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foxtongueIn 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.
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.
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no subject
Date: 2006-02-17 07:59 pm (UTC)It does.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-17 08:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-19 01:50 am (UTC)sometimes it is.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-17 11:32 pm (UTC)I have this terrible habit of being beguiled by phrases that seem like they'd be so cool on a T-shirt.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-19 01:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-18 01:38 am (UTC)You've summed up two large chunks of both my lives in two manageable bytes.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-19 01:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-19 02:37 am (UTC)From what I've read, you certainly can hold your own.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 10:57 am (UTC)I'm just a wee intimidated is all.
You're, um, rather amazing.
scary
Date: 2006-02-18 04:57 am (UTC)Re: scary
Date: 2006-02-18 02:33 pm (UTC)Re: scary
Date: 2006-02-18 02:33 pm (UTC)Re: scary
Date: 2006-02-19 01:43 am (UTC)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)Re: scary
Date: 2006-02-19 02:08 am (UTC)Re: scary
Date: 2006-02-19 07:36 pm (UTC)bloodkrystal
hotmail
Re: scary
Date: 2006-02-19 08:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-19 07:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-19 07:36 pm (UTC)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)my knees they are a'trembling
Date: 2006-02-20 05:43 am (UTC)i wish it were sunday. that is my fun day.
Date: 2006-02-20 05:53 am (UTC)did you know i have the worlds 325th best pokerface?
friday I'm in love
Date: 2006-02-20 05:56 am (UTC)magnetic tape delilah
Date: 2006-02-20 07:10 am (UTC)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)Foxtongue's Folly.
I hope he's bold enough to allow himself the goodness he could have access to
Date: 2006-02-21 09:52 pm (UTC)I leaned over and told him quietly in the dark of the ballroom that I'm harmless.
Date: 2006-02-22 06:05 pm (UTC)"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.
It sounds like you mightn't be as harmless as all that to him
Date: 2006-02-23 11:49 am (UTC)Oooh, that kind of scary. That's an exciting tightrope to traverse. All that talking should help you on your way.