understands, does not comprehend.

overslept this morning, got to school and the bell-tower clock told me I was late. I wasn’t. attended history, felt like I was on another plane. made tea. wandered the school like an Irish ghost. sat in commons with brainless girls, making to-do lists and sarcastic comments that went unnoticed, or rather, un-understood. read. played animal game and ate cookies in advisory. felt almost real through occasional acknowledgment, and through the pain of sweetsalty cookies on sores in my mouth. bought lunch: noodles cookie apple. ate, got told off for eating where we weren’t supposed to (ie, the same place we’ve been eating for weeks). thought about working on take-home test/writing assignment(s). decided against. continued to wander school like a ghost, this time one entirely anonymous, with no nationality or religion or face. checked all emails. finally set up system to feed one into the other. attempted to play tetris. lost miserably, felt dizzy, felt dead.

can’t work. can’t think. can’t cry; just. sit. brain in slow motion, like slogging through thick fog that impairs motion just as much as it always seems fog should. cough; runny nose; ear infection? eight and a half hours sleep last night: plenty. i’m exhausted. my skin is dry. i feel like i am wearing thick cotton stockings, but i look down and my legs are bare; the whole time i know my legs are bare. my hair is clean but it looks like it is traversing that no-man’s-land between clean-curly and greasy-flat. my hands hurt. i have done, by my estimation, approximately nothing all day. it is 12:42.

i feel funky. i feel like dancing naked in the rain and the dark, with wild, streaming mascara and red bite-marks in my pale moon skin. i can’t move, though, with any energy, so it doesn’t matter that it isn’t raining and that i am counties and states away from anyone who wants to leave marks on my skin or dance with me in the rain. i want to be feral. i want mud on my body and cries on my lips and stringy, wet hair and the numbing pain of stones and twigs and cold water under my feet.

i feel; i want; i can’t.

i need; i do.
need to:
wake up! (stop pretending to be alive, or fix this)
be nicer to the people who love me
dye my hair
do my work
stop complaining
buy socks
buy dress
buy train-tickets
go climb a tree?

i miss you people who make me feel alive. right now my skin feels dry and motionless and i wish it could tingle, hot and hurting, the way it does when touched, bitten, kissed. my eyes feel dry and motionless because i have nothing to see. my mouth feels dry and motionless: nothing to say. heart? vaguely dry and motionless.

cryptic and strange she is. maybe the sun will come out soon and make me smile. maybe the rain will come and make me scream.

black tea, blond boy.

went to a “party” last night. six girls, none too closely affiliated with any other (except the close bond between the short girl (ie me) and the long lanky one). ate junk food in copious quantities. learned to play guitar hero (at which I am crummy) and mario kart (at which I am worse). ate chinese food. went out in the cold rain to bounce on the wet trampoline. sat down to play never-have-i-ever, and the lanky chick lost her lanky pants because she didn’t like the feel of the wet denim. slowly, slowly, clothes came off. bras and underwear were all that was left for me and her, and one or two pieces more on the others. lost (won?) never have i ever by ten full fingers – that is, all of mine were down before the squishy genius lost even one. decided to go swimming. jumped in the cold diluted-with-rain pool in my underwear with lankygirl, while others got swimsuits, or put away wet, stripped-off clothes. on the count of one-two-three, we took off bras and soon after (peer pressure?) everyone else followed suit. swam in the cold, cold water, splashing to make bubbles against our freezing, goosebumped chests. felt free. contemplated the removal of any remaining underwear, decided against it as the redhead brother came out on the porch to ask what we were doing. “swimming! what do you think we’re doing?” sweet gentleman. he turned away, went inside. he fed us ice-cream with cookie-cake when we came in. then played more guitar hero, abused facebook. was told i must attend chc mixer next week – unsure of the appeal of a boy-sweat-jungle, i agreed. curled up on the couch and had pillows thrown at me so i wouldn’t sleep. slept anyway. woke up during the second movie. more facebook, more sleep. got up and ended up confusedly bringing two children home with me. no breakfast. hungry, tired, needing to shower and dress for high tea (a.k.a. the first rehearsal), went upstairs, sat on my toilet, had a break down. scratched at my skin and tried to fight it off, told my bathroom walls that i didn’t want this.

cried anyway. went upstairs to try and fend it off, to move on, to dress. could only think about not having time for this, about how i say it doesn’t get in my way, how it’s okay, but it isn’t. realized on the stairs that i wanted my boy. realized that i couldn’t have, realized that i was needy. realized that was not entirely okay, that if this kept up i would have to hurt us to save us both from me. always end up in that place! cried more. cried and cried, loud, loud, loud, and my mother came. told her to go away before she touched me, before i saw her. she went a few feet away behind me. could tell she wasn’t gone and told her to go farther away. called the momma cow and told her i needed help. she made me breathe, made me focus. she is harsh but i knew (always know) she gets me out of these funks better than anyone else. she does not tolerate lies, ridiculousness, and other useless folly. i appreciate this. went downstairs and ate cereal. cried in my mother’s arms. she asked me if i had taken my pill, said no, forgot it at the sleepover. she gave me a pill, reminded me that coming off was hard, told me it would be okay. cried more into the kitchen sink. dressed, washed face, applied makeup. walked to auditorium, got in minibus. went to tea room.

smiled and drank delicious black tea. said my funny lines and laughed at others. “la-tit-ty-a” and mispronunciations of “colonel” and “abroad” and “propounding.” ate delicious scones, cucumber sandwiches, cream-cheese sandwiches, miniature tarts and chocolate-covered strawberries. learned i have to kiss the blond boy. (after rehearsal, talking to the jacket bitch, made a face about this.) played a crazy ingenue. not very difficult…

life life life love love laughter tears tears life life life.
breathe, sleep, eat, read, practice, pretend.

tomorrow is monday. oh, my darling ernest, promise me it will be okay.

narrator =/= author

but narrator does not necessarily =/= author either.

***

Cut me open, please.
Slice me like a taped cardboard box.
Use a sharp knife, so sharp
I can barely feel pain.
Scoop out my heart, take it!
Hold it in your two hands.
I have one heart; it’s for you.

Put it close to your ear.
Cradle it, this new conch shell.
Hear its loud beat, so loud
it shocks you.
You – it is your own possession!
But you knew its sound only through walls of muscle and bone,
its old guardians, before it was ready for you.

Touch those walls, under my skin.
Feel the smooth and the rough that make me.
Press with your cool fingers, so cold
I shiver from within.
Be gentle, love, please!
Remember you touch me outside and in.
All of me reacts, aches for you.

Now I am released. My heart is too,
and yours.

a moan, alone

words like “transient” make me gasp, my back arch, my eyes roll back. poetry about rain and wind and flowers. the thought of the effect of my own pouting lips. the thought of him. sunshine reflecting against the shining feathers of a crow. the silence of this library, the sound of the printer winding down. the motion of leaf-shadows in the wind and my own fingers clicking across the keys. the legs of girls in their short green skirts, the tips of teeth between lips, fingernails on fingers grasping papers or pens. the shape of a statue’s wings. stained glass windows; the way my own body moves against my blankets in the morning or my clothes each day.

my head aches with it.

darling, your words have made all my moods sensuous, all my moods filled with that bittersweet imagined pleasure. any thought of those words is almost too much, and somehow any other thought brings to the surface those waves of feeling.

my breath catches in the middle of class and my posture changes, unnoticeable to most. but i know that my back curves, my center of gravity moves. i know that my lips part, i know that my stomach drops. i know that you have too much power over me, but i know i have more over you. i know that what i feel is unreal and real at the same time. i know that it’s happening to me.

i know, and that’s enough.

pointless but poignant

I think he even smiled as he said, “Well…I guess our dreams went up in smoke, eh?”

And I said, “No, our dreams went up in dreams! You stupid pothead.”

Dar Williams. Mortal City on replay. Salvation.

aaaah

my to-do list:

history project: finish handout, organize group for presentation (monday)
laundry
homework for geometry
and chemistry
and French
and English
some form of exercise
write!
make plans for next weekend
make pancakes
sleep

get my mother to stop being mad at me
stop being a bitch
resist urge to hide from all of this by sleeping
resist urge to scream