You are living a reality I left years ago It quite nearly killed me.

Well I wasn't going to post this, because it's unfinished and without an ending, but I realized that I might as well, because that's what a blog is for, right? Im always telling flower to post things no matter what, so so will I. I wish I could work more on it, but I'm going away without a computer for the next week or so, and this is my last day to post it. Maybe when I come back I'll write some more, but for now, this is it, deal with the lack of ending. I worked hard on this.
Anyway, here goes. . .

She wrote things on her hands, cryptic notes, abbreviations, acronyms. They were little reminders to herself, to give a friend back her book, to pick up ten dollars owed from someone else. She was an impatient sort, and she never waited long enough for the ink to fully fade before writing something else on her palm, so it looked almost as if she had criss-crossing semi-transparent veins of words upon her hands. She said this suited her, because if the outside of her was entangled in words, it was fitting that the inside should be as well. She carried a pen everywhere, fumbling for it with her inky fingers, digging through her pockets when something came to her mind. Often, that thought would land on her palm, and when she waved, people would see her mind on her hand. Sometimes though, it was a longer thought, and she would rummage around in her backpack until she found a little notebook, crisp clean sheets of paper, and hurriedly write down sentences. She wore long tiered skirts that furled around her ankles and converse sneakers, and her skin was dark, very dark. She was so dark that at night all you could see were her eyes and the half moons of her fingernails, twisting and blinking. She had long nappy curls of hair only just darker than her ebony complexion, that were always slipping out of her loose bun and hanging down about her nose. She didn't care about her appearance. She was more focused on the outside, or within the outside--the unseen but not unthought. She was thin, but not waif-ish, and she was calm and careful. She answered questions slowly, with a long pause for thought before she opened her mouth. When she smiled, only one side of her lips turned up. It was a thoughtful sort of smile. She was a thoughtful sort of girl.

He, on the other hand, was not the sort to look before he leapt, or to think before he spoke. He was easily excited, and moved like a train running. First, he would raise his eyebrows, blink his eyes, lean forwards. Then, just as a train begins to gather steam, so did he, becoming animated as he stood up, his mouth working, his body moving, as words began to flow and his hands gestured slightly. He had man-boy hands. They were becoming like a mature man's, with protruding knuckles and pronounced veins, but they had this innate softness about them, sturdily delicate--that edge of vulnerability that comes with development. They were the perfect hands for skipping stones, she thought. She would daydream about his hands holding a dappled gray stone at the seaside, about how his fingers would grip the edges and then loosely hurl them out across the waves. She would sigh and tuck a curl of her hair behind her ear, and write this image on something, the underside of a leaf perhaps, which she would tuck amongst the pages of her notebook. He also had this little hemp necklace, weighted with a stone in the back and with a thick metal loop hanging from the front, pocked and dented, which lived around his neck always. The pockets of all his pants were ripped, as were the sleeves of his hoodies, which he would absentmindedly tear and bite at when he was daydreaming. Often, when he was bored, he would reach into those ripped pockets with his man-boy hands, and pull out a ragged crossword puzzle which he had taken from the newspaper. He would sit with the paper, his teeth nibbling and the edge of his sleeve, his chair tipped back, oblivious. He would sit there and do the crossword, slowly filling in the little white squares without registering whatever was going on around him. He would be oblivious to whichever class he was ignoring, or whichever teacher was droning on, and he would just read the clues to that crossword puzzle, mouthing the words with his lips. She found this habit charming, the whole crossword deal. He liked to read, and he was rather smart, but he was none too keen to do schoolwork, and people didn't really know why or how he passed any of his classes, since he listened none during class nor completed any of the homework. Still, he always passed, and did not badly either. He read book after book on his own, and had amassed a huge vocabulary. People knew he was smart, but it was an odd sort of smart. He was not school smart, he was mind smart. She understood this.

She did well in school as well. People often called her smart, top of the class, genius, even. They didn't realize how much this angered and hurt her. She didn't want to be known as smart, she wasn't just smart, she was Tulya. And she didn't spend her time alone learning the lessons before they were taught, or whatever people thought she did, instead of hanging out with everyone. She wasn't socially inept, or too shy or ashamed to be part of their big clique, their band of high-school kids. She just chose to flow in a different direction. She would go outside, to the park, while they would be watching a movie. Or she would go to the theater when they were at the park. And all the time, she would be writing, words leaking from her ears. That's just how she was, how she chose to be. He understood this.

He was well known among the school, though. He was friends with the collection of teenagers roving the halls, the friends or groupies banded together in a one for all, all for one situation. You could often see him walking with a few of his buddies, his neck tilted back a little, his face smiling, his hair tousled up. He had olivey tan skin, and soft brown hair. Someone would call his name, "Bay, Bay," and he would lift his chin up in reply, in challenge, in question. People liked him. He was likable. So he hung around everyone and they hung around him. But if he ever saw Tulya or the hem of her skirt whisk around a corner, he would smile doggedly, almost apologetically, and he would break off from this group and lope down the hallway to catch her.

The two of them were wrapped tightly around each other, bound together by a ribbon, a ribbon of words. A ribbon of words she had written, of words he had read, a ribbon of words they had said to each other without speaking. The words said Bay and Tulya and love and brown and lines and train and happiness and a shared mug of hot mulled cider, and they said tears and ocean and frustration and bare bellies and sheets of paper and sheets of linen and they said the infinity sign. They were strong words, and she and he walked strongly together, arm linked with arm.

Title Quote: Crosby Stills & Nash, You Don't Have to Cry

Shootin' rockets to the moon Kids growin' up too soon

Ode to an Ice Cream

Cone. Cardboard brown, lit with sugar to a honeyed hue. Brittle, crissed and crossed, filled with diamonds of dried batter. Ice cream cone batter. Rolled out flat with a pin on a butcher's block, heated in a pan, wrapped gently with the tip tight, the lip opened wide, ready to swallow gulps of ice cream.

Cow udder. Gently squeezed, smooth milk cream flows out, splashes into a tin bucket. Sugar, frothy milk, vanilla bean, churn churn churned. A bucket holds sweet cream ice cream, glinting frosty ice crystals. 

Silver spoon, glinting dully, curve, turn, concave, convex. A reflection only just missed, steel cities, sky scrapers, machines, machines; machines. A clean incision is made. Pure, smoothly separating ice cream from its brother, its mother, creating a crater on the surface of freshly fallen snow, an untreaded planet. 

And each comes together, plop bang smush: round melting scoop on top of ridged unbroken cone. A small pink tongue will lick the ice cream perfectly spherical, its natural roughness smooth, and small white teeth will nibble at the sugar cone. The child will pull off the paper wrapping and pursue the last ice cream trickle tickle until all that is left is the space where the cone tips almost meet, and sticky fingers licked another time, in the hope of one last bit of flavor.

Title Quote: The Tempatations, Ball of Confusion

And president of The United States of Love

Chaos

Pantomimes of nonsuch

whirl round

trodden down 

anarchy

intangible joy

gathers at the 

heart, its

bent wax

ropes free

mangled swirling 

solemn snowy

silks.

Inflections of the mind

slide into

spheres containers oceans

pitiless veins

leach 

shining golden

acrobats warriors ideas

darkened mirrors

blast

lethal grenades

empty empty

hollow, hollow.

Woven dangle tied-up

walls 

scrub

wrapped purple 

precision incisions.

tears minutes shocks of grief.

hours

of grief.

Title Quote: Hair Soundtrack, Colored Spade

And be a goddess in the planet wars And save the living things.

“Who wants to see the world?” They said.

“Me." I said. "I do."

“No, not you,” they said. “You can't. You're too young.”

“But I want to,” I said. “I want to see the world, I want to save the world, I want to be the world!”

“Too bad,” they said. “Come back later, come back when you're older.”

“What if there is no later?” I said. “What if this is the only time we've got, what if I need to do this now? What if?” I said.

They did not answer, they only turned away from me and called at others to join them.

“Wait! Wait, don't you believe in me?” I said. “Don't you think I can do this, don't you think I can have dirt under my fingernails, holes in my shoes, aches in my back? Don't you think I can see the world?”

“No.” They said. “Sorry.” They said. “Go away.” They said.

They turned away and began to ask other people again:

“Who wants to see the world?”

 Well let me tell you this, let me tell you: I can and will see the world, I can and will save the world, and guess what, I can and will be the world! 

What do you have to say to that?

Title Quote: Neil Young, Sun Green

You can't watercolor a fire cracker

She watched her reflection in the streams of light filtering through the half closed blinds on her windows. The bed she was lying on felt unstable, as if rocking on the sea, about to pitch over, yet the sheets felt as crushing, cold and lifeless as stone. She imagined, idly, that a poisonous viper had been let loose from the zoo that very day and had slithered in to reach her the same way the light had, and now, it was resting on her, curled tightly around her legs, a tight skirt of emerald scales. That would explain why she could not move them. But then she chuckled at herself, chiding gently, in the place of a nanny, that she should be so silly as to think it was a viper causing that. For many months she had lain here, nauseous and weak, sipping tea and crumbling dry toast beneath her lips tasting nothing but cardboard. She thought she saw the sunlight flicker, just out of the tail of her eye. Her mind returned to the viper, its tail fondling her toes, its little tongue darting out, eyes glowing in her own. It must be getting pretty hungry for a meal by now, she thought. But here she stopped, for she knew she had crawled to deep inside her mind and laughed too loudly into its tunnels, the laughs turning to echoing screams vibrating through her skull. She repressed the trembles that started from her eyebrows, and proceeded to ripple and contort her whole face with fear. Taking a deep breath, she looked for her reflection in the light again, but all she saw was darkness.

Title Quote: Beth Orton, Heart of Soul

When you find yourself in the thick of it

Haiku (untitled)

nestled in the snow
a tiny jeweled footprint
among busy boots.

Title Quote: The Beatles, Martha My Dear

When the armies of emotion Go out to fight.

Rags

Wicked

winter swirls

and no one’s out

but the 

Spare change beggars

and Shopping cart pushers,

no one 

but the 

worn out

rags

of once before people

bare feet and a

brown paper bag

trundles by  

cart full of possessions— 

raccoon meals.

sitting rags with 

an eye patch and a

disfigured mouth

pleads for that penny

the seams holding his smile up

breaking, falling

garbage eaters,

park bench sleepers,

almost dead

rags

are the dirt 

you hurry through

with sharp heels

Let the snow cover them

don’t look back

or give

them your scarf

some spare change

hot soup

Let the snow cover them

until there is no need

for food

or warmth.

Title Quote: Nick Drake, Cello Song

But listen to the color of your dreams It is not living It is not living

Sometimes she saw green. She would just wake up and everything would look as if viewed through emerald glasses. The pearls in her grandmothers folded wrinkly ears, the sky through her old french glass windowpane, it was all tinted with green.


And then the next day, she would see it all in red. Red trees, red teeth, red cars.


Then blue. Or purple. And so on. She loved it. Loved never knowing what she would see when she woke up, loved how everything that looked one way one day looked completely different the next.


But she could never see what she had seen again, because if she ever took a picture, it was of the colors that everyone else saw, normal people, not the color she saw it in, so the next day she would see the image in another color. She could never preserve these moments of beauty affected so profoundly by the colors.  It was like there was a screen, a translucent tinted slide, that conformed perfectly to her irises, to her unique pupils. And each tinted slide was replaced as she closed her eyes to sleep, to wake up and see a bright new day, a bright new color.


She missed so many of those days, missed with such a longing, like the day she saw in mango orange, rays of sunlight of creamy sorbet, or the day everything was different shades of night blue. It was like night vision, everyone leaping shadow dancers. But even without the chance to ever revisit these days but in her memories, the girl lived with it. She knew she was lucky enough to even experience them once. 


She was a painter, and everyone would marvel at her work because she would paint the most mundane, everyday things, and transform them into, well, art. The girl felt this was the closest she would ever get to having the world through her eyes, so she worked hard. She worked with a passion, the thinnest point of a pencil carving the most precision and life onto a canvas she would be glimpsing in sepia tea color, then salmon pink. What people liked so much about her works as that she might paint one scene ten times, yet each piece was so uniquely different, you could hardly tell they were all the exact same view, the exact same snippet of a life. That was because each one was painted in shades of just one color, just as the girl saw it.


She, of course, couldn't tell the colors she painted apart from the other. They were all just different hues of the same color. So instead, she would have an assistant (mostly it was her high school teacher who would help out) and she would say to him or her when she began painting "Today is turquoise. Bring me some turquoise." And he or she would bring her a palette with turquoise paint, which she would mix to different shades for for the "different" colors of the painting, judging by their shadows, their lightness and darkness. 


People loved her technique and unique style and how much feeling was put into each piece, and the girl loved how happy the paintings made people. And so it went on like this, a painting a day, never the same color. 


Until one day. The two colors she never saw in where black or white, the absence and totality of color. But this day, she woke up and everything was in black-and-white, an old photograph. Amazed, the girl looked in the mirror, devoid of color for the first time in her life. Shades of gray, it was all shades of gray, dusty, creamy, sharp, softened. She ran around the house and outside in a frenzy, looking at everything in stunned rapture.


Then, She took out her tubes of paint, to see them colorless as well. But when she took off the tops, thick, saturated, explosive color slipped out. The tube marked yellow was the creamiest yellow; the tube marked red was the most violent red. The vibrance of each color shocked the girl. She reeled back, experiencing the fact that she could see all the colors--at the same time! Overjoyed, she ran to the mirror, chose the colors she thought herself to be, and painted herself colorful over her black-and-white reflection. She leapt off, leaving the portrait of a colorful young woman painted to the mirror, smiling the widest smile possible.


She ran outside and noticed her feet, nestled in the grass of her front yard. She plucked one piece, felt its soft slenderness. She weighed it in her palm; weren't books always mentioning how green the grass was? The girl uncapped the green, vert and squeezed some of it on her palm. Laughing, she pressed it against the grass. Grabbing a handful of speckled green grass, she gathered it into a brush and painted the grass around her the most lush, verdant green she had ever seen in. Then she painted the waiting school bus a daffodil yellow. Then instead of getting on the school bus, she blissfully lay on the ground, surrounded by a black-and-white world. She reached up and brushed the sky blue, and dreamily began to paint upon it a rainbow, using every color she had ever seen in.




Title Quote: The Beatles, Tomorrow Never Knows

So be kind And don't lose your mind

Wind

Blowing when

already through.

Reach.

Assume the 

languages, muted

embrace

inner spikes.

Holes in a

sheet, flapping

anger, angry

Rest.

Dark slumberdown

stillness kisses

rage

and the rapture.

Title Quote: Rent Soundtrack, Take Me or Leave Me

I am your mermaid Tangled but blissful

When I grow older, I want a child. And I know what he will look like. He will be my little boy, dark Caribbean skin, glowing from within. He will have long kinky brown hair, that I will back-comb for hours until they form fuzzy swaying caterpillar dreadlocks, that hang to his shoulders. And he will have dark, glowering eyes, and a round, button nose, that I will rub in greeting. His dark wide lips will smile slowly, revealing happy gapped teeth. He will have the most perfect toes and fingers, that are continually filling pockets with the treasures of the earth. 

I will teach him to make music, so he can bring emotions into the air, and then my wild little child will run, screaming off into our backyard. I will smile and make cinnamon cookies, and when I'm done, I'll go looking for him, and all I'll hear is the throat songs he will have left trailing behind himself for me. The trail will lead me through a hole in our fence, and into the woods, into the thickest part. And I will be standing there, with a bag of warm cookies, and I will look up, and there he will be, his naked brown body swinging from the rough bark, his miniature clothes piled over the roots at the bottom of the tree. He will sing a taunting monkey song to me, and climb higher. So, barefoot, I will climb myself up up up until I reach him, and we will find the biggest branch there and I will lie upon it on my back, and he will curl up on my stomach, and we will fall asleep, naked monkeys high up on a naked tree bough. 

When the night tickles us awake, his eyes will open, luminescent beacons attached to a body with grasping fingers that pull me down and forwards, back to home, where he will steal the bag of cookies from my open palms and run off to my bed, to warm it for me, and when I come back after retrieving our clothes, he will have eaten all the cookies but one, for me, and there will be crumbs in his hair. I will sing a little song beneath my breath, until it swells larger and larger, and he will get up and dance to it, his little arms akimbo, his hair reaching up and outwards, and he will spin and spin and spin until his eyes will close mid spin, and I will pick up his soft skinny body and deposit him beneath warm patchwork covers. That is what will happen when I grow older.

Title Quote: Elysian Fields, Mermaid