One day.

When I woke you were sipping on a straw from my spine, drunk and dreaming. In that time I forgot how to sleep so I stayed up and watched your rib cage, hold your lungs, your lungs boast and then cower. I watched you for hours until I couldn’t take it much longer I woke you, I woke you and asked if you knew,
“how many bones are in our bodies”
and then I said
“well, but what I meant was, …I love you.”
(Ignore the questions about the bones; I only wanted to tell you the second part)

That day you assembled me with Rumi and yet, you- not the lover- nor the sage had ever heard of him. That day, I felt a tapping from the inside of my flesh. A Jameson heart covered up with pineapple. You took a straw and drank from my spine. “206 bones” you said were in my body. I pushed my jaw into your collar bone, 412 bones I thought. Now, here, with you I hadn’t expected it.

A deer that had escaped a hunter, caught in the morning that day we first slept in.This is only one small way we are different. You released an irritable sigh. I thought of trains and oceans. I thought I could do something but did nothing besides think. And then I thought about the weekend and how it was mostly beautiful . As you, are- mostly, beautiful. Even when you can’t help but try to unbutton my polished nerves . With your furrowed brow and the dramatics of the season actor. You know, when cornered like this I think we’re competing for sanity and I refuse to loose. When I say these things your only response is to ask if today is the day I am going to take my red shoes and used books home from your house. If today was the day I was leaving you.I always respond with “No” I say, “you’ve assembled me with Rumi and you’ve never even read him”

the lights are pretty.

I was raised on ritual. Each breathe, it seemed a prayer. I still believe in intrinsic human goodness but I think my faith, faith in things uncertain, faith for things bigger than face value in part (a big part) caused my downfall. I always thought, “things have to get better now” until they didn’t and I just needed to step out of that pseudo sanctuary. These days I am so far removed that I smirk thinking about how I barely made it out of that, again. Now, I hold my cards close to my chest not because I live defensively but because most of my honest emotion, my true emotion has been spent and I am only trying to keep what’s left safe. I have changed very much over who I once was- a mental paradigm shift. This time of year I see now how I stand out (or at least feel the goofy paranoia).No, I don’t stand out physically. I am pretty average and as my father would say “count your blessings that you’re average). In a long sleeve shirt I could fit in just about anywhere. Most of the time, I’m impermeable, clear, calm. Logic is uncomplicated and easy for me to follow. I may not be a great leader but I am for certain, a decent follower. But this time a year my speech, my thoughts, my actions are clumsy at best. Underneath the shirt, the skin, the bones I nervously wait for the holidays to fall into the quieter days, the ho-hum months. It like the holidays, the traditions, the rituals have the power to hold me up in a light that I am not comfortable in only to examine me for long enough to tell me Hallmark did not send one addressed to me. Oh woe, oh woe…pity makes me ugly and I hate to ruin perfectly good day so I make it look like I am busy, not just standing around waiting for some great celebration.

I make blueprints of my thoughts and plan for a future similar to my past and search frantically for simplicity.

Maybe one day I will laugh and remember what it is in Turkey that makes you sleepy and bring it up after a holiday dinner.