May 10, 2009
She blanched. “I’m not used to being naked in front of people.” She wasn’t comfortable with nakedness of any kind. The sight of her own bare arm was mortifying to her. She kept all extremities securely uniformed each day in a tightly regimented fashion. She never dreamed about those scooping necklines or form fitting skirts, not once. And here she was being confronted with his nakedness and the potential of her own nakedness. Right there, right in front of her. He stood. She knew that he would emerge from the shower naked, possibly towelled, but at some point he would have to remove the towel she reasoned. Then what? Then he would be naked, she supposed. Bare-armed glory, but more than that. “It’s not that impressive, I’m sorry” he said with a shrug. Her eyes were squeezed shut. Tight. So tight that little white spots danced before her closed lids. “I know its only nakedness and I…I’m a coward that’s all.” She opened her eyes. He stood before her, directly in front of her, self-conscious but not afraid, and he gently lifted her shirt up and over her head. She looked down.
The drops from his hair dripped on to her face and chest and he wiped them off with the tips of his fingers.
Sparkling fake jewels dangled from every possible place. Ear, nose, wrist, finger. Shining. Gaudy baubles and bands. Excess. Too much. Overdone. She read the numbers from the book in her head and stared at the jewels. Mesmerised by the shine. She looked at her own fingers, so plain and white. Just finger no glamour. Just wrist decorated with her own anguish, no wealth displayed there. Plain old wrist topped with a useful hand. Utilitarian. Modest. Quiet wrists she thought haphazardly, distracted by the shine.
May 11, 2009
Deeper. Dig deeper.
Surety has replaced the doubt that once existed in this moment. That single perfect moment I was sure that I had done nothing wrong and that you love me. Oh for that surety all the time, what I wouldn’t give. But the mind betrays itself and I start to think about the what ifs and the maybe you’re just imaginings. They invade like an army of termites slowly eating away at the woodwork of my certainty. Structurally compromised. But now I’m sure and I will live with this certainty until the termites in my mind return to feast. For now I love you and I know that you love me. And I’ll wait out the storm for the certainty again.
May 21, 2009
Have you ever met the epitome of nerd? That one person who screams geek, no questions asked. Lives and breathes Magic cards and acne. I have. It’s me. My face bears the painful pustules of adolescence marking the passing of the most awkward stage of life I will endure. I repel women like Off bug spray repels flies. I am the object of scorn and derisive laughter constantly. I possess no sense of the social adjustment that is growing in the youth around me, I am totally antisocial. I will live in my parent’s basement and sleep on a mattress that rests on a brown shag carpet stained with the urine of my childhood dog who suffered from a disease of the kidneys, with posters of Pamela Anderson and Elvira Princess of the Dark covering the faux-brick walls with faux-wood wainscoting half-way up. My little brother will have reached first and second base before I even contemplate the possibility of women. He will go on to be a successful lawyer or butcher and I will remain unemployed, arranging sorry job interviews for myself, which I will attend with sweaty armpits and dirty fingernails. I will shake hands firmly but my palm will be damp and slick. I have none of the necessary qualifications. I push thick glasses up an unfortunate nose and prepare to receive rejection once more. I return home to my parents a failure. My mother hopeful and my father indifferent. He had given up hope when he realized the breadth of me was not varsity material and reinvested in the less awkward version of himself he found in my brother.
May 22, 2009
She had slept with most of the swim team and the rowing team. In her defence she was drunk for the majority of her sexual encounters, so she can’t be held accountable, right? She was an anomaly, usually quite shy and reserved. Mousy brown hair and browny green eyes. Huge doe eyes, which she accentuated with a touch of mascara. She had almost perfect skin, quite soft. She was self-conscious about the size of her hips and her teeth weren’t perfectly straight but they were very white. She had dainty feet, all but the wart on the bottom left one, which she had picked up from her days as a swimmer, negligently forgetting to wear her sandals when she walked around the training pool. Now she was incredibly protective of her feet, constantly worried about picking up various foot diseases which could become a further source of her poor self image.
Her father was possessive; he tried to live vicariously through her successes and critiqued her failures mercilessly.
May 27, 2009
Sitting on the bank of the river in the sand amid the cigarette butts and broken glass dead leaves and dirty seagull feathers. The water makes a dying gurgle, on its last leg. A sick green and white foam rides the current. A mate-less shoe bobs in the thick of the stream, waiting for his partner to float down, but she’s stuck in the skrag.
The weeping willow hangs over the water, casting shade on the depths. His branches hang like sweaty southern bells fainting at midday; they sway like the black men that the white men hung that day.
Stripped stick, white and bare, floats past ashamed of his nakedness.
Rock gets wet and dries and gets wet again at the will of the tide.
This water is dirty.
May 31, 2009
Put your hand on my leg and ask, “Is this okay and how do you feel?” The sky grows dark like the bottom of a sweaty tennis shoe and the thunder streaks the sky. The wind pushes up her skirt like the greedy hands of lonely men and leaves her bare. We saw something not meant for us to see. A stolen glance at her intimates and she’s none-the- wiser. How piratical of us. Hold my hand. Say “I love you.”
I only get one look. Just one moment in passing. Briefly I know you together, wishing I were in on the secret.
June 3, 2009
An intense sense of my own insignificance. A book of poetry by Ginsberg sits on the shelf and the cover is bent. The only place I feel at home is the library. Rows of silent books which quietly advertise their subject matter, neat, alphabetized by author. Containing entire worlds within the front and back covering. A picture of the author, a smiling redneck hillbilly type. Contradictory to the eloquence and wisdom within. Purposefully paradoxical.
June 11, 2009
You wake up naked hoping that the thing inside you hasn’t been devoured.
The flowers beside your bed smell like jasmine tea from China. You put them there. Hoping that when you wake up at some ungodly hour, they will make you happy. You worry that they will wither and die before you wake. You picked them from a tree two houses down. On your way home from a movie about a revolutionary. You felt inspired. You hope that your current inspiration does not wither and die like the flowers. Traitors. Beautiful smelling turncoats. Each and every last bloom will sell out before the sun's rise.
