To Goodbyes

Parting is such sweet sorrow.

And then relief, and then guilt at being relieved. And then... it just is. I am alone.

Nostalgic for company, but content and reveling in my solitude-- as if it is something that happened long ago to look back fondly on, though the desire to re-enact it is little to none.

Maybe it's just me, but that part in-between...
The lingering and the holding and the awkward pausings before the umpteenth embrace. Everything pregnant with expectations I will never meet. The unspeakable, the unutterable filling the space between hearts. Hearts that used to beat their chests in proud staccato Morse Code.
I hate it. I hate you.
I don't mean that. I apologize. I'm just having a hard time right now.

Sometimes you are the fermata before a resolution.
The hot fudge bottom in my Sundae of a Sunday.
I linger to taste the music in your words. Revel in your many faces. I embrace you, tangle my fingers in your hair and let you go like a trickling handful of warm white sand.
I let you happen like a sunset, like I have no choice.

And other times you leave me... raw.
(broken, crushed, shredded, fucked up, shattered, wrecked, burnt out, lost)
...All these words that make me sound like an abused lamp.

I peel myself away from that last velcro hug, leaving strands of myself behind that I will never return for. But I still clutch at you desperately, unwilling to let the defining syllables out of my mouth. The ones that make this end.
If I never say your name, it's not really over.. right?
When I force them from my throat the words are cement vomit. And I am left a statue. A weeping angel filled with an invisible, rotting sickness.

What makes this so Good, huh? I guess it would be insensitive to wish someone a fucking-terrible-bye.

There are so many places in between these though.
I guess, in your life (like in many things) context is key.
All I can do is treasure our good times and learn from the bad.  Learn to make the bad into okay into future-good...
It's all I can do-- at least I'm going to try.

Yours, Truly

PS. ...And also try really hard not to do that thing where after leaving we find we both need to walk the same way... so awkward.

To Poetry (Pompously)

I want to write you a poem.
It shouldn't be so difficult, I've done it before.
Write what you know, write where you've been, write how you feel.

I've been the ingénue, seeking a taste of glamour and gambolling in rain-soaked frocks. Chasing epiphanies and waiting for the world to reveal the secret blueprints that must exist for existing. (A girl can dream.)
Once, I believed in balance, in rhyme-schemes, and trite paths to trivial endings.

My words had to change with me. To give voice to the edges of my thoughts-- the things that fit nowhere, but begged sweetly to be said aloud.
I bombarded you with ephemeral eloquence-- glimmers of finesse.

I almost became inured to the face-crumpling regret of routine tragedy. Almost.
And almost, I accepted my own place in that flawed tangle of rights, and wrongs, and very wrongs, and seemingly inevitables.
Almost.

The deluge... was a stream... was a trickle.
And what is left?

I fear sometimes that I have lost you. That you have waited, and languished in disuse.
That I will never be able to capture a scintilla of your essence on paper again.

But you are here.
In the lilting tangential lines I struggle to subdue into recognizable diction.
In the way I listen. Sifting through countless ragamuffin syllables tripping over teeth like puppies to sleep, tumbling head over heels for the sumptuous aural fragrance of a graceful phrase. Mooning over the vestigial remains of you on my tongue.
In the truth I force myself to tell.
I feel you.

Always your gossamer strands catch at me. A cobweb of now unravelled, unrivalled beauty.
In rapture I remain, a palimpsest-- a pastiche.
A patchwork girl with poetry in my hair.

Yours, Truly.

Roller Coasters

I'm never afraid of the things that I should be.

Spiders are artists. Loving parents, innovative engineers.They fascinate me.
Snakes are lovers looking for warmth. Composed of a single all-encompassing hug, just waiting to happen.

Fire plays on every sense. The heat caressing your skin, the crackle and hiss of a new log, the smell (oh the smell!). Fire smells like joy and childhood. Like dusky nights and freed secrets. Even cave-men saw it-- equal parts danger, practicality and beauty. I could stare at it for hours.

I love to be alone, I'm more afraid that I will never be allowed to love it without guilt.

Death is simply another place I have to go. 

Flying, falling, jumping, going...
They leave me elated; my nerves sparkling, and every breath I expel is victory set precariously on the edge--veering recklessly ever closer to laughter.
They also cause mothers everywhere to frown (as only mothers can).

You, I'm allowed to love. I guess your gaudy colours and flashing lights distract from your more nefarious possibilities. But despite them and, in part, because of them we flock to you.
What do you expect? I'm just an overqualified monkey-- an adrenaline junkie. I'm a moth to a flaming chariot. I'm a girl who loves to feel alive. To snub my nose at the incredulity of existence and let awareness flood every iota of being that I possess.

You give me all of that, when you can. But it's cold now, and I miss you.
Thank you for existing.

Yours, Truly

To My Biggest Fan

I want to express my appreciation, in these last few weeks you've made life bearable. There are literally times I couldn't live without you. And that's not just a bunch of hot air, I mean it!

You don't let the conversation die, so there is no silence between us-- And despite your blades sharp tongue you never cut me off. When I am lonely and listless, you spin tales of ice cream worlds and water-slides to distract me. You'd blow off anyone to spend time with me, and it's something I really appreciate.

I remember falling asleep to your whispers every summer as a child. Covered in mud and creek water, in bug bites and sunscreen-- I'd walk through the door with the light fading in my wake. I'd grab a glass of water and find you, and just bask in your presence until the crickets had chirped their last chirp, and I was out (and deliciously) cold.

And that's how it's always been, you make me feel good--
I come to you when I feel extra hot, and I leave feeling like the coolest girl around.

You always listen, occasionally shaking your head slowly in commiseration when I complain about the damned heat.

And when I whisper close, you make my voice sound hilarious!

I have to say, I think this letter may be addressed wrong. Right now, I feel like *your* biggest fan. I'm off to visit Pool, when I get back do you want to have a mini-hurricane party in my room? Sweet.

Oscill-you-lator Gator!

Yours, Truly.

Internet Friends

My (almost) friend,

It feels different to write you a letter even though (as of yet) our communication still stems solely from our fingertips.

But there is something wonderful about communicating here, inside the wide umbrella of Internet. I always imagine it like Santa's workshop within a large clockwork factory-- as soon as I hear that satisfying click, my words are off! Speeding through the frantic underworld at megabytes per second, narrowly missing tiny elves and eluding the occasional gremlin in the works.

You are so far removed from everything around me, it's easy to imagine a labyrinthine complex between us. And so each time I receive more from you it means our words have found a way to exist and to survive our combative worlds. Basically it means you haven't forgotten me for the spoils and triumphs of the dreaded 'IRL'.

And more than that, it is glorious. We sit atop computer chairs of gold and memory foam and declare ourselves. Our size is whatever we imagine, we are entities solely made up of words.

I will choose to be a microcosm.

A sub-genre of obscurity on the fringe of your cognizance.

And I will choose to be no size at all.

So that I may infiltrate you at any level and no physical boundary may preclude me.

And I will choose to be all-encompassing.

Bigger than your whole imagination, so I can swallow you whole and fill you up until my own words trickle out of your indents.

Until your spacebar is my heartbeat.

I like the idea that a turn of phrase can be a turn of hip, or cheek, or some abstract polygon of anti-flesh. That I can build myself into a sea of letters that still somehow carries what, and (if it can be answered) who I am in essence.

When I cease to be this virtual claim, and regain my status as a flesh-and-blood girl again, I hope that you still like it. Still like me.

Are we the same? Which will my screenname evoke?

Names are a different kind of word.

When people say "who are you?" you say it, instinctively.

And maybe it represents all you are, but maybe it's simply a collection of letters with a vaguely pleasing sound that someone thought up once while drunk on life and high on the power of word creation...

Mine means more than words to me, is more than even they are capable of. And the only way to make you see that same inherent worth is to use all of my words (all the silent ones too), until you know who I am.

Until you know the most important word in my life.

I know that there can never be just one-- words only flow when they collide.

And that is part of the wonderfulness, that something can exist with so much potential but realize none of it without another. It's gorgeous and cheesy and speaks to my insides.

For now I am glad to know the you made of words, and fascinated by the process of learning more. I will continue to revisit the common clichés of meme, and link you to weather.com until something real falls through the cracks of this crazy-beautiful phenomenon--

Internet friends indeed.

Yours, Truly.

And Now For Something Completely Different

"To Scale"

My littleness is not one-sided.

It pervades my every dimension, it colours my movement, it informs my mannerisms.

I live a little life.

But the slow pull of melancholia is double the gravity,

And the hole in my stomach echoes more times than a can in a canyon.

My raging pulse is an mad drum reaching a wild crescendo and that damn trickling fear

just sits in wait like an icicle

over my fragile spine.

It makes me wonder... Are my feelings immense?

Or do they only overwhelm me because I am... small.

Am I the only one?

I have compared myself to a moody ocean.

Sinking ships in the bay,

I beckon with the lulls and dips between waves,

Before the storm hits, and the sky admits--

it's just for show.

Pathetic fallacy calls for stormy skies, despair prefers straight pain.

My friends, you take your thunder-- I'll bring the hurricane.

Other times, I have cited a star--
A cosmic release, a bug in a jar.

Up and away from these notions
The motion of the ocean, and the commotion of
emotional turmoil.
There is a fire, making it's home in my bones, burning the marrow till tomorrow,

running on midnight oil.

You're too distant to see how it burns in me,

and the colours bleed;

There's a disconnect in my constellation.

My littleness is not one-sided.
But neither is my greatness.

The Scientist

Dear Sir,
The evidence is as follows:

I have never been normal. The days of wanting to change that are long gone, but you make me feel like I could be... stable. Like everything is just a little bit easier than I thought it was. I've been struggling at things that can just... be.

You make me feel real, like a real person. And for years I’ve been living like that’s not me: like rules don’t apply to me, like other people aren’t speaking the same language as I am. It feels like I’ve been trying to communicate with crude charades without getting through, until now.

When you feed me, I feel cherished. My parents fed me for my entire life and never made me feel like this. At dinner every night I am warm inside, from more than the soup.

But you also care about me— not just for me with meals or homework help. You care about me with private telling glances and appropriately-placed worrying. You care about me with early morning wake-ups and late night (occasionally comatose) cuddling sessions.

I never know how to say the things brewing inside me, but you make me want to. You make me want to tell you everything, and not just the stuff I know you want to hear. You make me search for myself and turn what I find into words.

You teach me so much. Not only with the astonishing array of facts you carry around in that head of yours, but with the way you live. You teach me to be better, to be kinder, to think more and to try harder.

You show me a man that I could love— if love were an acceptable, operationally defined term, that is. But if it is never defined, how do we know we aren't missing it?

What if that sleepy smile you give me over oatmeal and chocolate milk, and the kiss you leave smouldering on the back of my neck when you go to work is—

What if the comforts of my embrace as you shift between nightmares, or the purposefully neglected silk I leave home in favour of your discarded clothing is—

What if it isn't? I'm much less prepared to accept that.

In conclusion, I love you.
By default, by design, if not entirely by definition.

Let's redefine.

Yours, Truly.

My Childhood Room

I didn't think I could do it... leave you behind for good...

I remember the slumber parties, sometimes me and a friend, sometimes just me and you. And either way, I'd be up much too late, singing or giggling or reading like a fiend.

I remember when I was scared, when the world was crumbling under the weight of adult-sized yelling. You held me in your four compassionate blue walls and hid me from what I couldn't understand yet... when you could.

I remember living in you, and feeling so relieved after a hard day to sink into your depths and finally take a full breath...

When I saw your new face I balked... You are blindingly shiny, brand-spanking new-- showing me what I'll be missing, I get that. I'd do the same in your position, get repainted into a weak facsimile of cheer. But Butter Yellow was never a good colour for us...

I didn't want this to be goodbye, forever... but that's the way things have to be. It's not up to us anymore. It never really was.

Stop. Just Stop. Don't give me that blank-wall stare. Just listen:

I just came to get my things and move on with my life, just a little more broken... but you stare accusingly with all the ire 27 beanie babies can muster. You've shed my paintings and greet me, bare-assed bare-walled, showing that if I don't need you to hold me, you don't need me to fill you up.

But someone is going to love you, and soon.

It is time, to let go of this petulance, and start to forget this heartache.

Let us say goodbye like lovers do. Lingering; soft words and violent passion in turn.

I'm not leaving you to be cruel, I need you to know that.

Just because there is no room left in my life, doesn't mean my room is gone from my heart...

Yours, Truly.

Goodnight moon, goodnight room.

Goodnight books, at least I'll see you soon.

Goodnight desk in blue and white.

Goodnight lamps with coloured lights.

Goodnight glowing, stick-on stars.

Goodnight to the sound of cars.

Goodnight closet, goodnight air.

Goodnight always, just know I care.

To Melancholy

Hello my old friend. Have you come to stay again for a time?

I want to say I've missed you, but that's not quite the right thing to say. When you're gone I don't usually spend my time thinking about your cold hands, and if I do, you always seem to know and simply show up at my doorstep. Like tonight.

I will just say, I am glad to see you.

...But again, that's not exactly true. I am not glad, I am immersed in you. I am lonely and introspective, my mind is waxing poetic and my voice is silent, the world is an installation painted infinite shades of grey.

But I finally get to take the time to appreciate the variation, the wide spectrum of individuality found in a single gloomy cloud.

Or to reflect on how lonely it must be to be a snowflake, lost in a melee of other grey faces that we like to pretend are white. Anonymous in the crowd, surrounded by other snowflakes yet entirely solitary, the only one of your kind...

You're looking well... or unwell. You're looking down. But I suppose so am I, when we're together. Lost in my head and in the beauty that blooms everywhere. Everywhere but here, in my heart's sleeping garden. Waiting on the sunshine of a smile, you help me to plant the seeds that will grow into wonder, gratitude and insatiable thirst for more beauty, more sadness... more life.

And not the "life" you see on television sitcoms where there's always a funny quip to solve your problems... Real Life. Real in-your-face-hardships-may-or-may-not-make-you-stronger-teeth-bared-heart-on-sleeve-blood-sweat-tears-and-passion Life. Fuck yeah.

That's why I love you-- even as you take me in your cold gripping embrace. Even as you erase the smile from my eyes and replace it with cool and detached appraisal. You make the good days good, because I know I've earned them. You make colours brighter, because I know what it is to go without. You make my heart bloom into an Eden that far surpasses what I could do alone.

Because there is good and bad. Light and Dark. And I won't hide from it, won't hide from you.

You make me stronger; when you push me down into the depths of misery's arctic pools, I am swimming, pushing, kicking for my life, and learning to do it harder every time... Because breaking the surface and taking that gasp of fresh air, basking in the joy of sunshine and making my way to the shore is better than having stayed dry. Better than warm and safe and boring.

Better than ignorance.

I guess I can do without bliss.

I'll forget utopia for even a taste of Real Life.

And that's on you.

Yours, Truly.

Le Premier Abord.

Firsts; you can be beautiful, educational, cruel.

My beginning was not for me—my first steps, my first words, my first injury. They were for my parents; to show them my growth, to reassure them of their good parenting and to remind them how very delicate a life is. How delicate my life is.

Next it was my turn for some revelation and along came my first day at school, my first bully, my first crush. And I learned that being different isn't easy, that not everyone is going to like you, that learning could ignite my passion...
and that boys are stupid. And so are girls.
But they are both pretty great.

And as I grow, I collect more and more of you: first time I got drunk, first time I thought I was in love, my first apartment, my first driving lesson, my first car accident, first time I had sex, first time I had sex outdoors, my first vote in a federal election, my first surgery...
The first time I thought I might die... right there on that hospital bed.

I needed to learn my mortality too. Learn how delicate I am... learn how fucking strong I am.

I needed to know that good comes around but so does bad and both make you live harder... if you're smart.

I needed to know that people come and go in your life and the most important person to love is yourself. Even when it feels like someone else is your whole life... which would be a first for me.
I guess I learn fast.

Some people live their lives afraid that they will run out of firsts and be left with only higher denominations of "been there, done that".
I am not afraid. I will not hoard my experiences; lock them inside little boxes of achievement to prove who I am and where I came from.

I will wait, and one of these days, this stage will end. Firsts will once again stop being for me, and start being for us— whenever I find someone to be an “us” with me, of course.
We can explore them together, the triumphs and mistakes and unpredictable staggering blows. We can be human, and act like we’re children, and live like we love being alive— because that’s important.

And one day I will watch my baby smile for the first time, and know for sure, as I've known in my heart... that life will never, ever get old.

Yours, Truly

PS. After writing this, the word first has lost all meaning.... the down-sides of repetition.