The Looking Glass

I was laying in your arms when you told me that you hate me. We had just finished making love. You told me that people hate what they don't understand. Therefore, you hate me. Do you hate me now? Now that I have bandaged you? Now that I have held that towel down to clot your blood?

Sometimes I hate me now. Just to be on your side. Just to prove that I will always support you. In all you do. Even when it hurts me.

I saw it in your eyes. The pain and regrets. I saw myself. How you still see me. I should be yours, that's what your eyes said. Right now, we're not supposed to be here. We are supposed to be in that place where I am still yours. I saw your eyes say it.

It's all over. The dust has settled enough for me to see the wounds you left me. They're not so bad. But these parts will always be ugly.

I've never been so ugly.

That guy....

The edges are faded. I guess I held this picture in my mind too much. I wore the color from the corners and light seems to emanate from unnatural sources. Beams slice through the faces of your friends, the bathroom counter. But everything seems to become clear in the center. The illumination hones itself, it finds its precision in your face. And all I remember is the ruddiness of your cheeks. How you were that guy. The kid everyone went to school with who had rosacea and you never said anything and you didn't know what rosacea was because you were just a kid but it set them apart in a really non distinct way. You were that guy. The guy I remember on the playground that i knew I'd never go to prom with, never have my first kiss with, never marry. Curly, frizzy hair and glasses guy. T-shirts with brand names I didn't recognize guy. We will smoke this weed together but I won't even attempt to make small talk with you because I'm That Guy. My friends will poke and prod intellectually--is she single? Can I fuck her? But I will take my two tokes and pass the bowl to my left Guy. You weren't real. You were one of those shells of man, all flesh and bone and insecurity. You were an ego without a face. You didn't matter. You meant so much to me.

It's just a surreal painting now. It's my starting place as I replay this game. Trying to figure out how you slipped through my fingers. It's the first piece of the puzzle. And yet, I've always felt like it was the one piece that didn't fit. Every other picture that I have of you hints and the next. It is a prelude to the entire roll of film that follows in my minds eye. Except that first snapshot. Inside of my little body then, my blood didn't boil. My guts didn't rise up and forward and emit this smothering heat. I didn't know you would create an entire world with me. A world no one else has ever been in. A world I'd come to call home. A world I can never go back to now. Or maybe worse....maybe I never left...

This is our story. In all it's ruthlessness. This is our exultant tragedy.


Welcome Home.

Gorgeous Hair Looks as Though it's Never Been Dyed...

The next thing I remember is sitting at coney island with the din overwhelming me. There was some force of electricity in the air and my hair was pink again. I remember running my fingers through it and the stray strands floated around my hands like they were alive and just as excited as I was. I remember crossing my legs and feeling the stinging pain on the back of my hip. I reached back and rubbed it, where I had permanently etched your name. I remember thinking, this is the place I've always wished I could be. This is the girl I always knew that I was. Everything was so real.

The room itself was loud, as though even if it had been empty the walls would have screamed until my ears bled. I loved it. I was high so the lights smeared themselves across the ceiling and the cigarette machine. Our booth appeared neon in the blandness that was everyone other than us. And she walked in.

Why I hid inside the silence...

I took a mental snapshot of the skin on my forearm. It felt like it wasn't mine. I could tell I was coming down. That arm was numb, having laid all night propped up on it, writing in my journal. I was sitting in the garage passing the cigarette back to you, as we had finished the weed. It was time to go. We needed more coffee. I shivered.

Wait. Let me explain it this way. It was the champagne cork, when you haven't finished the bottle and you stuff it back in, knowing the champagne will go flat anyway, but what else are you supposed to do?

Tibetan monks make intricate mandalas. With sand. Each grain has its own specific place for the purpose of the perfect finished mandala. And when they are done, without even really bothering to admire their work, they wipe it away. It was getting light out. The first irreversible stroke across our sand. I spent all night making this mandala.

I spent all night in the car singing Breaking Benjamin, in Linda's drinking cup after cup of coffee, in bed writing line after line of worshipful observations I made while I watched you play guitar. I can still smell the summer air easily. The sweet rotting smell from Lake Saint Clair. The road slick from dead fish flies.

It was Sunday now and I was coming down. My jaw was sore and my skin was pale and parched. I was in that in between state where the adderall wasn't really keeping me up anymore, but I hadn't sunken down into depression yet, maybe because you always made sure I smoked enough weed so I wouldn't get sad. You always took such good care of me. But it was Sunday now and it always seemed to fall apart into Monday and I was at the title agency again answering phones and updating files. I'd try to catch the clock at 3:11 just so I could be the first to text, but you always beat me. I forget sometimes, how much you loved me. You were the coolest person I had ever met. And you loved me. We'd spent all night moving tiny grains of sand. But it was Sunday now and we were going to Linda's and then you were taking me home.

You can never understand. That moment. Sitting in my driveway in your car saying goodbye to you. It was a knife thrust so ruthlessly into me my sternum split open. I have always hated saying goodbye to you.