Fact: I am not a very good blogger

I didn’t touch this in over a year and in a way I am glad. I will always be that girl who takes a breather from the melee of the dancefloor by jotting down a few lines of poetry, but the time I took away from being a Writer was meant to be lived. Met up with a boy I had a crush on back when I had a body almost as awkward as my smile and ended up walking tipsily down Broadway at midnight, laughing, rising up on tip-toes because I was sharing his iPod earbuds and he was too tall, realized years too late that we should’ve done this earlier because we got along just fine. Spent my Olympics in the Village and told Heather Kearns that I loved her nails on the same day I mistook a Chinese figure skater’s request for fried eggs for an ill-advised confession that he was ready for the bomb. Vowed to learn French after being picked up hitchhiking in Languedoc-Rousillon by a man who wanted a kiss for his efforts but could only conjure up the word “smack”, nearly got sold into prostitution by an underaged Irish boy, learned how to lime-wash and mix cob in England, got sunburned for the first time gardening in Spain in my bathing suit, lost five pounds in a week walking up and down the San Francisco hills. Saw my favourite band both nights they were here and cried both times over the same songs.

You know what? I’m a writer, but sometimes I fancy myself a photographer, too. Photo post upcoming.

I am a remarkably – possibly unjustly – privileged girl. But, dammit, I’m not going to apologize for throwing myself into my youth.

2009 or, A Study in Confusing Uses of You.

Drinking beer with the boys on the porch, talking about babes and racial relations and fashion as evening slowly filled in the shadows around us.

Opening an exam booklet and partway through realizing that I had only studied for half of the chapters tested.

Nights when my room got too hot and I slipped out of the window to ride my bike down silent streets. The eeriness of being able to bike straight down the middle of a road that bustles during the day.

Falling in love with a boy who smells like summer rain.

Blasting Springsteen and Denver, the road ahead black as flat Coke. Your feet in my lap because the ground was littered with empty cans. The mist lifting for our first view of the jagged shore, the sea tossing its hair like a girl vying for  attention.

The way your arm slid around my waist, your hand resting on the same spot on my hip every time.

My only memory of the fireworks your face in profile. The thud of every explosion like the beating of a heart.

Sitting on your lap no seatbelt the truck going thirty above the limit. Your fingers sneaking up to twine with mine. Thinking, I could die like this.

Waking up to you curled into the shape of a paper heart, folded in half.

Cocooned in a corner away from the bad music and girls dressed like penny-per-dance callgirls, texting cheap poetry into my cheap phone because I had long lost my pen.

Not knowing you were going back to Paris until you were halfway across the Atlantic.

Sitting with you by the river next to the graffiti and abandoned cranes, sharing a bottle of Scotch and watching the sun rise.

How we could only stand each other when drunk.

How you used to read poetry into my voice mail.

How I never realized how much I needed you until you were gone.

Looking for a partner in crime

No, really. I’ve been watching my Reservoir Dogs and Ocean’s Eleven. I’ve been planning my moves every time I put down my 1% milk and apples on the conveyor belt at Safeway. All I need is for a guy with a gun who’s got my back as I yell, “EVERYBODY PUT THEIR HANDS UP, THIS IS A HEIST!” Maybe afterwards we can even have drunken ski mask sex.

Apply with a picture of your tool. No, not that one.

014.

Someone sits alone in the back pew where Michael usually waits, his face soft around the cheeks and jaw but his dark eyes grave, the face of someone who has grown up too fast. There is singing in the background, subdued but high, yearning, Latin or some other long-dead language preserved for posterity.

“The one on the far right is free,” Michael says as he plops himself down.

He whirls to scan the row of confessionals before meeting Michael’s eyes and flushing. “Was it that obvious – ”

“I’m sorry,” Michael says at the same time. Up close, he looks around Michael’s age. “And I’m, um, Michael.”

“Ender,” and the singing suddenly raises goosebumps along his arms.

Sometimes I like to take pictures, too

010.

Let’s imagine that Michael never meets Ender. Let’s imagine that he gets married to his high school sweetheart and has two kids, a golden retriever, and a white picket fence. Let’s imagine that his biggest worry is whether his shirt matches his tie.

Let’s imagine Michael was never born.

Curtain Song

It’s a summer the colour of a Shirley Temple and the heat falls down in shards when Emmeline comes home.

“Hey,” he says when he sees her. His hair is leached at the tips and his neck and shoulders have crisped, but the helpless eloquence of his hands is the same, wicked sexy and slow like he doesn’t know it.

“Hey.”

“You look tired.”

“Markus is dead.”

“But you’ve come back.” His fingers brush gently over her collarbone. “That’s all that matters.”

Four Truths and a Lie

Every time I hear your voice I wonder how you sound in bed.

I never realized how beautiful you are until last night.

I miss the smell of your cigarettes.

I never remember my dreams, but I remember every dream I’ve had of you.

I think I’m in love, and it scares the hell out of me.

Seen From the Seventh Floor of the Loneliest Apartment in Brooklyn

Garden gnome
Frozen in rapture
As cherry blossoms fall

This is the top shelf of my bedside bookshelf