A new way to miss you:
I no longer see you everywhere
Now that I can see clearly.
It’s not so much that I miss the moments
of heart-stopping mistaken identity,
joyful split-seconds when I think you’ve come back,
followed by self-reproach five times over.
I don’t want to see you
if you don’t want to see me.
And so I’ve begun the process of forgetting your face
and stopped looking for it in crowds.
Now that you’re nowhere to be seen I realise
that nobody really looks like you.
The things I have don’t count
The nice things in my house that are mine alone
The things of yours that you left behind
And I’m one of them.
I wear your hat instead of mine.
My old ones are silly and worn out and too big now,
Somehow my head has shrunk.
Yours is a bit big too, but in a cozy way
And it’s the warmest.
My new hat has a felt flower, it makes me look old, like I’m on my way to buy a huge bag of cat food
Which I am.
You liked me in glasses
But with the new hat and the glasses, and the catfood, I look like someone’s old maiden aunt
Which I am.
I don’t know who I am, so I sort through my closet, clinging to melancholy like it was my youth,
Which it was.
My looks out of fashion and fading
Like I’m becoming a ghost.
I guess try silver bullets next time?
“If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.” – Kurt Vonnegut
“If there’s anything you want….
Come on back, coz it’s all still here.”
Lyrics that remind me sharply of my conflicted feelings. Much the same way 90% of the maudlin lyrics on my music player do.
Okay, he’s always on my mind.
His damn coat is hanging in my front hall, the nice warm one. It’s getting colder out, almost frost, and I haven’t heard from him, wanting the coat back. So I worry.
I don’t know if burning the coat would help. I don’t know if the coat being gone would help, if I could get closure. I hate that word, maybe because it’s another need that I resent having to address. If I knew I was saying goodbye, would that be easier?
The email is roughed out, saved as a draft, which is further than most of them get. But there’s too much subtext to send it.
What if he doesn’t need the coat anymore? What if there’s a new coat in his life? I’m reduced to an idiot girl, over outerwear.
On the topic of subtext: the poster for Girlfriend Experience in my stairwell. I didn’t really like that film. But it’s a statement on my low opinions of relationships. As well as a declaration of movie snobbery. I should get a poster for a documentary. I did get a poster for Manborg! I don’t want to think about what kind of statement that is.
I’m dancing around the subject, mentally and in close physical proximity. Hang on, going to the kitchen for a snack… You see?! I did it again.
The coat.
Hanging there, by my door. What did I need to say about it? I’m suddenly at a loss for words.
Maybe trying with someone was a stupid idea.
The coat has his smell on it, of course. I raided the pockets looking for a lighter, which there, of course, was. Smokers, why do I like them? So gross.
What else about the coat?
Not the coat, but the message about the coat. I can’t not send it. It’s driving me nuts to wait, this awful feeling that the timing has to be right somehow…
Like there’s ever a good time to casually be like “Hey, we haven’t talked in months, how about that weather?”
Damn, Facebook is boring tonight, nothing but Hurricane this and wind that. I’m gonna go have a bath and read a book.
After years of working with my hands, my dexterity is unconciously improving, though strangely I am not less of a klutz.
I drunkenly spit out an ice cube I’m chewing, and without thinking catch it easily. Which leaves my hand in a cold and confused place.
Sunday no longer means anything more holy than a long evening
getting off work early and having the whole evening to kill
nobody having any claims on me for the moment
the week finally over.
And whatever tomorrow may bring for next week
(another week, and that’s how I count the days.
multiply by seven, since you’ve been gone)
at least the rent’s paid up
and the liquour cabinet restocked.
So that’s how I strangle out the martian-colored sunset
as the year gets old and the evenings get darker
one point seven five liters of gin
(I bet the imperial measurement sounds catchier)
Alone in a pretty dress.
it’s a great day for a bike ride JUSTKIDDING.
also- its driving me bananas that any time i post a picture, it shows up twice on the main blog page. what the hell.
asevenyearitch 