Come to Me...

I've never been that stable, you see.
But neither was Beethoven. Nor Picasso. Nor Poe. Nor Hemingway.
What's the fun in watching sailboats and sunsets all the time? Placidity never much suited me. I'm not sure what it is.

They tell me I was wired wrong.
You're the odd one out, they said. You're strange. Maybe my brain was knitted with the threads of tornadoes. Woven nets of Expressionistic art, quietly catching all the passions of the Greek gods in its complicated trap.
I have prickly bramble for grey matter,
Tsunamis for cerebral fluid, stirring up my calm, rational thoughts until they're nothing of the sort.

If David Hume were still alive, I'd have him over for champagne.
Perhaps he'd like Pour le Piano, too.

"No matter what the passion is: let it be disagreeable, afflicting, melancholy, disordered; it is still better than that insipid languor which arises from perfect tranquillity and repose."

Give me anything but slow slumber, for that is what wears me out the quickest.


Come to me, all silent sailors, if your seas are still tonight,
if the world's not big enough for you, if infinity is at your fingertips, but not in your grasp.
Come to me if you want to rip the electrodes off your pulse. We can run together to the arhythmic beats of our restless hearts.

We'll build a canoe with those dead, languid lives. We'll row our way to the Netherworlds.
Or Jupiter.
And then we'll catch them in nets, every fiery tragedy, every subliminal flight,
until our backpacks are full. Until we have to hold those brilliant stars, like tiny crystals, in our hands.


I'm waiting.

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.