This is a distraction

I had a whole bunch of stuff written here and it disappeared when a bumped a stupid key trying to put some pointless post-it notes back on the printer after they fell down.

I was talking about how I am trying not to annoy people in the little things. About how it's dark outside today, the tops of the trees blowing, the air cold enough to feel like air again. It looks like it's going to rain any second but it probably won't. Or it will.

I want to go for a walk, but I wore the wrong shoes and I also want to take a nap just as badly.

Twenty-five more minutes.

Talk to me. Tell me things in little sentences.

Write back to me, you jerk. I'm sorry I broke your heart all those years ago. You wanted a van and ten kids. I didn't want to think about someone else. I wasn't ready. I am now. I am putting myself on this limb, ready to change, for you to catch me. I am letting go of what I held on to for so long. Don't let me fall into nothing. I have been there for too long before.

My iPod just died. I was listening to Owen Ashworth again.

(The post-its just fell, but I shall learn from my mistake and not attempt to replace them.)

I had a dream the other night that I adopted a Japanese orphan baby. We were refugees, running through things. I woke up crying. Not because I was scared, but because when I woke up, I didn't have the baby anymore.

These things happen when you get older. They happen even when you don't expect them to. When you tell yourself you don't want things.

I want. Oh, I want.

My old roommate is engaged to some guy she's been dating for 3 or 4 weeks. Apparently they just know. I went with her yesterday, to look for engagement settings for the diamond she inherited from her mother, who got it from her mother-in-law. She found the perfect ring. Because that's more important than the perfect man.

I don't want a perfect man. I want mine with holes. I want cracks and scars in him, to make him interesting, to run my tongue along the edges. I want him here, is all. Here and willing to want someone else with holes and scars. Lick my edges.

Had bad sushi for lunch yesterday. I am over it, the whole sushi thing. Too many episodes with dubious avocado and unfresh eel. Was up at 2 am puking it all out.

I can hold so many other things in. But avocado escapes me.

And I have new work to do. I don't want to do it.

I want to go sleepwalking.

Today I got up On Time

First day in a week or something, I can't remember. Been falling asleep so late I can't get up in the mornings.

I got up. I had breakfast. I never have breakfast. Sleep is always worth more than food. At least, in the mornings.

Can't sleep lately, have a hard time with it. Acting asleep is no big deal, but it's always one of those tortured half-sleep things. Paranoia with sharing a room, I guess. And the one night this week I do actually fall completely asleep, my sister informs me that I sleeptalk. Excellent. Like I need my dreams advertised to the family when I have no idea I'm doing it.

Which equals more paranoia, which equals less sleep, which equals more irritation at little things, little people.

I am writing this because I was meant to be writing to a friend's email, and my gmail has gone nuts on me and keeps trying to refresh in the middle of things and I kept losing everything I was typing. I hate computers as much as I love them sometimes.

Today, I have decided to listen to whatever's on my iPod nano in alphabetical order by song title. I don't know why, I was just obsessing that way. Right now, it's playing "London Still" by the Waifs, which Adam sent to me. I like this song, it fits in little spaces today. (Apparently little is the word of the day.)

Wonder if you can pick up my
Accent on the phone
When I call across the country
When I call across the world
I...see you in my kitchen
I can picture you now
As you toast to your small town
When you drink the happy hour
I’m in London still
I’m in London still
I'm in London still

I took the tube over to Camden
To wander around
I bought some funky records
With that old Motown sound
And I miss you like my left arm
That's been lost in a war
Today I dream of home and not of London anymore
I'm in London still
I'm in London still
Yeah I'm in London still

You know it’s okay
I’m kinda happy here for now
I...think I've finally grown up
And got myself a lover now
And if I ever come home
And I, I think I will
I hope you're gonna wanna hang at my place on Sunday still
Oh yeah I hope you will
Cause I'm in London still

You know we got it sorted, yeah
We really got it down
To a fine art on Sunday
In a sleepy Sunday town
I wonder what I'm missing
I think of songs I've never heard
I'm dreaming of your voices
And I'm dreaming of your herb
I'm in London still
I'm in London still
I'm in London still

Oh I'm in London still
la-la-la-la-la London still
I'm in London

He misses me like the left arm he never had. A phantom third nipple? How would that hurt? It's what I feel like I should be. In his world, I want to be a tiny thing, I want to be...whatever that word that starts with an "a" is that means an organ that's not necessary for survival, like an appendix or a tailbone.

I don't want him to need me anymore. It's how I fall out of love. When I don't love being needed anymore, because that's what I fall in love with in the first place...the things that need me. Being needed makes me feel bigger, better than I am. I am the saviour, the anchor, the hand up in the dark. I make them brighter, clean them up a bit? It gets that way at first. They need me to feel good about themselves. I am a champion ego-fondler.

Because I see everyone as better than me.

That's why I let them love me, I guess. Why I love them back. If they love me, such an impossible, flattering thing, the least I can do is be what they need, love them back. My love is a thank you, it's an obligation.

I always get tired of my obligations. If you know me, you know this. My playlist is shot-riddled with songs he has sent me, beating guilt into my ears for keeping him like this, for staying when I'm screaming at myself to go.

I don't want to hurt him. The hurt is inevitable, and I delay. I was - still am - always crap at finishing things. Rilke once said:

It is a tremendous act of violence to begin anything.

And I love beginnings. I am always beginning, I'm good at it. The finish is what I dread, what I avoid, what I never get around to. I wonder if I love beginnings because they're violent. I wonder if, really, I'm just an angry, bitter person after all.

What kind of sicko pulls guys in and holds them there for 6 months just to let go and drift away? What kind of perversion am I, being everything they need, an ideal, never really there and then gone? Do I kill the rest of the women after me with the things I say I am?

I can be the warm thing you lay on in the dark. But...and I told him this in the first poem I ever wrote for him, before we were a we...

custodian

we've peered
through each other's
windows.

candlelit matching.
the same

trinkets of
self-absolution

adorn both mantlepieces.
the kitchens stew

meals
for one -

not us.

we cook for people
who aren't home.
we interact through
invisibility -

wonder why
nothing pauses, looks
back,
focuses on us.

us: the benevolent

presence,
nightbreaths,
but not anything

they can cling to.
our relationships:

janitorial.

we maintain,
upkeep,
locking doors as

we leave in grey hours so

morning can find
us
asleep, behind other

walls.

It's 3 am, love. And I am slipping out from underneath the covers.

I am listening to Keith Jarrett as I type this

Another corner, another box for me on the edge of things. I was tired of editing it all, of not being able to post, of posting when I didn't give a shit and then having it come around to bite me in the ass while I was sitting unaware a week later...when I was back to giving a shit.

I should stop swearing. It's not ladylike, and it's allegedly going to be another piece of the puzzle of the picture of my own bobsled to hell.

"Hell" doesn't count if you're talking about the place, anyway.

I love that Keith grunts or cries out while he plays. Maybe it's someone in the audience, but I like it better if I think that it's Keith. I owe Hippie Craque for sending it my way. It's the perfect music, really. Something I needed. Something that I can write to.


It was short today, quiet. I was unreciprocal. My significan other'd stayed up late for me, wanted to chat. I didn't. I haven't all week. But I do anyway, because I don't want to hurt him.

I am back to the same familiar place. Holding hands because it's familiar, not because it's comfortable. Because he wants to, not because I am actively participating. I am back to thinking I am doing him a favour by staying, by not saying how I feel, by putting myself in the silences and hoping that he'll notice and leave before I have to say anything.

It gets to a point, you know, where you realize that you love someone wholly, completely, inexcplicably profoundly as a friend. And the more and longer you keep them as a lover, the longer you keep them, the easier it is to see what they really mean to you.

He was the right thing - once. Was the one. Once. Now he's not, he or I have done some sort of moving on, and it feel different. It doesn't feel right anymore. I have carried on this lie long enough, and I should leave now, before I get there and have to leave after everything more.

The vagueness is intentional. I am only as clear as I can make myself understand. It has to be abstract.

Because I can't just look at the thing in my hands and say, honestly, I am bored and I do not want him anymore. I am over him and I am trying to untie and let go, without him noticing that I'm leaving, because I am tired of feeling nothing just to make him feel good. But I don't want him to feel bad.

Enough. I cannot do this today.

I am the truth of what I feel. To myself. In my dark corners.

Everywhere else, it's a fake feeling. And the faces you see aren't me. No one sees this face. No one's been here enough to peel back the layers and understand.

These words are an exorcism. I distill myself in poetry until you have me complete and enigmatic enough that I no longer need to be here. And when that is done, like Sylvia, like Emily, I will run to the quick and eager dark. Heed the call of some need to discover if I can still be, without all the masks and the voices.

I wrote that once, elsewhere. Elsewhen, even.

But I am back to a place where it fits. I am back inside, cowering. I crave this shell, the hidden places for things where I am...just am. Where I can feel and say what it feels like, can look like it feels like, and no one has names or faces or knows enough to point and judge me.

No one even knows I'm here.