forty ounces of social skills.

i’m feeling really frustrated artistically this week, really useless and not quite good enough. nothing i shoot says what i want to say, and everything i want to say leaves me with an uncomfortable feeling in my throat, like a pebble lodged there, keeping the words in my brain from coasting out on my tongue, like admitting love and wanting to be loved is weakness. like loneliness and being lost in the city i want to give myself over to completely is not something to scream about. like i’m maudlin and weak and need to just keep my head down, dodge my friends and make it through this month in silent exile.

sometimes i miss drinking more.
sometimes i miss you, and everything, even though we both know we were bad news, coasting from town to town with no set direction and lots of pills.
sometimes i want to look cover my face, punch my soft stomach, rip the skin off my arms and sell everything i own, and most days i want to be braver.
i want to show you.
i want you to see.
i want you to recognize that maybe i’m ok. maybe i’m special too.

and i wonder if she will stay my little run away.

i stayed still for too long and it’s come back to get me, grabbing at my heels in the early mornings, sitting on my chest like a night terror, luring me into a series of bad ideas and poorly planned adventures. my brain clicks and my fingers itch and i am always trying to figure out the nearest highway, my fists sore from clenching, a hundred possible destinations calculated in my head, weighed by financial means and ambitions. i will leave tonight, i will leave tomorrow. i will leave every afternoon this week, a woman with ten sweaters and a cardboard sign, begging desperately for direction.

but my knees creak, and my temples slowly go gray, and all the people i loved and love have either grown up or gone home, and i wonder if i am too old for this.

i walk along the sidewalk, skidding on the ice in my slip ons, walking on the curb like a balance beam, arms bent at the elbows, a child’s walk, and a soft sad face, scarred legs, beat up feet, a long story and a farmer’s tan. and i wonder what will become of me.

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.

where the soco is warm in your mouth

and i lean against the door frame, pot belly. not pretty, picking at my skin, my scars. the same old stories and the same old songs, counting off the minutes on my dirty fingers.
(do you dare-)
i do.
and i expect this whole fucking city to challenge me.

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.

he asked if this was ok.

all these years.
i gave them to you.
stuffed in the pockets of your jeans
and your sweaters.
folded and tucked behind the tongues of your shoes.

smart face.

stubborn body.

i

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

calmly waiting to make you my lamb.

sometimes all you need to do is lie on your living room floor and sing along to the songs blaring on your stereo.