nude bodies remind me of death.  maggots, liquefaction.  bloat.  seepage.  i know too much about the mechanics of decay.  couple vivid knowledge with an obsessive, whirlpool consciousness like mine and you get the weirdest, most difficult sex life this side of the law. 

at least, if you're in my head. 

if you're naked on top of me, you're probably having a great time and, decidedly, not being attacked by thoughts of the actual noise maggots make when feeding on decaying flesh. 

meanwhile, the rest of normal human women writers are busy with seduction, romance, adventure. 

my throat is a piano, but my fingertips are all stringed instruments.  my inner thighs are tribal drums and my eyes are my voice. 

when i cry, my forearms ache along the inside all the way to the ends of my thumbs and forefingers.  have you ever wanted someone so bad your teeth itched?  i have. 

red is male, but not a man like green is.  seven is a woman in heels.  blue is a woman, too, a deaf-mute with thin hands.  eight is male, and nine too.  but two is female.  october tastes like cinammon, december like juniper berries.  summer tastes like salt.  spring tastes like dirt, except for the last part of may, which doesn't taste like anything but feels like the stuffing inside teddy bears and makes me feel sick.

circles hum and triangles shriek.  squares giggle.

so there you have it.  a starter list of why i can't talk to anyone.

my Babyrat has a tumor.  matter of time and all.  it's funny---intellectually, i can accept the fact of a rat's short life.  i've been a rat mommy since i was a little girl.  lots of Babyrats over the years.  but it's still hard.  she's my Babyrat.  she's furry and sweet.  and her lifetime is almost spent.

from now on she gets all the damned cookies she wants.

Rotten Crabmeat Smell in Cabinet

help: I need some
advice
about getting the rotten fish juice

out of my car seat ...
out of the nooks
and crannies with a tooth brush,

dipped
in baking soda

so, at work, i find out that one of my baristas is good friends with an old friend from junior high school who i actually have a long history with and haven't talked to since, well, about 1993.  which is kind of sad because he was my best friend in junior high and we spent a lot of time together back then.  i actually ran into Friend a few days ago but didn't recognize him.  he's changed quite a bit.  anyway, i managed, (really wasn't a struggle,) to talk Barista into setting up a small-stakes poker game for which Friend will be present.  it's going to be weird seeing him again.  good weird, though.  he was a nice guy back in The Day.  a nice jewish boy, to exercise a cliche.  hopefully will be pleasant to catch up. 

when i moved here, (why oh why i'll never truly understand,) i swore to myself that i'd avoid my past like one might wish to avoid an angry wombat.  (there is surprisingly little difference between my past and an angry wombat, actually.  or, for that matter, any smallish marsupial.)  but the past, as Utah Phillips wisely said, doesn't go anywhere.  and it didn't.  i started running into people, literally, the day i arrived here.  and it hasn't stopped.  i'm still trying to figure out how to be comfortable with it.

on a somewhat different note, i tried taking Celexa again.  and was, once again, reminded why i stopped taking Celexa in the first place:  i am a poster child for the side effects of this drug.  i experience them all.  nausea, headache, trembling, palpitations, vertigo, dizziness, intrusive (an extremely disturbing) thoughts, violent and generally bizarre dreams, anorgasmia, appetite disturbances, memory problems, difficulty concentrating, insomnia, restlessness, anxiety, panic attacks, bruxism/teeth-grinding, sweating...the list, impossible as it may seem, goes on.  this drug is HELL on me.  i don't know why i took it for as long as i did or even how i managed to.  the side effects vastly outweigh the intended effect of the drug.  it's kind of fucked up when you can honestly say that, given the choice between indescribable sadness, on the one hand, and taking a certain drug, (that doesn't, by the way, so much "lift" the depression as make you an emotionless robot,) to NOT feel said indescribable sadness, you'd pass on the drug.  and, if any of you know me, you know that there are very few psychoactive pharmaceuticals i will not use, for whatever reason.  so to have a full bottle of Celexa sitting on my desk and knowing i'll never take it again is saying a lot for how shitty those pills make me feel.

what else is new...

oh yes.  the agency that is handling my claim sent me a letter a few days ago informing me that they're offering me a lump-sum settlement to close my case.  i'm taking it.

and other stuff is new, too.  but nothing anyone but me would care to read about.

i got invited to a party this weekend (me?  invited to a party?  do they know that i play bridge and read books?  without pictures in them?  for FUN?)  and i'm trying to decide whether or not to go.  i haven't been invited to a real party since, um, yeah i can't remember when.  get-togethers, sure---where the alcohol is fine wines, the company is in their late thirties/early forties, the conversation is a mix of battle-strategics and knitting (they CAN go together,) and everyone is sleepy by midnight.  those are the "parties" i love.  those are the ones i feel comfortable at.  this is, decidedly, not going to be one of those parties.  this party is going to be vodka, tequila, a bunch of people from work, a bunch of people who are friends of people from work, (many of whom are under the age of 20, which is problematic in itself,) pizza and chips, and, surely, someone getting naked.  yeah, THAT kind of party.  i know they won't miss me if i don't show up---on the other hand, if i don't show up, i'll be the ONE person from work who got invited and didn't show.  maybe i can make a really, really brief appearance?  or maybe i can just BE that loser who would rather stay home and play with her rats and read her National Geographic.

i AM that loser, damnit.

hmm.

i'm going to bed.

i want to be sucked backward through my life to the dark floor of your beach-house where we made a kind of love like moonlight makes to all those words that never graduate from the factory line but hover, a tense vapor of erotic fear leaching from the fissure between my body and yours.

fuck thursday.

she thinks beauty is
her mouth, sacrificed
in glossy red before congregations of stares.  she thinks
beauty is her breasts
wrapped in silk and lace like heirloom
ivory carvings.  she thinks beauty is
what does or does not
reflect itself back to her when she faces the mirror
each morning.  some transient,
arbitrary thing as fragile as a berry.

most of the time i think beauty is
an old man sitting
on a stool
in his garage
on an august night choked
with the smoke of wildfires.  again and again
inventing hot slivers of trout from nothing
but tinfoil and a smile.  four cats rapt at his feet.

i really, really, really like alanis morissette.  i really like her.  really really.

 i feel like i should probably be a little bit sorry about that, too.  but i'm kind of not.  i guess my generation just flopped out there.  and i should probably tuck it back in and whistle nonchalantly as if nothing terribly embarrassing has just taken place, but i don't really want to.  i like her.

 and, as an added bonus, she's weird looking.  some might go so far as to say she's "homely" or even ugly.  they'd be wildly off-base, of course... 

i like weird looking people.  i like how their beauty surprises you.  it's there all the time, but it's not vulgar and obvious like other beauty.  i like how you have to "glimpse" it.  how it feels surreptitious and naughty and giddy and cool.  how you feel like you're getting away with something. 

i think you're not who i thought you were.  you and i are alike and we are not alike.  more not-alike than alike anymore.   i am falling out of love with you.  it feels a bit like lifting oneself out of...

i remember twelve.

thick summer air, june-beetles drowning crunchy deaths in chlorine puddles.  how, after a hundred yards of butterflying, i would dissolve into a red thrum attached to a small pair of hands gripping the cold cement wall of a pool.  waiting for something like strength to seep into or gather together in or evolve out of the fibers of every muscle.  and i would eventually take a breath, deep and sharp, and lift myself out of the water and into the bite of a cool country wind.  my arms shaking, my thighs burning, my feet numb, my mouth a mess of baby lips and smile. 

no bed as soft as a dry towel stretched under bleachers.  no food as delicate, as magical as jell-o powder licked from pickled, papery fingertips. 

i haven't since loved a single moment of my life as sincerely as all those moments i didn't know i should be loving.  moments fattened now on the passing of years.