Fought and Forgot

I listen to Eminem, sometimes.  My headphones on, the volume up, my angst and anger cringing in the face of pop's greatest claim.  But that's not why.

I listen for the blonde crew cut.  For the baggy jeaned white wife beater of a culture not my own.  For the thrill of memories I'll never have except scrawled in this poem.  And with you.

For those times we parked and fought or didn't fight and I forgot.  For the words that say you better then I ever could.  For the ones that are actually good.  For Stan.  Haunting obsession and dysfunction.

Do you listen to Dido, thinking of me?

For regretting your past, for you.  My present, with you.  A future without.  Not dreaming I'd end up with  some commercialized beats on a mix disc of songs we could both appreciate.  For Cleaning Out the Closet.  Our one common conquer of communication.  For the times that disagreement and you lips on mine were a confused passion.  A plethora of emotion, of action.  And of painfully knowing I could never like Eminem.

Because he reminds me of you.

Worn Jeans

"A penny for your thoughts?"

"They're worth more then that," she protests.  Less adamantly then intended.

"Alright, then.  A nickel."  He reaches, this time, into his pocket and searches through a spattering of change.

"Here."  He places a dime on the table between the.  "When you're done I'll owe you some of mine."

Kalee glares at the dime.  She's normally more words then thoughts.  Crafting opinions, stories, debates as she goes.  She usually sounds good every time.  But today, no, this whole damn week she doesn't feel like it.  Who is he to wait patiently for her attempt?  The dime will end up in the pocket of somebodies worn jeans.  Kalee can't decide who's.

Her thoughts aren't worth five cents.  Not, at least, to you or me.  But they're labour intensive.  For once she's struggled to build them and she doesn't want to let them go.

"I don't know," she sputters.  He lowers his chin, raises his eyebrows.  A man who can say more with an expression than a phrase.  Of course he expects more.

"I don't."

There was Madison.  She had always been the pretty one, the domestic one, the nurturer.  Well she started dating soccer players and doctor's sons Kalee had done what little sisters do best.  She shaped herself into someone completely different.  The student, the scrapper, the arguer.  They were comfortable in these roles and friends and competitors.  Each knowing they would never succeed wherever the other excelled.

Kalee had one boyfriend in high school and another in university.  Boys she shared notes and lunchtime sandwiches with.  Ones she could attend parties with when she had time.  They filled a role but mostly they were boys she could talk to.  Endlessly.  On the phone, in the car, late at night.  Around campfires at the lake well everyone else played drinking games and dared each other to come skinny dipping.

Kalee could thank these boys for her prowess with words, her lauded communication skills.  Her honours degree in journalism from McGill.  They were what she needed.  When she shut-down with her family she always had someone worth shaping her thoughts for.

And now here was Daniel waiting.  And she couldn't do it.  She is tired.  Twisting her white ceramic mug she hopes the waitress will bring another refill.  Kalee never drinks it black but she is today.

So, Madison is married.  Of course she is.  Finally she is.  Married in a beautiful ceremony on a beautiful beach.  A beach on that pretentious B.C. island with the waves rolling in, the sun overhead and the shells lining the aisle to the alter that wasn't an alter.  The spot where Kalee had stood holding the bride's bouquet, smiling and acknowledging that she had a different lot in life.

Hers was the flight back to Toronto.  The pumps, the meetings, the assistant editor's job and the ambition.

"I hate my ambition," she spits.  "How dare they downsize?  'Cut my position' when I'm at my sister's wedding, of all things!"

Daniel nods.  Kalee continues.

"Screw them.  Screw Madison.  Screw my student loans and my so-called career."

She is tired.  Wondering, briefly, why Daniel is listening.  If he recognizes that this is just a little piece of her incoherent thoughts.  The little part that's a little less vulnerable then the rest.

The diner door swings shut behind them and they pull their hoodies tight against the autumn breeze.  A caffeine buzz and plans not made.

She doesn't know.  Nothing apart from that Madison is married, Daniel is here and she is unemployed.  She'll take herself away if she finds that scrapper's courage.

The waitress is right behind them, coming off shift.  She's changed her flats for scuffed leather and tied a scarf around her hair.  That last booth is empty.  She thinks it's about time.  Might as well check before she goes...  C'mon.  Seriously?  Sure, there's a downturn but this is friggin' ridiculous.

And she slides a dime into the pocket of her worn jeans.

Brave Enough

A string of lights in a summer evening.  She's brave enough to dream.  Like dreaming is enough.  ---

(violetda)

The hours feel long.  Endless smiles for endless customers.  Peppermint gum and a particular aptitude with the Numerical keyboard.  Something to be proud of.  Gossip with the next cashier over the party last night or customers best forgotten.

Jostin in deli is leaving, she's been told.  She'll miss his smile when he comes through her till with a sandwich for lunch.  She'll miss quirking her eyebrows when he offers her a ride home in his pickup truck.  And saying that she'd rather walk, thank-you.  She'll miss the reminder of an awkward kiss between the shelving in the back before Julie asked him out.  Before he said yes.

She's drafted a cover letter.  She'll make the deli position hers.  It's opportunity.  To learn to slice peppercorn turkey, weigh salad and hang her white apron on her own hook in the hallway.  And benefits.  After two years it's certainly time.

This is where she's going.  But dreaming...  Dreaming is what she does in the silence of home.  When she gets caught in the quiet with her guitar in her lap.  And on lunch breaks.  Lying on the picnic table.  Eyes closed, salad forgotten and sun on her face.

Winter isn't for lunchtime naps and dreams.  Winter is for reheated soup in the staff room.  It's icy breaks and cigarettes on the plastic chairs outside.  There's nothing better then her burgundy trench with the lighter in the pocket.  It's winter.  She doesn't care.

Her favourite season.  She forgets how to dream.

---One light fades.  It fails.  The string drops into darkness and a wounded socket.  Just a moment, a shadow.  Not even a hope.  One day she'll let it go forever.

Fragments of Friendships

They're memories of you. All of you. Sometimes I don't open the drawer for months. Other times I take them out five times in a single day. Pulling these close to my heart, brushing them with my lips. Clenching them in my fists or throwing them back and slamming the drawer.

Random pieces. I like life a little better when I forget they exist.

A homemade necklace. A charm that says “friends.” Yours said “forever,” of course. We were twelve and we knew it. This one is a broken heart. That's not what it meant at the time.

I hold it now and it remember the confusion of torn families I only observed. Whispers over the phone. And you disappearing one week without a goodbye. The strong decision your Mom needed to make. I still see your Dad sometimes. I'm glad you're free, and I trust you grew into a woman that would make your Mom proud. Confirm she made the right decision. I know more, now. Things I wasn't ready to understand when I was twelve. Things you probably weren't either, but had to. I'm sorry. I wish my two letters could've said more then that I missed you.

Where are you now? I don't know. I guess I never will. I searched your name on Facebook, but it's probably not what it was.  I still have that piece of pressed metal that says “friends.” That's what I'll remember you as.

A sand dollar. I was sixteen now, walking with you down an abandoned Mexican beach. I was so proud to call you my best friend. So sure you were cool, you convinced me that athletic teenage girls like us looked good in over sized t-shirts. We would wrestle, and I would win. I believe that you thought it would last forever. I trusted you.

At nineteen we lost touch, but I still have that sand dollar. I wrote letters, e-mails. I poured my heart out and scribbled in my notebook. Life did get in the way. Such different paths, you and I. We share the most important now, but it's not enough.

I'm sorry. I try to hard.

A pair of drumsticks. They say you'll love me forever. I almost believed that, too. Luckily I was jaded enough to question it all.

I know I held you at arms length for longer then you thought possible. But you were my best friend. A misjudgment, but I wish that part could have been true. I cried with you well you held me. I cried when I left. I stuck by you until I couldn't any more. It was too long, yet far too short.  How you could blindly cut me like that, I'll never know.

These drumsticks will never tell.

And you. You haunt my life more then any other with these reminders. We shared our childhood, our struggles and, finally, my home. Others came and went, but you were like my sister. My sister with communication skills that would never match mine. Is that where we went wrong? This crumpled stack of notes, letters, ramblings? This giant paper clip, teddy bear and a heart. How unlike us, then. You and I with our hitch hiking, our first time swearing, our baggy jeans. The times we shunned each other and our mutual respect.

And this last letter. The one where you asked me not to reply. The one I'll never understand.

I'm closing the drawer for now.  I've learned that others will be added, despite my greatest efforts and my learned reservations. I regret that it's still so damn worth it.

(photo source: Barcarola)

It Tastes Like You

It tastes like you.  The rush, the thrill, the novelty.  Pressing it to my lips.  The driftwood behind my back.  That endless lake, the setting sun, our handprints in the sand.

Salt tears and blood.  The tensity and an allergy.  The cold that I'll inhale.  Bruises and your hand at my waist.

Bandanas, denim and soft plaid shirts.  Mine and yours and maybe a mix.  Sweat beading at my neck before I lift my hair.  Leather cuffs and the tang of their metal buckles.

Daisies and a hard dirt trail.  Labatt beer, wild strawberries, foam and that photograph.  Dust.

It tastes like you.  I'll hold my breath and wait for the bitter aftertaste.

First Northern Lights

That brilliant green streaked its way through the night sky above us.  He drew me close on that icy granite monument.

"What other firsts do we have?"

First song written for me.  First beard to run my fingers through.  First crush with glasses.  First time lying in someone's arms in the snow, or sneaking in at night past a sleeping roomate.

First time flirting makes me fully forget the job to be done or the fact that I care what people think.

First active lack of judgement.

First time forgiveness fails me.  First cold hard lies.  First time crying to my sister on the phone.

The vivid display fades it's hues into a black star-studded sky.  My head rests on his flannel shoulder and my trust is hopelessly gained.

"Let's have as many firsts together as possible."

Peel the Label

There will always be smokers cluttering the entrance.  Freshly exhaled nicotine wafting away in clouds.  I would step out with my friends to stand beneath the streetlights and discuss the crowds.  Escape the music and breathe the frigid night air.

Stepping back inside we'll drape our coats over a bar stool.  Everything a soft orange glow beneath neon signs advertising Labatt, Bud and Stella Artois.  Cheap hits play just loud enough so we have to lean in close.  Nelly Furtado, Les Cowboy Frigant, Usher.  We're all waiting our turn at the pool table.  No one is brave enough to step onto the ten by ten hardwood against the wall, yet.

I am aware of everything.  The way  I hold my beer, trying not to warm it as I drink it slowly.  The barmaids heels walking past my boots.  Laughing at a joke, biting my lip, running my fingers through my hair.

I'll drop a loonie in the table.  I'm usually the one with spare change.  This time I play a French artist.  We make a good challenge.  I'll break, loving that first tight shot.  The only one that always works.  Not really caring who wins, just how well I play.  I've learned to chalk my cue by rolling it with my foot, never doubting how cool this makes me.  My French friend plays well, although I banter with him about how he'll lose.  He is deep, that one.  Too deep, really.  I will miss him.

Leaning against the bar with the girls in my group we smile and talk about summers back home.  I sip their coolers and look back at the tables.  Brown bottles and green felt.  Beer and billiards.  It even looks good on a random who should really work out and wears slightly tacky t-shirts.  Or maybe I shouldn't order another drink.

We will walk down the street, our breath crystallizing as we hurry to that basement place where we can afford the two dollar cover.  Or maybe we'll go to the folky Rafiot with their live music, shandy and checker boards.  Regardless, we'll always stop at Tim Horton's on the way back.  I'll order a moyen Carmel Anglais for a dollar forty-nine and try to sit with whomever is still sober.  It ends up making no difference. 

Falling asleep on my rickety top bunk beneath that provided pink plaid comforter I forget to realize I'll never have a twentieth winter again.

Devil's Advocate

We know she's irrelevant.  We know she's irrational, opinionated and emotionally charged.  Or maybe she's just the devil's advocate.

Hard to live with, oh yes.  That quick smile and disarming blonde hair.  Wait 'till she turns on you.  Rips your words to shreds with that quick tongue.  She'll defend you mightily behind your back.  She's like that.

Oh, Rebecca.  Her questions hit your face like a wet towel.  She'll manipulate your words.  Play with them like putty, forming characters of her whim.  You won't understand what you've said.  Wonder what you meant.  And she'll love you hard.  She's good at that.  Crazy girl.

Give up on winning.  Becky knows subborn.  She knows a fight.  She knows how not to lose.  Make her yell.  She'll lose control and seeth in her own anger.  Make her cry.  That's your best chance.  Practice it.  Tune it.  Learn the chinks in her armour and the smooth white tissue underneath.  Pierce hard and you'll see that deep red seeping through.

That pale hair flowing past her thighs and her forehead on her knees.

She's like that, Becky is.

Who, What, When, Where, Why

How was she supposed to know?  Tell me that and I'll tell you why.  Why it happened all at once.  Why she believed.  Why now, and why then.  What useless point it catered. 

How was she supposed to know?  Tell me that.

You know.  I know you do.  And I know where.  Where the time took place.  Those seconds dragging by.  Look back with me.  It all passed so quickly.  When.  We know that.  Don't we?  You and I.  We should, you and I.  Who, what, when, where, why.  And how.

How was she supposed to know?

Let's look back, now.  So happy.  Endlessly happy.  'Till then.  So instant.  Playing it over a million times.  Why?  I'll tell you this.  She doesn't know.  She should, but she won't.  Why won't you answer me?  Tell her now.

How was she supposed to know?

Artists

I don't think I could do it.

Never wander around, the prisoner of brilliance.  Broke and drunk with ideas.  Passion overcoming practicality.  Romance trumping reality.  I already know it.

My white walls are covered with dynamic magazine pages tacked with painter's tape.  My bottom drawer is full of blue jeans. My fridge holds Orange juice, one percent and a Brita.  I spend on things like snowboarding and Sony stereos on which I occasionally listen to the countdown.  I like Van Gogh's work because his colour and style is beautiful.  I hate Picasso's because it's ugly and doesn't make sense.  I usually sleep at night.  I like being in control of how I feel and how I'm acting.  Anger makes me want to swear, shout and punch things.  Not create a masterpiece.  I read Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes.

So I can't be one of them.  Them with their misbuttoned sweaters, bleary eyes and corduroy.  Loosely masked anarchy, cold apartments, bespecled lovers, ironic welfare cheques.  Sensitive, deep and emotional.  They're closer then me, and they know it.  They're just misunderstood.

I may try, but I won't succeed.

Creating Security

There she is, looking back.  Appearing naked, dishevelled, raw.

This skin, not yet sunkissed.  Curving down her neck, over collar bones.  Yet taut, admittedly.  Soft and clean.  Moisturizer, foundation, concealer and a fight with the shade above her cheeks.  Pale skin and sunblock infused bronzer.  She runs fingers beneath her chin, attempting a seamless meld.

Those cheeks.  Full and prompt to redden with reason.  A brush on the apples.  Blending up and out.  Midnight Rose, today.

These lips.  Capable of forming words to any end.  Needing to be kissed.  Bitten, pursed, twisted, smiling.  Twelve colours to consider.  Lined and dabbed.  "Barely Nude".  Subtle, or so they say.  Stashing the tube in her handbag for emergencies.  A glass of wine, maybe, or absentmindedly licking her lips.

And eyes.  Looking so dull, now, on this face.  The soft gray of pussywillows.  Contacts already in.  Framed by brows she shapes and colours.  She's been told her eyes convey intelligence.  Now she will line them, shadow them, paint the lashes black.  They will stand out.  An artist and her canvas.

Finally genuine.  Ready to face the street.  No hint of last night's late discussion, or the teenage scar on her brow.  Smiling, Crest has taken care of party cigarettes and morning coffee.  Framed by hair carefully sprayed to fall in place.  Straightened to deal with dangerous waves.  Highlighted to look natural.

She's made herself beautiful.

Today the old gray hoodie I'm wearing smells like pesticide.  Such a contradictory smell.  It makes me sick.  I recall trying to shower it off behind the tarp of my parent's outdoor shower before crashing out in the back of the bus.  I wore this hoodie too often on those early mornings.  I haven't washed it enough since.
Today I walk to the edge of a lookout.  The mountains are hidden in an upside down bowl of fog.  For some reason I'm convinced it's snowing and wonder where the line will drop to.  I push my hands deeper into my pockets.  Why does it look like the end of autumn?  The beginning of winter.  Looking out my eyes follow the back road, the river gully, endless orchard rows.With a jolt I realize I'm standing directly above the fruitstand I worked at last year.  The trees right below me were sort picked a few short months ago.  Laughing with gristly old men who let me take the easy branches.  Sitting on overturned bins I'd eat mini culls and drink lukewarm coffee before returning to the stand to sort and sell the apples.
From here I can look farther back.  Cherries.  I have five of those seasons on my record.  Across the valley I make out the block of orchards I hit last July.  I can outpick some of the hippis, now.  I'm still not a highballer.  Quebecois dreadlocks and Mexican accents in the rows next to me as I affixed my stickers on wire handles.  M17.  They claim to pick faster stoned.  They may well be right.  Walking down the road I felt like society's rebel in my canvas harness and Thai pants.
Today I stand in this brush taking it all in.  Wrapped in this damned hoodie that smells of poison and yesterday.

On a slow Sunday afternoon I realize some women will catch up on t.v. reruns.  The sophisticated of us may meet friends for brunch or skinny lattes.  Others will hit the mall for a little shopping retail.
None of these are me.  I collect a few bic pens, chocolate, and my car keys.
When I was very small I remember my parents taking me out for drives.  Well watching the telephone wires from the backseat I decided this was a pointless concept.  Muted adult voices drifting back, mixed with now vintage soft rock.
Once in my teens I overheard a theory that boys use driving as an experience well girls use it as a tool.  As a generalization I must admit this makes sense.  I also once overheard a slightly bitter woman saying that men tend to prefer driving standard because they're simply power hungry.
I drive standard, partly because I've grown to love the experience that is driving.  Such as drizzly Sunday afternoons, downshifting on twisty mountain roads.  Playing overused albums by Dido or Natalie Imbruglia.  Parking at the end of backroads where no one will find me and I can scribble endlessly on scrap paper with cheap ballpoint, sprawling across my passanger seat.
I can haunt my childhood neighborhood and window shop.  Just to imagine.  Looking for a sign on the ideal half acre.  A plot with a veiw or a little place to fix up.  As long as I'm here my restlessness will take some form. 
I realize, as I skid around gravel corners, that I'll undo all the summer pedalling I've done, laying claim to climate awareness.  Even in my efficient little Civic.  As summer comes I'll be driving along the lake with the windows down.  Listening, this time, to Aerosmith or Our Lady Peace.  I'll be speeding alongside fields with the smell of sunshine and an eye out for cops.
But I can't help it.

Don't let denotation fool you into believing it didn't matter.  I am a girl.  Believe that too.  It mattered.
I told you, screaming it subtly.  A million messages everyday.  A hundred thousand ways to let you know, bar one.  The one where I look you in the eyes and say something, out loud, in words you'll understand.
Why won't I?  It changes everything, and yet means nothing.  I cry for honesty and communication.  The kind, apparently, where you react the way I'm asking for to things I won't say.
So, yes.  It mattered.  But don't worry, please.  I'll consider it alone.  My pen moving across paper, today a jagged dance.  An angry slash as you sit there.  Maybe you'll learn as I fall asleep.  You, peacefully elsewhere as my fists clench beneath the sheets.
There will be a next time, this time.  I'll learn not to confuse strength with frustration.  Or you'll learn to know.  For now I'll leave it here in words I don't say.

At night the stars seemed to pierce the entire sky. More then a little upset, I was there without my sister. My now very married cousin was having her ceremony, and I remained halfway around the world. Instead I stayed up nights talking to a dreadlocked Jewish stoner. I chopped pallets for wood and walked into town to buy oatmeal and bread, asking for "shtay kabbalot". Two reciepts. Still the extent of my Hebrew. I walked to the edge of Mtizpe Ramon's canyon-like crater and marvelled as the sun came up. I learned poi from, and made American hashbrowns for, a vegetarian hippi who camped with us.
I would wander outside the palm frond fence and sit on the old car seat.  Paco, who looksed like he should be pulling a sled through the tundra, would bark around my feet.  The landscape almost was tundra-like.  Long rolling stretches of bare land sprinkled with stone.  I rarely wore shoes around the camp. 
It wasn't my first experience with desert.  Arizona, Texas, Mexico roadtrips has left them one of my lesser favourite forms or terrain.  There was something different here.  Maybe it was slowing down that had the calming effect, but I think it was sleeping outside at night.  During the day I laughed at everything.  I wasn't high, but everything was funny.  All I had to worry about was that there was enough wood for the fire and that the bathroom sink was clean enough in case any guests showed up.  At night, wrapped in a thick sweater we would talk.  Myself and Sason and any guests staying.  Memorable characters who's names I can still recall.  Andy, the other Canadian, Mark the British preacher, the lesbian couple.
Sason was my best friend for four weeks.  I can't pronounce his last name, and I have no idea where he is now.  But for that month we talked about everything.  Maybe it's because we knew we'd never see each other again.
A left healed in so many ways I'd been waiting for.  Ready to see the rest of the world.
It was something about the desert.  Something so calming.  Something in that dry barren waste land and the raw elements.  The candle light and that wide open sky.
This concept cemented itself for me over the next month.  Eating Magoobla with Bedouin, a philosophical Phillipino American and an underage Belgian in a stunning Jordan desert.  Long desert walks where we managed not to get lost.  Smoking nargilah before the four of use would fall asleep around the fire, full of sweet Bedouin tea.  Watching the early venus sink towards the horizon.
Camping in the Egyptian white desert.  The Jeep ride out.  Arab drum beats into the dark.  Jumping off the pure white drifts to get captrued in the sunset.  A polite Japanese with infinitely cool hair and a crazy middle aged Swiss lady who was strung-out on something.  She sobered up eventually, but never quite got sane.
I love the desert now.  I'm still a Rocky Mountain girl at heart.  Home is a river, a lake, a field surrounded by white peaks.  But the idea of sleeping on sand beneath a stretched canvas of stars calms my soul like nothing else.