There she was, the mysterious brunette in over-sized snow boots whom I had seen on multiple occasions in the very same spot. She awaited her bus under the cover of the train station, which provided no heat, but kept the bitter Chicago wind at bay. Her weight was balanced on one leg, the right one, and her left was a few inches behind, knee bent, the toe of her boot grinding lightly into the ground. She seemed to stare blankly through the iced glass doors that led right out to the bus stop, but her mouth was turned up slightly to form a gentle smile. It couldn't have been a blank stare, she must have been deep in thought, but what did I really know? I knew nothing about her except the color of her hair and impeccable balance. All I knew is that I had to have her. She would be mine to ruin.
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Without realizing it, in a span of four months, I've written to you twice. The first was about rain, and the second was about snow. From September to December, I wrote of wanting to watch different types of weather phenomena with you. I find it strange to want something so mundane. A few drops of rain, a flurry of snowflakes, and the desire to share them with you is unequivocally strong. Some days I'm not even sure what we're doing, why I'm with you, but then I think of the rain, I think of the snow, and then I understand. Water in any form is still water. Even as the seasons change, or my feelings waver, there will always be a cloud.
I want to watch the snow fall
I want the seasons to change I want you to stay even when I question us Hold my hand as I figure out who I am Let me go when I need time I want you to understand me I want you to stay even when I want to go Be there Let me be reckless Wait for me Each day like a snowflake Hopefully leading me back to you I want to watch the snow fall Will you be there too? I want to watch the rain with you
Drip drip drip The drops hit the ground The birds bathe in temporary puddles My heart beats in tempo with their wings I don't know what your heart is doing I'm not sure I want to know either I don't want to break the illusion I just want to watch the rain with you For as long as I can Front seat to avoid puking.
Three cars with ribbons indicating unity and togetherness. A small part of a larger procession that will soon be forgotten. The French countryside is a muck with twisting and turning roads that require constant gear shifting. 4th to 3rd to 2nd and back again. I swear we passed at least a million trees. Maybe more. Eyes tired. Restless. Sleepless. 4am return. 11am check out. Two croissants consumed. Irony: declaring that you don't want nor ever will get married and then catching a bride's bouquet a few hour later. (And then insisting that you only caught it because you calculated the trajectory, all very mathematic and scientific, a simple accident of athleticism, a fluke.) Ribbons don't flow in the wind, they cut and rage,it's a concentrated madness. Concentrated madness: a small, often uncontainable or uncontrollable, burst of "crazy" or "insane" (1) behavior, (2) movement, or (3) speech pattern. Ex: "marriage is a good idea" is an example of concentrated madness (3). Applause. The show begins. We lost our procession for two minutes due to the toll. The Alps are in our sights. We're going around them to get back home. The French-Italian Alps. The mountains are truly wonderful, their beauty incomparable. ---- A stop. Ripped the heads off shrimp. Broke a glass. Consumed a large pile of fries. My head is spinning. My stomach is similar. ---- A stop. A natural fountain with ice cold water from the Alps. Crisp. Refreshing. Possibly contained electrolytes. Research later. The mountains seem endless. The road is infinite and there are no destinations. The trees are ancient and intimidating. One wrong turn and the road could end for you. ---- Through one tunnel, out of France and back in Italy. It's that simple. A twenty second drive through a tunnel built into the mountains. Crazy. The autostrada is the fastest way to get back. ---- Thoughts: (1) Is love necessary? (2) So I need to do Laundry? (3) I swear pairs of my underwear were stolen at that hotel in France, but I might just be forgetful about my packing and paranoid. It's dark, but I can see the outline of cypress trees in the early morning mist. It's 5:30am, and we're on the road: twisting and turning our way through Italy. It's been hours since we last stopped to rest, and I'm feeling restless. The thoughts of a gruesome death in a vehicular accident won't leave my mind. Being crushed, enveloped in a burst of flames, and slowly bleeding out play like a film in my mind every time we take a sharp turn. Morbid, I know, but I think if you're not worrying about such things that you aren't really living. Stress and worry are a part of human nature, the need to flight or flight to survive, as well as questioning if you're really on this road, and are you sure it's not all a dream, or if this reality is real or not.
Note to self: don't watch videos about philosophical topics while on the road, too much time to contemplate like Descartes and question Socrates' cave theory. Just enjoy the sunrise. Enjoy the cypress trees common to Tuscany, enjoy the hues of blue and orange and yellow and try not to overthink. No thoughts of gruesome deaths, or philosophy, or how your eyebrows were ruined yesterday and how you want to choke the waxer to death. Listen to popular music that you can't help but enjoy even if it is mainstream, it's a science after all, they know how to get you with their catchy beats and repetitive chorus. Scam artists. Enjoy the detour through Florence, the sights, the rising sun. The clouds are voluminous and awash with pinks and yellows. It's lovely in the early hours of the day, a sign of good things to come. Self awareness is the worst part of being an artist. This road is familiar. The trees. The turns. The tunnels. It's like remembering a dream. Or deja vu. But you know you've been here physically as well as a mentally. You've seen these signs, these houses, these street lights. You've seen the sunlight seeping into the tunnel of iron rods, the mountains in the distance, the ocean before you. Seeing it once more is better than any lasting memory. It's real. It's tangible. You're here. Breathing the air, feeling the sunshine on your skin, hearing the traffic; it's constant like decay.
---- Here you are, alone, stuck. This bus ride seems as though it will never end. Good thing there is ac and a USB port to keep your tech juiced. ---- You see the houses and the churches in the hills and wonder how they're inhabitable. How in the world do those people get around? Repelling? Rock climbing with their groceries tied to their necks? Is there an intricate system of tunnels built into the mountains? Maybe you'll never find out. You'll be left wondering, waiting, wishing for answers. ---- We passed sunflower fields and abandoned villas. There was even the remains of an aqueduct. The houses were multicolored and the roofs were red like clay. Tuscany was as beautiful as we remembered. Mountains in the distance, fields and fields of cultivated land, years and years of lives lived, blood shed, sweat dripping into the earth. It's lovely. It's stunning. The greens and the golds. The life. The decay. We rode passed cities and towns older than our great grandparents, and trees just as aged. We drove through rows of cypress trees and passed grassy knolls. ---- 6 hours in. What's there to do? Listening to the conversations of strangers of course. This is when one learns the most about human nature and character traits. We can poke and prod and dissect a person's character by listening in, invading their hearts and placing our own desires into their minds. Warning: writers writing, hide your hearts, hide your best lines. Writers are the best cons; we listen in and absorb and steal and twist your lives into other worlds and place you in other times. Your minds are putty in our demented childlike hands. (This piece was written last summer. Title: "my day")
I don’t know if it’s the sound of multiple planes flying overhead or the plastic cat heads that bobble back and forth in the sun light, but I miss you. The birds still sing at 7pm, did you know that? Maybe it’s a summer thing. It’s cloudy, but bright, and all I hear are birds, and plastic cat heads, and a plane every five minutes. I can’t get up, and I can’t function. I won’t sleep, and I won’t start my homework. All I do is think of you, and meander through your Facebook notes. They’re weird like you. The good kind of weird. I think of your favorite fruits, and imagine feeding them to you. Don’t ever ask me why, I don’t even know the answer myself. I enjoy our conversations. I’m just a teenage dirtbag baby, like you. Wheetus makes my giggle. Will you dream of me too? I don’t know anything, I have no idea what I’m doing, or what I will do later. I suppose not knowing is fun, but it’s painful too. I just write my thoughts and I realize they are so scattered. I don’t know what’s going on in my head half the time. I feel like you could understand my mess, but then again maybe not. No one ever really knows someone do they? This song is distracting me now, and I can no longer hear the birds. I think I miss the silence. I wonder what I’m missing like Noel, but now the song is over so I don’t have to linger on these thoughts. My bird died today. Well he wasn’t really mine, but I tried to save him. Poor guy fell out of his nest three times. You know that nest above my balcony? I climbed up and placed him back in like the internet told me, but no luck, he just kept falling. Maybe he was being pushed out. I tried really hard to save him. The third fall left him with a cut on his little featherless neck. I came home and he was stiff. Dead. The little guy was like a metaphor for my life. Someone will come home one day and find me dead too. I guess that’s life. I tried writing on the train today, but all the Black Hawks fans were hovering over me. 77 years since a Stanley Cup win at home. Woo Freaking Hoo… they made my train ride slower than I would have liked. Annoying. Annoying. Annoying. Saw this kid I went to high school with on the train too, but I didn’t acknowledge his presence even when he sat next to me half way through the ride toward home. Never talked to him then, why start now? Nothing meaningful will come out of it. Plus I already have this idea in my head that I’m better than him, so that will never work. There were no packages waiting when I got home. There was no one waiting for me either. I suppose I like my lonesomeness. I like the quiet, but I hate the thoughts that come with the silence. Too many thoughts, and too little strength to deal with them. I like your writing. Today I asked you to write me a sonnet. How selfish right? I guess I just desire to be written about. I’m vain aren’t I? It makes me laugh dryly just to think about. I know lots of facts about sonnets too, but I know no one cares about the differences between a Petrarchan sonnet and a Shakespearean one. I care about the lamest things. I care about nothing at all. Lie. I lie to myself a lot. I care about many things. Trivial things. Trifles really. I care too much about too many things and too little people care about me. Lie. I’m sure lots of people care about me, but I have to act as though that’s not true because being sad and lonely is so my aesthetic. I love being that girl. I feed off the souls of those who pity me. It’s absolutely fun. My foot has fallen asleep now. I look up at my push pin board and wonder why I have so many post-it notes. One says “write essay, write your essay,” in all caps. Funny how I ignored that and turned in that essay 4 days late. I couldn’t think for days. Another note says “Alone, I am,” I guess that one is still relevant. My favorite is from Cleo. It says “Kill yo self - Cleo” I love that girl. I don’t want to go into detail, but I’ve made her promises I’m not sure I can keep. Or want to keep. I’d have to give up on my own dreams to help her, and I said I would, but I don’t know anymore. I can’t say anything else about it now. The birds are still singing their songs, the cars are still passing by, and I, well I sit here, waiting for something. Maybe you. Maybe nothing. I’m not sure what I wanted to write about today, but this is all that I could produce. Enjoy. You love the elegance and the grandeur,
Being led and spun and held close, then pushed away, then pulled close once more The line of young dancers all strangely coordinated and seemingly lighthearted You ignore the sunken look in his eyes, the defeated smile He’s only doing this for you You know it, but you pretend his smile is one of content and his eyes are filled with pleasure Your hand is in his once more, he’s crushing its pale delicateness into dust This shell that carries you: it’s frail and obsolete, and you’re cursed to house in it until the end He knows it He knows how weak your body is, and how easily he can break it if he chooses to You’re nothing Weak, crumbling dust pouring through his fingers and falling to the ground near his feet You’re his and he will do as he pleases All you can do is wait And hope that this dance lasts forever (Re: I've been lazy! I've missed two days of writing, and today would be the third, and so, I have decided to post some writing I did about a month and a half ago while in Italy. I hope it's not terrible since it's not as spontaneous as the other trials I've been posting. Now those are terrible due to their spontaneity, so if this one is terrible then it's because my writing is just that, terrible. I worked on this while on a train to the beach for three hours, that's when my thoughts started to wander due to boredom... (fiction))
14:25 Train to the Sea Six oval lights in two rows, twelve lights in total, are above her. Two seats in front, two seats in her row, four seats in total to complete a square, this small enclosure for the passengers of the 14:25 train to Loano. She’s facing the back of the train, not preferable, but necessary, as the train is packed to the brim with bodies. Lucky most travelers get off at the first few stops, so the mess has mostly dispersed. She did not enjoy the fifteen seconds of a stranger’s ass against her shoulder as the stranger attempted to make room for others to go around her sickeningly thick body. She also did not like change, and so this seat, annoyingly placed against the entrance of the cart, and facing the back of the train, was hers, until her destination was to be reached that is. Two more hours. What she didn’t mind was the young man sitting across from her. He was handsome and gave off the air of one untamed and untroubled, wild. His hair was shoulder length and finger brushed, a color that wasn’t quite honey, but she imagined that it smelled just as lovely, that he would wash it often and let it dry with the heat of the sun. She gazed at him as he stared out the window, eyes focused on the trees and rivers and mountains that drifted by. She imagined him thinking of the people who lived in the houses spread across the greenery, as she would. She imagined the two of them living on one of those farms, happily, with dogs, donkeys, and cows, maybe even a few chickens. Living with common live stock would convince them to give up eating meat, as they would not be able to imagine eating a member of the family. They’d be healthy and fit, in love with each other’s bodies, and their own. If he’d only turn around and see her, hear her thoughts, imagine what she imagined, then maybe they really could be happy, or some version of happiness that could last as long as a single glance. Who would know? The train continues on, the grass and trees blending into one green ribbon of textures and shadows and bursts of sunlight. Turn around, she thinks, but his eyes are focused, his manner is calm despite his wildness. His tanned arms are relaxed, large hands in his lap. She imagines his hands in her hair, gently massaging her scalp, telling her that life was indeed an endless chain of misery, but at least they had each other, he had her. She wanted to hear those words so badly, at least some version, any version. She sighs loudly, unintentionally. He turns. He looks into her eyes and she wonders what he might see in them. His are brown and beaming, and make her feel awake, like a rush of caffeine from the coffee color of his eyes. He's focused like before, but instead of out the window, on her. She has goosebumps all over. Embarrassed, she turns away. She can only blush while remembering the life she’d just imagined for the two of them. She’s not sure how to react, and so, awkwardly, she turns. She meets his eyes again, he hasn’t turned away. Awkwardly, she smiles. For a moment nothing happens, her smile doesn’t falter, and his eyes don’t turn away. The train continues on, and the ribbons of green turn to ribbons of blue as they pass a river that seems so vast that it could actually be a lake, or maybe they've already arrived to the ocean, she isn’t sure. The moment passes, and then he’s smiling too, clearly amused, she assumes, and hopes it’s not out of laughter at her awkwardness. Could this be a version of happiness? This glace that lasts only a few seconds? She hopes so, and then his mouth opens as if preparing to speak- |
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