despLove letter to a school companion (2006)

My Body Mass Index was a round number earlier this year and I wanted to tell you.

i could hear the crickets that night, and when we sat on the wet grass I could feel the

rainwater shiver through me. I was young enough then, I thought it meant life, of the

saturated, concrete, sensory laden type, instead of the nostalgia that floats and spins and

sucks me into ether when I remember. Shivering with you in darkness that stretched on

forever, and yet not far enough to reach to where I am now.

I will scream at you for all the wasted years, I will scream at you like the fluttering of a

million nervous butterflies that your memory has trapped inside me, that grow cancerous

in me, dredging up so many new sickness, new symptoms, new phobias. Time drips

unbearably in this place. If only there was a way to fit forgetting into a time span, but

memories dribble on forever, growing weak and old and inauthentic just as we do, losing

their sense of time and place and identity. But they’re still here. And today? Today,

honey, you’re as much here as I am.

Where the hell are you? Where the HELL are you?

The last time I saw you I kissed you in the deepest part of your neck buried in your soft

black hair, and you kissed me back symmetrically, and the fumbling stupidity of our

teenhood and my infatuation lingered but no longer mattered – I couldn’t have cared less

who was watching. I held you for who you were, just for a moment, the first and last.

The road we stood on then stretched on forever, but not far enough to reach here where I

now am. Maybe it zigzags so wildly, our respective neuroses, our whims, our dreams, our

wings, that it’ll be years before I find you on these jagged roads.

But how to dramatise the accidental meeting that will surely perchance one of these days?

It will take place in the frame of barely a minute, our tired eyes meeting, afraid you will

look so deep enough to see the hollowness, the bottomless pit, the vacancy signs, the

stagnant failures… afraid I’ll see in yours the same thing. You will note my new hair

color, I will number your piercings, into which we have put all our hopes that someone

who knew us, somewhere, will notice that we have changed, that everyone new will

never see what’s gone but always is.

Will we be growing forever, flowering seasonally, changing colors? To say we will be

able to finally show each other our wings? But what I found after you left, after I left off,

is that we are no longer live butterflies, but the kind in museums instead, forced to reveal

our broken, faded, weathered, dead glory for the appreciation of others. Immobile,

because it hurts too much to live a life which is fleeting, solitary, and painfully

individual. A glimpse of red-white-black wings, and you were gone forever. There will

be so many others of all colors, just as pretty and majestic, but it’s not about who you

were. It’s about who I was. Standing in the garden of my youth, chasing you relentlessly,

the first one I ever saw. I was young enough, I still believed I could catch you.

(home in three weeks, but it won’t be anymore)

We are mad, it is what makes us pretty. We are scratching tinfoil from skins. I am

papering the moon with crepe paper. I often think I can hold the moon, standing in a field

with fingers crossed over my eyes.

I breathe to let all the molecules in, to digest the very light, as though all the grime and

salt might somehow cleanse my insides. I need a light source to digest, of skin, sex,

smiles and power, that will hold me forever and muffle my screams, for even this is better

than the hopelessness of freedom. I need to hide in the cavity of a dragon’s tooth,

cocooned in warm womb flesh.

I have shortcomings, and I’m not proud of them, I make no excuses for them, and I desire

to change every one of them. Can NO one else in the universe say that for themselves?

I’m too quick to react. I don’t think before I speak. I don’t listen. I make up my mind and

it’s hard to sway me. If I distrust you – and I distrust almost everyone – it’s a hell of a

task convincing me that you’re ever telling me the truth.

I’m self absorbed. I only ever think about myself. I give gifts and compliments and love

propelled by grandiose fantasies of being loved by everyone around me, or at least being

able to love myself, but the central focus of all my giving is my own receiving end.

I’m a hypocrite. I shouldn’t even be writing about my flaws, because I’ve surely

modelled it cunningly, omitting the deepest flaws, embellishing on the easiest ones.

And anyone who stayed did so because it was the easy option at the time, the best option

at the time. They use you up while there’s no one else around to make better use of, talk

to you because it’s easier than conflict. But I fight, I don’t flight. I would, if you would

just give me something worth fighting for.

Everything you do is a (fucking waste of time)

Where

She called me brave, it instilled a curious feeling that reminded me of childhood. How

brave of you to walk down the street alone! No one else could admire me and demean me

so simultaneously. I loved her for that.