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. 

so i'm out shopping and i wander into this jewelry/accesories store and i see...

a pair of paperclip earrings.  for seven dollars.

let me emphasize again, PAPERCLIPS.  like, the little metal things you use to bind documents together. 

it was, at that point, that i realized just how profoundly i do not belong.  in the mall.  in this society.  on earth.

i left the store and went home.

seven dollars for paperclip earrings.  that has got to be the biggest markup in the history of commerce.  they're office supplies.  office supplies, people.

punk is so, so dead.

as it turns out, i'm good at poker. 

i am terrified of the fact that i could do anything i ever dreamed of.  i am paralyzed by the realization that i can be the person i always wanted to be.  i don't know what to do with that.  i don't know what it will mean for me if i start behaving like an individual who profoundly understands her personal power.  her responsibility. 

who am i when i am not who i am right now?  who am i when i stop being this weak, frightened thing that i am?  who am i when i start living my life?  

will i lose friends?  what will happen to me?  what will happen to the people around me? 

words here words here words here.  and here and here.  words here that were erased, more words that were erased.  words that took their place and were also, later, erased.  words here and here.  more words.  frustrated scream here, tissue box thrown at the computer screen here.  laughter here and headache here and no more words.

oh, go to the mall.

narcotic 

that bless-ed cotton-headed
buzz that fucks itself 
slow
and
sweaty
in to a
sweet
sleep, dark and meaningless and warm.