Rereading

You made me hurt in a way I didn't think was possible. Going back, rereading even the first lines of what you wrote, the knots work themselves back through my chest and throat, climbing and coiling, and then they just sit: a reminder.

I pride(d) myself on detachment. I warned you, saying I wasn't ready or willing to commit, unwilling to give the romantic gestures you so obviously craved. After the first time, I didn't see you for four months, and except on the lonelier of many cold nights, I wasn't sorry. You weren't worth my time, and for that I'm truly sorry. I know now that I hurt you, more than I meant to, more than I ever intended. I never intended.

You did warn me, before you sent me the link. "It'll hurt," you said. I didn't listen. I put too much faith in my flimsy walls, sure you couldn't wield power over my emotions. Wrong. Sucker punch to the gut, beating down my heart, curl up in a ball and absorb the blows that just keep coming. I deserved every single one of them.

Every so often, I go back. Click the link, start reading, and then just... stop. I can't do it. You impacted my world in perhaps exactly the way you intended. I'm vulnerable now. Each admission of my faults, written in your lyrical and devastatingly accurate prose, broke me down further. I haven't made it through a second time, and for that, I thank you. You made a difference on the first try: more than I could ever do for you.

These Days

Spring break saps the motivation from my limbs. Time moves at a slower pace (or so it seems), allowing me the gift of a whole book in a day, devoured slowly over many hours. It's been a while since I read for pleasure. Long bus rides make knitting a necessity, and a whole pair of socks sits ninety nine percent completed in my knitting bag. College decisions happened, and still, I'm stuck in limbo. Waitlists happen. With two full days left of pure free time, I'm starting to feel the clouds of doubt descend. Work, this break, has simply... passed me by. A paycheck came for me in the mail today, and I simply read the number and set it aside. I take my job for granted, these days. Even heavy chains of potential probation don't seem to drag me down. These days, I'm floating, and I'm not sure how to come back down. Apathy has set in, and the only things I feel passionate about are those the larger world says don't matter, or those I do on my own time. College has never seemed so far off.

Identity

Some days, the Internet can be a really, really bad place for me. Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, photos and faces and articles flashing past as quickly as I want. Some days, I get sucked in. I read articles for hours, ogle more photos than I can count, open tabs upon tabs until I cannot fathom the amount of information I have on my screen. Some days, I look too hard.

I identify myself as queer. I've slowly come around to carrying that label, because it fits as well as any I've used, more so than lesbian or bisexual. It's open for interpretation, and I like that. It doesn't force me to make a decision, or force people to make a split-second decision about me the way I feel some other labels do. I have fluidity in my sexuality, and I've come to terms with that. I love my queer self, and I'm proud of me for who I am.

I also identify myself as female. I've never felt uncomfortable in my body. It may be that I'm incredibly lucky and privileged  but I've always loved my body. I have strong rower's shoulders, muscular arms, rower's thighs, and the core of the equestrian I used to be. I have a Nike-swoosh scar on my face from a riding accident, calluses on my hands from oar handles, bike riding and rowing induced scars on my legs. One of my ankles locks up from an old injury, and I can't touch my toes. When I see myself naked, I'm proud. I've occasionally had bouts of thinking that other people don't find me attractive, but I've never felt like I had to change everything about me. Just occasionally overlooked.

Some days though, despite my solid grounding in my identity as a queer female, I feel inadequate. I'm fine with my naked body- hell, I'd wear less clothes during the summer if I could, it's too hot where I live. It's my clothed body that brings me down. I've been toying, picking, worrying at my gender presentation for a while. It's been hand in hand with the issue of my sexuality, but up until recently, it was a non-issue. I didn't know who I was, or how to present that person. Now that I have inner balance (most of the time), I've been struck by the problem of outer harmony. I've never been a girly-girl. I chopped my hair into a short, fauxhawk-ish thing over a year ago, and I've been dyeing it various colors for almost three years. My hair has allowed me to explore my appearance, and my confidence has grown a thousandfold because of my experimentation. I shook the first couple of times I went out in public with short hair, but eventually I got used to it and just embraced it as part of my overall changing identity.

Yesterday, I went to a fancy mother-daughter tea-thing at my school for graduating seniors. It was lovely, and I had a great time, despite less than high expectations. True to form, 99% of my class was in dresses or skirts and heels or nice flats. For me, a dress was not an option. For the past year, I've grown more and more attached to pants, button down shirts, ties, and blazers. So, true to form, I threw on a black and white checkered shirt, my black dress pants, my trusty Doc Marten boots, a blazer, and a skinny black silk tie. With my hair looking extra spiky and my tie perfectly knotted, I looked damn good. Or so I thought. When I got downstairs, my mother (who, by the way, has a Masters degree in Women's Studies and as a pretty radical feminist, should GET THIS) looks at me and goes, "Why aren't you wearing a skirt?"

I just looked at her. She's always been very accepting of my sexuality (even though I haven't *exactly* come out officially, but she definitely knows), so this was just kind of an unexpected blow. I know it wasn't her fault that she mentioned it at a bad time, but she brought me crashing down from the high I'd been on. I was so confident in how I looked, feeling really dapper, and suddenly that just... disappeared.

For the last twenty four hours, I've been brooding. I was home sick today, so I had ample amounts of time to distract myself with the internet. This proved to be a rather bad idea. Instead of a pick-me-up, I got a downer slipped to me by mistake. Each article I read, each photo I saw, made me question myself a little more. And each question brought up more bad feelings. I'm not unhappy with my physical body, but even so, this new sense of dysphoria made me feel extremely off center. I'm unhappy with my presentation. I'd love to have a more masculine of center, androgynous appearance. I want my jeans to skim my curves, not hug them, my shirts to show off my shoulders and not my breasts. I want to wear bowties and blazers and oxfords and cool sneakers and dress like a hipster boy and be a dapper queer and wear snapbacks, even though I look bad in hats. Almost everything in my closet feels... wrong, and that makes me sad. I don't feel very confident in myself anymore, and that makes me even more sad. I want my confidence back, my assurance in my queerness. I want to find my swagger.

But.
Where do I look?

Random Bits (My Day)

Last night: a random Target shopping cart, probably stolen and dumped, standing forlornly on the corner of a dark and rainy street. My dog sniffed it suspiciously.

Today: the unexpected surprise of early dismissal from practice, and then the complete letdown caused by a huge traffic jam of unknown origins. The firetrucks didn't seem in any hurry.

The Wasteland: phenomenal. Layers upon layers of words and meanings, waiting to be picked apart: the ultimate cake. Delicious.

Unexpected depth: velvet sky turned liquid, the moon suddenly giving light to thousands of unseen miles between Here and There.

Morning tea: arrived on the doorstep sometime during the night, heaven in a cardboard box. Perfect.

Lovely: a meeting of the minds, beyond class, of books and the power of wishlists. These things should happen more often.

Overall: fueled by caffeine, in the best way possible. Amen.

Interior

Slowly, ever so
Slowly I'm
Learning, infinitesimally, to
Take an interest, even
Care a little talk a little stay a little longer
Branch a little fail a little fall a little more
Each
Time
Until
I resemble
Humanity
No longer boxed up
Caged in
Bottled and stoppered feelings mixing colors until they're just
Dark
Murky
Brown.

A Sudden Wave of Being an Adult

Usually, the library isn't mentally draining. There's no pull on my brain, no pressure behind my eyes, the thrumming of monotony normally kept at bay. Today, not so. Endless hours on the children's desk, punctuated only by overly questioning children and slightly overbearing adults. Periodically, the phone rings, inquiries from upstairs. Yes, I say, it's fine. But really, the turbines of monotony only provide anti-power, sapping me of my ability to Get Things Done. A small children's book, reeking of memory, keeps the day bearable. I read the whole thing.

The day drains rather than ends. There's no sharp crack between work and play, work and the rest. On this day, one simply flows into the other. On the bus, my SmartTrip has no money, and I stupidly add the coins to the box before swiping the card. Sixty cents lost, and no bus ride for me. Want to ride? the driver asks. Not worth it, I reply. I'll go through this next time I need the bus. Instead, I disembark and walk a lazy loop to the Metro, descending through wafts of an unidentified stench. Twenty dollars on the card, and maybe a train soon, if I'm lucky.

If I'm lucky.

Wind-Up Girl

No lock and key exist for me to
Open up your head so I
Drink up, crunch down, mascerate
Mundane and esoteric facts, letters and questions that
Inform me, entice me with everything but
how
you
work.

Some days I just want to climb inside your
Head and walk around and
Build a blanket fort and
Curl up and this way at least I know you're thinking

(Of Me).

For Boston

Yesterday, I fell in love with a city. I didn't mean for it to happen. It just... Did. Boston felt right, from the moment I arrived at Logan Airport. Flying in from DC, all you get is this expanse of water, then a lighthouse perched on a little rocky island, and then the airport. There's almost no indication of the actual city, so I had no idea what to expect.

We took the Silver Line bus from the airport to South Station, where we hopped on a Red Line T headed out. I basked in the beauty of public transportation. Coming from a city where the Metro is overpriced and not very extensive, the T and the bus system in Boston felt like a savior. The ticket-buying machines were both simple and easy (miracle of miracles!) and the stations felt cozy and, oddly, less hostile than the ones in DC. The Davis Square station both smelled and looked like any station in the New York system, but felt infinitely more friendly. Wonderful.

I'm not entirely sure what got me, but before I knew it, I felt at home. Even though I embodied the lost tourist, iPhone map in hand, I could get around. The whole city (and outlying areas) felt laid back, almost welcoming, friendly. The bits that felt touristy were definitely that, but even more out of the way parts had something to offer. I didn't feel like an out-of-towner- in fact, I was asked on multiple occasions for directions! I guess I look like a college student, so people just assumed I knew where I was going. It was a pretty crazy experience, and I can't wait to go back again. Hopefully, (fingers crossed!) Ill be going to college there next year. I really, really hope so. 

Good Things

Morning sun, enough to take the edge off but
Will probably burn my face if I'm out all day.
Suddenly, spring seems within reach.
Good things are coming.

A good hair day, enough so hats
Aren't needed,
Warm enough to go without a scarf.
Good things are coming.

Meet up, new faces in familiar places
Old friends still at hand.
Across the bridge, adventure awaits.
Good things are coming.

Pick through old CD's, new music to my ears.
As reggae-dub plays over the radio,
I smile at the man behind the counter.
Good things are coming.

Too crowded for coffee, back to beat the streets.
Wrapped in the smell of warm pita, I take a bite.
Suddenly, everything feels perfect.
Good things are coming.

Tip my head up to catch the final rays of sun,
Back across the bridge towards home,
Where the downhill caresses my worn out knees.
Good things are coming.

I'm A Car Dancer

There's a feeling, indescribable
Connected, infected, reflected
Up your arms, down your ears, warming you
From the inside out and
Outside
In
Crackle and pop
Radio static clears
And a song
Comes
Through
Crack a grin and sing
Bang your head and dance like
No one's watching
All alone in your car.

Work Walk #3

The cold nips at your ears, reminding you yet again that you forgot a hat. Spurred on by the brisk weather, you stride around the corner of the library and swing your way across the street. Your breath plumes out in front of you, even though the thermometer reads thirty-six degrees. Practically balmy. Crossing the street, your gaze momentarily flies skyward. Clouds cover the previously clear sky, and you briefly, achingly, suddenly miss the stars you weren't used to seeing. Your long strides make your boots clump reassuringly down on the frozen sidewalk, and you're so taken with the sound and the glittering lights over the horizon you walk right across an alley without looking. A brief burst of panicked adrenaline propels you the rest of the way, and afterwords you laugh inwardly at the complete lack of trucks coming at you. Across the street, the new addition to the elementary school glows softly under streetlights. The stairs have a poetical air to them, like an unfurled seashell. Were they always there? There's a sneaking suspicion you are just noticing them now. Ahead of you, a couple laughs, boy and girl moving in harmony as they head to an unknown destination. You follow them, momentarily diverted onto a similar path. After all, you are going the same direction. Just before you reach your endpoint (almost caught up to them now), something catches your eye. Hulking and heavy, an orange snowplow sits at the corner, shyly peaking out from the darkness of a lesser known street. The plow in front almost looks like a smile, jauntily curved up towards you. And you? You smile back, in the face of the thirty-six degree weather that can't possibly include snow. Just you and the dinosaur snowplow, grinning.

Ketchup

And she asked,
"What's that stain
On your pants?"
And I said,
"It's ketchup."
Head held high, daring defiance, messy and exposed.
And instead of judging,
She laughed
And said,
"Good for you! Was it worth it?"
And I grinned right back and said,
"Yes!"
And in my head I thought, in passing:
I want a girl who will laugh with me at
Ketchup stains 
On my pants.

Rain Walking

If you turn up your collar, just so, and scrunch your shoulders up around your neck like closed wings, the rain just... slides. It's possible to stay both warm and relatively dry just by keeping the rain off your neck.  You move through and around the drops, a little hutch of warmth and dryness braving the elements. When your hair is short, like mine, you learn these things quickly. As you walk, the rain floods around your feet, the kind of rain that rushes down so hard it continues right onto the sidewalk. You're wading through minuscule rivers, each one carrying its own load of trash and leaves. Slowly, as you continue on your way, you notice... not so much a smell but a feeling. The world slowly washes itself away, the sound of cars replaced by echoing rain and the underlying dirty scent of streets fading into rainy purity. The city, for a moment, feels clean.

What's Coming

High 60's, slight breeze, sun. We uncurl ourselves from the batting and flannel of winter, unwrap in our minds the fresh shoots of spring. Ideas are growing. Here, in the depths of January, we remember days to come. Muscles loosen, shoulders relax, toes uncurl inside suddenly too thick socks. Longingly, we speak, in quiet voices, of green, warmth, single layers next to the skin. As we drink in the blue sky above, so different from the dreary light of yesterday's gray, we think to ourselves, savor this, and bottle the memory for a rainy day.

Sunday Morning

This morning, I drank three cups of tea. "It's Sunday," I thought to myself. "Why not?" So instead of my usual one cup, Prince of Wales tea (I'm out of Scottish Breakfast), I went to my afternoon default. I found my bag of Lestrade tea by Adiago, and made a whole freaking pot. Bad idea. I'm shaking and can't sit still and I'm accidentally typing double letters because my fingers are jerky. Why do I always forget that tea is caffeinated? One cup in the morning gets me up, but I can go without it if I must. Two a day keeps me going through the afternoon, picking me up in the darker bits of early evening. But three? Three cups in about an hour period was a really, really poor decision. This has been a post.

Red Toothbrush

I still use
That red toothbrush you gave me
The first time I stayed over when you said
"Why don't you just stay the night?"
And we both slept close but not close enough until
The next time when
I brought my bag with your
Red toothbrush and
Brushed the taste of you out of my mouth
In the morning and then left with
The smell of you still in
My hair.

I Have To Stop Spending Money

I have to stop spending money. I get paid every two weeks. I know when I'm getting paid. I know how much I'm getting paid. I know that I have an automatic withdrawal of $50 to my savings account every two weeks when I get paid. Yet I still spend money that I really shouldn't be spending. I just went to the yarn store, which I shouldn't have done because I cannot walk out of there without spending at least fifty dollars. Sure enough, it happened. I was only going to buy two sets of circular needles that I need for two at a time socks. But then... They had restocked all their yarn. ALL OF IT. It was so beautiful and colorful and soft and... two skeins of Manos del Uruguay later, I'm down $58 including needles. I have to stop doing this. It's the curse of having an income... now that I know it's coming, I feel better about spending it because I know there will be more in another two weeks. Thank the lord I set up my withdrawals to savings... otherwise I'd be dead broke, always.

Disagreement of the Hardest Order

If you don't agree with me
And I don't agree with you
We butt heads.
Even if we agree to be respectful
We butt heads.
Yes, I value you
And your friendship
And your opinion but really
Can't you see how this changes my view of you?
I
try
try
try
not to let your ideas
Poison my idea of you
But sometimes it's
really
really
hard.
I still love you for
Who you are and
The power of your beliefs but
Like I said before,
It's hard.

I know it's best to take in as many different ideas and perspectives as possible, and I know that not everyone will agree with me or my opinions. Your ideas aren't even misguided or invalid or blatantly idiotic like the opinions of so many others; they're lovely, well thought out, logical and rational forces of will, but that's what makes them so hard to swallow. I know that you value your opinions just as much as I value mine, and even though we can talk about them and discuss without taking the other down, the undercurrent of "what if" lurks beneath the veneer of our polite conversation. There's always the backing tone of "I Do Not Agree". Disagreement happens, and I know it happens, but it still makes me sad when I see friends going down a path that I view as blinkered to the wider worldviews on the issue. I try to learn as much as possible, take in as many perspectives as I can, see from all sets of eyes and walk in multiple pairs of shoes. However, I've found that, even as it opens my mind, this strategy makes me more and more suspicious, more questioning, less likely to be bought by one perspective or another. I find it hard to form my own opinions without thorough research and contemplation. I can only hope that my friends do as much research as I do about their opinions, because I feel that one should take make their decisions only after they find at least one viewpoint opposing theirs, and they can still say that their opinion is valid after discussing and researching the other side. It's worked for me, and I can only hope it will work for others.

Night Drizzle

Outside the library, a stiff wind blows and the rain drizzles down your neck. The flag on the flagpole shivers along with you as you hurry towards your destination. Cars drift by, each its own little world of warmth and dryness. A few late stragglers huddle together at the bus stop across the street, and you silently commiserate  as you wait for the crossing signal. Instinctively, you hunch your shoulders and turn up your collar, thankful for the black wool of your jacket keeping the wet off. Eerie neon flashing spurs your movements, and you hurry across the street, head down against the wind and rain. Your feet take you away from the glowing lights of restaurants and stores and direct you downhill. You skirt a series of metal grates, thankful your boots grip the slick surfaces. Preoccupied as you are with keeping your footing, glancing at the perpetually parked delivery truck as you cross an alley, you almost forget to look up.

You've been travelling downhill, but it's unclear how high up you actually are, until you look. Directly in front of you, framed by strands of electrical wires and the mishmash weaving of trees, lights, and buildings, the lights of a city appear. In this rain, they appear ghostly and misted over, slowly rising from the cloudy depths of time and space. Even in this weather, the view stops your feet, letting your eyes feel even as your neck shivers and your teeth click together from cold. You've seen this view a hundred times, but here, in this cold rain, it looks especially beautiful. Plumes of fog flow through the streets, and the wind flashes the rain faster. As the cold begins to soak through your hair, your body takes over and your feet continue downward.

When you look up again, the city is gone. In its place, misty trees and the odd under-glow of rainy streetlights blend into dark gray clouds tinted pinkish by city lights. You continue on, boots clump-slapping on the wet pavement, dodging more sidewalk grates and slippery grass. As you near your destination, you realize you can actually hear the rain and wind, but no cars. The world is silent. Looking both ways, you step out into the middle of the street and let your hearing spread out. No cars, no dogs, no city noises. In the distance, a loose street sign clonks against its metal pole, but the wind soon shifts and the rain-sound returns. Complete and utter stillness, in the middle of a city.

At the intersection, the stoplights silently change from green to red to yellow and back, an endless cycle uncaring. In this light, the colors mutes to shades of gray. The whole world reduced to monochrome and senses, where your boots stick to wet asphalt and your turned up collar almost but-not-quite keeps the cold off your neck, where the sound of rain-wind-silence melds with the eye-speak of trees-lights-mist. Even as the cold seeps through your body and trickles down your neck, even as your breath adds to the fog and your breathing ghosts into the silence, the world spreads out, bigger than you can hear-taste-touch-smell-see. Even up here, surrounded by houses and wires and signs-dogs-cars-underglow of city pollution, the mist still rolls down and engulfs, softening edges. And under your feet, the world turns.

Metal

The room is quiet, except for the occasional page turning or the underlying click-clack of laptop keyboards. The fluorescent lights shine over many toiling (or most likely slacking) high school students, their sweatshirts showing a school name in varying shades of navy, gray, or white. The teacher at the front of the room vaguely scribbles in the margin of some paper they’re grading, probably for the oh-so-lofty upperclassmen they’d rather be dealing with. Nobody likes supervising ninth graders.
I always sit about the fifth row up, in a chair that swings out to the right. I can’t concentrate if the chair goes the other direction. Today, however, concentration is not on my mind. I only have Spanish homework left, and my severe dislike of the subject prevents me from caring if I do a good job or not. The workbook pages pass quickly, with a little help from GoogleTranslate and the dictionary at the back of the chapter. There are more important matters at hand.

Back in the good old days of freshman year, my school hadn’t figured out how to block many music listening websites. There was Youtube, of course (and there still is, thank goodness), but for those of us who took our music seriously and didn’t want to pay, there was Pandora.

Laptop click-thunks open, headphones settle gently into ears. Click-click-click with the mouse and the lovely blue Pandora screen appears. Pandora, simple and brilliantly easy: input an artist, and the algorithms within the program spits back songs by similar artists. It’s better than listening to the radio, with fewer commercials.
So, what shall I listen to today? Well, let’s see what the algorithm gives me. Silence, then tick-tick-tick of a high hat cymbal, then the slow, dull boom-boom of a bass drum. I’ve never heard this song before. Before I can think anything else, fuzzy guitar distortion pounds my ears, and then a voice, gravelly and electronic, and then guitar the riff everyone knows, even if they don’t know where it’s from. I do know this song, but I’m not thinking anymore.

The guitar and the drums reverberate all through my body. I can feel the vibration in the floor. My boots are stuck to the ground, my head feels like it’s about to explode. I’m suddenly a million pounds. I can’t think, or feel, or do anything but listen. I don’t know if my eyes are open or closed, if I’m standing or sitting anymore. As the tempo rises and the guitars shriek, I’m flying too. Just as I’m sure the song is ending, the distortion rises and I slam back into my body, back from my journey riding the spikes and valleys of jagged vocals and throbbing drums. The song peters out with a long trail of background static and one last note.

I remember to breathe again. The feeling slowly returns to my fingers. My feet unstick themselves from the floor. The weight lifts. I experimentally shift in my chair, and my whole body protests. I’ve cramped up in the four minutes I’ve been sitting here. Dazedly, I gather my things for my next class, not sure what just happened or what I just heard. The song plays back through my thoughts. Belatedly, I check the song listing, and a surprised chuckle escapes my throat in this quiet room. The little box flashes an album cover, and the words “Iron Man” followed by the artist. I stop, and frown, and then smile as recognition dawns. Black Sabbath. Still grinning, I leave for my next class, humming under my breath.