Hospitals

You scare me.

It could be the smells... The rubbing alcohol and floor cleaner with overtures of too many unhappy faces... and the occasional whiff of vomit. When I get a needle, or a new medication in my IV, I can smell it, no matter how many times your minions tell me I'm imagining it. In the emergency waiting room I smell fear. Tears and sweat and utter despair. 40 people in front of me having their worst day, and the smell follows me.

And the worst of all is the sickly sweet and insidious smell of the rubber when you come to try 50 times to take my blood. It smells like vanilla that has been run over by a burning truck tire... and my blood smells like salt and batteries.

Maybe it's the memories I have of being trapped within your countless walls-- memories that still haunt my sleep. I wake up already sobbing and short of breath saying "don't make me go, don't you dare make me get better".

But it was never the getting better that was the problem.

It was the endless waiting, the excruciating pain and the days (to weeks) without food that come with getting better that make me afraid to go back. Make me afraid to be sick. But worse than that, afraid (once I'm sick) to start getting better...

It could be the tiny boxes that you try to put us in.... Your consumers seem to have come to be Zoo animals for a day. In a cage with no walls, open to the air. Open to the eyes-- staring, questioning, curious. The one time you want to suffer in silence, in secret; you look your worst on purpose but the gawkers won't take a hint. You become a stuffed owl for the masses of other sick people and hospital employees.

Maybe it's just the opposite.

Not that there are too many stories, eyes, smells--- but that within the midst of hundreds of people, you are the loneliest place I can think of....

Yours, Truly

Hot Accents

Sooo hi... I'm writing because I'm embarrassed to speak in front of you.

You're all smoky and rounded and I feel like I'm all thumbs... I mean... all consonants. I like to just close my eyes and listen to you purr. I think "take me! teach me!" but that doesn't help...

I realize that I'm objectifying you... maybe that makes me a bad person... or just a bad feminist, I don't know. All I know is, I could sit enthralled while you told me about your fascination with snails for hours. (Maybe not snails... but something else generally considered quite boring.)

Lately I've been walking into you--clouds of you-- on a regular basis. I really can't complain, I thoroughly enjoy the change in tone. So move over Mister Darcy and let me sit by you and yours.

Let me be silent while I bask in the memories of far-off places I loved so dearly and wish to see again...

Let me cup my ear to your throat to hear the ocean standing between us...

Let me watch as lips sculpt your features...

Let me breathe you in and taste your wonders...

Let me know that accents aren't everything...

But that you still want to taste mine. (I'll let you...)

Yours, Truly.

Health

I need to stop.

I've written you a letter before this, though I never sent it, never showed anyone. And I was proud of that letter-- the writing, the sentiment... But I guess it's not true anymore, so you will never see those words.

I am stumbling my way down a slight incline.

I dream about you sometimes, and usually I wake up forgetting that I'm not allowed to be happy. Not with you. And when it hits me, it hits low. It takes the wind right out of me. Sometimes I cry, and sometimes I am too sad for tears.

Are you waiting to catch me... or watching me fall?

One thing that bugs me... I don't even know if I ever had a chance, or if my fate was decided from the beginning. Was it something I did? Is my life now just some twisted punishment? What is it, I don't deserve you?

I've been here before, and I just keep coming back.

It's been hard to change the way I think, my reflexive reactions. I forget sometimes that you are gone. Some days I act like you're still here until something snaps and I'm in pain. "Oh yeah," I think, "it's like that now."

Do you know how easy life would be if I could stay away?

I am trying. Trying to live differently. I don't want to live like you don't exist, and I can't physically live like you are a part of my life. So I am left with living like I don't need you. I don't need you. But I'm still learning that. I'm new to this.

I might actually be more happy without hope... Do other people understand that?

I hope everyone feels lucky today, lucky to have you.

Because they will never understand me, not until you are gone from them too.

It's sad, but it is the truth.

Let's leave the light-switch, and keep them in the dark.

Not Yours... Truly.

Lubrication

Mmmm... oh hey you.

Thank goodness you're here, I was about to get desperate!

You know, I am acquainted with some people who have not discovered the joys of your touch.... poor things. What gets me is your versatility, if I want to be warmed up, you get to rubbin'--- I'm feeling frisky and you tickle me juuuuust right.

I see you're trying a new look, and what's that I smell? cha-cha-cherry?? Yum, get over here you stimulating strumpet.

I want you to rub me down and get me off. Don't you go slipping out the door now, just once is never enough... Like the Eurythmics sing it, I want to use you baby.

Whatever your name is--and you have many--I want to say now on behalf of women everywhere, and okay, the men too... You make life better. You spend your days, and allll of your nights making people happy.

Hell, I bet that Mister Jiffy went into car repair just so he could appreciate you properly, get your name on a biiiiiig sign and smile one of those special secret smiles that you seem to elicit every time he looked up.

Babe, I don't say it enough but, I Love You.

(even if you don't always hang out with the best crowd, they're better for having you)

Kisses (to start with...) from

Yours, Truly.

Casual Romance

You are not what I'm used to. but I'm willing to try you on for size (not that size matters...).

You know, I like the idea of sharing, but, as we learn in kindergarten, the hard part comes when someone actually wants to borrow your new toy. I might not want to give it up...

But so far I am pleasantly surprised at how easy you are to handle. I feel like an octopus, with my "hands" getting up to no good wherever they want to. No strings, no guilt, no obligation.

Your name is so fitting. Casual, yes-- I can feel it in the easy swing of step, in holding hands, in my lips as I purr into a waiting ear...

...But Romance is not dead and gone. You're not on the same level as 'One Night Stand' over there, oggling my ass... You give me tingles. You don't need my full attention and commitment to do it either. High five for skilllllz.

Maybe I think too much, in fact , I know I do.... but I want to keep your warm breezes, your walking too close and your freshness. I want to be that kind of girl... for a little.

We both know it's not going to last forever.... so let's have some fun.

And maybe some french toast?

Yours, Truly.

To Irrational Jealousy

You fiend. You creep seep slip into my heart. Or is it mind?

I don't understand where you come from.

If heart, then I admit to caring more than I want to, if mind, then I am petty and ridiculous.

I know, there is no justification. I know there is no reason. But I feel... too much.

I feel inadequate... insufferable, sentimental, freakish--foolish.

And hypocritical, no one likes to feel that.

I may deny you, but you will be there.

There to beat war-drums in my skull. To hot glue my hands into fists.

You will delight in your short-lived existence.

So have your fun, poking the back of my throat into lumpy oatmeal, far too sticky to swallow.

I will bide my time.

Working on my visualization, strengthening my rationality.

I can think you out of sight.

Out of mind.

Out of heart.

You're nothing but my insecurity, my vanity, my possessive nature....

But always and somehow I am Yours. Truly.

PS. I still wish you wouldn't ruin my fun like this... come back on the 12th of never?

We Meet Again....

You sir, are addictive.

I think you know, but in case no one has told you, that is the truth to a T-shape.

I watch from afar your manly corners moving, turning, settling, your day filling out perfectly--- when it's a good one....

You may be a liiittle square by some opinions, but I find you colourful and interesting, complex and captivating. I love to watch you do your thing.

I think the reason I can't look away is that I want to be more like you. Everything has it's place... I just need to learn to put things in the right places.

Don't listen to the haters, Tetris. You are so much better than Brick Breaker.

Love and long pieces....

Yours, Truly.

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