Memory

My memory is hazy. But what is clear is that his facial features through my nine year old eyes could not have been arranged in a less appealing way. He handed us moldy, bruised peaches from the ground; rotting, skin separating from the flesh without effort. One, two, three rotten fruits in the hands of children, and we watched as he plunged his thumb deeply into the flesh of the fruit. The juices oozed down his palm and wrist before he lobbed it over the fence between his house and the neighbor's. "I bet you can't make it over." He challenged, his freckled face contorting as he spoke. We looked at each other for silent confirmation then arced our gooey peaches over the fence to hear a muddy plop on the other side. Marco Polo We played in a tepid pool never once skimmed for fallen leaves. We floated in the water chest deep, calling and answering. Fish out of water. kicking up the layer of dirt that coated the pool floor, no one daring to submerge their heads beneath the surface of the water which then resembles herbal tea before adding milk. watch out for the leeches, they warned. We played tag around the sunk-in living room with no couch, taking breaks to perfect our pitch and harmonies against the repeating Sing-Along-Songs video playing from the twelve inch screen tucked into a folded armoire. We ran free in the house smelling faintly of whisky and decay to the beat of Zip-a-dee-do-dah and held a competition for who made the better Jasmine in A Whole New World. I stood in the doorway of the back bedroom, they sat on the bed. The smell of stale shit and overdue death smacking me in the face. I cursed my mom and dad for leaving me with family friends for the week while this man slowly passed in a red tinted room covered floor to ceiling with Betty Boop knick knacks and memorabilia. I was out of place and forced deeper into the room brimmed with death and sexy figurines. I sometimes wonder what became of the boy and girl I spent a week with at nine years old. Maybe she teaches history and he makes scale models of high rises. Or he got arrested for assault and she smokes crack next to her baby boy's crib. My memory is hazy. But what is clear are his twisted features that sometimes haunt my ambient thought, and the smell of peaches makes me sick.

This shit gives me weird dreams. Those vivid ones that stay with you for days, that you remember the details as if they really happened. Then the specifics; people's names, places and the order of events, slowly start to trickle away, bit by bit, until all you are left with is that terrifying moment that it all was centered around in the first place. Sometimes I wake up to realize that the pool of blood I was lying in while looking up at the metal rake in my sisters hands was really just my sweat soaked bedsheets. Other times it's the tears that wake me up, and the shaking. Like when they wheeled out my dad's mangled body on a Radio Flyer just to dump him in a hole. And i watch as they cover him with dirt and garbage, wondering why they didn't bother to put him in a box or a bag, so the dirt didn't get in his mouth. And when she falls to her knees, I feel the electricity shoot up through my thighs. And when she starts to cry harder, so do I. So I wake up with tears covering my face, breathing heavily and violently shaking. But the terror fades until it is only a movie I can replay in my head. The emotions are gone, the sensations removed. And everything is back to normal. Well, as normal as it can be. This goes for the good dreams too. You know the ones, where you are fucking that hot guy from the office. It's raw and beautiful and dirty, and you wake up soaking wet reliving that moment where your body tensed up on top of him and all of the sound drained from the world. Then you realize that the only time you ever cum is in dreams anymore and get up to make a cup of coffee. I don't complain, sure I have to feel pain and heartbreak, and indescribable pleasure that's not really there. But it beats going through each day wondering if a smile really does warm up your chest like they say. Or what the hell they mean when they describe butterflies in their stomach. The only thing I can do is go to sleep and feel whatever forms of emotions that are thrown at me by the sandman each night. "honey. Babe, wake up! You're shaking and hyperventilating." Oh. I was just shot in the head execution-style in front of everyone I know. Weird.

addict

She's that liquid ecstasy that courses through my veins. She's that extra puff of smoke that holds heavy in my lungs. She gives me wings and holds my head as I'm coming down. She makes colors brighter, hours last longer and food taste better. I hold her in my arms and she alters my judgement. But, all in all, she is a bad idea. She makes me think she'll never leave me, but just hours later I'm jonesing for another hit, a stronger high. I can't have her; she isn't mine, but I steal her away and we dance in the colors we create. she leaves me when I need her most, blood and body, and all I can think of is how to get her back. She's a habit I can't kick, but she's controlled me for too long. Her plum stained lips call to me and it takes all I have to turn and say, "not this time" - an answer she doesn't like. She works harder, beckoning me with her slender frame and her crimson red fingernails gliding up my arms. I give in to her calls, take her one last time. I'm not an addict, I can quit her anytime I want. But, I take her to my bed and inject her into my veins. She rushes through me. my breath tightens, my pulse quickens and my skin flushes pink. I fall asleep in her and when I wake she has left me, empty and alone. Again. 

smile

Why can't you hear me? I feel like I'm screaming. My lungs hurt. As if lungs have feelings. Pain sensors. Nerve endings. My eardrums are quivering. Every flutter amplified one million percent. Like when you hold a seashell up to your ear and you can hear the ocean crash from a hundred miles away. Or something like that. Even my pen is craving your attention. My obnoxious, in-your-face, Barbie doll pink pen is screaming "Notice Me!" Could have been purple gel or blue ball point, running out of ink. Not that the choice matters, in print everything is black and white. Every word, carefully chosen with no grey area. Don't attach your agenda or personal interpretation to these words, they don't mean any more than swirling wrist movements or keystrokes. Everything broken down to ones and zeroes. Eventually something as dull and ordinary as black characters painted on white canvas with nothing to say that hasn't been said before will catch someone's wandering eye. But who knows, you may never notice the curve of the letters that form the word "smile". And by the time you do, I may not want you to anymore.

save yourself

Here's the pavement. Cold and colorless. Not inviting, but here he lays. Weight distributed between knees and elbows. His hands with tiny cuts on each of his ten fingers were raised up to his eyes, which watched tiny lines of red snake their way through the creases of his fingerprints. With overturned hands he scrawled his story onto the cool ground. In long crimson strokes, the red tint drained from his lips. His digits dragged on the floor, kicking up dirt that hugged the underside of his nails. He swallowed his tongue because what he bleeds onto the pavement is more important than words that escape his lips. He lay his head onto the chilled ground in the middle of a windy afternoon. He exhaled a stream of blood that formed a letter, that formed a word, that formed a sentence. And, that sentence read "Save Yourself".

Your story

There you are, engulfed in a story you've read before. You know the way it ends, yet you still rush to the finish line taking note of character changes and plot twists. Jump from page to page, your heart races at all the same places, your head whirls when something unexpected expectedy happens. You think that the story will change because you have; you've gotten older, more mature. But the words still form the same sentences they did before, and the ending still disappoints you the way it did the first time. You sit, heart melted to the floor and sweat dripping from your furrowed brow. Close the book for good this time, like you thought you had done before.

Webster Doesn't Know Shit About Love

you can copy and paste the definition of love into a blank page
but it still doesn't fill the emptiness.
all there will be is words
that don't mean anything.

Love (verb): To love. To feel completely devoted and attached to something/someone. To know that nothing else in the world will ever compare or matter as much. To KNOW.
Making Love (verb): Fucking with emotion. An act of pouring your soul into another. To reveal all of yourself, every fucked up detail of your persona to your partner.
Falling in Love (verb): the act of being completely smitten with another person to the point of ignoring all of their flaws. To fall in love is to reach a state of psychosis that will eventually fade and you will see each other as you really are. damaged.

Love (noun): An intangible "feeling" that is impossible to know unless... you know.
"if you were in love, you'd know it"

Historically:
Love is something that our world fights for, and fights over. We so badly need someone to love us that we do things for attention, make rash and rushed decisions. we burn bridges and lose friendships to keep love alive. we tell people that only some are capable or deserving of love. We set guidelines on love and we break rules for love.

Medically:
Love blinds us. We become so enthralled in the idea of love that if we don't have it, we spiral into states of depression and think ourselves "not good enough" for anyone to love us. Heartbreak: when a person "so in love" is let down by their partner. The pain they feel they connect with the heart which they connect with love. When a couple breaks up, their brains and bodies go through a state of detox. they must cleanse themselves of the memory of the comfort of that other person. Little things will trigger memories; scents, songs. eventually the brain and body heals, just like coming down from a drug addiction, although, there will always be cravings for love.