Turn the Page

The year, as I know it, is over.
Somewhere between wrecking everything and falling in love, the year turned over on itself.
And here I am.

Ever crashed through hell long and hard enough to wind up on the other side of life?
Ever seen the grass on both sides of the fence only to realize your new hell is something entirely different?
Your new passion has a different face?

I'm there.

Or at least that's where I place myself having turned the page on something wicked, destructive, and ultimately a side of me I can't tolerate to admit anymore.

It often starts with "Happiness is..." and ends someplace between a cold shower and a curled up sob.
But the year has just started and I can't anticipate that catastrophy anymore.
I am resolved to hope.

Perhaps it's the season, or the fact that I'm sleeping more in my old age, but honestly, this body has perservered and isn't quite done with the good yet.
Here's to hope.
Here's to faith.
Here's to not-taking-it-laying-down.
Here's to love.
Here's to joy.
Here's to...

Peace.

Goodnight ghosts and nightmares.
Goodbye old friends and phantoms.

Hello to the new day and a promise -
To never again be the same.

Tangent #4 - Ice

Dammit.

I've been driving for forty-five minutes and I am nowhere. I'm someplace between Hadley and Scott, but I'm not sure what direction I'm supposed to go this time. A smarter woman would have refused to come out in this shit.

I'm two cigarettes into this drive and I've got one left. We keep saying we'll quit this time, but I'm not ready. I'm ready for everything else, but not that. Work tonight was slow and I got caught up in the daydream stuff that always keeps me from making much money. Or is it the hangover? I'm not sure. Maybe I'm still drunk or high or something-far-from-reality and this ice storm is just a figment of something else that's blocking me.

Doubtful.

This is real. Traffic is crawling and all I want to do is see him. I'm not even sure why anymore. I can't see through the her-and-then-now or the fact that she's likely beaten me to the house. At least, I keep thinking this when I try to speed like this and smoke like this and every time, she's not even there.

Why do I care so much? I'm only a quarter way's away from my past and all I can think is future - future - future - future. Do I even have one at this rate? I could careen over the edge here in my car and never get out. Nah. Life's not this short, is it?

I'm on my last cigarette and I want to quit. I don't even know why I want to quit. She smokes. He smokes. I smoke. We smoke. She doesn't always smoke.
And never with us.
I wonder why that is? Why am I so obsessed?

She makes it look so easy. Makes it look so easy to love someone.
She makes everything look easy. She's easy.
I should keep that in mind.
But I can't.
She's got all those checks and balances in her favor. I hate her.

And I love her.

And she's already checked me and has me in this compartment.
She doesn't think I know about it, but I can tell when she looks at me.
She thinks I'm small. She knows she does it better.
Knows she does it smarter.
Knows she had everything first.

Only thing I got on her is him.
And the fact that I am eventually going to hit her.
In that smug piece-of-shit mouth. She honestly thinks I wouldn't.

I would.
I will.
I just don't know when.

But that's only going to make me look stupid and I feel stupid anyway.
He thinks I'm stupid.
I really don't know if or why he loves me.
But he does.
More than her.

The why would make me sleep at night.
And I can't ask.

Perhaps I'll never get there.

Trick or Treat : Donatello

I am getting really sick and tired of this display. A month ago I'd have said it was over, doomed to failure. And here I am, eating my fifth or fifteenth piece of candy and I really can't tell if this is the beginning of it or the joy before the end.
All I keep hearing is laughter.

I don't even know what that means.
It's on the other side of the door and I can't even tell you who it is.

Where is my life?
I keep asking this question - the one that's equivalent to 'who am I?' and I keep turning up the lower case version of myself.

I don't get that.
I'm such a poser.
People think I'm this. I'm this for awhile and then go for that when that is more appealing.
I think that's why they call 'em costumes.

I went as a Ninja Turtle for Halloween once. I never really thought I was one.
Maybe just that day I really was?
Probably not. My bow staff wasn't the right measurement.

But when the holiday was over, and my mom took the turtle stuff and packed it away, I still knew I was a boy. I was nine and had dinosaur PJs and a green sleeping bag.
I never thought that wasn't cool.

Now, when it's over, I'm just this guy.
Sitting cross-legged on my bed eating old candy.

I know there's more to this man than that.
But it's the not knowing that keeps me here.
All the time.


Some days, I wish I was Donatello.

Tangent #3: Two half-dressed women pass in the hallway...

It was dark - someplace between 2 am and 4 am - the time when only anxious bodies rouse from sleep. There's always a reason for the waking.

Disoriented, the first stumbles for one bedroom door and opens it. Her eyes really aren't open. She uses her other senses to trace her path down what was becoming a familiar hall. With one hand on the rail, she moved slowly, adjusting to the dark and the T-shirt she was wearing. It wasn't hers.

Still mid-sleep, the second walks assuredly out into the hall from the other direction. She never sleeps in pajamas. It's the weekend and her eyes are weighted from the makeup she never removed. But it is the weekend and this is not her house, so she pulls a sweatshirt over her head. It isn't hers.

Someplace between the stairs and the wall, the two stumble upon one another.
"Hmmm...rrrffff...hmmmm...rrrmpph" said the first through her sleep.
"You still here?" the second mumbled with one eye open.

"Mmm hmmm. Yes." said the first.

"Well then, me too." replied the second.

She's home from the hospital. There was a yellow tulip at her door.

Weeks, months had passed since the disaster. She sat on her patio drinking coffee in the early morning fog and as usual, her eyes fell on the browned, crisp yellow tulip standing rigid in the bud vase on her patio table. She'd let the first frost get it. In fact, she wasn't sure why she still had it out there. She never brought it inside. She knew where it came from.

There was a letter someplace. He never gave it to her, but she knew he wrote one. It was his way to try and say it without words.

Yellow tulip means friendship.

That's what all the books say.

She sat in the quiet, the steam from her mug swirling delicately upward.

How can you be friends with someone who no longer exists? she wondered in thought.

In her world, friends were around, in her orbit, tangible and reciprocating. Most of the time. Since the attack, she had so many......friends.

She would have rather had the letter. She hoped the other woman was beautiful.
Even more so than she.

She hoped it was worth the cavernous abandonment in the hospital. Worth leaving her to doctors, nurses, none of whom filled that void.

The one that was slowly filling now.

With herself.

And the promise of something different. A new year. Someplace after the growing snow and ice and wind and all that other natural stuff that has to arrive before the thaw.

Before everything warms up again.

She didn't miss him much anymore. He was only a memory.

The tulip would eventually turn to dust with the cold.

Autumnal warning...

If she could write poetry, it would sound something like this....

So...it's like that.
Burnt down beneath a camp fire
Where it seems you can't tell
The marshmallow breath
From the sugar of skin.

To most it would seem natural
To fall in love that way
But some of us know better
Than to put our salt
Into passion

They say, it's about the talking.
And really looking into someone
Like you mean it
For a change -

In the season when skin
Smells most like the fall.

Someone should tell you
It never really lasts.
It switches over someplace
Between the first kiss
And the past.

Fall Memory #4 - Girls' Bathroom

She stood a moment, the room spinning slightly amidst the fluorescent lighting and the brightly drawn scribbles and scratches.

She did not sit down.

Instead, she stood, jelly-legged inside the middle stall staring. Just staring.
She read line-for-line everything scrawled over the years.
And she wasn't sure who she was anymore.

With disappointment as she scanned the lines, she realized...
"I'm not here," she whispered, her breath catching in the tinge of her last shot.

"There you are!" a voice called. "Wondered where you went."
Silence.

"You okay?"

...................................

"Yeah. I'm fine. Coming."

As she rejoined the waning crowd, she made a mental note to do the one thing she had never done before and swore once she was too much of a lady to do.