He’s everywhere, on all sides of me, at all times, lurking. I see his glasses on the face of a much older man with too pale lips and crooked teeth. I see his hands gripping the thin metal pole on the train, but they’re attached to the skinny arms of a teenager. Looking up from my cell phone, I see him across the street, and I almost jaywalk to get to him. But it’s just wind. He’s not even in this country and if he were he would be more beautiful than when I last saw him. He must be.
—
I didn’t get it then, I couldn’t see how big his nose was or how his ears stuck out. His lips were too full. He never took care of his eyebrows except for occasionally when he would shave crookedly between them. It never helped: there was just the shadow of the hairs there and a bit missing from his left eyebrow. His teeth were straight and white but he never brushed them enough. The electric toothbrush he had was a gift from his mother, and he hadn’t bought a new head for it since she gave it to him two years before.
These things I then knew not, nor observed. They met my eyes on every side, and I saw them not. I composed poems, in which it was not permitted me to place every foot everywhere, but in one metre one way, and in another, nor even in any one verse the same foot in all places.
I started writing poems about him from the moment I saw him, poems where I noted his nose, his glasses, his shoulder blades. He sometimes would jut them out at me to prove he could, like wing flaps, like broken wings. I knew he looked unique. It was something I knew well.
—
Now I walk into a restaurant and see his hair from behind but when I walk past and do a double take, the chin is all wrong. I stare at too many tall, thin men with black hair and unshaven faces and plastic glasses. I look too long and it frightens me that they might be looking back.
—
His tongue was slick, licking syrup off of my cheek or spices from my fingers. His hands rough as he pressed them against my thighs to open them. But his skin was so soft and I would rub his back and say, “How did you get skin so smooth?” And he would always reply: “I moisturize.” But he owned no lotion. I saw these things, but there was so much I knew not, nor observed.
Or I ignored.
I don’t think Abi’s actually going to get in touch with me, so I resign myself to staying home for the night. I go to the corner store with the two dollars in quarters left over from laundry last week and I buy some candy and a little box of pasta sauce. I eat a bowl of pasta and Nutty bars and play Persona 4 for an hour and then my phone rings. Abi had to get my number from someone else, but she tells me it’s gonna be a while before they’re done with dinner. While waiting for her, I die in my video game by accidentally casting a strong spell on a bird who has a reflection shield. And then it’s a few hours later, and I put on my shoes and sit on the couch. Abi still hasn’t called me, and then I psych myself out, tell myself I don’t want to go.
Two minutes later, she calls. My shoes are still on so I decide I should meet them. While I’m waiting for the bus, a white car pulls up on the other side of the street and two people get out and yell at each other. The woman is yelling that she’s scared, but he seems to just be wanting to drop her off. I pause my iPod and try to make it seem like I’m not paying attention. He gets back in the car and starts to drive away, but she runs after him. He stops, lets her in, and I hear them screaming at each other loudly until they’re out of sight. The sun is setting. The bus comes.
There’s a thin redheaded guy sitting across from me reading a book. I want to know what he’s reading, but I can’t quite make out the title. I can tell it’s one of those Penguin classic books. A few people get off of the bus with me when I go to make the connection for the train. One of them is that guy. I walk up the stairs to the platform, get a better look at his face. He looks like a coworker from when I was working at the library in Evanston. He’s too gaunt, his teeth aren’t crooked enough, his glasses are the wrong shape.
I call Abi when I get to her stop. She comes out to meet me. Upstairs, I see our friend Thom, and a guy who I assume is her husband, Taylor. They’re playing Bubble Bobble on an NES hooked up to a HD television. Taylor talks to me about how Abi’s told him about me being a geek, about some of my youtube videos, and we start talking about Persona 4. I don’t know if he wants to impress me, or if I just want to be impressed, but he pulls out a Famicom and his copy of the board game style Mega Man game. The four of us play for a while, but the game is in Japanese so it’s just a guessing game.
Continue reading wading into the lake
The first girl I was ever attracted to was someone I met on the first day of a new school when I was going into fifth grade. I’m pretty sure on the year but it could have been fourth. I was young.
She was a blonde with green eyes. And she had short hair — I thought she was a boy. I stared at her all day, thinking about how I wanted to talk to this new guy but he was sitting all the way on the other side of the room from me. And at one point I heard the teacher say her name and I remember the exact words I thought, “huh, I guess I like girls too.”
No flutter of shame or anxiety or hate, just a small thought in my head and then I was okay with it. I didn’t even know what gay or bisexual or even pansexual, the term I call myself now that I stumbled upon at the age of twenty three, meant. It was just a small realization.
I didn’t tell anyone until my sophomore year of high school, when I finally met and socialized with people who were likeminded. I’ve never told this story to anyone until writing it down here.
I dream pretty much every night. Sometimes it’s really frustrating because I have really terrifying or intense dreams. Other times, I dream about pleasant things and wake up refreshed. Dreams make my sleep shorter also, as they will wake me up in the middle of the night.
I can’t figure out if I like this bombardment of dreams. It’s always been like that. Dan says he doesn’t remember his and Dustin says he never really has them. I only don’t remember mine because I don’t immediately write them down.
As a child, I once dreamed that the world was ending because the sun was coming to devour the earth. This was from reading too many books on astronomy (I was/am a geek). The radio was going fuzzy, the sky was going bright and then black, and once it reached a complete blackness, credits started to roll in my dream, making me wonder if maybe my subconscious was trying to save me from freaking out.
I was obsessed with my weight from the time I turned 18 and became less active and grew into a woman’s shape. I had always been a bit chunky and this just was something I wasn’t going to tolerate. For a few years, my weight would fluctuate from a slightly too high number to a way too low one.
In the past few years, I’ve stopped that. When the Wii Fit came out, I lost a bunch of weight and gained some muscle mass; however, I got bored with it quickly since there wasn’t much to do. Now, I’ve gained some back, but I’m not uncomfortable enough to want to lose it. I’ve finally realized I’m going to be chubby just because I’m short and I like candy too much.
The thing that bothers me turns out not to be the gut or the smushy parts, but the fact that my clothes no longer fit. I’m really broke now because of student loans and such, and I can’t afford to rebuy summer clothes! It’s a refreshing attitude coming from this twenty-six year old, in comparison to me at twenty-one, starving myself, obsessing over food.
I just obsess over more healthy things now.
|
About As a poet, I feel like any photography I do will always be a reflection of the words I use. When I think, I think in words, not images, unlike visual artists. This site houses a minimalist dream log, my poetry including poems from You May Waltz To Your Doom In Sanguine Stained Shoes, my photography, and a blog with Let's Play related entries.
|
