Journal
Wednesday, 01 July 2009
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"When you look up and all you see is ash and cloud, and night falls darkly cross your shoulders- know. I have woven this for you."
Thursday, 07 May 2009
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Currently
The Bone People
By Keri Hulme
see relatedA Silver Mote
There was a moment when birds exploded from my chest and every gasping soul swept in to pull away the remnants of what you left. Every breath and piece of tongue and bit of beating heart until all that remained were clumps of hair and feathers and mewling voice. Not even shadow, but perhaps a silhouette.
Empty is our house as blind you stumble forward into the rising sun, seeing only red hot pain, although I wish that you could see my cold white hands and how they lust to reach inside your chest and grasp at tangles, working deftly, quickly, just working.
Of flesh, of thirst. Sightless eyes and brief, unpromising touch. Of heat and pressing bodies. Legs and arms, as the crook of your neck is salty from the sand of a sea you visit only in your fevered dreams. Eyelids blinking tears and sweat, and thirsting. Thirsting.
I want to scoop what darkness runs through your veins like silver running through that cliff, to rub each flaking piece into the heart of that little porcelain bowl.
To take and hold you, to lick and swell from what I take knowing I'll be done but you will not. But I'll return to see, to weep, and watch and to be watched by other silhouettes who've run their course and jealous, turn to us for motivation. Deprivation.
Knowing that you'll long to know of what became of me. Knowing only how I loved you as dying embers love a breath of air. Knowing not of how now, I can grow beside you, both strong and reaching toward that sun and what we see of other worlds.
Entwined. Amalgamated.
You and I and all the ghosts that glimmer at the edge.
Monday, 20 April 2009
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Currently
Child of the Prophecy (The Sevenwaters Trilogy, Book 3)
By Juliet Marillier
see relatedIn Progress.
Audrey Kawasaki © 2009 Visit her @ http://www.audrey-kawasaki.com/ .
Down to the cellar and he found her, curled up among the cans of oil and bags of flour, the dirt floor damp beneath her, not from tears or blood or piss, instead with salt and sea, though it lay nowhere near where they lived together. He knelt to meet her slowly for she was little more than feral and terrified of him. He could see it in the way she dug her fingers into the dirt becoming mud becoming sea.
In the kitchen the floor was still covered with broken egg and feathers. On the counter there was almost dough. In the stove an almost fire. Embers burned but didn't ignite, and somewhere underneath the floorboards, rolled and wrapped in twine, lay her almost escape. He'd have to move it tomorrow. He'd clean the mess tomorrow but then, just then, he knelt, and talked in whispers, sweet love notes. Words she did not understand, a song she'd heard so many times she heard it even when she screamed for hours, eyes screwed shut and throat raw and bleeding even, but still that song. She began to growl.
He left and came back with a blanket. A bowl of stew. He left again.
By then the crow was stiff. The eyes were dull. He wondered if he should take the heart, the liver, the bones, but decided against it until he moved the skin. By then, the things he might have wanted would have spoiled, so he left it at the back door for the wolves. He cleaned the egg and feathers, saving only four for her. A necklace, maybe. A fine thing. He checked the lock and satisfied, he brought the fire back to life.
It had only been two weeks. Only two, he told himself. Not so long. And it would go this way for a while. That was why he had to move the skin, and soon. She was just as the bird, the wolves. Worse for all her night dark hair and eyes. Human coming, but still not there.
She picked the carrots from the stew with muddied hands. In the dark she tried again to talk to them. She sent out motions and colors, tastes and sounds, but nothing came back. She was too far away, and what little of the ocean she could call to her was not enough. Not enough to disappear, and it wouldn't have mattered anyway. She stretched her legs and toes and fingers and tried not to hate them. When she thought of the him up there, it was a tangle of things she'd known, but never really what he was. He was hunter, and teeth, seaweed catching and storming waters to confuse her.
Upstairs the flying fish had come to her, had hopped across the hardened not sand, scratching at it with tiny claws a fish was not supposed to have. Her eyes were starving for it. She watched it stop a lay away, and turn its head to stare, fins too big, and soft. In water it would fail. And she would eat it. But here, she wasn't certain. Here she was almost afraid, but for the grace of its neck and silent shuff of scales. It watched her while the hunter bent to make the hot that hurt, and while he couldn’t see, it hop-fluttered across and to a place where light did not quite reach. Its beak was quick and suddenly in among the cracks, pulling and prying and she was curious too.
And then he was upon them. He was twisting the neck in his hands as the eggs hit the floor, and then, suddenly, she was being pushed down the narrow steps into the cool and dark almost sea and though falling, she was still glad to be out of all the light and hot and anger.
Sunday, 22 February 2009
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Currently
Mortal Engines (The Hungry City Chronicles)
By Philip Reeve
see relatedThe Wild Sea Rose
Photo © 2008 Audrey Kawasaki visit her site @ http://www.audrey-kawasaki.com/
I remember that day you came for me as if I dream it every night. Ten years ago, and I was only eight. Ten years ago and my father was a fool, my mother was dead to your arms and I was thinking I would be the same. We in the village saw you often, of course- you rested on our shore and raged against our rocks. You took our fathers, our sons, our mothers. Don't be sorry. I have since forgiven you.
I remember- my father in disgrace- he'd gone to the sea once more for her, for her revenge. Once more searching for the Loreley. The last time. He promised it would be the last, but we all knew he'd drive himself to ground and never stop for such the searing pain he harbored in his chest. He knew he'd killed my mother.
She had found them together.
After that she felt nothing else, I'm sure of it for I was always closer to my mother than the others. I knew the blinding white that blistered in her eyes. The hollow space of blackened air that hung suspended in her chest. She used the strength she drew from that to pull herself atop the cliff, her last graceful movement ending as soon as it began. My wee brother Cillian knew not what was happening, thinking she’d only gone atop to dive, to hit the sea and then return. In that moment of silence- when everyone had stopped to watch, to realize- his laugh broke into all of us and froze our blood as it moved.
My father broke with her, against those rocks. You told me later you had felt the shock of their impact. It almost broke you.
Almost.
Bless him mother. He knew not what he did, for she were a witch o’ the sea. He’d fallen under her curse and couldn’t think of anything but what she offered. And oh, how he mourned. He forgot everything. He forgot us. He almost forgot me until you came to him. I almost never came to you. I thank the gods for my poor bumbling fool of a father.
My father thought he had the strength to die, to be reunited with my mother. He was mistaken. In grips with you his ship moaned and creaked, wood bending and sails cracking. He thought that no one would be able to hear him as he muttered, as he bargained against his life with mine. I think he thought of me for how much I was like my mother. Feeling gracious, you had given him a moment to make penance and he infuriated you with his cowardice. You faced him, this salt wearied man, on his knees with fists gripped and eyes screwed shut, you faced him and granted his desire. Far worse punishment, you thought.
Far better to us.
He found his way home after the winds died. My brother and sister ran to greet him on the shore, but I held back. Something in me lit the moment he had licked his salt-dried lips to speak, and I had known the truth long before he made his way to shore. Before he made his way to me, and fell, weeping to my feet. I placed my hand upon his head only for my siblings. Were it just me I would have gone to you then, and never turned back. Were it just me I would have gone to you the moment my mother’s broken body washed to shore.
We sat up that night, the dark falling all around us. My father sat across from me lit by candle light, his eyes weeping blood and salt water. With his first footstep over the hold of our house, he found he could not stop. Poor Cillian was so scared of him he would not speak from then on, though you told me that the blood did stop once I had gone. Once everyone had seen him in disgrace.
We waited till well past the sun set. Hush in the house, and hush on the shore we heard nothing- but I felt you coming. I felt you slip under the door and rise to my ankles. So cold I went numb before I had time to think. My older sister, Sinead, made as if to stand but found her feet entwined in kelp. It was all I could do to rise and walk towards the sea. Towards you. As I walked the water swirled around my ankles, pulling and pushing. It pushed me towards the boat you left upon the shore. I did not look back, I did not need to.
Ten years ago and I was only eight. Ten years ago, my father a fool, my mother dead to your arms- myself rocked to sleep by you every night, and every night you whispered in my ear, setting all my senses to fire.
I’ve spent ten years in this boat, with naught but the cry of gulls and the waves lapping the hull. Ten years and I’ve learned to catch rain water as it falls. You brought me conch and abalone to use as basins, you brought me kelp and cress, clam and shrimp. Once you bore me an apple so bruised, and with a crust of salt thicker than that of any cured meat, but the inside was still sweet and I savored its sugars on my lips for days.
My clothes have long disintegrated, my skin has burned and healed, and long ago my thoughts were closed to land I knew you would not steer me towards. The night sky is so much brighter here, and though I am alone, I do not long for human company. I have you. Finally, we have each other. I am your Aisling, your dream. And you are my Aigéan.
My sea. My beast.
You are my heart.
Ten years until this point. Afloat still, not realizing that today marks our release. After ten years you whisper, slán leat. Midnight and you find shore. I sleep, but troubled by your farewell even in my rest, I cry out. Ten years, I did not realize even my fool father would not bargain with the entirety of my life.
Morning and I cannot bear it. I will not leave the boat. I tell myself, not to the shore, but you make the boat remember its age, and though I stand amongst the tired broken wood, your waves push me back. Away, and I fall into the surf, sand and tears and skin and all of me refusing what you want.
I will not have it, instead I rise to face you, for I will not lie broken in defeat like my mother, nor will I allow you to deceive me, like you did my father.
You have always been the air and earth and sky, but most of all you've been the sea. A beast, but still something more. You're the sand and the kelp, the urchins and the rays. Your voice is a storm breaking on the horizon but your eyes are the stars that lull me to sleep.
You push me away as I cling to you- but the break in the rhythm of your breath deceives you. Our souls are more than entwined, they're amalgamated- and standing here, barefoot on lava rocks and the bits of broken shell that all belong to you, I know that you're breathing me in. Every little bit you're breathing and longing and aching.
As am I.
I seep back into you, and the shock of me is too strong for you to fight against. You have no choice for I have given myself to you. For ten years, never to see your face, and ten years wishing to embrace you. I must be mad, but I know I heard your voice. I felt you in my dreams. I’ve left my broken family, my broken life, and now I wish to leave my broken useless body here amidst the rocks.
Release me beast.
Release me.
Go scaoilimid mise.
You cannot ignore my plea, for it is my heart and my dream that you love.
And so, you rise up. Everywhere around me, in me, through me, you raise me up, too, and bring me crashing down until my breath is done.
Thursday, 04 December 2008
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Currently Reading
84, Charing Cross Road
By Helene Hanff
see relatedJonah's Whale
"Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights."
~ Holy Bible, The Book of Jonah, Chapter 2
And then there was Jonah- and there had always been the whale, of course- since the beginning, but particularly since they had built the harbor, and he had found he was hard pressed to leave- Jonah, whose mother was drenched in sweat equally from having nowhere to put the baby insomuch as intense labor pains, arrived at four twenty-seven one angry Monday morning. Angry, for it was raining torrentially and was uncharacteristically cold for early April; something which Claudia, Jonah's mother, would forever swear had everything to do with her daughter.
This was perhaps due to the fact that A) Claudia was a devout Wiccan, former hippie, and firm believer in all the proper sorts of Olde Magicks, and B) Jonah, much like the morning that had preceded her birth, had been more like a baby implied iceberg than an actual fetus, from the moment of conception until, ten months later, she was wrenched screaming from her mother’s womb. Claudia could pinpoint the manifestation of her daughter down to the second, as it had felt like she was being injected with a turkey baster full of ice water, whereupon she immediately rolled off and checked for a pulse from her partner whose post-coital stupor prevented him from answering even the most basic of questions. Which is quite possibly why Claudia never learned his name.
Jonah, for her credit, had always been content to refer to him- at her mother’s eager urgings- as ‘the sperm man.’ Which, even at the age of twelve (with full knowledge of all the intricacies of the male form), she still believed to be a prefix akin to the likes of sperm whale. Claudia (being Claudia) was very pleased with her daughter’s strength in character and clear ability to overcome obstacles even in spite of the fact that she had been deprived since birth of one half of her rightful caregivers. And being as how she was Claudia’s daughter, at the age of two Jonah knew the proper names of all the folds and flaps of her ‘down there parts’ as well as those of her friend Daniel’s.
Three years later the two of them were encouraging their entire kindergarten class into the belief that clothes were pointless, because nude was beautiful. Mrs. Henderson, who had left the class for no more than fifteen seconds to get hot water for her tea, opened the door to a magnificently naked Jonah executing an equally spectacular jackknife launch from Mrs. Henderson’s desk and into a virtual moshpit of similarly nude five year olds.
And so, on Monday, April seventh at four twenty-seven a.m., well sheltered from the sheets of freezing rain outside, Jonah was pulled forth into the world, yowling at the top of her voice. Three days later she and Claudia made their way out into the streets of Boston, followed by the collective sigh of exhausted hospital personnel.
And so, then there was Jonah.
Tuesday, 16 September 2008
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Currently Reading
Pretty Monsters: Stories
By Kelly Link
see relatedAgainst Atmosphere
©2008 @http://qarrtsiluni.com/2008/09/14/against-atmosphere/
All of a sudden I'm too conscious of my blinking. I don't know what brought it on, except that I think it was because I was watching television and someone blinked too much and then I thought about my blinking and now that's all I think about. Am I blinking too much? Not enough? Do I really need to blink? How long can I go without blinking? And then I get a headache that feels like a chasm in the middle of my skull- a split the world open hurt that makes blinking the last thing on my mind and then it doesn't matter anymore. All I want to do is sleep.
I lay down on the floor and I think, I never realized how soft it is, like, why doesn't everybody sleep on the floor all the time, why do people even waste their money on beds, all the hours they work for money they have to save and save and then they go and spend it on some mattress that won't spill a glass of wine when all the time they could just be sleeping on this floor that is so damn comfortable I feel like I will never want to move again. And I just rest my cheek on the cool of the hardwood floor and I just breathe and breathe and breathe and I wait for dark to come.
After I've been lying there for too long and not long enough, the noise of the t.v. in the background for some commercial- is your hair soft enough? But I don't have any worries about my hair because it is in the atmosphere and the air and the space all around me floating like I am underwater. It is a marvelous feeling and I know that if I use that special shampoo they want me to buy then it will just weigh my beautiful hair down.
And then I am floating along with my hair my whole body free of gravity my head no longer hurting and I'm looking up and my ceiling isn't there anymore so I can see stars and constellations whose names I don't remember. I'm just reaching out to touch them when I hear the front door of my house close and I look down to see who it is and it's someone nameless who looks very familiar carrying a bag of groceries they probably want to share with me, and that makes me smile. And then I look closer and I realize that I see me too on the floor, almost I look like a crimson smudge, not from blood, I'm sure because I think I remember my bathrobe is that color.
I try to remember why I was home in my bathrobe alone anyway and I can't, only I see the person with the groceries has spilled them all over the floor, and they have all the right things for making a chicken soup and I think maybe I was sick? And I want to go investigate except that I suddenly notice that while I was trying to remember things the atmosphere was still slowly sucking me up like pudding through a straw. And I am pudding. And I don't want to be pudding, I want to be back in my home with my crimson robe and my nameless familiar person and my almost chicken soup. I want to go back-
I WANT TO GO BACK!
And that's when I start fighting the atmosphere and moving against it like I am a combination of a swimmer and a runner and a really pissed off cat. But that steady suck of atmosphere is relentless and I am going up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up- and everything below is lots of dots and I look around and realize I am a part of a constellation although I still can't remember the name of it.
When I finally feel like the sucking is done and the realization that I'm not going back has finally sunk in, I try to stay angry and I try to be a mix of all the right emotions, like sorrowful and regretful and concerned about what will happen to that nameless familiar person- but I can't.
I'm up here, a part of this constellation looking around at everything, and I notice I am very shiny. Not like wake up in the morning and still haven't washed your face yet shiny, but shiny like the sun catches the surface of the ocean shiny and I feel like a deep gold, like, the deepest gold there is. And it is a good feeling.
And then I laugh, because I realize that all that worrying I did about blinking didn't matter, because I don't even need to blink anymore, and it wasn't even that important, but what I'm doing now is even more important then anything ever.
Saturday, 21 June 2008
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Currently Reading
The Flowers of Evil (Oxford World's Classics)
By Charles Baudelaire
see relatedWhen I Set You Away (though you'd already set yourself)
But there were only so many times you could touch me before the ice that built in you began to rest upon my cheek. Like a whale that’s been breached under the winter’s moonlight, so am I. We used to lay entwined the two of us. Such shelter we found amidst each other.And now your heartbeat follows your footsteps. And your breath is like starlight in my arms, feeling- I cannot grasp. It’s all I can do to hold on to what is left of you. Of us. When in life I took all I wanted, now you leave me with nothing but almosts.
In my mind,I find the way back to my favorite part of you- where your shoulder meets your neck- your skin so pale, your body tightly wrapped in mine.You always smelled of pears, so sticky sweet. I couldn’t help but taste.
But sometimes, something works its way between the cracks. Crawling and grasping, penetrating anything it finds. It spoils. It spoiled you. You weren’t ever meant to be touched like that. And I was never meant to promise you you wouldn’t be.
Too sweet my darling.
You were always too sweet. No one could look and not crave a taste of you.When I held you in my arms, I could only realize the irony of my tears, come too late.
I cannot follow, though I’ll take your ashes to the sea. The salt of the ocean carrying your scent away with it. Such waves, such temerity, wreaking havoc on what isn’t left of you. It doesn’t matter does it?
Ankles, knees, waist, chest, neck- it doesn’t matter.
I’ve lost you, you’re not coming back.
Saturday, 07 June 2008
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Currently Reading
Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art
By Susanne K. Langer
see relatedBeneath the Silt
When I wait for him by the river's edge, the things I've forgotten resurface in the corners of my mind, playing at the edges- half in sight, but diving beneath the surface when I turn my head. Like shoals of silver fish they glint in the light of my almost understanding, and then, they're gone. It's always like that now.And all I can think about is what it would be like to sever his tail from his body. I imagine it would be incredibly satisfying, like burying your arms deep down into the mud of the marsh, only more so. You only have to watch them to understand what I mean. That tail is what propels them through the water so fast that catching anything, even a six year old boy, requires no effort at all. I think that maybe if I can remove the tail, I'll stop dreaming about the leftover pieces that I kept finding for days afterwards.
I want to render him powerless. As powerless as I was when my voice and breath caught in my throat- nowhere to go but back inside of me strangling my heart and darkening the outer edges of my eyes. As I watched those jaws snap shut, I froze. And for years, that was all I was. Years and minutes and moments and nothing but stretching time- seeing nothing more than water stained with what had been my son.
But I am not frozen now. And all I can think is how will I catch him, how will I get past the bone, how will I feel, once it's over? Is there a release- will I feel sorrow, and not just ice flowing through my veins?
Or will that darkness come back to take all of me this time? Will it push me down to rot beneath the mud and silt?
Since then I've been watching from the shore, waiting and planning, until finally I'm ready.Spear in hand, I wait along the river's edge, holding onto roots to stay in place. With the water high above my head I surface for air only when I remember. Time now is the same as always- it stopped for me so long ago.
I wait until what I think are just shadows and the difference of darkness and light, quickly turn to limbs and claws and jaws so powerful my skull can feel the threat. From the mud and silt of the river bed, my feet slipping, heart pounding-
I do not lunge.
Instead, I find myself eclipsed. The late afternoon sun shines down on the water and silhouettes him- so that his eyes, brown but still so clear, catch the light and fragment it back through the current. His tail pushes him lazily along, and I watch, entranced and powerless by what I yearn for. As I watch him go, my breath grows short, and I rise slowly to the surface knowing that it's over. For the first time in months, I feel warmth spread through my body as I pull myself by reed and root up onto solid earth.
And lay here panting. Satisfied, and digging my arms deep down into the mud of the marsh and crying and gasping and underneath it all, overjoyed.
Friday, 23 May 2008
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Currently Reading
The Master and Margarita
By Mikhail Bulgakov
see relatedA Pear as Large as the Moon, and just as sweet
Our eyes met from across the room. I know, I know- it seems cliché, but this is how it really happened.
Myself, I’ve always said that because love is unpredictable and indefinable, it can’t be orchestrated, it can’t be learned or taught, and it certainly can’t be explained. So it goes to reason that love, therefore, cannot be bound by any set of rules. Love does not conform to expectations.
Maybe I had met her before. I myself find it hard to believe that I could simply look up, and fall in love. But there you have it. What can I say?
I could say “I love you.” I could walk up to her in the middle of her dinner and say “I love you.” Casually place my hand on the table and interrupt her quiet solitude for “I love you.”
“Excuse me miss- but, I love you.”
Would she even look up? She’d seen me, yes, at first, when our eyes had met, but perhaps that was simply an accident. She’d really been looking past me, or through me. Was I enough to occupy her view once more? I, with my unsubtle -but certainly invigorating- declaration of love, was I enough to coax those eyes from Bulgakov? Enough to tempt those lips from Darjeeling?
Enough for her to entertain for just a moment, one brief moment, the thought of reciprocity?
I think she will not see me as I leave. I think she will not think of me until tomorrow-
when we might meet again, and I am given another chance to say:
"I need you."
Friday, 02 May 2008
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Currently Reading
Animal Crackers
By Hannah Tinti
see relatedThe Eggshell Theory
It's harder for us real girls. The ones made of flesh and bone, not saline. 100% real, no additives-ever. That's me.
We used to peel hard boiled eggs at the sink- cracked porcelain- washed our hands with an old bar of Ivory soap, like our mothers taught us to scrub real hard, peel real carefully, so we wouldn't get cut on the egg shell. Hard boiled eggs and coffee so old it stained your tongue and your memories. Hit your stomach and made you really think. Made me think about an eggshell protecting a universe, my universe. Made me think about girls, think about me, think about me and girls and how my mother never taught me anything useful.
I sucked at the cut on my finger and washed the blood and tiny white shell pieces down the drain.
It's easy to pretend you care when you don't- sort of like crying when you cut up an onion- except the onion's optional. Love is tricky though. It's not as easy to pretend you're in love with somebody. Not like cutting an onion, not even like peeling an egg. It's much easier to get hurt.
When we felt like being bad we'd take off our pants and eat fried chicken on the couch. Toss our jeans to the floor and wiggle our toenails- painted different colors, depending on the time of year and what type of moods we were in. I always felt like my eyes lingered a little too long on her-
feet.
I am a real girl- a girl who drinks days old coffee and eats hard boiled eggs in her underwear, a girl who combs out her hair right after she gets out of the shower and wonders about what color to paint her toenails that don’t need to be painted, because no one will ever see them, except her. A girl who is capable of falling in love- but who would rather cut onions and think about an entire universe contained in a single white egg.
I am a 100% real girl.
And I have never been lonelier.
~*~
“Do you want some gum?” I asked her- that day on the beach was windy with a fair amount of rain- the occasional burst of ice cold precipitation that would just blast you on the back of the neck, long enough to make you wish you’d brought your jacket, short enough to make you change your mind about going back to the car.
“What kind?” She asked me, but before I had a chance to answer she’d grabbed my hand and opened it to check for herself. I loved that about her, that kind of intrusive intimacy that added so many layers to our relationship.
I forget what kind of gum it was, or whether or not she had had any. But later on, when I kissed her, down by the water’s edge, her breath tasted sharp and cool- like peppermint.
Her name was caramel melting in my mouth and her skin was soft underneath my calloused hands. I used to trace circles on her stomach as we lay in bed. Of all the girls I’d ever been around, she was the best at being soft. I talked to her about the universe a few times, but she wasn’t really interested.
There was this one girl who sang all the time, even though she wasn’t really good at it. And another who knew how to build a fire in all kinds of weather. There was one who could take things apart and put them back together, another who could peel an apple all in one peel. There was even one girl who knew how to make true darkness by putting her palms over my eyes. But I've only ever known one other 100% real girl.
Girls like her are few and far between. Girls like her eat fried chicken half naked on overstuffed couches and know all about eggshells, and stained memories. Girls like her are pitfalls for people who’d rather not fall in love.
~*~
I remember a time when everything was vintage, but we didn't call it that. When I was twelve, I spent the majority of my time at my mother's boutique, where everything smelled like lavender and even the air appeared to be purple. If there was ever a woman in the world more feminine then my mother, I hadn't met her. My mother reeked of femininity, which of course, smelled like lavender.
I smelled like summer- dirt and sunlight, grass stains and clean laundry.
I got my first kiss when I was twelve. That summer we were all down by the old Pepsi-Cola sign, it was a dare, more accurately a triple-dog dare, and no kid in their right mind who doesn't want to be labeled chicken for life refuses a triple-dog dare. The darer was a grungy kid, I'd picked that word up from my mother, dirt under his finger nails, hair that hadn't been washed in weeks- this was the kind of kid who never ever washed behind his ears.
"Kiss her." He said, pushing me.
"No way!" I had to protect her. From him, from me.
"Kiss her! C'mon, you guys spend so much time together anyway, you might as well get married!" His voice broke into that sing-song-y style kids our age used as emphasis, his mouth puckered and he made kiss-y lips in my direction.
The bastard.
"C'mon, I dare you."
"Go away!" I yelled, my fists raised. I could feel her trembling behind me.
I couldn't kiss her! Such an action surely meant humiliation for her. It was a different situation for me, I'd already been labeled the tom-boy sort, I'd only be in trouble if I refused the dare, but for her, it was a lose-lose situation.
If I kissed her, than she'd be the girl who'd been kissed by the tom-boy.
If I didn't kiss her than she'd be the girl who couldn't get kissed.
Such humiliations weigh heavily on the shoulders of twelve year olds. Little did any of them know that I'd been wanting to kiss her for a while. But not like this. Not in front of everyone. Not when she was standing there in the dirt, her sundress wrinkled from crawling under porches, tears streaming down her smudged face- her eyes so blue in the summer sun.
"C'mon, I double-dog dare you!" He smirked, hands on his smug little hips, as his cohorts whistled in awe behind him, their eyebrows lifting, eyes widening as the stakes were raised.
I grabbed for her wrist behind me- I knew what was coming, and I was getting us ready.
"Triple-dog dare you." His voice was strangely calm now. He knew he had me check and mate. I'd have to be out of my mind to back down from this one.
"Come on!" I yanked her arm and we took off running. We left them all in a cloud of dust so big when it cleared they were wondering whether or not it had all been a dream. At least that's what I hoped.
I led the way and she, brave, loyal soul that she was, followed me blindly, with complete and utter trust. I was, after all, her 'best' friend. Such a title carried with it more than just broken necklaces and slumber parties. I was her leader of sorts, in that summer of scraped knees and tadpoles, I was her teacher and I had one more thing to show her.
When we finally stopped we were both so out of breath we had to sit down on the pavement and drool for a while, squinting in concentration trying not to throw up. A few minutes later we looked at each other, our faces split with goofy smiles, tears in our eyes.
I leaned over then, and kissed her. On the lips, where it counts. I was no chicken and she and I both knew it.
Of course, that was the summer before I learned that kissing girls is not allowed.
My mother came hurtling out of her boutique trailing streams of lavender smoke like purple fire behind her. In our haste I'd brought us to the one place I thought we'd be truly safe. Instead, I ended up stuffing more bags of potpourri that summer than I'd ever hoped to stuff in my life.
I didn't see her again until eighth grade started that fall. But when I did, she didn't seem as happy to see me as I was to see her.
Life's like that.
My eggshell was more fragile back then.
Over the years I've built it up to be stronger, better. Tougher. The only downside to having a thicker shell, is if it breaks, you'll get cut worse than you ever got cut before.
And if you break- who'll be there to pick up the pieces?
~*~
I met her in one of those culture markets downtown. The kind that refers to everything as fresh and homegrown. She was buying coffee and cigarettes, my kind of woman. Later that night, back at my apartment, she and I smoked cigarettes and drank our way through two bottles of red wine before we realized, life was nothing like either of us had expected.
She was gorgeous, even more so with the water cascading around her shoulders and breasts. She leaned into me to turn the water tap to hot, and as her hands slid down my back she whispered in my ear-
"Nothing is ever what you expect it to be."
She was right.
I used to know a girl, who was 100% authentic. I kissed her once. But the thing is, people change, and nothing is ever what you expect it to be. She's probably not 100% anymore. Come to think of it, neither am I.
Ma_Malai
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- Name: Darcy
- Birthday: 6/6/1986
- Gender: Female
- Member Since: 10/2/2007
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About Me
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"The first time I met her she didn't know how to fly. In fact, she didn't even have any feathers. None that I could see anyway, but then again, she was always pretty good at hiding things. Like the first time we slept together when she took off her shirt and I saw she wasn't really as heavy chested as her padded bra had led me to believe. It’s funny, the only thing I can remember thinking about that- as I hugged her close to me and reminded her that I loved her for her mind and not her breasts- was why did she even bother? Seemed to me that worrying about what other people thought of you was a pretty good waste of time. I told her that, and later, she threw away all of her lacies and started wearing sports bras. She told me once, over coffee, that when she was younger she knew how to fly. Honest, she’d said, really and truly. Sometimes I wonder if I knew, too. And maybe I just forgot."
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Trying to update more, means, writing more. New computer. Good goal...
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Listening to Tori Amos, making foccacia bread and gardening. Also reading Winter Rose by Mckillip. Wondrous.
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Editing and working on my chapbook.... COFFEE.
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