I pull the curtain of fog over me
To skew vision for nights like these
Nights I think that I need
Nights that keep me blurred
Around the edges of their eyes
As they fall in love with me
It’s pitch black, sometimes navy
Either way, it’s dark

We were smoking on the porch
And he was looking at me
Like I was something real
He’s naïve, of course
But on these nights, I’ll take it
The fog is getting thicker
I wanted it this way
This is all my idea, my doing

Sometimes in the morning
The curtain has slipped up
And there are hours
Before I can pull the sweet
Promise of the kiss of death
Back over my eyes
To **** out my soul
I need it, I think I need it

The fog gives us all cover
As we go out to waste our lives
Pretty girls with charcoal eyes
Stiff drinks to make us cry
Those mornings when the fog slips up
And a lover is there, left over
That’s when I need cover the most
They can’t see clearly, not me

I’ve been veiled in my delusion
Shrouded from the truth so long
I can’t go on without it
My friends all live in the fog
My lovers as false as the words
I let spill from my mouth
After one too many
I’m lying, but they let it slide

They’ll let me stay in the fog forever.

I don't think I was created
For public consumption
But I draw blood red lipstick on anyway
Do I look OK?

The joy I feel
cannot be captured
in a pixilated square
But my lipstick is there

The pain I live with
Should not be ignored,
or worse,
exploited,
for the approval
of a judgmental public

My body doesn't need a filter
It is creased and warm
It is vibrant, it is alive
And no photograph in the world
Can convey who I am

But still - we are slaves
to anonymous approval
Do I look OK?

Am I even in love
if he's not on brand?
He can move my entire earth
with a hand on my thigh,
but what's a soul on fire
without the approval of the faceless mass,
yay-ing or nay-ing,
as they claw at their screens?

I need to know
Do we look OK?

I want to love you
I want to mean it when I say it
But the demons inside me
giggle at the notion,
saying, honey, what makes
you think you deserve love?

It's not like you always imagined
And it's certainly not better.
When they ask you to talk about it,
if they ever do,
you'll have nothing nice to say.

Maybe that's your fault,
you little killjoy,
Or maybe,
he shouldn't have treated you
like the pile of happy tissues
that pile up beneath his bed.

That bad dream of a human being
That one that you despise
Who caused you so much pain
The hurt pulsating behind you eyes

That shadow behind a fragmented smile
That terrorizes you,
From the hidden pockets in your mind
For days, for months, for years ...

Thank her, for she's your greatest muse

Jealousy is a beast eating at us all -
No amount of preparation, warning, level headedness
Can ready the mind for the heart's selfish paranoia

A feeling that can make a happy woman turn bitter
And a proud man resort to petty games of children

What's a sweet, young girl to do?
When the beast of nightmarish imagination
Takes a bite out of her once practical mind

She can put up a fight
Though it may not be worth it
Or let the monster take hold
Get on her knees, smile and take it

Imagine them together, jealousy says
Images beyond the power of repression
Images she's created herself in the back corner
Of her filthy, shameful mind.

Imagine what they did.

Remember the days
When beers and warm nights were enough
Where I carried my shoes on the walk home
And I lied to a good man
By letting him think
No one else had been in my bed
The night before him

Three years later it’s easy to see
The memory play out like it’s on TV
I told myself then that it’s not a lie
We just weren’t talking about it
I told myself I have no loyalties

I guess I was right

It was August and the air in the attic where I lived
Just felt like summer – moist, suffocating
Hard to sleep in – painful to wake up
Strange smells clung to my sheets
Deep purple – My mother bought them

I ate breakfast with him
He paid – a gentleman
Even on nights when I was
too drunk
too tired
too uninterested
To let him touch me

In the back of my mind … somewhere …
I worried about when he’d ask me
To be his girlfriend
I worried about when I would have
To make it unofficial

But in the thick humidity of that summer
Our apathy was enough to keep the parties going all night

And every morning when the sun blared through
My tiny, attic window, waking me
And drying on the sweat that reeked of Budweiser
Reminding me subtly – that it might time
To grow the **** up
To have the tough talk
To learn the art of saying no

I made plans for later that night

The first apartment I ever called my own
Complete with kitchen, bathroom and twin bed
No mom, no dad
But a living room with a rickety couch
And ugly blue carpets, with cigarette burns
Even though smoking wasn't allowed

They bulldozed it to the ground
It's a big parking lot now
Full of those tiny rocks
The annoying ones that get stuck in your shoes
They bulldozed my first apartment
And a few of my other firsts

Like the first time I thought I was in love
And I waited nervously
In front of the heavy, wooden door
And he came in with a mission
Because drinking and ripping bongs
Melted away any nerves he may have had

I wondered if I'd shudder when the moment finally came
If I'd get red in the face - hot from the pressure
Would my arms turn splotchy?
Would my chest turn red?
Turning me into some diseased-looking freak
As opposed to the pretty, young thing
I'd wanted him to make love to
If only I knew,
That he wouldn't notice any of that

He didn't ask me if I was sure
Like guys do in the movies
And he told me what I wanted to hear
And bent me in ways someone with no experience
Should not be bent
And the TV was on in my very first living room
The whole time - the History Channel
I listened to the low hum
You could hear it through the walls
Despite what was supposed to be
A lifelong, loving memory,
I learned about World War II

My twin bed had pink sheets with white stripes
And a pink comforter too
And the next week he forgot my 19th birthday
And I don't know what I expected
But it was OK - I said it was OK
Because I had my own apartment
And my own kitchen
That I can't ever recall cooking in
And I had my pink sheets
That didn't feel so innocent anymore

Table, chairs, fridge and freezer
I had all of that.
Frozen dinners and plastic handles of *****
Not all memories are worth remembering
Sometimes, they just get bulldozed

When I am alone in bed, I can spread out as big as I want
I can wrap myself into a cocoon blanket
I can pull the covers over my messy bed hair
And look as ugly as I want when I wake up in the morning

I don’t have to worry about body heat
Touching me, coursing in through my skin
And making me a sweaty mess
I don't have to make sure not to hog the down comforter
I can toss and turn as much as I want

I can rebuild you with my pillows, work them into the shape of a man
I can wrap my legs around them and hold them all night
Because they’re cozy and welcoming
And I don’t have to place my head in anybody’s nook
And I don’t have to wrap my legs around a warm body

I can watch TV until 2 o’clock in the morning
And wake up with heavy purple eyes
I can put my blankets in between my legs when I lay on my side
Because I hate to sleep with my thighs touching
And no one will be there to tell me that’s weird

I can sleep on my stomach with my hands under the pillows
Or I can sleep on my back because I have no one there to hold
I can snore, if I want to, I can even drool if I see fit
I can open the window if I want and listen to the sounds of the street
The creaky sign, and the drunk 20-somethings, getting hammered on a Tuesday
And I can wonder, all alone, what they got up to that night
And why they're all having so much more fun than me

But I think I’d rather be sweaty and confined
I think I’d rather share my blanket cocoon and lay my head in your arm pit nook
I want to kick my pillows on the floor and make room
To wrap my legs around my human and pull my blankets over us both
And wake up looking ugly together – with bed hair and tired eyes
Even if I snore, I’d like you to hear, even if I drool

When you can't see
It's hard to step out
Difficult to look in
Impossible to really listen

When you can't see
It's easy to get trapped
Simple to get caught up
Human nature to hide inside

When you can't see
There is no other option
No solution either
It's this and here, nothing more

When you can't see
No resolution will fit
Nobody's understanding is kind
And not a soul can know that
It's only you
And you've gone blind

I was heartbroken in San Francisco
But it wasn’t San Francisco’s fault
I had been abandoned
And I don’t think I’m being dramatic when I say,
left for dead

Isn’t that how you always feel?
When someone you love abandons you?
Like they wouldn’t care if you died
It’s not their business to care anymore
That’s the beauty in leaving
And the travesty

So I walked up the winding hills
And I took in the beautiful Bay Area
And I stared out at Alcatraz
And I walked along the Golden Gate Bridge
And when I asked my best friend,
How many people do you think have jumped off this bridge?
She said, let’s go home

We took a ferry to Sausalito one day
Where it was just as beautiful
We ordered tacos and margaritas
I couldn’t eat the tacos
I couldn’t eat anything
I was on the heartbreak diet

I tried to mask it,
Lord knows I failed
But I tried

I went to every gay bar I could find
I covered my face in makeup trying to mask the misery
I blasted the happiest song I could think of,
Which was Love Shack, by the B52s
I met a preschool teacher,
She offered me ******* in the bathroom of some bar
I don’t do drugs, but sometimes
You have nothing to lose

When I leave California, I told myself,
I will leave heartbreak behind
I will leave my heart in San Francisco, if you will
But that didn’t work out too well

Because when I got home, it was everywhere
It was in the walls, it was the smell of my own sheets
It was his leftover cigarette butts on my balcony
It was the flannels he bought me
Because I was always shivering at night
And his lighters in my coat pocket
Even the slight slant of my apartment’s floor
That he would always complain about
It wasn’t San Francisco, it was anywhere