“Can’t you feel the knife?”

I let you trace the lines of loneliness down my back to my hips. I let you hold onto the tender parts in my shoulders. We filled our insides with weed smoke and wine and peeled off the steely fingers of my skin away. I understood it all now. I understood all the precautions, all the years of warning passed down–don’t give your virtues away. And though my virtues were never chastity and faith in God, I felt the utter lostness of my own humility, of being horribly fragmented and shy. All the concrete and grass and moldy earth slipped from underneath me and I fell completely and totally into a whole other lost, one that is not easily distracted, one that cannot be placated by pride and absolution of moral laws and codes. The tile underneath me was cold, cold enough to make me shiver, cold enough to wake me up.  I waited for the shame and guilt to wash over me, for me to feel myself rip apart and wash away, to completely fall into the pieces of fragmented pieces that loosely tied together the me. And now the pieces of skin that tingled lost your imprint. And now I can feel myself growing desperate, growing larger and stronger in heat and anger while also growing dull, growing buried. All of this because you sighed my name in my ear. All because no one has ever called me out, has ever called my name out like it mattered who it was–like it mattered that it was me. All because no one has ever given me a name, like I was a whole, created girl.  All of this heavy loneliness, all of this newfound non-shame and newness. All of it has the colors of your body written all over my walls and I can’t sleep at night and I can’t face the hours alone.

All of this because you sighed my fucking name.

 

After Glow

Soon, I will have to close the door leading into my home. I’ll have to shut the outside cold wind out, filling in the floor space with pieces of fabric in a mousey attempt to keep in increasing cold out. For now, the door remains open–serving as a reminder that soon I will be shut in, confined entirely to the messy clutter of my home, of my ugly room. I chose not to read on the train ride home today, finding no typical comfort or escape in its pages, despite their comfortable focus. There are no distractions anymore.  The film protecting me from the rest of myself has been turned away, flipped so the tint faces outward instead of inward and I can no longer find comfort in these life distractions. I look outside, remarking on the growing size of the houses, finding that this architectural shift has changed nothing. It’s still town populated by too many people living too close together for the was we’ve all chosen to live–to shut the outside doors into themselves. Where am I? What is this place? “Glenside, this stop!” No. That’s not what I meant. I mean, what do the people do here? If they are doing the same things that I do, how is it that they are not located in the same place as me? Surely, there is something done differently here, in this unfamiliar town. I shrug this incomplete thought off, asserting that it is, naturally, going nowhere and will continue to remain inconclusive until I once again shrug it off. What a stupid question anyway.

The wound in my chest glows a little around the edges, illuminating only as a reminder that there is some absence, some profound hole of nothingness punched into my organs. It illuminates only because it is the edge of black darkness, not because it truly glows. Not because it holds some similar quality to lightness. Though I never grew accostumed to its inhabitance, I’ve grown able and willing to explore its pains. I’ve developed new ways to appreciate its oblivion. That’s where my head is when my eyes are closed, looking into this hole with its glowing edges, not quite ready to accept this oblivion. I don’t sway, or stumble. I don’t back away or get any closer to it. It’s just in front of me, always to be in front of me.

I walk inside and leave the door open, turning the heater off–delegating blame to this pathetic space heater for the disconnected feelings I was having, blaming it for this disjointed temperature in the room. This is not the temperature outside. The world does not invite me in because I close my door to it, refuse its changes in seasons. I wander around my house until finally settling on watching a stupid television show on my computer.

It didn’t work. But at least I had wasted enough time to force myself to get ready for work.

And through all this mess I completely forgot to write about the guy with the bad hair and the tattoos on the bus, who laughed and waved at me. He smiled a genuine smile like he was happy to see me. And I waved back. And I laughed a really happy laugh.

And I forgot to write about him.

 

Radio Radio Radio

As we were walking by, passing the tacky Olive Garden in Center City–I noted the boring looking people inside of it, their accepted ignorance of the surrounding gastropubs (also took the time to remark on my own undeserved criticisms)–I saw a man; his head bent towards the windows of the eating establishment and he was rocking manically back and forth, a mad smile creeping across his face. I had to briefly look away, feeling that I was intruding on whatever strange moment of serious and unexpectedly pure pleasure he was having. I quickly formed a judgment that he was just cracked out and acting like typical crack bums do, unable to, perhaps, confront other possibilities. We neared, and as we were soon about to pass him, I realized the incoherent mumbling I quickly accepted as some drug-induced mannerism was a well tuned sing along of some tacky Sinatra song blasting from the Olive Garden’s outside speakers. I kept walking, incapable of pacifying the pure shock radiating in my ankles, radiating through my own realizations of how angry and horrible I was inside–how incapable of seeing a moment so pleasant and almost comical (in a non-cynical way) truthfully without much investigation. I switched gears to imagine him walking up and down the sidewalk, stopping at each wide, and still open window of the bars lining Chestnut and Locust. I thought about him treating them like big radio stations, imagining to pacify my own ill-will–hoping that in some way this man still had some inkling of comedy, of imagination. And I started to believe that if I imagined him as so, he might be or become so.

We walked a little further and crossed Broad towards Chinatown, pointing out houses of Pho we’d like to visit, to make Bourdain references at, to curse and spit and cook and fuck like he does. We approached an almost-empty, generic Chinese food diner, and I watched a young-looking guy sitting alone, hunched over a bowl of vegetable noodles. Draped down from his ears, the cords of an iPod snaked down into the pocket of his black hoodie. The waitress walked over and dropped off some kind of plate of beige food, probably fried, and just as pointedly walked away without ever really speaking or looking at him. I almost doubled over and felt an even more powerful shock than before, a forceful wave of jealousy and envy. I was green-mouthed and acid-tongued for his loneliness, for his assertion into the world of self, for his refusal to cowardice, for his ability to look at the face of his loneliness without hesitation, to be truly and utterly alone with his own complete aloneness. And then something inside me pulled, heavy. It pulled down from my stomach into my thighs and inside of the bones that make up my shins. He was handsome, well dressed and quiet, naturally quiet looking–as if it didn’t bother him to be without someone to talk at, as if his mouth didn’t hesitate, didn’t look for something acceptable to say to his waitress.
I quickened my pace, anxious to get the night out over with–feeling scaffolded and embarrassed by the people walking around, all dressed in thoughtful, prepared casuals.

cc Colleen Reese

+++

I cracked a Pennant ale this afternoon and picked off pieces of my expensive, 8oz Italian Peasant breads, buttering them and felt pleased with the luxury of both of these actions, the luxury of this absurdly overpriced simplicity. Momentarily, I was very pleased. I felt mildly embarrassed, imagining the disappointment I would feel had anyone walked in on this perversely sensory ritual.  I am just so pleased.

 

Courtship Dating

I swear to God, to someone, to whomever was close enough to hear me sputtering out some incoherent greeting, to this old woman that she wasn’t real. I always see her sitting on the stoop of her rowhome, watching the people pass–looking horribly old. She’s like a made up movie old woman. Nothing about her makes any sense and I’ve never seen her smile no matter how many times I wave or smile at her as I walk by. I quickly reversed into the parking space behind me, seeing that the old woman with her sever under-bite scrutinizing my park job. I’m not sure why, but lately, I no longer appreciate her absurdity. Something about her narrow squint and locked jaw make me agitated these days. I stumble out of the borrowed car and head quickly down the block, throwing food into the fridge and laying out the work left to do in my head. I don’t kick my boots off or take off my scarf and sweater. I feel the base of my throat, feel it exposed to the recently cooler air and my hand instinctively flies toward it, rearranging the fabric to cover the chilled skin. That is the most pleasantly and horribly sensual place on a woman: the throat. I’m not sure if it’s the shape or the light or what, but I fumble and blush, feeling exposed to no one. I quickly regret blushing, only because it reminds me that I have so few, so small gifts to give–faith and humility, the quick flash of a collar bone, a warmth of color, skin and hair. It reminds me that I have very little usefulness, very little to offer. I don’t have the honesty of words to pass out like holiday greetings cards, embarrassed by the intimacy of honesty. I have only small patches of pretty colored skin, of quick and healthy veins, good eyes. I have only my teeth, in all of their functionality, of their quiet and obvious gifts. I quickly skim over being old, admitting that my gifts will become barren, rotten fingernails.

 

I don’t know how much longer this comfort will last.

 

This loneliness is restleness. It’s quietness. It’s a loss of speech, of words. It’s hot and it runs for a long time, like an engine–like the start of an engine. It doesn’t turn over, though I continue to press my foot to the breaks, on the gas, alternating each motive. I’m unreasonably warm, lukewarm to the bone, comfortable in this state.  I feel lazy and apathetic in this warmth and as I can hear the rain outside, it creeps in. I feel a small want, a desire larger than any others in my organs, to sit outside. To sit and stare at the outside until I am freezing cold in the rain. Until my toes start to hurt. It makes me want to do something irrational, to do something less symetrical–lyrical–than the rather sad and beautiful melancholy I’ve been sitting with here on the hour. I breathe my small breaths into my rotten lungs, I breathe to quiet into my body, hoping that the thin and moist air will quiet the notes sustained in my head, the dull sounds of lazy pianos in my head–of my own stupid and utterly complete loneliness. It makes me feel strangely whole. But it’s so hard to be quiet. It so much harder to be quiet, to be good and quiet, to be truly lonely. I don’t know how much longer this comfort will last.

 

Grilled Cheese

The most Awesome Summer Time Grilled Cheeses!
(The Donna Kay Adaptation)

1 1/3 C  grated Cheddar cheese
6 fl oz  of Plain Greek Yogourt (*)
2 tsp   Inglehoffer Dill Mustad(**)

(*2 floz of Sour Cream)
(** 2 tsp of Dijon Mustard)

Mix togther ingredients into a medium sized mixing bowl. Lay out 18 pieces of cocktail size (or 6 pieces of regular sized) South Philly Marble Rye bread, buttering one side.  Serve with your favorite tomato soup–put the soup into a small glass on the middle of the plate.

Salad: Fresh romain, parmesean shavings, tomatoes, cucumbers, bacon.

 

The Leaves Are Green

I never believed in all that stuff about seasonal mood swings, about spring truly having a restorative power–about the world taking on a new sort of color not just in it’s display, but also in the quality of its tone. I used to feel quite the opposite. Spring time and warm weather just marked another year of missing out on all the  things that I had meant to do that year because when you are still young, a year’s time is measured in summers, in semesters off. And only I would ever feel that the year that I had no semesters, the year that was supposed to mark the worst, the hardest in my life. And I suppose that it was. It was hard. It was harder than I ever expected to be left totally and utterly behind while people I knew raced ahead in life and what I didn’t expect was to grow so unbearably old in the process. I was older than all my friends. I had already lost an illusions of grandeur, lost any illusions I had about work and the fruits of labor, of this town and this place. I had already learned that being old had nothing to do with how many hours I worked and how many hobbies I gave up, it was about being totally alone in my own lost. Being old is about being directionless by force, by means of having the only visible possibilities erased and the path ahead dark. And dark. And alone. I have no one to blame and I know, in some ways, I was punishing myself for losing school so quickly, for being patient and giving it up until I was ready for it in all aspects. I guess that’s why I worked for what eventually grew to be fifteen hours a day on my feet and why, eventually, I crashed.

But I endured what I thought I could never endure.

 

What a Life I Lead in the Spring

I bit down, pretty hard, against my lower lip. I had caught myself day-dreaming again, standing literally in the middle of the lounge with a tray and two coffee cups in my hand. It’s like I had been literally stopped by some kind of immovable object. The increase in thought and sensory experience made me double over a little bit. It was the smell of bleach against the humidity. It was my god damn nose again.

It was being seventeen and sitting for hours in controlled, 84 degree weather every day for hours. I rebalanced my tray on my fingertips and forced my attention away from this sudden memory. Today had been pleasant, and if I was being honest with myself I would admit to being totally blissed out hours prior to this moment. Absolutely and disgustingly, and and ignorantly happy.

Ugh. What a wreck. I wrinkled my god damn adorable Irish nose against the smell, as if learning not to like the smell would help to detach the very real warmth of youth away from the images still floating around in my head. I dropped the coffee at the table and sat down on one of the high tops and flipped through the FRANCE book one more time, noting the Tripe soup and how badly I still wanted to try it despite the fact that it was made out of vegetable broth and cow’s stomach. I supposed that Anthony Bourdain has been rubbing off on me. He’s too cool. He’s perfectly crude and horrible and selfish and sexually aggressive, someone who–in real life– I, typically, would have avoided at all costs. But in book form, I suppose he’s pretty cool.

I stopped flipping the pages of the book. I stopped day dreaming and reverted back to typical restaurant bantering. It makes things just that must easier to stand.

I can’t stand much more these days.

 

This is a Song about the Workin Life.

I’ve been robbed of Five Hundred Dollars
and been stripped down to my five dollar under clothes
and listened to my sister singing
on the broken couch, in a stupid town
drunk on Heinekens, and  pursed my lips with six dollar gloss
and been broken bones and city homes

“… in an American city”
and I can still hear my sister singing
on the broken couch, in a stupid town
in an American city.

“And we gave em’ Hell.”
“And we gave em’ Hell.”
“And we gave em’ Hell.”

 

Trinkets

The floor boards laid uneven and warped under my feet. As I put my feet forward I noted the kind of cool, nice feeling the wood gave me–despite the years of dirt blackening and solidifying between the grains of cheap plaster wood. The smell of this apartment, while I am alone, has always centered me, given me peace and I was starting to believe it was the reason I continued to come back. This house was empty. It was a house naturally and very visibly owned and maintained by males; it was so totally unlike my own house. My house is full–too full, and while I would like to pretend it doesn’t meananything, I can’t deny seeing all the baggage and emotional damage attached to every single littered piece of forgotten item holds against me. I don’t sit in the living room because I don’t know (or want to know, for that matter) how to work the TV or the stereo. I’d like to sit on the furniture and remark at the lamp and the floor boards, but I know if someone walked in it would be awkward. Me, sitting there, the TV not on. It’s too intimate. It’s too human and personal and people don’t like that. So I walk into the makeshift dining room and sit at the table, absent mindfully fingering the folds of an envelope addressed to someone else. I thought about that car I had been really thinking about buying and how maybe it would tie my life a little better together, make me look like I wasn’t loosing it. Maybe my friends wouldn’t resent me as much for never seeing them because I could waste my gas to drive and see them, play drinking games and remember that I’m only twenty and that I’m not old. The last part sounded bad. I don’t like when people ask me how old I am. I feel hopelessly old and young at the same time; young, in that I feel like I’ve never made a responsible decision in my life, and so old that I’ve given it all up for smaller hopes, comparatively infinitesimal goals from those I used to have. In between all my day dreaming, which I’ve recently grown more into the habit of, my stomach growled.