May 2012
1 post
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Darling, Before you left I said, maybe you could write me a letter, and you laughed. I decided I wouldn’t send you a letter to spite you, but here I am, writing this goddamn thing. You’re twenty-two and still sort of a boy, if you know what I mean, and I’ll be twenty-six in a few weeks and I wonder if you’ll ever stop needing to leave, go, ramble when the summer rolls...
April 2012
2 posts
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We had a fight and I am waiting it out at a coffee shop, ignoring the work I need to do and torturing myself by reading Modern Love—tales of love that worked out, and relationships that fizzled. I don’t know which makes me feel worse. I wonder when you can get to that place where you can safely point to how things shook out, and I realize you never can until it’s over. It’s...
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My best friend hopes to be engaged to her boyfriend in a very sensible “six to eight months,” and mine and I are moving out and it’s not because we’re not still in love, I don’t think. I wonder where we will put our things, who will get the painting he gave me for my twenty-third birthday and the cast iron skillet and if our bikes will be lonely when they aren’t...
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Sometimes I feel certain that it’s over. It’s terrifying. I love him, but he drives me crazy, lately. A lot. I’m quick to anger with him and sometimes I shut myself into the bathroom and let out silent screams because I don’t want to let him see how frustrated I am with him. But I am short with him, and he with me, and sometimes it feels like there’s nothing left to...
March 2012
4 posts
4 tags
His name was Harrison but he went by Huck. I’d never known anyone named Huck, save for Huckleberry Finn. I made a quip to that effect the night I met him at a party in a cramped apartment downtown, and he gave a halfhearted smile. He had heard it before; I should have known. Anyway, whoever was renting the apartment had bad music cranked up too loud and I could barely hear him over the din....
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I wish I could tell you the whole story, but I could never recount it, not in a million years. What I remember: It was a hot day, unbearably so. Sticky. Everything felt slow, and I could barely move beneath the sun. Must have been a hundred in the shade. I could hear seagulls cawing in the distance and the sand was hot beneath my toes. It was July. No, August. August, definitely. Louis was reading...
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Falling out of love at a coffee shop.
He was drinking coffee and she was tearing a napkin into little tiny pieces. Neither spoke. I had a good sense, though, of the words they wanted to say but couldn’t. She thought he didn’t pay her enough attention. He couldn’t handle her constant mood swings, the way she would be happy and laughing when he came home and sobbing by dinnertime. She wondered if there was someone...
February 2012
4 posts
5 tags
I realized it was never going to work the day she brought the baby home from the hospital. He was preternaturally quiet. To me, his face looked wise. This baby knew things I couldn’t even begin to grasp. He was only three days old. She set him in my arms and I felt my body sink deeper into the dingy, floral-printed couch in our living room. I looked up at her. I wanted to ask, what the...
6 tags
I remember the night I realized he was all wrong for me so well. We had been together—or something like it—for a few months, and I was smitten. He treated my like shit, you know. We saw each other when he wanted to see me. He ate all of my food and he borrowed my car without permission and when I let him sleep in at my place after I had to leave for class, he would use my computer...
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What I need is complete silence. Have you ever really enjoyed a moment totally to yourself? A moment truly free of noise or worries or others? I wish everyone would go away. I wish my love would leave me for the afternoon, that I could sink beneath the covers on the bed and drift into a moment of clarity and solitude. I’m afraid that’s why I haven’t been writing much—I...
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There are things I wonder about, you know: Where will I go, and will I ever find a job. Will my boyfriend ever settle down, or will he always follow the sun west when summer rolls around, leaving me alone and frightened? Will we ever open the restaurant we dream of running? I wonder if I’ll ever write a book, if anyone will ever care to read the words that escape from my pen. I wonder if I...
January 2012
6 posts
2 tags
I can’t do anything. Do you know what it’s like, to be unable to move? Unable to get out of bed? I can’t make coffee, I can’t hug my boyfriend when he leaves for work. I can’t pick up the phone. I can’t watch a movie. I can’t brush my hair. I can’t ride my bike and I can’t go for a walk. I can’t get in the car and go. I can’t...
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My phone lights up with a text message. On my way, it reads. I was supposed to meet my friends at a bar a few blocks away a half hour ago. I am still in bed, a book open in my lap, naked. I can’t focus on the words, and I have this awful feeling—I’ve barely been able to move all day. Everything take a whole lot of effort, lately.
Finally I gulp the last of my tea and drag...
4 tags
An ambulance is pulling into my apartment complex just in front of me. Lights flashing, sirens off. I follow it to my building, where the ambulance stops. Two other ambulances are there, and a fire truck. Lights flashing, sirens off. The engines have all been left running and it’s louder than you might think it would be. It makes my head hurt. Somehow I get a strange feeling that...
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He had sort of told me he loved me before—collapsing into bed when we came home drunk, or after a long three weeks apart, over a milkshake at our favorite diner. But of course I’m too shy and strange and, even at twenty-five, I’d never been in love. Before him. I resolved to tell him, the next time he offered the words first. I didn’t want to say: I love you too. I...
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I’ve been sleeping a lot lately. It’s mostly all I can do. I fall asleep by nine, usually with the lights on, and I’m up by seven for tea and breakfast, after which I go back to sleep. I catnap through the afternoon and have whiskey for dinner and then it’s bed by nine again. This is the extent of my days. I don’t pick up the phone when it rings. People who are...
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It’s really fucking hard to look at someone you care about and tell him that you hate yourself. It’s been a sort of mantra for me for more than half my life: I hate myself. I want to die. And it’s only just dawned on me that that’s probably not a normal thing to think. We’ve just ordered hamburgers at a little diner a half hour north of town and I haven’t...
December 2011
4 posts
2 tags
I walk mostly aimlessly through the city—it is beautiful, sure, but all I can see is him. It’s nearly the new year, and I do not want to spend New Year’s Eve alone in a dingy hotel room sipping prosecco nor vodka. It’s all planned out in my head, our first New Year’s together. I look stunning, for once, in a little nothing of a dress. Burgundy, maybe. My hair is...
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And then suddenly my life is characterized by a stark loneliness. Everything is quiet. My phone doesn’t ring, and anyway I’ve turned it to silent. I don’t put on music because nothing seems right for the way I feel, which is mostly okay, but a little dazed. It seems far away now, and I can barely remember it: the bars, and the boys, and taking pictures with my girlfriends....
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She watched me put my things in the car from the window. It was raining that day—pouring. I tried not to, but I couldn’t help looking up at her. Her eyes were wide and her fingers were pressed against her lips. I couldn’t tell for sure if she was crying—knowing her, she was—or if I was merely seeing the raindrops splashed against the windowpanes. I didn’t ...
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Alex and Brianna broke up after Thanksgiving. Brianna had taken Alex home to Westchester to meet her parents. She told me about the fight that precipitated the break-up over drinks soon after we got back to school. I couldn’t really follow—something about three years and him not caring and she was the most beautiful she would probably ever be. Brianna always spoke quickly, but...
November 2011
8 posts
4 tags
Someone hands me a carving knife and gestures at the turkey. My eyes go big; I don’t eat meat. On the other side of the kitchen, my mother is muttering under her breath, and then she yells to me—I need more wine. Her glass is still half full. Moscato. It’s too sweet for me. I hold my breath and step toward the turkey and I’ve been getting these awful headaches lately,...
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I’m so afraid he’ll find out; that smiles and laughter and stupid jokes are just the veneer, that underneath it all, underneath my loud mouth and my crazy dances and a million kisses on his cheeks and face and neck, underneath that, and not very far below, I am broken and cracked and shattered. That I cry at the touch of a feather, when I don’t feel right. That I don’t...
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My head is pounding and I don’t know why. It has been for days, weeks maybe. I don’t care to do anything. I sit in bed and I eat more than I should and I will probably get fat, if I’m not already. I never can tell. It feels as though my muscles have already begun to atrophy. I wonder if I will waste away—I always did think it would be so lovely, no bones, just a bit of...
My sweetheart, my darling, my lovey, my dear; My puppy, mon amor, my honeybee, my sweet; My baby, my doodoo, my fluffy, my angel: I love you.
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I hope one day you take a nap in the arms of someone who really, truly, super duper loves you. I hope that it’s that perfect time of day where the afternoon sunlight is just a little lazy; and it will filter into the room just right. It’s best if it’s fall, and the trees are boasting vibrant orange and red and yellow leaves, and the air is chill, so the two of you are...
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It’s the same fucking thing, over and over. The boys are different, but I’m still me, and I’m beginning to realize that’s the problem. Me. It’s not you, it’s me. Really. I wish I could tell you all about this most recent guy. He was really something, one of the sweetest boys I’ve ever known. He held doors for me and he wrote songs for me and he bought...
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I’ll never forget what it felt like to fall in love with him. Late nights and leisurely mornings, my heart always racing. He played the guitar for me every night and I thought—still think—his voice is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. We had a song in no time at all, a lesser known Beatles song I’d never heard before I met him. It quickly became my...
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My freshman roommate went crazy, a year after we lived together. We spoke on the phone a few times before that awful, sweaty, nerve-wracking August day when we moved into our freshman dormitory. She had a bubbly, excited voice. I had always been slow to talk, and I spoke in a hushed tone. I was more than a little shy. She was a lot more normal than I was, I thought. I was dressed in an outfit...
October 2011
6 posts
6 tags
The sun is warm on my back and every day I’m more in love than I was the day before. Everyday my heart aches more for the man I sleep beside each night.
This morning when my alarm rang, he was still sleeping as he said, you’re an angel. I wrapped my arms around him and as I leaned in to kiss his chapped lips—his eyes were still closed, but he puckered his lips and mine...
I ask him, are you mine? He kisses me and says, of course I am. I hold him tighter and I feel mostly better but you can never be too sure.
3 tags
I’m trying to recall the way it feels to climb into bed alone and wiggle under the covers, how to set the alarm and turn off the light and close my eyes and go to bed. How it feels to fall asleep without your arms around me. I’m trying to recall what it’s like to cook dinner for one, and to go to a party without your hand in mine, how to tell the hostess at our favorite...
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I picked him up at the San Francisco airport. It had been a long month apart, and I had missed him more than I knew someone could be missed. The car rounded a bend at arrivals and there he was, all blond hair and big smile. I had barely put the car in park and I was out and in his arms—baby, baby I said, and that first kiss, oh my god. And then we drove. We were headed north, but we got...
4 tags
I can’t stop thinking about it. About bashing my head against concrete again and again, until blood and brains seep out and I am just a mess atop a body. About going for a walk at night in my black coat, stepping out in front of traffic and hoping no one notices me, puts their foot to the brake and screams, terrified. I can’t stop thinking about all of the people who have died...
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The e-mail was tersely written, and I had to read it a few times before it even began to sink in. Brian was robbed in a subway station in Brooklyn this morning. He was pushed in front of an oncoming train. Funeral is Wednesday. We hadn’t spoken in years, and I rarely thought of him anymore, but suddenly everything started to spin and when it stopped, I was left with an awful empty...
September 2011
11 posts
3 tags
on buying weed from your ex-boyfriend.
I had bought weed exactly once, when I was in the tenth grade, from a kid named Korey—yes, with a ‘K.’ I followed him out to the parking lot after school and handed him a wrinkled twenty dollar bill in exchange for a plastic bag full of schwag. My girlfriends and I smoked it sitting in the bathtub—I don’t know why the bathtub—of one girl’s...
3 tags
He walks in the door and he tells me that he’s in love with someone else. I don’t ask whom, because I know, and I can’t say that I blame him. She’s beautiful, and passionate, and a hell of a lot nicer than I am. I say, okay, and he crawls into bed with me and we go to sleep.
In the morning he will pack his things and he will go. He will stay on his brother’s...
Anonymous asked: Just out of curiosity, are you male or female?
2 tags
I suppose two people is still a writing collaboration, in a way. It’s certainly not too late to write your own piece inspired by a lovely photograph, but I did want to go ahead and share the fabulous one that was submitted by onaparisafternoon. I’ll link others if people write them. xo
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I love writing pieces inspired by photographs, or finding a photograph that perfectly suits something I’ve written. Would any of my fellow tumblr writers want to participate in a photo a week, where we write something inspired by the photograph? (And, if photographers wish to submit a picture, that would be tres bien as well!) I think it would be really neat to see what we all come up with.
7 tags
Today is the birthday of the first boy to ever break my heart. I suppose it doesn’t matter, not really, not at all. Just another boy celebrating another fucking year. I think what does bother me about it, though, is the fact that I still remember. The fact that every year, on September eighteenth, I remember that it’s his birthday. I wonder a little bit what he’s doing,...
5 tags
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It’s simple things that add up to a cozy, warm life together. Waking up beside him, he holds me tight when my alarm goes off and so I stay in bed another ten minutes, wishing I never had to leave. He fixes dinner and lights a candle, pours me a glass of wine. I wake up early on Sunday morning and bake blueberry muffins, his favorite, so that he can wake up to the smell of fresh-baked...
6 tags
Driving through a rural town in Oregon, I spot an ice cream shop, one of those cute, old fashioned ones with a retro sign that has an ice cream cone hand-painted beside its name. I take a picture of my gold sandals on the worn pink tile floor. We order an ice cream sundae, the biggest on they’ve got, and we continue north. He puts the top down and Frank Sinatra is crooning through the...
August 2011
1 post
4 tags
We are dirty and hungry and barefoot, running free across the country with a couple of rucksacks and a hundred bucks. We climb mountains and slide down waterfalls and when I get scraped or fall you pull me up and kiss me and everything is more than all right. We pluck ripe fruit from the trees. We sleep beneath the stars, watching for flashes of light zipping across the sky. I wish on every...
July 2011
7 posts
3 tags
She says, it’s a pity about Sam. Hmmm? I say. Pity about Sam, she says. I heard her the first time. Sure, sure, I say. I turn back to my newspaper. There was a train wreck a couple hours west of town; the route I take to visit my mother on the weekends. Crashed a few hours after I would have left last Sunday, if my mother hadn’t called to say she wasn’t...
1 tag
Every story is about you and me, and my cheeks are covered in tears—they are in my hair and they make their way down my neck and my pillowcase is damp from how much you mean to me. You’re it for me; I know that certainly, without question. It’s exhilarating, and it’s terrifying. If the end of this story isn’t happily ever after, I’m afraid there...
3 tags
It’s really something, the way my heart races and flutters and floats high up into my throat. And the way his name is always on my lips. The way I’ve settled into the missing him, and it hurts but only in a gorgeous way. The way he tells me that he misses me, and I know that he means it. His voice on the phone and the way he tells me stories about his day, the way he calls me ...