Bones

This is super rough, but I like it, and I love the idea, obviously. If you know me at all you know I love the idea. It has a lot more to do with what I am working on than one would expect, though this is the first time I've actually sat down to write about this particular part. I really don't know how to say it yet, but you have to get it on paper before you can start to figure it out--at least, this is how it works for me. So, here is my really rough, really not so awesome first attempt to say what I am trying to say about bones, and skeletons, and broken parts in general:

The majority of the human body is soft—except for the bones. I have known the softness, the ease of bruising, the sponginess of relaxed muscles and tender fat. How simple it is to slice our flesh, rip it apart, cause it to crack down to the bone. I have felt how vulnerable our skin is, how breakable our flesh is. How easily we get hurt. I like to believe I have built up an exoskeleton along the surface of my skin, to protect my mushy insides, because for twenty years I’ve been over-sensitive to the slices of words and tones and looks from people I’d like to trust. So I pretend to be strong on the outside, because the organs, the blood, the heart, and the brain can’t take it when flesh breaks. It isn’t really true, though, about the shell.
If anything, it’s an inner hardness that I have developed, which has caused in me a longing to be “soft” on the inside. This, too, though, I believe is a lie. I don’t think I have ever been hard, but maybe for small moments when I pretend I am strong, when I pretend I am made of bone. Maybe this is why I love them so much—bones. I love lyrics, songs with references, “broken parts,” “cracking bones,” “all my old bones are growing new bones,” like some sick form of super skeleton, doubling up on the hard parts. I love the idea of skeletons, the idea of bones...of stripping away the easy to kill flesh, down until there isn’t anything soft. I don’t like to get hurt, I don’t like to break, and I don’t like to cry. I don’t like being soft, although sometimes I think I am not, I know I tend to be easily bruised, like the pink, fuzzy flesh of peaches. But, I have never broken a bone.
We are all so soft, so squishy. Our bones hold us together.

Oh What a Day

My problem is that I have too much I want to say, too much I want to include, too much I want to discuss that really doesn't have much to do with the points I am trying to make or the messages I am attempting to get across. Too much that really isn't about anything but myself, and in a way that isn't necessarily entertaining or insightful, but more self-destructive and sometimes just corny, motivationals of which I have never been pleased with--I'm not a "motivational" kind of person, but I always find myself writing them to myself, which in turn just turns me off more from the idea of motivation. No, what I want to say isn't about that, self-motivating or stories about my job or paying off my car...that isn't the point of it, and the idea of writing those things in, I think, is bogging down the whole idea. I can't breathe under the weight of all the useless crap--thus is my life. But, everyday, I am getting closer to knowing what needs to be cut, what I need to concentrate on, what really has the story all wrapped up around it's finger. My father, the divorce, the move from Tulsa to Chicago, from Chicago to Tulsa, and then back again this past fall, my family's communication problem, my mother...those are the things that are important, the things that are still bogging me down a little with their massive weight, but the things that are necessary. In a way, though, those are the things that just discuss how I got here, and that is the ultimate challenge...how did I get here, so worried about everything, so terrified to invest faith, so cynical towards hope and yet eager to hope again. How did I get to this point, trying believe that something good has to come because I am due, when really I am the one who has to make it happen. That is the lesson, and the lesson of faith, because we have to invest it, or nothing will happen. For so long nothing was happening, but when you step out on a ledge and you jump, well, you're going to fall. It's supposed to be about all of the lessons that were so hard to learn, why they were, and if I have.
I guess what I am saying is this, I am closer today than I was yesterday to understanding what it is I need to talk about. The thing about it is, that even if everything works out for me the way I want it to, I still won't have said these things until I do this and until I do this I can't be whole and healed and I can't forgive anyone, and I especially don't want to, I don't want to forgive. I'm not ready; I'm still broken. I'm still looking for a reason to deny it, I am looking for a way to avoid it, and I am closer each day to finally confronting it. I have to get over it, and I can't do that without this book, I know that because I can never say to anyone what I need to say, but I can write it down. I don't care so much if it gets published, but I will try, and I certainly want it to. Right now, though, I would really like to just move on; I would really like to just write it, put it on paper, and finally get over the past five years, finally learn my lessons, and move on with my life the way that I should.
Yes, I know, this itself seems motivational. But, more, I am coming to some understandings, and when I do that, I like to write about it. Go figure.
I just don't want to lose sight of what it is that is most important to me. Yes school, yes my career, yes my friends, yes my family, but the one thing I have wanted since I was six, the one thing I have been working hard to accomplish since I was fifteen, the one thing I think about the most is this, and I have to do it sometime or other...I would rather do it now. I think it's important to do it now. I think somewhere someone knew, some part of some pattern, and I didn't lose my job or get this one at Old Navy or finally have the opportunity to get the CNA, or get back into UIC, or have the opportunity to pay off my debt myself....none of this happened because shit happens. Somebody, somewhere, some piece of some pattern, I was fired because I needed to stop being someone I am not and finally realize who this person is...and that includes finally realizing what it is I need to write about.
I Think I'm Ready to Win

All Winter We Got Carried Away

"Pillow Talk"

Sometimes I curl up
to the pillows
on the other side of the bed
as if they were something warmer,
something firmer,
something tangible beyond
feathers and lace.

I find myself with the overwhelming
desire
to wrap my arms around a stranger
whose warmth radiates
and whose body seems strong.

For all I know, if I did, he’d
crumble into feathers;
he’d crumple under my weight.
He’d be nothing but pillows,
cotton and lace.

And cold,
on the other side.

December 15, 2008
So Come Over, Just Be Patient, and Don't Worry

Closer Whole World

I felt like posting this again. Dunno why....

Roll Up Your Sleeves

Why do I get this feeling
that life is harder without you
so close and so easily obtainable—
so easily found on street corners
were buildings are tall enough to swallow
our small hearts?

If there weren’t an ocean of grass and land
maybe life would be less heavy,
maybe I would feel less hard—
stone walls and glass barriers and
borders I put up—seemingly impenetrable.

If trees as fierce as skylines, cold
and metal and cruel,
didn’t appear in the distance;
if they were as beautiful as
small pines in the past, left behind with
all the things deemed so difficult
maybe I would be kind.
Maybe I would be gentle.

I get this feeling the world
would be softer if you weren’t
a distant thing, long sought after.
And I ask it, all around me, the cars
and concrete and cold steel,
I ask the world: “when will I be soft?”

When will I begin again, closer
to you, swallowed and whole
in the belly of the world
so distant I can’t but feel
the world would be easier
if it were close.

January 25, 2008