This Is What I Look Like Today

Sometimes I think that if I was the only girl around you'd have no trouble in choosing me.

I guess I forget that the beauty in being chosen is that, to the person who chose you, you're the only one that matters. Regardless how many girls are around.

**

Excuse me for wanting more from this
Than a secret kiss
And dial tones.

**

I imagine you like the cloud of melancholy from every cliche cartoon. The ones that hover overhead or slightly to the side, constantly contributing to the woebegone atmosphere of the victim. I always thought that if the cloud would just go away and stop raining and reminding them of their discontent that they could get over it, move on, happy up.

But they always lingered. They always hovered just close enough; and that was the point. Out of sight out of mind. Perhaps. But even having stuffed you in the cardboard box I emptied yesterday, along with the residue of dust and fragments of lint carried by a season occupying space, even having wedged you in the corner under my dresser beside the stack of notebooks from junior high I can't bare to part with because some day I'll take the time to read the evolution of my literary tactics, even in the dark garnished in mistrust and seclusion you manage to materialize as a cloud. Even out of sight you find a way to my mind. Even, dehydrating in the dust, you find a way to vaporize and congeal into the little black rain cloud hovering over my honey tree.

I suppose it's my own fault. I doubt you sit across town in your car with binoculars trained on my window with the shade drawn and lamplight spilling out thinking to yourself memories to telegraph to me like Casper through the electrical lines. I doubt you're consciously the cause of this.

But this is the trouble, the trouble I've hit with celebrities and all of the "for sure" "romances" I've hitherto encountered: I've internalized you. I've taken all I know, all you shared, all the moments between us, all my overly optimistic hopes, and constructed an understanding of you in my heart. Enough so that you live there. You breathe there. You occupy space there and leave candy wrappers and dirty laundry there. You've moved in. I moved you in. I unpacked your dufflebag of video games and the boxes with the picture frames and posters and the bracelet you thought you lost. I helped you set up camp and then sheltered you in with a lean-to that eventually became a hope house because I didn't have the funding to build above the ground. And perhaps I sheepishly thought you'd stick around long enough for this to become something, for me to have causation to purchase the lumber and construct a castle where you could wander the airy halls and sing all the songs I know only well enough to recognize.

And in reality you are in your car, driving to some date with someone else, or leaving work or buying a pizza. You have no mind for me, you take no thought for me. And that's why it's not awkward for you. To you our relationship is what you apply to it, and as you apply nothing more than the occasional eye contact and half-hearted smile, there is nothing between us. Nothing to get in the way of your plans and ambitions, nothing to hinder your pursuit of everyone else of the female gender.

And that's the case, outside.

But I internalized you. I've taken you to heart.

So I'm shadowed by a cloud.

And it's been raining a lot today.

It's when you look back and see yourself as a different person that you know you've moved on. 

I never really had one of those moments. I had the experience of reading a journal or school writing assignment from early adolescent days and smiling at the immaturity and stupidity of that little girl. But I've also had the experience of reading something less than a year out of date and cringing at my youthful way of seeing the world.

And then I had this, reading words penned less than three months ago, and realized it's nothing to do with the wrongness with which I viewed the world in that space, but rather the difference with which I see it in this moment compared to then.

It's the disconnect, the Brechtian breech of the fourth wall. Those memories, writings, stories sound so distant and strange because I'm not the girl that wrote them anymore. I stopped reading the book for a few months and tried to pick it up where I left off, without reviewing context. I paused the movie for a day and came back to watch the end.

Alienation. 

That's the term. 

I felt that way when I wrote it. I believed those ideals when I scribed them. I see them as ridiculous or odd now because I don't look at life in those eyes anymore. Times have changed, my situation has changed, and my eyes have had to adjust.

Does this make sense? I feel I'm losing factuality in my vagueness.

I don't know if this is a thing, and frankly I'm too lazy to look into it, but in my creative writing class in high school, the teacher dedicated the month of April to poetry writing. Allegedly it's National Poetry Writing Month, or something. (That's the part I'm too lazy to look up. Go forth and discover.)

November is National Novel Writing Month, but this past November I resolved to merely write something every day, as my novel was not fresh enough in my mind to flesh out. So I did. I carried a notebook with me and wrote something every day, a practice I have for the most part carried on through these intervening months. With regards to April, I had an idea.

I've been writing a lot of poetry lately. So I'm not going to do that for April.

I'm going to write monologues.

A few months back I was searching for a monologue and I stopped by my blog, with monologues on the mind, and realized a lot of my musings are structured as theatrical pieces, which only makes sense when you consider what I'm wrapped up in constantly. I've written and performed a few monologues for school that have turned out quite well, and each time I've thought "Write more of these."

So I'm going to.

I don't promise to post them, I find I get more slacker-ish if I give myself strict requirements like getting on the computer to type a thing every day. But, undoubtedly, like I do with most everything else, when I write something I'm very much pleased with, I will most likely post it here.

So...yeah. I just felt like writing a blog post that was actually a blog post and not some sentimental/poetic/prosetic piece. 

My Inevitable Letdown

"It's empty." He said as we stood shoulder to shoulder. I watched with eyes cast down, contemplating all the hype we give these moments, all the expectations that ultimately end in ruin.

When has reality mirrored my mind? When has the outcome exceeded my expectations and dreams? When have these things gone right?

I slowly came to a squat and brushed my fingertips against the jagged wood of the chest. I felt him sink beside me.

"I guess that means we fill it."

He took my hand and pulled me up, the warmth of our touch lost in the wind, my eyes somehow seeing what they've always seen, forced now, by my inevitable letdown, to take the sight for fact. We gathered up our things.

I helped him fill the box, did my best to contribute, but it boiled down to the fact that he had the most to add. He brought the nic-naks and souvenirs we could bury for decades; the things we want to remember but will come to forget. I hid the few I wanted, the things I couldn't bury, the things I need to keep though they haunt me with their memories and gather dust before my eyes. I slipped them in my bag as he hunched over, arranging the box.

He looked up at me and smiled.

I received it emptily, finding a disconnect with each article we piled in the box; drained of all empathy in the act of packing it away. He smile faltered for a moment. He stood.

"Would you say we're done? It's full."

I touched my bag lightly with my foot, an affirmation it was real. "I can't imagine what else we have to bury."

He smiled with heart and clamped the chest shut. "Let's throw it in the sea."

I let him take it, trailing behind, a melancholy seeping in with each step, the bag on my shoulder dragging me down and stopping my steps. He walked to the edge and heaved it over, letting go before I was near enough to watch it plummet and crash to a watery grave. He turned as I reached him, and smiled with ease.

I wonder who will find it. I wonder who will know. I wonder if the box will beat, if it will thump a rhythm of the lives contained from its place at the ocean floor, or creep its way underground to be dug up by a boy with a bike.

I turn to find him gone; I stand alone at the edge of the sea, knowing it won't be the same. The box is full but my soul is empty, save the pangs the weigh my purse. It's time to find another chest, to invest in another container and hope and pray there's something more within than air.

I've taken too much of me to fill more dead space. I've taken too much of me to have any to spare.