I’m so ridiculous
2006-04-21
I don’t know what to feel.
justsade at 5:02 p.m.
You know i am blushing for you
2006-02-21
sometimes your head is explanding at the sides and you feel like you are going to crack at the edges and the flesh is going to flake off.
sometimes it really is that little bolt of lightening, that lightbulb hanging jauntily at an angle in the air, and you can feel its electric warmth.
sometimes you can feel your eyes widening and your lashes darting but you can help it.
you run down the halls. you jump. you scream.
justsade at 5:30 p.m.
erudite
2005-12-20
It’s so hard, coming back to the womb.
justsade at 8:30 p.m.
sensual
2005-12-20
I was so proud of her for cutting herself off. I wanted to, you know, but I couldn’t. There was some obligation, or someone asked me so sweetly that I had to say yes. This one person. This one thing I kept coming back for.
But I don’t think there’s something to go back for. It’ll roll on fine without me and I feel like it will be the most imperceptible breeze, a faint hint of rose, which makes you turn your head, and it will be gone.
justsade at 8:30 p.m.
saturnine
2005-12-20
Who is that girl that I'm seeing there in those smooth rounded letters?
She told me over her steaming soup that I seemed quiet, bookish, and I though at first that it was an insult. In the background, the waiters were yelling to each other in mandarin and I focused on the beef below me not to say anything. I looked up and smiled at her softly with the corners of my mouth.
“No” I said
“Not really”
justsade at 8:29 p.m.
nervous tick motion
2005-12-20
There was something so funny about the snow being solid, about the sky being such a sad blue and in the silence the snow bouncing off of my curous palm.
justsade at 2:07 a.m.
duh
2005-07-12
I always get stuck. It is like moving through a swamp, this writing thing. It is like killing dandelions it is like hitting a wall point blank, and pushing against it anyway. Some times you win. Sometimes you melt and you push through the wall anyway, despite the impossibly. Sometimes you give up and sit tired and defected on the side of the road, hitting yourself for your stupidity. Writing will put the fear of god in you. The fear of white, of words, of other people’s probing eyes, of the clock, of your own mind. But it gets things out. It gets things out and once they are gone they are gone forever unless you move them back in. sure, some jobs are bigger than others, but still little by little you can feel your should clearing and then you get back into the mood and you notice things again and the world is alive again like it is after the first rain. So that’s the incentive. You have to be crazy.
That is what everyone says, you have to be crazy.
justsade at 11:29 a.m.
i remember grey
2005-07-07
How many days has it been now?
Each time I close my eyes, as the darkness comes over me I curl into a ball, nudging my head at something that isn’t there.
I think it was the first time id seen him outside of school. There, sitting on the bench looking like a true beach bum with his beautiful sandals and newspaper tucked underneath his arm.
The only indication was the golden hair cascading down. He said he didn’t even know. That he had just come down to the beach and seen them bathing themselves. I love his hugs. I felt so smitten, and thought hey, he’s a family man already. He has a woman that he will go back to. But still, tugging.
What is important is that he too hand those thumbs. That he was kind. That perfect smile. That he almost, almost spun with me. That he talked, that he stuck close by, that we, mimicking eachother's bodies, talked softly and ran our hands through eachother’s hair.
I never knew before how it felt to have someone not mine do that.
Then the hug, that would not end, rocking eachother him rocking me on his hip like I was a baby and then another one and wanting to whisper again, don’t leave me don’t leave me don’t leave me, then leaving, then laughing and leaving.
So at night, he comes back because I don’t want to leave him. Because I remember how suddenly without my noticing he was there with his arms around me. Every pause he came. White shirt. Angel hair. Beautiful sandals. That smile. Indescribable. Tall and thin and soft.
Whisper: don’t leave me.
justsade at 1:06 p.m.
trying
2005-06-19
I’ve always said that I will miss these rains.
It’s true. I will carry them around with me forever, these rains and the sounds of the river cooling itself in the night.
These days I have taken to sitting alone in my bedroom, trying my best to cry without wetting my face. Everyone has those days, I think, when they wonder what went wrong. The thoughts are always the same; “I wish I could have been better” and so on. The kind of thing that will only worry you when you’ve been alone for a while and now the silence becomes like velvet brushing itself all over you. It comforts and it suffocates, moving down into your throat, seizing the contents of your stomach: one lollypop and one sour candy bar, bright blue.
Tomorrow though, I get to disappear. I will never board the plane, never finish studies. This business of feeling a strain because of studies, feeling guilty because of the expense is just so self pitying really. You don’t want to go. Don’t.
Your parents will search for months.
Where I will be these rains are pitiful. They come down for moments at a time, as if indecisive, they pain like ice. The summer is not a long yawning thing, but a pause, as if someone is holding his breath. Wait, wait for the winter and this breath, so cold, rushing past you and embracing you in every direction. This is what I trade my rains for. The silence is filled with sounds, it sparkles as if teasing. There is a promise of so much, the void winks and says to you, what are you sitting here so pensively? Who are you waiting to come crawling over your skin? It laughs too loudly at dinner parties.
This is better, at least, than being owned. When the chains have been cut, everything is endurable. When you are away from the world everything becomes beautiful.
justsade at 10:56 p.m.
braying of donkeys
2005-06-13
The woman next to me, she was so frightened, visibly exited. She wanted to stop me, for the good of her health and all I could think was how slick and round she was. Caramel brown and her hair freshly cut, highlighted deeply conditioned. She would go home where her husband would berate her for cutting her hair, pushing a wooden ruler against her head.
She laughed.
Why cut your hair so short? Why make yourself so masculine? I didn’t understand, I didn’t want anyone to notice me. That wasn’t it, she said, it was the principle.
I am so sorry.
justsade at 11:26 p.m.
oh, oh
2005-06-11
I want to write pretty things but I think my brain and the flying away like o that poor poor balloon wish is flying away and that I fear is never coming back that I have feared is not coming back for some time and I want to write about waling up so drowsily in the morning and having these little gangster movies playing in your head for an hour and how horribly pathetic to be humping your own thumb and wondering, wondering if groping is ok at this stage or if there will be nothing at all, you know you don’t want to be square. It’s become a different thing under inspection everything tends to become a vice. Humbleness becomes pride. A sort of sexuality becomes prudishness. My I feel so suffocated now. Like my world has bottomed out. Was I getting to comfortable with myself? I was just getting so ready to accept this lost jigsaw epic and then it came back. Oh how truly infuriating when I could have moved it. Could have put a nice flower pot there or a little insect to fly around and whisper things into my ear and fill my hair with thoughts of rum pudding and lacrosse.
justsade at 11:52 a.m.
utah, share the love
2005-06-09
I don’t know. I remember your deep green. Forest green and browns. Thumbs like the earth. You would figure meat and potatoes man. But then sir, where do you fit? You can’t, you can be one of them. Sir, your fingers betray you but so does your reading. Sir you don’t get to fit in anywhere.
I was not ready. I was not ready for the great hulking mass that was you. In your shoes and in your belt too big and tied, how many times over itself, and in your beard and your eyes. Your eyes which were, to say the least, expressive. Your eyes which would, so wide, frighten just a bit before you laughed and smiled a bit and said it was okay.
Sir, I could not have expected you to be so big.
I fancied myself like you sometimes, but I knew it was a silly dream. There were the rumours, of what a bad boy you were once. We wonder what you are like uncensored, we crowd around you in private hours to lap up you words.
Maybe the first year. That first year I was silently edging down that path too but then it switched and is supposed I floated away as a balloon, a bit disconnected from everything.
I am still floating down.
I suspect that some years from now I will spontaneously begin to cry, and it will finally be me saying good bye.
I am sorry I was not big enough yet.
justsade at 10:52 p.m.
one so terrible
2005-06-08
As they play, all I can think about is what must bee the cool smooth feeling of those pebbles as they reach their fingers in.
The black and white stones.
Of course he would be playing this; Mathematical geniuses always play these kinds of games. They need some kind of release ad this is close enough to fun, close enough to math – dealing in black and white, almost zeros and ones, almost patterns and algorithms- for it to appeal.
I wonder what he must have been like when he was younger, if he still had these nervous ticks, those blinding headaches. There was an article that said evolution was the reason those Jews had such diseases, why they were so bright. It said that the same thing was responsible for both, like sickle cell and malaria resistance. That and the lack of interbreeding.
But I think it is so novel for them to be playing this, the old man and his pupil who has gone awry. In a few seconds the old man will be discredited. He will say that he has given up. The game will end and he will smile, one smooth stone in hand.
justsade at 11:14 p.m.
left to right
2005-06-06
They say that rain is a sign of fertility.
The clouds were looming and, of course, beginning to peeter little drops of rain down amongst us and I could see, across this expanse of rain, my friends waving at me to come over. Each one of them dressed in these log blue robes, each one having spent so many hours to look that good. Each one knowing full well as I did that I wasn’t going to walk over there unless they could call God to stop the rain.
It is still thundering and I am standing outside feeling strangely all American. The hipsters, simply following in the same spirit with their dark jeans and predilection for strange jackets and buttons. I was just another in the line except that behind me was booming bachata and in front of me, my house covered a mango grove and our flag waved high. I’m thinking, what will I feel when I move somewhere without this rolling thunder. Where will my music be? I won’t stand there in my jeans and feel so anymore but just, alone again.
He gave me the best hug, my Romanian. I kept telling him not to leave me, that was all I could form with my lips pressed against his shoulder. Above me, I could feel is curling hair come down as he leaned his head against mine and rocked with me back and forth.
I don’t think I will see him again.
Just like that, boom, all ties are severed.
I’m a free woman.
justsade at 1:06 p.m.
Her hair was coming down so beautifully, it was as airy as cotton candy and she stroked it all night long
2005-05-18
It is understandable how she was a bit mesmerizing. After so many years of browns and yellows, to see here there with her porcelain and her rosy cheeks was a change. Stranger still to see her there in jeans and a top and even more in a dress wondering how to eat, how to walk. She was perhaps genuinely afraid of us. Poor thing, we’re only staring in wonder.
justsade at 12:19 a.m.
All of a sudden, the expensive silk and beading of my dress disappeared into the sweet warmth of his hand on my waist.
2005-05-17
That’s why I knew that I needed it. He couldn’t get away, because more than anything, even if we said not a word to each other, I could remember his love from his sweet sweet embrace, which was always like him whispering, in that weeping voice of his, hello and I missed you and I have not forgotten.
I had expected it and not as well, with all the forceful hugs that squeezed my breasts into my chest and those that left hands lingering around my waist and around my shoulders, fingers trailing off into dime and the coming lightness of the dawn.
They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. Yes, and also intimacy is frightening. I was fainting, my knees were bending. I made a quick exit.
justsade at 5:36 a.m.
tight
2005-05-10
I don’t know where it came from. Every single one of these things, I sat down and had something heavy weighing on me, and today it was so bad, oh it almost forced me to sit with her and have just a little bit of light ( she looked like a message, descending from blue satin clouds) to break up the weight for a while.
I tried so hard, I was thinking and those images were running through my head and I’m trying to hum to myself “lets start at the very beginning..” and even tap my fingers and close my eyes but they keep coming and I see the girl on the operating table with her intestines out in a bowl, and that doesn’t bother me, but then I have this other image, from underwater of a red onion hitting the water and being so rotten underneath that the skin comes off.
I was sick.
I can’t feel it now. Thinking rationally now the onion wasn’t that bad, but I felt then that I was going to die of nausea and fell forward, covering myself.
justsade at 6:15 p.m.
flowers on the wall
2005-05-10
There were always the plastic flowers.
Mama liked to keep them in vases around the house. Her excuse, I think, was that she had no time to grow real flowers, no money to buy them.
I remember at first thinking they were so beautiful, that it was so exotic to have so many flowers in the house, and why not, everyone said they were beautiful. But then, there was my first rose, just as sweet as my first kiss. After the hours I spent with that poor bud of a thing, I realised how sad our plastic flowers were.
I wanted rooms of fresh flowers for my mother everyday. I wanted the house to smell of nature and pollen and even damp earth.
So I tried, I tried
justsade at 5:32 a.m.
poor old johnny ray
2005-05-08
In fiddler on the roof, tevye wonders to god why, on the night of his daughter’s engagement he must be told there will be a pogrom. It is a sad scene because we’ve gone through the whole movie with him, though slightly odd, as a lovable Jewish papa and here is, for us, a double blow. Poor tevye.
I’d gotten used to the fact that it was over; perhaps even that there was nothing to begin with, but certainly that there was nothing any longer. I think, one day I was watching her move and I saw for the first time the laugh lines in the skin and she didn’t glow the way she used to. I remember that I could stare into her for hours, feeling what was around her but now it was all dry.
At the office later on I cried. You know, I could feel the tears coming and I tried to stop them, though I couldn’t tell why they came. I thought to myself that if I breathed properly or if I held very still, but they still came streaming down my face. Even then I was thinking. Only if I could hold my breath it would freeze. Everything would stop.
I really hope sometimes that I would come home and see a note in the kitchen, her telling me that she was leaving me. On the floor, she would have left some insignificant thing and I would cling to it. I prayed for it, so that I would never have to see her, so I would be the victim.
In fact, I dreamt of it.
Yet every night she’s there. My darling, my angel, she is there in the home greeting me with warmth streaming from behind her. Ever faithful, ever doting.
I think, instinctively, I just need to get away from her, but all I can think of doing is breaking her neck.
justsade at 8:51 p.m.
touche me now
2005-04-30
I didn’t mind your sweat on my shoulder, because it meant your arm was there protecting me and my frail little bones were tickling you ever so gently. I could feel, every time you jumped, your muscles tensing. I liked it.
I liked too, the feeling of melting and the warmth of the seat and that feeling of impending death that, as a teenager, you stare at until it is forced to bat its eyes. We thought, yes, we are going to die. I can feel my stomach lurching. But we will die young and beautiful under the Florida sun.
There’s no room for pity in that.
justsade at 6:59 p.m.
One moment where our hands danced
2005-04-30
I wanted to try something. I was feeling brave. Your hand was laying there all pale and alone and I thought we could have some fun.
I’m sorry if I take it too seriously, but a warm hand goes straight to my heart.
I was worried you would fall limp, lose interest. It was worth, for a second, a try.
I got more and less. for a while we were dancing and our fingers turned and pulled at each other so softly-I remember once like a tiny kiss- and I could feel too the heat coming from each of us, hovering in the air.
Then you were lost to me.
justsade at 6:58 p.m.
Sliding, speeding
2005-04-30
You joked about it, how reckless you were. You said we would die, that you were known for it, but under you were saying how worried you would be of me. Each curve, my dear, slid me closer. I would laugh, too, because it was endearing, because it was a show, because I wanted to.
My favourite moments were wandering down the roads, every way but the right one, talking till we had missed another turn.
But only alone with you, only with you.
justsade at 6:58 p.m.
Wind and the toast sun
2005-04-30
I saw through her metaphors. In the wind, her wild black hair circling around her in a haze and slapping your skin, I was jealous of her. I was jealous of her hair and her natural femininity. Even in this skirt, with this earring, with this necklace, she turned your head.
I don’t blame you; I was becoming drunk on it too, but all the same…
I wonder if it was that that made you less interesting. She had you, so why bother. Too, then you weren’t man enough to match her which is strange because sometimes I can feel it hitting me as you look, so seriously.
My new man was the sun, toasting me deeper brown beside you. Did you see me, gathering each delicious drop? I hadn’t had him in a while, and he was so much more interesting.
justsade at 6:58 p.m.
Warm concrete, bare feet
2005-04-30
The sun had come out just for us. I hadn’t noticed, spinning as I do, in my little room. In there it was always the some light blue light and the same measured air flowing across me. The same carpet that lost its spring years ago, back before those paint stains.
But anyway, I had stepped into that yellow light and felt, under me, the rough warm concrete against my bare feet as I ran to you. I wanted to tell you, how delicious it was, how I should go just like that and you and I could run over the asphalt together, all the way down to the shore.
I felt silly and didn’t say anything, and got my shoes and my purse and my kisses
justsade at 6:57 p.m.
like a wolf
2005-04-20
I say that, but in truth he would have to be perfect. Just looking at him would have to inspire hunger.
justsade at 6:51 p.m.
ditz
2005-04-20
I could totally imagine myself marrying someone mistakenly. A better thing to say is by accident. I would just let things roll along until…I’m married with three kids and an SUV (maybe even a summer home and a nice stable job).
justsade at 6:51 p.m.
mafia
2005-04-20
Every time someone lifts me into the air I fall in love a little.
I know I am small, I know I am light. I know anyone could do it.
But to be pressed close to someone so tight, and to trust them so entirely...
justsade at 6:51 p.m.
feh
2005-04-20
So who can I tell when my body begins to yearn and cry for some strong hand around my waist, lifting me skyward? I don't have anyone to tell, they all have their yearnings satisfied.
More than satisfied.
My eyes become drowsy and I think of it, phantom touches. I begin to lose my concentration to this idea when, at the slightest confrontation I blush.
Writing these things is like screaming into a pillow, barely even temporary.
justsade at 6:46 p.m.
long, thin
2005-04-19
What I told myself was that I’d never see him again. Then, what would be the harm in pressing myself against him for a few days?
justsade at 11:11 p.m.
done
2005-04-19
I have always felt this pressure to be someone else. I have always just been an image a distorted mould of what someone else wanted me to be.
I’ve only just figured this out. I have only just started to let my body dry.
I am afraid that it will happen again. There is this name, and this prestige, and I feel…I feel like I should begin projecting this image that is not mine, that by the very nature of my being could not be mine if I wished it to be.
There isn’t anyone in my corner telling me to be a little West-Indian girl.
That’s all I ever was.
I’m going to rebel. I can feel it.
justsade at 11:10 p.m.
right here?
2005-04-17
My little golden haired boy is fading. I’ve already moved on from him, to taller dark haired boys.
Oh, I am so shy.
What I tell myself is that it is all in innocent fun, that this is just play.
And it is.
And it isn’t and with him I’m naked in the most indecent way. I should stop this whole thing. People are wondering, but it isn’t anything serious. It isn’t anything serious.
I need to find something serious.
justsade at 10:57 p.m.
my words
2005-04-17
I can’t stand to hear it read aloud.
I have to pretend that I’m not listening, that it’s not happening. I didn’t notice until he had started speaking, and I was pacing around the stage with my hands hovering above my ears. My stomach had turned.
He said he felt the same and that helped a bit. I wondered if it was just me. If I hated myself so much that even my body had an automatic reaction.
But no.
justsade at 10:51 p.m.
its always been like this
2005-04-17
I cry when things are true.
My body reacts physically to beauty.
justsade at 10:50 p.m.
ramble
2005-04-16
Skipping though the halls I saw the plaque and it made me so happy to think of it, a building this old, and once some other little girl had skipped down these step, once a boy did, moping and to think we were in the same place. To think that my mother bled for nine months, to think that I am here now and were will I go and will a little girl be thinking about me?
I type now and I cannot see, I stare at the keyboard but I don’t see anything because of this creeping blindness that stays with mw. I could stare at the the screen, it wouldn’t make much difference, I can see neither, but I can’t type that way. My eyes are glued to my fingers, brown blobs, fluttering over the grey expanse of keys.
So that day I was so happy. With the silence welling up in me I wanted to sing and even with the trouble. Even with the cold. Even with everything, I was so happy to be alive.
justsade at 4:59 p.m.
black and white
2005-04-16
Please have children, please.
The looks on their faces, when they were staring at each other. And the soft way that they touched. Oh, it was so perfect that I could have begged.
Please get married.
Please have a million of each other’s babies.
justsade at 4:28 p.m.
open letter
2005-04-16
Let us begin with, I saw it coming. That night (that day in truth, but it was a night) that you said you did not trust me a sharp silver door came sliding down between us and it will not go away. From then, perhaps from before then, it had ended, those carefree days. You say you need me, but you don’t.
I am contemplating leaving all of you people and never coming back. I want to never come back.
I tell myself that it will most likely be four years of aloneness, to prepare me for the rest of my life.
I do not think my life was meant to be one shared with other people. I am going to walk this long path of life alone and love people so intensely…but from behind a wall, but from far away and only close enough so that I can help. Then I will slough off like a scab from their shoulder and the path will begin again.
That is what I see.
I was not always like this you know. It takes a while for me to put things in words, because I always know things before I can explain them. It takes such a long time for me to pt the colours and the feelings into words and sort them out from the dreams and the stories and the patterns that sit around in my head. Did I really love it so much? Was it really that beautiful?
I have to take it apart to be sure.
Then my whims, oh they don’t make things much easier.
But yes, I used to have such high highs and such low lows and everyone would know, everyone would know which one it was today. And it was so beautiful and so horrible at the same time. You could not go on living like that though; those people die young and beautiful. It is like living at war, and you feel sometimes that you want to go back because the civilians don’t understand, they don’t know what you are talking about and you can never deny that it has happened.
So with you I learned to be quiet. To remember that no one really cares what I think. That no one will notice when I tell them anyway. I am probably only a substitute for something or someone else. That is what I took from you.
You are depressing.
And I know that isn’t me, that isn’t how I came here, that couldn’t be how I came here. So I am trying to remember.
I am like a chemist, weighting variables over and over, isolating causes.
Was it because I had run out of mirrors? Was it because my examples had left, because things ran of their own, because things that were meant to be cut finally had been?
You met me that year.
You don’t know anything else.
But I have to make a decision, a big one, all alone.
I have 24 hours.
What to do, what to do.
justsade at 3:56 p.m.
traps
2005-04-16
Am I an old man?
Tell me the truth. My body says otherwise, but you see we’ve never been on good terms.
justsade at 1:21 p.m.
will this be my first son?
2005-04-16
So, what I had told myself was that it would come to me. And it did, somehow, I never know. The first time, I said I miss my nuns. The second, I remembered a Colombian. And then by the last my mind had already begun to wander and my sanity was breaking up.
I only had a rock to keep me from drowning.
justsade at 1:20 p.m.
heresy
2005-04-16
That day, when the leaves where moving thought the air as if underwater, she was walking around so pensively.
I remember because a girl, a little girl was telling me how beautiful it was. She said there were violinists and carwheels and I began to remember how I loved to traipse past you, mr.saxophone player, and how my head followed your song like a sweet sweet musk making love to my tiny cockleshell ears.
That’s what I imagined. I imagined every night I would do this ritual, this little dance in the dark alley,and you would be the best friend that I never met mr. saxophone player. My best friend.
justsade at 1:20 p.m.
if i was a rich man
2005-04-16
I remember each one of you, my abandoned babies. I can tell, from the first glimpse, what you were and why you were born, and perhaps even what I was eating the first time that I saw you.
I wonder now if I have an more space, if I haven’t become infertile, if all the hopes that they had will lay fallow and you will have no more borther and sisters.
Perhaps half-breed mongoloid children.
Most babies aren’t born pretty anyway.
justsade at 1:08 p.m.