I took it very personal. Laying on my back, eyelids open during witching hours. Insomnia made herself comfortable in my bed for going on 47 days. You'd think if she was going to spend all this time under the covers with me, she'd at least want to fuck. But no. I lay here in a gray room listening to four paws chase something in the apartment upstairs. Back and forth, back and forth. It might as well be the ticking of a clock. Back and forth. Rain clicks down on my window sill and some drunk asshole just got home and thinks every thing is funny. I wish he'd laugh away from the window so as not to scare away my sleep if it came by.
If I run any farther away from my self I will fall into the Atlantic. This brain can be so dramatic. Why is it that every fucking time I pack up those boxes, all of me shows up to the next place yet some of those boxes tend to fall off the truck? Why can't memories and character defects fall off the truck? I got a few stories I'd like to leave behind.
Life gets hard when you start living it. With out fucking it, drinking it or snorting it, I don't know what to do with it. I look around the room nervously trying to pull my cheeks up and squint my eyes, the way I see others smile. I bite my knuckles and life just looks at me, slightly disappointed, slightly bored and very resentful. It's kinda like spending the weekend with your real dad. I make little jokes and speak in foot notes. It rolls it's eyes at me and gives me a pity smile. When did this happen?
Gun Shy Heart
I stood there, like I did many years ago with my heart pounding it's way out. Choking wasn't an option in this case. A mistake meant death. My head warned me about it the whole way here. In the car, on the phone and in airplanes. Through songs and drugs, between sex and crying it warned me of all of this. But every heart suffers from amnesia. And despite the fact the brain has a firm grip on the steering wheel, well... we all doze off once in a while.
It felt heavier than I remember. Was I as shaky before? A mistake meant death. I became fully aware by the chill running through my hands, along my arms to the tips of my nipples. I set it down and looked back at you in shame and defeat.
I can't.
Your hands met my hips and you turned me back around, pushing up from behind me. I rested back on your chest.
Just relax and hold tightly.
I repeated it like a mantra. Your hands left me there, shivering. Inhaling, I pushed my shoulders back and submitted to the amnesia, and with the exhale I fired two more rounds. I think I've got a gun-shy heart.
It felt heavier than I remember. Was I as shaky before? A mistake meant death. I became fully aware by the chill running through my hands, along my arms to the tips of my nipples. I set it down and looked back at you in shame and defeat.
I can't.
Your hands met my hips and you turned me back around, pushing up from behind me. I rested back on your chest.
Just relax and hold tightly.
I repeated it like a mantra. Your hands left me there, shivering. Inhaling, I pushed my shoulders back and submitted to the amnesia, and with the exhale I fired two more rounds. I think I've got a gun-shy heart.
Dark Lover
I wake up with him. His shadow on the wall the moment I open my eyes, I feel his arms around my waist. Please go, I think, please leave me in peace. Not today. He shushes me, today we will spend the entire day together.
I pace the living room, his shadow following me, forming to every wall in my apartment. I open and close the fridge, he stands behind me. There is no reason to shower, no reason to dress. I'm not going any where, not until he's done with me.
I lay on the couch very still and silent, his arms tightly around me. No one will call today. I will exchange very few words with the outside world, if any. I'm all his today. I wait for his caresses to end, his damp hard kisses, the way he pushes himself against my groin. I close my eyes and wait for it to be over. But he stays all day, and some times over night.
Will I wake with him tomorrow? I can't bare the thought of it. Usually it's one day, but some times he lingers. A few consecutive days of this and I might not survive. He knows this too. He knows I can only take so much of the shadows, of the silence, of his body tightly wrapped around mine. Of his mouth suffocating mine. My whole life, he's been my dark lover.
I pace the living room, his shadow following me, forming to every wall in my apartment. I open and close the fridge, he stands behind me. There is no reason to shower, no reason to dress. I'm not going any where, not until he's done with me.
I lay on the couch very still and silent, his arms tightly around me. No one will call today. I will exchange very few words with the outside world, if any. I'm all his today. I wait for his caresses to end, his damp hard kisses, the way he pushes himself against my groin. I close my eyes and wait for it to be over. But he stays all day, and some times over night.
Will I wake with him tomorrow? I can't bare the thought of it. Usually it's one day, but some times he lingers. A few consecutive days of this and I might not survive. He knows this too. He knows I can only take so much of the shadows, of the silence, of his body tightly wrapped around mine. Of his mouth suffocating mine. My whole life, he's been my dark lover.
Nueva York
The mice didn't bother me. They never really have. I kind of liked watching them scurry close to the wall, their gray shiny bodies wiggling across the gray shiny cement looking for the right hole to go through. I watched one this morning stop at every other hole and poke it's head in, then quickly continue to the next.
I'd glance over to the faces
that matched the feet
the little mouse navigated by
to see their reaction.
But the faces were too busy kissing each other.
Adjusting the scarf tightly around their child's neck.
Sucking their teeth and checking their watches.
By now the mouse is gone and I'm alone again.
My train pulls up violently like an ambulance. People pour out, and more people waddle in.
I am pushed up against eighty-five people with my hands across my chest to protect my tits from smashing up against a stranger. I'm kinky, but this is not my thing. I think about my mouse friend. Is it crowded in her hole? Is that what she was doing, looking for the least crowded one to crawl into?
When you're in a human storage container blasting through tunnels under water, under an apple, under more human storage containers, you tend to day dream a little. It's as though you're brain doesn't have to really function if it's underground. Your cell phone doesn't work, why should your brain? So I day dream. I'm eleven states away and I have yet to feel homesick. Among all these strangers, I'm alone inside them and it feels great.
I like looking at the girls on the subway. When you're smashed up in a subway car, it's really hard to place your eyes any where but on a human being. Eighty people trying to look at anything but each others eyes. You find your self looking at nooks and crannies of the car. Starring intensely at advertisements for vocational schools and domestic violence hot lines. Any thing but the eyes of a stranger.
So anyways, I like to look at the girls. I look at their boots and crawl my eyes up to their shiny, pout lips. Mouths are my favorite, "the lips have it!" I say. I'm pushed against all these people when really I want to be pressed against those mouths. Pressuring them to open, like subway doors. Their love pours out as my tongue waddles in.
I'd glance over to the faces
that matched the feet
the little mouse navigated by
to see their reaction.
But the faces were too busy kissing each other.
Adjusting the scarf tightly around their child's neck.
Sucking their teeth and checking their watches.
By now the mouse is gone and I'm alone again.
My train pulls up violently like an ambulance. People pour out, and more people waddle in.
I am pushed up against eighty-five people with my hands across my chest to protect my tits from smashing up against a stranger. I'm kinky, but this is not my thing. I think about my mouse friend. Is it crowded in her hole? Is that what she was doing, looking for the least crowded one to crawl into?
When you're in a human storage container blasting through tunnels under water, under an apple, under more human storage containers, you tend to day dream a little. It's as though you're brain doesn't have to really function if it's underground. Your cell phone doesn't work, why should your brain? So I day dream. I'm eleven states away and I have yet to feel homesick. Among all these strangers, I'm alone inside them and it feels great.
I like looking at the girls on the subway. When you're smashed up in a subway car, it's really hard to place your eyes any where but on a human being. Eighty people trying to look at anything but each others eyes. You find your self looking at nooks and crannies of the car. Starring intensely at advertisements for vocational schools and domestic violence hot lines. Any thing but the eyes of a stranger.
So anyways, I like to look at the girls. I look at their boots and crawl my eyes up to their shiny, pout lips. Mouths are my favorite, "the lips have it!" I say. I'm pushed against all these people when really I want to be pressed against those mouths. Pressuring them to open, like subway doors. Their love pours out as my tongue waddles in.
Flat Mouse
I was on my way home, crossing the Mission on Mission Street proper. The morning was young still and merchants were pushing and pulling carts on to the sidewalks. Words slinging from the inside of stores out to young workers propping up merchandise, like a game of ski ball. Shoes, socks and dresses. Mangoes, bananas and dried fish. Everything shimmers in the new morning light. I give credit to the men in rain boots washing down the side walks. Washing away the semen and vomit. I saw it all last night, but the morning light makes it seem so innocent.
It's too beautiful to take the bus, so I walk the two miles.
Next to a failed meter lay a flattened mouse. A flattened mouse. It's tiny pink feet and hands stretching out to the four corners of the world and it's skull listening to the earth rumble. It was as if he was hugging the concrete.
How does a mouse get flattened like that?
I'm not dead yet, as far as I can tell. But some times I feel that flat. Desperate, lost and out of air. Laying on the ground, searching for answers I may have dropped. Poor mouse. I hope he found something before he went out.
It's too beautiful to take the bus, so I walk the two miles.
Next to a failed meter lay a flattened mouse. A flattened mouse. It's tiny pink feet and hands stretching out to the four corners of the world and it's skull listening to the earth rumble. It was as if he was hugging the concrete.
How does a mouse get flattened like that?
I'm not dead yet, as far as I can tell. But some times I feel that flat. Desperate, lost and out of air. Laying on the ground, searching for answers I may have dropped. Poor mouse. I hope he found something before he went out.
Back in L.A.
The belching buses were gone. The whirl wind of dust in my hair as the subway lights flashed toward me, gone. The train crawling up and down the city, each car jerking left and right, gone too. They didn't exist for me. At least not here.
The trolleys...wait, the last time I was on a trolley I was five years old visiting on vacation. Sitting there watching the hills roll up and down, my knees sticking out and gathering goose bumps from the fog. That is until a gray-haired man in a gray suite with a black suit case stood up before me on the ledge of the car. I was not imagining it, I soon realized. And with every bump and sway of the trolley he'd push his dick harder into my knees, looking out into the street, then down at me again. His compulsion lay big and wet shame over my tiny frame, shrinking me into nothing. That's the first time I went numb and I never looked up again. I fantasized kicking him off me onto a busy intersection, cars running over him like a speed bump.
They'd arrest me for sure.
I imagined the court room at my trial,
"Ms. Lockman-Soto, why did you kick him off the trolley?
Why did you kill him?"
I knew I'd never be able to repeat what he did to me. I'd go to jail for sure. Where ever they take five year-old girls, that's definitely where they'd send me. So I sat there, trying to scoot to the right then to the left. He would casually adjust himself back onto my little nubby knees.
Yeah, fuck those trolleys.
I cried in the airport. The man who checked me in was so sweet and accommodating. "Here you go Miss. Gate 21 Miss. I can help you with the bag, be careful Miss." He would smile but his cheeks would quickly let go of it when my blood shot eyes met his. I hardly noticed security or how much clothes they made me take off, but suddenly I was upstairs plugging in my computer and burning my lips on some muddy coffee. This is a good time to work, I thought, and began my round of phone calls.
I hardly noticed any one around me on the plane as well, I simply stared out the window, like I did on weekends waiting for my father. I made sure however, to acknowledge the flight attendant when she would come by. I did not want nuts. I did not want club soda. I did not even want a cocktail.
I DID NOT EVEN WANT A COCKTAIL.
When I left my heart in San Francisco, it left a gaping hole, dripping black/brown stale menstrual-like blood. No one saw it, but it was in a puddle all oozing near my breast. I watched the world thousands of miles below me. My life went backwards and I knew that at the airport awaited the ghost of young, bruised and abused Alexis.
Would she wait in the car or would the bitch have flowers waiting at the gate? She's so desperate to please I kinda wish I remembered her number so I could tell her to just wait in the car. I didn't bring much baggage with me. I wouldn't have any answers for her. I would tell her what every one else knew; the wizard was a fake and I didn't bring back courage or a heart. But I could take her home.
I was back in L.A., living out of a suit case in which I forgot to pack clothes in. I had a hair dryer, flat iron, tons of hair goo and make up, but no fucking clothes. What the fuck was I thinking when I packed? Luckily for me, I know where every god damn mall in this city is located and it's just a matter of time before I figure out which of these credit cards still has some life in it.
I collected my things and navigated down the narrow air plane stairs with my head still in the clouds. My skin could not feel the bright sun, though I appreciated. Even in December. I walked through the small airport, across the high traffic carpeting and decided a few things.
1. Dry L.A. weather ensures my hair will stay straight.
2. My heart wouldn't drop if I saw any of my mistakes.
3. When I see young, bruised and abused Alexis, I'm gonna kiss her hard on the mouth and tell her not to worry about a god damn thing.
I'm back in town.
The trolleys...wait, the last time I was on a trolley I was five years old visiting on vacation. Sitting there watching the hills roll up and down, my knees sticking out and gathering goose bumps from the fog. That is until a gray-haired man in a gray suite with a black suit case stood up before me on the ledge of the car. I was not imagining it, I soon realized. And with every bump and sway of the trolley he'd push his dick harder into my knees, looking out into the street, then down at me again. His compulsion lay big and wet shame over my tiny frame, shrinking me into nothing. That's the first time I went numb and I never looked up again. I fantasized kicking him off me onto a busy intersection, cars running over him like a speed bump.
They'd arrest me for sure.
I imagined the court room at my trial,
"Ms. Lockman-Soto, why did you kick him off the trolley?
Why did you kill him?"
I knew I'd never be able to repeat what he did to me. I'd go to jail for sure. Where ever they take five year-old girls, that's definitely where they'd send me. So I sat there, trying to scoot to the right then to the left. He would casually adjust himself back onto my little nubby knees.
Yeah, fuck those trolleys.
I cried in the airport. The man who checked me in was so sweet and accommodating. "Here you go Miss. Gate 21 Miss. I can help you with the bag, be careful Miss." He would smile but his cheeks would quickly let go of it when my blood shot eyes met his. I hardly noticed security or how much clothes they made me take off, but suddenly I was upstairs plugging in my computer and burning my lips on some muddy coffee. This is a good time to work, I thought, and began my round of phone calls.
I hardly noticed any one around me on the plane as well, I simply stared out the window, like I did on weekends waiting for my father. I made sure however, to acknowledge the flight attendant when she would come by. I did not want nuts. I did not want club soda. I did not even want a cocktail.
I DID NOT EVEN WANT A COCKTAIL.
When I left my heart in San Francisco, it left a gaping hole, dripping black/brown stale menstrual-like blood. No one saw it, but it was in a puddle all oozing near my breast. I watched the world thousands of miles below me. My life went backwards and I knew that at the airport awaited the ghost of young, bruised and abused Alexis.
Would she wait in the car or would the bitch have flowers waiting at the gate? She's so desperate to please I kinda wish I remembered her number so I could tell her to just wait in the car. I didn't bring much baggage with me. I wouldn't have any answers for her. I would tell her what every one else knew; the wizard was a fake and I didn't bring back courage or a heart. But I could take her home.
I was back in L.A., living out of a suit case in which I forgot to pack clothes in. I had a hair dryer, flat iron, tons of hair goo and make up, but no fucking clothes. What the fuck was I thinking when I packed? Luckily for me, I know where every god damn mall in this city is located and it's just a matter of time before I figure out which of these credit cards still has some life in it.
I collected my things and navigated down the narrow air plane stairs with my head still in the clouds. My skin could not feel the bright sun, though I appreciated. Even in December. I walked through the small airport, across the high traffic carpeting and decided a few things.
1. Dry L.A. weather ensures my hair will stay straight.
2. My heart wouldn't drop if I saw any of my mistakes.
3. When I see young, bruised and abused Alexis, I'm gonna kiss her hard on the mouth and tell her not to worry about a god damn thing.
I'm back in town.
Deciding to Live.
Alright. I put everything I think on this table in front of me. Rusty trinkets, the collection of a drunk sailor, too old to be on a ship, too tired to drink. Memories, fears, regrets and a few pieces of hope. I put them all on this table here. I gaze at them fondly although they clutter my head. Some of them are of you.
I sit at the table, whiskey in hand. I can't seem to bring it to my lips, but I don't want to put it down. I can't let go of it all. I wanted there to be order, I wanted a linear life. I wanted to live my life, not imagine it. But here I am starring at all this junk I've been carrying around for so long. I am Ms. Havisham.
I thought all these things kept me safe. Kept me centered. Kept me company. But the weight of it is becoming unbearable.
I imagine sweeping my arm across the table, watching them all clatter on the ground. All cracking with satisfaction like Christmas tree ornaments, the glass balls that dangle so gently from the branches. Each year I brake at least one of them. That's what I imagine it sounding like. But I won't do it.
I go to the back of the bar and dig out a flattened box, and bring it back to life with some masking tape. I wrap each memory, fear, regret, hope, and even those thoughts of you, one by one in old yellowed newspaper, and place them in the box. I walk home slowly with my package, holding it close to my chest with both arms. The keys open the gate, and then the front door, and I walk straight to the closet where the vacuum and coats live. The top shelf has just enough room for the box, and I set it up there, reaching on my tip toes. I stare at it, and it almost looks sad.
I step back, and still watching it, I close the closet door slowly until the knob clicks. I can't seem to walk away just yet. This is when I decided to live.
I sit at the table, whiskey in hand. I can't seem to bring it to my lips, but I don't want to put it down. I can't let go of it all. I wanted there to be order, I wanted a linear life. I wanted to live my life, not imagine it. But here I am starring at all this junk I've been carrying around for so long. I am Ms. Havisham.
I thought all these things kept me safe. Kept me centered. Kept me company. But the weight of it is becoming unbearable.
I imagine sweeping my arm across the table, watching them all clatter on the ground. All cracking with satisfaction like Christmas tree ornaments, the glass balls that dangle so gently from the branches. Each year I brake at least one of them. That's what I imagine it sounding like. But I won't do it.
I go to the back of the bar and dig out a flattened box, and bring it back to life with some masking tape. I wrap each memory, fear, regret, hope, and even those thoughts of you, one by one in old yellowed newspaper, and place them in the box. I walk home slowly with my package, holding it close to my chest with both arms. The keys open the gate, and then the front door, and I walk straight to the closet where the vacuum and coats live. The top shelf has just enough room for the box, and I set it up there, reaching on my tip toes. I stare at it, and it almost looks sad.
I step back, and still watching it, I close the closet door slowly until the knob clicks. I can't seem to walk away just yet. This is when I decided to live.
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