foxtongue: (moi?)
[personal profile] foxtongue
In my dreams I'm climbing. My hands grip wooden railings and the edges of bricks. I pull myself over balconies and stand on the knobs of doors. I brush flakes of paint from my hands onto my pants and look over a small inlet to apartments across the water. There is a light there, blocked by a friend I only know when I'm asleep. I think routes, maps that mean escape and freedom and eluding pursuit. Up, I dream, up and over and that way. I am rescuing myself from the ground.

The graffiti in the washroom reads DO IT BECAUSE IT'S FASHIONABLE? VOMIT! WHY NOT? in thin black permanent marker on the door. Later, for a split second, I think I recognize the hand-writing as I walk by a man sitting fetal on the street, rocking back and forth, holding a sign in the air with an empty paper coffee cup. HIV POSITIVE & HUNGRY, PLEASE GIVE CHANGE. I am wrong, of course, it is merely that they are both messy block letters, both made in staining black marker. I am walking too fast, not fast enough. We miss the light and have to wait. My wallet is thick with coins, but there are none spare. I am poor. The quarters are for laundry, the dimes are for carefully counting out at the check-out counter one by one by one as I try to pay for a bag of oranges. I don't feel guilty, but I turn my head from him as we stop and talk. I want to block my brother from his line of sight. He is eighteen, but he is still too young.

It's official now that I'm tangled with a hotel ghost, brass numbers drifting through my blood. There was A Talk last night that mostly involved Kyle apologizing. "Where will you be tonight?" "Vanishing." It was a portrait of everything dysfunctional between us. Ourselves as hungry children who deny that we're stealing. He said, "like" and "you know what I mean?" a lot. I nodded into his shoulder and repeatedly asked him "why?"

We're a gordian knot on the bed. "I've got too much to figure out right now." A train-wreck year. "Let me explain mine." Every five sentences, we're laughing a little, he's unconsciously kissing the top of my head. We tell the right kind of stories. "See, this I can live with. This is really nice." I say yes. "More is too much. You scare me." "See me twice a week," I say. He says he's not sure.

I believe him implicitly when he says I'm scary. Everyone worth knowing says I'm scary.

The summary is a red flag warning that he's unreliable company, that he's not ready for four letter words. I can live with that. "Come back to bed with your dumped non-girlfriend." He says, "See, you're scaring me again." and stops his mouth with mine. My gold lipstick dusts his cheeks and the tip of his nose.

After, he spreads his hands with an expression on his face that I can't identify. "Where did you come from?" I can't see him, is he kidding? My glasses are off, I'm too blind. I lean down, spreading wool across his shoulders, my weight on my hands. "What do you mean?" "It's a good thing, believe me." I'm grinning. This is the same man I had a water fight with in the bed an hour earlier. The sheets are still damp with beer. He found out where I'm ticklish. "Well, where did you come from?" "Here," his hands point out, "planet Earth." I tell him I fell from the moon. It feels true.

Date: 2006-02-17 07:59 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
"I tell him I fell from the moon. It feels true."

It does.

Date: 2006-02-19 01:50 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] porphyre.livejournal.com
*nod*

sometimes it is.

Date: 2006-02-17 11:32 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] punzel.livejournal.com
Everyone worth knowing says I'm scary.

I have this terrible habit of being beguiled by phrases that seem like they'd be so cool on a T-shirt.

Date: 2006-02-19 01:52 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] porphyre.livejournal.com
MY LIFE IS A BUMPER STICKER OF A YOU HAD TO BE THERE JOKE.

Date: 2006-02-18 01:38 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] static-eddie.livejournal.com
Based completely on your first and last paragraphs, we need to talk.
You've summed up two large chunks of both my lives in two manageable bytes.

Date: 2006-02-19 01:52 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] porphyre.livejournal.com
I'm on msn messenger most evenings, bloodkrystal at hotmail. You know I'm more than willing to. I watch your journal with avid curiosity but never feel I'm quite clever enough to have anything valid to say.

Date: 2006-02-19 02:37 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] static-eddie.livejournal.com
hah. "not clever enough"
From what I've read, you certainly can hold your own.

Date: 2006-02-20 10:57 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] porphyre.livejournal.com
.... maybe I'll start commenting then.

I'm just a wee intimidated is all.

You're, um, rather amazing.

scary

Date: 2006-02-18 04:57 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] naekkae.livejournal.com
i used to get that alot, the whole scary thing. i freaked the hell out of my husband when i first met him. i was helping a friend with a monolouge from medea, and i was going into graphic detail of how to get into her mindset before she killed her children. he said i was too intense, too real. he must have liked that about me, because he moved in 6 months later.

Re: scary

Date: 2006-02-18 02:33 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
You reeled in the father of your children with a monologue about infanticide? There's something olympic about that.

Re: scary

Date: 2006-02-19 01:43 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] naekkae.livejournal.com
why thank you. i think.

our son is six weeks old, and neither of us has threatened to kill him yet, so i think we're doing well.

Re: scary

Date: 2006-02-19 01:53 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] porphyre.livejournal.com
Have you posted widdle pictures yet? I've fallen behind on your journal, what with suddenly working a mon - fri.

Re: scary

Date: 2006-02-19 02:08 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] naekkae.livejournal.com
my husband is freaked about me posting pictures because he's convinced some psycho will hunt us down and try to steal the baby. i've sent a bunch to angus, although trying to get him to send them to you may prove difficult. if you give me your email addy i can send you some.

Re: scary

Date: 2006-02-19 07:36 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] porphyre.livejournal.com
um... that's a little special


bloodkrystal
hotmail

Re: scary

Date: 2006-02-19 08:25 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] michel-lacombe.livejournal.com
If you haven't threatened to kill him through that first no-sleep-for-mommy phase, you're doing great.

Date: 2006-02-19 07:33 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] hentooth.livejournal.com
do you think you are scary?

Date: 2006-02-19 07:36 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] porphyre.livejournal.com
So asketh the great icon of mind control.

Well, no, but sometimes I understand where they're coming from when they say it, though I would never apply that sort of "oh my god, this person" fear to me.

be afeared of my feeble mind control power

Date: 2006-02-19 09:51 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] hentooth.livejournal.com
i'm not scared of you and i'm worth knowing!

my knees they are a'trembling

Date: 2006-02-20 05:43 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] porphyre.livejournal.com
You have never seen me in action on a more manic monday.

i wish it were sunday. that is my fun day.

Date: 2006-02-20 05:53 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] hentooth.livejournal.com
so long as you don't ever try to skin me, stuff me in a freezer bag and post pictures on flickr i am fairy certain i can deal with it.

did you know i have the worlds 325th best pokerface?

friday I'm in love

Date: 2006-02-20 05:56 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] porphyre.livejournal.com
yeah, see? Trying to explain to A Boy I Like that I've just come from fencing the day after I've just been breaking into buildings the day after Taxidermy Tuesday, and I'm wildly yanking off clothing as I'm saying all this...

magnetic tape delilah

Date: 2006-02-20 07:10 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] hentooth.livejournal.com
i'm sorry i blacked out after the "wildly yanking" part.

maybe somebody should make you a disclaimer t-shirt.

the perils of dating porphyre

don't know that one

Date: 2006-02-20 10:10 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] porphyre.livejournal.com
see?

Foxtongue's Folly.
From: [identity profile] silver-notebook.livejournal.com
So many men are such cowards. Apparently, I'm often scary too; though those that really know me see me as quite harmless.

From: [identity profile] porphyre.livejournal.com
"You're not harmless at all. The most dangerous people are the ones you love. They can hurt you more than anyone else alive. Tell me I'm wrong."
"Ah, but see, this is the life I have to live. This moment and the next moment and the one after that. You're terrifying for the same reasons, but I'm not willing to live these moments in fear."

My reasoning's got enough wisdom, I think, to work. We talked for hours and hours last night in the ballroom. Things are coalescing around us, like we'e collecting light. It's so good, I'd forgotten what this can be like.
From: [identity profile] silver-notebook.livejournal.com
You're not harmless at all. The most dangerous people are the ones you love.
Oooh, that kind of scary. That's an exciting tightrope to traverse. All that talking should help you on your way.

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