open letter.

Freight trains move fast. Like people, and time, and days, and changes. My friend Travis wrote a song… One of the lines is “Days fly by like trees along the rails.” The banjo is picky and mounrful in that song. It picks up and falls back like a heartbeat. Like a train. We love trains, us crazy people. We love travel. We have a love/hate relationship with change. We all think we’re going to stay the same forever, or the same with just subtle differences.
We don’t.
It’s ok.
We just don’t.

These days it is cold, and I wear three sweaters and a thick scarf when I walk from my apartment to work to the bar to my apartment. I kick garbage and leaves out of my way when I am in a bad mood and stomp in puddles when I am in a good one. If I run into someone I know, I get a hug and a high five. My days in and of themselves don’t change much. My life however, is so different, yet not all that surprising. I have a retail job at the mall. I dumpster dive. I champion causes. I sleep outside in the summer because I can. I stay up all night at house shows. I make street art. I want to start skateboarding again because it’s better than biking. It takes me place to place and makes me think of other times when I lived in my parents house and my belly was always full, I never had my own bills and my clothes were newish and cleanish always.

I get hungry sometimes now. Sometimes I’m cold, but I am always happy. It’s weird what we own and learn to own up to. I have a cat who sleeps in my lap every night when I come home and kisses my face when I wake up. I have a string of ex-boyfriends who still talk to me, I have a group just strong enough and just mobile enough that when I leave them, I won’t leave that. That something, that whatever.
I’m restless.
I’m changing. I need to change. I guess it’s just in me, you know? That motion. it sits in my heart, and moves around my chest and pushes and pulls me forward. I’m restless as hell, but I think it’s in the best way possible. Does your new city do that to you? or do you love it there? I hope you love it there for now, but I hope you get restless later. Restlessness is good. It keeps you young and and powerful and just scared enough. Some days are terrifying for me and I sort of love it.

I saw a tall kid the other day, waiting for the bus. There was a shorter girl beside him. He had a skateboard and was making dumb voices at her. She covered her face and laughed. I thought of you and me and being dumb and sixteen. I miss that sometimes.

This all seems very vague in retrospect, so let me just spill my guts.
I am good. I am great. I am hyper and lonely and filled up as hell and waiting for the time to pass. My mother thought I lost my mind for awhile and so did I, but then I realized I am just the happiest I have ever been and half drunk on possibility. She is better with things now. We both are.
We’ve changed.

when we made a god of the revolution and it did not come for us.

so i will be the first to admit it. we’ve had our ins and outs and our ups and downs. we’ve not exactly been consistent. there was a time when i believed in you whole heartedly, with all my teenage being. you were going to get me out of this world, and you were going to carry us all into a place where we could be happy, and safe, and everyone else would have to admit we were right, once and for all. and after all this torture and punishment for your cause, we’d have won the peace we swore was coming all along. i believed in you so badly it hurt. everything i did was for you. i brushed my teeth, i dived in dumpsters and gave away my belongings freely in your name.
i went to sleep every night excited for the changes the next day would bring.
i prepared enthusiastically for your eventual arrival, me and my friends, drinking, sitting around, singing our songs in your name. it was an exciting time and we were excited people, depending on your homecoming.

but you did not come.
night after night i laid waiting and you did not come.
in my drafty bedroom, aching with bruises, you did not come.
in the back seat of the car on the spare lot, you did not come.
in the parking lot of the mall,
in the hopsital,
in the home,
in the halls of the school,
and in my dorm you did not come.
and i was left all alone, defenseless and laughed at.

i won’t lie to you. it was hard to believe in you then, and those 2 or 3 years were the darkest of my life. the moment when my belief had faded from proud, to simply quiet and private to nothing at all. i was alone with myself, and nothing was coming to my rescue. nothing would make all of this worth it. it would not weigh out into bigger or better things. it was meaningless, null and void, and i was hip deep and the water was rising.

i slept a lot for those years. i faded in and out of life. i made myself up into something i was not. i convinced myself my old ideas were child’s play. my brain ticked routinely in my robot body, and every beat of my heart said ‘all for naught.’
i knew how the people of israel felt then. i was surely lost in the desert and no god would extend his fingers and point my way home.
another dress. another lipstick. another paper and another three hour nap.

i dropped out of school and told my mother i couldn’t figure out what happened to me. i couldn’t piece it together. i used to be bright and brave, and now i was scared of everything. fading fast. a rumpled thing with a crooked haircut and dirty clothes i hated in an overpriced apartment with things i did not want or need. i didn’t know where i had gone so horribly wrong.
and then i felt it.
small and quiet at first and then louder in behind the beats of my sad heart in my chest.
freedom.

slow at first and then gaining speed until it was uncontrollable, and i was shocked at the way you came back to me. whisked me up in your arms, sent me to others like us, and promised me you were coming, you had come, you would collect the others soon but for now it was our time and we ought to prepare because this is just the beginning.
please tell me this just the beginning.
tell me i need to prepare.

i can feel it.

we were alone when we went into the city. it was a little different than you had pictured it, but i told you there was no point in minding too much.
you know how these things go. and besides, we had all been together when we left. me with my broke down sneakers, and the pants with the patches on the knees and the old hoodie. some kid left over and ready for a fight. you with the sweater he gave you. our eyes were black from crying and exhaustion and the overwhelming sensation of enthusiasm.

“there are more of us out there,” you told me, pointing wildly as we slouched down st. cats. “i can feel it.”
i can feel it.
i put my hand over my heart, over my eyes, over my mouth and i can feel it.
this lovely grown up club for two that we’ve established, and i can feel it like the freight trains and free rides we’ve long for, thundering through my body and coming out of my chest.
promises.
tires.
tracks.
whatever.
run down soles of over priced badly made shoes.
whatever.
thumb holes coated in grime and snot.
whatever.
a whole lot of whatever and a whole lot of no more biding time as something pulls our bodies forward, a coffee and fuck off fueled exodus.

i can eat later.
i can sleep when i am dead.
i can sit up reading for days.
i can find these other bodies. i can make sense of these other maps that lead us back to each other and lead me right to you, hand in hand, the same wild eyes face.
i can feel it.

i

am a terrible sister to you.
and i am so sorry.

the present

i found this the other day when i was going through my files. it is incomplete, but i think i may try and add to it.

It didn’t happen like she thought it would. Blood bounces on the ice, it doesn’t stick. She thinks back to all the hockey games she watched her brother play. Gloves off, masks tossed aside and punches thrown. The blood always bounced, then pooled in thick gel, dark like candy.

***

Sooz squats over The Body. Fingers twitch against the snow. She shivers and wipes her nose against her sleeve, pulls her stocking hat down further, and then stuffs her hands in the front pocket of her hooded sweatshirt. Her knees dig into her chest as she rocks back and forth onto her heels. Thick ropes of black red blood pull against the soles of her boots and try and keep her still, but lose their battle against her inertia. There is not much to be done now. The boys are gone. All that remains of their presence in the alley is a broken bottle, some large boot prints disintegrating into a bloody circle, a blood soaked ball cap, and this, this Body. They did this for her, or so they say. They told her this is the creep that tried to grab her in the bar. This is the creep that tried to rape her in the bathroom. Whether or not he is, Sooz can’t say. There is no real face to identify, and his clothes are torn and soaked in blood. When the cops come, they will have to search for his wallet, take his fingerprints, gather what they can of his teeth and check his dental records. There will be no open casket.
If there is a casket. Sooz is pretty sure The Body is dead, but she can’t be certain.
It is doing a pretty good imitation.

***

Even with most of his head gone, he is heavy. Sooz is not a tiny girl. She is thin, but not skinny. She’s taller than average, but not abnormally so. Regardless, the ice is thick in spots, and the lot is uneven. Her feet skid as she yanks The Body by the calves over the spare lot past the alley towards the railway bed. She’ll leave his pockets for the transients to poke through, and his boots for the hobos, but it’s taking longer than she anticipated, and she leaves bits of The Body behind as she goes a long. A little skull, a little gore, still fingers marking trails in the snow. Body this way! Sooz can’t help but grin with each yank and each scramble for purchase against the slick pavement. She slips and groans as the ice and snow resist her and her special package, gift wrapped and sent from the boys. Her new special present who followed her home, her new mess to clean up. At the edge of the ravine, she will push him. She hopes he will roll.

dullsville

We went outside for an hour and he squatted beside her, humming into her ear on the step.
While I imagined that I was invisible,
Tiny and gone.
Crawling between my ears and staying.

Now I’m counting you among the casualties.
On that list
Of people I pretty much didn’t bother calling anymore
Because you just weren’t interested
And I suppose I’ve never been that interesting.
Just this big lumbering quiet thing
With paint stained everywhere
Staring down into her
Liquor store bag
Picking her dirty fingernails
And looking for an excuse to leave.

just amatuer.

If this city were a man you would have left him long ago. Dirty, and always the same, parading the same egos wearing the same sunglasses. He’s never on time and takes you to the same bars you hate every time you go out, if you do go out at all. He’s never left his early college years emotionally, and you are getting tired of the same old thing. The same old bands, the same old spot in the commons, same old boyfriends, same old you. You wear the same leggings every morning under a slightly different t-shirt and the same cardigan under a hoodie grown stiff with dirt and patches. You are gray like the city has made you. Gray like the buildings themselves. Gray like your eyes. Sometimes blue, but underneath always that same shade of slate like a hard heart and an empty head.

So you do silly things, like drink martinis, buy red sunglasses and yellow shoes, spend too much money on eyeshadow that is electric green. You wear bright scarves over those same t-shirts and change your shoe laces from black to blue. A dressed up rag doll trying to look fetching in the face of nothing in particular. Just amateur and aging in the dim light where the overpass ends, and the north end begins. Your feet, your home, your life. The corner of your street.

better get back to juding books by their covers.

these people are guests in my home. if i had taken you to any of their homes, they would have been courteous and respectful to you as a courtesy to me, and because they’re good people and would have wanted both you and i to be comfortable, and all you could do was disrespect them based on their looks and lifestyles. so not only did you embarrass yourself, you embarrassed me and made my home a place my guests felt unwelcome in.

thanks.

it’s hard for me to kick against the pricks.

I will play the greats, my greats. Cash, Danzig, Williams, Allin, Cave, Strummer, Rollins, and Young. I will fill my living room with the aggressive male sounds of Bad Brains, Black Flag, Birthday Party, Clash, Queers, GG, GBH. Assaulting myself in noise to dodge this obnoxious and evident silence.

Loneliness is best combated by punk rock.

they just get younger, don’t they, baby?

Sometimes I think I’ve got nothing left.