lights go up,
realclose and unblushing
neath splayed strands and lush pinkiness.
yielding tones
and raspy endings, a paint-chipped radiator to warm yr heart this evening?
slow-moving reflections in TV screens and sliding glass shower doors,
    trace the truth in steam:
         ‘in my mind, everything we did was right’.
dripping wet,
step up and out so the cars rushing past can air-dry you as they honk, and then
leap for the reaching gasp they carry,
tunneled between the root-beer el camino and the galloping town and country, and ride it
until you’re dropped back where you started when the iron bars wouldn’t let you digress and the turn stiles kept you moving.
the windows are all pulled down shut now,
but you remember.
twenty-five cent popcicles and cinnamon lip smackers at lunch time still lay rotting against the roof of your mouth, even at
sweet sixteen, when you’ve done more than one might at ten and eight, or even twenty and one. but
yr hair’s still wet, and when the night wind sighs cold streaks rush across the back of yr neck and down yr chest between yr thighs. so
change gets you going back, yr hands clasping two subway poles. you swingswing back
and forth like yr drunk or high or in love and you lose yr footing as the creaking halt begins to come but then again, don’t you always?
both of you did, that nite at least.

thumping temples kept the beat ‘tween yr ears as
she made her nervous peace with rotating wrists and slinky, drunken fingers
romancing space while her hips upped the pace
and she sunk on down past guilt and deep-lying dis.honesties and so aimed only for the making of happy memories.
like, cactus flowers at sundown in the city.
    it’s too cold to wander around outside, so come on in to beds that slide and gravy bulbs that leave shadows in the corners of yr head and be sure to do yr best not to remember aching little snapshots of a former girl love sucking on rock candy past christmas-tide and humming lullabies to curls caught behind transparent scotch tape.
    try to forget little prince boy, yr art class crush, who liked taking that blonde one into the woods. remember when you went?
they all yelled and you even punched one back off a log, went into the creek to save the tall, lanky one, and was pushed back when she was being dragged off on the ground,
heavy and sick. and you slung her over yr shoulder
and prayed for sobriety
and the blonde one tossed her hair
and... and... “hey, hey, hey-- what’s my name sweetheart? d’you know who i am? wh-what’s my name bebe? stay awake! please, please just stay awake, and, and tell me- what’s my name sweetheart? oh god, stay awake...�
and you laid with her in yr legs out on a dirt road,
tapping         her cold cheeks
until the lights came and stuck her with tubes and said her name and pronounced you dead.

starting a forest fire in winter, yr art class crush had came back monday morning with only gleaming whites and smoke stuck in his clothes,
and you had inhaled deeply over acrylics and smearing lead
and knew you were finished there.

but you got clean, and it was too cold,
so you came in and forgot everything, didn’t you?

stumbling back across kilometers of floorboards, nails coming up and
out and ripping holes in socks only to evoke an unwanted response- giggling,
as he kept her secret and considered telling her one of his own. but her bra landing on the carpet that had faded to the color of her skin told him that she already knew, or could at least guess at it.
so he sprang out
through the window she’d opened with a cheeky grin,
flying the shutter open as she shuddered,
and so let the cold black eye in on their conspiracy.

...

now all their gorgeously-laid plans had been executed and laid to rest
deep in the pit of her
d
owny gut as
she clung to his side, wondering
if her eyes had run down her cheeks, picasso-esque, as
he squinted up at the yellow fan light like
an even younger lover, spread against the great green earth.
you rose and spun round with yr chubby arms out wide, letting the air taste the sticky,

cinnamon
-popsicle juice that laced yr mug and fingers.
sinking back down over me like a cold sweat,
i took you in deeper than e’er before,
till the paint-chipped radiator burst into flames and we traced the truth onto the
gleaming black retina.

clutching to anchored hips,
heavy as a single brick and twice as hard.

pressed deep into and swallowed by sand.
overwhelming fullness,
sinking down too fast,

i took you in
    and didn’t anticipate
the chill detachment

of angular numerals even then-- they that lost their spilled affection to the artificial bulb, forcing the planctan to grow shadows ‘till a dull beam shown from below like
collected drops burnt flat on a stove.

and the collapse came so soon
as we were pulled free and separate from simple sin(cerity) and, and--
and, turning away, i thought you wouldn’t come back. i thought you wouldn’t come back, but you did, adding insult to injury-

i’m too tired to do anything else too--
that wasn’t what i was wanting,
that was NOT what i was waiting for. these groans, shaking fists, naked truths…
this was not what i wanted for my piece of the pie.

and now it seems the braille on yr back has gone as sharp as yr words. i’ve pressed my fingers to the spindle, bled, and am hoping to sleep walled in by thorny arms until true luv’s kiss should deem to wake me up
and the people are (a)roused and cry,
“lord it must be exhausting to be you,
with all the overcomplicating you young lovers do!�

we’re so simple! you and i.
so go on and take a walk, get some air. listen to a song that makes you smile
(and please think of me)...
from rational realizations that emerged long before a solitary pink line did,

i know that—yeah-
no way.
not when you can't fess up and can't kiss
in front of an eye or two. and if, in these coming months,
you decide you can- then i'll cede to say
that i—yeah-
don’t go tiring yrself out with worrying until something goes wrong.

//this waterfall will outrun our scars,
    and i will be there, naked before you,     rainbows sprouting from my lashes,
and smiling.

a martyr swinging 'round, a sacrifice nailed down-
yr tears could mark my baptism.
so come on to me now,
and know that i haven't got anything new or exciting to put out into the world... no
mary janes to buckle up quick and on the go, no
shining jubilation radiating from virginal innocence, nor any
soft pink sweetness for the boy next door to love.

only the absolute,
        dire need to please and appease,
and a self-centeredness that could pass for creativity if the timing's right and yr in the mood.

but you weren't then-
so i fled, as red as her skirt,
running for (the) cover(s).
and i hope it's on it's way, cause the jazz is still between my ears and lungs and thighs and is showing no signs of emerging from some subterranean sweet spot where it seems only music and love can last.
my hair's been growing long and the wait even longer-
but the jazz is still with me. still moving and moving in me and out and in and moving me. always moving me to tears or past midnites or to painfully aching recollections of those beyond sacrosanct trips to the backseats of cars and to comforters and mars, high on the lust of teenage rendezvous' that have left me squirming inside my warm shell on nites like this when i claw parallel lines in the earth, forced to simulate the care i took in clawing yr back when she came and we left for our own lunar landing.
    afterwards and before we both took a glazed look around and realized
how tired and up and on we were-
and oh god,     there go my knees a-bucklin' again.

and well,
i've let it all resurface and have reaffirmed my devotion to the sky and the ground and how sexy i feel when i can't tell the two apart.
when i can do no wrong, when my makeup doesn't run, when my hair looks gorgeous, when we were tucked up inside each other like some fetal position defense device, or rolling around haphazardly on the A.M. kitchen tiles.
it's a reflex, i believe. (kissing you, that is.)
cause i'm so… young, and unrestrained, and alltogether notwhatyoushouldbewanting.
and, after a slip up in the way of a tongue slip, i curse myself for not being
coy and shy and for not
radiating with virginal innocence.
    but here you are again, and i've never let out a more pregnant sigh.
in faith, i am at my best with you pressed tight to me-
sober and drunk both at once. so,
with the kind of faith that which fuels fatalists,
i'll let myself lay back down on whatever isn't above
and keep silent when nervous or threatened by onslaughts of insecurity or sanity or honesty.

i'll keep things simple,
like these numbers and points and changes in temperature. like a take off in yr gut or the plane of yr chest when i run my hands over you and pull you tight to me-
we’re so simple.
we kiss, and i'll take my smiling leave.
    i'll be willing to work, accepting that this vinyl could strike me deep, that this kiss could be my dismissal- that i have every right to be afraid of sleeping alone and need not fall into insecurity as if it were anything less than a mound of comforters or yr loving.
and that, is what makes me a real female cosmonaut.

the problem with reality is the lack of background music.



opening credits:
"alison" elvis costello.

waking up:
"beautiful" carole king, "happy day" ryan toby.

average day:
"what i got" sublime, "kiss me" sixpence none the richer (acoustic version only... shut up.), "what a girl wants" christina aguilera", "something to talk about" bonnie raitt.

falling in love:
"hello sunshine" super furry animals, "falling is like this" ani difranco.

first date:
"sock hop" all time quarterback, "what's going on" g love &the special sauce.

love scene:
"rapture" pedro the lion, "summertime" the fire theft, "communist daughter" neutral milk hotel, "penning the penultimate" the velvet teen.

morning-after:
"sunday morning" maroon 5.

emotional scene with friend:
"there's no 'i' in team" taking back sunday.

breaking up:
"lover, you should've come over" jeff buckley, "consequence" the notwist.

getting back together:
"she" elvis costello.

walking down the aisle:
just the chords of jeff buckley's "hallelujah".

life's okay:
"los angeles, i'm yours" the decemberists, "we will become silhouettes" the postal service, "santeria" sublime, "swing swing" all-american rejects (shove it.).

mental breakdown:
"mercury rising" from autumn to ashes, "iris" the goo goo dolls, "black and blue" counting crows, "okay i believe you but my tommy gun don't" brand new.

driving:
"my favourite chords" the weakerthans, "we laugh indoors" death cab for cutie, "claire" morphine, "can't fight this feeling" reo speedwagon (shut up.).

learning a lesson:
"gold days" sparklehorse.

evening bath:
"all about our love" sade.

flashback:
"left and leaving" the weakerthans. "the scientist" coldplay, "tiny vessels" death cab for cutie, "ghost man on third" taking back sunday, "cinnamon" the long winters, "falling in love" lisa loeb.

partying:
"44 caliber love letter" alexisonfire, "only you" portishead, "badfish" sublime, "call me" blondie, "i'm waiting for the man" the velvet underground.

drunkenness:
"lilac wine" jeff buckley, "snake face" the throwing muses, "centrefolds" placebo.

after-party:
"lover's spit" broken social scene, "soco amaretto lime" brand new.

happy dance:
"blister in the sun" violent femmes.

regretting:
"wake up" sahara hotnights, "paperbag" fiona apple, "we looked like giants" death cab for cutie.

long night alone:
"don't let me be lonely tonight" james taylor, "take everything" mazzy star, "apricot tea" the robot ate me.

death scene:
"naked as we came" iron and wine.

closing credits:
"alison" elvis costello.

we came out together in puffs and darkness and hips.
good intentions rang true 'fore the morning was over and amidst roll-overs and walnuts
i decided
maybe it was a good thing that could bind-- hold us to when shoulder blade would inevitably meet shoulder blade on the A.M. kitchen tiles, and the sun came up from in between teeth in winning smiles.

because i'm slightly sixteen and very much a girl and these points- they must be accounted for.
the trial will go on
through the present and the following days in lieu of scary testimonies and pointed-finger yelps of
'the windows were fogged!'

i'll sit in a pew somewhere this afternoon, feeling sick to my stomach, reconstructing yr profile when
i let you steer
and conjuring up the taste of
content in the back of
my throat, penning odes to the beats that refused to
stay the nite. a silent
speakeasy and
facial piece of negligee- oh how veiled by quaking blankets we all are! how much i'd like to rip them off and stand outside where the cold will sober us and match hand with heartbeat and lips with neck,
sing out of this hermetical want for
you to even try to let the covert eventide seep into our days.
because they can't know
what tongues can convey when the windows are fogged.