Crying Baby Upstairs

Please shut up.

You are cute, you are fluffy and pudgy and you have adorably minuscule fingers and toes...
But I am sleeping.

Please shut up.

I understand you cannot speak for yourself yet and when someone leaves you wet or hungry or soiled or you fall down after your experimentations with walking upright, you need to let it out...
But I am writing an essay.

Please shut up.

I don't remember your name. If I did I would say "Augusten," for that is a most dignified name to have, "please stop crying, you are young and as someone with more experience let me reassure you, things will get better." ...
But I don't remember it, and so I am left with:

Please shut up.

Please.

Yours, Truly

Ornamental Orphanage

Dear things on the wall (which is not my wall),

There is a strangely appealing order in your chaotic masking-tape-tic-tac-sticky-border-madness.

I love the motley mosaic of postcards from places I've never been, but now wish to go— though I'm sure I will miss seeing the stylized city labels flaunting their attractions from amidst the always-azure skies of granulated cardboard.

From perfume to Paris to a page from a Chinese calendar there is something for everyone hanging on your every (illegible) word. You are not perfect, but your dinosaurs watch over my fragile sleeping form and your posters offer a variety of blushly-lipsticked goodnight kisses.

You tell me: I am confident, I am beautiful, I am desirable. And I believe you, who could mistrust your blatant bright pink pandering...

Tell me again?

Yours, Truly

To Tears

Soft and salted caress, I know you're there; lurking just beneath the marble surface. The dark won't tell anyone you've come, it's safe now.

Tentatively at first, you're afraid someone might hear; might know that you haven't left town for good. No one wants you around, not even the one you've come to visit-- but once you arrive, you are invited in.

Embrace the swell of cheek and let yourself flow, you have no need to hide in the night, you can pour out your soul until you are empty-- begging to give more, but having only a dull ache left to give. Mingle with the whispered queries floating from trembling lips; shake with the fierce passion of loss and fear.

The world is a flat palm, holding its treasures. Sometimes the grief could sweep your rivers right off the face of the earth... into nothing. An eternity of falling, struggling for breath and getting lost in the rush of space.

You are at first a burden, and then a solace. Sometimes you could last forever.

But you end, like everything else. You do your part to soothe, to rage in tempestuous waves, to mend... and soon there is no place for you. The river has run dry and the heaving of earthly bodies slows to a mere tremble, a pulse.

Curving to envelop your absence,
Breath echoes your keening plea.
I thirst for you in hiccups;
And forever you indulge me.

-Truly

Oooh Fire

Heyyy! What's cookin' good lookin'?

Marshmallows? God DAYUM, you know how to get me all hot and bothered. I've been waiting all year for someone like you to light up my life. And now that I've met you I can't help but want s'more...

okay too many puns. I'm welldone.

But seriously, I've only seen you in small Bic sized doses for the past 10 months, and last night was a welcome change. I feel like we really connected (I still have the marks to prove it).

We should hang out more. You make the dark seem cozy and your smell practically makes me salivate. Plus you make drinking so much more fun!! Do you still have that fur rug laying around? I can think of a couple activities for our time together.... as long as you're cool watching. (SCANDAL!!!)

Just remember we may be friends but that's all we'll ever be, you try to touch me the wrong way again and I will toss a drink in your face. A whole BUCKET of drinks!


See you later hotstuff, I leave you with tons of burning love,

Yours, Truly

To Any Semblance of a Romantic Relationship

I am lonely without you. There, I said it.

And yes, when you're gone there is that sense of empowerment screaming, "I don't NEED you!" But I always feel pretty empowered. I don't need this much. Seriously I could empower the entire appliance section at Sears. Overkill.

It's excruciating, the shape of you on lips all around me, your heat in the most casual of touches and your low sounds drifting through my pipes from the floors above. I want you, I crave you, I wake up in the middle of the night sad because you're not there. Fucking tease.

Don't get me wrong, I am not a wreck. I'm not falling apart, but I miss the warmth and the secrets and the...accoutrements of having you around. I miss hanging out with your friends; I could use a visit with Mr. Hank Y. Panky, he was always such a stimulating conversationalist...

Maybe what I'm trying to say is: friends will never be enough. They call it just friends for a reason. Basically, I can't hang out with you in a casual sense any longer. Be mine, or GTFO and let me focus.

Focus. It's a funny word when you think about it. It used to mean "fireplace" or even "fire" (Latin was good for something after all!). But what elicits fire from me... is you.

Think about it. Whatever you decide, I'll be living my life, laughing out loud and loving every minute. But I'd love it even more if you were there too.

Yours, Truly.

Did you Hear??

Hello Earring!

You're shiny, let's play! I'll be me and you be a hula hoop. OW!--

--

Ear...

You hurt, I get it but please stop. It's just metal shoved right through your middle, not like your boyfriend dumped you over your potato salad at lunch and then had sex with your sister's ex best friend. Not like that at all.

Beauty is pain and I happen to believe you look lovely. Thank gosh you aren't one of those fat-ass ears... like that guy in front of us in Spanish. Whooowee his ears stick out like a sore thumb. Well, a sore ear.

I'll make you a deal: I'll stop sleeping on you if you stop spontaneously combusting, mmkay?

Yours, Truly.

To My Skin

This is emotional for me. We are always together; you cover my back and I take care of you every day of our lives-- well I try. It'd be easier if you didn't have so many dirty secrets that you try to pass off as freckles to fool me. I swear to god there is a whole process to just getting through the day without you embarassing me.

But I digress; this letter is not about our problems. You have always been there for me, keeping all the important stuff inside so that people won't scream when they see me. And so I'll, you know, live. I don't hate you. You're not that bad (apart from that whole hatred of Sunshine you seem to have developed), in fact you are pretty damn gorgeous. I'd hit that (OW!).

We make a great team, I bring substance, personality, organs, sentience and shape and you bring translucent alabaster softness (put THAT in your romance novels!). I'm We're basically perfect! But I think we need to re-evaluate our relationship.

All my life you've been so damn clingy and the only people who wanted to hang out with you after I hit puberty were creepy boys. I don't know why Cotton is so much more popular, Skin, it's probably just because he's so "colourful" (*wiggles eyebrows*). But Sunshine is back and I think, I think it might be time to try again. You might even get some colour of your own.

Let me know what you think and if you're ready for some changes and maybe a new friend, I'll let you play in the moisturizer section.

Love/Hate forever,

Yours Truly.