January 2011
22 posts
245/ December 31, 2010 – Orange
You had to bring me home before the fireworks started, and it was at this moment that I wanted to tell you everything. We reached my house and I avoided the gaze of the gate. You didn’t kill the car engine. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” is less of a statement and more of a prayer. I’ll see you tomorrow, and we wait: 1. Today was lovely. 2. Did you get enough to eat? 3. Every silence that went...
244/ December 30, 2010 – As sure as a sock
When I told you I was leaving (for now, for good), you leapt out of bed and pulled off my socks. I wasn’t going anywhere, not sock-less like this. I love you; I love you as sure as a sock.
243/ December 29, 2010 – Common uncommon things
How I told you about the tiny white duplex I grew up in as a kid was not an open invitation to sit around the living room of my future with your legs crossed, palms up on your lap, hands waiting for the warmth of coffee. “Look,” I started again. “They were just stories. They are mine, not yours, so please give them back.” You met my gaze with a question: but did you consider? I gather your...
242/ December 28, 2010 – Lady bones
Perhaps it is no longer new— But I am a new girl each time I climb on top of you. You don’t feel the train rushing past the platform between my lungs; you don’t feel my legs pushing up the stairs. I reach the platform in time to watch the train leave me behind. Closer, closer now, but already you are so far. I long for someone near but no longer here.
241/ December 27, 2010 – OST
This is not our song anymore. But when they listen to this song they will think of us without them knowing it. Air will thin out as the song ascends: the lunge in their lungs is from when I held you on my last night here and I begged you to take me out, my tiny body shivering, clasping yours. We drove for hours before that. They were not there when it happened but they will feel it: cold...
240/ December 26, 2010 - Content / continent
You want to take your old motorcycle to the province of your father’s boyhood. You’ll ride to the market every morning and the village girls will trace your name in the dust clouds you’ll leave as you drive by. I get urges to book flights everywhere. I fall asleep thinking of lofts in Los Angeles or park benches in France. Sometimes, I mouth out the word “Cairo”...
239/ December 25, 2010 - 12:00 a.m.
The minute before midnight we were parked in front of a convenience store along a highway we did not know. Our phones were on redial; we waited for directions. We turned the radio off and counted backwards. Inside the store, an old man was in line to pay for medicine and a packet of Milo. The cashier was a lady who could be any boy’s mother. 12:00 a.m., said the digits on your dash, and...
238/ December 24, 2010 - 2001 memories spun
This is not what I want to tell you: The night we owned Bahamas Street was the night my mother threw a party and the street disappeared beneath the cars parked outside our house. We had to close our side of the road; the neighbors didn’t like that. My father pulled out the best wine from his collection; he even opened the bottles he swore he’d never open. I didn’t know half...
