lookbook.nu

So, being on lookbook is weird. I feel like I'm much more cynical about the entire thing now. I'm not into as many outfits as I used to be - I look more for the beauty of the person, now.

Roo had some sort of seizure fit, Mum needs a hysterectomy, and Liam is taking up half of my bed.

If Dr. B doesn't let her become the receptionist, we're screwed (more than we are already). 6-8 weeks out, plus the danger of the surgery since she was operated on in the same area only two years ago . . . It's a good thing I came home, because I would have had to halfway through the semester anyways. Frere will be, as always, absolutely no help, and I'd have been (even more of) a nervous wreck if I were there while she was in the ICU again.

I'm applying to wash dishes at Havenwood. I can't imagine it will be all that bad, and it's right next door, so I won't have to worry about the bus or the car.

Goals:

Gain three lbs

Yoga every morning and evening

Be quieter around the house! And in general.

Read all my books and Mum's before getting any from the library!

Read two books a week.

Go to family gatherings with an open mind.

Work on Quest every day, or, if really stuck, work on other writing.

Develop "Dear" and "In Hospital".

Go online only every morning to check all my sites, and every evening.

Go for a walk or bike ride every day (preferably both).

Save up either for an iPhone or a cell, iPod, and camera.

Get Mum the Buddha statue for Christmas!

Actively seek out a counselor for the anxiety/depression.

NOT think about college for at least a month.

Reply to people's emails and inboxes in a more timely manner!

Post one lookbook look per morning.

Watch more movies/catch up on LOST, Gossip Girl, Gilmore Girls . . .

Go through stuff and donate more of it.

Bake more! Cookies and apple crisp.

Make dinner every night (unless Mum is making something special). Eat a veggie EVERY night!

Let's just forget it, I think, huh?

Yeah, let's just forget it.

it's getting me down, my love

And I hope you're thinking of me

As you lay down on your side

L called. It was great to hear her voice after so long. But being sick really limits communication.

Mum called, too, noonish. I hate not being with her on her birthday. She's always been there with me, only not my freshman year of college. And then G was with me, so it was okay. She loved him so much.

Somehow I came out of the weekend not arrested, not having seen him, closer than ever to the girls, and taking four English classes. Three of which he is in.

I am a bad girl.

So I'll think of her, always, and of him, and how he was never older than ten.

We wonder more than anything what he'd be like today.

This black ribbon, it will stay wrapped around my wrist until it is naught but soggy shreds.

social intercourse

My biology book is extremely aware of itself, and finds itself humorous.

When I woke this morning to an update from him, from Nepal, and thought about the end of this summer, it struck me that the issue is not sex at all. It's not being physically attracted to your best friend which is the problem, and not being able to do anything about it.

once upon a time

I wrote a poem about this day and thought it actually meant something.

And we wrote letters to the firefighters of NYC. And thought it meant something.

I fell in love with a quiet artistic boy in an English class, and everyone knew, and Fournier loved it.

And when I saw him sitting on the bench outside the library, a cigarette in those long hands, a black shirt making it all clear, I wanted to go out there, or at least to the window to knock, and wave like a fool.

dichotomy, part two

likes:

-boys who smell faintly of cigarettes

-crossword puzzles

-Stuart Murdoch's voice

-"sassafrass"

-bikes

-riding bikes

-LBDs

-early breakfasts in Commons

-waking up for the sunrise

dislikes:

-girls who smoke but somehow never smell like cigarettes

-sudoku

-Gene's voice (he always looks/sounds slightly guilty about it all)

-"flesh"

-segways

-people who ride segways

-lace on dresses or anything other than underwear

-grumbly stomach in bio

-being woken up for the sunrise because my phone is ringing, and not being able to fall back asleep even though it's an hour until my alarm goes off!

pfft

Silly girl can't sleep again and is supposed to be waking up in 6 hours. She hates 8 am classes and waking up, period. She's going to get breakfast afterwards, and see the Study Abroad dean, and then take a nice long midday nap, before working. Working. Ugh.

one more time with feeling

We're hiding in plain sight, all of our days, you and I.

Bird

Take me to the Hudson River Valley; teach me to golf; have me read all these modern books you love that I think hardly hold a candle to pre-1800 lit; let me see the color of your eyes, and run your fingers through my hair once it's grown back and reddest red; tell me why you took time off, enough so that you're two years behind your entering class; let me know how much you smoke and don't do it around me; share a cigarette now and again; ask me if you need to go get a condom.

Let me say yes.

Blue Lips

Regina, you're perfect. It's so melancholy, but so hopeful. Precisely how I feel at the moment.

Everyone calls him Bird. At least 98% of the people who know him. Most don't even know his real name. I do.

He sat down next to me, and I helped with his NYTCWP. God, this is all there is. "You must do more than crosswords?" Well, he watches films by Hitchcock, Bergman, and Tachovsky, but that's about it. And he likes to play golf.

Words, words, words, it comes down to. Every day, from waking until rowing, I was doing a puzzle or two, deeper in love than I ever could feel. I always thought I loved him more than he loved me, but it was the other way around.

Blue veins in strong arms, and tall, and dark, and a slow talker, which was surprising. No one takes a moment these days, they just spurt out whatever happens to be in their mouths and not their mouths at the time. But like me, in front of the class, he took his time, and we followed up each other's answers a few times; and she let us go, and I left on his heels, but he's shy, he's shy, and we'd both blushed enough already for today.

I've got a perfect body, but sometimes I forget . . .

drowning

It never ends the way we planned

I need this to stop. This coming and going, this wishing and washing.

Please someone tell me what to do. I can't keep exerting this much energy on plans that just fall through. Of my own accord. Am I incapable of seeing things through? I grew up in a dreamworld, and now you expect me to function properly. I have the feeling it may take the rest of my life to come to grasps with being a normal human being.

battle

Okay, so I'm not eating even though I have been hungry for hours now. I don't understand. I just want to CRY. I can't cry. WHY can't I cry?

What am I doing here, and what are you doing there?

I need a home-cooked meal and a good long shower and then to wrap up in a blanket by the window and watch the falling snow.

I need to go apple-picking and eat my mum's apple crisp on a windy October night.

And the problem is that I want it to hurt and sear because otherwise I can't cry.

convocation

The hours slip away and she knows not what she has done. Across the hall a boy is taking a shower, and she wonders if all of them are deeper than they appear to be. Just because we're at the same college doesn't give any of us anything in common. We look away, selfishly, pretending we didn't see one another, pretending we've got something on our minds.

This preoccupation is killing me. But the thoughts otherwise are that I can go nowhere without running into someone I knew, or a memory. When I saw him going for books today I felt nauseous. And Sam's chair was empty, which isn't right. Even though she's been gone over a year now. We were going to be roommates.

I'll take the coldness of strangers over the heat and anxiety of remembrances, please.

critical mass, part II

Her eyes are lined too dark her hair too short the blonde streaks showing through that were not supposed to be permanent.

If she could go back to one day it would be that one so her identity would still be her own and not some facade.

critical mass

It will toll, and toll, and toll, for how long, no one knows. In their caps and gowns the professors feel important - or bored.

Ben had it right, traveling the world, seeing things. I always want to learn, but once I'm here - it's overwhelming. Trian's a firecracker, that's for sure. Sanford's a dear, but maybe I don't WANT to deconstruct those things after all. Those writings. Those writers.

Everything would be easier if I had an eighth semester. But coming back here AGAIN? Can you imagine that?

If I go with CMS, I catch up with Latin and have to take it abroad. If only I could afford to go over the summer! If only I could afford to not always wish away time. At least I have Bowen to look forward to.

Damn these GECs. Damn the fact that I did not go to Wesleyan!

let it go, girl

This is one of those moments in which I can say for certain: "I have lost my mind."

Paler than pale, paler than death. If I can't sleep even with this medication, when will I?

dacha

If all else fails, there is Russia and the women who walk on cobblestone, slick Metro platforms, and grass in the highest heels.

I am become the quintessential English major. Bring me my Buddhism, bring me my peace. Sit, muse, solve, enjoy. All at once and none ever.

They moved Critical Theory on me, so I can't take either of the yoga classes. DRAT.

beyond the sea

Carmen Sandiego was somewhere in the world. I always loved it when one of my pieces was beneath the Indian Ocean.

I have prayed to no saints, borne no crosses, witnessed no miracles.

Please, we believe in the same things. Calm yourself for a moment, hop on a bus, and yes, make sure that I'm all right. In person, face-to-face.

highest noon

The consequences of our actions

and the catching up they do on lonely days while waiting.

I can't write it off as lust, for it would have actually worked out.

Now in love with the wrong man, the one man in the world that I cannot feel this way about. If she came again into herself, could you really pass her by? I understand that we were the cynics, the two who laughed in dark corners while everyone else reveled mindlessly, but long ago, she would have been there, too.

Is that the point? That now is now, and since we only have the future and not a moment of the past, we should run, run, run with it? Three dreams last night, and your hair, and pranks and shouts and hiding more. I'm not opposed to the city, if someday we can retire to a country house.

exuberated

Flirting with the cashier when buying textbooks. Said cashier saying the price wrong. Said flirter having more money left than she anticipated.

There is this need for solitude, but it should be spent sleeping. Or eating. Why has eating become so difficult again?

It's back to three majors in eight semesters. With all of the requirements fulfilled. But only if I can afford to go abroad to Bath this summer.

Please please please, let the planets align . . . I need to stay busy, to stay occupied. I don't need more clothing, or even a rug. Just let me travel and come out of here with three degrees. S.v.p.

identity crisis

It finally struck me that THAT must have been the underlying/subconscious reason for cutting off my hair - my fear of sex. My lack of desire. My ardent desire to NOT.

Women find other women with short hair to be cute, but men don't find it so attractive. Especially when the girl in question used to have long red hair, and it's now cropped above her ears and dark brown.

It's this androgyny, it's killing me. I want to feel feminine again.

fear and loathing

Those are the two problems we face.

My fear of love, which has driven me from you and into other men's arms for the past two years.

My loathing of sex. I wish I didn't, I suppose. But I just don't care. And not caring can make you kind of hate it. And loathing it, well, then it just feels dirty, and irresponsible, and utterly ridiculous.

I wish I cared. I pretended to care, for his sake. I just wanted him to be happy. But you're already happy, and I'm already happy. So can we please fall in love properly? Can it be that I accept you for all you've done so embarrassing, for all the friends we have in common who underestimate you? Can it be that you don't adore me so very much that I'm terrified to be in the same room as you? You'd never touch me. It radiates from you, though. It's not even desire. It's some sort of admiration. But less than that. He thought me perfect; you know I'm not.

You know I'm as fragile as I am strong, as silly as I am intelligent.

Can it be that you accept me for all the men I've been with who were not you, who should have been you? Can it be that you accept his words, his conviction that you're the best guy out there?

Can it be that I accept that we can be quiet and yet more adventurous?

She told me you'd surprise me, and I replied that you already had. Away from school, when you can be yourself, and I myself, and there is nothing but us and the land and strangers - then you are witty at the least likely moments, and I'm fonder of you than anyone in this world.

Urban Lewiston

It's the strangest thing in the world, that I have to convince myself that I love you.

Because it's the most obvious thing in the world that I do.

When I was lost, beyond lost, you were the only one I stayed in touch with, you were the only one I trusted.

When I was happiest, well, it was with you. It was the meal after the photoshoot. The best sandwich ever made.

And it was walking around the fair like we'd done it a million times before. It was seeing that ad for the log house with the floor-to-ceiling windows in NH Magazine and thinking of how much you'd like that. How much I'd enjoy living with you there.

It's fine that you don't like dogs. I would have stayed with you forever on that boulder looking down at Lake Solitude. They are too much worry anyway. We need to be able to leave on a moment's notice, and sleep in late on Sundays.

You're going to work for National Geographic. Just you wait. We won't have children, and quietly I'll love you. Since it's you I think of when I wake at night, and you I think of when I see something amazing that I want to share; since it's you I remember in the dining room, and you my mother wants me to marry, it's the strangest thing in the world that I have to convince myself that I love you.

what is subversive about love

I wanted so badly to hate you. Every time I dreamt about you, my passion grew. My passion against you. My desire to strike you when we met again. To make you understand how I felt. To give you the opportunity to experience picking yourself up from the gutter.

And then, lo and behold, you wrote to me. And I was calm and cold, frigid as a January morning. And you tried to explain yourself. Which was something. I can say "hi" to you in passing now, and feel awful that you seized up at Commons the other day. I remember puking from working out. And I remember it being worth it.

Maybe I want to forget, though. It would be easier if I didn't know you better than, well, anyone. I've not known you very long, but you told me everything. Everything you'd never told anyone else. You're the only other person I know who has admitted to having an eating disorder. And you're a guy. It's the last thing you should feel comfortable talking about.

But naked there in the bed, knowing that we could not make love, we bared our souls to one another for hours, speaking of everything unspoken, everything not allowed.

What is subversive about love? The fact that she screwed you over and you'd still take her back. The fact that he wrenched my heart out of my body, slept with five other girls, and then I took him back.

What is subversive about love is its magnitude. It completely pulls the wool over all of our senses. We lose our minds for a feeling that is illogical; that is chemical and animal, hormonal, that is not created by any choice.

4 am

Back to dreams of you and waking up feeling ill.

Except I've only dreamt of you a dozen times or fewer. Perhaps that's why it's hardest. It comes unexpectedly, and despite everything, I miss you.

dichotomy

That's how we'll survive love. By being different.

the ghost of corporate future

Having loved a poet and then an early acceptance to RISD, I was done with artsy boys. I wanted someone brash.

Alas, I shall not marry the future lawyer whose father owns a yacht. You may find me in the mountains of Vermont, or India, or Scandinavia, with the man who would be photographer for National Geographic.

I won't let him waste his talent in a lab somewhere. Of course the environment matters. Even more than art. Even more than touching the brain and the heart simultaneously. But Chloe can do that, or Eliav, or any of them, really. Your spirit is in your photographs; through them, with my writing alongside, we are closer than ever. You may be halfway around the world, but I have never loved you more than when I was looking at "Urban Lewiston" as the sun set on this day, the first of my favourite month.

Mirasol

"She sees all things clearly, which is both her strength and her weakness."

Zooey

No, not like a zoo. Like Ms. Dechanel, who was named, after all, after the character in J.D. Salinger's short story.

She's the tiniest, most delicate thing in the world. And so loving, so trusting. She slept on my feet, then curled up at the end of the bed, and now right beside me. She does "sleepy eyes" just like Amelie, and yes, I'll probably bring her to college, even though things will get complicated if she's found.

I'll keep my mind, though, if I have another being to look after. Someone to talk to and to share the blankets with.

100 words or fewer

My latest posts have been over. I've not even been counting. I can't. There is too much to say and not enough time to narrow it down. To cut out unnecessary words, to remember how to spell in Latin. I don't know a word of Swedish, and I'd rather not live an hour commute away.

The strange part is, it's as though I was always planning to do this, I just hadn't clued myself in yet. Triple majoring is not going to be a breeze, but there is nothing particularly daunting about it. I take classes that sound interesting, I get credits toward three degrees, I receive said degrees.

But yes, I do want to know how many people have done this before me. And especially if any of them were women.

you take things too seriously

How can I not, though? After my life, how can I not?

A paragraph and a half left, but you're falling asleep. Your hand is over my head to keep me connected. I'd fall asleep right there, please. It's a big enough bed. Please, Mummy, like when I was a child and had night terrors. When I woke up screaming, when I woke up sobbing, when I woke up fallen out of my bed.

Do you even know that I still fear the nighttime? Not the dark, not when I'm out in it - because it's the earth then, it's the world, it's the way things are supposed to be. But in houses, it's as though electricity should always be on, lights turned down low at least for the evening. A night-light would glare, and if I leave my shade up a bit, well, the light is too bright, and I have to hide beneath the covers with fear . . .

From fear? Do I fear that itself more than . . .

breathing as a start

The truth of the matter is, I'm not the kind of girl who paints her fingernails. So tomorrow it's coming off.

The truth of the matter is that I love long hair and want long hair but hate that men love and want long hair, because of the expectation of it all. But also I love it, when I have it.

The truth of the matter is that I'm not the type of girl who colors her hair. And I'm certainly not the type of girl who smokes cloves, or anything at all. I'm not the sort of girl who throws parties on the weekends or even goes to others'. I'm not the sort of girl who even gets invited.

I've put up this facade with this haircut. The don't-mess-with-me facade, the I'm-hipper-than-you facade, the one that makes people think I care.

But I don't care. I want to tie my hair back like the old days, when I sit down to write. I want him to be there and notice and love it, my little quirks as I prepare to bare my soul, not in bed, but on a computer screen; on a printed sheet of paper that tells the story of the girl I am.

what you want is a cigarette and a thespian

You're eating less and leaving out the scale more. At least you're not throwing up, as was the boy I met recently.

I've known you forever, but I don't know you at all. Your entire life I have been here; we have an unbreakable bond.

No, I did not take one of your cigarettes. I spent the entire day thinking about it. Yesterday, too. But our mother is already in enough shock. Let me at least wait until I'm back to school and have decided that I can't deal with the stress unless I breathe in carbon monoxide. Let me at least buy it flavored under the name of "Cloves." Let me at least do that so I can hate myself for turning into my oldest, my first love. He'd not recognize me these days, but were I lost in a stampeding crowd, he'd pick me out, and he'd see himself in my haunted eyes.

broken down and hungry . . .

For one weekend, I found him, a lover with the candor of a friend. He told me things he only talked about with his father. I told him things I only talked about with my mother. It was going to be a happy ending.

Like all other times, it got in the way.

You're still there, and I'm still writing to you as though you're someone who will respond even though I'm ranting. Even though I'm raving mad.

I write that way because that's who you are. Because you will.

You feel farther away than you did a month ago, though you're three hours closer.

But it's not too late . . .

August

Welcome to the first day.

I have planned out three majors, two theses, and a semester abroad in Stockholm.

Keeley, our cat, comes every night now. But sleep, it does not arrive. I am into the twenty-second hour.

Her face as she leaned there, hugging the tree - she was herself after an entire lifetime of searching, the girl I had known as a child. And so, even when faced with the black oblivion of the sea at nighttime, I knew I had to go back, and that I would, and that everything, absolutely everything, would be all right.

it could get both of us in trouble

You seem like a good guy. Long replies are a positive sign.

I'm going to dinner with the cousin, only two years older, whom I barely knew as a child.

Museums. I will happily be lost in them forever, to look but not touch; and before I die, I will gain access to the archives of the Vatican.

There is something ridiculously satisfying about peeling a sunburn.

d'accord

You say it's okay, but you know it's not, and I know it's not.

But it's okay. In this past three and a half years, we have both become very good at pretending.

chattering from the trees

It is not a bird you hear screeching, but a squirrel.

A very angry squirrel.

Incensed.

Outraged.

And quite possibly also confused.

beauty sleep

Je l'aime, je l'adore!

She is in love with life! After a day spent consoling her mother, out of money, out of energy, the pictures arrived, and she realized, from behind those leafy vines, that every day is worth living, and every photograph worth taking.

Thousands more tomorrow, she expects. This is going to happen. It's not a matter of desire anymore, but a matter of need.

Quest

Well, then.

A friend not seen in two and a half years; a teacher, the same; and a best friend who went to college down south, come home at last.

Dreams of New York City. Why won't they go away? Because in my heart of hearts, I don't want to quiet them.

Everything is about the story; but everything else is about the art. How do I balance these two desires? Would you let me stay, would you love me, would it be easy, if only I read War and Peace?

you will be my Ferdinand and I your wayward girl

Of course, I can’t go back and read it now. Not yet. I flew through it, and, happy, nay, ecstatic, I immediately decided it had to be too good to be true. Is that what I fear, then? A lack of candor? A misinterpretation? I tend to know . . . but how do you tell, these days, when life is already hanging from tenterhooks?

one of these things first

We fear and we fear and we fear, and then in the blink of an eye, all is better.

I might not catch my breath until I make it down there . . . yikes.

The vertical experience was certainly worth the view at the summit; but the sunburn . . . I s’pose it’s reconnecting with a best friend that matters most.

If follow my dreams and do what I want, I’ll be in New York in no time.

My lack of fear of anything is going to get me into trouble one of these days . . .

shoot the sexual athlete

Train tracks to homeless men, flower garden to Eden. I'd never shot in aught but a studio.

If I could do eye makeup like this . . .

Of course it always comes down to the same thing. All along I was writing about him, and all along I was lonely at school, a mess at work, and fidgety at home because I'm supposed to be hundreds of miles south of here, making my break . . .

Can I write a piece about you now that you've made it?

drat

All you can think is, "this cannot be happening." And not in a good way.

My life comes crashing down, with his following in two days' time. Why? How? Our poor mother already has enough on her plate without two kids who are half-mad.

He was my great white hope. She loved him so very much. Now that's over, what does he have? He doesn't care for us the way he did for her. Will it be a retreat to drugs, to attempted suicide?

This is not the sort of thing you just talk about. It doesn't seem real.

well, it's your eyes . . .

When I tell you to close your eyes, keep them closed, and I'll kiss you.

It's been a while . . . it shouldn’t have been. Since those days when I had you enthralled . . .

Yet part of me doesn't want commitment, doesn't want the drama.

I just want your jeans . . .

Then again, you look great dressed up. I'll do the chores if I can have the futon, make a career of modeling, and hold your hand on the red carpet with flashbulbs popping in our eyes . . . such intense eyes.

the great parks of Europe

All you can do is try, correct? Try to reconcile. Try to fall again.

Would he call this a PLC? Not in comparison to his!

Europe, Europe . . . New York. Only a bus ride away, remember.

The place where dreams are found and made and shattered.

Shakespeare would have loved it. Perhaps he does.

on the walk up to Hathorn Hall

Dratted boy, why’d you stop saying hello? It can’t be that it didn’t happen, that you didn’t know. It cannot come as a shock to you now.

She wanted to sit down next to you, to discuss Russian politics, and your brothers at summer camp, and Wimbledon. She liked the old-fashioned handsomeness, and the sense of self-worth, if not overwhelming confidence.

The two of you need to accept the fact that it was one of the best chances you’d ever had, and not flee from it again.

‘Cause what you want is a cigarette and a thespian . . .

take a look around you, you silly girl

Oh, you silly girl! You should have listened to your heart! But no, no, no. Life was all planned out. Marriage, a daughter named Lily, and a man who had once loved your soul, but now only wanted sex.

You were so incredibly unhappy that summer. Nothing went right. Most of the time, you were alone.

Why did you fear it so very much? What did propriety have to do with it anymore?

Tennis, Scrabble, a run around the block. What would have been the harm in it, when you’d fallen out of love months ago?

century of fakers

And fashionably you’ll say

‘all is equal in love and war'

How long is too long? It was only a summer ago, and it’s true that my guilt has been forefront in my mind every time I’ve seen him or heard word of him.

Now there he is, conquering the stage, and here I am, uncertain of my future.

If it had been any other book . . . but it was War and Peace, and it was summertime, and I’d wanted to devour it since I read the first few sentences in the college bookstore a year before.

happenstance

And you hope that they will see . . .

It all comes down to the same thing, doesn’t it?

Panic.

Love.

Freedom.

Home.

How, in only one day, can a human being experience such a smorgasbord of emotions?

He’s an actor; fully about the art, the audience, not his own life, though he does have grand dreams for that.

I’d have believed he belonged to the Business Elite, too. And shared a shower in a closet of that hallway.

Maybe things will look better there, for things couldn’t be much worse than tears and a curse . . .

softly to sleep

Lower back pain, disengaging, meeting two years later, survival, lies, and forgetfulness. I forget, when I am in there, that a world exists outside. The only help is the open door, but I am rarely close. Why is every moment filled with fear? Why can I think of nothing but things? And why then, when I leave my shift, when I am customer, not counter girl, do I feel disgusted by the entire ordeal, and wish to shop elsewhere? A job at my favorite store indeed.

the disenchanted forest

You must, you must be kidding, in your heart of hearts.

Mustn't you?

I'd rather be a gypsy all my days

Than wondering when my shift ends

Selling hundred-dollar sweaters to women

Indifferent to my world.

je retournerai?

And I told you to be patient.

But you were certain I was not impressionable, just a free spirit.

And all I ever wanted was to dance.

But you have your fun and then forget about it.

And give my greetings to the motherland.

But you wanted something to say to her.

And some things, once lost, are lost forever.

But you loved her, her coldness, her sass.

And they called me arrogant.

But she had become someone else.

And the last thing I wanted was this.

But I'll make time, just one time, to see what comes of it.

mystic

If you're gonna grow up sometime, you have to do it on your own.

Lessons over the telephone, with Michaelangelo as our metaphor for the evening. Despite it all, perseverance will prevail; I've a gift, and I've got to run with it.

What would she look like standing by the well?

More like a woman and less like a girl.

What if you just left your home, and never went back? I'll make trips, I'll travel.

My responsibility lies here, for now.

Her worries make everything else seem trivial.

dans le francais

Alors, je suis une petite princesse de mon cher chevalier. Il s'a dit, tot le matin. L'amour, l'amour, l'amour . . . Non. Nous devons etre amis, amis seulement.

Porquoi donc nous faisons ecrire dans le francais?

back in the south end

This is precisely what summer is supposed to be. Fresh vegetables, bikers and runners floating by, catch on the back deck. Crickets.

The pool house is the size of half our apartment. The water pressure of the shower – soapy at ten p.m., a movie to follow, some yoga . . .

No moon that big or that red since four summers ago. Would I take love after the shower, instead of sleep? Certainly. But for now, that role remains empty, until someone can fill it and spill beyond the borders, a lover with the candor of a friend.

I speak the language of my village, of my street

Early summer. The reservoir would have stopped me in my tracks, were I not on a highway overpass. Lush, mossy, damp, sweet – I’ve never seen it that way before. Does the twenty-first summer cast fresh light?

Down into town tomorrow, a nice house, a good dog, a phone call awarding me a job. You won’t believe this is what I want, but it is. The children will be trilingual, or I won’t have them; you’ll commute to work, or I won’t have you.

I’m done compromising my dreams in order for a man to realize his.

musician, please take heed

He has no idea how long it’s been. Full of literature, dreams, and paths that diverge in a yellow wood. I always held hope that he would let his hair grow, find a more comfortable jacket. It’s been a journey brutal at times and exacting at others. They are the only two who write like that, who know exactly what I am, regardless of the mask I display, the airs I put on, the French I speak in public. The last is always like the first; they are not one, but the same, and, knowing such . . .

not what I expected

I was never going to be loved. That was that. I accepted it early on, and was content with my Saturday afternoons playing Scrabble and eating dinner early.

despite it all

Perhaps if I had not gone to the fireworks by the ocean, and seen the ships with their lights ablaze, I would not believe in love.

I told him that emotion is volatile and unbecoming. However much I am attracted, I become above, beyond. ‘Tis why the first thought me a rebel, the second a muse, the third a goddess. When my heart is at stake, I must be a personage, a character. I must speak as is expected when it ends, with cool blue eyes and that British accent my voice takes when I have gone cold.

Mary Currier

He was dead before I was even born.

She has been a widow longer than I have been alive.

Thus I cannot begrudge her the fact that of our entire zoo, she is taking my kitten. My Amelie.

She belonged to both of us, you know. He put the cover to the Scrabble box over her heard one time, and she went to town, racing about and knocking, ever so gently, into the bookshelf.

As much as I loved Boone sleeping in my hair, he adored it when Amelie would lick his fingers clean. If only he had been.

accidental love

Here now, I've done it again. Drat. It's been a long time coming, at least. I attempted to fend it off, I really did. For propriety's sake, as well as mine. 'Tis not what I need at this time. But come it will. Come it may.

Part of me is hoping so.

Even wishing.

this is not insomnia

Eight years. Not a single proper test.

I'd rather not take your medication, but I'd love to sleep.

damp and dreary, with a side of decay

The Estonian girl reminded me, long after I was sure I’d forgotten. Had I chosen that path, I would be there now, in a two-bedroom apartment near the hospital, two cats instead of six, curtains as bought by his mother. Forty hours a week instead of zero; a job I hated, versus home and a novel to write. Luckily, I stumbled upon the dreams I’d had long ago, and made my choice.

Yet, I still wish I could someday teach the orphans English in that former Soviet state.

Perhaps I’ll forego medieval studies and take to the sea.