Pixie Girl

I wish I looked that good in bandanas.
Or in the clothes I danced in and slept in last night.
Your voice sounds like the tinkling of small, silver bells. It goes perfectly with your tiny frame.
You could almost pass as a ten year-old girl.

But your eyes give it away. Strange, blue eyes that look vacant until you speak.
Then they look like they hold so many truths. Or maybe they just reflect the disorganized mess in your head, only sounding like truths because while we all hide our messes, you embrace yours.

There is something comforting about talking to you.
Something deeper and more sincere in the way you ask questions that normal people wouldn't ask. But they sound normal coming out of your mouth. Just like nobody else could dance like that and not look like a whore. But you looked natural, as if it was something that humans were supposed to do.
Don't ask me why. I couldn't tell you.

I couldn't tell you why you seem so artificial, not in a fake way, but in a department-store-toy-that-came-to-life way. As if someone dragged out the corners of a girl's doll to make you just large enough to pass as a real person.
As if you don't need to eat, you don't need to sleep.

All you need to do is paint and laugh and ask strange questions
to survive.

Help, I'm Alive.

Weekends are for riding in cars with strangers.

They're for celebrations, dancing, mixing drinks,

and I'm sure that for a brief hour, if the world had ended, we would've all died happy.

The night was cold.

Your room was cold, and so were you.

I wish I had taken fewer shots so it wouldn't be so blurred in my memory.

But try as I might, I couldn't make falling asleep on the couch afterwards while you made spaghetti

anything particularly beautiful.

That was all I could think about on the ride back,

trying not to think about trying not to think about you.

What was particularly beautiful, though, was the moon the night I got back, a canary-yellow orb suspended midway between the sky and the ground, cool wind blowing my wet hair and parched skin. It's impossible not to be happy on a night like this.

But I went back to my room and wept like a child who just lost a valuable possession.

After all, I kind of did, in a way.

I love how Autumn feels.

It feels like how ginger snaps taste. How whiskey tastes with a touch of Ravel.

Sharp, crisp. Burning, yet soothing.

Autumn looks like fire, a world constantly ablaze, laughing.

Earth and sky lit up, waiting — almost tauntingly — for winter's frost to come douse its flames.

Autumn smells like you.

Like Dial soap and dried, crunchy leaves that I would pull out of my hair

after my sister and I raked them into piles as best we could with broken rakes on our brown lawn

and then threw our small, excited bodies eagerly into them as if we had waited the whole year

just to embrace Autumn.

I haven't raked leaves in years.

There aren't many around here. There's only cement, dilapidated buildings, silent evenings, and lots and lots of due dates.

Besides, I don't have a rake.

I only have lined paper and a pen. Piles of books, a bottle of brandy. Dusty, baroque records that I can't play. Empty coffee mugs and pictures of Paris plastered on my yellow walls,

and a right-side brain burning like leaves in the autumn,

fighting against the sanity, or insanity, that surrounds it

like the blue, white, and red soldiers of the Franco-Prussian War.

Ma chambre a la forme d'une cage

Why am I doing what I am preparing myself to do?

Because it's exciting, I told all the curious onlookers, the nonchalant spectators in the stand. Because it's good for my studies. It'll help me get a job. Or if not a job, at least a double-take on my grad-school applications. Because I am ambitious.

Because I am restless and can never be in one place for too long.

Because I am hungry to see more, learn more.

Because my stage is never big enough.

Because I want a challenge.

Or is that what it really is? I asked myself quietly when they all went home. Is that all there is to it?

Or is the real reason because the plug has been pulled for so long that you don't know how to reconnect, so now you're left running, jumping, leaping from change to change in attempts to find change of the right size?

Because it's not that you're restless, but rather you're a little, unanchored girl, floating around in hopes of bumping into your roots.

Because you want escapism and this is the only way you know how to get it?

I don't know. I haven't figured out the answer yet.

I am constantly

torn between being placidly disconnected from the world

and feeling like I need to try hard to be a part of it, but not knowing how much of a part of it I need to be.

And this, my friends, is the cause of all the internal strife I will probably ever have in my whole life.

Someone help pull me off this fence.

Coffee for dinner.

I'd bleed it from my veins if you cut me, probably, sweat it from my pores,
Every dark, bitter drop that flowed from my skin would engulf me.
I crave it psychologically as strongly as a crack addict craves cocaine physically.
Perhaps I'm high, too.

High on life.
Not in the way most people use that phrase. People who say that are usually partiers, extroverts, or people who soak in other people like sponges. People who thrive off of bustling days and colorful lights and social interactions and sunny days.
Non, pas moi.
I'm no extrovert.

I'm high on life in all it's hidden, overlooked splendor,
as bitter and dark as the drink that fuels my body every morning, every night.
On the art in shadows, on listening to French music at midnight, on being able to laugh at spiteful hatred, on the feeling of being able to feel accomplished even though every bone in my body is threatening to collapse from not sleeping for days. On the smell of the worn pages of a book.
On the feeling of silent, quiet growth.

On feeling like I am holding something others can't see, but not knowing what it is at all.

And on drinking coffee alone at midday, feeling like it's completely okay that I don't.

If I don't sleep tonight,

then maybe the leaves would fall a little more slowly.

Maybe you'll change a little more slowly.

Maybe I'll speak a little more slowly.

And then you won't be so different so quickly,

and the weather won't be so cold so quickly,

and I won't have to run so quickly

to halt the spinning world.

Who are you?

Boy With the Flaxen Hair

Who thinks with the other side of his brain,
You're not of this world either—
I can see things like this, just like
you can see through walls
with that stoic stare. The stare

that can bring down towers as
quietly
as you walk. And talk. But not like your thoughts. They're loud.
I can hear them rattling around, I can see you
rattling around
behind those bars.
It's almost like looking in a mirror miles
and miles
away.

Do you exist in colors, too? In large sheets of
canvas and broken pastels? Perhaps your world, too,
is bottled and corked powder that you mix
with lemon juice to pour over
that pale skin that probably
hasn't seen the sun
in years.

Are you ghostlike and enigmatic,
lost in a flurry of your own nondescript thoughts,
scribbling your way to Freedom
(or perhaps to Europe)
in spiral-bound notebooks?

Maybe Debussy should title a piece
after you too.
I would play it in the dismal hours of
morning, while you're asleep with the rest
of the world. I'd tiptoe quietly
to your doorstep on my
fingertips, hoping that
88 ivory keys
may be just enough

to unlock
unlock
unlock

you.