brain.

Be interesting. Be kind. Be liked, walk a straight line. 

Thursday.

Since you've been gone I've been plagues by what if's...questions with answers that can only be found far into the future. But there is something unhappy in me lately. I feel like I am not sure where my future lies. I am here, again, trying to decide what to do next. I keep thinking about saving money, maybe for a house. Maybe for some kids, or a trailer and a last ditch tour around the country before we settle. I think that would make me happy. Traveling alongside you, having a kid, being a mom. But maybe I'm not living up to my full potential? What was that education for? I want to do something big too, but I've been hurting, every, damn, day. Waiting. For the right time, when right now life feels so cluttered and these tiny rooms so claustrophobic and my heart empty.
I think now I am still, my existence feels...purposeless. I am ambivalent to so many futures. My soul not drawn to any one over the other. Most people say I am crazy to want what I want. More often I find myself holding other people's children as their parents squirm away to do their important things, and holding back. But I long to love. I think anyone who has known it would say the drive to become a mother is a feeling like a need, like thirst or hunger, a creeping coldness that knocks the wind out of you suddenly. I dont know the right answer. So we smile and think maybe next year and say but your still so young and yes, yes, that's true, but right now I'm only persevering and what I really want to do is live and be happy.

Rain.

"Grey", she whispers, "I don't think you should do that."
Maybe it's the way she says it, the wariness of her tone, the subtle whine in her voice, but something about that sentence makes me want to squeeze her. Squeeze her until she pops like a balloon. I let the frustration wash over me, a thousand tiny raindrops that cascade between over my temples and in between the folds of my shirt, down my legs and out out out of me, through my toes. Then it's over.
That holy moment hangs between us, thick and suspenseful. An eternity. But even as the echo of her voice bounces off the walls of the cavern to my rest between my ears for a second time, I lift my head over my shoulder and throw her a half smile. The spell is broken. I've reassured her. She lets out the breath she had been holding.
"Go sit outside if you are afraid. I will come get you when I find it."
I lean back, daring her to follow. For a second she falters, frozen at the crux of pride and instinct, both such stubborn vices. Then, with a twist of her heel, she walks quickly back out to the mouth of the cave and sits, beginning to run her fingers over dark hair. She lifts her voice in a thin, reedy song, and the birds sing their harmonies and watch her from high above in their tall jungle trees. She's better off there, I think to myself.
I have work to do.

You don't write to me anymore.

It's been a while
6 months
since you've rocked me to sleep
with the sound of your voice over the crackle of the telephone, talking about something new and exciting
the details all a whirl and getting lost in the abundant wordiness -

I
let myself get drawn in by that intake of breath, between the hiss of this and the tongue of that
To the time I
stayed up to see a lunar eclipse
and imagined your denim jacket hundreds of miles away
hugging your shoulders in winter
warming you when I could not.

Carry on, carry on.

I like to think we had something special.
It feels so far away now. Part of me will always want to rewind, out of pure nostalgia. For the way your place smelled, and the way your bedroom walls contained your energy, a vibration I can't quite explain. Once I opened your door and stood in the doorway, hands to my sides, and felt the power on my surface. Like you'd put some magic border up. It was safe, blue, like a blanket. Permeable like water. All shimmer and hum. It was sacred. And maybe I'm the only person who ever knew it was there.

One time I walked around your house. Opening all the drawers and searching through all the clothes. Not looking for anything in particular...maybe just looking to solve the mystery of you. Perhaps I believed if I could know all the things in this place, I could know you. I see how ambitious that sounds now.
I wonder all the same things girls wonder about a boy. Some are too selfish or shallow to be heard aloud. But I wonder if you miss me. If you think of me. And honestly, that's too terrifying to ask. It might change something. Or it might not. I can't deal with either.

Ghosting

Oh, injured bird. To steal your words, what am I going to do with you?
Has it really been so long for us?
Sometimes I wish I could rewind back to that night, when it all started. Quite a long saga in the end, but it played out a tragedy. But I still miss you, and the times you came to perch next to me. Sometimes you still try, and that makes me sad, because I still want to be the place you land. But it's nothing but a fleeting touch. Some passing ghost in shimmering ectoplasm passing me by on the sidewalk. Aimlessly haunting, and echoing conversations of long ago.

Husk.

He leans against the wall, feet crossed, and he's getting her number. I try to find some fault in her, but it's not even jealously. Just suppressed curiosity I guess. She's blonde and pretty. I quickly look down, like an unwilling witness to something I'm better off not seeing. I see her shoes and think, I used to wear expensive heels like that. So many things now only used to be.
On some level I really think it would be so easy for me to go full Type A. Perfect perfect perfect. I'm highly critical of myself and that's probably a fault...or maybe some leftover piece of my childhood, festering under the surface. It's actually really hard to explain. It's not that I want him, or don't want her to have him. I think I just miss someone looking at me like that. With interest, and awkward butterflies. Does that make me needy? Probably. Me the dry old husk.