Bits and Bobs and Unfinished Thoughts 1

And I see your name everywhere. I didn’t know there were so many people who would come running if I cried it out. In a sea of them, you’d think you’d be lost. But in that sea of them, I could still spot you and catch you once more like a fisherman on a wharf.

Note: I can’t tell if this one is really stupid and corny or not. I just really like the word “wharf”.

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He takes off his watch as soon as he gets home. He can’t be bothered by silly or materialistic things like gold or time.

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I undo you. Nimble hands for your small buttons, the spot on your back that you can’t reach. You stand naked, unarmed, shrouded in my gaze.

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At the end of the day, at last call, in the silent stillness of midnight on a once busy street, it’s you who I want to be with. It’s you who I want to go home with, come home to, think about when I’m away or you are gone. And it has, I believe, always been you. Even when I didn’t know it, even when I didn’t know you. I was always meant to stand on that silent street with you.

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Russian mother, do not send your son to war.

Shield his ears, do not let him hear his nation’s call.

Guard the door, let your boy sleep a little more.

From one mother to another, my son is trained to kill yours.

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A woman’s hips hold babies and baskets.

Bowls for mixing, laundry that needs folding.

A woman’s hips rock back and forth

to a beat made for all, and a fire only she can feel.

Jagged or supple.

A woman uses her hips to run, to escape, to live.

Wide or narrow.

Carrying the world

on her hips.

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I always thought that the day I could dance to this song again would be the day that I’d be over you. How foolish of an idea that was.

You? How could I ever be over you?

You are so much taller and your shoulders much broader, there is no way I could ever get myself over you. I don’t have a ladder and I’m no good at rope climbing, you know.

I’ll dance with the ghostly version of you, the one that my heart will always love and my mind knows doesn’t exist. It won’t hurt when you step on my toes. The sweet sweat of your skin on mine won’t linger. We won’t touch but I will remember you all over and the time we danced to that song.

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He, a man with a cockeyed grin and black hair that fell in front of his eyes, once said to me, a woman with ink in her veins and typewriter keys on her fingertips, that he wanted to be with me because I am a writer and I don’t need to tell him my feelings because he can just read them.

But that’s the thing about men with cockeyed grins and hair that falls in front of their eyes, you can never tell if they are lying or not. His grin might be a smirk, convincing me that a lie is a truth, and his eyes might be laughing instead of in awe.

And that’s the thing with women with ink in her veins and typewriter fingers: she can type whatever she likes, even if it is a lie.

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Take me to a party, I want to get drunk with strangers. Play pretend and put on a show where only you and I know the cast list. I’ll let you walk me home and tell you I never do this, opening the front door and letting you in with a laugh and the key I gave you for your keychain.

The next morning, I’ll wake up before you and bring out the toothbrush I keep for you under the sink. I’ll turn on the kettle and set out our mugs. I’ll make you eggs just the way you like and be so glad that we’re not strangers anymore.

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—it’s all so specific, this isn’t fiction. It was all real, then. It was, right? I’m not crazy, right? You meant what you said that night—right? And what you said all those nights before and the question you posed when you came back. At least I had you, then. In that skip of a heartbeat, in the brief moment of the turning of a page of a novel. I had you then and it was real, right?

-paragraph from “NYE - Unpublished”