How (Not) to Love a Monster

I can tell you that I love you how ever many times you want, sing it like a litany and a leitmotif in your presence, but there's no veracity inherent in repetition. I cannot learn an emotion like a nineteenth century schoolboy, reciting the Iliad again and again until it comes out perfect, every meter of every verse. But I can say the words if they'll make your eyes slip shut in pleasure and relief, sigh and let your shoulders drop. If I say I love you, then you are safe, you will insist.

But monsters like me don't feel emotions like humans - like you. You can run your palms along my skin and prick yourself on my thorns, and I can marvel at how velvet soft your flesh feels beneath my lips, but I'll always have fangs where you have teeth, and I'll always be hungry where you might be sated. I can tell you that I love you, with forked tongue and golden claws hooked into vulnerable meat. It won't even be a lie - but it can never be strictly true.

And if there are nights where you marvel, I have tamed the beast, as I lay stretched out and bloody at your feet, then that deception is all on you. I will wear the mask you give me, let you fuss with feathers and fine fabrics, dress me up like the solicitous romantic you've always wanted, serenade you with a script you wrote. They will only ever be words and stage directions to me, quietly stalking you through the forest of your illusions and waiting for you to stumble.

Other

Sometimes my succubus sits uncomfortably close to the surface, blood hunger, claws, and pointed teeth. I want to purr and lick a lover's blood off my fingertips, kiss their lips and turn their chin red with their own essence. It's a slow and sensual violence, gasps of pleasure indistinguishable from moans of pain. My fangs are sharp and my sex is wet, and I could take you, hurt you, make you breathlessly beg me for every minuscule bit more. I may seem sweet, even laughably harmless, but you would be foolish to forget that my human skin conceals a predator who revels in leisurely taking lovers apart.

The Weight of Silence

Sometimes, it is far too easy to fill your mouth with silence, to weigh down your tongue with all the words and emotions you tell yourself are better left unsaid. If you're not careful, you start to choke on the backup, gag on your secrets. No amount of dry heaving will stop you from asphyxiating. The only way to save yourself is to speak.

Such a shame that silence is a habit.

The Innocence of Monsters

When I was younger, I didn't know any better than to be exactly who I was, and it confused me when this course of action rarely worked out in my favor. Why should I pretend to be something I was not?

I was very self-possessed, and extremely self-aware - I had confidence to burn. What I lacked was guile, and an understanding that others would happily build my pyre from the kindling I provided. I was a monster who hadn't yet figured out that she was to be feared.

My ignorance made me vulnerable.

I won't say I was cast out of Eden - I never lived in such a place. But, for a time, I was innocent enough to believe that I had a place there.

Bad Dreams

I hate being alone. I remember a time when that was my biggest fear, when I had nightmares about standing in a concrete courtyard watching a crumpled napkin toss end over end, an urban tumbleweed. I wouldn't even scream, because I knew, with all the logic of dreaming, there was no one around to hear me, not even if I screamed with all the volume of dragon lungs.

I would wake to the stumbling panic of my pulse.

I don't fear being alone so much now - at least, not in the same way. I lay awake in my bed feeling the crack and pull of my joints, the way a recently dislocated finger burns, and my shoulders ache ominously. It is a loud and dark way to be alone, aware of every way in which my body is falling apart. My body has become a courtyard, my pain a series of crumpled napkins.

I do not scream now, either. My pulse may stutter and stumble into the storm winds of eternity - I will not wake up from reality.

Predator

I could eat you alive. My claws would drip burgundy as I dug into your stomach, and the salted copper of your blood would lash, heated, across my face.

I will lick it all up, tongue curling around my fangs for the last drops, before I am through.

If I cannot have the comforts of sex, I will have the gratifications of violence.

For now, I stretch, toes pointed, hips coiled with intent, purring between my sharpened teeth, kneading the bedspread with unsullied gilded talons.

Lessons in Pomegranate

"Eat this," she says.

I accept the fruit, the smooth red skin of it resting uneasily against my palm. I could drop it. I could walk away. I could forget.

"Don't be shy."

She hands me a knife with a wooden handle. The blade is too long, I think. The metal is not meant to be so dark. Is that blood crusted at the tip?

I stand, arms outstretched, a pomegranate in my left hand and a dagger in my right. My wings droop. My skin is pale in this dark place, an outlier.

Even the colors don't want me here.

She makes no further commands. She leans against a tree trunk, her arms crossed beneath her exposed breasts. She waits.

My physical eyes close. My third eye opens, tingling in the center of my forehead.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

I slice into the pomegranate, the skin resisting. But I force my two hands toward each other, and the fruit's membranes give way with a gush of red fluid that coats my palms and trickles down my arm.

I pause, horrified at the color staining my skin. Surely there's a way to avoid this mess?

Her laugh draws my gaze to her. She shakes her head, her long black hair brushing her shoulders with soft shushes.

"You are hungry. Why not eat?"

A trickle of juice drips from my elbow and spatters my upper thigh.

I look to her again.

Her eyes roll, impatient.

Slowly, fingers shaking, I bring the knife to my lips.

She arches a single manicured eyebrow.

I press my tongue to the cold metal. The juice is sweet, but it cannot cancel out the tang of iron. Surprisingly, the combination is perfectly pleasant.

I let my eyes drift shut as I draw my tongue up the blade, feeling the ridges of the dagger underneath my tongue. There is a flash of pain as I reach the tip, and copper mingles with juice and iron.

I lick my lips afterward, and swallow.

She's right - I am hungry. Not just hungry - starving.

I drop the knife, and it sheathes itself in the blood darkened soil.

I do not care - I don't need it.

With both hands, I bring the pomegranate to my face, digging it open with my nails, letting the juice run down my arms, splatter my legs, spray on my breasts. I expose the ruby-colored seeds, nestled in gristle. They feel like smooth pebbles on my lips. I lick, bite, nibble, suck, burying my cheeks in seeds and skin. the seeds taste sweet, yes, but I can't bring myself to savor the flavor. I spit out the white membranes as they get in my way, gulping down seeds with small crunches and large gusto.

She begins to speak as I eat, abandoning her post by the tree to circle me, running her claws lightly over my shoulders, purring in my ears.

"If you are hungry, you must eat. If you are curious, you must experience. If you wish to understand something, to consume it, sometimes you must destroy it."

She pauses and I use the broad of my tongue to push a seed loose.

"It's okay to be a monster."

I am not sure I agree, but I am hungry, so I eat.

"If you want something, take it. Make mistakes. Make enemies. Eat them too. Wear your teeth."

She moves back in front of me and smiles. Her teeth are pointed, blood-stained ivory glinting in the scarce moonlight that filters through the tree's canopy.

I run my tongue along my lips to capture some of the juice that's coating my chin. They catch on my own teeth with a long scrape of pain. I swallow the blood. Right -  I remember now.

My wings grow warm against my back, the flames brightening with my memories.

She nods in approval, reaching forward and swiping a clawed finger down my arm. She cleans off the juice with her tongue.

"Monsters are gorgeous creatures," she assures me. "We are wise because we have destroyed so much and cared so little for who would preserve it. Monsters break boxes, traditions, and hearts."

She moves in closer to me, close enough I can feel the heat radiating off her hips. She smiles at me. My lips, still coated with blood and juice, part. My breath grows shallow. She plucks one of the few remaining seeds from its nest and presses it between my sharp teeth. I am hungry, so I eat.

She smirks her approval as I swallow, wrapping my lips around her finger and sucking.

I am vaguely disappointed when she draws her hand away.

"You are covered in blood," she observes. "There will always be blood for you. Do not regret it - do not feel guilty. Monsters have their own beauty, and it is at its best in red."

I drop the mangled pomegranate skin when she backs away, letting it fall around the knife's hilt, dismembered and mauled in my frenzied quest to sate my hunger - an unavoidable casualty.

I am soaked in red. It stains my fingers, darker in the lines of my palms, outlining my silver moon and star ring. It is underneath my nails, gathered in the creases of my elbows. There are splatters on my breasts, dribbles on my navel. I stretch my wings, touching them together over my head and making sparks fly into the night sky to be swallowed by the tree's canopy.

My pale skin no longer looks out of place.

I have been here before I realize. The juice was not juice, then, but blood. The pomegranate was someone's heart. I tore their ribs apart, nestled my mouth into the cavity beneath their sternum and listened to them scream as I buried my teeth in their intestines and devoured them. I was alive with fire and dripping blood and I learned how sweet a lover's heart could be.

Now I lean and pluck the knife from the earth. The blade is the perfect length, and the hilt seems to mold to my hands. The weight of it feels like an extension of my self, finally back in place.

If she were more excitable, she would bounce up and down and clap her hands together in excitement. Instead, she stretches sinuously, her lips curved to the side.

"There you are," she purrs. "If you are hungry, you should eat."

Meg

When I was growing up, out of all the Disney princesses, I wanted to be Meg.

Meg was strong, Meg was sassy - Meg didn't need a hero. She played them like bongos, making her own tune out of their libidos. She had long red hair and she didn't hesitate to stare Hades in the face when he was flaming mad or blow out the lantern on Pegasus' head.

To me, at five years old, searching desperately for someone to look up to, Meg was the kindergarten equivalent of a BAMF.

"I'm a damsel. I'm in distress. I can handle this. Have a nice day."

And then I grew up.

I watched movie after movie where the girl just wanted to get the guy - or her interchangeable happily-ever-after. I read books where women were treated like male prizes, or cogs in their plans, or worse - the sex joke for the audience's comic relief - or interchangeable titillation.

And that was when the women were there at all.

But that's movies, you can say. But that's books, you can say. But that's comics, video games, television, blah, blah, bliddy, blah.

That's real life.

I grew up, and I heard my friends say, "You can't get fat, else boys won't like you." I heard my friends say, "I think it's a compliment when boys fight over me." I heard my friends say, "Everything's going to change now that I'm dating So-and-So." I heard my friends say, "He broke up with me - my life is over."

And the boys - the men - y'all think this is silly. That's just women. This is the natural order, the status quo.

You've heard enough feminist rants to know better.

So you write a female character - you don't want her to be like those other women. She cannot be silly. She cannot chase a guy for her happily-ever-after. She's got to be woman PLUS.

Give her some strength. Give her some sass. This woman doesn't need a hero - she can be her own. How? Well, she's got long red hair, and a voice that stinks of sex - she can play men like bongos and stare down her villains even when they're flaming mad.

That makes her a role model.... right?

Meg sold her soul for a guy who screwed her over. Meg's new employer used her, made her a cog in the machinery of his master plan. Meg could play men's libidos like bongos - if the bongos were sentient, and sometimes wouldn't take no for an answer. Meg ultimately sacrificed her life for the immortality of a man. And when he brought her back, it was not about her. It was about the strength of his heart, and not about the strong, sassy woman on his arm.

Hercules got immortality for being willing to sacrifice his life for Meg's. What did Meg get when she died for him?

Is she remembered in the stars?

When I was growing up, I wanted to be Meg.

And then I grew up. I realized that the last thing I ever want to be is Meg - just another misconception of what a woman can be.

Fuck heroes. Fuck being the sex joke, and the titillation. Fuck being a prize, or a cog of mindless machinery. Fuck selling my soul for someone else - self-sacrifice is not a wondrous virtue. Fuck being someone else's damsel in distress.

I want my own goddamned story, and the ending of it sure as hell isn't some guy. There is no need to play men like bongos when you're willing to take a sword and run them through.

Instead, there is a woman. She's strong and sassy, sure. She may or may not be attractive. Sometimes she gets in trouble, and frequently she gets herself out. This does not diminish the times when she must ask for help. She's got her own machinations to put in play, and sometimes she manipulates men using their dicks like joysticks. But other times, she treats them like just one more monster standing in her way that must be slain. She puts herself first, because how can she help others, if she cannot help herself? She may or may not have romantic entanglements, and those entanglements may or may not last.Those people have their own stories - they will not hijack hers. This woman does not care what others may or may not think about her. It doesn't matter if she's fat, or if boys are silly enough to fight over her, because she doesn't want such immature douchebags anyways. She does not expect her life to change depending on the person she dates, because it doesn't affect much more than whom she goes home with at the end of the day.

But no matter what else, at the end of my story, there's just me. The stars hold my image and immortalize my adventures.

And, really, there is no such woman as the one to which Meg is meant to be the antithesis. There's no such woman as Meg, either. We are told again and again and again that both these characters exist. We are told that they are a reflection of who women are and of who women are meant to be. We are told lies about our reality, and we do our best to reshape it in the image of those falsehoods.

I grew up. I do not want to be Meg.

I want to be myself.

Air and Anchors

I wish you were here. I miss you like a postponed inhalation. I need your warmth here beside me, reassuring me, telling me my fears are invalid, that I am not simply second best, my friend's runner up. I am in her shadow in many ways - I need my relationship with you to not be one of them.

I am terrified, like a child chained below water, fighting an anchor to have my next breath be air. I know that, in some way, you will always love her. She shaped you, like a stake guides the growth of a tree. But that part of you is now formed - it is no longer necessary for the stake to be there. You must let her go.

I'm not sure I can stay if you insist on keeping yourself tethered to her.

I don't know why you're not here tonight. Last night, you nuzzled close to me at the dinner table, ignoring our friends, and sighed about how much you missed me, that it had been too long. I exchanged a sardonic glance with her across the table. We could both read the body language of everyone around us, and could see your friend's defiance - "I slept with her, so what?" - and your guilty jealousy.

I want to believe that you missed me. I know it's more likely that you wanted to miss me, wanted to deny that you really missed her - even though you've spent the last nine months claiming to be in love with me. I hope hope hope that you really did miss me.

"I want to see you tomorrow," you said. "I don't care if it's not until late," you said. "Even if it's just for a few minutes," you said.

But now that she is gone, you are elsewhere.

If my prose hammers at your chest like a series of dangerous accusations, striking far too close to the truth for your comfort, I am not sure I am sorry.

When you and your friends parted ways from us last night, she and I made new friends to spend the evening with. I complained to them of how stifled I felt with you, bitter that I felt so consumed by you when you seemed to be feeding yourself to this expired, now out-of-circulation idea of my friend, your old flame.

I said semi-awful things aloud, but privately called to mind every reason I fell in love with you.

Your sweetness.

Your delight in puns, and the way you always call me "goofy" when I share one.

Your vaguely super-villainous laugh, the one you emit when something funny slowly soaks into your mind, gaining humor as it goes.

Your steady, calm tolerance when I'm going over the edge, losing my temper over small fish in small ponds.

Your eager willingness to discuss the brokenness of society's arbitrary sexual mores, and the way your eyebrows crunch toward your nose when you point out that same arbitrary brokenness in yourself.

Your desire to desire to have adventures, even as you sit on your couch to play the same old video games, and fall comfortably into worn routines.

I wonder if I will ever really be able to appreciate these things again. Because, my love, I need to talk to you, to ask you about my friend, your old flame. I need to see you, to have you bring it up, address it, say a eulogy for the situation and for your love for her. Then I will be able to smile, forgive you for leaving me uneasy, and continue on with you, indulging my love. The anchor will fall away from my ankle, and I will gulp in air with the appreciation of a girl who had almost accepted that she was going to drown.

But if you wait for me to bring it up, and then lie about your feelings, I will know. I will know that you did not miss me. I will know that, for you, I am second best, my friend's runner up. I will know that your stupid, impotent jealousy over her is more important to you than the past nine months, when you claimed to be in love with me. Worst of all, I will know that those semi-awful things I said to our new friends were true, and I will be forced to break my own heart as I break it off with you.

Moving On

Tonight slammed home all the ways that I have yet to drag myself beyond the corpse of our relationship. As the fiddle danced atop the box drum, I missed the sight of you whirling through the sawdust, feet bare and face shining red with exuberance. I even made the ultimate gaffe - I mentioned you in passing. And when they slowed the music, I felt your absence like a two-by-four to my midsection. I blinked away tears and left the conversation, because I knew I would not be able to succeed in the ruse of being "fine," and I had no desire to explain the situation to my company - I'm still trying to explain it to myself.

Silence, however, is not an option. I cannot be as a young girl and slam my hands over my lips, saying no evil even as it claws at my palms, drawing blood that tastes of burning copper on my tongue. I cannot hold my peace on this when I can no longer hold back my tears. (Although bravo to me for managing this long.)

I hate the way we ended, and I hate the way that it was necessary for us to end. You were by far the best I ever had, and are now the measuring stick that no one can match, stand on tiptoe though they may.

I have to move on, in a real way this time. Because I'd like to be able to see you whirling through the sawdust, feet bare and enabling you to fly. More, I'd like to be able to smile at the sight, knowing that we are both fine - no absence, no ruse, and no conspicuous corpse taking up room.

Mourning

I'm finally alone here. The air conditioning hums in a monotone manner that invokes silence. I only know it's on because I can feel the cool air brushing across the side of my calf and tickling the back of my thigh, just above the crook of my knee. I feel it, a cold caress that reminds me of all the warmth I'm lacking.

Right now, it feels like everyone wants something from me - no one's affection is unconditional. Most want simple things, like sex, but a few want something more, something violent, something terrifying that I'm fairly certain that I am not willing to give, no matter the circumstances. But I'm finally alone here, away from their demands, reasonable and unreasonable alike, and I'm not entirely sure that I'm any better off.

I'm mourning, I suppose.

I remember waking up at two-thirty in the morning and wondering why everyone was so angry, because it was so loud and hot and burningly uncomfortable. Why couldn't everyone just be quiet? Maybe I fell asleep, but it seemed only a few minutes later that I wanted from beneath his arm draped over me, oppressive and asking far too much. I sought asylum in her cool, rich green, but even that did not quite match. I wandered off to explore. The boy on the couch was purple, simultaneously cool and hot, but he belonged to her. The man in the guest room was teal, soothing in ways that the others were not, but ultimately closed off. I did not think to question my discoveries until morning, until everyone wanted something again and I had to face it.

A few days later, a man handed me a tumbled hunk of carnelian, plucked from the sand, and smiled, knowing that it was mine. It felt warm and alive in my hand, familiar in a way that seemed utterly alien beneath his expectant gaze. What was mine - my expression, my words, my freedom, my magick - was suddenly being demanded from me - a wild tigress now expected to perform in a circus act. I am untrained, untamed, and I have no desire to jump through flaming hoops. But what else can you do when you find yourself caged?

The air conditioning has shut off. It's a little warmer now, but still chilly. My bare legs are icy to the touch. My phone buzzes against the bedspread, violating my solitude. I'm not really alone here, after all, and I realize that I don't want to deal with other people's demands. Everyone wants something, sees me as an opportunity, a resource rather than a person. No one wants to stop and recognize that I just can't be the endless well of understanding and affection right now, much less of power, too.

I am mourning.

I need to go underground.

Self-Destructive Musings Interrupted by a Phone Call

I wish I was lonely without you here. It'd be easier if I needed you that way. Instead, I'm sitting on my bed, hair sweat-soaked from dancing, one heel broken off, fearing my lack of attention span.

I try to convince myself that a week is just a really long day, and that if you called, we'd find plenty to say, and that not a word would be a lie, or even a half-truth. But I know that even though I didn't mean to, from the start I've been dishonest with you.

I warned you that first night we stayed up and talked that I was dangerous, but I don't think you believed me. You turned the hour glass over, and I sprawled on the couch as the sand rained down, counting the seconds before I pushed my identity underground. I became complacent, soft, a cat begging at your feet, only wanting your affection.

I stayed in when I'd normally go out, wore long skirts and boots instead of lace miniskirts and fuck-me heels. For you, I let my lingerie gather dust in a drawer, and forgot what it meant to walk into a room and glow. Uncharacteristically, I let you be the only man in my life, became a peninsula anchored to land only through you.

But that's not who I am. I've never been good at sitting still, and now that you're gone, I'm clawing my way out of the sand, gasping for breath and remembering. I play with hearts as if they're stuffed with catnip. I am a new Delilah, clad in lace with a taste for variety. I go out dancing, glow in the dark and capture gazes with my hips, and then come home with sweat-soaked hair and one heel broken off my shoes, drunk off the power and the strobe lights. This person doesn't need you, even as she wants you. As she tugs off her shoes, she muses that it would be easier to hold on if she were lonely without you.

Spare Minute or Sixty

Don't you sometimes wonder why we're doing all this?

We're both going through life like the other's a bonus, something to be squeezed in when we have a spare minute or sixty, something to be enjoyed and then forgotten about as we move on to more serious, more important affairs. And we pretend, because we've got that spare minute or sixty for each other, that this whole 'us' bit is a Priority.

But can you even imagine a future with me, five years down the line? I'll be in grad school, and you'll be who knows where, embroiled in research or in an underground bunker wearing your flat face as you consider a panel of gauges. And we're supposed to do what? Be married at that point? Have had a quiet church wedding that'll satisfy your parents but that I won't have believed a whit in? Go to church every Sunday, so I can think about the implications of Facebook for adolescent sexuality as I desperately try to ignore the sermon? Go home in the afternoons to our little apartment, where you'll immediately start on dinner and I'll retreat to my desk and ignore everything but schoolwork, including you and your food? Go to bed at night, where you'll briefly cuddle with me, and then wake up at 3:07 in the morning, wishing like a six year old about to blow out his birthday candles that you were sleeping alone?

We don't even have to go that far. How's this summer going to play out, do you think? At the very least, you're going to be two hours away, probably more. You'll text me every once in a while, tell me about some minor aspect of your day, and you won't call more than twice the entire summer. Mostly, I'll text you, silly sweet stuff like "I'm thinking of you," and when you don't answer, I'll eventually give up, and we'll go days without exchanging so much as an emoticon. And the entire time, I'll be here, meeting people and flirting the way I always flirt, but you'll seem farther and farther away, until I can't even remember the way that you smell, much less the mingled taste of scotch and dark chocolate as we kiss. I'll compare every single last male to you and find that they come up short, and I'll still wonder why all I'm doing is flirting, because I won't really have you, except as a single line on Facebook regarding my relationship status.

But in the meantime, in that spare minute or sixty, we wrap our arms around each other, taste the salt on the other's neck, and pretend that the rest of the world doesn't exist, and it is fabulous. I remember that night on the roof when we were dancing with the lightning, off a few miles, flashing all around us, and you leaned down and kissed me and I went up on relevée to meet you and closed my eyes - the entire world disappeared, and it was just you and me. It was just us. It was just your lips on mine. It was just my arms pressing into the fleece of your jacket. It was just the warmth of your hand on the back of my neck. It was just us. And then I opened my eyes and we broke the kiss and we both panted hard as we fought to catch our breath and leash it, and it was physically painful to look around and see that the clouds had moved in and there was an entire other world outside of us, and we had to go back to it. Immediately.

After every spare minute or sixty we manage for each other, we go our separate ways. You go back to your desk, to your computer, adding just a few more shades of depth to the purple beneath your eyes, and I go back to my empty bed, where I toss and turn and try to imagine that you're holding me so I can fall asleep, but since I can't quite picture it, I never really get there.

Maybe I'm ungrateful, or maybe I'm naive, or maybe I don't really have a heart - just an overactive imagination to make up for the lack. But I can't help but sometimes wonder why we're doing all this - is this what love's really like?

Sleepless Nights

They tell me that the days are getting longer, the weather's getting warmer, and those sleepless nights are not so cold.

I'm spending the late afternoon standing out in the rain, feeling water stream down my face. It's almost impossible to see the puddles among the bricks. The world is bright - shades of gray reflecting shades of white. As I ineffectually wipe the moisture from beneath my eyes, I wonder how it is that the storm beats the sunshine for light.

Haltingly, I proceed home, leaping from dry spot to dry spot, but still constantly getting wet. But even once I've gotten inside, the windows are still open, still waiting for the night.

The rain taps an arhythmic melody, keeping scattered time as the evening progresses, and I tug down the blinds. I snap on my desk lamp, invoking coziness, warmth - everything that cannot be found outside. I do not change my clothes, but shiver as I dry.

When the rain petters out, the last few drops pressing on like a runner's final gasping strides, it's midnight. Sighing, I change clothes, crawl into bed, cut off the light. They tell me that the days are getting longer, the weather's getting warmer, and those sleepless nights are not so cold. They tell me, but I snuggle up to empty air and wonder how you're wasting your warmth tonight.

A Memory

I walk down the street with my head held high, gliding in high heels and perfect make up. I wear a serene half-smile on my face, making little nods and curtsies to passerby I may or may not know. A young man leaning against a wall cracks a joke in my direction, flicking the ash from the end of his cigarette.

"Where you goin' lookin' so pretty, girl?"

I turn and walk backwards for a moment, laughing as I reply, arms stretched wide in an invitation to the world: "Why, anywhere and everywhere I can go, good sir!"

He grins back at me and nods. "You alright, girl, you alright."

I continue along my way, feeling expansive and connected to everyone I pass, touching lives with my high-heeled glide and half-smile.

But I am fundamentally, painfully, alone.

It is not, I think, that I do not play well with others. To the contrary, my boss when I worked at a small short-order restaurant praised me for my ability to train new employees and my coworkers often commented to each other about how much "the customers love her!"

Rather, I believe this isolation to be a result of the transience of the connections I forge. While I may exchange jovial snark with the young man smoking at the edge of the sidewalk, I will never get his phone number. I will not see him again.

I do not dig into the abundance of small ways I influence others. I do not try to pull them into the broader scope of my life. I continue down the sidewalk, sassy, sweet, and solitary.

In many ways, I am little more than a bright, shiny, memory.

Change for the Better

I paint my face in the colors of pretend, claiming this isn't the beginning; this is the end. I am unfortunate enough to make that reality, because we manifest what we believe.

I gave myself almost completely only once - just once, and that was because I knew I had to leave. Truth is, I'm scared that I'll be alone always, and when I walk in the streets, all the passers-by will see. So I paint on the mask and I keep a safe distance, so I won't lose control and be devastated when no one shows up for tea.

The irony is that I want to reach out and dance with the people, laugh with them and be glad we're alive. The only thing stopping me is really quite silly; I want me to stop sabotaging me. I want to scrape all the paint off and close the distance, forget my control and my fears. I'll be alone always if I can't learn to let the beginning begin and the end be elsewhere entirely.

So, help me wash my face with the waters of reality, give myself completely, stride through the streets, forget about distance, and not care who shows up for tea. I want to reach out and dance with you, laugh with you and be glad we're alive. I want you to be different from all the others before - I want to change for the better for you.

From Beneath You

Sometimes you fall down the rabbit hole. No real reason for it - logic just crumbles from underneath you and then you're tumbling, blue silk skirt over your head, into the maw of emotion. From beneath you, it devours.

I am strange. I know it. I always have. I've never really been moved to change it.

I am alone. I know it. I always have, no matter how I sometimes wish that I didn't know, or that I could change it.

Sometimes you fall down the rabbit hole. It doesn't make any sense, but that's the nature of the beast. One moment, you're perfectly normal, wearing a pretty blue silk skirt, laughing and talking with everyone else at the party. The next moment, everything you relied on is inexplicably gone, leaving you blind, with no idea what's happening or why, only aware that you're falling and must eventually land.

From beneath you, it devours.

The Belters

There are some artists, usually female and robust, that I buy exclusively so that I can sing along to their music while driving in my car.

The attraction is not that I particularly care for their lyrics. And the attraction is not that I like their sound. Usually, I find the subject matter insipid and the instrumental backing to be washed out and uninspired. (Oh no! He broke my heart and I had to leave him to the sound of righteous piano and gentle guitars! And if he ever comes near me again, we might have to get some bass in this piece!)

 No, the attraction is that I am quite jealous of these singers' vocal abilities and wish to improve my own by seeing if I can hit the same notes and sustain them for the same unholy number of beats and make it sound somewhat passable.

Of course, it probably sounds more like I'm repeatedly stabbing a cat with a sharpened shard of bone than like I'm the next Sara Bareilles, but back off. I have the right to sound awful while driving in my car, regardless of whoever else is with me!

Over the past years, I have accumulated quite a few musical selections by these "Belters." My iPod, in addition to my beloved Anberlin and Fall Out Boy, now contains albums by divas whose main selling points are their high notes, such as Kelly Clarkson, Adele, Colbie Caillat, and Brandi Carlile. Indeed, my  library is inundated with throaty voices and subjects I just don't care about.

But that's okay. It's not like I'm actually repeatedly shanking a helpless kitten. It's only my passengers' ears.

Interlude

I hope you can feel how much I want you right now.

Yes, you're far away, probably distracted, more concerned with thoughts of your studies than with thoughts of me.

All the same, I hope you can feel the dangerous tilt to my head, the slight arch to my back, and the lazy, predatory caress of my gaze through the miles that separate us. I am deadly and vulnerable and you - beautiful and strong as you are -

You are mine.

So put down your pencil. Turn away from your desk. Sit back in your chair.

Bury your hands in my hair as I wrap one hand around the back of your neck and pull you into an entangling, branding, devouring, beseeching, exposing kiss.

Realize that I am not really there, although I still want you, still think of you, still miss you.

Turn back to your desk.

Carry on.

Quantification

How does one quantify the human spirit?

I assure you that our lack of success cannot be contributed, as many other things can be, to a lack of effort. We've number-crunched through months of dark, fluorescent nights and a good few sunny afternoons, and we've yet to come up with a defined number.

Hell, not so much as the mythical 42. We'd settle for that silliness at this point, so long as we arrived at that conclusion through legal mathematical means.

But, worry not, fellow Rationalists! We will not cease until we've figured it out, eradicated the mysteries of life and humanity, and put a number on that which has no relation to numerals.