Five Fingers, Five Friends

Five Fingers, Five Friends.

Thumb was rotund and short, with crooked teeth and a furrowed brow. He had thick hair, baby blue eyes, and a sniffing nose. He liked to brood and take control. When a conversation went a way that didn't please him, he said so, and changed the subject. He had little man's complex and puffed up his chest to show that he was strong. Deep inside, underneath the layers of skin and cells, he was soft, or so I thought. Who is to say really?

Thumb and I met for drinks. The red candlelight enunciated his bone structure and his eagerness to get over his craving for Spanish rice. He licked his lips and talked. I was surprised because I thought he was a good listener, but maybe not tonight. He tried to kiss me underneath the moonlight, but I was hesitant. It could have been worse. It could have been better. But I did feel like I knew him for years.

Mr. Pointer was scrappy and intense, with deep sunken eyes and hair of amber. His face reminded me of a delicate skeleton's, harsh and vulnerable, bare and angry. Small nose, long lashes. Time had changed my range and motion with him. Began as a budding flower, then opened to reveal the pollen, and now the falling, browning petals. More like egg shells and shards of glass.

Mr. P and I spoke over the phone. His voice always sounded different, and thus I constantly forgot who he was until I heard the gravel on the other end of the line. Agitation and exasperation hung on his lips like dried saliva. He had a way of ending things without ending them. He'd slowly stop responding, give a curt reply, or spit out a sarcastic remark - all which shut me down. The seed was no longer a seed, but I wanted to keep the remaining petals from wilting. Not sure how, and he won't tell me. He thrives on secrets, though he claims not to keep any.

Mid was goofy and lanky. He towered over me and the other minions like the jolly green giant, except not green. He looked stoned, though he wasn't, technically. He was against the reefer, against alcohol, against chemical enhancement - this turned me on. We could talk for hours, but it was only a conversation after I asked it to be. He was kind and that was clear. In his touch and his hesitation to touch.

Mid and I met for a movie. It was the only time we could meet, because he lacked motivation and was stuck in a rut, literally. He lived in a pot hole, on the side of the road. The flick was fun and we laughed and I put my head on his shoulder and he awkwardly tried to put his arm around me. It was uncomfortable and he could tell, so he removed it. This was sweet, and I enjoyed the gentleness of the giant.

Ring had green eyes engulfed in blue and strong, yet feminine hands. His smile lines told the story of his heart, and made him incapable of having a winning poker face. Ring was chivalrous - he opened doors, paid for meals, checked in every day, gave practical advice, and genuinely cared.

Ring and I sat in the park. He wiped the black off my face with a damp touch. We laughed after time, but he was simple. In darker topics of conversation he got silent and giggled nervously and changed the subject. But maybe this was good for me. Maybe I need the ring without a tarnished jewel.

Pinky was short and disarming with round spectacles and a piercing nose that went well with his bright eyes. His openness, his experiments frightened me. He loved life, that was clear. He was an amalgam of movement and senses and sight and sound and touch. He would talk to a random stranger, and feel as though he were talking to God. Maybe he wasn't cynical enough for me.

Pinky and I danced together. We bobbed our heads to the beat - the only two on the dance floor. We sipped our bubbled drinks, encased in flutes, letting the glass clink together, but not our bodies. We stepped outside and the night went from light to dark, from fast to slow. The world stopped spinning and I hoped he kept his distance.

Those are my five fingers. They are connected to my palm. Each one different, with a separate purpose and function, some more necessary than others. And yet they all have wrinkled knuckles, painted nails of the same chipped turquoise color, blue veins, callouses, and tremors.

I think I'll cut all my fingers off with a sharpened knife, let the blood drain out and the bones fall to the ground. Without my fingers, I can still feel, I can still touch, my palm grazing against surfaces and skin.

I won't be able to attach, because fingers cling and hold and grab and pull. Without them there is no latching on, no tugging, no pushing away. Just touching.

But, I think that's all I need. Because if you don't attach, you don't have to let go, and then it doesn't hurt when there is nothing to hold on to but air.

Jar of Poisoned Memories

Inspired by Adele's song "Turning Tables" and also inspired by life and the subconscious, per usual.

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Next time, I'll be braver.
Next time, I'll be my own savior.

I had a dream that I was strong. That I belonged. To myself.
I dreamt that the waves crashed over me, covering me in a bath of clean, the crests white and frothy like a cappuccino, and you caressed my skin as though it were a baby's. I dreamt that we dipped our toes into the sand and it was wet and grainy and felt delicious. We laughed. I pinched you so hard you bled and tears collected in your eyes. It made me excited.
The next day you didn't call. Or I didn't answer. I won't know which, because I had tossed my phone into the toilet, or was it the ocean? I'll never speak to you or anyone again. I'll just skip in the grass garden of my heart, where leaves fall from the trees, and flowers smell like flowers, and honey summons the bees, and I feel serene. Then dark shadows came. I ran for shelter, but there was none. I saw you lurking, you wore a hood, and you didn't have a face. But I didn't fear you this time. I ran to you and scoffed into the dark, cavernous hole where your head should be. I laughed so hard I fell onto the ground and I rolled down the hill.
The day after, I sat alone, on a cloud. Or was it my pillow? I don't know the difference. When I am strong, I lose focus. I forget who I am and where I'm going, because I try so hard to be brave and to fight and to forget. I forget to forget. Remember to forget! I say it, over and over. Then I forget what I'm trying to remember to forget. I do remember I was sitting on white. I held my pencil to my lips, the eraser felt like a piece of bubble gum and I had to scold myself when I tried to chew it. My journal was empty. You were gone and so were my words. I tried to write, but the pencil had no lead. I felt you behind me. I breathed you in, smelled your scent, heard your beating heart. When I turned around, you slapped me. With your words, of course. So I stood up, and I took my pencil and I wrote hateful things about you, in capital letters, across the walls and the ceiling and then I bit off my eraser and spit it out so it could not be used. Then I remembered the pencil had no lead.
The following day, I sat Indian style, with a jar of jellybeans, searching for watermelon, with the fleshy pink insides - the way you liked it. I let the watermelon beans collect in the folds of my dress, and then I picked out all the good flavors and left the ones you hated: cinnamon, buttered popcorn, and being nice. The next time I saw you, I was going to give this jar to you as a passive aggressive present. It made me giddy.
The next week - for days had passed of nothingness and so much that I can't recall any of it - I waited impatiently in the rocking chair. I rocked so hard, I fell right through to the wood floor. I stood up and paced around the room. You told me you'd come. You'd left a note on my door. A little yellow post-it  that said "I'll be there" - I had assumed you'd meant today. I thought I knew you. I thought you'd be here by now. But you weren't. But you're not. I guess you were only there when you wanted to be, not when I needed you to be.
A month went by and I was dry and bare as a turkey bone at the end of a big Thanksgiving meal. I wandered off the plate looking for my meat, but it had been eaten by the fat uncle who always sat at the end of the table and demanded the leg. It was swallowed and digested, and I had to accept that I was a mere bone now, about to be tossed to the dog. I scampered off the table, or I suppose I fell off, and succumbed to my fate of entering a slobbering mouth. This wasn't very brave, this wasn't very strong. I had failed.
A year's gone by. That's funny. It makes me smile. But when I look in the mirror, I look like I'm smelling a bad smell, because the smile looks forced and my nose is scrunched and my eyes water. I guess it's not funny. A year of trying to be a man, a pirate, a warrior has gone by, but I'm a withered, unwatered fern leaf. I'm brown, not green, and I've fallen off the plant. I wonder what's happened to you. I only imagine because we don't speak. I thought we were connected, so I guess. And when I see your hands, and the way you walk, and your feet under your sheets, and your blinking eyes, it feels very real, but it's not. If you were a figment of my imagination I could control you. But unfortunately you're real. I think. So I have to let you go, and free you. Once my budgerigar, Sky, was let out of his cage, and his wings weren't clipped so he flew out and he never came back. I thought he loved me. The next day it rained. I was certain he had died. He didn't know how to survive. My mom told me he probably flew off to some exotic tropical land and was eating banana chips. I cried and cried and felt abandoned and angry. We should have clipped his wings, but we were trying to spare him.

Next time I will inflict the pain.
Next time I will know better.

Left-Overs

This is funny. And it's happened before. I opened my old creative writing folder on my laptop, and found this gem - this heart-wrenching love splattering that I wrote over a year ago. It's funny because since I have written this, I've felt the same thing about 4 more times with 4 other people. I just find it slightly amusing that life is a cycle, where we are constantly putting ourselves into similar situations (whether it's conscious or not, I don't know) or repeating actions over and over again. It's a sad kind of observation, because these aren't necessarily good actions. This passage is about feeling like left-overs, about feeling like I've been discarded for something better, about feeling unwanted. I've felt this over and over again. It's funny...but it's not. 

Regardless, I like the rhythm of this piece, because it was raw and it's the way my brain works - constant and punctuated and on-going. I am assuming and some-what hoping the subject of this passage is a universal feeling, which is why I will post my vulnerability for all the world aka my mom and the 3 other people that read this blog (ha). If nothing else, hopefully I will come across this later in life and have a soft pity for my old self. The future me, having experienced true care, will smile with withheld tears and compassion for the old me who suffered so when it came to love, knowing that it got so much better, and so much easier with time, wisdom, and age. Let's hope. Fingers crossed.

WARNING: This piece get's emotionally intense and depressing. But we all have those moments right? Yeeeeesh. 

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I saw her today. It was jarring. I didn’t expect to see her. I didn’t want to see her.  I didn’t know she’d be there. I was caught off guard. Unawares. I didn’t know you still felt that way about her. Whatever way that is. I didn’t know you still felt it. I didn’t know that feeling, whatever it is, still coursed through your veins, like tobacco on your lips after a cigarette. I thought you’d given up the addiction, if that’s what it was. Who knows. What do I know? I know nothing. So I’m forced to guess, to estimate, to guestimate. I’m left to analyze, to wonder, to scrounge for details. I’m left searching my brain for memories and words and bits and pieces so I can put together this puzzle that doesn’t even matter. I’m racking and ranting and reveling over you and this girl. Why? I saw her today, and I didn’t expect to, but I also didn’t expect to feel anything. I thought I was over you. Maybe that’s where the shock comes in – not that you are not over her, but that I’m not over you. I feel like left-overs. The kind you don’t eat the next day, but that sits in the refridgerator for days, until the whole kitchen starts to smell, and finally someone throws it away, like you threw me away. I was her left-overs. I was your left-overs? Whose left-over was I? Regardless, I meant nothing to you. I was just some distraction. I was temporary, momentary. Like a blink, a wisp, a breath of air, but an inconsequential one, like a sigh, an unnecessary one, like a gasp. Not even a gasp. Gasps are too momentous. It hurts. I won’t deny it. It hurts to not feel wanted or needed or desired or thought about. It hurts that you could have me, but choose not to or don’t want to. You did have me, but you didn’t like it. It wasn’t your thing. Me. I wasn’t. I wasn’t your thing. I was just sort of there, for amusement. It was nothing. I guess I knew it was nothing and thought it was nothing too. Until now. Now I’m reveling and racking and wondering and pondering and analyzing and questioning and fantasizing. What are you two doing now? I bet you’re making love. Is it sweet or sour? Do you like it or is it out of habit? We are creatures of habit, you know. Since I’m pessimistic I bet you like it. A lot. I bet you are so happy. With her. I bet you never think about me. Some girls aren’t like this, I realize. Some may find ways to make themselves feel better – may think you are unhappy or feeling neutral with this other girl, this “other woman”. But not I. I don’t. Why do I make myself unhappy? Why do I choose to make myself unhappy? I think I’m being realistic. But maybe I like being miserable. Maybe I like feeling “bad”. Who knows. Who cares. Who gives a fuck. You certainly don’t. I bet you haven’t thought 2 seconds about me since we last saw eachother – since that fateful day when I gave myself away to curiosity, sex, and you. Since I gave myself away to temptation, and destruction, and self-loathing. Since I gave myself away to someone who didn’t even want me. Good thing I didn’t give all of me. Good thing I didn’t fall in love with you. Now that would have been disastrous. People say things are more complicated than they seem. That we never know what goes on behind closed doors, and we never will. But maybe we do know, but are too scared to face it. Maybe I face it and that’s why I’m left feeling empty inside. I don’t think this is more complicated, though I wish it were. I think its plain and simple. I’m thrown away left-overs, that you haven’t thought about since you took the trash out. You’re eating at a fancy restaurant now, your favorite restaurant, the one you’re a regular at – and you are loving every minute of it. Well guess what, I still exist. I’m still in the garbage can, right where you left me. 

Drowning in Cake Batter

I forgot that other people, aside from my mum, may read this blog. One such reader asked why I hadn't updated in a while. The truth is, I've been too busy and in my spare time, I do a lot of thinking...not so much writing. Recently, the business has settled a bit, tho the hiatus shall be brief, and the wallowing in my sorrows has started to come back. And, obvi, whenever that happens, I take to the pen, or the keyboard...So here is something cheery. NOT. Here is some free-form about how situations are always so much bigger and more complex than they seem. About how people we have relationships with often stand in as symbols for something of greater meaning, like our psychological make-up or something in our past, or our "character flaw". If only everyone understood that, and stopped thinking I was a middle school girl who loved talking about boys. It's not that, you dim-witted ninnies. It is so much more.
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I miss something that wasn't there. Someone who wasn't there. He plagues me - Loneliness...and he who shall not be named. Men who have too much power over me, who control me, who lure me with their fingers into a trance. Men who I long to possess and whom I obsess over. Men who were never there and are not there still. Who show their face than remove it. Who taunt me and tease me and then say it was nothing. But to me it was. How silly of me. To think of men when others think of politics or school or interior decorating. I think of men. That is my weakness. I think of how they are not there and how I want them to be. How I want to fix it, change it, scrape it up, ooze it out, melt, cry, be held. Why doesn't anyone love me? "Because you don't love yourself". No. I don't love myself because no one loves me. What is life without love? What is life without being needed, without being wanted? What is life if you just exist for yourself? It is empty. It hurts. It is not enough.

Scrape the remnants of the bowl and lick your fingers. It'll satisfy your taste buds for a minute. And then when it settles, you'll crave more. But the bowl is empty, the ingredients gone. No, this is not souffle, you fool. This is my heart. This is my fucking guts, we are talking about. My bottomless-pit of a stomach that aches and yearns to be full and filled and forever satisfied. Never enough. It's a wonder I am not obese.

Stuffing my face with fruitless attempts at love. At stolen, contrived, pulled, contracted moments of faux emotion to feel a glimpse of reciprocity that isn't even real. So that when I watch two people in front of me, holding hands, touching her knee, rubbing his back - it doesn't hurt as much because...I had that...once.

I can't be alone. It is not boredom. It's the inability to distract. The sounds and thoughts and perspective drown out the world. I can't see or hear reality, just my beating heart and the wind in my ears, whistling, and the obsessive thoughts and the wandering thoughts and the thoughts and the thoughts and the thoughts. STOP.

I can't.

Unless you're here. Whoever you are.

The Clock

I wrote this poem, and for some reason it makes me laugh. I don't usually write in rhyme scheme or write poetry about men wanting to die. The whole concept is just bizarre. Maybe it's the "woh, woh" ending, maybe it's because it reminds me of those chain e-mails from the nineties where if you didn't send it to 10 people something terrible would happen to you, and the poems were always corny and written by a middle schooler. Regardless, I kind of like this piece because I don't typically write like this or about this subject matter, and I think it's important for artists to step outside of what they normally create. So here it is...I'd say enjoy, but that's not really the point. This is about our survival instinct, about fighting to die, and then fighting to live. This is about feeling trapped between life and death - wanting both. Being stuck in daily purgatory. Oh jeez, I'm getting dark. Just read the poem. 

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Tick tock goes the clock

He wonders when this will stop

Bang bang goes the gun

Shoot it now, shoot it son

Bullet penetrates the skin

Piercing, pulsing, blood within

Red runs down his chest and cheek

He stumbles, he slows, he feels weak

Gravel and cement becomes his bed

But now he doesn’t want to end

Frantic, pacing, adrenaline

Grabbing onto life - must win

Someone help me! Someone, please!

Save me, love me, I’m on my knees

It’s too late, the clock’s run out

His cries are unnoticed, no one hears his shout

He is gone now, from this earth

He chose to leave, he had no worth

Now

I haven’t written about you yet. I’m not sure why. I’ve written about many of them, but not you. Did you not inspire dark emotions? I thought you did. Did you not reach my core? I felt it sink. Or is it simply because I feel too much and will not allow myself to delve into the depth, as I usually do?

Let me write about you now. Let me write about your small eyes. They did not peer into my soul, but I think they yearned to. And your thin lips, which at certain angles looked plump and full and I wanted to pounce on them like pillows. I liked the way you moved your hands. Your fingers were long and thin, but strong, and your wrists held them firmly when you waved them around as you spoke. Your body - lean and fresh, tight and tasty. I liked to grab your arms and stroke your smooth skin. Did you like to touch mine? Your teeth were like tablets, straightly aligned, your nose protruding like he wanted to be heard and seen, your hair was slight and wispy, like a warm summer breeze.

Let me write about you and me now. Let me write about us. Did such a thing even exist? It feels so surreal to me. Our first kiss. When you made me laugh. When you saw the freckles in my eyes, as the sun hit them. When I cried in front of you. When you held back your own tears and my heart leapt because your emotions were dancing in front of me. When you first took my hand in yours. When we looked at art, and sat in a movie theatre, and had a picnic on the grass, and you brought me yellow roses, and I beat you in Boggle, and you beat me in cards and we wrestled like siblings. When I borrowed your clothes and wore them to work. When you lit candles. When we danced the tango, naked, in your room. When you stood behind me, your hand wandering up my dress, as I stirred brownie batter in the kitchen. When we joked about gnomes and lumps and other silly things. When we hiked to a waterfall. When you stroked my back early in the morning as I slept in my twin bed. When you forced me to eat tuna fish. When I expressed my fear and you held me. When you didn’t say anything.

Let me write about what’s left of me now. We are no longer. Just me. And you. I feel broken. I do. I feel abandoned. I feel…unhappy. Why didn’t you want to jump for me? Why did you lay in the lawn chair, sunbathing, as I was drowning in the pool? You watched my body slowly sink. You didn’t care to save me. All I wanted was to save you.

You still exist. But now you live somewhere far away. Somewhere I am not allowed to go. I have been banished, exiled from the place I called home. I don’t know if I want to go back. An evil ogre lives in that land. An ogre who told me things I didn’t want to hear, who hurt me, who didn’t listen to me, who didn’t want me. A gentle lion lives there too, one whose purr comforted me in times of sadness, whose strength made me feel safe, and who gave me great joy.

I tried to sneak back once, back into this forbidden forest. They kicked me out – the guards. They grabbed me by my frail wrists, tied them together with twine, and shipped me back to my jail cell. So here I am. Sitting, wondering – do I rot behind these bars, within these four walls? Do I try to escape once again and return home? No. I will look beyond the barriers and find myself again. 

Teddy Bear

I have a teddy bear that my mother gave me before entering college. He has scruffy golden fur, a red knitted sweater to keep him warm, a loving, moldable body, and innocent eyes. I feel very close to this teddy bear, whose name shall not be revealed for anonymity purposes (he is quite skeptical about blogs, and is in fear of attracting stalkers). Anyway, as you can tell, this teddy bear has quite the personality. Sometimes, when I make my bed, I tuck him in with the comforter and he waits patiently, alert and ready for my return. Other times, when I am in a rush, he lies, contorted and hurled across the room, sometimes on the floor, sometimes hidden under crumpled sheets. But nonetheless, he is always there. My teddy bear meets my friends, especially the special ones...you know, the ones who sleep over. He tells me which he likes the most. It is a kind of a ritual, with my special friends, to make my teddy bear dance before bed time, move his limbs around whilst listening to a random shuffle of music. It is a fun game I like to play with my pals. I like to observe how they treat my teddy bear. It says a lot about their character. Some friends are crude with teddy. They sexualize him and force him into uncomfortable and inappropriate positions, for a laugh. We don't think it's funny. Teddy and I. Well...sometimes I do. Other friends go more along with Teddy's persona, making him dance awkwardly and out of sync with the music. This is how I think my teddy bear would dance. He doesn't really have a good sense of rhythm. Sorry, Teds. But, it's true. My teddy bear is an extremely good nuzzler. NOT cuddler, but nuzzler. He fits perfectly into the neck/shoulder crevice. I like to put him there. I like to force other people to put my teddy bear into their neck/shoulder crevice and see how they respond. If they think I'm strange and refuse, that is a check minus in my book. If they oblige and find my attachment to my stuffed animal endearing, we have a winner! Once, I was lying in bed with someone, and we were playing with my teddy bear and he told me that it smelled like me. It doesn't sound romantic, but to this day, I find it one of the sweetest things anyone has ever said. Up to that point, I didn't even know I had a "smell". I do not wear perfume, nor do I shower with any fragranced body wash or shampoo. For him to recognize my smell, and then to notice it on my teddy bear was something so intimate. It meant he cared. It meant he felt close to me. Whenever I nuzzle with my teddy bear, I think about that moment. I put my nose up to his soft fur, sniffing intently, hoping to get a whiff of my "smell". But to no avail. I smell nothing. Well, not nothing, per se. But I don't smell anything distinct. I wish I could speak to that friend again, ask him what my smell reminds him of, so I would at least have some vague idea. Teddy misses him more than I do, actually. He told me so. My teddy bear has favorites, just like you and I do. That boy was his favorite. He hasn't really liked the others.