Month: July 2007

it’s only you

Sorry for the pain you’re in

The last day he was here, I woke him up with a silver fountain pen. He opened his humming evening eyes as I lay upon him, delicately pressing his long body into the cotton-stocking sheets, and began to write poetry across the seamless skin of his paper white chest.

I got as far as the end of the word “Love”.

Later, in the shower, as a miracle might, I saw the word survive hot water, clove soap and our bodies painfully pressed together in tight comforting hugs. I thought of it at the airport, how it was still resting above his heart in graffiti black ink under his shirt, and how it would travel home with him on the plane like a new neighbor. I said nothing, but my reckless fingers pressed against it, saying goodbye, and my lips, as if they never meant to stay.

I think the Boy would have liked it there.

One hand fumbling under my skirt, pulling the fabric up, cinching it tight. Unexpected, yet perfectly typical. I’m glad I didn’t spend the night, though I had been considering it. (Plenty of places to sleep, many of them unmolested, a vague promise of breakfast.) I’ve been almost naked in that kitchen, fishing in the cupboard for a glass after a shower. Part of me knows that part of me belongs. I’ve been talked about in every room.

Cigarettes, beer bottles, black velvet curtains in every doorway – the place I fell asleep wearing the head and skin of a bear – the bed made of sticks, the bed made of stone. Rarely do I feel absolved, yet in this case, it’s beyond any retraction. There is no reason to ask, there is no longer any breakdown. How we always had a pillow that was mine. Always the brightest flowers. The rejection close to shame. I considered the smell of fire and smoke still in my hair as we stood there in the street, bodies pressed together, waiting for my ride home to finish her goodbyes, feeling tired, (indifferent), and unable to remember what it felt like to be in love.

colour


“Recommended readings”, at The Secret Knots.

Song of the Week: Dirty Laundry.

It was like we were watching the dawn together through the slate gray rain as it fell in Chile. “How many miles away are we?” I asked. “Every mile,” he replied. I said, “We are the future, this morning.”

We had stayed up all night, sending music across three time-zones and updating our theories on the thinly coloured sky, how the sun was coming to find us, neglectful of our beds in the light of our company, caught in the web at it’s late night best.

When I finally left my computer to sleep, it was bright outside, pale stone blue, like milk spilled on lapiz lazuli. The birds outside, huddled together on the wire, had begun to coo, an alarm clock in reverse, and our music playing was like our hands warmly holding across the distance, comforting and quiet. I wonder if we got it in sync.

The Rubber Science Ducks have finally run aground. There’s bounty on them too.

This week has felt long, stretched out, as something new happens every day and I struggle to find a meaningful habit of pattern. Every day flows free form and anchorless. It’s bad for me.

Yesterday I meant to re-write my resume, but instead Lung brought Dominique and I to a lake out past Sqaumish where the water was clear green and cold. Next to the highway, it was perfect British Columbia. We sat in our bathingsuits on a log jutting out into the water and complained the water was too cruel to swim. We sang along to our music and told stories about the first time we had heard certain songs.

The day before that I had planned to spend sliding down hills on ice with with Merlyn, grass stains mandatory, but instead I found myself visiting Chelsea in New Westminster with Jenn and Dominique, ultimately playing phone tag with him and missing him altogether.

Today I’m taking head-shots of Michael C. in exchange for lunch, other than that, I think it’s time again to plan an afternoon inside, crafting a resume to explain to the world that I am competent. Finally the summer is here and I am ignoring it.

Jesus Monkey Pants in Space has two new pages.

drumbeat

Old space-suit recycled as experimental satellite.

I went to sleep knowing he was in the air over the ocean, on his way to Tokyo, Japan. The ceiling of my room telescoped away from me, showing me my life as a tiny toy dragon with topaz eyes. Nothing in me seemed as effervescent as the waves speeding below the plane I could sense like smoke outside and so many miles away from me that I could not walk them in a year. Rain on the windows loud enough to shut out the streetlight, lying in the sleeping nest of salty silk pillows on one end of my bed was suddenly the saddest place I had ever been. (Wrong, of course, he goes next month).

A photo gallery of Japanese manhole covers.

Sasha is moving upstairs to live with his cousin. I’m going to need a new flatmate for August 1st. Anyone interested? Rent’s $450/month + half utilities.

Pulitzer Prize photo by Oded Balilty

A potential Cure for HIV has been discovered.

From the Associated Press: “A lone Jewish settler challenges Israeli security officers during clashes that erupted as authorities cleared the West Bank settlement of Amona, east of the Palestinian town of Ramallah. Thousands of troops in riot gear and on horseback clashed with hundreds of stone-throwing Jewish settlers holed up in this illegal West Bank outpost after Israel’s Supreme Court cleared the way of demolition of nine homes at the site.”