I’m sitting in china flavoured ivory silk and wondering if any intentions have coalesced into something real or even vaguely legible. There are so many undercurrents to conversations, so many tones of voice possible with which to set a scene. I could stand in my doorway and merely shrug to express how necessary the awkwardness of roommates can be or you could call me at three in the morning and not know what to say, but not need to, because the gesture was enough to remind us both that we love each other. We could dance with the idea of innocuous topics while bringing to the table everything mother told us we shouldn’t take from strangers. We could even smile (or want to) at the mention of a number overheard in passing because six by six was a room once, but none of it helps when the air from the window is cold and I am curious with no immediate answers. No invisible cowgirls swinging their hips can save me, no assumptions of data paper are forthcoming with the tiny musical ting of inkwell spurs, only your voicing of desideratum, digital or otherwise.
I cried at the party I went to, after the burlesque show. At exactly the wrong moment, that third-of-a-second where my throat was too tight to let anything out but misery, Michael asked how I was, and I dissolved. On the porch I held a twenty minute court, curled in my coat against the dawn and an outpouring of explanation, friends at my feet and holding my hand. Earlier was amusing, a boy in the kitchen drunkenly spinning fancies of admiration and delay while he worried about something entirely different that I pushed him toward, but when it came time to go, they found me as a black cloth lump between the stove and the corner kitchen cupboard. Occupational hazard, I warrant, when I’m not very good at being betrayed. I’m much better now. I began to fix most of everything the very next day, after Nine Inch Nails.
(Which if you listen to anyone else, was a masterpiece of sound and light and motion, but to me was reminiscent of a high-school dance, with sledgehammer subtle visuals and terrible acoustics. With all the expectation built up, I was amused to find it was a surprise to see the people on stage only half an inch tall. They’re not twice the size of mere mortals! The rest of the concert was peppered with my mind being occupied on how effects are meant to erase that and create an actual feeling of bigger than life. “This is the audience, where all the lights shine out to blind you, and we are the band, who control this glorious blaze of flash and fury with a shake of our magical hands. We all know our roles, now we are bigger, and you are going to put your hands up in unison and punch the air so the people behind you get the right silhouette.” The most beautiful thing was the BIC constellations that flickered into being at every lull. A hundred hands bravely holding shards of fire above their heads to create a mythical web of stars in darkness.)