Tangent 2 - Martha goes to confession....

"What do you have to confess?" the priest asked her through the murky partition.

She sat a moment, nicked at her fingers, and bit her lower lip.

"Remember child, God will love you anyway. Purge yourself of your burdens and you will find the light," he added.

"You know," she started, "I think I'm okay. I don't feel it yet."

Realization one

"It's the beginning of the fall and all," a friend told her.

She smiled. Looked up at the stars and thought to herself,

'I am not that girl I thought I was.'

And she resolved once again to grow her hair.

Visual

This is what freedom looks like, my friend.

Have a good laugh and toast only the good times.
It's really not that bad, after all.

Cheers to the past and cheers to the future.
For in the right now, all is as it should be.

Truth #1

Life tastes so much different when you're young. But unlike what they say in all of those songs - despite what everyone likes to say or think... Life tastes so much sweeter when you're old enough to appreciate it. This is the first day of my life where I knew I wanted to be older.

How else are we ever expected to understand beauty?

Sensation #10 - Knowledge

As much as it would be so beautiful to pretend,
This life is never going to be simple or easy.

It plays out through the senses and causes us to feel like that one image
we know, deep down, is actually us sometimes.

And you know what?
For the time being it's better to be the monster and know,
Than to pretend.


Afterall, it tastes like salt, feels like renewal, and smells like beginning of the fall.
And what eventually blushes green.

Sensation #9 - Frustration

What you do not realize, this time, is that I do not owe you my kindness. I do not owe you this courtesy nor are you entitled to my compassion or understanding.
You did not earn these things.
Just as you did not earn my trust or adoration, which I would give freely if I could.

But I do these things. I give them to you - my kindness, my courtesy, my compassion, and even my understanding.
Not because I love you.
Not because you deserve my ability to see you through this lens of adulthood,

But because I can live with myself.
Because this makes me feel like a human.
Because it is that which we all strive for.
Because it is RIGHT.

And this knowledge makes me feel ALIVE.

Tangent #2 - Two men pass in the hallway.

Sometimes when I look at him, it makes me angry that he's alive.

Walks around like he's this person no one really knows. Truth is, I know. He told me.

It's not as mysterious as a lot of those women like to think.

It's just that he handles things in a way that I can't - carries it on his sleeve or something.

It's as if he doesn't give a shit if someone hates him or loves him for it.

I mean, damnit, doesn't he have any f-ing pride at all?

Truth is, he's got what I want.

He has it and he already knows it's coming.

I see it coming.

He's going to get it. It'll happen.

And I'm going to hate every single minute of it.

Tangent - She meets God on the subway.

He is wearing a very nice suit.

She leaned in and said very carefully, "I'm really sorry I'm not getting this right."

He looked down at her and for a moment, she thought he looked like her father. But not quite.

"If you were supposed to get it this early, I'd have shown you. You have to straighten up, deal. You know how."

She looked at her shoes and then in a moment of courage said what she needed to. "You see, I am so tired of doing the right thing. Everyone else seems to be having a lot more fun mucking up the world around here and for once, I want to go to the party."

He laughed, strong and hearty guffaws that startled her.

"Girl, if you were doing the right thing all the time, we wouldn't be here."

Sensation #8 - Five cigarettes in

I should probably stop doing this for the third time. The first is always one hell of a high, the second an excellent chaser to the first.


But by number, three, four, and the inevitable realization that many follow, well, your mouth becomes paper.


Not the good kind. Not the paper on the back of candy buttons with its sugar residue or even the quick 'oooh gross' that comes with licking a stamp. This paper tastes like old news - stale, black and white, a little gray, and ultimately a sign of dying childhood.





Cigarettes were cool about ten years ago.
Now they just cause cancer.

And the stink eye from people who watch knowing you're ultimately getting cancer by choice.



I wonder if anyone thinks about liver cancer when they watch people drink? We're probably going to get that too.



I don't know, man, but that's what it's like. Your lungs squeeze together and resist your own actions. It tastes good and bad together, like something foggy up in your brain and your nose at the same time. It's tantamount to sneaking out of the house for the first time.


Sure, the fear of getting caught smoking is almost that great these days. Especially in a town where they hate you for it.





None of the pretty people smoke anymore.
And I don't know what that means.

What she would never read...

Crumpled on his desk at home lay the other half of the note. He kept it. Just in case.



And I am so sorry you know. I can't be that man you want or need, or even the one you deserve. You don't see this, but I can - every time you look at me with those "I accept you as you are" eyes that makes me die a little inside every time you smile.

And I am sorry that I can't make that mean forever and ever and the stuff that dreams are made of. I really want to. I want to promise you that it'll be good and that we'll be happy.
But if you know me by now, you know,....damn you really know....I break all my promises.

I hate me.
I hate myself for being this person who can't live up and who can't let go.
But I'm working on it.

And I will keep trying.

The truth is, you are my someone. Through this guise of broken down habitual failure and despairing fear of anything beautiful or good in this world, I'm still in love with you.
You haunt me and take me to places in my mind that I've never viewed through this lens before.
When I'm sober, your face, your influence, makes me hope.

I have never had this before in my short life.
And though it hurts - God all the time it hurts - I still want that.

With you.

Please forgive me.
This part of me that can keep moving forward, the part that still thinks there's a crucible out there with my name on it, is hopefully and hopelessly in love with you.

Take me back.
I promise to try. I promise to be a better version of me.
Because I not only want that for you, but for myself.

Find me again.

Me.

Mrs. Weedgrass takes the stand tomorrow...

The light inside the tiny cell in county lock up glinted and reflected against the muted steel of the toilet. Mrs. Weedgrass crossed her legs tightly in defiance and drummed her knotted knuckles against the edge of her cot.

She felt caged. Like an animal. Like those drunks she always saw on the corner of Calhoun and Creighton. She wasn't one of them. She only goes there for her charity work. She leaned her back against the cinder wall and sighed heavily, the weight of her situation settling someplace between her shoulders and lower back. Funny, she couldn't feel anything inside.

In the distance, she could hear the night time rustlings of women and men chatting and barking orders. She could hear the buzz of monitors, doors heavily swinging open and shut, mouths blurting out sounds like "Number 4, this way." At one point, she thought she heard a woman protesting, but perhaps she imagined it.

Mrs. Weedgrass had no idea why she was even worried about her trial. She had gone through this several times, each time a bit more serious - each time a bit easier to lie through. God told her to do things. He told her her son was a bastard from Satan. So she raised him and loved him that way. What else was she to do?

Afterall, even Jesus was crucified, right? Better to go down in Christ than not to go down at all, she supposed.

She didn't know he was going to go and shoot that girl. That stupid, stupid, nosy girl. He had always threatened to use his father's gun, but it had always been to fire it on himself, never to gun someone innocently down in a public place like this. And how in the hell is that her fault? she wondered.

Her son died because he committed suicide and assault. He tried to murder. She always knew he was a bad seed and how else could she have raised him? What did people expect when your son is a spawn of hell and worse yet, you know it at infancy?

She tugged at her whitening hair and wondered about Alana. Beautiful, successful Alana. She was curious if Alana would show up this time. Maybe she'd wear that gorgeous suit she bought her in Abilene.

Mrs. Weedgrass glanced over at the toilet again. She crossed her legs more firmly. Best to keep them closed in a sinful place like this, she muttered lowly feeling the electric 'sssshhhh' of her pantyhose rubbing together.
She really needed to go.
Badly.

Progress

Back in the hospital, in the deepening night, she rolls over and sighs in her sleep. Dr. Macafee makes a note. He takes another glance, notes his record again.
She breathes.

Next to the note, he attaches a Post-It and doodles an image of a small sun peeking over a wispy cloud. He really needed to get a grip on this mushy stuff.
Crumpling the paper, he stood up and then pitched in the direction of the waste basket near the window.

He sits again.
She breathes again. Turns over.
Mumbles in her sleep.

Dr. Macafee makes another note and puts his pad down. He looks out the window and sighs audibly. This round ought to be over, he thought.


Through the window of Room #126, Noodle watches Dr. Macafee and the sleeping woman, the yellow tulip in one hand and the note in the other. Outside of the hospital room door is the wall folder that typically holds medical charts for patients.

Noodle sighs. Wipes an eye.
She looked so vulnerable there. So incredibly innocent despite her age.
He slides the tulip into the wall folder, watches it droop slightly to the side. For a moment, he remembered the one bouquet of flowers he ever gave her and the way her face lit like a sunrise when she saw them.
Every now and then, she'd take a surprise.

At that moment, he would have rushed in, taken a quiet hand, and confessed it all into her sleeping ear. But she was not alone anymore.

And so he ripped the bottom half of the note, pocketed it.
He placed the other half in the folder with the flower.
He hoped deeply that for now it would be enough.

Silently, he slipped down the hallway, head down, watching the scuffing of his shoes as he left her the second time.

Still Birth

You would have been born

Six months after we broke

Down. You would have slid

Into this unhappy spiral

Innocently smiling.

I would have loved you anyway

Though you may not have known

Much. Love at that moment

Was insurmountable

Like glass sliding through pavement

Or men of war.

No one ever wins when life

Shatters and spins out

Into the atmosphere.

But that doesn’t mean,

I mean, it doesn’t hurt

To keep something warm

Deeply buried somewhere

Inside. I would have carried

You. For as long as you had let me.

Perhaps I dreamed

You? I cannot feel anything like that

Anymore.

It is no one’s fault.

Perhaps my life has been wasted

Never knowing, never feeling

What everyone tells me

Means everything in this tiny universe.

Relatable Quote #5

Some of the most hurtful of things are indeed what makes life the most beautiful.
Some of the ugliest of people, have the shadow of hope inside.

The motivation to love in the face of adversity is what makes a person,
A person,

And nothing else in this life.

What Quiet Feels Like

Really, when I think about it.
When or if you think about it.

It's not that I can't say "I love you."

It is just that I can't mean it.

How do you mean what you do not know yet?

Is this called faith? Flying blind?
Is it even that sensory really?

I don't know, friend.
But when I mean it,

I will say it.

So until then. This is what quiet feels like.