whoever reads this should follow me on tumblr here

i don't even know what this blog thing is anymore
it used to be a place to put things in case they got deleted
but now i'm too private to show anyone anything

oooooh private phase

it's just that i want them to be perfect first
this is a problem

tumblr?

She said it wasn't finished. I needed to do something with the lemon. I needed to make it darker or something. Otherwise, my art teacher told me, I lost the lemon. But I liked things unfinished the way sketches were done in pencil, the way lead looked messy and sewn together. It meant more to me unanswered, imperfect. It meant something that we didn't leave, that we liked the ruins, that we tried to save them.

Maureen smoked on the golf course and parked in the front of the clubhouse, a no parking zone. It wasn’t really raining when we got out, but some raindrops hit my purse. I pushed through the bathroom door and held it open for her. Her purse was bulky. She was small and a little chubby. I watched her walk past me into the big stall around the corner.  

“How long have you been in Kansas?” I asked, crossing my arms on the toilet seat.

“I grew up in KCK, then I moved to Eudora.”

           

“Oh I’ve been there.”

             

“I didn’t like it. Everyone knew my fiancé. I couldn’t drink a beer outside without someone seeing. It’s too small. Now I live in DeSoto.”

“Do you like it?”  

“I like my house.” 

The toilet flushed. She held her purse between her arm and body while she washed her hands.

It was green in the light from the clubhouse bathroom. There were bulletin boards and posters with wives on the walls. I thought about how Desoto to Maureen didn’t seem like Desoto to me. I had been up too early in the morning.

           

Little white dogs on leashes walked by the tent after we drove back. The tent had been badly decorated with internet bought banners and bracelets, pirate-dressed rubber duckies and an inflatable treasure chest full of bottles of hard alcohol the nurses called shots. Thanks to Kansas liquor-license restrictions on the golf course where I worked, sitting under the Hospital’s OBGYN-sponsored, pirate-themed Hole 12 with these women for twelve hours was my job. So I took walks to escape and got rides from white haired men in golf carts who were nice, and who I was nice to. And even though I had time to enter the white tent and eat some rice and beans and an enchilada. Volunteers for the hospital handed out shirts and musicians with brass instruments and hungry supervisors sat or stood together as I left with my plate. Even though I talked to the nurses about the seasons, with Maureen repeating “I just eat healthier in the summer” and with her later in a car because we were out of walking distance from a restroom and the golf cart still wasn’t back. It was raining. More mist really. We were driving through neighborhoods I recognized but I was confused about where we were. Even though they surprised me with their moments of calling an ex-husband because he was closer in vicinity. How that was the weirdest part. Temporary tattoos on their cheeks. Their lawn chairs and stomachs out over their legs. Their bandannas and noses and makeup. Falling asleep in the lawn chairs because Deb would stay awake waiting through the lightening for the next round of golfers and Maureen grabbing the keys from her friend’s purse saying “Come on, we’re going to the bathroom.” The people who really kept me there were the men.

                       

At Ryan’s, ideas drift in front of us like islands and we are the captains of different truths. Something as natural as the two of us gives me light I can hold onto until later that week when I wonder and hope it won’t go away. There are too many faces in memory I don’t remember anymore.

In the upstairs apartment of a house where cats rule and all of the cats are overweight Adam just looks at them shaking his head asking why, but I don’t want to ask myself that question and look away. I understand the attraction to someone who loves what you love, out of everything.


He weirdly pulls my chair close to his while we pick out which cat bowl is our favorite. He holds my legs as if they were one and leans over them. He arches over me. The chairs are at two different angles. It is difficult because he's so big.

He says, “Let me take care of you.”

Smiling sort of hard like my eyes could probably start crying soon. The kitchen is not the same with my eyes this way and I am unable to hide for the first time. The smallness of the cigarette between his fingers and the scar along the bottom of his palm. Shaky big hands. Thick. 

Him saying you’re going to make me cry. Me saying I doubt it. Him saying I haven’t cried in three years. I can’t believe that. 

The cat scratches his neck and he shouts ow and it scares me and I am drinking my tea like are you going to scream again sort of scared and curled and him really apologizing, speaking extra softly to the cat, cradling it like a baby.

           

Cat hair falls from the ceiling and we are in a sort of intercourse facing the bookshelves in different rooms. Conversation leads too far inside Adam’s head to be real because it’s me looking in and he is the wall around me and we are unable to get to the bottom of anything that way. 


The hipbone is his favorite part of the body. I repeat you don’t know me. Luckily, there’s a patch of mud and I’m wearing shoes.

           

I rush into Ryan’s living room with my arms full saying, “These are the only clothes I had in my car and I have to wear my uniform tomorrow.” Shaking my head in the mirror in her room as I change out of my uniform and walk into the living room in a long floral skirt and plaid button down.

They all turn from Futurama.

           

“You can borrow some of my clothes.” Ryan says.

           

Scott stands and walks past me, “You look like a Mormon.”

           

The mud in between us.

           

The feeling of needing something. The feeling of needing to beg in the bathroom, washing my face. This is an important concept. Very strange. The dynamic shifts and I make plans to leave. Wanting normalcy and then catching my friend run out of the shower without a shirt, a little crouched going through his dresser but not completely guarded because maybe he wants me to see something real.

           

This is what I talk about with Ryan. The almost encounters and how hard it is to live in more than one place. How waitresses should be paid more and how her boss has it out for her. She’s cold, but Scott is still here with his whiskey and ice cubes saying he figured out why wine in Spain is so cheap.

“They’re all alcoholics,” he says.

The porch light is off but the light through the living room window is bright enough. “That’s why they take that naptime, so they can get their fix and be able to work.”

           

I have a theory that Scott is a little boy trapped in a body that's too big for him. He drinks at night because he can’t sleep. So many leftovers are at everyone’s houses.            

It’s raining outside when I wake up at Adam’s and drink a large glass of pre-brewed iced coffee before a slow and overcast day at the country club. And even though it hasn’t rained in the morning since then, I wake up happy and watch viral videos in another living room on another couch with another person who plays Halo like he’s watching football. Shouting. He comes home tired and I know that means I have to leave.

Scott asks me where I’m going and I can picture him thinking about it. But the image and reality are not the same. The image can’t capture the little things, like my dishes piling next to the sink and when Adam says cigarettes are evil. When it was ninety outside in September, but we were out there anyway. 

I pointed, “Look a woman landscaper” 

I thought he'd be excited about her blue bra strap, but Adam was just happy she was a woman.

“There’s no women landscapers,” he says.

           

No image contains the view from his front steps and the side of him. If he leans back. Or the way he can’t really fit on his couch or the poem he showed me by Wang Ping. The lack of light in the bedroom. The billowed curtains. The art on the wall. His office. How I don’t get his jokes or like his music, but I liked that it was soft and that he played it for me the second time in his broken car. He opens my door and I crawl through to open his. Taking the pillows out from under my head. How I open around him. He starts to tell me he doesn’t like it when I feel bad and listens to my theories about why Ryan is the way she is, asking me to stay, it doesn’t matter, he just wants to see me, and he is stronger than me and I watch my body crumble against the wall if he threw it.

           

“Why would you think that?”

           

“I don’t know. You’re so big.” 

           

How impossible it is to be a nomad on my period. Just hoping it won’t come and wondering why I got so sad in the kitchen when he offered to take care of me. I make it back to my couch where my friend is playing Halo and his girlfriend is pixilated and asleep on his computer screen.

i am crying for the mountains and the children 

alone in the hills in my closet 

forever

i saw the books on your desk and stole one

then found a piece of paper in the printer

and a blue pencil in my bag

just to see my handwriting

to match it up against hers

i think i stole this pencil

because i can't use the word paradox

without sounding like a teacher or

a student -- now i'm neither of 

those, or both. i do not know what

or who anyone is at least every five minutes

i've got questions but i erase them

your phone is old and my eyes hurt 

from the fire how brilliant does a person 

need to stop being

to be ok 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sftuxbvGwiU

i am very afraid/scared/freaked out/disappointed
i mean i guess its cool she got the alien out of her
and how she survived on her own
but mostly i am just creeped out and have a huge headache
im going to start going out more
i feel like a goblin
Prometheus makes me feel like a goblin
i don't even know what to say
goodnight im sleeping forever tomorrow
thank god

outside on the wooden porch swing
i had visions of virginia wolf


on my wrists are friendship bracelets
my new favorite song is spongebob squarepants

if i could figure out how to follow someone in this world i would
but this world is too confusing
at least there is string that i can tie into knots at night


in the morning i turn over and look at my friendship bracelets and tell them that i love them
i misspell bracelets
i look for a Father's Day card at Walgreens
and pass an old man walking his cart down the aisles and up the cement ramp
in a KU basketball cap
i think about the clothes i would wear if i was an 80 year old man
definitely a hat, and a t-shirt
i think about making t-shirts with collars sewn around the necks
i could learn how to sew instead of practicing the guitar
which is broken anyway

i must leave to research friendship bracelets

is docx the same as doc?

please!

Shit is books, books are food, food is shit. The conclusion? We're in it. Deep.

seeing my parents is always funny. my dad always gets my jokes and my mom laughs at inappropriate television scenes really loudly and talks about me when i walk upstairs. she gave me all of her old clothes she was going to give to goodwill and says funny things when i try them on in front of her like, oh i was smaller than you are. isn't that funny? why would you say that? and ozi writing a new chapter in her book about a grape. and alex when he pulled Me and You and Everyone We Know from the middle of my bookcase. all of these heartbreaking moments happening around me at what seems like the wrong time, but time doesn't exist.

outside i held three rocks and lined them up like brothers. then i pushed them down the hill and i think if i was in preschool again i would try to build a tower, too. or would i? if i could go back, would i still trace the timeline and masturbate under my desk with my coat on and throw a huge fucking fit over being made to write a report on the statue of liberty because i didn't want anything i wrote about the statue of liberty to be a book report about 354 stairs? things were so meaningful back then. when i actually saw the statue of liberty she looked small and i was bored after the first five minutes. it was nice to ride the ferry there, though. and i took a picture of my friend courtney sitting in the sun with a beautiful baret in her hair.

i get to read this literature and play drinking games

and into the abyss of the internet i go

Bolsheviks!
Weeping!
The Same Location!
Dave Van Ronk!
he was a friend of mine!
part of my heart in Olympia
part in Houston
part in Denver
part in Bilbao
and Alabama

thank you summer
for this

dear daniel bailey i wish that i could read all of your poems kept in your computer for further notice
and i wish that sasha would send me her thing about a mail order bride
and i wish that nitzan would marry adam
sometimes i think hey all of my friends should get married
we could go to weddings forever
we could ask for more time
more paper
and water our dumb roommate's flowers
when my brother forgets to say goodbye

i woke up at 8:am, free

I think he likes me

he was looking at me like he wanted to eat me

Hans Christian Anderson wrote this:

and when it boiled the sound was like the sound of crocodiles weeping

in the middle of the war on terror

and the war in iraq for weapons of mass destruction

and operation new dawn

that color really washes you out

I am listening to Barenaked Ladies.....
where is the lease? Ah!
Why do I never know where that is!
When I think about my life
I imagine hiding out in the teachers' resource room
...........it's like they are connected
...........and sometimes.....other people are in there...
and sometimes
I find things

The next two weeks are state assessments CAN'T WAIT

Watch out for those flying recyclables! It's March in Kansas!

This is for you SAVANNAH

what are these

crescent rolls

I get dressed listening to Lil Wayne and go out to see art. At first I don't know where to park, but it's Lawrence so after I few minutes I find a parking lot and a crowd of other people looking at the art already. One of them turns out to be my five year old student. Her Mom smiles, "It's Hailey, right?" and introduces me to her latin boyfriend. With my hands in my pockets I walk around. Most of the paintings on the wall are of hay or in Chinese, which I can't read. There is a camera on a shelf on the ceiling. I think it's funny. An artist asks me if I am an artist and we watch someone hit a silver tea pot with a hammer. "I was afraid he was going to hit a finger," the artist said. "I didn't want to see blood." This week the teachers told me I was going to teach shapes for math groups. I don't know if that was an insult or a compliment.

I don't even know what the difference between a poem or a newspaper article is anymore. A window is a photo and mine is closed. A joke is a tomato. The top most searched word after define: is love.

It's hard to understand people.

Do you understand anyone?

No.

Not even me?

Of course not.

The sun was out all day and I thought about the Beatles. A stranger was nice to me. Savannah leaned her head on me and called me little bird. She also spied on me when I was singing in the shower and repeats lines from my made up song. She thinks I didn't know she was home :)

What did Martin Luther King want to be when he grew up?

A Doctor.

I guess he wanted to be lots of things. This page says he wanted to be a Lawyer.

So he's like me. I change every year.

Oh yeah? What did you used to want to be?

In first grade I wanted to be a zoo keeper. And before that, when I was five, I mean four. When I was three. It's hard to remember.

Everyone, what do you all want to be when you grow up?

I want to be a policeman or a race car driver.

With both of those you'd get to drive fast cars. What is the Emancipation Proclamation?

Uh...........

In the morning I'll write a whole paragraph about Emily's red and black barette and the dirt in her fingernails I tried not to notice when she wouldn't let me teach her how to tell time. "When my Mom gets her tax return she's going to get me that barette from family dollar," she said.

Driving to the dentist in the rain I used my horn so I wouldn't get rear ended. After I parked and walked up the stairs to the door I passed a man watching the demolition of a building across the street.

My dad is still sniffling and he can't eat too much cayenne pepper because it's too strong. I revert to a child and hit myself between the eyes with the end of a pencil while I file my taxes. "You're getting money for this you have to do it. Stop acting like that," Mom says.

Coming home and organizing the porch with that cigarette

putting up pictures

the year of the dragon is my year

"Oedipa nodded. She couldn't stop watching his eyes. They were bright black, surrounded by an incredible network of lines, like a laboratory maze for studying intelligence in tears. They seemed to know what she wanted, even if she didn't."

Thomas Pynchon ^

Somehow everyone has gone home and Robert keeps making mumbling gestures, kissing my cheek and holding his hand on my side so I can feel its weight. Too afraid to even take off my scarf I sleep with it on. My make-up is smeared in the morning as I look around at Robert in a gray undershirt and a typewriter in the corner and flag of Kansas against the wall--a little less grown up than his last room.

There are so many stars up there when you get out far enough. On the road, talking to Ryan's dad about schools. Ryan turns to me. That's nicotine gum; he's addicted. She cries in front of the cash register in McDonald's because she can't find herself the way Depok Chopra can. She gets a chocolate-dipped ice cream cone; her dad coffee.

Driving to the water to see it. Me and the lone branch standing up against the wind. The layer of stillness and boat abandoned out there where there's no parking in front of the gate and I run back to the car for exercise, looking up at the stars because I don't want to be the only one anymore.

The train tracks invisible until the train passes and our arms are linked like we will walk tight together in front of any train, but you only spoke Spanish after pulling me on top of you and I can't stop hearing you say "Me encanta cuando ries." Sitting like Buddha. And I don't mention the lack of handwriting about to affect the curriculum, but I do bring up the spelling bee.

oh, the future

are we there yet?

I came home to a girl with dark hair, cut short around her head, stirring marinara sauce and munching popcorn in the dark. We curled up in front of Netflix for a couple hours and I forgot more things, days, amounts of money, addresses, people I know, it all. There was a lot of curling up today.

I have started to ask myself serious questions. Am I the woman carrying a filing cabinet to her classroom? Am I four years old eating pizza at a table in the cafeteria? Was I featured in People magazine for losing weight? Did I run into a tree and suck my thumb next to a girl's knee? Did she pick the rubber mulch out of my hair and tell me "What do you have in here, toothpaste?" Did I not understand until tonight, in her arms, that outer space was not pretend? I gave birth to twins and found them sitting in the lap of a girl, watching a movie, then repeated how dark it was in the room three times.

Do I look darker to a person coming in from the light? I felt a little stranded next to a farm house, but also managed to buy a cappuccino and park in front of the lake where it was hard to see the stars. Red, blinking towers stretched out before me like dim and alien souls in this mess of children and pregnant newly weds. God save us all.