someday
will you walk into
my room
lie on my bed and
stare at the ceiling i stare at
every night

smell the
mishmash of
stale perfumes
on my clothing

play my guitars
read my books
touch my walls
clutch the afghans
i made in your
tight fists

and
cry?

or will you think
that somebody
made a mistake
and that mistake
wasn't me
leaving
but was you
staying?

go ahead
take every
single game
piece from
its box
put them all
in a jar
and shake it

you'll see the
parcheesi men
dancing around
wooden words
forgotten kings
and queens

the bishops
praying for the
pewter hat
as the dog barks at
a red hotel and
plain checkers pieces
slide into partially
assembled pie wheels

watch closely as
the tiny
peg people
are separated from
the car holding their
family together.

and then decide
that what you had
wasn't good enough
not when there
are still some lost
and create tokens
out of buttons
bottlecaps
or whatever
you want

just remember
when the cards fall
from a tornado
we're all just losers
and when the dice
roll off the table
you can kiss the game
goodbye

unless of course
you're playing
all by yourself
which
while lonely
is actually
almost
advisable.

and i've
done it
enough times
to know.

it was uncomfortably
hot out today

i put my cardboard box
down on the pavement
and squinted into
the midspring sun

grateful for the
knowledge
of the truth
the ukulele truth
and nothing but
the truth

like i could
scream every
johnny cash song
i've never learned
at every pathetic smoker
disobeying the signs

and i understood
oh but did i
understand
why they're always
pushing friday
on midweek radio shows

it's thursday
at 3pm
and guess what?
now we're free

(to roll in the grass
and soak up the sunshine
or maybe just
take a nap)

tell your winter
clothes where they
can stuff it
and your hick
christmas lights
to get lost

there's a pitcher
of unsweetened
ice tea with just a
dash of lemon juice
waiting for me when
i get home

and a cracked
front step to
nod off on once
it gets cooler

and even these
june bugs
out in may can't
bring me down.

maybe if the
art store
that it feels like i spent
most of my lifetime in
had never closed
i'd be doing better

(maybe i wouldn't
but that's less likely)

and maybe there would be
a stack of canvasses
somewhere in my room
all covered in words

poked through by
needles and stretched
with yarn
laced and glittered
within an inch
of their lives

and i'd be crying
glue
and bleeding
paint

and maybe my
tension would be
strung looser than their
stretched and stapled frames.

i'm wondering if
we ever get
over our losses
creatively
or if we just find
alternatives
to abusing the
canvas.

once we were
young
dangling our legs
off the stone
wall dividing your
backyard in half.

we got a little
older
and you ran your
father's truck
backwards off
that same wall.

the truck was fine
(until the wheel
fell off awhile later)
but i daresay you
killed a few flowers
in the process.

during swimming lessons
i never jumped in the pool
but a year or two later
i fell off the deep end.

you never understood
and i doubt you
ever will but you've
sure as hell stayed.

we both realized
what was wrong with
everything
and that was
when we left
for war.

sharing music
and things that smell
wonderful
linked-arm goose-stepping
down hills
lazy sunday afternoons
with the rat-tat-tat
echoing through the house.

last summer you were
cursing for the fun of it
in the church parking lot
when the pastor showed up

you'll never agree
with my stupid *** reasons
and i won't say the
s-word if you don't want me to.

and in two or three years
we'll be full grown adults
leaning up against some
wall somewhere
(probably not the one
in your backyard)
and i will fish a pack of
cigarettes from the bottom of
my purse and you will proceed
to *** one off me
then offer me the use of your
vintage lighter

then i expect we'll stand there
smoking in silence
and we'll both be properly
****** up

you're d-day in
a floral dress
and i'm a radio signal
lost on the airwaves

we're both scraps
of destruction
whispers of a truce
lost in taffeta and lace
because we forgot
to bring the blood
and choked on
gunsmoke

we go together like
fire and gasoline
toxic
volatile
and having a whole
lot of fun in the meantime.

if i believed in
shooting stars
birthday candles
lost eyelashes or
dandelion fuzz
i would be wasting
every single
wish on one thing

that the smell of
vanilla and coco butter
that always
surrounds me

was burned into
your mind so
strongly that you
sometimes smell it
when it isn't there
and the uncertainty of
not remembering
where it's from
bothers you late
at night on the rare
occasions when
you can't sleep

(a distant memory
of last summer that
you can't quite
pin down
something coated in
simmering heat and
copious amounts of sugar
grass stains
scribbled notebook pages
a teddy bear and
slightly out of tune
ukulele music)

and it became something
that you would go to great
lengths to trace
something you would
like to smell
for the rest of your life

but i never said i
believed in wishes at all.

It's been too long since I've thought of anything like this. I've gotten trapped between the sections of keyboard, tried to fit into those endless spaces between the lines from the enter key. I'm shifting every dozen words and my eyes have gone the same route. But worst of all I'm afraid of glasses of water and the times when it's too early or too late to be alive -- maybe just the time I've always spent being someone else.

Spring, and all my old items are hitting my bed springs and bouncing off as fast as I can throw them out. Clothing and bits of string and papers that I never wrote on or that I wish I hadn't written on are falling on the floor around a pair of feet that are always being questioned as to their intentions. Sometimes I wonder if my feet are real, or maybe I'm just wishing that I could pull them off at the ankles and switch them out with a person who is very unfortunate but who has lovely toes and a predisposition to a higher immune system. That same predisposition to a higher immune system would come in handy a lot of places this time of year.

You had better believe that I would get out of here if I could.

I was standing in a bathroom that I've hardly known but I know it all too well because it's just like every other bathroom nowadays. And it was halfway okay that I was trying not to gag over the toilet because there was a jazzy pop song that sounded about five years old playing. I had never heard it but every word and corner of the brass section ran down my spine and I recognized the voice from somewhere else and I felt that he had written it just for me.

It's not blue and linear at this point, but it's not so much a black ink blot, either. It's somewhere between the two, a piece of old paper from under my bookshelf covered in black and blue circles. Every outline as empty as you could imagine.

The lawnmower is running again and I'm wishing I were still the kind of girl that could wear flowers made of sunshine and sky and feel alive when she ran through the oceany grass. Depression is a *****, wouldn't you say? You probably wouldn't say that unless you knew firsthand, because she's the kind of thing that nobody believes in until you meet her for yourself. I've met her too many times to count and I finally gave up trying to knock her down because she always comes back up. There are people like that, too, but at least people give you a reaction if you scream at them long enough. She never does.

I stopped trying to tell the truth when I realized that nobody believed me.