Sunday Wasteland

This day could be crimson leaves if the colors knew their turns, but instead it's crispy chill through crimson stockings. There is light and Southern sky and autumn rushing on. I'm out of the show for half of the afternoon (this is weeks ago, you know, I'm so slow), relishing the bare-arms cool, that no one need call, and the nails in my shoes.

So we meet on the sidewalk and set off for Winn-Dixie. There's glory in the aisles, gentleness in the produce, in this strange sheer of unfamiliar that nearly makes me forget these things are just for sale. He's making chowder, buying clam cans, counting potatoes, investing in cinnamon for spiced wine. I'm drifting and and looking and dreaming for the out-of-doors.

The day is sharp and the land is flat and the sun is cold and wonderful. I'm everyone's little sister, tagalong plaything, matching the décor in the dirty back seat. It's back and forth on the breezeway, up and down on the sidewalk cracks. I'm useless, it's endless, we're counting on a coughing engine and ashing out the windows. Up the elegant stairs and this poor boy's room is empty, but he has books, you see, a few things in the closet, a little bit in the pantry now, and something up his sleeve.

I want to brush up with beauty and come away calm. I'm seeing Taylor Wolf, the slanted creature, his truest, bluest cut-offs, eating whole apples, reading books, getting high and batting his eyelashes. We were damned near close, my boy, but I never could hold on to you. I will dress myself into glorious things, I will take on mid-afternoon adventure, I will tumble into the blankets of the quiet, quiet night.

Second Thought

I can feel it coming on like deep waves, electric undercurrents, pulses and purple midnight sky. I'm going to dictate into the keys the words I can breathe when we ramble where we're less tied together.

Take heart! Michael zero, that one, Jesse two, Michael three. I'm going to weave your names into the tapestry of the words between the lines and I'm going to hear whispers and wait for girls and cross my toes and kiss your neck. Jacob, Jesus! I could write a benediction for every anxiety because there's a whole new holy book waiting to be found and it will tell you the truth if you shine the light and we go our way.

Take a word from the old text, all travels and returns in another skyline: old makeup, Peruvian blanket, curled skirt, cursive bloodlines, your great neon shoulders in the eighties and now your bare skin on the pages. Tell me all your numbers and I'll write you in impermanent fashion and you'll crumple it and recycle it and months from now I'll find the key and unlock the channel between our hands and our minds.

You've made me acknowledge the devil in me
I hope to God I'm talkin' metaphorically
Hope that I'm talkin' allegorically
Know that I'm talkin' about the way I feel
And I've never known a girl like you before
- Edwyn Collins, "A Girl Like You"

Go Away

I'm building up the backend in a brand new place, setting up the little continuities that take me forward. I kept the only promise I made in my last first post. Here's the new one.

I was sitting up late, watching the digital time tick in six shades of black and white. Lately I've only been making a few naughty records between the covers of my little black notebook, toothpaste-smudged from being thrown in and fished out of overnight bags. It's time to elaborate just enough so no one knows.

"Summertime slut," Mariah says, and I can't quite agree. We've always been more eye-to-thigh than eye-to-eye.

There were new words in the sidewalk--"go away," they said, in spiked letters, as if someone laid toothpicks into the wet cement. I left Saturday morning, so early I hadn't yet slept. I flew into the sun, changed planes, and followed it across the South.

Let me go over your head. The morning of the first and the morning of the first day; the barest I can leave behind or the closest I'll come to digging out. I sit next to the open window and listen to the roaring white of wasted air conditioning. Now I lie in bed and map the cardinal directions to draw us closer. It's hard to learn, hard to change the map. Don't stop there. Dream until it happens. Prepare for close reads.