Given

Sometimes, I want to drive my car right into whatever the fuck is on the other side of that guardrail. Sometimes I want to be reckless and out of control so that never again will I have a desire, or an ability to be in control of anything. Sometimes I wonder how many pills I have to take to get my stomach pumped, how many more I have to take to end it. Sometimes I think about how bad it would hurt to slit my wrists and how long I would have to think about what I had done. Sometimes I think if I was prettier, I would hang myself in that bay window in your apartment.

Your apartment. The one I helped you move into. I helped you move in there. I helped you shatter the plaster of the ceiling carrying a bed frame neither of us were built to support. I helped you hang curtains. I sat up with you when he was gone and I slept over when you were too tired to go out. I windex-ed that bay window a million times, a swept your floors and wiped down your counters. I sealed your checks and stamped your love letters. I have your spare key on a chain right next to the key to your Honda Civic, in case something happens and you call. What the hell would happen to you, if I was on the other side of a guardrail and didn’t answer the phone.

I think about you at work the day I went to the ER. I remember your hands shaking as you sliced watermelon, and I remember the juicy pink overflow on your polo. I thought for a second you would cry. I thought for a second, in that stupid Nike hat, and that work polo, that those blue eyes would water for me. I remember sitting knelt over with my head against the floorboard as I rode to the hospital, and I wished you were driving. I wished we were in my car, that I always let you drive, and I wished you were telling me about how you shouldn’t have hooked up with that girl at that party. I wished I was helping you write a paper over the phone and I was comfortable in my bed. I wished that we were still at work together, and what had happened hadn’t happened, and that I was starting your coffee and stacking your trays. I wished I was helping you, I wished you weren’t worried and I wished we were together as I rode alone to the ER. I wonder now, if those blue eyes would water at the hospital if they said they tried to pump my stomach but it was just too late.

I think about holding your hand. I think about the way that your nails were chewed even worse than mine. I think about your calluses and your long fingers. I think about that time we pretended to be together to protect you from some other girl. I think about the time I sat up all night memorizing that stupid song so I could sing for you while you caressed keys with those hands. I think about you told me you needed me the only time I ever told you no, and then all the handsey procedures that followed. I wonder if you’d find another hand to hold, it mine was bloody and cut to the bone.

Then I think about your apartment. And how your bay window has blurred the lines between the world and me, between yours and mine, between you and me. I think about how I need to do something for me just a little bit less than I want to do everything for you and thus I tie a rope to your curtain and not to my neck. I hope you like the favors and contributions I’m trying to give to you. Maybe they’re worth hand holding and can persuade you to care a little bit about me. The little things I have given you are all I have…

it really is too bad I’m not just prettier after all. 

A Saltine to be Specific

A Saltine to be Specific

I ate a cracker this morning. A saltine to be specific. Dammit. It was only eight-thirty.Devoured the entirety. Perfect, complete, but so gluttonous. I had not intended to eat it,when i think of it, i didn't want to. It was like a reflex, a breakfast reflex. The first bite was anyways. That’s my biggest problem I think, I start something and I’m in it for the long haul.

One touch of teeth on teeth. All of a sudden my  body was rolling on the most hardcore drug in town. Sinful. Goodbye clean body, toxinless temple, and goodbye caloric record. I should have known you would come back for me blood sugar. That’s what you do isn’t it sir, come in, infect me, tell me I need you, tell me it’s a cracker, tell me its not that bad- you come in and you make me like it, tell me i need it. you're telling me you keep me alive sir, but i know it is you thats killing me. You’re the forbidden fruit of Eden Mister, and you come right in and take my innocence and purity.

Maybe with all that euphoria and a bite of saltine in me, I lost all my coherency. Maybe Blood Sugar was already working his black magic, maybe I had already lost control. It always happens like that. I took just one one bite, of a damn saltine, and then i had to take another- like I said, im in it for the long haul.

I took another bite. It was smaller to avoid indulgence. That time I paid attention to the every contraction and relaxation of chewing. I concentrated on how it felt. I personified my teeth. They liked it. It was different from the gum they had been given yesterday, and the day before. Gum is like a four speed bike: enjoyable, better than nothing, but more work than reward. If I chew gum for two hours, my jaw alone burns sixteen times the five calories I ingest. Besides, I spit gum out, and my boyfriend always says, it doesn’t count if I don’t swallow. So gum, like I said, is like riding a four speed- because at the end you're tired and hungry, but you got where you needed to be. A saltine is just a pleasure cruise. Three bites and my body hoards three calories.

Three calories. Like the ones from a saltine, are actually three kilo-calories. That’s thousands of calories. So compact, so bland, so substantial. I ate thousands of calories this morning. three thousand six hundred is a pound. how close i had cut it, how reckless i had been.

Two bites in I just stood there in my apartment kitchenette, with one bite left. A little bite. It looked so innocent in my hands. It always does. Saltines are the most malicious cracker i have ever come by. temptation in the rawest form. you always want the little bit that remains. i know i didn't deserve it, i know three days of gum and four of hard salsa classes and sleepless nights being used for crunches gave me no right to indulge. I did it anyways. thats the thing with me and food, i know whats good for me, and i know how to get healthy and that i shouldn't do what i do, but i keep on doing it anyways. So I took my last bite.

It felt like such a binge after I was done. I could hear my mother’s voice in my head from way back when telling me: “don’t feel like you need to finish that honey. Never eat when you’re not hungry. We need to control what we put in our bodies.” I don’t know what hungry felt like anymore. I cried then, I had been waiting to for a while I think, and maybe that saltine gave me just enough energy to let it all out. My mom would be disappointed in me. And she would probably blame herself or some equivilant craziness.She would miss her daughter and fear the monster replacement. All that time and all that effort, and I still don’t know how to eat.  And to top it all off, I have no control.

 I convinced myself what was probably just nerves and upset, was bad digestion and stayed home today.  I spent three hours at the gym repenting and trying to burn some of the kilocalories I had for breakfast. When I got home, my boyfriend asked me what was wrong and offered to make me dinner like usual. something is always wrong, and he like everyone else always eats dinner. I refused and said only, “I had a big breakfast, I don’t feel good.” I am shameless.

So today resulted in three hours on a treadmill, a morning of tears, a sick day, a million lies, and thousands of calories. I have weeks worth of guilt i'm building now, toxins in my temple, and a probable blow to my figure to deal with. All because I ate a cracker this morning. A saltine, to be specific.

filling up and leaking out

My shower was small and the water had gotten cold. The walls were cheap and plastic, and peeling from caulk against the pale pink plaster that defined the bathroom. Every light was on, and the curtain was opened. There was a white rug on the floor, and it was turned grey where the water had skidded off my skin and soaked it. I watched the rug as it got more and more wet, and thought about how alike we were. Both of us stone cold and still in that bathroom, slowly filling up and leaking out.

My right arm was bloody and dripping. I settled to the knees on top of the drain and I watched my blood hit the water and dissipate like food coloring before it slid down the drain. My knees pressed into the grate and I felt the imprints of the cold hard metal force into my skin.deeper and deeper, harder and harder. The outline engorged me. It felt good,  it was sustenance in the only form that I appreciated it. There I was, on the floor of my shower- filling up and leaking out. And that is the only way I ever feel good. 

Fuck, Marry, Kill

He’s dirty

His hands are bloody and bruised.

He’s gentle

His steps are soft and his breaths are slow.

He’s appropriate

His eyes are closed his skin is close.

He’s dirty

With close skin and slow breaths.

I’d fuck him.

Someday he’ll be educated

Mozart, Milton, and mechanics.

Someday he’ll be wealthy

In soul or in stuff.

Someday he’ll be witty

With inside jokes and good intentions.

Someday he will be educated

With good intentions and soul.

Someday I’d marry him.

If he was clean

With smooth hands and heavy steps

If he was stupid

With stuff and bad jokes

If he was lost in sight of a someday-

I’d kill him.

He’s educated

he knows me like the back of his hand.

He’s wealthy

That boy has all of me.

He’s witty

All his jokes get inside me.

He’s dirty

With close skin and slow breaths.

I’d fuck him. 

Hoping For Raleigh

Hoping For Raleigh 

“I made it down the coast in seventeen hours

Picked me a bouquet of dogwood flowers,

And I’m hoping for Raleigh

So I can see my baby tonight.”

I’ve given up on seeing lines and lanes

I just wanna feel that satin and lace

I wouldn’t care if I drove off this road,

If the risk was anything but seeing your face.

I didn’t say I was coming

Because im just feeling needy.

I need to make it just far enough south

To get you to hold me.

You told me not to leave when I did,

Said I couldn’t bear the cold.

Warm me up baby-

I’ll never grow up, im just getting old.

I bet you have a life now

Some big plans and a big deal

Cause you were always good at being good

And I don’t know how not to steal.

If I run out of cigarettes and these flowers die on my dash,

I’ll knock on our door with petals and Marlboro ash.

I hear they’re cheap here in Raleigh,

“So I can see my baby tonight” . 

Success

Success

There is a tranquility at my lonely kitchen table. It’s modest, quiet, and tarnished. There is a candle from some fancy shop in the center of a town just far enough out to be a trip. There are some dishes from this morning too; a plain glass, a cracked plate, and a fork. I eat everything with a fork. I Push them to the other side of the table like I always do, and open a self-help book on time-management or some similar bullshit. These are what gifts become when you enter adulthood, I guess.

I stop for a second to look at the picture that has become a bookmark. I think my Aunt in one of the Carolinas sent it to me for Christmas. It is of my cousin and I, seven and eight I’d guess, in that big opened living room we had when we were still down south. I can see into our dining room in the picture, (it was probably the only legitimate dining room we ever had) and on that table is some china I’d never eaten off of and some chandelier bulbs dad hadn’t yet installed. The living room was pretty impressive for our family too, big old stone fireplace, two matching velvet chairs and a long ass sectional my parents split up in the divorce.

Then there is Jessie and I. I’m wearing a red sheet wrapped around me like a strapless gown with a longer train than any wedding dress I have legitimately seen. Jessie too, is decked in linens, but she is pulling off a sassier short look. Her sheets are pinned up at the hips with hair ties and her own popcorn-butter-coated-fingers. We both tied up our straight blonde hair in knotty buns and left out some straggly strands for show. I am holding a hair brush (that did not belong to me) and has the word “princess” inscribed on the pink grip. Jessie has the real microphone; she must have bribed with a good secret to get it for the day.

Looking at the picture I can hear us singing Britney Spears at the top of our lungs. My dad walks in and out of the memory, desensitized to our booming presence. Sometimes we’d yell demands like :

                “Daddy, This dog can’t be on stage with us, it’s barking over my singing!” or,

“Uncle Mark, can I have a Pepsi? Britney always drinks Pepsi and we are just as famous as her!”

Then he would let the dog out, and brink us drinks. He would be muttering things under his breath about how we should “marry wealthy” cause we clearly weren’t ever going to be “cut-out for day-jobs”. He’d tell my brother and his friends that “at least we were ambitious” and he would tell our mothers that they should teach us to be “realistic”. He would tell us we should hope we were “cute like this forever” because he saw no signs of “the crazy in us calming down”.

We didn’t mind back then, we would steal away with our sodas in our dresses and write fairytales about becoming famous and being on Oprah.

Sometimes in the end we married princes- but that was always for the tabloids. When we were young, famous, and successful princesses, we were romantic classics, and we were always in love with the poor boy next door.

 It sure as hell made for a good story.

I called him a couple weeks ago, the poor boy next door. He didn’t have long to chat, he translates for the UN now and has two kids. His wife is a stay at home mom I hear, but she is better at being best friends with their nanny. He asked what my plans were and where I was in life. I laughed anticipating how surprised he would be if he knew how calm the crazy in me had become. I looked at my kitchen table and ramshackle apartment and I told him, “I’m pretty successful too. I’m saving up to buy our old house back.”

I will get it all back too. I’ll be trading in this tarnished table for chandeliers and velvet chairs. Even if it means marrying a prince for the tabloids and wearing my best red sheets. Daddy should be proud. 

Unsettled

Unsettled

I have a set of keys

To 900ft. of carpets and walls.

I know how many steps to the bathroom,

How many people fit in these halls,

But knowledge isn’t home.

I have a bedroom with my paper name on the door

In a house somewhere too far out.

In a place that smells like your cigarettes and perfume,

Where the air tastes like strangers and doubt.

Papers and names don’t make home.

I have a gas tank and four tires

New brakes, and a new transmission.

But she came used and already trained,

And she starts up without my permission.

Mechanics built her body but didn’t build a home.

I have a gypsy whim to abide by

And a youthfulness unwilling to settle.

I miss believing in something permanent

I’m a gypsy who is too attached to you:                                  

           I'm the present tense of cars and keys that came and went.