reset.

one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven. seven eleven. fated to meet. fated to like, and fated to fool. fated to break, appearing out of nowhere and returning everything to where it belongs. couldn't hide everything from myself for a very long time, couldn't let you change me, couldn't let you lead me somewhere directly opposite to where i wanted to go. and if you think you could find the right place eventually, i think i'd rather go alone. we'll cross this street, that's all, and then i'll let go of your hand and you won't even notice. 

summer dreaming.

last night,

you imed me. and told me that you were leaving me, with beautiful words that i thought would never come out of you. i was happy that you had it in you, and sad that it had been revealed to me all too late. it confirmed to me that everything i had been holding in hopes was real, that it had been a truthful wish and was always there. i thought i had it right for a moment. and i said to myself, he finally did it, and he did it for me and our goodbyes. 

the morning is silent. mom came by to tell me what time it was (it's 7:40) and i asked for 3 more minutes. i collected the fading memory of the words you've never said and what it was all about. i thought about what i was doing, and how i felt and how i could probably say hi to you in the morning and either just go with a simply hi and goodbye or face your beautiful words.

floating floating.

i knew you'd tire of waiting for me. what i didn't know was what you were thinking when you started to walk towards me. and what you thought when you stopped to stand next to me. hold an umbrella over my head. watch the rain drip down from the umbrella and plop. watch it soak my right shoulder and run down my hand, clinging on to my fingertips. plop.

plop.

plop.

plop plop ploploploploplopopop.

did i ever tell you i like the rain? i like the rain and the way it looks and the way the sky looks before it hits down on me and afterwards, when the colors come out again. when the winds pick up and swirl around me and you and the buildings stand strong against the wind but you and i we are shivering and moving with it like...

water. look at the water around our feet. our reflections. what do you think? me beside you, and you beside a smiling emptiness. listen. listen to the...

tambourines.  

too loud.

when the music started i remembered my mom saying how loud concerts made you feel like it controls your heart. the beat the beat the beat beat beat in your heart. loud, shake, rattle, rattle. he looked like you. i saw him and quickly turned my eyes away, i thought he looked too much like you at one point that i thought i was looking at you. i turned away, looked back, looked back a lot of times and too many times and stared at him when the girls in front of me bobbed back and forth and up and down, jumping jumping, rattle, rattle, they blocked everything but i tip-toed up and saw you. him. him. i saw him and his face and the way his eyes glared with that look of angry fury. you? and you were what i thought about when i looked at him. and i looked at him for the rest of the night, as the music muted my heart and substituted its rhythm and life.

dedicated to you

dedicated to someone who is alive and something that is dead. dedicated to your words and foolish, ignorant jokes and to my responses that i wish could be said not in jest and in a different tone. to the times where you thought i was a girl having fun playing around with ideas and simple scenarios and i wish you knew just how much i wanted it to be real. all that is in the past, all that we have left now, is more than i ever thought i could get. an indifferent happiness.

on our funeral day the birds will sing, not for you, but for themselves. you wanted it that way, i was told, and so it is. they will sing in chirps and shrills, they will show off their mating calls in hopes of finding the means to reproduction. and birth. it all ends with birth. and while these birds sing, for themselves, the weeping willow will dance, for you and your soul. your body will be left alone, perhaps next to mine, or perhaps far away, but it all does not matter because everyone will be watching your soul and trace its journey. they will lose track of you sometime, at a given moment when you decide that you want to disappear and reappear and then fade away. they will be puzzled, but only for a while, and after that, they will forget you as they have forgotten me long ago. i don't know who will remember me but that is of no importance because i will have gone, while they remain, to a place they won't ever reach. no, it is not heaven. i do not know if my name is written down in that Book. i do not know my name. i have too many. i have none. on our funeral day, as the birds sing for themselves, as the willow dances for you and your soul, the sun will break because it does not know whether to rise or set and the stars will dance, invisible to the world. in the sunless day and the moonless night, you will do whatever spirits do, you will move like the ghosts who pass through everything and everyone while leaving nothing but a cold shiver and odd confusion. if on your curious journey you should feel the wind pass by, smile for yourself and for me because that wind, that wind will be me.

windy.

i didn't open or touch the window at all. she walked over and opened the window, and i felt the breeze change. it is strong now, blowing the papers on my desks, making them flap this way and that, sounding as if anxiety had struck them and would not leave them soon. and when the winds calm down, they scrape against each other with their thin edges, making it sound like they are whimpering after the violent hits. 

i'm waiting, i'm waiting for you. for you to appear, if only in words, perhaps even unspoken ones. you have vanished. i want to say a long farewell to end that mistake, a sweetly developed mistake that needn't go further. you, standing there, walking down the line...and i saw you, but i turned my head. what was that look on your face? i thought i saw you scowl. impossibly bitter on your face, but i'm almost certain i've seen it before. uncomfortable. i'm uncomfortable.

i'll give you a cookie, and you'll hand me crumbs.

no, don't.

i made her cry. i didn't mean to. it's all my fault, she said. and i wanted to say, no, no, it's not. but i wanted to keep silent. i wanted to be still. i wanted to keep still so that the tears wouldn't fall out. they did, anyway. and she cried when she saw them fall, some rolling down the cheek unto the bed, others dropping straight down, on my knee. mother, don't, don't cry. mother, it's the way things turned out, it's the way things are. please don't cry. it's not what you did or did not do. it's just life. i don't think i could really climb out even if i wanted to. i know when i am lying to myself, and can't really release when i am supposed to. i've come close to that moment before, of maybe believing in what i tell myself is the truth, but the skepticism of what is reality and what is my own making stand in the doorway. i can't pass through. if i can, then everything would fall into place. if... this could be a lie, something of my own making, this could be something i am trying to force myself into believing. she offers me something in her palm and i push it away, and if she comes near me to try again (she will) i'll slap her hand (i know it hurts her, but it's what i always do). don't you know there is something called being too nice, and i don't want you to give everything you have, i don't want the best of your goods, i don't want all this love. i think songs sound so much better when the room is silent and it's a dead air in my head and when he doesn't love me anymore.

dinner time.

i imagine smashing something against the door that he insisted i close with such a loud voice, WHY DON'T YOU CLOSE THE DOOR?, i imagine i might smash something multiple times against the door that it'll crack and break and rain down in pieces all over the floor, and i'll make an awful mess on top of all that nasty noise, all that nasty noise that the neighbors downstairs can hear, and they can retaliate with however much pounding they want against their thin ceilings so that i can hear their protests. i don't care, really, i don't care. i can't walk and these stupid blisters and that stupid muscle ache that keeps pulling me behind and this stupid life of all that keeps me on a yoyo, pulling me back and letting me go, pulling me just when things are going alright, and i think, okay, i can handle this, this isn't so bad. and almost believed that what was past can stay in the past and that history doesn't have to relive itself this time. that i can be happy if i wanted to. i guess i could. i guess that isn't a lie. i guess then, the fault is on me, and i don't want to be happy. what the hell am i doing here. if it's such a pain to live at times like these, why am i here. why couldn't she have had that other one that never made it to where i am today, the  other one that could have been healthier, and happier, and not such a bother and a better son, or perhaps daughter. fail. fail...

on a boat.

the wind blew past and i didn't know what to think about except for the fact that i am getting closer and closer to those tall, shiny buildings. the wind was strong. too strong for dad, who went down to the lower level to sit down, away from the wind that was giving him a weird rash of red bumps. i stood with my camera in hand, not finding anything worthy of a picture, except when she stepped up, a door away. and i turned the camera on and clicked, hoping she wouldn't turn around. she didn't. i thought, i brought this camera for nothing. and i felt the wind whooshing and flapping and running all over me as the shadows had run over me earlier on the subway trains. i saw them glide over the orange and mustard yellow and tangerine seats, on to the floor, on the poles and over at me, over me, beyond me, past me and away. when i wasn't talking, i thought. when i think, i think about you and whatever happened between us was probably of less weight to you than it was to me. naturally. the first is always the one we remember, isn't it. but funny thing, i don't think you were the first in all of the important ways. but perhaps my priorities have shifted in their seats and the last on the list climbed up towards the top that night. for some reason that i can't put my finger on. maybe that's why i talk so much sometimes. 

nothing.

are you free 4th of july? it doesn't matter. i'll be going away for a while. i think, i will have changed when i come back. i think, you will have too. i feel we have changed already. i don't know if you need me, or if i need you, but it is true that we don't really exist together anymore. mom says i never listen to good advice and i probably don't. i told him, they say, don't assume. you know what they also say? be careful what you wish for. i wished for a boy, and not a man, and...this is the one wish that was handed to me. wasted wish? wasted days and nights and smiles and tears and memories and that night with the stupid game and controls and eggs and chocolate and finding that someone that everyone keeps looking for...who was he? did we find him? did i find you, or did you find me? the first, the only. a joke gone too far. why did i start, why did i want, why did i do what i hated being done to me, and why did you follow? why did i continue a mistake that could've stopped before i made a fool of myself and realized that quicksand doesn't sink me, that i sink myself and that you weren't really going to follow this time, and that you weren't really going to help, and that you were probably going to leave soon after i stepped in? this is the wrong time, i am not the one, and it doesn't matter to you. this is the wrong time, you are not the one, but i think i thought you were. i think daydreams are dangerous. too carefree like a child i frolicked, and i fell where the downy grass ended and the pavement began. dizzy, i felt, looking at the bleeding cut skin, a bit like choking and drowning and suffocating on a cloud that's about to vanish. you couldn't answer simple questions, and i knew then, and i knew before then, and i know now that delusions are joyrides i have to pay for later. i need a job. i need something to occupy my time. i need to get off the streets, stop chasing the pavements, because i keep taking the roads that might lead to the chance of seeing you across the line of cars and fumes and honks and people rushing rushing rushing. i miss you. i miss that night, when i could've been outside in the rain, crying a little like i almost always do, getting sick because the wind was a bit too cold, feeling sick because the people was too much too cold, wanting someone to come and walk out to where i stood in the grass and say a word or two and maybe hold me. hold me.but you were holding me that night, and i didn't want it because i knew i would be writing this sometime in the future, or something similar to this, because i am a fickle creature and i didn't know you at all. i don't know you, darling. first time, last time.out of character and awkward but comfortable. does it make any sense at all to you? because it barely does to me.i don't think i ever loved you like i thought i loved him, i don't know if i loved him, i don't think i could love you, or maybe i just can't love because i don't know what that curious thing is. is it the adventure you talked about? were you serious? were you serious with me? were you ever serious? did you love her? what happened between you two? did you love her? i want to know everything...do you know everything? tell me. tell me what you did, what she did, what it was like, to like and to love. tell me what i am to you, because i don't know, and i'd like to. a cross between a teddy bear and a mother? you probably forgot this existed. words will be words, and these aren't spoken, or even properly written and i can't picture you reading them right now. answer my questions, and take that stubborn filter out of your mind when i ask because now, it doesn't matter what you say, i just want to hear your words, spoken or written or typed. am i on one of those ships sailing around? are they still bothering you? am i still bothering you? you are bothering me with your silence. the truth is, i'm horrible at interpreting all that is implicit. i only hope that you understand what i want to say but never pronounce because i swallow before the sounds make it out of my mouth. i am rambling because every time these thoughts ram against me i tear up in public places, like the subway, and the park, and the streets between the met and madison sq. park and i am not sure if i should the wipe blurriness away because it feels nice to know that this is all bothering me so much. because one day, this will all be past, and i'll be so calloused and aged and like an adult that i won't care and all i'll be able to do is say, ha, silly me, that wasn't worth crying over. i'll be like my mother then. i'll say to myself, well, well, that's that, it's natural when you are young...ha. i feel old already.

yesterday and today

but not tomorrow.

in bed, by the window,

interrupted by thunder,

on the subway and through the park,

underneath the rain,

you,

i held on to like an impulse,

like a drug for a loneliness

that has no cure.

you had no answer to my question,

a simple one, really,

with no wrongs or rights,

since they rarely exist outside of our minds.

tomorrow, you will not need to answer

because i will not ask you again.

tomorrow i'll know.

we will be nowhere.