Only Yesterday

It suddenly hit me that the boy on the screen is only eighteen - well within my reach. This is my world now - it's not just something off in the distance I can barely see. (And yet that night so long ago when I shimmied innocently and was told I should learn to dance was really only yesterday.)

I've filled notebook after notebook with this glittering trash. There is nothing more concrete and nothing more abstract. I remember when I was told I should really get it published and I laughed (and wondered if it would ever really happen). (Remember when 'social commentary' used to be called 'bitching in your journal'?)

I'm shivering fever-cold as I recall who I used to be and look at who I am now. Have I really changed? (Duh.) But it all comes full circle far too often. (He used to be the boy on the bus I'd look at before smiling to myself.) History is a loop or, at least, a spiral.

The boy on the screen who cries like an artist is really just a reflection of me, roller coaster of body language heart pinned to his sleeve. You want to reach out and touch every wry smile, because you had that thought too, so long ago, only yesterday.

I laugh because I still write poetry - or maybe it's that I only ever wrote prose. Whichever way it happens, it's still where you can find the meat of things - all the overblown pretense, and delusions, and buried deep inside a set of parentheses... (the truth). Though if I recall, I didn't like those all that much back then.

I swore I'd stop writing these, but I missed them too much. (I suppose what is real and powerful inside us can be neither hidden, nor disguised, nor repressed.) I just want to be honest.

So let's say it.

I am lonely.

But I am not depressed. (I gave up on the idea of bleeding grey a long time ago - but then again, it was only yesterday.)

I am vivacious and flirtatious, and when I see the people I used to know, I tend to clam up and laugh to myself. Not because (as I claim) I see all the layers of irony, but because I want to make them think I'm interesting. (I've always tried too hard to make that third impression.)

And they lean their heads in close as the camera catches the flickering end of a caress. They're only eighteen. (I wish you could rewind real life to see these moments.) Good Goddess, they are only eighteen.

I sleep with a stuffed frog that an ex-boyfriend gave me (so long ago, on a bus - no, I guess it wasn't yesterday), not because it reminds me of him, but because it reminds me of his quirky best friend. Bless you, Buddha - why did one of those quirks have to be the habit of not wearing a seat belt? (I suppose all this really comes back to you and John and Jesus.)

Yeah, I'm crying. I have been since before that boy said, "Get off of me." There is some strange drive within that won't let me stop, won't let me sleep. There's all this remembering, all this thinking I still have to do. (Oh, great. We're back to that vague sense of rhyming rhythm once again.) I think there's no such thing as a crazy random (ironic) happenstance. There's always a reason. (I'll swear he's timing the intervals between each wall post.)

You want nothing and you want everything. You want "one." (Remember that conversation we had yesterday about second person?) So make up your mind. There isn't a way to have both, no balancing point to stick your rapier-sharp wit into and see the hilt quiver. There is only "get off of me" and "she really has a secret crush on me." (Whirls of interrelated intricacies.)

There will always be the 'suppose's. Even though I want to stop dealing in those. (Let me take my glasses off.) So, I suppose it was a long time ago, when I stood in a circle and shimmied innocently. And I suppose I can count back the years and find that they aren't as many as I first felt. I suppose it was really only yesterday. (Good God, he's only eighteen, that fellow there, on the tv screen!)

Dying Embers

Cara stood on the beach and stared up at the sky, head cocked to one side. She looked silly.

"Whatcha lookin' at, sweetheart?" I sing-songed, slinging an arm around her shoulders.

She didn't answer, and I ended up caught in that awkward moment where expectations are not met.

"Cara?"

"Hm?" she intoned, her gaze not breaking.

"I threw your book-bag in the lake."

"Good place for it," she murmured.

I massaged the bridge of my nose.

"It's the sunset," she finally told me, her eyes only now meeting mine. "It just struck me down with its perfection. It made me think about all the things I used to love, but that I burned away."

I laughed. After all, this was Cara, everyone's favorite party girl. Her chief concerns were boys, fashion, and popularity, in that order. But now she almost sounded... philosophical.

She sighed, and shook her head, her gaze darting briefly back in the direction of the horizon, which glowed like the final dying embers of a campfire.

"Don't worry on it, Hannah," she assured me. "It won't happen to you."

I followed her back towards the music, only vaguely wondering what she meant.

Galaxies

Do you ever think of me? Oh, I wouldn't have back what we had for the world, full of emptiness and repressed urges. Besides, now you have her. But do you ever think of me, when it's dark at night and you can't quite get to sleep, and to recapture a feeling more than a moment, picture my face before guiltily replacing it with hers?

You never know whose fantasy you are. There may be dozens, even hundreds, of people who imagine you when you're not there. You become important to them through those intimate instants. You'll probably always be ignorant of your minute stardom.

And now I can almost feel your lips pressed against my shoulder as I scribble, cold fingers brushing my hair across my neck. I turn to look, but I know you are across this galaxy of a southern state from me. (Warning: this thought process encompasses more than one person.)

So why do I care? (Excellent question. I may even endeavor to answer.) Well, there's something about multitudes that leaves one feeling utterly alone. (Ah, my favorite paradoxical truth.) No matter how much you smile and laugh, and lie with words about support and family, you know that (I know that) you are (I am) still that girl who scribed nonsensical chimes in the shade of a bus. (Second person narrative is never really second person.) You were the only guy who ever made the lies even a little bit true.

What she says isn't true, though. I don't want you back - not in that sense. I may remember laying in your arms, but it's more for the feeling than for the moment. I am only happy that you two are happy, because though I may miss both your conversation, you both deserve your smiles and romance. (I guess I don't really want to know if you ever think of me. I'm not that important.)

Maybe now I will finally be able to drift to sleep in your embrace, though you may as well be galaxies away.

Contemplatia on a Common Paradox

Sometimes it's worth noticing that no one is really paying attention and that reality is not the same thing to any two people. We are irrevocably separate. Never mind this and that bung about 'other halves' and 'soul mates'. There is no symmetry among human beings.

But that's not to say that some vestige of understanding can't be achieved. One just has to remember that we don't fit in the other person's skin. Sad but true that we even try. (The main component of metaphysics is physical.)

One has to adore the paradox of the social animal that is the human being.

Have To

I crave something new - a dance, a security, a snark, a man - and know that no such thing as what I desire exists. But I crave it anyways. (After all, we all want to be understood.)

I know that neither one of us can be what the other one needs, but we're both just so sick of being lonely. I try to recreate a state of naiveté, where a mere name may make me blush, but reality has eaten all my romance. Even celebrities are far too tangible to be the stuff of my fantasies.

So, maybe there is no solution. Maybe the days where I got lost are long gone. (How ironically appropriate!)

But to never taste euphoria again.... I have to believe that a match is out there.

Plexiglass Possibilities

The phone is stubbornly silent and that hurts.

Not that I expected it to ring - I'm familiar enough with the human species in general and the male gender in particular not to entertain such foolishly romantic notions as the phone's low growl against my bedspread would imply.

I suppose I was just hoping to be surprised.

But I am more aware than ever of this plexiglass possibility cage I'm trapped in, bruising my fists where I would usually pace. As shocking a revelation as it may be, I'm furious. After all, I'm supposed to have options. In theory, I could have anyone I want - I know all the right moves to make, all the right phrases to say, just the right balance of accessibility and challenge to offer.

The problem lays in that I cannot think of one person it might be satisfying to have. (It is not enough to want and it is not enough to be wanted.)

I guess I've been around just long enough to be jaded.

So, I offered him a challenge. Because things can never be so easy as 'yes' or 'no' and 'happily-ever-after.' Or even 'happily-three-months-after.'

"Are you asking me out out of genuine emotion or out of a sense that you should?"

If nothing else, one should always be honest with one's self.

And now my cell goes silent and my anger (why must I be so much more than average?) kicks and screams and rages at these plexiglass possibility walls and I try not to cry over this all-too-anticipated non-answer.

Yet, there's still a stupid, silly spark of hope, wanting to be surprised. (Plexiglass is see-through.)

WON Contest!

I'm even more excited about this particular recognition. After all, "Introductions" is my baby. Most of my stories go through a mere three or four drafts. What won that contest was a tenth, possibly a twelfth. I find it rather fitting, actually, since I also consider this to be my first work of intentional literature rather than just storytelling. If you're super curious, compare what won the contest to the draft I posted here April 16, 2009. I think you'll be amazed at the difference.

Placed in Contest!

"Nobody - Nobody Special" was placed second in Steward House Publishing's weekly youth writing contest for the week of June 22, 2010.

I am very excited. :)

Waking Up

"Kissing is good for you."

"Uh-huh." I batted Elec's hand away from my face. "Only when both parties agree to it."

He reached for me again and I rolled my eyes.

"Touch me again and I will remove your lips," I threatened.

Elec chuckled, leaning back against the locker bank as he dropped his hand.

"That's definitely at odds with what you were saying last night."

I jammed my lock closed and flung my book-bag across my shoulders.

"Yes, well," I sniffed, "that was before you took it upon yourself to make out with my best friend directly in front of me."

He followed me as I attempted to storm off, his long legs making it easy for him to keep up with my stiletto-shortened stride.

"Hey, you were off somewhere with Cameron earlier," he said all too reasonably. "You and I both know that kisses don't mean much."

I rounded on him, his chest ramming into my index finger as I brandished it at him.

"At least Cameron is straight. Hallie is a lesbian. You were making out with my lesbian best friend!" My voice climbed in pitch.

Elec, with the blond curls and deep velvet-brown eyes, the strong jaw and slight stubble, had the nerve to look amused. The rat!

He captured my hand.

"As I said, Rena. Kisses mean nothing."

I jerked away, careful to keep my eyes on the linoleum as I put him behind me.

Only a few days before, I would have said he was right.

Frustration & Stories

I'm discontinuing Bloodstone. I went back, read it, discovered it sucked.

I'm discontinuing The Violet Round. It was originally intended to be Draco/Hermione fanfiction, but the Writers' Club convinced me to write an original draft, which I stupidly did, not thinking about how I wouldn't be able to make my points with an original.

What I'm working on now? It's a sort of hybrid based off the Arsenicia novel I was going to write, but lost most of my work on. (Stupid flashdrive!) It's the same sort of snark that Arsenicia brings, with a similar male/female character dynamic and the changeling premise. However, I feel that this will be stronger because it focuses more on this world than on Dretis, has plenty of room for allusion (Joss Whedon and his works figure heavily), and makes more of a point about identity. The main character? Carnelia Bellis, a girl who wants to grow up to be a female version of Joss Whedon but discovers that she's a succubus. Which, really, explains so much.

Check back for drafts. ;)