But you, you just know, you just do

Nothing is unfolding as it should, my body feels corroded. I want a new one. Sometimes I feel as if I were stuck in a grave, unmoving – sheltered by nothing but aching flesh and bone. Is everything else useless? My soul feels unfinished but perhaps it is time to call it quits. If I die I don’t see what that has to do with anything. Haven’t I died before? Isn’t it the living part that is the hardest of all? I’m so tired of crying myself to sleep. I hate these nights where my brain is helpless, and my body restless. I can feel myself drowning.

forever strange

I pass by his grave by accident Monday and my heart seems to plunge into the cusp of my ovaries, and up to the cave of my chest before I catch my breath. Strange he has been on my mind a lot lately, awakening to nightmares of his death. Sometimes it is as if it just happened. Then there are words, and strange exclamations I’d only briefly crossed in those days following his body’s collapse to a darkened world. Death changes you. It’s subtle at first as if you’ve morphed into a twin, two people in the same body until each side of you is just as a coin. Those who stay unaffected by that of a lover’s death, or a death in general frighten me. I still feel quite fragile in this sense especially since before his death I was considered to be an ice queen (now maybe it is worse). Funny since I’ve never quite felt that way. I thought of that lover today, my mind dragging up the past like a long quilted blanket running through the stitches with my finger tips. I have not loved many men, but those I took in as lovers were special to me. They were delicate. I suppose as humans we cannot help but be attracted to what we see in ourselves in those reflected upon us.

I came across a dress I used to wear in high school, when he was alive and would flag me down in the hallway – calling out my name in that condescending way to drive me crazy. I threw it onto the floor, and gritted my teeth. When does the anger dissipate? I’m afraid his death has ruined me romantically for anyone else. It is anger over the loss, over his obedience to condition. Why didn’t he tell me? He sought me out every day for months, his mind cradling the idea of reuniting in his desperate state. I know partly why he stayed away but it brings me such little comfort, and now the weather is changing – every time this happens I sway to the memories we shared. A cloud of smoke in the air, a triangle of love curved by all of us involved – a rush of my hands on a doorknob to find him in bed with someone he did not love. I was pressed for evidence to make me hate him, so that I could not love him anymore. He really should have hated me for my betrayal was far bigger than his. I was only seventeen but had already lived a life full of complete and utter insanity. I was far older than my age, even if my brain was not fully developed – living with two men who loved me, and each other was a mess.

At least I had his love, maybe I still have it. I do feel sometimes that he is with me, surrounding me. I miss him though, for someone who died at his age will forever be a loss. He should have succeeded in impregnating a woman, having children as wild and tempestuous as him. He was magical. I may attempt to cross his grave again with purple roses but it already feels so cold, and so close to that date I will never forget – and I don’t think I’m strong enough to not fall onto the dirty ground. I wonder how he felt about being buried, if he thought of it at all. Was his death on his mind at the end as I imagine? At fourteen I only knew him as the boy with the house across the street from the school, at fifteen he was mine and for ten years we spun a web.

you're not a freak

I want a baby. I was reiterating this all day. Later I realized this particular feeling was a link to my desire to birth a new creation of myself. I have been at such a loss this year, wandering aimlessly with my heart exposed like some wounded sparrow. I am abuzz with the idea of traveling again staying in New York this long has been unhealthy especially with no goal or destination. I love this city, the way it breathes, eats, swallows but occasionally I found myself contemplating its suicide inside of me. The memories that swarm all over me everywhere my feet walked, my legs scratched, my hands touched. I suppose once you feel love you can’t help but keep its memory alive. I expect life will change dramatically and for the better in 2010. I need some stability that does not drive me mad. I’ve decided without much thought just a simple twist of fate that I will dedicate myself full time to a volunteer program that pays (not a lot but enough) to work with Arab families in New York city. Maybe this will fulfill all those hearty desires I have for love. I know there is some synchronicity in it coming to this but I cannot model forever, and be happy. I wish it were possible but I feel my love for it wanes. It has a way of reawakening and this destined trip to a little down the east coast may win my heart over again but I cannot depend on its awakening. These things happen or they don’t. I only know I need more to satisfy my heart and soul.

it's always the same

The full moon is wide and awake, and like an animal I feel as if I should howl at it. Admire its coming but wish away its madness. I always feel like a bubbling up balloon when the moon is wrung with that fiery glow in the evenings. I am already feeling restless, but this seems to be a common theme with me lately. The bright stretch of sky doesn’t ignite its usual existence of pleasure on my soul. I do actually feel an ugly sickening desire for this moons warped gaze. I am stepping on gravel with four inch heels, my hands wavering against my sides. The evening is cool, crisp with the demise of summer and the start of fall. No I want to scream do not take those brief humid skin bleeding days away from me just yet. Led Zeppelin plays on my ipod and my hips sway to Robert Plant’s voice and Jimmy Page’s guitar. She is sitting on a stool at the bar and I am late. I already recognize her stance, the way she bows her head while playing with her phone but I suppose this is not so uncommon when I am sleeping with someone – their motions become almost like a second nature to my own. Our bodies have come together in moments of desire but tonight I know I will not sleep with her.

I’m so consciously aware of how and when her feelings for me change over dinner that I draw in a quick breath as if I am drowning. My words get stung in the back of my throat, hard to come up in between my lips and finish the story of my lost love. I trickle down the years of Christi and I like reciting some descriptive poem. I even later break into short words of a poem I once wrote after we’d been separated for months but she came back to claim me as her own. I can tell my date is fascinated by this, by how strong willed my love is when it is alive and well. Unfortunately not everyone loves like me. I’ve learned this in all the hard old fashioned ways by having my heart ripped, and gutted for my loved ones to see. It is not my lovers fault in some ways as they never quite had the capacity in them to love as much as I can even though in the end I always feel as if I have just been had, or fooled. I can roll into the story of Christi and I so easily that I only later realize the candle at the dinner table has gone out when before I found my hand roaming near its heated blaze. I was intrigued by its ambiance.

She grips my hand in hers, her caramel skin contrasting with my snow white skin. I can’t tell if our hands fit as I am even more unwilling to give anything about me away right now – in this moment. It is only because I can see in her eyes that she desires me more than she had even an hour ago. Women especially crave the reckoning of love (even if it later drives them mad), and this one is so jaded and cynical about it that in some way I almost feel she has fallen under my spell when that switch goes off in her brain. She has never been loved as I love this is obvious by the descriptive emotions on her face. It is not that I was trying to reel her in – in fact the evening before I was trying to spin her out. I am turned off that she cheated in her last relationship, and it does not seem uncommon that these women exist but I could never betray someone I loved in such a demonic way. I would rather scrape my own heart out and feed it to the dogs. I say this in less words so that she knows I cannot condone such behavior even if she can. It seems silly to me what made her fall out of love with her ex because as an adult I still feel that love should be coveted when it appears in ones life.

Later while fastened to her hip, her big brown eyes fluttering to look at me she asks me ‘will you hurt me?’ and I catch my breath again. Who is this before me? She appears the same stoic, rational woman I first engaged with on that wild evening of longing for me (for my other lost love) but she is different inside. I almost want to explode, swing myself away from her and never look back but I’m fascinated by this change in her. It is just this about me that keeps me there, other peoples emotions have always cast an alarming interest to me, perhaps because I feel so different from everyone else. I’m obnoxious and cruel because I know I cannot love her even if this isn’t what she is questioning. I know that my love and affection take more time than others. As my best friend and I say we are not serial lovers. I do not give my heart away without a grand fight to keep it stored inside my chest. Yes I am a romantic fool but only when it comes to that, when it comes to a hammer slowly breaking down those most glorious walls I have built so high. She does not know me, and least of all understand me. I am not even sure she wants to. There is a part of me that wants to protect her even though she is years, and years older than me she strikes me as a vulnerable bird caught in a nest that is slowly unraveling.

there must be some kind of way out of here

Dreams unleash possibilities, even those rendered as nightmares. I quaked in earlier days under a spell of distorted medication but it wasn’t pleasurable. It wasn’t as if I was seeing ghosts of a lover past, or hallucinating myself into magical places. My emotional well being was curled up in a ball, in the fist of my heart I could feel my soul dripping away into madness. I swept my skin over the past like a lonely woman of a desperate heart club, wanting to grab onto anything that I could remain still for. But is stillness necessary in life, just as patience? I am not a still person, not planted in the ground, or destined for soil. My soul is that of a gypsy and when submerged in a drowning pool of depression my thoughts began to wander to a places I didn’t know existed inside of me. While drunk I slipped onto the subway, staring gingerly into space and laughing - my hair curled into tiny tendrils. There is something familiar about the splinter of yellow, and orange lights and although the anxiety that had been plaguing me, even the anger began to swell I let my thoughts be consumed by drunkenness and the idea of meeting a new lover.

There is no love in my life except that of a river of ghosts. I will never forget that line from an deep, dark middle eastern movie where the woman says, ‘my heart is like a train at every stop someone gets on, and off’. On Monday I am crazed for my desire for Jae, my mind cannot think of anything else although these feelings were bound to make a headway at some point they evolve like an volcano about to explode. I am on the verge of screaming when we begin to argue while I am standing on an outdoor subway platform. I wonder if she knows that she has manipulated me, been unable to let me go and yet unable to pull me in. this isn’t an abnormal pattern for me. I did this for years after all, and loved that woman through all the madness of our hearts (even still). It is true I would not have cared as deeply had that drug the doctor so readily prescribed even saying that it was my friend (what a mysterious joke) had not been in my system. She tells me she wants me, that she is attracted to me, that I am an amazing catch but that she cannot be with me now. This is destined to be our story, and maybe I should be more hopeful but it shouldn’t be this hard to connect, to come together. What you can’t shake is sometimes destined to simply be nothing. I learned at an early, and even unforgivable young age that despite your desire, and pull towards someone whether you were intertwined in another life holds no meaning to whether your story will conclude in this life.

I’ve never had one of those straight and narrow paths like some people who go through life without an ounce of discord. We all have stories, of course and recently I discussed with a friend who has been through many of the same things as myself why it is that we seem so unafraid of those normal things others are so bothered and frightened by. I can tell Jae I want her without much fear about it because I have already suffered the worst sort of pain. I did in a chilly way ask if she was attracted to me, and she looked at me with ravenous eyes and said ‘I think you’re gorgeous’ but this isn’t enough - not for me. I should plow our story into the ground now before it erupts into another heartbreak. I have an unabashedly obsessive nature. I won’t even pretend that my passion cannot make headway into other emotions, and feelings. I have thrown lamps, phones, bottles, crashed walls with my fist. I suppose it is that initial feeling that is hardest to shake since I only had experienced it once before when I was fifteen - but that should have been my warning to stay away. We are destined to repeat our mistakes until we get them right.

I wonder though if it is that I am still so in love with Christi that I have projected all my left over feelings for her onto Jae because they’re resemblances are beyond the physical - even their behavior is what is of a comfortable nature to me. In a diner in the mid twenties on the east side my mom looked up at me and said ‘you are still in love with Christi’. it wasn’t a question, it was simply an observation but my heart stopped, and tears welled in my eyes. Do we ever learn how to get over a love that felt so grand and yet still felt so unconsummated between all the lies and miscommunication? I know my love for her could still set fire to us, if only I felt she could be with me. I know that our love affair is dead, especially now that she will not speak to me. I do not think we have gone this long without speaking since our initial breakup, and I suppose it is for the best as she has hurt me so many times maybe this will open the door to a new love, and less heartbreak. I do not know if my love for her will ever be trumped as I could never tire of her. I do feel a conscious hatred for her, and her brutal and brave honesty in telling me that I am her other half, and yet being unable again to be with me - but this seems to be my destiny with women like this. Is ten years of love turned to a drain when it no longer runs like a deep, and sounding river?

I imagine my story with Jae with similar resentment already. As I see our story played out in my mind the moment we met, like a flash of negatives framed by fractions of light - playing like an old movie with twisted words, and brief and then hungry kisses. A passion of moments that is or is not destined to play out in our reality - but as I once tried to explain this to her it sounded quite inadequate to what I had already seen. Maybe these were just dreams long past, a life that was lived in another universe, another time. It is her distance that draws me and contains me. I cannot pull her towards me if she does not desire me with as much longing as I desire her, and in the end my resentment would ruin us anyway. This much I am already aware of. Why doesn’t this stop me? I said Monday to her in a matter of fact way that I would not stop pursuing her until I felt I had quenched my desire, and as pushed as her ego may have gotten it is my own selfishness that speaks. I will not give up until it is no longer a part of my thoughts. It does not mean that she is everything but she takes a key place. I will pursue my other options as my reality senses Jae and I will not be together for ages, maybe years, maybe never. I do not understand these people as I am so open to love, to giving it that I am always willing to accept that their love may not be as great as my own - but I can live with that. That seems to be the curse of people who feel much, and who dive into the ocean of the unknown or is it all already known?