You're My First Love

Monday I sat incredibly still for the first time in two years.

Added the last line breaks, capitalized the D in dad I forgot to, took out a few commas, and saved my 54 page manuscript-thesis as a complete and finished document.

Yesterday I packaged up two of these little babies and sent one to Mark Wunderlich and another to Ed Ochester. And as soon as I stepped outside the post office, I felt differently than what I anticipated. Empty. I felt empty. And maybe 'empty' isn't necessarily the *right* word; but I didn't feel great or light or unburdened.

I found a baby bird, almost dead. I brought the tiny thing back to life with care, intention, and food, lots and lots of love, mornings of conversation and even my own breath, sometimes. And, as time went on, that thing got gorgeous. She preened and perched everywhere; she fluttered throughout the house and slept quietly on my pillow. I loved her, you know? And when I sent her into the sky (when it was time); she didn't even turn around to watch me wave.

That's how I felt. Is that the same as empty?

Tuesday I Get a Little Sideways

Somedays this girl wakes up wanting wine, and maybe to die, but just a little bit. Instead, I make coffee. Some victories are palpable. Listening to that one song by Ray Charles that always makes me cry can't be an option on mornings like this, so on second thought, I'll listen to Brooks and Dunn. Sure, I'll think of my dad, but the good stuff.
"Jukebox plays on drink by drink."

My grocery list should be longer than it is; it reads: Peroxide, Cereal. I should add "booze", but we don't have money for that.

Before the morning is over, I'll make the bed. I'll put away the dishes and polish off this pot of coffee. I'm going to waste a few more hours daydreaming of running away. I might research New Mexico towns, look for jobs in Labelle, Florida, and apartment search in Sulphur Springs, Texas.
"I like my women wild."

I'm trying to make good decisions. That's why I'm listening to country music.

Share My Bread and Wine

I am not surprised. I'm the kind of girl who gets rabies. And who breaks her foot before the race. I'm magnetic in all the wrong ways. I feel things too much in my bones. I fall in love with all vibrations. I feel that blue collar catastrophe, personally. I want a sharp hair line and the kind of collar bone that perfectly spills into shoulders. Maybe beer on the couch is best. Or red wine in the morning, in a coffee mug. And stars beaming through electronics. I'm that kind. The ruiner kind.

Things end.


That's how my book would start.

My heart's learned to kill

The summer between my junior and senior year of high school, I had a boyfriend named Jon. In August, he went away to the Naval Academy where I visited him twice. It was nice. I was friends with his youngest sister. I called her MixMaster. That summer was slightly stressful - my stepdad had moved away to set up house in Arizona where he accepted a job with a huge pay bump. I had decided to stay in Indiana to finish up my senior year. I was approaching a year without my mother. Anyway, I had this boyfriend, before Arizona, before Annapolis.

He was a nice boy. Smart. He loved to make out in his Caprice Classic, he had a wonderful mother and dad. He liked me a lot. Once, in a moment of vulnerability, he sort of proposed to me. This, however, wasn't *before* Annapolis. This was during. Anyway, I had this boyfriend.

I was with him the night my dad died. He left about 3 hours before it happened. We didn't really talk that night, we did a lot of kissing on that green couch. Well, anyway, he was the 4th or 5th person to stand next to me the morning after my childhood home burned down. He was the one who waited on me while I told the firemen "exactly what happened as [I] remember[ed] it". He let me lose my shit.

He moved away weeks later. He accidentally proposed months later. And I cheated on him. Lots. I was a vacant human being. I know now I should have been nicer - fuck, I knew it then. But I couldn't.

Let's be honest: I couldn't do anything. School, and grief, and school, and grief, and blowjobs, and movie theaters and lots of Fazolis, and the loneliest, scariest nights of my life. That's what I had to hold on.

And the distinct memory of watching that green couch in flames as I escaped the house without my dad.

He died 13 years ago today. I was the last person to see him, the last person to talk to him. He didn't really like my boyfriend.

I'll show you my scars

My horoscope yesterday said "you're longing for the new, the different, the unique." That doesn't mean anything to you - and if we're honest, it doesn't mean anything to me, either. But for a moment, I stood up straight on this little mountain I've constructed mostly from cardboard and thought, "I do need anything but this" and the entire day I jotted down notes about my escape to the ocean.

And everything was affirmed about a trillion times before bedtime - yes, yes! the echoes bouncing off the church walls, crawling up the bricks on the outside of my house, coming in with the wind through the cracks in my floorboards. Yes! Move away, lady. Be something else. Pick up each grain of sand, tell them the secrets you have hidden in your sinews. Braid your hair until your fingers fall the fuck off your hands.

Go.

Because let's face it, sometimes a girl is alone. But not really alone - just lonely. And let down.