pages from the sketchbook

Words from the sketchbook, collections of life happening randomly around me, I put pen to paper and draw the moments. These are my landscapes, my profiles, my sketches.

Bent head, eye brow a stencil of thin brown perched upward like a thought, her eyes looking downward toward some distance point on the floor. This is her pausing, thinking of the next thing to say. This is a moment that silence fills with potent conversations about uncertainty, the self pausing to collect all the practical that should come with a moment like this. She is in the moment and in this moment she weighs the risks of taking things on or letting the moment walk away.
~
There is a smell in the air, fragrant sprigs of lavender and burnt sandalwood mixing in a holy union of two strangers sharing a bench. Bookends of olfactory delights mixing in the shear joy where randomly they collide.
~
She said there will be a tomorrow as sundry steps of strangers collide with the air around her. She is a wreck of cold and worn wearing on her, speaking her words to the bitterness blowing around her in this harbor of glass and metal called the bus stop. I was an accidental witness to her resilience toward some unexplained pain she was fighting on this winter’s day. I was her witness.
~
Three children sit under lamplight and morning stars passing around some mystery found on the side of the street. A prize, a treasure, a tossed out thing that has become something for them to share.
~
The wind’s blowing hard, bitter crispness whirling all around. Snow drifts.
~
A cackle and a call out for the bus to come. People talk in murmurs of resistance to the icy day. Its cold, where’s the bus already?

A Blessing in the Air

Cheeks feeling tired from another night, my book bag dangles from my shoulder, I’m about to go home. Finishing conversations and inside jokes with coworkers, laughter lingering in the throat, a smile washes away the worn, and I am feeling like those familiar pair of jeans again. I am comfortable in myself, fitting just right.

Walking out right before dawn, a crow flies out from the night, landing on my car. I am still, watching her eyes stare back at mine. Thoughts flash in my head of my childhood and womanhood coalescing into a pirouette of self-embodiment. This last year’s work greets me in those crows eyes recognizing me. I am humbled by her presence, sharing with me another conversation from the universe. The crow squawks a blessing into the air and my breath is struck silent in the listening and then off she goes two circles and into the night she returns. I have no idea if any of my plans will work out, but here I am about to go home.

Sunday Scribblings: Destination

The dawn cracks the horizon, light breaking through the back of tomorrow, and with the light comes the wind. It is a fresh breath, chilly, brushing the cheeks with the subtle sting of winter. I get into my car. I have a destination in mind. Long hours, this self heading out onto the road hiding behind point A to point B, but really my goal is just to be in between. This is the road trip. The world passing by, everything that peeks out of the task list of daily minded living falls away into the blur of scenery flowing by, the constant then becomes this self in this moving backdrop. My destination is not to get there, goals accomplished and the journey done, rather it is to be the solid form among a moving canvass.

I turn the key in the ignition, pushing the defrost while holding the other hand close to the lips breathing warm breath over the frozen knuckles. Then I move the other hand up clasping the two together and feel my life flow over the two joined. I wish for the heater to work faster. I watch the cold air turn warm against the frost of the windshield, at first a dot that becomes a circle and then the heat explodes the icy crystals into wet droplets that evaporate away. I turn the radio a few times over for just the right song. The one that sings of going, leaving, and coming back all at once. The song that sings of this self’s own internal soundtrack, always playing somewhere in my head. I shake off the fear that I’m not leaving fast enough. I remind myself the journey has long since begun and I am only just beginning the middle of it all.

I put the car in reverse and back out. I put the car in drive and begin the movement. I turn the corner and head out for the destination.

~

~

~

More destination at sunday scribblings. Happy New Year!

for mandy

Walking with stationary thoughts,
tucked away on the loading dock,
while watching this city move.
I am reminded of you,
thoughts unfold from the envelopes
of living,
the stickiness of the seal
long since worn open.
I remember you –
age 3 running around
in the rays of the sun,
bare naked
and liberated
from any thought of indecency.
I remember you
at 6-years-old,
eyes closed
while pumping the legs
back and forth
forth and back
on the swings,
watching the colors
change
from yellow to red,
red to yellow,
the head tilts further and further back.
You hung like a board
arms tethering you to flight,
until you bonked your head
on the ground,
scraping skin
and bleeding your favorite color.
Tears were a momentary response
turned into another story
about how once,
while watching the black screen
of closed eyes light up into the Technicolor
from the sun, you scraped your head.
~A Letter From You~

Slowly, I am reconnecting to my words.

oh, and its snowing AND its sticking!

tired piles

At this moment, scattered around me is the history of my research class. Codebooks, data analysis, frequency tables, needs evaluations, logic models, and gobs of research papers have broken free from their designated piles to become one continuous circle of clutter. This mess sums up all my work, leading me into the final that has only just begun. The final is due Monday, I have completed one section of five to write – the statistical analysis.

My piles are tired and so am I.

The rest should flow smoothly in a cut and paste pattern of filling in the blanks from what I have written into what I am asked to write. Three hours tops. Not tonight though. Tonight my brain runs into run-on-sentences, and I am ready to succumb to the lassitude weighing down my eye lids.

I’m writing simply as an act of procrastination, a moment’s reprieve from making sense of my circular chaos. Sigh.

morning coffee

Time change leads into sleep change, and suddenly I can wake up without cue once again in the morning. My snooze button thanks me. I get up this morning an hour before my alarm clock went off, pulling this self out of bed without negotiation or second thoughts. I feel like I have gotten enough sleep for once in the last two months. So, I take the extra time and walk around my home, drinking coffee and looking at the piles that have once again invaded my space. It really is hard to keep everything in tip top shape, while simultaneously putting myself through Grad school. I’m proud of my piles, as I begin to excavate them for the organization that lies at the bottom. :)

Then I realize, with the extra time I have better things to do. So, I grab my warm cup of coffee and sit on the couch that has become my badly needed coffee table. I begin to read Curve Magazine, a spontaneous buy yesterday. This woman named Michelle Wolff is on the cover and she is from a show called Dante’s Cove. Yeah, I wanted to know more about her. I ask myself why I didn’t know about this show that claims to mix Buffy the Vampire slayer with my favorite subject – lesbian women. I flip through the mag, reading about Babeland which is one of the top businesses to work for. My preference in reading any magazine is to randomly flip through and read the articles as they catch my eye. I admit, Babeland caught my eye first, then the short Julie Goldman article because I am seeing her next month at a local festival, and then I turned my attention to the intriguing women of Dante’s Cove. Hmm. I make note to add this show to my TV DVD watch list.

sleeves

Watching her sleeve move ever-so-lightly downward in a bent slouch as she reached up to pull the stop-signal cord on the bus, I remembered you. It was a long sleeve with a big cuff, oversized really, that when ‘laxed, fell comfortably around the palm ending appropriately at the beginning of the first set of knuckles. The cuff was sturdy and narrow, giving off the impression that it was a glove for the hand rather then the end of a shirt sleeve. When reaching, the sleeve casually with subtle lightness fell back to release the hand from the home it lived. I found myself surprised by how my heart worn weary on the edge of my own sleeve gave way to endearing love for hers.

You have been so forgotten for so long, lost between the louder rhythms panging in my head – studying for class, assignments due, and the tasky endeavor of creating a clinical program in hopes that a published paper may come out of the attempt; polishing my skills for the promotion at work and the preparations for the flight onwards. I treated you like a regimented cover, though weary, kept clean and spotless with that professional gleam I’ve been harboring. I forgot you hanging out exposed in my days, redirecting myself to more important things. But really I’ve never known how to work you, as evidenced by the sudden flutter from the simple movement of a stranger. You sang so loud it changed this cadence in self and all I wanted to do was remember you. Remember you.

my day

I set up house at the coffee shop, preparing my day of study, after spending the morning in quiet communion in a circle, then cleaning the dust bunnies of clutter that collected in my home. I pop in a new CD – Chris Bathgate, Silence is for Suckers – as I sit in silence with this self. I begin to type an entry, wondering what I want to say, but my head feels constipated with used up thoughts. I struggle to put any words to the page. I go outside to get a sense of something outside. Watching this gyrl in the distance playing with her red umbrella in carousel twirls, up and down, over and around and around and around. Her goulashes spin, a wobbly rotation between her and the unsteady ground. Caught with her red umbrella between the rains today, she becomes a dancer in the chilled wind, content and impish in her childhood.

I am distracted by my favorite entrepreneur who has gone door to door trying to find a space for the bongo people, who want to play but have no home today. Her smile always catches between my chest and lungs; I want to strive to live life with as much bubble and joy that erupts from her. She tells me about the cracked glass and tile dreams she has for this coffee shop as inserts of insight unfold about the bongo people that has sent her out in this day. I smile in myself while muttering the words bongo people, bongo people, bongo people in my head. I want to keep saying it over and over again, my own carousel of spinning happiness.

I come inside and start again to prepare for my day. Studying the top of the list, writing the primer for the studiousness, I am not ready to put my nose in the book or the book up to my nose. I murmur bongo people, letting it bong from my lips. My neighbor smiles and I smile back. I’ve learn not to explain me. It’s just best to let it be.

Typing my page, I realize, though I haven’t moved any of my clogged-up thoughts, I have eased them with the color in a day, this day,
my day.

There You Are, I Whisper

A bluesy day, but I’m feeling good. Woke up and rolled out of bed, turning off NPR blaring at my head. I tell myself, I simply cannot wake up to the news, shaking off the dream where I was in the news commentary, so close to Bush I thought I could tell him to [knock it off already]. Maybe it’s time to go back to classical music or white noise instead of the news first thing, I think to myself as I turn on the water for the morning brewed coffee. Turn on the light in the bathroom and look at this self in the mirror. There you are, I whisper at the smile coming back at me.

I am the comfortable old blue jeans I put on, with the undershirt and dress shirt buttoned just above the chest. Hair brushed down, the one exercise in patience for the day; I drink my coffee while flipping through a magazine. Today is the autumn equinox and I spot the balance in it all.

I am coming into myself or towards a new chapter. Like a reader reading a good book, I am excited by my turn of the page. I smell something on the horizon, though not sure what it is, I do know its coming and for the first time, I’m pretty confident it’s gonna be the best thing that ever happened to me. There is no concrete rationale for the thought, no proof of what I sense; it’s just a dousing rod kind of hunch smiling right at me. ;)

Happy Autumn Equinox.

Prickly Finger Tips Touching Orange Blossoms

Fall came poring down today under gray sky and cold wind. I wake after a long day of sleep between work shifts and go for a walk. Though the day gives off a sense of glooming, I feel none of it, contented by the themes of autumn unfolding. I finally get to wear that sweater, wrapping my feet in hiking shoes, and head covered. My memory walks down lanes of Apple Festivals, football games, autumn hikes and bond fires. My mind remembers how much I have loved fingers exposed to the prickly cold of autumn’s chill, palms rubbed frantically and then held to the mouth for rushing spurts of warm breath on finger tips.

I come home to a house full of Japanese Lanterns dangling from my mantel. On this fall day, I welcome the orange blooms. On this day, I am filled with joy and awe. I am also busy beyond belief and my tiredness may be influencing my disposition. I take reprieve in simply enjoying the beauty of today and this self.

Hmm. I guess this is me scribbling a love note for this moment. Seems about right.

Earlier in the Conversation

Earlier in the conversation I was talking to La Fer Nakita. Since college we have kept each other tethered to the epic stories in our lives, constantly turning our oars down the parts of our days we want to share. Months and even years have kept us as distant as a forwarded funny, but somehow when the time is right, we step back into the boat and share one good sail down our histories. I have never stopped looking forward to hearing everything she has to share.

Earlier in the conversation I was listening to a message from a high school friend. Someone I see randomly throughout my life. We seem to catch each other every few turns around the sun. We always seem to pick up where we left off, briefly tumbling through each others lives. Our conversations never seem to end, never seem to be finished. Then a stumble on our roads, bring us bouncing into one another again…to pick up where we left off…then off again unfolding.

Earlier in the conversation I was camping with friends. A circle of people who sway and mold, our conversations present and past, we are always coming full circle between thoughts. Laughter key, insight essential, we barter time in each other lives just being exactly who we are now. There is nothing like letting go and trusting we can be just as we are among one another.

Earlier in the conversation I was eating mango sherbert under star filled skies with the note maker, a friend. A bike ride and music during the days end. Our conversations take us back and forth. We just flow in and out of each others lives like the cadence of the tides, always catching each other between high and low times. We dangle buoyed travelers until the anchors are pulled and the waters push us away from shore. I’ll see you in the next harbor.

~GoGo

To Yield the Crops, Growth Must Occur

Slicing tops of tomatoes, sticking my finger in pushing the seeds out under the flowing water. One, two, three, cleaning the insides. There’s joy in this process.

We all get defensive. We all try to protect ourselves from the hurt of others thoughts, the fear of someone getting the better of ourselves with judgment, opinions, and the worst of them all, truth. It is a lesson of self-exploration while the soul learns to yield to trust that stops the battle armament from forging. Trust of care, trust of self, trust of knowing things will work out; even when we still don’t know the results is our best defense between each other. Yet, even as it is written, the strength it takes to get there is half the battle.

Pausing between tomatoes, picking the basil from its stem, fingers brought toward the nose to inhale the freshness of the green growth. Pointed, firm, fresh, picking the best growth on the stem. There’s contentment in this process.

We all want the best of ourselves. It’s a misnomer to assume we all have the same lessons to learn or we know each others lessons. The blessing comes from knowing we balance each other, mixing our lessons with one another. Even the worst experience becomes the best teacher, if we can still our insides from the pitch fork of distress. When life becomes sh!t, we should practice stillness inside. Stillness from the tape recorder that judges us, stillness from the controlling hand of minds contemplations, stillness from pushing feelings away. Stillness even when all these things fight us. They will fight us.

Slicing tomatoes and chopping basil, my fingers reach for the garlic. Cusped under palm, crush, then peel. There’s healing in this process.

Today is a sunny day. I am pulling out my tent to prepare it for camping. There is a month left until Festival. Festival! Also known as Michigan, Festival has always been the highlight of my year. This year feels uncertain, in that too much change happened between the last one and this one. I am not sure what it will look like for me, though I hope to let go of my underlying feelings of being separate and isolated from the women around me. I do know, these words on the page, are the ones that will yield the best growth for my time there. I really like this part of myself that gets this. I really like the fact that I am willing to risk myself in these words. I like the idea of letting go and trusting in this stillness.

Combining tomatoes, basil, and garlic, this harvest slips through my fingers and sticks to my fingers. Scraping the bowl, fold, then turn. There’s truth in this process.


Photo from the Festival Website

Over Night - Free Thought

Mixing thoughts on another over night shift – listening to Solsbury Hill, my heart going boom, boom, boom. I want to grab my things, and have you take me home.

I was just outside, sitting in the dark night smelling the warm air, hearing the thick air displaced from cars driving in the distance. I was just sitting there, absorbing the summer night. The smell of plants having pushed up from the earth, now growing stronger and thicker in the perfumed dirt of summer’s rich soil breathes strength and energy in this night. I was taken back to moments sharing night time swims with friends, letting the water lap around our bodies, and that smell of wet bodies in wet clothes that is so unique to summer nights permeated my mind. I am so grateful I appreciated those moments as much in the moment as I do now.

The job is the same as it was last weekend, 40 hours in 4 days, money in the pocket, and sleep an exercise of athletic sprints between the hours working. I am very glad I have trained my body to sleep at odd times and in between times to keep my energy up, though am sad all at the same time. My internal clock just wants my days to be consistent, waking and setting with the sun - not against it on the weekends and with it all other times of the week. My resistance is the same its been from the beginning of school, stemming from the internal child who never liked to be tired. Of course, if I didn’t say these words, didn’t put them out there, how could I release them and do what I need to do to get through school, work, and all the tasky that goes hand in hand with Grad school? Life has never been so easy, but I am living in the cusp of change. Soon doing what I need to do to get where I am going will change to things I am doing to grow me right where I am. Sleep and time will balance out. and at the same time, I appreciate this moment for what it is - I am a student on more then one level, learning as I go along. It really has never been so easy as it is right now.

My coworker and I are working, silent partners to things to do, we stop and share moments in lulls of an over night. The music on the radio is excellent tonight.

Today I don't need a replacement

I'll tell them what the smile on my face meant

My heart going boom-boom-boom

Hey, I said, you can keep my things

They've come to take me home

At This Moment

At this moment, I am listening to Nina Simone sing “Feeling Good”. There is an excellent version on the Six Feet Under Soundtrack. Yeah, I bought the soundtrack…I mean it had Nina Simone on it as well as Imogen Heap, Death Cab for Cutie and Radio Head. It just felt right to purchase.

At this moment, I am procrastinating from taking a quiz for my class by writing a blog entry.

At this moment, I feel pretty good from another bike ride. I’m living my life a sweaty renegade this week, refusing to shower every time I break a sweat, letting the patchouli mix in the perspiration. Its summer, or close enough, and I kind of like knowing my hair is currently drying under hat from riding 5 miles of trail.

At this moment, that’s pretty much the sum of what I have to say – music is fun, bike rides are good for you, and sweating detoxifies the body. ~ GoGo wisdom of the day.

The Road Trip: My last stop...

My last stop landed me down Route 15 South, a highway draped by the blackened night. My headlights revealed pitch black farm houses, long since gone to bed. For miles, I was the only one moving. Movement is what brings me on this road trip. Just moving down the highways, crossing rivers and back, keeping everything passing by, except me (myself, I?). Hmm.

As I drove to my final destination tonight, eyes tired and arms worn, I realized the directions I had were wrong. They weren’t taking me here, that’s for sure. So, I had to stop the car and collect myself. Found bits and pieces of information I could use – the map, the hotel address. Then off again, onto unknown roads, following the road map directions I made for myself. I’m here. On the way, the roads, completely new, felt so familiar. Having crossed thousands of miles of road in this country – freeways, highways, toll roads, back roads, and unknowns – even in a completely different place, I know exactly where I am. Nice thought, in a time when I wonder what my direction really is, I have the literal taken care of...

On the road, thoughts passed through my mind about getting here…I realized it was more then just about a map. It was reading it, seeing it, trusting the direction as they unfold. But more then this. As I drove undercover tonight, I was completely engulfed with the blackness of night – just me and my headlights seeing the way. It wasn’t just the map and directions that guided me, but that the road had a structure familiar to me. Some-ones built these roads; some-ones drew out the map and cushioned the pavement into topography of our earth. The roads are the same roads everywhere, with variations of course. And there I was, driving down someone else’s mindset, guiding my way.

As I came to my final destination, I understood the word faith.

Good Night,

GG

Between Thoughts

“Riding in back of cars with girls is fun. Eyes sleepy, body cramped, and feet numb just below the ankle I sat between the lull of conversation while swimming through the night sky all around us. Loved every second of it. I came full circle driving home from a[concert] in [A2]…” ~Journal Entry 4/19/06.

Do you know about the Ark? It’s a highlight of Midwest living. Saw Chris Pureka on the stage, singing songs that just make my heart leap. Good time, good fun, good life.

There is a story forming in my head. Images of shirt cuffs, eyes lined with a smile, and a camera. This week the word beautiful has greeted me everywhere. In emails, on billboards, in street chalk, blogs, and on the tips of tongues. Even leapt off the stage and held firm in the car riding home with friends. For some reason the word beautiful has spurred these images in my head like memory’s snapshots of time gone by and by, except it’s not my time or my memory. I can smell perfume, a soft lilac smell with just a smudge of lavender. I can hear the laugh – an open laugh that catches at the back of the throat like a diver's coming up for breath. I can see this coffee table round and flat. Nothing lives on the coffee table except for a single white vase only big enough for the single daisy residing there.

Last night as I listened to Chris play, the story between the photos in my head began unfolding, and I realized it was a story. I hope to shuffle time between now and then to actually write it. I have so many things that NEED to be done right now, I write these words in hope I can remember until I purge them on a page. I am always surprised how stories form, completely a life of their own...

“…On the drive home in a small car with five, I let myself swim in & out of conversation and the dark. The direction in our lives was the road, while we wandered aimlessly in conversation and laughter. I’m contentedly sleepy while writing these words. Yep, riding in back of cars with girls is fun.” ~Journal Entry 4/19/06 continued.

Halfway Up My Sleeve

Spending time winding down, playing this laptop like a keyboard on a piano, I want to make myself some music to listen to in my head. This was a nice day, a good day beginning with me scratching my bum and drinking OJ from the carton. Plopped myself down in my favorite chair and read some theory before getting dressed and heading out to work at my internship – was stopped with my arm halfway up my sleeve by a neighbor knock, knock, knocking on my door. He had remembered a half spoken conversation where I said my week was busy with tests and papers, so he brought me over a cup of java to start my day. A new neighbor, half remembered in my head, remembered me and the insignificant comment from one day became a significant start to this day.

Opened the door to the Community Center a smile on my face and the sun at my back. Greeted my counterparts on this nonprofit ride as I made coffee and sliced sweets for my group. Today we had an honest man who is starting a bookstore on the Eastside come and speak about it. I listened as his story unfolded on the table to the lusting beat of all our hearts for this wonderful idea. It will go in next to the coffee shop I am at right now. There will be French doors between these two worlds – the coffee shop where I study and the bookstore where I will run my finger across the books listening to the thud thud thudding sound. Then I will stop randomly and the book I land on will be some random find I will read. Of course this will all happen in between my graduate life existence.

Left there to go to my work for a staff meeting, and found myself lost in the sunny-ness of the day. When the sun shines in winter, it opens the sky in a new way. Everything seems possible; all roads lead someplace new and meaningful. It is days like today that I feel most impulsive to go for a walk somewhere in the woods – take myself out of the grindstone of the day. I didn’t, I had that staff meeting waiting for me, this just happens to be a day I would do that. :o)

Removed myself from the staff meeting, my heart beating from a last minute chat I had with a co-worker friend. She’s an old same of the soul who shared with me her crossroad contemplation as I shared with her a school load of conversation. Then OFF I went to spend time with Mr. Man kidsitting while his Moms apartment searched via phone. We took an adventure outside up and down the side walks. There is nothing like the cracking sound of wisdom when a kid speaks.

Then back we are to the end of my day, exhausted by this wonderful ride. There is nothing to do now, but end this sentence.

Good Night.

Residuals From Doing Shrooms In College

I came home to my apartment this morning and immediately put on some pajama pants. I love to be in my kitchen first thing in the morning, the light drips in from the living room just right, a bent beam all over my stove. Not tired, I drank tea leaning against my counter just watching that beam move up the stove onto the wall and for the first time recognized this was my home. This was me spending time in my home.

I’ve been so stressed lately from the isolation of work, school and internship (oh my!). Worried that I don’t make friends quick enough or with charmed impressions that there must be something wrong with me. Living alone and not being in a relationship compounds this fear right now because without the comfort of someone else, living alone means your alone. Doing Grad School and living alone. Whew! This is one of those fears I’ve let sit in the corner, darkened by perception. I’ve done so much to try and prove it wrong, try and change it. But lately, I’ve just needed to drop it. Let it go...knowing if I give it enough time it will appear as it really is. Well not necessarily knowing...more like acting as if I know and hoping that acting isn’t just the bull in the shit I am feeding myself. I just let it sit in the corner while I drank my tea.

And wouldn't u know, there it was - me, my fear, and that beam of light sharing a moment in my home.

Cars, Classes, Rain and Soaked: Random Commentary

Grey weather here in the Midwest. Rain soaks everything while winter breaths down everyone’s neck. Class day, so I’m very familiar with the rain today. I take the bus to campus and spend the day here…today’s my all day thing, and I won’t get home until after 10pm. Only then do I get to drive my car and go to bed. That’s a weird sentence isn’t it?

These days I wake up and go to bed with the intention of driving. My wonderful, thank god I have one, car is high maintenance. We're not talking about burnt out head light H.M., but the “It’ll work as long as you turn the key ¾ of the way instead of all the way, push the gas 1 ½ times only with a feathered touch and wear your favorite color underwear for luck H.M..” The problem these days is a short somewhere and this means I have to keep up a continuous routine of driving my car in order to have it function the next day. The next day is the same routine, with the same intention – to keep my car going these days. I have an appointment to get it looked at, but not until Friday.

To tell you the truth, with the exception that I am feeding into environmental problems with my gratuitous driving, I like the idea of beginning and ending my days doing just that. At night I drive towards the outskirts of some northern towns. I go about 20 minutes out and exit onto some obscure road and try to get lost.

In the morning, appreciative when the thing actually works, I just go to some western exists I know and drive past some factories that have closed. My circles these days know about but aren’t affected like my family is by the Big factories closing. For me it’s been a theme throughout my growing up years. Shutting down and getting laid-off. It’s the biggest thing in this town, and for some reason I have no connection to the people directly affected…I hear from my family in other towns about so and so or what not who was lucky enough to have saved some money…or not. Its weird to get my information via newspapers here.

Anyway, this is the beginning and end to my day with classes sandwiched in between.

Glad I shared.

Half Baked Truths and Parliments

Went walking a silent town, down the street toward the river. Came across myself hanging from a tree, dirty pack of parliments imploded and all used up. I smoked parliments in the end to remind me of the first time, the first girl who got me to smoke. Because of that time when we smoked parliments with your granddad at your family cabin. I started to smoke to cover up the silence between us when all I wanted to say was, stay with me. See me, love me, and don't stop calling me beautiful.

The air was chilly, my hips hurt from the weight of my thoughts. It was your hips I fell in love with first as they peeked outside the brim of your pants. I loved them because it was easier than loving that laugh too much, how it roared out of your mouth in hiccups. I loved them because your brightness scared me and I thought if I could convince myself I wanted hips like yours on me, that was actually the desire beating in me.

I went for a walk and I honored the genuine side of me, that was not so genuine then. Remembered half baked conversations on the phone when I called you higher than the sky, wanting to tell you this is me trying to get close to you, trying to stay close to you. Remembered that tremble in your voice b/c what I believed kept us close was pushing us further apart. If I could tell you I loved you, I would never have stayed so high for so long.

I went for a walk and enveloped myself in the memory of you - of that night when we cried in the receiver repeating to each other "I don't know why I'm crying." I know why today. I cried because I could never tell you, how much I loved you and wanted you to stay, and you were crying because you got me high for the first time, taught me to smoke, and you knew I loved you and you couldn't stay. Indirect conversations and half-baked undertones, seem so much clearer now when there is nothing between me and this memory anymore. Nothing to hide me from you.

Half baked truths and parliments. Half of us were together while the other was on our way. Its silly you know. You've reinvented yourself in my days, from one girl before to a few more. Each time, I wanted to say, stay with me. See me, love me, and don't stop calling me beautiful.

Went walking a silent town, down the street toward the river. Turning the internalized into internal trips - down, into, through and out. This time, I know who needs to stay with me. Me. See me. I. Love Me. Self. And I won't stop calling myself beautiful...but i will always love you.