these are my notes

i can see in your eyes that you feel right at home here, in this place where words like "modular open source system" and "online economy" curiously tickle your sensibilities and dance right into your heart faster than I could ever start to believe in them. it's this gleam glowing brighter each time you remember you had something to say and start waving your arm around, frantically looking for a way to voice your opinions, because let's face it, you have many. i can see that today already.
i find myself sitting here searching for better words capable of expressing what i’m feeling without sounding horribly obnoxious and terribly trite. except, the only thing is that i’m not feeling like myself tonight and i might say something off-color, or more specifically a certain shade of blood red, the color of your glasses i guess inside my head.
i felt lost for awhile as you looked occupied and got all dreamy eyed over these technical concepts that flew over my head like passing shadows fluttering with an increasingly fading purpose.
but before i fall over and float away from you, turning to shadow myself...you should know that i can’t see beyond the frame of your glasses anyway...and the perfect boots on your feet. the boots that someday i’m going to take away from you.

you

i was twenty-one when i was reintroduced to you. although i had known you for years, it had been this sort of removed friendship that would come and go as we entered and left each others lives, free and unrestrained. you'd come over and talk to me about your day, or try to get me to play basketball. i would never play basketball with you, for a few reasons, starting with i hate playing that game, ending with a muffled i love you.

for a very long time, i kept us from happening. i didn't dare go there. although sometimes, in a moment's weakness, my mind would wander and i would find myself thinking about weird things like your hair, or your toes, or the taste of your saliva in my mouth. it went on that way for quite some time, we couldn't have each other, and it was better that we maintained this sort of reverent distance that feigned intimacy, yet clearly defined where we could and could not go. what you could and could not touch, as a friend of course. although, looking back, you'd touch me every day in ways that were off limits. with every look you weren't supposed to give, you'd stick your hand right into my chest and touch my heart as if to jump-start this love affair without a care about the rules. and it was this way until the day i actually let you do it to me, stick your hand into my body and touch my soul, which you did.

you and i started out like that until i could no longer hold onto the pieces of my life. no longer free to choose anything but you because i couldn't see anything else in front of me, and i was completely ok with that, ok with seeing only you. as i lost control of my actions, it became obvious that something else compelled me. something else drove me to you in ways that i tried so hard not to.

i don't have all the answers, now. nor perhaps did i ever. but i do know that i tried not to love you, with every inch of my being i tried to hold onto the pieces of my heart without throwing them at you, daring you to put them back together. you should know now, that although i tried and failed, i feel like the luckiest woman because you are the best thing that has ever happened to me.

lesson learned

it was february and i wore the clothes of my newly found independence with striking pride.
it wasn't as if i hadn't read life books, or didn't know what to expect, because i had. i knew i was in for it. the complete and undeniable gut wrenching that would come in the days ahead. maybe hell. maybe not. maybe i'd be torn in two like they said i would. maybe not. maybe my heart would pop flamboyantly out of my chest in an effort to grasp at pieces of retribution.
all i know is that anything i could possibly go through would be better than being with you. and i mean that sincerely, tenderly, almost. as much as i can be right now.
i don't mean that with malice, really. i only mean to say that when i said goodbye to you that day, i meant it with every inch of my soul. we are finished, so walk away.

boy with a coin

boy with a coin, you found me in the weeds, playing with matches and dirty magazines. the wind in my hair, the smell of my curls, the hope on my fingertips molding the world.
you turned to me gently and showed me your coin, blind to it then, but you'd done this before. polluted the soil and tore up my earth, speaking of promises and words that would hurt.
you promised me silence for innocence in return, stuck your hand in my mud with no other word. it happened so quickly, ran out of my soul, as free and as fast as the body you stole.
left nothing to trace this pain that you gave, nothing except the coin that remained. i was too young to understand the rules of this game, to young to have known what you stole on that day.
from moment to moment a life fades from color to black, taking all that is good with it, never to come back. for a long time after i carried your coin on my heart, in search of a man whose game he would start,
by showing a girl something pretty in return for her light,
taking more than her beauty, taking all her delight.

lisa may

she walked into a bar not knowing who she was gonna get tonight. sometimes she wears this strapless dress that's this perfect shade of red looking like someplace between heaven and hell, fire and the end of time, revelation rolled up into one beautiful image of the perfect woman meeting perfection undying like icarus meeting the sun.
the smell of rapture on her breath intoxicates every man in town, but on this night, her heels will click to the sound of violent men drinking too much gin without the stomach for compassion.
for a moment she thinks this is heaven before being sucked back down to drown in the hell stench of bile masquerading as tolerance.
even dressed in a suit pressed perfect, polished and primp, he is regal and they know it. they can see it. but sometimes his boots find themselves walking toward some of the worst ones. bigots, haters, simple-minded people who don't know words like intersexed. they are corrupt men who can't see beyond their hearts turning colors that end up black. this person standing in front of them is a freak, they know it. no right to speak of love or make soft cries for mercy when they're cutting her down to size in front of their young children. now, another generation of eyes can see what they do to people who don't fit in. and then, the best part is when they carry on this sick legacy of sin onto another generation of people who just want to live normal lives...who simply want to come in from the constant raining down of horrible on their skin.

this is her reality. she's too pretty for this world. one day it'll kill her and someone will find her dead, maybe floating somewhere in some peaceful riverbed in a place too filthy for something so sacred. so she walked into this bar because she can't live life being scared. she can't dream of beautiful things unless she can have them.

seppuku

there's a moment when i look at you, and it's no longer possible for me to breathe. the lights fade and everything that is human in me is turned into this unbelievably obscure shade of what heaven must look like on a good day. this composite being decomposing into bits of unmastered lucidity as i lose myself in the clarity of your image, looking for the right words to tell you how i feel.

but what if i can't find them, elusive words that forever change? emotions that are fleeing and are rearranged within moments of having them. it's as if i'm this translucent thing floating away in this beauty that i discover each day, over and over in you, but can never express the right way because i'm moving too fast in the opposite direction.

how then will i justify this crime, punishment for a dying woman's heart? how will i find the courage to end what you had the courage to start?
what will slowly happen to me, as i pay for the choices i've made,
a dying woman taking her last breaths under the shade of misplaced honor and duty?

on a bad day

if you would only look into a mirror and see the pain that you've given me, this undying chain of reciprocity and the viciousness with which you love terribly, perhaps i would be set free from this cycle of self-deprecating torture i put myself through by being with you.
maybe one day, i'll be able to cut you out of my skin, cutting away the way you come inside me without asking if you could come in, the way you hold me by the throat and choke what's left of happy on my breath teaching hope how to fade away like a drifting cloud about to rain on a clear day, dripping tears like children i never meant to part with. i'm left to start over with nothing all over again. but even then, even when the nothing becomes something i learn to live with, i hold onto the idea that maybe today will be the day i find the courage within me to say what i mean and cut you out of my skin.