You have to post your opinion about the following
- On drugs.
- On gay marriage.
- On politics.
- On kissing randoms at parties.
- On getting wasted and not remembering nothing.
- On bullying.
- On religions.
- On anorexia and bulimia.
- On going out a lot (like 3-4 times a week)
- On sex (in general)
I’m going to do this, just in prose form, since I actually do have stories about every single one. Should be interesting.
I miss you
in still, quiet moments
remembering what it was
to lie
on your bed, curled up
so small
and the way you looked
at me with laughing eyes
and I wonder:
Is it all still just a dream?
I held my own hand that day, and cried until sleep had at last quieted my lips and brought temporary peace to my mind.
I held my own hand because you were suddenly no longer there to touch me yourself, to trace your thumb against my palm with fingers intertwined. Briefly, I realized it was what you must feel each time our hands slip together – guarding my tiny palm in your own, grasping as if you are the only man able to fill those spaces in between. And we fit. Always fit.
You should know of my idealism, my tendencies to trust too easily and fall too quickly, to feel without slowing to see consequence. But you should know I don’t mind with you, because we fit.
We fit with our laughter, our God, our stolen glances and secret smiles. We fit with my hand on your chest, curled into the space between your arms that seems made only for me. We fit with our talk of passions, your music and my words and our dreams that someday, life will be simple enough to do what we love with those whom we love, forever. We talk, and I show you me with more ease than anyone before. You speak of admiration, despite what I’ve been and who I’ve become. You tell me I am beautiful and I begin to believe you, for you have a faith in me I can never find on my own.
You fit into me and make me better, far more than I could achieve myself. You say I am incredible, but it is you who deserves that credit – for many reasons, but mostly for inspiring a wholeness and happiness so long forgotten. At the end of the day, when I hold my own hand, it is that which I attempt to preserve – our wholeness, still true despite these circumstances.
The other night, after you drove three hours to escape nature’s fury, you returned to me as well. It had been only two days but my heart leapt for joy, and my soul quietly said, “Oh, there it is – that missing piece of me. I’ve found it again.” Once more, we fit, and I tried to show you with each kiss just how it felt.
The next dawn began to break and you were still there, eyes closed above me. I studied your profile in the moonlight, memorizing every detail to bring across the country, across the ocean. Handsome. Happy. Mine, if only for a little while. This is the man I care so much for and the man I hold with me, until holding is once again possible –
Until the next time we fit.
I told her once that it is possible to write happiness. You’re defeating my theory. You won’t write, you with your beautiful smiling eyes and tender hands, you continue to avoid my words. I can’t understand. You flow so perfectly in my mind, my thoughts of you a stream of prose rather than a simple string of image and idea. And yet, you won’t write. I almost prefer it this way, but this is too special to leave unsaid for long. Let me capture you, us, what we’ve become and who you make me, again and again and again. You, my prose, beg to be my novel, and I would gladly write the world of you. All you have to do is let me. Let me set this free with the captivity of words. After all, it is not only how I breathe but also how I love - and so I wait to write happiness.
It is 2:27 a.m. and my life is once again divisible, caught in limbo between old and new realities. I fit neatly into four large boxes, three suitcases and five bags - nothing is permanent, not now. Three months here, one week there, nine months back where it began, perpetual moving the only constant. I close my eyes, imagining the roots I want so badly to put down, growing down from my feet and twirling out of my hands, anchoring me home. What home means, though, I’m never quite sure anymore.
Slow breath in - remember the last time I was a box and a bag and a suitcase, just a little girl in a big city, trying to anchor herself anywhere. A summer undiscovered beckoned with its sunshine and its buildings and unfamiliarity - she was at once overwhelmed and intrigued. And it allowed her to live. It allowed her to learn. It allowed her to grow. Most importantly, to love.
But retrospect is cruel. Missed opportunities taunt thought, wasted weekends create what ifs, not caring to provide an answer. Did I do everything I dreamed would happen, see all I wanted or simply be as fully as I could have been? No, I say with regret, casting a disdainful eye toward my life in piles. Were it not for packing myself away so carefully, I might get a few more minutes of exploration and discovery, of curiosity and learning and adulthood.
I cannot leave you, beautiful city, not like this, not with so much unfinished business and untold stories. But I thank you - your streets and society have picked me up, spun me round, and left me more dizzy with excitement and love than when I first arrived. You are unlike any other in your ability to make me at once whole and unfulfilled, sated with knowledge and joy but incessantly craving more.
I am divisible for you, my city, so dark and quiet in nighttime air. I break myself into so many pieces just to be able to return time and time again, to leave and come back with renewed zeal for all you offer. After all, you are my anchor - my home. Thank you for the summer.
From my regular Tumblr. Check it ouuuut.
This is a test, though of what, I’m not sure - your influence, my strength, our boundaries. Vodka bolsters confidence, reassuring the fingers and keystrokes that start as common conversation and inevitably lead to the same tired question.
If I know you, and I do, your answers betray your drink. On Friday nights, we can both assume.
Nonetheless, I agree, because above all else, this is a test of normalcy.
In the morning’s clarity, I retrace that first meeting - young, excitable and naive, blissfully unaware of what our future would become.
“I’m Ted,” you said, and I’m sure I said it was nice to meet you, because it was. The sky was blue and the school was new and our parents smiled as we made our first friend in each other.
“I’m Rachel,” I replied, because I did not yet know the meaning of the word.
We spent the afternoon exploring, learning, discussing dreams and pasts, making promises to see each other in August. It was something real, something true, and now something lost.
And that was it. Innocence is quickly gone and never regained, but before that, you were Ted, and I was Rachel, and that was all that mattered.
Before the nights of smoke-filled lungs, of sneaking and rolling and green; before the morning of keeping you alive through the phone, as the absinthe poured through your veins and onto the floor; before the weekend I turned 19 and you were lost but I was kind, and I awoke a different girl —
before then, you were Ted, and I was Rachel - young, naive, excitable and new.
“We have to act as if this never happened,” I told you. “Erase the history or nothing will work. It has to start over.”
Perhaps impossible, but true. There is hope. This is our test.
The clock blinks almost midnight, and the Jeep finally comes to a stop by the side of the road. They’ve been driving for hours, barely stopping save for to crush cans on the hood of an empty police car. Their minor rebellions matter, after all.
She lights a joint, takes the first slow drag. Closes her eyes and smiles as she exhales, waiting to feel.
The moon is so full overhead, casting its perpetually surprised gaze upon the earth, and her back arches as she stretches her legs past the pedals to get a better look. Tonight, she is the moon, full and beautiful and untouchable.
It occurs to her to check the backseat, but to no avail - they’d lost the other two hours ago, somewhere between I-75 and the first stalks of old corn.
This is the meaning of youth, at least tonight. To be wild and free and high, to lie and run and want nothing more than instant gratification. To see dreams as elusive, only to be spoken of in the abstract, only outside this town.
Inside, all there is is to be young. Alive. To fill the void with self-destruction of the happiest kind.
She won’t see that this was never meant to be her life, that ambitious perfectionism and common sense hold more promise than barn parties and tall cans of gold and froth. None of this occurs to her. She simply passes the joint across the cup holders and smiles. Possibilities equate to what they can do without getting caught.
And as she sits on the curb in the summer’s heat and waits for the bus, the clock blinks nearly midnight. A Jeep passes, its young passengers laughing and discussing plans for a night yet to begin. She looks up and watches a girl lift a red cup to her lips. Closes her eyes, smiles as she swallows. The car pulls away and false nostalgia begs her to revisit the lifestyle of instant gratification, makes her wonder what would have happened had she stayed.
But she was never to be one of them. It was not her world, that life of police cars, dead ends, dead friends, and it wasn’t likely she’d return. The momentary taste had scared her away and made her work for something more. To stay on the inside was a death sentence for higher hopes.
She stretches her legs, arches her back, heads for home. Existing on the outside.
Young. Alive.
I’ve never been good at goodbyes. This will be no different.
The tears form in anticipation, hours ahead of what is yet to come.
So long, so long.
I’ll board the train, count the stops, make the walk. I’ll hand you the bag, and the tears will fall as freely as they did in a hotel lobby six years ago.
If only we had known back then.
We’ll stand there, unsure of words appropriate for such a separation, and I’ll simply stare, trying to hold your image in my mind as long as possible, as long as it takes this time around.
I can’t quite recall what happened, just an outline – time has blurred the details. We were young and I was innocent. As far as I know, and as far as they said, that simple fact remains.
I am innocent, as she’s told me herself, and yet so guilty of a crime I never knew I committed. And suddenly, one I held most dear was ripped away.
Confusion.
Pain.
Silence.
Certain moments remain clear.
A hug in that lobby – “You’ll have to come see us before high school starts. It’ll be fun – you two can go to the beach, we can use the grill … Do you like brownies? I’ll make brownies if you come.”
Indeed, there were brownies.
A smile in your kitchen – “I’m so glad you’re friends. You two really are like sisters. Don’t worry, I know you’ll stay in touch. You have our address, right? So you can mail each other letters? Let me get you a paper.”
Thanks, mom.
Dialing your number, searching for answers. Fist hitting steering wheel once, twice, not caring which broke first. Choking back tears, an attempt to show how real the hurt still was.
I was so vulnerable, so open with her. It made no difference. Looking back, I never should have thought it would. Guilty by association, a life sentence of perpetual defeat and anger.
“I’m a good person,” I told her between sobs. “I don’t understand.”
“I know you are, honey, but this is what we’ve decided is best.”
No. Not best.
Best was seeing you in the bookstore that first time; expressing to you things I hardly confront myself; discovering that we have something unbreakable, indefinable and incredible.
Best has been half a summer of reunion with another part of my soul, of laughing, of running, of confiding, of growing in a way that only you can inspire.
Six years of incomplete. Who, I wonder, would we be, had fate decided differently?
What would she think of me now? Of us? How similar our ideas, our dreams, even our boys still are? Her approval isn’t necessary for me as it is for you, but the small voice will forever wonder.
Six years to wonder, and how long now to wait again? And for what? What’s to happen in the interim? Even after?
I will never appear on your doorstep. My future does not include your graduation party. Your wedding. Your children.
If only wishful thinking created realities.
I was certain that the season could be held between my arms, but the car will be packed and north it will go. The season will leave, and so will you.
Tell me what’s next.
Promise me this won’t be the last. Promise me we’ve proven our strength.
So long, so long.
She buried her head in her hands, fighting the thoughts gnawing at her conscience. She wasn’t sure why she kept running back to him time and time again, why the insatiable urge to involve him in her life had resurfaced once more. Yet here he was. He looked at her pleadingly, almost sadly, with a face that read simultaneously of desperation and hope. He needed salvation. She was his second chance.
She was denying him the opportunity to start anew.
“I don’t mean to hurt you,” she said. “This just wouldn’t be right.”
Though true, the words felt ironic out loud – all their relationship had ever been was a series of unintentional hurt. Beside her was the boy in whom she had once sought wholeness. He had used her emotionally, physically, and when the time came, she felt it only necessary to return the favor. A year silently passed, months of empty promises and half-hearted commitments, and this was the inevitable impasse that had resulted.
“Please. Just one night. You keep saying we wouldn’t be good together, but why is it never the reasons why we would?”
The heartbreak was audible. For two years, she had been his constant – a girl who, to his amazement, had always given him a safe haven from his demons, for which he would never truly be able to repay. Past transgressions ran tauntingly through his mind, telling him he’d never deserve her. The drugs. The alcohol. The sex. All were part of their story, and all gave him more reason to try to win her back.
He didn’t know what he wanted with his life, but he knew he wanted her. She knew it would be emotional suicide to try.
Somewhere between the first infatuation and the last one-night stand, she had lost her ability to feel anything but a simple platonic lust. To keep her from falling in love, each relapse of intimacy brought a muting of emotion, subconsciously saving her from the eventual pain of loss. And now, when it mattered, she couldn’t see him as anything more than a sometimes friend who knew her sheets almost as well as she did. The switch of romantic interest was forever off. He’d never understand, and she’d never explain.
Their hands found each other, and they sat in silence for several painful moments, her wishing the conversation would end, him praying for her to relent. Finally, she spoke.
“We have to be just friends. It’s better this way. I promise.”
“But why? How do you know?”
“I just do, okay? It’s our history. We’re not good for each other. Trust me, leave it be.”
“Let me prove I can be good for you. Just once. I’m different. This is different.”
He wasn’t different at all, but he feared if he lost her, he would lose the chance to change as well. Surely he wasn’t good for her – his prior decisions proved that – but she was good for him, and he depended on her to retain his sanity. He could be a better man, would be a better man, if only she would see him through.
He stared at her, hoping to see any positive sign. Her brown eyes betrayed confusion, her struggle between easy trust, quick forgiveness and common sense, and he felt the overwhelming urge to comfort her in the situation he himself had created.
“Please. Be with me,” he implored quietly, leaning in to kiss her.
This – this was so comfortable and so forbidden. This was the source of her torture and the source of her safety, and she couldn’t bring herself to pull away. This was how it had started, but she’d be damned if it ended as such. There had to be a resolution.
“Come on, stop,” she said. “It’s late and I don’t want to talk about it anymore. We’ll sleep on it.”
He dropped his gaze from her face, finally giving in. He knew it was wise to stop fighting if he wanted to hold her longer.
They fell asleep in the same bed for what she hoped was the last time, his arm around her waist in their old familiar way.
She couldn’t let go, not yet, not him, and as had happened so often before, the resolution would wait until dawn.
He needed the second chance to move on.
But so did she.
