Yours, Truly
Letters of Love and Loathing
Salutations!
Tuesday, June 27, 2023
Dear Rain,
It's been a while, but gotta say, you're looking fine. Bigger, louder, bolder, wetter than I remember. It seems like every time we meet you look better than before. Pulling a Benjamin Button on me? Maybe a Max Tivoli? I always preferred Max, he has a sweetness about him. Tall glass of rainwater, that one.
You get a bad rap, it isn't really fair. It isn't your fault that some lady planned her wedding on a day you're working. You can't help it if people don't happen to enjoy their picnic food soggy. And just because your best friends are a little rowdy doesn't make you the bad guy when Little Tommy's Dog hides under the bed.
I like to focus on your good qualities: your whisper, your green thumb. I don't mean to be forward but you make me feel sexy as hell just standing there feeling you all over me. Rain, you are the absolute best way to get wet and I mean that with all connotations intact.
I love the exhilaration that comes with running from you, laughing as you chase me about. I've been trying to outrun you since I was 5, zigzagging wildly about and telling mom how I beat you at tag dripping quietly on the kitchen floor.
Just wanted to tell you that I'm rooting for you. I won't say that I don't need some time for myself, a little space. (You don't want to become the geek in math class who girls wish they hadn't ever cheated off of because as soon as you receive eye contact you become an obsessed stalkery mess and drool all over their yearbook picture.... in front of them. Ew.) And yeah, I'm friends with Sun too, so we'd probably hang out.
But hey, you should come over sometime and we'll have a picnic lunch, heavy on the H2O.
Yours, Truly
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
To Poetry (Pompously)
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.
Friday, November 9, 2012
Roller Coasters
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.
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).
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.
Yours, Truly
Monday, June 25, 2012
To My Biggest Fan
I come to you when I feel extra hot, and I leave feeling like the coolest girl around.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Internet Friends
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
And Now For Something Completely Different
A cosmic release, a bug in a jar.
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,
But neither is my greatness.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
My Childhood Room
Sunday, July 3, 2011
To Melancholy
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
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.
Yours, Truly
PS. After writing this, the word first has lost all meaning.... the down-sides of repetition.