, but rather one day I wanted to cease to exist and the next I realized breathing wasn’t a chore any longer.

Now I remember those days with a sort of haze around them. Like a movie with a soft focus filter that gives it the quality of a dream, they stretch before me so that I can see now where the corner was turned from darkness back toward the light.

A month or two went by and I began to realize that it was time to go home. Time to go back. Time to try to piece back together what, if anything, was left.

It wasn’t all sunshine and roses. It wasn’t all forgive and forget. There was no do-over.

There were only shards of before left to pick up. Some of them were broken, some were missing.


Some I’ve never found again.

It would seem when you come undone there is no way to mend. The scar will always remain, standing out, ruining the perfect weave of what was with the dropped stitch of despair, the huge black stain of fucking it all up.

There is no forgiveness.

What is left is the memory of how things went pear shaped.

What is left is the stories; the one you tell and the truth.

Je regrette pas (GBE 51)

Of the things I should not have done
Of the things I should not have said
Of the things I should not have felt

You are not one

If I could have been other than I am
If I could have known you other than you are
If I could have altered the path time took

What apology would have been needed?

There is no season for lament
There is no occasion for penitence
There is no latitude for despondence

Love does not regret the price it has paid
Love does not regret the tears it has shed
Love does not regret the hours it has waited

I do not regret you

Beautiful Indifference (GBE 49)

I was relieved when I did not find you. Because no trace of you existed I could convince myself that you did not exist, that what happened was so long passed that it no longer mattered.

I did not, could not, would not, let it go.

You became a fairy tale monster. Mythic, horrific, contained.

I peered around corners expecting you to jump forth and rip my heart from my chest. I tiptoed through the forest of buildings you used to haunt for fear that you would materialize before me. That like a Jabberwocky, you would always await me, making every road impassable.

I mourned what was lost at the same time I added mortar to the walls of this fortress; bricking myself up one pebble at a time.

All the while with one eye on the looking glass.

I am not sure what I thought I would do if, when, I found you staring forth from my reflection. I believed I would feel anger. That every old hurt, real and imagined would rush righteously back, searing my heart.

Then, at last, there you were.

And I felt nothing.

Even if it's only you....(GBE 48)

I am the one that left that twenty clipped to your tarp. I've seen you there before, huddled against the building to keep cool or warm or dry. I have seen the way that you look through me, the same way I am sure that people look through you. I would have stopped to talk to you, but you don't look as though you are interested in my penance so I waited until you disappeared around the corner before I made my move.



I hope that you used it to buy something you needed like a hat or a sandwich, but if you used it to buy a Forty and a dime bag, that's cool too. I wanted to leave you a note to suggest that you call someone. Maybe a friend, maybe your mother. I wanted to tell you that as long as there is someone in the world who remembers what the back of your ears look like when you are fresh from the bath that there is still hope; that as long as there is someone who knows what your laugh sounds like when you are genuinely happy that all isn't lost. But I didn't have any paper so I clipped the bill to the front door of your plastic and pallet board castle and walked away.

Witching Hour (GBE 43; Reality)(Life as Fiction)

I have never forgiven myself for that night.

It doesn't matter now. I’m not sure why I hold onto it so tightly. I’m not sure why that night sticks fast in my memory, frozen, perfectly preserved so that I can smell your aftershave masking the desperation. So precisely detailed that the sheen of sweat on your forehead shimmers surreally in the half light of my memory and I can still taste the salt on my lips from the kiss I gave you more than a decade a go.

In reality, that night was irrelevant to what followed, wasn’t it? You never said a thing to me. You never hinted that anything was other than fine.

I want to say that I wish you had, but I don’t. It is easier for me to take comfort in my ability to say that I had no idea. That I can say I never saw it coming allows me to reconcile myself to it. I understand why you never said anything to me. I have been where you were since then and it’s a place that you can only go alone. There is no room there for anyone else, because there is nothing that can be said to bring you back from there.

I get that.

I understand, now, what it is like to go days, even weeks with no physical contact. I understand that you cease to exist when you do not exist to someone else. I understand the intoxication of an unexpected touch. How it yanks you back into yourself and you are forced to confront what brought you to that point to begin with.

Then, I did not.

Then, you were just a boy I knew. Just a friend. Just a coworker who would always cover my ass when I was inevitably late. Someone to sit with in the cafeteria and mock the yuppie bitches trying to land rancher husbands who smelled of their daddy’s money. You made me laugh, but you did not exist to me.

Now I understand what happened after, but I do not understand what happened that night.

Why did you come to my room if you didn’t want to let me help you? You were there for hours and you never ever let on what was coming.

You didn’t even say good bye when you left, my lipstick print perfect on your cheek in the dim light of the 3am hallway.

They told me the next morning that you were already gone at dawn.

Two hours from my bed to your grave.

Why didn’t you say something? Was there a plan already formed? Was I some kind of test? A good bye? A last chance? Could I have said something, anything to bring you back from there?

Or was the reality of your life that you had believed there was no other choice?

There was a choice.

There is always a choice. You could have said something. Anything. Asked to stay, asked me to stay with you. I would have.

A decade has passed and most of another and if I could have back that one moment, that pause in the hallway when you turned from the stairs to look at me, I would trade my teasing go home for a come back. I would give you one last hug.

Maybe it would have been enough.

In Which I Am Hit On In A Classy Fashion

All of my life people have thought it was okay to say whatever random thing comes to mind to me. This makes my life pretty interesting. It's also taught me to think on my feet. There is very little that you can say to me that's going to leave me speechless.


This is an awesome trait to have I've found because most other people are easily made speechless. Especially when talking to someone whose brain has no filter. Like um...me.


But this isn't about what I say. This is about what other people say to me. ALL THE TIME.


Last week I was standing in an impossibly long, slow line at CVS. Because I'm prone to talking (that's what every teacher EVER wrote on my report card, btw), I strike up a generic conversation with the guy behind me.


Slow line I say.
Ain't DAT the truff he says. Gun be hot, t'day.
That time of year again I reply.


See? See how generic this conversation is? See how I am not making any reference to what I am, say, wearing?


Which was this, by the way.

We stand there in companionable line waiting silence for a minute and AT LAST it's my turn. I put down my Midol, my King Size Special Dark, my Diet Dr. Pepper and my Glamour and as I wait, MINDING MY OWN DAMN BUSINESS, my line mate leans forward, his mouth right by my ear and says


I bet you have amazing nipples.

WTF. Are you kidding me right now? WHO THE HELL says that to a random girl in a check out line on a Saturday morning? If I was at a club, okay. If I was wearing a bikini and dancing around a pole, OKAY. But at CVS? While I'm buying MIDOL? Come on now! So I reply;

I certainly do.

I mean really, what else COULD I say?

Ice Cream Social

I am nineteen and you are twenty one. Our relationship has long since faded to friendship, but I make a point still of seeing you when I am home from university.


It is late November and we are sitting huddled on a park bench eddied from the wind. My left hand is in your pocket and my right thumb worries, worries at the cuticles of the other fingers. You're spinning the ring on my finger and we are talking about something or nothing.


There is a silence, companionable, still, inviting and I blurt I am pregnant with no preamble. You don't say anything, just spin the ring, forward and back. At last you say Is it his? and I nod, because I can not say his name.


You are quiet again, spin, spinning the ring and ask who knows? and I say no one. This isn't wholly true, but is true enough. The women at the clinic know. My flat mate knows. You have stopped spining the ring and slide it instead, up and down my finger, up and down, up and down and then at last all the way off and you are on one knee before me. Will you marry me? You ask and I know that you are serious.


Having a child you did not plan is one thing, marrying somone you do not love is another and I shake my head no. You hesitate a moment longer and I can almost taste your relief in the cold, wet air. Well, then you say as you return to the bench, pulling me closer, my face pressed against the frigid nylon of your parka, we'll just say it's mine then.


This is a very neat solution to my problem. A good, honest man to claim a bastard beget by a bastard. I can not let you do it though. Your parents, mine; there would be a wedding anyway.


You know this too, but you don't back down. You are determined to be my savior. I do not want or maybe can not allow myself to be saved at this point. I am too far gone into myself, into this mess that I have created to be brought back by simple goodness.

Marco Polo

We always danced around each other. I had a boyfriend and you liked me. You had a girlfriend and I lusted you from afar. You and she became "The Couple". He and I were "so cute". Finally, years go by and you are alone and so am I. The Boy plays in the next room singing a song about nothing while we get high in the living room and listen to Ella Fitzgerald.

You're leaned back against the mismatched pillows and I have my head in your lap, legs dangling over the arm rests. You pet my hair and pass me the joint. I miss the way she folded the towels you say at last. I tilt my head back, looking up to you as always. You blow smoke through your nose and stare at the ceiling. I have nothing to say to this but I know that you have told me something profoundly heart breaking. I should have had her show me how she got them all to be the same size; you say, I should have paid attention. You looked down at me then, eyes red and I understood what love was.