Seriously dude... what. the. fuck.
Did I wrong you in some way that made you so colossally pissed at me that you had to chase me for 12 months with a chariot of fire and destruction?
I mean, we've got a few good hours left in us so I'm hoping we can end on at least moderately peaceful terms but what the hell did you have against me? The only truly good things I got this year were a new couch set, a former prison guard, and a super hero best friend. But even then, yo managed to pry everything but the couch from my hands in the eleventh hour.
I can't say I was the most loving either, but at least I tried. I had a hope in you, faith that you'd bring me something better. Maybe I didn't give 100% to you but I at least hit the lower 90s.
It feels like all you did was take from me this year. You took jobs, took friends, took futures, took all joy from me when it was the only thing I had left. So I ran.
I chased the moon, I chased the deer in my backyard, I chased sunsets and I chased the windstorms out of my hair. Guess what? I still win.
You tried your best to destroy me and to be honest, you got pretty close. But there's still too much fight to ever give up even when I'm hanging by threads.
My house is a mess, my life is a mess and my immediate future looks about as uncertain as the piles of rubble across the street where beautiful buildings once stood. Yeah. You took the stained glass windows too.
Unfortunately for you, I can still see Orion watching me outside my bedroom window. You can't move the constellations, and I still have eyes to see. You haven't taken the moon or Jupiter or Venus and I wait for the frosty nights when I can talk to them in orbit across my bleak horizons.
It's been a month of long Decembers but you underestimated me. I still have reason to believe. I'm still here. Tomorrow, you'll be just a fading memory, but I'll still wake up breathing,
Checkmate, motherfucker.
Thursday, December 31, 2015
Monday, December 7, 2015
A Lack of Compuntion for Hating Winter
December 28, 1989: I had just purchased my very first cassette with a $20 gift certificate I got to The Warehouse in Orange County, California.
The Jets topped the charts with their album "Magic" and their hit single "Make it Real" was an all-too-relatable anthem for my pathetic 8-year-old heart.
From then on, Love seemed to be an ever-dying mistress... a shooting star constantly fading from the night sky. Rolling tides of romantic cliches, waiting for boys to ask me to dance at awkward junior high social events and writing hundreds of sheets of notebook pages of poetry for boys who still never knew I existed.
As winter pushes in again with its hateful grey eyes, heavy black rain clouds and chilling temperatures, I have to wonder if maybe love itself isn't also a sepulcher of sorts. We fall into this tomb of darkness waiting for someone to be our light but each time love ends, the lid is pushed further shut until eventually we end up dying alone, in the darkness, waiting for someone to notice we're still here; we're still waiting. Waiting to be seen, waiting to be heard, waiting to be told we are beautiful and magnificent and worthy of all the joy in life we seek.
Sometimes ponder the chances that the weather has turned me to stone along with the rest of the frozen earth until nothing can penetrate my heart through layers of ice and cynicism. Nothing good can reach the roots such that, when someone tells me I look beautiful fighting with a tangled scarf and cup of cider, I can only roll my eyes and scoff the possibility of gaining attraction.
Perhaps there just aren't enough days of sunshine this far north to fully thaw out the land. Or maybe Mike Gonzales really did break my heart before I ever knew what to do with it. Life seems to be an endless two-lane highway of hearts in such tight propinquity and yet, miles from ever seeing each other.
At what point do we finally get to stop? At what point do we finally see each other for who we are?
At what point can we finally fall in love before the chilling wind of death takes us back to the sea?
I long for a life
with more love and less strife
unlike your sweet Annabel Lee.
And if I should die -- be a widow or wife
let my love not be quick, or sharp like a knife
lay with me down by the sea...
in a sepulcher finally set free.
The Jets topped the charts with their album "Magic" and their hit single "Make it Real" was an all-too-relatable anthem for my pathetic 8-year-old heart.
He never eve knew I existed.
And yet, I loved him.
Joey Gonzales' brother, Mike, was in the sixth grade, had wavy brown hair and he was going through a slightly chubby pubescent stage of adolescence. He was everything I'd ever dreamed of. I mean, he had a pulse, he had hair, he had eyes and a face and everything. He was tall dark and handsome because I was tiny little redhead with ringlet curls and was only a year away from discovering the first love poem that would forever change my life.
Joey was friends with my brother so I tried to hang out with them in order to be around Mike but I stood out like a blade of grass on a baseball field. Which is to say, not at all.
But oh how I loved him. The way he did whatever he did that I can't even recall 26 years later. I think he walked or talked or, maybe he just stood there breathing.
I had no idea what love was at that age.
And yet, I loved him.
The only definitive moment in all our nearly-real interactions was when I was too short to reach a red foursquare ball at the bottom of the ball cage on the playground. He came up beside me, reached down, grabbed the ball and placed it in my hands. For the briefest moment, he made eye contact and I'm pretty sure in those five nanoseconds, I saw our entire future together, complete with a wedding a house, a dog, and two cats. That was the first and last interaction we ever had.
The following year, I discovered Edgar Allan Poe and the harsh realities of unrequited love in tragic tale of the beloved Annabel Lee.
"I was a child and she was a child,
Joey Gonzales' brother, Mike, was in the sixth grade, had wavy brown hair and he was going through a slightly chubby pubescent stage of adolescence. He was everything I'd ever dreamed of. I mean, he had a pulse, he had hair, he had eyes and a face and everything. He was tall dark and handsome because I was tiny little redhead with ringlet curls and was only a year away from discovering the first love poem that would forever change my life.
Joey was friends with my brother so I tried to hang out with them in order to be around Mike but I stood out like a blade of grass on a baseball field. Which is to say, not at all.
But oh how I loved him. The way he did whatever he did that I can't even recall 26 years later. I think he walked or talked or, maybe he just stood there breathing.
I had no idea what love was at that age.
And yet, I loved him.
The only definitive moment in all our nearly-real interactions was when I was too short to reach a red foursquare ball at the bottom of the ball cage on the playground. He came up beside me, reached down, grabbed the ball and placed it in my hands. For the briefest moment, he made eye contact and I'm pretty sure in those five nanoseconds, I saw our entire future together, complete with a wedding a house, a dog, and two cats. That was the first and last interaction we ever had.
The following year, I discovered Edgar Allan Poe and the harsh realities of unrequited love in tragic tale of the beloved Annabel Lee.
"I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee"
From then on, Love seemed to be an ever-dying mistress... a shooting star constantly fading from the night sky. Rolling tides of romantic cliches, waiting for boys to ask me to dance at awkward junior high social events and writing hundreds of sheets of notebook pages of poetry for boys who still never knew I existed.
As winter pushes in again with its hateful grey eyes, heavy black rain clouds and chilling temperatures, I have to wonder if maybe love itself isn't also a sepulcher of sorts. We fall into this tomb of darkness waiting for someone to be our light but each time love ends, the lid is pushed further shut until eventually we end up dying alone, in the darkness, waiting for someone to notice we're still here; we're still waiting. Waiting to be seen, waiting to be heard, waiting to be told we are beautiful and magnificent and worthy of all the joy in life we seek.
Sometimes ponder the chances that the weather has turned me to stone along with the rest of the frozen earth until nothing can penetrate my heart through layers of ice and cynicism. Nothing good can reach the roots such that, when someone tells me I look beautiful fighting with a tangled scarf and cup of cider, I can only roll my eyes and scoff the possibility of gaining attraction.
Perhaps there just aren't enough days of sunshine this far north to fully thaw out the land. Or maybe Mike Gonzales really did break my heart before I ever knew what to do with it. Life seems to be an endless two-lane highway of hearts in such tight propinquity and yet, miles from ever seeing each other.
At what point do we finally get to stop? At what point do we finally see each other for who we are?
At what point can we finally fall in love before the chilling wind of death takes us back to the sea?
I long for a life
with more love and less strife
unlike your sweet Annabel Lee.
And if I should die -- be a widow or wife
let my love not be quick, or sharp like a knife
lay with me down by the sea...
in a sepulcher finally set free.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)