Fighting Words

I bite my tongue and let it bleed,
cause all I have are fighting words.
I taste the taste and feel the burn,
since it's no worse
than what I ache to say to you.
I choke it back and hold it there,
Hoping it will stop me
From hurting you
And hurting me
And making us go nowhere

These Fleeting Moments

Last night I volunteered to stage manager for a show the musicians of the SPCO put on. Last night there were hugs and 'how are you's. There were genuine smiles even among genuine grief. But you never would have guessed it by their playing. I caught them smiling at one another during the opening Rossini. Being with them felt like home, feels like family.

I have forgotten what it's like to be apart of something I believe in. I can't remember how it feels to take pride in something that I do and how I go about doing it. Last night I remembered how much I like liking what I do. That feeling seems so far away from me today. 

Just another day. One just like any other. One like before. And one like after. But I entered work today, saddened by my happiness of yesterday. I was counting down the minutes before they even began.

4:30 rolls around. Dinner. I usually would grab a bite and head back to work to eat. Today I needed to stay away. A break. Away. I took a chance on the Chipotle in the skyway being open and I'm so glad that I did.

The usual exchange in conversation with the young kid behind the counter, who was covered in tattoos and obviously bored enough to want to bullshit with me for a few minutes. By the time I got to the cashier, they were both wondering about my day. Unlike me, I told them I was fine but not eager to get back to work... "a mess of a day" I told them. Almost in unison the guys nod their head in sympathy and say how they can understand that. Such sincerity. I was surprised I confessed my frustration, but even more surprised at how genuinely heartfelt their reactions were. One offered, "Maybe the tacos will help".

I sat in the back of the empty Chipotle to eat my hard shell tacos, just to stay away a little bit longer.

I cleared my plate in like 4 minutes flat and soon after the guy with the tattoos wanders back to me. He asks me if I'm feeling better as he takes away the red plastic basket. "A little," I say and add with a smirk that I'm still kinda hungry. He brightens and says, "What else can I get you?". I shake my head and laugh a bit. I should have realized my smile and insistence on nothing was not going to convince this guy. He smiled back and starts guessing which salsa I want with the chips that he's bringing over. "On me", he insists. He decides that I'm a guacamole girl. He saw right through me.

He comes around the corner again and I'm shaking my head at this point. So unnecessary. He tells me, "If not for now, then for later." He sets the bag in front of me, turns his back and walks away.

"What's your name?" I call out after him. 

Beau, a great name. Beau and I shake hands as I tell him how nice that was. Beau chalks it up to nothing and is glad it got a smile out of me. He looks me in the eyes and tells me he knows what it's like to have a hard day. "My baby sister passed away on Friday" We hold each other's gaze and I tell him how sorry I am to hear it. He breaks away from me for an emotional second and returns, recouped with "that's the way life goes sometimes". According to Beau, we're both having the same hard day. What Beau didn't realize though, was that he just spent his hard day getting a smile out of a stranger, and all I did with my hard day was appreciate his gesture.

He returned to work and I opened my guacamole. My eyes welled up a bit. There was something incredible beautiful and incredibly sad in the exchange I just had with this person. Where, just as it shed so much light on the good in people, it also reminded me of the pain we all carry with us. So there I was, sitting in an empty Chipotle, eating my guacamole trying not to outright cry, like ugly face, all out cry. I sat there, chip in hand, incredibly touched and not exactly sure why I was having such an emotional reaction. Maybe it was because I was touched by his honesty. Or surprised by his sincerity. Or even impressed by his generosity. Maybe I was just sad from his story. Or sad from my own. Still, in this fleeting moment, it seemed like I saw all of humanity. The good and bad. The love and lose. The happiness and sadness. And all from a perfect stranger.

Afterlife

"...afterlife... like you're going up there and will see all your family and friends? Is everyone in heaven? like Napoleon and Hitler...?"

"You think Hitler made it to heaven?"

"I don't know, I don't really like the idea of heaven and hell, I'd rather think that Hitler went up there and God gave him some therapy or something"

I love my mother.

Hold On

Something new,
and the old sets in.
Maybe it's because,
the start is always so familiar.
The same excitement.
The same hope.
Or maybe it's because,
the end is so familiar too.
The same pain.
The same loss.
So here I am,
holding onto hope,
and wishing it was easy.

Project Table

I think, maybe, that I can do anything.

My Boyfriend Rain

I love the rain,
And he likes me
Lulls me to bed so patiently
He fills my senses
With sweet scents and
Calming sounds so pleasingly
He tells me how to wash away
A day, today or everyday
Let go, he says
Then shows me how
To let it roll
Roll and roll and roll away
He waits for me
To give up for him
To close my eyes
And give into him
With breath like that I can't resist
Not as his soothing sounds persists
To sleep, he says and I obey
Its time to roll away this day

mismatch me

It's funny how long we wait on the simplest thing. Things that take little time, little money, and little thought. It's also funny what ideas we get stuck in our head and how long they'll stay there. Years and years ago I heard Martha Stuart give this idea, and I've always remembered it. I was going to do that. Years later and I still never had. A decade after having had my first $20 college set of flatware with the band of color on the edge (we all had them, didn't we?). They gave me a good run, but I grew tired and maybe a little bit embarrassed serving dinner parties without 'grown-up-ware'. The idea was this: flatware that only match in color, not pieces. That's an idea that I can get behind. I'm not matchy matchy. And I don't have enough style to coordinate Design A bowls with Design B plates. But what I can do, is buy one of every variety and make them all white. So here's my $8 goodwill start to a new collection of flatware.

PS How awesome is it to not worry about breaking one dish in a set!!! And I'm giving all the oddball, outcasts a good home :)

might smite the smitten

I'm not sure how I got here. Stumbling along the etymology of love. Maybe because I want to be smitten, and in wanting to be smitten I wondered if I could smite. It turns out I can smite. You can smite too. And apparently we all smite quite violently in fact.

You see in the past participle of smite, lies the adjective of smitten... hefty with three definitions:
1 - struck, as with a hard blow
2 - grievously or disastrously stricken or afflicted
3 - very much in love

One of these things seems not like the others. One of these things just doesn't belong.

It struck me, excuse me, it smite me as funny how our language of love originates so violently. That from the same words as "He smitten thousands of men with his sword", we can suddenly be struck with love just as violently. Disastrously stricken with love. Slain by love. How romantic.

Moving backwards from smitten to 'smite' I realize that the verb, the action itself has no mention of love in it's definition:

1 - to strike or hit hard, with or as with the hand, stick, or other weapon
2 - to deliver or deal a blow, hit, etc by striking hard
3 - to strike down, injure, or slay
4 - to afflict or attack with deadly or disastrous effect
5 - to affect mentally or morally with a sudden pang

Who knew? That from this violent verb, after we are struck, slain, attacked with disastrous and sudden blows... we end up in love. Love is somehow the aftermath. Huh.

It seems that in language, just as in life, pain seems symbiotic to love. Dependent and maybe even defining it.

What I realized today, that for thousands and thousands of years as humans and hearts and language evolve... we've always known that we're fucked when it comes to love.

look lightly

The sun is shining
Shining too brightly
It drops my eyes
Cast down and front
looking lightly

I'm walking again
But the sun is shining
Shining so brightly it makes me miss
the blades of green
the buds of pink
my eyes dropped
cast down and front
looking lightly

I watch my path
the step before my step
and miss the spring
as it blooms around me

I see the pavement
roll beneath me
same as it always does
warm or cold
rain or snow
looking lightly
with the sun shining
oh so brightly

To my next boyfriend

Come on, give in and try with me.
Take a breath and try for me.
Forget where you've been and all you've done and be right here, right now with me.
Ask too many questions so I can give too many answers.
Want to know me and show me how much.
Give me all the attention you want to give to me, I'll give it right back to you.
Hear me and hear the words I do not say.
Tell me and tell me all of it.
See me and see right through me.
Let go with me. Right now, let go with me.
Try with me, whole-heartedly try with me.
Try for us.
For what we could be
Can be.
Are being right now.
But let's be here longer.