it�s just me and the stars and eternity. i was happier when i was sad. life is stitched in funny ways except my seams are ripped. michael is still snorting cocaine down in the basement and i just kiss his hands. all melodic and staged. he�s so perfect that i�m not talented enough to even start describing him.

the first time we met, michael left his shoes on the front porch. he had a bottle of Guinness lager in his left hand and was swallowing it quickly. he looked all right. not too bad considering that he was so desperate.

�what can i do you for?�

�well. i�d heard that you were..�

�hm?�

�i heard you.. um.� he gestured with his hands.

�i�m not good at charades.�

�well. i thought maybe.. i�ve been having bad luck and... well, i�d pay you of course if that�s how this works.�

�oh? you want to sleep with me?� he looked nervous.

�yeah. i guess.� he looked off into the distance. of course i�d known.

�you really believe that i can help you?�

�you�re a pretty bitchy whore.�

�then lets fuck� he blushed and finished his lager. i rolled my eyes and pulled out a condom. that�s how i met michael.

i always try to be part of a culture that doesn�t exist. maybe it�s like masturbating and never getting off, or kissing inanimate objects. pointless practice and i cut out paper dolls that look a bit like michaels silhouette and nod understanding his addiction.

At 45 my mother has not even begun to approach her dreams. she keeps them in cardboard boxes for later. when it starts to rain i just cry and she talks about the divorce and how worthless men are. we feed seagulls in the mcdonalds parking lot and i feel okay. the rain gets heavier on the drive home and we pull over and i curl up on the seat next to her. fall asleep curled up like a cat. i�m afraid of my father coming back and breaking whats left of the family apart.

i sat peeling sunburned skin off my arm in the parking lot while we waited for sarah. lai was figuring out how many syllables were in my name. chlo-e ash-ley. she�d learned english only a few years earlier from someone who taught her that the trick of speaking the language perfectly was to count syllables. so there we were.

i hauled out a calvin and hobbs comic and giggled. cal-vin and hobbs i heard her say. i took her hand and grinned. she had learned about american culture through magazines and a few rush records her father had brought back when he was in the service in china. i�m a real tom sawyer she�d proclaim laughing and i was in love with that. lai had a nice car. small and shiny. we�d ride it up and down congress street beeping, waving, smiling at strangers and nearly swerving off the road laughing.

i fixed my hair in knots in the sun visor mirror and cringed at my funny reflection. i like girls and boys, apples, dogs and that sums me up. sarah got in the car and pulled a new pavement record out of her jacket. we were too cheap to pay those capitalist bastards. i smiled at lai and she pulled out into traffic.

we ate sushi under the bridge that hovered over the piscataqua river and listened to beat dandy. we did this every sunday and we were like family. we were growing up on the shores of portsmouth, nh. lost our virgin qualities to each other. i pulled barnacles off the cement pillars while sarah told us about her theft. lai didn�t like to hear it. i would stay awake waiting for lai�s breathing to become calm to whisper secrets about michael. we lived two blocks away from one another and the city was ours for the taking.

lai played violin on the wet grass and sarah and i would spin around for hours until the night had taken over and we�d collapse with my mother smiling over us.

i watch the stars come out. there�s someone new in the solar system my mum says every time someone dies and i believe her. there�s a star for all of us. someday it will shine for me. i lie and make shadows into shapes that please me. you said you�d always tell me the truth.

i read old letters, jukebox playing in the living room. old dylan tunes. my mum thinks those are just the best. �bobby was the best in his day�. ah. michael used to listen to prettier things and i can�t think of anyone than him that i�d rather hear sing along. the only thing that could turn me on was duran duran. we had our phobias still. like i was afraid of bacteria. i avoid it. wash my hands compulsively. blood feels like bacteria running through my veins and that scares me most. when i was a kid all i wanted from life was someone to drink, smoke and fuck with. i�m starting to wonder how i ever left behind that dream.

mum wakes up at five by her mental clock. she gets up and takes a shower, walks about the house naked, smiling. she�s a strange kind of art. she sees a guy named jonathan who has no idea about anything. he thinks she loves him and wants to spend the rest of her life with him.

mums always suicidal lately. she drives around hoping she�ll get hit. cup of coffee balanced between her thighs, flipping through the stations trying to find bob dylan. seeing her cigarette glow in the rearview mirror, she sings crudely, unappreciative. jonathan loves dylan too. huh. the car smells like pine tree air freshener today as she drives me to school. i get there. hey, michael. i slip away, i slip away. it�s insane that things are so unclear so you know it�s really saying something when i say i want you here. youre just like a popsong, kid.

my moms at work. staggering in from her nicotine buzz. the avant-garde entry simply a ploy to attract cheap business. it was a big mistake to work anywhere that the elevator hadn�t worked in for more than 3 years. mom says the secretary is hot. she lies, too.

carrie is the secretary. her hair is long, bleached blonde, and curly. she reminds me of a low budget porn star. her skirt is far too short. the office smells like smoke, no doubt from carrie. everything in the office is pretty cheap. my mom is in charge of sales analysis.

mum suggested lesbianism to the secretary. now they spend the nights together. i hear them talking and holding each other. it�s cute in a way. at least carrie has pretty eyes and soft skin. sex is a paradox, i just wished i had someone to hold.

they�d fuck in the office. she describes her warmth close to her and feeling a hollowness in her stomach like the feeling the first time you heard a choir. an exceptional seduction that demi-gods would become depressed watching, like trying not to cry and making it worse.

jonathan still visits and enjoys the live-in �roommate�. mom just cries when he says he loves and needs her. i pity him and sometimes tell him mum�s more interested in his sister than she is in him.. he smiles.

the ball dropped in times square and it became 2000. almost 2001 and where�s my space odyssey? i sat watching tv with an angsty desire to see mass destruction, television networks crumble beneath some terrorist bombing but alas nothing. jonathan and mom kiss and i being me, envy them. everyone cheers and i just talk in a fake british accent about the days when mum and i used to play the spoons and get drunk on maui laui.

i saw michael on new years. it made me miss him more. it was strange. i was drugged and the room was just spinning and he was glowing. it was all very beautiful. i wished i�d brought him june bugs.

but like my friend sarah says, why sell out now?

suddenly i feel like i�m running out of time. i swallow glass and throw up diamonds. lying here on the pavement, like a worm drowning. i pretend every second of my life is being filmed and that you�re watching. that way there�s always meaning.

�i�m tired.�

�you just woke up�.

�i know, you make me tired. you�re so boring�.

�shut up. silly.� michael scrunches up his face.

He�s watching a movie. i squint and wish i had my contacts in. �halfcocked�. uh.

�michael, can we go to strawberry bank and look at all the flowers? they�re heaven this time of year and we can steal a bunch to decorate with.�

�i�m watching a video.�

�and is that video more important than time with your favorite friend?� so we�d swirl our mouths around and he used to say �i could never go blind doing what i do� and i�d just smirk.

*

hours later we found ourselves in the car. getting ourselves some type of drug. anything to make me stop remembering things.i put on my sunglasses and smile. it�s a bright day, void of loneliness. we�re the only ones really breathing and what we breathe is life. everyone and everything else is on respiration. we listen to 80�s music and i sing along.

i hear your footsteps rushing through snow and mud and sleet, i can hear my name in an erotic song and i just kissed anyone who was around. sex is just sex he�d mouth and warm breath would condense on the windows in the cold air. there were a thousand shattered mirrors and bodies, maybe hearts for your collage, scintillating in the headlights.

he gets back in the car tossing whatever in the back. i just watch the landscape until everything blurs and my head hurts. the trees are moving faster by the car. i squint in the sun and stare out the windshield. i wish i, too, were immortal.

today is my moms birthday. she got a card from dad with a month of my child support that he hasn�t paid for a few years. she gave me it and told me to get out, the years only get uglier. so i talked to strangers and stepped on cracks and walked under ladders for her.

i knew every character. i was ivy and he�d weave his fingers through me, stained glass lining the tunnels of my vision. reading dog eared books and knowing he�d be back to grow that garden someday, that every bit of him was aesthetic when it was inside me.

so michael and i head out and take all of the powder in the bag. he�s making lines on the dashboard while i chatter endlessly about what i really want and expect from life. he falls asleep or passes out. i trace his outlines with my fingers. he�s cold, claylike. i hold his clammy hands for moments, then hold his cold, frosty face. so i try to kiss him just to see if he�ll wake up. forcing my tongue through his partially opened lips to see if he feels it. he doesn�t. so i dissolve into cold leather seats.

his eyes are watery.i said �i am the drug abuser and you are my drug.� he smiles. i stretched. i hold on to the missed opportunity. i explain to myself that i can�t always pretend. that i�m in love with an idea and not a person. i put my head back and moan. and sniffle.

i really loved his laugh. loved his smile. maybe accumulated interest is love. but i don�t know. i guess optimism is the answer. sometimes i just want to fuck him under the ice of a frozen pond and we�d make our way to the top gasping for air but instead be in endless winter forever.

i don�t know if i�m really in love. i guess it�s my age. i sort of wish i were, just to feel something. michael pretends to be things too. pretends he really cares about what happens and then does something dumb. he gets twisted and desperate, it�s marvelous to see. so i got slapped across the face for crying. mom says that i would never break your heart and it�s all i hoped for.

we can be anything, we can be anyone. so lets start today. make a new beginning. you in me and i in you. even if you don�t believe, it�s worth it to pretend. i�m easy. i�m so easy and i think i love you.

i drink caffeinated drinks and stay awake. hoping memories won�t fade. staring at the tv set. i can�t eat or sleep and these mornings come too soon. lai sleeps beautifully in the other room and sarah sits around making rude gestures that make us both giggle like hell. we poke one another in the ribs and yell about her daniel. she�s hiding behind a coffee cup with the sun rising through her. for one new york minute, she�s stolen the show.

sarah pulling on her alligator skin boots and cowboy hat. country music playing and tapping her cigarrette on the ash tray while reading the paper at the kitchen table. noises in her throat remarking on the morning news. i make her eggs and coffee. she looks up when i set it down and she thanks me. i drink orange juice, the extra pulp kind and rub my lipstick off the rim of the glass. make sure she�s happy and hearing him walking up the dirt driveway.

i never thought i�d find her cold and smooth against me. finding the place to put my fingers inside her. she�s not normal anymore. she�s stronger than i ever thought anyone could be. she�s moving inside me, todays she�s masculine and beautiful and i�ve got the feeling that if i swallow it�ll be over. she�s the antithesis of good. she�s so pretty when she uses the word fuck. i couldnt be any less of a person if she werent around

i just knew what felt good when i was 13. movements never reaching a pinnacle. no fucking was really fucking. it was just movement until you were so wet and she wanted it so bad you could smell her. but there was only movement so pure and innocuous. clawing at the sheets and waiting for that moment that it would end. you know the kids at school just dont understand and if they know, there will be no more showing one another your underwear

tell lai i dream of old men biting my fingernails and boys fucking my ears.

i was swallowing semen while other girls were learning their abc�s, i say laughing. you say these days are never ending but i keep looking around and seeing things closing. fuck. his name is so common but i just get sick every time i hear it.

nothing is what it seems. touching her thighs and she�s so tight, we keep going. she�s not who i wanted her to be. she�s not michael. light fades into the shadows and my best friend is moving, years of love running liquid over my fingers. transforming into this hippogriff who steals whats left of my dreams and i cant look her in the eyes anymore. not with her orgasm on my hands. we�ll never be the same because she never smiles without that look in her eyes.

she didnt mean to be this bad and she�s more or less a thousands rocks under your back when you�re stretching across landscapes, your spinal cord is a telephone wire and youre just the operator. they�re ringing up philadelphia through your neck and boston through your heart.

still drying my face from the rain that ran down it, room sprayed thick with perfume and a chemical taste forming in the back of my throat. she�s listening to cat stevens. i work for a company. i write news. i tell it like it is.

like what you want to hear.

the bed is spinning and my mind is picking up the abstract contours of furniture. i look feverishly toward the door. my hair is sticky on my forehead. i stare at the white ceiling. pain runs down the sides of my body so i kick down the sheets. things are too complex so i just smile. i muster enough strength to get up and take a shower. i write a novel during breakfast, eat cheerios. sunshine in a box. i vomit. gawd, i vomit for ya.

when there�s nothing to do, sometimes i wish i were someone else. some mornings i am.

�you�re such a lazy girl,� my mum says smiling. she hums and makes eggs for herself. she�s been happy since she started taking prozac. life, y�know it just gets me down, she says.

i shuffle out to the bus and think about the times i was so clever with jarvis reassuring me that masturbation could get me to the top. but here i am now. literature, art and music. those are life he whispers. i believe it.

i count sheep and think about ships in bottles, collecting dried sea weed in the window during those summer months. the salty taste that filled every breath. i wish i were in a hot air balloon. at the end of the day its all just gasoline and emissions from cars that shouldn�t be on the road. liquids running down my chin that never should have been in my mouth.

i was hugging him before the cold came, before the clouds. his eyes were looking to the ground and i heard the secrets in his stomach. i believe i�m insignificant and therefore i am. i believe you�re beautiful and therefore you are. but if seeing is believing, what if i�m blind?

i got a call at three that sarah was in the hospital. i sneezed, pulled money out from under the mattress and called lai. she drove me to see sarah falling apart. she was bruised, bleeding internally and completely angelic. i held her hand and cried. she murmured about an accident. lai and i kissed her cheek and sang our salvation song. by morning she was dead. everyone talked to me in languages i�d never heard.

i can see michael is tired too. his eyes are blinking slowly. i tell him to go home and go to sleep. i know he won�t. i walk barefooted on the sticky linoleum to the sink, do the dishes and watch the stars. if tonight were a song, it�d be violently beautiful. there are photos of me as a kid. i was so cute. one hour photo because my parents just couldn�t wait to see my smiling face. another candle on the cake and another year i can promise you when i was blowing out those birthday candles, your name was on my lips. i still bleed a lot of colours if anyone cares. rainbows of serum.

i don�t know how long forever is anymore. but i know this, i�d beg to know every centimeter of your face. paint it on walls across this nations. hold a light to you on those city nights. i wouldn�t be walking anymore, i�d be hovering above the world.

falling out of love is ideal. it rarely happens because there are those moments that everything is perfect, unforgettable. i�m capable of falling for anyone at all. my dream was you, michael on a spinning glass floor, your body levitating. your cheek pressed against the pane. spinning, making a rotational pull. there�s blood on the glass, spreading and darkening and i realize we�ve been dying since the day we were born. but you, you just make the world spin.

sarah used to push you down the stairs and i couldn�t watch anymore. i put on a taffeta dress and let saliva run down my porcelain face. i figure when you get sick of the smart girls, you�ll still come hang out with me. i�ll just lay around and sigh, matching pitches with the stereo.

his apartment is a mess today. i�m eating grilled cheese and drinking to the future. i tell him there�s nothing he can say to change how i feel about his happening style. he just rolls his eyes and sits at the other end of the couch. i just feel closer to what i used to be with him at my feet. when we went to the park and sat on the wet grass and he smiled and told me that i could never take those good memories he had of us.

even the animals know we�re wasting tonight. and lets just be together tonight because i might not be david copperfield but i can still escape and i want to remember what you taste like. oh, and michael, you�re such a babe. i didn�t think anyone could make me sigh so much. and maybe after i�ll say i thought it was love but it was just fucking. we�ll go back to the way we were. i�ll be sorry i gave you cancer and spread through you all these years. on your silvery autopsy they�ll say they found pieces of me.

sometimes letting go is the best revenge, sarah said. ha. michaels confirmed his departure, emptied the humidors and filled the reservoirs with tears.

i was twisted in the sheets that night. singing some luna song. i looked at my shadow. i missed the child i used to be. everything i do turns out the same. always about some boy i thought i loved years ago. someday someone will wake me up. make me feel things again. those beautiful feelings. i cry better than i laugh beneath the street lights. i think i have dreams that are reality.�judy and the dream of horses� is my song.

i loved sarah. nothing was the same with me anymore and i didn�t want it to be. i had a thousand rosaries around the house. the funeral went by so quickly and i held her ashes in my hands for days, not believing it was her. i laid awake in her bed until morning peeked in through the shades and i made my way to the ocean. under the bridge, i left her and i lost myself.

michael takes me into the woods. we walk forever. the sunlight coming through the trees makes me sick, invisible, turned on even. i look out of place in the woods with my betty page bangs and �i know what boys like� shirt. we sit on a tree stump. nothing makes sense. i tell michael i�m writing him a book.he raises his eyebrows. i want him to see he�s so gorgeous.

michael sprays the room with cologne. such a girl like thing to do. gawd. and he says it smells like the dave matthews band. ha. remember you can take a picture and never develop it. hey, you�re still like walking on the pavement and seeing the mica in the moonlight. those brief seconds where it�s okay. maybe not great, but it didn�t hurt.

i stay out till midnight watching cars on the overpass. it starts to rain. i smoke my cigarettes and tangle up my insides with pretty thoughts. it�s slow and misty. the sky is just falling. dancing on the seemingly endless alluvium. the clouds were too thick not to ever rain on him. i drop my cigarette in a puddle and watch the orange glow go out. i�m so charming when he loves someone else.

his voice is like coming out of the fade. it sounds like drowning. his bass line under water. the sky is lit with lightening and i don�t move. i watch that rain, like tears. i remember the first time anything meant something. i grew up without anyone noticing. cut my hair and lost my virginity on the cement.

jeremiah lived down that gravel road we moved away from without regret. we were poor then, before dad left. times got better when we left the south.

you have those moments that mean everything, that can never be explained because they never made sense. you turn your head and sigh. it�s still very alive in every part of your body. how jeremiah and i loved. we poked cute holes in our flesh with needles and exchanged fluids with our tongues in a labyrinth for affection. i can�t capture those moments or relive them. and now i try to pour them thick and sugary from my fingertips. i rubbed my feet on the Persian rug and listened to those songs that used to always make me smile,

i remember how he felt then. how he slid through me like a first kiss, body made of glass and shattering at the pinnacle. not being able to resist, something possessed you to keep going.

i raked leaves in the front yard while my parents watched television with my sisters. i went to school but afternoons were best because then he was there. always waiting on the porch. childish himself and unconcerned. tracing the front of his crooked teeth. his hair was falling out and had been for the last decade. he�d drive me around in his old chevy and we�d yell at the birds and yell at the sky, squirrels and sports cars. we�d talk about the smell of grass and i fell in love. he�d talk to me in thick southern accents, pretend he was james dean and that could save me from the world.

He complemented my every thought so perfectly. he let me fall in love with him. rendezvous with him in a garden, 14 years old with semen running down my thighs and he thought he was so cute, well. there's him in the doorway and there's suicide. letting me believe in fate and destiny. sticks and stones could never break his bones. he was 45 the day i read the most beautiful fluent writing ever. i looked for myself in the pieces , when they were put together they spelled my name and that was perfection.

i had mosquito bites and i leaned against the kitchen counter and sighed. he pushed what was left of his graying hair back. the lines in his face illuminated by sweat and deny i was any part of his writing with a smile. the smile told it all. even my mother knew.

i went every day it seemed, listening to my shoes hit the dirt road to see him. kicking up rocks. so deep in thought that i never thought i�d be back here wishing it�d been different, scarcely a dream. watching streams and waterfalls and airport lights, all the things that matter when you�re in love. jeremy, buy me a motorcycle. cyclones never stopped you before.

jeremy, buy me a motorcycle. if i lose my flesh, you�ll give me yours for sure.

i thought there were no reasons for societies age laws and i surpassed them never thinking they were to protect me. i did it to myself. on the basement floor, near all the cobwebs that i never saw any reason to move. i took on sweet jeremiah. he never objected and he just radiated beauty through my tears as we mapped and traced the future in the dust.

i raped sweet jeremiah and he raped me.

nothing ever meant more

and nothing could ever be captured.

i told michael all this. his eyes were just wide with black slits. he�s covered in moss, smelling like rain. textured and rich. falling into a strange void. clicking his tongue. there�s an eerie glow about him. erotic almost if i weren�t so asexual. i push the earth off that�s covering his face. we�ve been making him decay for years. not recognizing him in all the tv movies.

soap sculptures were on all the window sills. i made angels. anthony made cats. maybe i started to ignore things partially because i hoped they�d fall apart and partially because i never believed they�d come together. mum reminds me often that if life gives you lemons you make lemonade but i never really like lemonade much.

you convey yourself streamlike, uncontrollable. fascinating to see. always systematic. your eyes are always dilated and digging deeper into me. it�s adorable.

so i left him because i just couldn�t be the one who was fucked. i had nothing to lose except body parts. i couldn�t scream and fall apart like i always do. he told me he�d be famous so i set my clock for his fifteen minutes and gathered salts for these open wounds. he asked why i was letting go and i just wished he weren�t holding on. i�m living michaels nightmare smiling because i know how to wake up and end his drowning.

the swing set splintered and michael ran away to meet a girl he met on the internet. i wished i were in arizona watching the sun go down with him cos only he could make me cry... jason told me never to fall in love with emotional cripples because eventually they cripple you. but i never listen. he promised me the ocean and recommended the sky all while tires sped on the wet pavement. sometimes i pretend to be you and then there�s no reason to get mad. if you were here, i�d kiss you in the hallway. i�d think your jokes were funny.

the trees are coming down, michael, in all those colours you adore. they�ve turned brown and died. you just breathe death. so i helped him pack his suitcase and bought him a drink. i never thought he�d make it to arizona with the floorboards rotted through, at most it was a one way trip. he shut the car door and i could hear the diluted bass of a beach boys song. i smiled and knew that maybe i�d never meet anyone like him. but was that really a bad thing? heh. i just thought about how we�d never fuck up against one of those pyramids in egypt like he promised.i�ll end up middle aged and collecting leaves for craft projects alone.

i wrote sarah letters every other day and addressed them to heaven. i told her that we�d eat sushi again and i�d pay for the gas and cigarrettes every time. i knew providence was endless daylight. we�ll thank god for floral arrangements. pinecones. smiles. the sun. cherry coke. seduction. coffee shops. choirs. perfumes. stars. laughter. china dolls. oranges. mirrors. animal crackers. airports. pop music. love. toe-nails. babies. bad poetry. the ocean. breathing.

by the time he reached oklahoma i was thinking about the goodtimes that could have been and i paint him pictures now and then. but i figured it out, there are no beginnings or ends. we just say things and hope we can make ourselves believe. i�m still not even close to forgetting when i can still smell you on my clothing. holding these film negatives up to the light making my own memories out of ambiguous shapes. i lean on the desk and hope maybe sarah and michael will pull up in an old truck and we�ll drive south together. i�d shout poems off of skyscrapers to have him back now.

and like the feeling that your movie is ending, i light candles and hold an old guitar pick with teeth marks on it. i just think about our joint custody of the sky and traffic islands and tap my fingers on the desk. i�m closing my eyes and letting you go. images fading. it�s going to be a long cold winter. i�ll follow your paper trail to the end. he�s gone, giving the world color and without you it just pales. the dream is a day for sliding on the ice, down that hill into

michael and chinatown.. and just you whisper

�dreams are just movies..

and you�re a star.�

*

so what happens when the little boys grow up and stop looking you in the eyes? well, i bought my first porn magazine when i was thirteen and i took it out back in my tree house and sarah and i stared at the images and sarah moved a little closer to me. i heard my daddy coming up the ladder and i tried to hide it but i couldn�t. so he struck me down and pushed sarah around. i felt so dirty and gross, strange noises in my throat. but i guess it wasnt the porn it was the naked women and sarahs hand in mine that made him insane. it was the last time i really saw my dad.

james threw himself across the bed and melted into the sheets. we peeled up his waxy vestiges and made him into candles. they say in that town that they saw you beneath the waves, still hiding in those ocean caves. i come back and stare at the sea. i�m still making promises to that watery waste, ah i smile and remember your taste. i used sign language when i was driving away, you waved back and there wasnt any more to say. at least there�s nothing more that i could cry about.all the boys liked to watch sarah and i. us with our painted red orifaces that never smile. you versus me, i dont want to fight but i have to because the world wants us to, how could i disappoint the world. i used to slit my wrist for attention and i hoped you wouldnt condone the dried blood on my arms, that you�d yell at me and care. but michael always looked away.

there are other girls i like to touch but they dont matter when i think about you .i dont even know what color i am anymore.i�d love to put images of you up around and hell, people would smile cos you�re rather pretty but things arent what they appear. like acid rain for your blue sweater.

i worry about records and having babies every tuesday. i just wanted punk rock and midnight drives and you to say you loved me even if you didn�t mean it. wanted to see you hop around in your studded belt and kiss me on the cheek and say we�re something. it was june and she was just rolling around in the grass. lai gave me her favorite ring and said you were a jerk. but i could never believe that about you. so i get drunk alone and read old poems.

i met 5 thousand boys with t-shirts that had catchy sayings that i couldn�t get out of my mind. i met a girl named tara who was as fucked up as me. i spent most of my time convincing myself that my life didn�t suck.

i just watched the ceiling get darker with the smoke that was curling from the end of irvine�s cigarette and spiriling upward. his fingers were thick and his voice velvety and strange. i bit my nails and moved my hair out of my eyes. he talked about the profound effects of david bowie coming from chapped lips that hadn�t spoken any beautiful words for weeks on end. but i think if they were mine maybe nothing important would have ever come out of them. he never parts his hair. it�s always a thick, tangled mess and his eyes are raw and young. he�s so weak, anyone could break him but i dont see how they could, he�s made of porcelain. someone painted on an akward nose and tired lines. he drove an old car, one i got jealous of. it was red with an 8 trak player in it. he had two tapes, johny cash and willy nelson. he listen to them non-stop when he was driving, arm on top of the door, black hair being thrown around in the wind. i wasn�t sure what i expected from him. he had a kid like mentality, he was manic depressive who�d stopped taking meds a long time ago and sold them for gas money. he made girls feel special then used them and no one complained.

tara and i tried to make our own website. it ended up being a few links to pop band sites that no one visited. i put black and white pictures of emo bands. tara wrote bad poems about her cat and i was the only one in the world who thought she had potential. and she did. tara liked michael too. she used to run along the railroad tracks behind her house and cry and try to get the trains to hit her. she understood.

theres a radiohead poster under tara�s bed. she likes hard liquor and the boys who drink it. she breaks from the crowd and starts a spelling bee. i push her on the sofa and rape her but she doesn�t ever tell anyone. it�s our secret.

i waited for tara to call the police to arrest me for ruining her life and when she didn�t, i wonder if it mattered to her at all. tara and i got jobs at a convience store downtown and worked the late shift.

tara didn�t know her mother. she lived her father who forced her to perform sexual favors for friends from the time she was old enough to talk. sometimes she said she thought she could remember her mother but her father said it was impossible, she died during taras birth. and tara accepted that anwser.

i didn�t give a fuck for her father and i�d take her to my house when she was too drunk to drive and put her to bed. i�d call him and tell him he could fuck his friends himself. he�d yell obsenities into the reciever and i�d grin at the other end. i always felt bad when she left.

james is the character i wanted michael to be. so perfect and charming. the suicidal dream with black hair and nice eyes. who breaks your heart but always heals it. i�d send him telepathic messages and he�d open his blue eyes in the night and reply. say i was a baby for whining and know why my dreams were troubled sketching across his water color skin.

i�m not dead yet. i�m so fucking in love with michael still and even though i know how great i could be with james, i�m holding out cos there�s a chance you�ll come back and you wont.

i was sliding my hands along the cold white-washed walls and i felt fingers soft and euphonious and i wrapped mine around them and held your hand for minutes and i wanted to say i loved you for coming here and knowing. instead, i smiled in the darkness and went to bed.

i cut your initials into my leg and filled it in with ink. i find the summer air scares me now that michaels gone. tara and i watch american movie classics but the heroes arent the same now that youre only a memory. i thought i could build arks and you could bring the animals two by two. i was wrong and i�m here with my embryo of hope. so lets smile the way we did before you met her and someday you�ll be so sorry, my anamnesis will flow thru you. even if one memory of you dies every minute, i�ll still be living with you all my days.

i kick it to local bands and vomit later. wrote it all down, memory without sound.

and i�m sorry for underestimating people. i scribbled my name out on my birth certificate and wrote julie over it.

i throw pages of something anthony wrote onto the floor and i hope they�re so scattered that i�ll never be able to put them in order again, never knowing how the story really goes. it doesn�t really matter though.

not romance, just breathing. so quickly and it warms me up. the rest of the world is a lie and i love you to death. i want to fuck you in the suburbs when i cant keep anything together but then you wont have to put up with my shit. you never should have. you�re so pretty. you never should have.

i used to masturbate with james just because we were too chicken shit to have sex. he�d steal his dad�s porn videos and we�d squint at the television trying to make out shapes of bodies fucking. we�d make out after without any sexual drive and for some reason it really meant something. we never talk anymore.

i bought a pair of orange sneakers and fell asleep on the couch. fell asleep wrapped around diana . diana has the best hair i�ve ever seen. she spikes it up, it�s red and soft and matches her lips that she paints every morning. i�ve been looking for something totally beautiful to take my mind off of all the bullshit that�s been floating around. the truth makes me fucking angry. i rip out my hair to try and forget and i feel all sick inside when i think of those other girls he�s with now. i hate myself for feeling that way. for being so goddamn human and vulnerable. he�s got me so twisted.

i threw myself down a set of stairs for no reason at all one sunday morning. james was standing at the bottom, waving a picture of a homosexual at me. i closed my eyes and knew that some part of me was dead, the only part worth living for. i bent my knees slightly, seeing the light behind my eyelids still shining brightly from the chandelier. i moved my hand over the smooth railing. i didnt intend on dying, just trying to reconnect those broken wires. and i did it. did it with force and speed. i felt the pressure come from my lungs and exit onto city sidewalks.the world was dark for moments and i tasted salt in my mouth. things flashed before me: an old convience store that had long since closed where i had stolen gum, the nutcracker ballet when i was a child and was indestructable. then there i was, on the wooden floor of a friends house.

it was the hospital. hospital for people like me.

fuck. i was so stupid. suicide is so stupid. i should have followed michael where ever he went. watching him, face so concentrated and voice alchemy in the colored lights. but i�m here. with girls with slit wrists, taking a prescription to cure the tattoo he left me with.

sometimes i think diana is psychic and tricking me into trusting her so she can read all my fucking thoughts and sell them for fuckloads of money cos i�m so goddam smart.

bring me the ocean oh and scream that you hate me in my ear and i�ll hide behind a sofa in moscow. i�m come dragging my entrails behind because i�m not sure what love is and the principal is good and the idea makes me undivided. meet me under the piano and i wont tell anyone. i�m in my ghetto of carnal appetite.

i miss you while james quietly strums his guitar and i tell him things i never thought i�d be able to say because he�s a tenor angel. he knows what it�s like to be alone. sometimes i just cry while he moans. i didn�t think i�d need anyone so badly as i need you. my room smells like your hair and i�m surely blind. memories arent what they were when you were around. i wonder who you love now. that new girl for every piece of your broken heart prophecy always coming true and i�m screaming your name and youre shooting up far away. i hate crying but i dont know of anything else to do besides feel useless and you said we were different. but i guess there are a lot of people who are different and now i�m just one of many.

my lungs hurt and i�m breathing fire suddenly. i didnt know what i had. i get drunk, it�s the only way to see you again.his heart doesnt beat anymore. turn black and pulsate into me. beneath layers of skin, it flows through me, dark and getting darker. he spread his disease over me, viscous like tar. my stomach was tight and knotted. i buried my head under the sheets and pressed hard into the mattress. i knew it couldnt save me so i let go. my body burned and eclipsed.

but these years i fall in and out of love. waiting to get my life together enough that it�ll make some kind of sense. waiting for him to come back, to call but there�s nothing. i know if there is something, it�ll just be silly michael telling me about someone new, someone else who seals my fate of never obtaining someone so perfect.

now and then i grow close to someone but sex always gets in the way. i kissed my friend, i guess it didnt make as much sense to her as it did to me because she just turned away. everytimes someone walks away i close down more and these part of me are mute from being slaughtered so many times.

i�m so obsessed with defining things but so convinced that there is no definition. my friend bari says the world is infinite and that maybe by trying to define it, he saw all the features of it and it was less important to put the universe in essay form. i thanked him and kissed his hand, went home and tried to write that essay.

i was always drawing pictures of the sky. thinking i�d be there someday. you make me warm when the world is so cold. i thought why dont you pin me to the ground and we�ll fuck to the beat.

electric rain coming down again. before i know it i�m smiling at the sky all over again. gravity is like a magnet when i feel like joining sarah in heaven. i�ve got dried blood on my thighs, stains extending down to my bright red nail polished toes. i sing dropkick murpys and grin. and i hate you. i hate you for making me hate myself. you make love to people who only matter a little and make it mean a lot.

cuts and bruises all over faces fallen and hit the floor. never bled because they were too strong. muscles and bone jutted through tough skin, years of perspiration and hatred bleeding through gray tee-shirts.

skipping through the old abandoned parking lot, shoes scuffed and a broken chain length fence bent to the ground. we ran from here. i was so happy when everyone stared but it didn�t much matter. i threw rocks through the already shattered windows of an old mill. they hit the ground with a snap like that of the bones of a cat i once ran over on a dirt road. i watch girls that i�m as pretty as and think maybe this is where i am supposed to be.

yesterday, i went outside and the world is the same whether i am here or not. my fingers are flesh without bone. but i still have my bad attitude, pessism and dental floss. nothing gets done around here. walls to paint and floors to clean. those pictures of you were only pretty without me. the world is so white and im so blue. you�ll find a better loser.

michael calls from a payphone and i�m surprised. he�s waited years to pick up that phone. he sounds so much older now, so alone and i�m glad.

fat men in white teeshirts could never make me feel the way michael does. blades of grass were never sharp enough. the sun showed off this poverty. plywood floors, a slutty mom. i never thought of gifts when i thought of christmas. my dad liked M.A.S.H, shot guns, car shows, and trailer parks. i had cold black eyes and a heart to match. through my window, i saw the neighbors fight. listened to the rain on the metal roof. i could hear her crying and their tv, getting drunk on misery. through your window i saw blue skies, treehouses, and sunsets. you mom made dried flowers and your dad watched the news. your eyes were soft and you had the world to match.

you and i and a million others in this city that revolves around the sun but only i know the best dreams never die and therefore, you�ll always be alive.

the dream is so blue. there�s a dying african man holding my hands as i pull him up over ledges and through caves. his throat emits noises as his bones make cracking noises. i�m guiding us, his eyes are watery and he�s so old. his skin is barely visable in the dim light but i can see it is weathered, his skin rips like tissue paper at the touch of a sharp edge. his arms are bony and weak as he clings to my sides. i am so in love with him.

i�m barely coming out of a dream and i hear irvine breathing heavily and dirty metal music coming from the next room. following the contours of a dirty room in the dark.

i know you wouldnt believe me but i didnt want this. sex was supposed to be fun and i wasnt supposed to be miserable anymore. tara was going to meet a rich man and they were going to be 17 forever. but when i get fucked up all those dreams fade into letters and numbers and i�m just a statistic. i never thought either of us could sell out. but you met other people so now i take prozac and i hope i can forget that i was a kid with a fetus inside me thats now in a compost pile somewhere. it�s been confirmed, i spoke with god.

irvine had too much to drink, he hit the gas instead of the brake and flew thru a traffic light. he hit a car with babies in it. irvine was just a kid himself, a kid with 2 lungs filled with vomit and a head that had hurt for years. his father used to rape him at midnight and he was never the same after. so he hid himself, masked it with rum and coke and cheap popsong remixes. when anyone needed him, he closed down. verbal communication was never his thing. he never told anyone anything about the woman screaming with her blood bathed baby in her skinny arms or the months he spent in juvenile hall. he just got colder and drank more. he became dead, addicted. he only talked to a few people. one of them was karen. stupid karen with her puffy eyes and olive skin. her ideas were so idiotic that you couldn�t help but adore her. she was always wasted out of her fucking mind. when you looked at her, nothing was symetrical. everything a mess. her rusted car, her lesbian friends, her fetish for roy orbison. she spoke with a sharp new york accent and in short bursts. she and irvine stuck together.

when we were 17, Irvine promised that he�d never fall in love. he�d fuck them and use them, never give them anything then leave them. now he�s 19, with a wife and a baby on the way and i was in his bed. irvine and karen werent afraid of the future, of plane crashes, of getting aids, of failing in life, of their parents, of the government. they didnt care about anything. they held hands and said mean things about society. when the building burnt down years later, laurence and karen were satisfied that their skin was merging together and they�d become charred and angelic.

always the perfectionist, never perfection. that�s how the day started. james muttering that as i yelled at him for dropping dish soap onto the linoleum. i was so positive things would be different for james and i. i used to be so infatuated with him but those are just memories once you get a steady employment oppertunity and set hours of daylight. i was going to be the girl who never grew up. the one who still drank till one in the morning and made jokes like dreams that you could be jealous of. but friends overdosed on ugly drugs and i mutated into my parents. i wanted to be a musician. i had these ideas for the future, for films, for fucking and breathing.

james had soul, just like some song. now he doesn�t tell me anything, and i dont tell him anything and i assume that�s how it�ll be until we�re so old we can�t speak anyway. maybe we�ll hold hands and look at the sky or maybe we�ll get divorced at 45. either way, i miss us.

we bought an expensive stereo and tv. we live off of them like life support. we dont need to communicate with each other about anything except what we retrieve from them. we talk news, maybe pop music. james listens to britney spears and i listen to enrique iglesias. we used to listen to beautiful hippie shit. we used to talk politics like it meant something, we were full of shit but so in love. back then, james never wore a suit now he wears nothing but.

god, where�d i go wrong? the truth is, james never knew me and i never knew james. i never knew he expected to be a software engineer for IBM and that i would to be working at a porno bookstore in a small town near boston, catering to the needs of bearly 18 kids with hard-ons the minute they saw a naked woman/man.

later i met up with lai, she�d missed her bus to mississippi. watched the fireworks and filmed herself nude in the mirror. she bought chinese food and rem records// wished on stars and waited for charlie to return. she had a good supply of tarnished furniture & pictures of dead rock stars. i caught her in the backroom paying her rent in orgasms. she swam around my mind until my skull cracked and the liquid pressure was released, then she'd grin and run towards the sun.

i�d worked in this porno hotel for ten years. watching them come and go on business trips and teenagers on holiday coming for a fuck. seen them come and read the gideon bible before blowing their head off, seen them throw their baby in the dumpster.

but she kept all her thoughts on sticky note pads and arranged magnetic poetry/ clumsy preschool magnet letters on the hotel fridge. when i was cleaning the room i read them. they flowed from my mind down through my legs and between my thighs and new idea was born. she comes around when she comes around to see our infant. telephones ring and operators pick up, she�s just painting her nails. she�d wear mascara but she�s burnt eyelashes.

i bought her a sandwich from a lunch cart and she sat down and crossed her legs. my sisters pretty lesbian friend collects books. she collects them by the hundreds and hides her cliff notes from friends. she�s in love with winona ryder and lilith fair chicks. she decorates thier apartment with gay pride flags and pictures of naked women. buys artsy table ware. i spent the weekend there. in boston during the summer. i heard people throwing glass bottels while i tried to slit my wrist with dull scissors watching the spanish channel and understanding nothing. in the morning i woke up and wondered around the apartment building which was empty for the season, thinking about the things that must�ve happened there. people who might be famous someday sleeping in cheap, dirty beds and looking out windows only to see brick walls. it's been a year now and sometimes i feel michael near me, like a leg that's been amputated must feel. that part of me that can never be replaced by any amount of plastic or prosthetics. i read some of those collected books. i read them while my sister pretended to like the people she hangs out with. she makes promises to the dirty city. she fights for the innocent she thinks but no one is innocent and she�s just giving away parts of herself to people who�ll never give them back.

so i mop up the dish soap and james brushes off his suit, giving me the same look he always gives me, hard and cruel, picks up his briefcase and gets into his shiny car with power everything and an annoying alarm. i want to tell him not to leave, want him to work things out, but that won�t happen so i light a cigarrette and look around the apartment for some pot i hid a long time ago. i turn on our expensive stereo and cry.

irvine was my hippie neighbor whom i had procured the pot from. he grew shit load of it in a little back room of the apartment complex. everyone in the building either didn�t care or assumed that the amount of tinfoil covering the walls was quite normal. now and then we�d have a get together, fuck or smoke then watch reruns of gilligans island. i cant help but think every now and then that this is the man i should have been with. i remember how terence always smelled like a hospital when i first met him from being in and out of this old rehab center, how afraid i was for him and how james told me that depression was weakness and anyone who had it was pathetic. i guess i was pathetic.

i keep repeating myself, keep watching those stars and thinking maybe one day i�ll be as pretty as a constellation. but i�m getting older and older is synonamous with ugly. you and i with our painted nails, we could have made it. he�s avoiding the mainstream and drowning for it. irvine often sits around wishing he were gay so he could be with someone more like himself.

it�s time for work for me, time to say goodbye. so i spray perfume over the apartment and change my clothes. i get into the car i�ve had since i was 16 and drive down the highway a piece to a little driveway which leads to this towns dirty secret. a vibrant, acid glowing sign selling magazines and other �adult� items. i sigh and nothing surprises me anymore.

when i get home, james is watching an old war movie that he knows i hate and eating on the sofa. my body aches as i yell at him for eating on the sofa. for never doing anything right. for some reason, i cant forgive him for anything.

i remember michael pointing at his neighbor. �see him, he only dates girls named debbie. so i think it�s safe to say that�s debbie he�s kissing.� then he had that smile that meant nothing really meant anything.

i hated it. pushing him into the plastic bin, his wrists slit and body withered. i was sad he was dead, sorry he�d killed himself. his last wish was nearly complete, we were almost to the water. he said he didnt want his mother to know what a pathetic excuse for a human being he was. he wasnt really weak. some people kill themselves for attention, but not charles. he killed himself because the world was no longer beautiful and he didnt believe it ever could be the same. he was quite pretty with strange eyes and the darkest shade of black hair i�d ever seen without dye. he didnt want katherine to know he was dead, they�d been together for years. he didnt want her to know she wasnt much of a reason to go on living.

so there i was. standing beside an opaque blue rubbermaid box that contained my best friend. the water looked turbulent and i knew he�d be lost forever. no one would ever find my michael. maybe no one would even look for him. i started getting irational, thinking maybe i should take him and bury him in my back yard so he could be close to me. i put the box on a rock and went back to the car for a letter i wrote that i planned on putting in the box, then i filled it with rocks so it wouldn�t float.he was light and i could easily carry him even with the rocks. i waded deeper into the sea, as far as i could go without choking from the water coming into my mouth.my head was bearly above water when i dropped the box. it loged between two massive rocks that were covered in seaweed. i blew a kiss to the ocean and with blue lips, his story ended. right here, right now, in this moment. if you turn the song up loud enough, there are words, words even you have never heard before.