Cleaning

I could feel my heart pounding against my ribs as I watched him ride away. It was that time of year once again when the anxiety takes over and I forget how to sleep. And I was afraid for him to see. This is the part when I can hear my own voice telling me I am broken. Shattered pieces of porcelain that can never quite be put back together again, I was perpetually imperfect. And it was almost funny how I would try to create a façade of perfection by working constantly to craft a “perfect” home.

I clean. I literally am constantly cleaning. And just in case I haven’t emphasized this enough, I will not lay down in bed until my entire kitchen is spotless. I don’t know if I am seeing imaginary dust or make-believe dirt, but my house can’t seem to be clean enough. Today I ignored the tears as I cleaned my home from top to bottom never quite seeing it as clean. My fingers cracking from solvents, while I resisted wearing gloves. And minutes later I am on a chair vacuuming the ceiling because I just can’t stop. I ignore the commitments I have made, because I have to keep going.

I jokingly call this OCD, but really it’s not. I am not sure what to call this, since it’s not really nesting either. I am still cleaning as if no one will notice my personal imperfections in such a clean house. And I wonder if I should tell the Viking as he notices the overpowering smell of Windex upon entering my house. I have created an illusion of cleanliness when really I am just crazy. And all the while secretly hoping someone will compliment how clean my home is. It’s actually all quite pathetic, this desperation to be noticed even though there is no one here.

I wonder if my mother cleans for the same reason. While visiting an old friend yesterday he described my mother’s home as looking staged by a realtor. No sense of warmth or comfort, just everything neat and tidy and put exactly in the “right” place. Her house is immaculate. I remember as a child she used to sweep and mop the kitchen every night while my father watched television. She couldn’t stop either.

How did we get this way? Did she also yearn to have her parents tell her that she was loved, even just once? Just a week ago I listened as the Viking told his father he loved him while on the phone. I turned my head away afraid he would see my tears and then found myself absentmindedly picking imaginary lint off of my pants.

Fall

The orange radiance of the harvest moon illuminated my room like the glow of a lighthouse.
Lights and mirrors warning ships in the night
And it’s fall and I am waiting
Impatient for the shoe to drop
Too many years of chaos taught me nothing different
And I am restless

After all I am the girl who disappears in the middle of the night
The child on the buses going nowhere just so I wouldn’t have to be home
The young one hoping to be remembered
In the ruins of all that was destroyed
I forgot how to trust

And as I stared up at the brilliance above I couldn’t help but pray I wouldn’t run
Images never seen don’t need to be erased
And they never really were gone
Like little slivers on my skin there were still marks
Or sometimes they lingered like the feeling of a shiver, as the colors of the sky grow dark

Most of the time I just pretended
Under guarded smiles and a muted tongue
I thought the world conspired with me
Allowing me to hide my head under veils thankful to not be seen
But it was me that was hurting all along

After all a tree falling in the forest does make a sound
And even under the comfort of your skin I can forget how to breathe
Or perhaps it's just I am holding the air still inside
Listening for the sound of the other shoe to drop

Felony

The Viking was right, it was just a simple task: just write. And yet here I find myself unable to find the words as if they are lost somewhere like the keys to my house. The sadness is indescribable. My body feeling as if I had gained 20 pounds over night, I was unable to move under my own weight. My life has been marked my so much loss and here I was facing the loss of my friend for the last 12 years and I just break. I almost feel embarrassed to feel so much grief. Here she is laying in my lap quietly purring and content. And here I am asking myself if I am doing the right thing by letting her go. We have shared so much but I never thought we’d be sharing a diagnosis of cancer. Mine in remission and hers inoperable. I almost wished it were me instead because I could understand and I had no way of explaining to her what was going on. I still don’t speak tabby.

She was just a little grey ball of fur the day she entered my life. After a visit to a vet and a bath, I discovered she was white. Nicknamed by a friend in grad school, she came to be known as “the cross-eyed beauty.” And although she shared her first 8 years with a 120-pound shepherd, she knew she was bigger. And she was. She was my comfort in times of pain and she was the first to hear the good news of the day. She is the first to greet me in the early hours as the sun begins its ascent. And she is my melody at night as the rumble of her purr soothes me to sleep.

She ended 2008 on a diet and began 2009 unable to hold on to her weight. Despite her condition she still rules the roost. She has the energy to remind her sister that the bed is only big enough for her. And she still slaps me in the calf beckoning me to play a game of chase. She guards the house unaware of her size. Greeting strangers at the door and meowing at friends. While rehearsing and vacuuming she will stand her ground. And despite her crossed eyes, no bug has ever been safe.

And now I am faced with saying goodbye. Unlike her sister, I can plan for pictures and I can hold her one last time. And I can keep telling myself tomorrow and silently pray that the day will never come.

Cutting

The security of the Tenderloin has changed from the subtle reminder of the dangers of depression and a bottle to a world of temptation for a girl looking for an escape. Even as I stood today facing the peckerwood with the blade screaming his racist rant while his “old lady” reminded him we shared color in common, I found myself too numb to muster a sense of fear. It almost scared me how much I wanted to feel his blade. Desperate for emotions that don’t come easy, I spent my day faking a smile to every face I thought looked kindred in a crowd. I began to think about the last time I had longed to feel and absentmindedly began to touch the scars on my leg.

Fiending to cut is much like craving booze or drugs. I would desperately yearn for the euphoric feeling as I dragged a razor blade across my thigh. For many years, it was the only way I could cry. The first time I cut, I was only 12. Oddly, I remember the day I did it as if it happened yesterday. On a day that began as “normal,” I was alone in my room surrounded by my childhood friends of Barbie’s and stuffed animals. A latchkey kid since I was 5, my afternoons were typically filled with conversations with my fuzzy friends about my day. I couldn’t tell time yet nor did I know my home phone number, but I knew to put the key in the door and to find my after-school snack of oranges and peanut butter sandwiches in the refrigerator.

I had formed a semi-circle of blonde bodacious beauties as well as lobsters, bears, and dinosaurs around myself. There really weren’t any favorites, but only the big brown bear slept in my bed with me at night. I still have no clue what compelled me to leave my room and walk the narrow hallway back to the kitchen. I have no idea why I walked directly over the beige patterned linoleum floor to the silverware drawer. Instinctively I grabbed the metal butter knife and returned to my room as if I had done this before. After returning to my room I closed my door and sat on the carpet directly in the middle of the semicircle of my toys. I ran my finger up and down the blade pressing harder with each turn. Eventually my skin grew rough and began to peel revealing some of its layers. Next I ran the knife against my wrists. It wasn’t suicide I was after. I am not even sure I knew what suicide was. I just wanted to rub the knife against my wrists until I would see blood. My only witnesses from that day long gone after years of living in boxes turned their fur musty.

I remember finding it strange that the knife didn’t hurt. I also remember finding it curious I couldn’t cut into my wrists. That first time there was no blood. I couldn’t seem to drag the knife in deep enough, being too naïve to understand the dullness of the blade was conspiring against me. I continued this ritual for years trying different knives and different parts of my body. I slowly began to comprehend that my sick secret could only be kept if I opted for less obvious places. Maybe it wasn’t exactly the conspicuousness that led to my propensity for my thighs. My sensitiveness of my thighs finally allowed for me to feel the pain and the sight of the red seemed to bring relief.

And this was my ritual for more years than I care to confess. Nestled deep in my clothing drawer was my kit. I graduated from knives to razors. Disposable were my favorites as I took them apart and was left with 3 thin sheaths. Sometimes I couldn’t wait to get home from school just so I could reopen the wound I had just created the day before. It was years later before the wounds allowed me to cry. Finally I had the relief I was after marked by the color red and the salt of my tears.

And here I am years’ later yearning for this dope-fiend to participate in my ritual I had left behind long ago. As I felt the spray of his words of anger and could smell his own desperation, I recognized it was me who would be his co-conspirator in his crime. And the relief that I was after was not in the tip of his weapon, but rather in the knowledge that soon I would be walking away from all of this. Today I will mark my countdown to feel. My security no longer held in the hands of strangers or in the blocks of cement nor the graffiti on the walls in this land of the forgotten and suffering. I am still the latchkey kid opening my door to the semi-circle of fur. Now I have the cross-eyed beauty and her large loud friend greeting me as I make my meal. And there is comfort here nestled in my lap as the sound of a purr brings calm to the day.

Pacing

I can’t remember the last time I have felt this lost. Pacing for days, crawling out of my skin and no comfort to be found. Redefining myself with no luxury of time, overwhelmed at the thought that all that I have built was so quickly stripped away with a signature on the dotted line. Committed to compassion in a cold industry no different than any other bureaucracy. The thought of saying goodbye to my oldest friend is breaking me. Without the genuineness of the stripped down existence I have come to know as a second home. I no longer know where I belong. And truth is I am scared.

I am the child who disappeared before I was grown and the girl on the skateboard just to out roll the boys. I was the teen who died handcuffed to a door and the woman who sat besides men with no souls. Perhaps not having anything before made it easier to ignore the fear.

Too tired to really write, I feel unable to even catch the thoughts that race through my mind like particles of dust being swept up by the wave of a hot breeze. My anger displayed in alone moments in my car as I curse those around me. Even the exhaustion from the day that began at dawn has not lulled me to sleep. For a moment today as the rain fell upon my head as I stood in the silence of the trees and the hills, I could breath deeply as the flitters through the trees harmonized with nature’s songs. My world colored in grays and greens since Friday brightened by the sight of the yellow of an enormous slug. I think about the red of the Viking, which has always brought calm and I long for just a moment in his arms. And now that night has fallen, I feel the urge to crawl on my floor like the accused awaiting trial familiar with the routines behind the gate. I recognize the panic like waves lapping at the shore, as the clouds above turn dark. And I repeat to myself, “I am strong, I am strong.”

Firefly

I found myself wandering from room to room to room looking for any trace of him having been there. I knew it was silly of me to want to hold on to some forgotten item, but it was the closest thing I could have to holding him near. I almost giggled at my reaction to his toothbrush no longer glistening from use. For some reason, the house seemed emptier, quieter than before. And I kept wandering, finally plopping down at the kitchen counter staring into my kitchen. It seemed like hours passed before I took a breath. I couldn’t sit still, my brain firing thoughts so rapidly and me crawling out of my skin. And it was late. I began to write and erase and write and erase until my body hurt from sitting as each muscle beckoned me to simply go to sleep.

I wanted to find his sent on my pillow as I crawled onto my bed, while allowing myself to feel the sadness. The night air was warm as my exhaustion betrayed me with no ability to sleep. And even the rumble of the cross-eyed beauty’s purr provided no comfort. I was confused by the sorrow as the lump grew in my throat. And I longed to feel him tender and warm even while recognizing I was fooling myself.

Ultimately he was just a stranger to me with his impenetrable walls contradicting his inviting arms. Perhaps it was that. Maybe we were no different than two fireflies in the night, sending out signals no one else understood. I am not even sure we understood as we found ourselves attracted to one anothers’ light. And we did glow, even if it were for just a little while. And like the little flies shimmering in the night, I soon found myself alone glimmering with the possibility that he and I could radiate as an us. But now here I am wandering from room to room to room looking for his light that no longer shines.

Ah Nicotine...

It's the crack of dawn as the caffeine slowly makes it way through my veins. Nicotine cravings remind me of the years I spent cigarette in one hand coffee in the other. I think about how often I used to deny being a smoker even while I was taking a drag. The smell would still be lingering on my fingers and my hair. I was convinced there was no evidence; no smell on my clothes or in my hair. But yet, I can always detect that distinctive smell on everyone else. Funny how invisible I felt I was.

I remember years ago, the way I used to walk down Market Street, almost as if I was tiptoeing past the bodies wrapped in blankets and boxes. The air would be still as the city began to wake and no one would notice the curly-girl with the coffee and the smoke. I would walk past the shop owners who would be slowly opening up their metal gates and begin the process of hosing down the evidence that too many people have no where to live. And I truly felt I belonged as I made my way to Boedecker Park before they built the fences. Just like every nowhere man the suits would step over and never even notice, they'd look right through me as we crossed paths. I nod hello to the girls done with working for the night. I wonder if I look as tired as they do and whether the bruises on their legs will ever go away.

I contemplate the comfort of my bed but I'm now on the clock handing out these sticky smelly rubber sheaths that will never be used by the men grabbing them. They linger and speak to me grabbing handfuls of Trojans, Durex and Kimonos. And even though they all know I am here every week, they grab more and more. I ignore the comments they make as they size-me-up from head to toe. I smile at the compliments as the hungry and the toothless offer to take care of me. I am only 22 years old and I don't try to pretend I understand the life anyone here has lived. There's the guy with one-dread who enters the park shuffling his feet and mumbling. I never say hello or he'll yell at me all morning. I never understand who he thinks I am. Then there's the super-tall guy, last week he was a famous lawyer, this week he is a surgeon. He stops by my table to tell me about the patient waiting for him at the unnamed hospital he works at while his 5th of gin peaks out from his pants pocket. Then there are the girls. They stop by to tell me where they will go to get their surgery once they have the money saved. I compliment their dresses and hair and ignore their 5 o'clock shadows and hormone-induced breasts. Of course, what they really want is a cigarette and truthfully there's a brand new pack in my pocket I hope no one notices. I am convinced no one does, even as I reach for one and light it.