A Part of That

I am indecisive about everything. It is constant, it is chronic. Everything.

It is only about this that I am so unwaveringly certain. I would bet anything in the world on this one tremendous, insignificant observation. I love you.

And I've come to the conclusion regarding this fact that the only way I could ever manage the false impression that I've gotten over you would be to simply fail to coexist. In all labyrinth of choice, the only to choose is to leave. To sever contact, sever conversation, and sever the sinewy strings that bind my life-force to my body. Stay away for as long as it takes to forget you.

And you see, an act like this would only serve itself a death sentence.

Had I some manic scheme to follow this path it would leave me with two choices of fate. I would have nothing to do but to wait and, if by some miracle as lucky, die for sheer absence of required time. It seems impossible to survive the infinite ticking of hours and days that would record my efforts to scrub your mark from my mind. I simply do not have the time.

So, in an all more likely occurrence, I would live to my fated age pining and grieving and breathing your name in my sleep. Likelier so, I would die very young of a broken heart disease. I need those sinewy strings, you see.

So, not nearly as decisive as I am in earlier respect, I have still made a resolved decision.

I would rather live ten more minutes of time with you and wilt to dust than to spend any sort of time purposely apart. I would give years of my life to sit beside you, shoulders touching, breathing commented conversation into your ear in the darkened hush of the theater. I would trade my heartbeat for the chance to hear you call out my name and hurry to catch up. I would stop breathing if only you were to look at me.

And, so it is. Just like they said it would be.
I was destined for unrequited love.
You are the unlucky soul to have had it thrust upon you.
For that I apologize, but there's nothing I can do.

So, live. Breathe. Be happy.
When you have the time, let me tag along.

That's all I have credit to ask.

All Things Considered

If you lose something every time you use it, you make special precautions so as to remember where you left it and never lose it again.

So why is it that if you lose a piece of something everyday, you make no effort to gather the remaining portion close to you to prevent further loss? You ignore it. Pretend it isn't happening, and it'll go away. Literally.

Then, when you have nothing left, you mourn the loss instead of making an active move to regain what you've lost.


Why is it so hard to watch things slip through your fingers like sand? Why must I feel so out of control?

Rainbow Blue

I went to her with my problem, thinking to myself, "She is my only friend. If she can't psychoanalyze and figure out enough to explain to me what I should already know about myself, well. I don't think anyone can."

I explained the situation. She sat quietly, patiently. Listening.

"Ilion, you're puerile," was her answer. "Just because you don't point three hands to Zeus every time a pretty girl walks by means nothing except that you're more evolved than 97% of mankind."

"But, you just said I was puerile." I was quietly fuming.

"I did and you are. But, I suppose it isn't really your fault. No one else you could have ever possibly met would be in the same boat. You're one of a kind."

"I'm not following you. If I'm so great, why can't I feel great? Why can't I find a woman who makes me feel great, and whom I can make feel great in return? Why do I simultaneously want that kind of a relationship and want anything but that kind of relationship? Why am I so fucked up?"

"I told you, you're not fucked up," she noted, "You're puerile." She was matter-of-fact and I glared. Heatedly.

"That's all the advice I'm privy to today? That I'm devastatingly puerile? Damn, Tegan. I could've asked my mother to tell me that much. Forget it. I'm leaving."

"Now, don't be cross with me, Ilion. You're just a confused little boy and I'm not telling you what you want to hear. I wish I could tell you this was perfectly normal, love, but it isn't. That's a cold, hard fact of nature. Not everyone is normal. Don't be too disappointed, though. You're on a better track than most others. You'll never get your heart broken."

"You have some hasty gall to assume that, love. I'll have you know I am no stranger to heartbreak."

"I know. You talk about it enough. So you thought when you were five that you'd love that twinkly little Melia Morey next door. So it didn't work out. So it hurt. You were over it the moment your mother bought you a puppy."

"So I didn't just stop feeling hurt, Tegan. I stopped feeling."

"Nonsense. If you'd stopped feeling you wouldn't be here now asking me if you'll ever be happy again."

"Wanting to be happy and feeling a emotion are two terribly different things."

"You think want, when not coupled with a basic human need like hunger or thirst, isn't an emotion?"

"I'd have to argue that feeling emotion is a basic human need."

"You're not just puerile, Ilion," she said, sighing. "You're infuriating."

"It's part of my charm. Anything else? Am I hideous? Am I irritating? Am I a love-less, sex-less, hermit of a human with a dehydrated heart, tougher to chew than nails?"

"Maybe. I'm no judge of such things."

"You are infuriating. You've been talking to me for a quarter hour and you haven't said a thing."

"You want to know what I really think, Ilion? I hesitate to tell you as usually when I do you shoot me down like an enemy jet. You come asking for advice and opinion when all you really want is reinforcement of your own."

"... I won't deny that, but I won't admit to it either," I said, reserved, feeling mildly nauseous.

"A fair trade."

There was silence then and I stared at her. She looked sad, really. Honestly, heart-deep in remorse for things she'd said and things I'd done in response to them.

"I'm sorry, Tegan," I said finally. I couldn't stand to see her like that. "I want to hear what you think. I always want to hear what you think."

"You will be loved, Ilion. Trust me on that. Someday you'll meet someone who has just enough in common with you, but also a creative outstanding spark that keeps you coming to her, desperate to get to know her, desperate to discover what makes her tick. You'll watch her move and wonder how no one else in the world could have never noticed it before. You'll reach out to touch her and your heart will pound like the gears of a ship sailing full speed. Just her proximity will send electric shocks across your skin, the feel of her clothing against your fingertips will send the hairs on your next into their own erotic praise to Zeus. You'll fall faster and harder and feel wonderful things you could have never felt for Melia Morey. You will love her with your very being. You'll feel as if you could give the next fifty years of your life just to spend an afternoon with her, doing something completely mundane and stupid. Like playing chess."

I smiled at that remark.

"I only play chess with you, Tegan."

"Something else then. Maybe you'll find a girl who can build rainbows. You'll build the planes and she'll build the rainbows, and you'll live in the sky and the clouds."

"Building planes and building rainbows are two completely different things, Tegan."

"You're doing this to piss me off. You have to stop denying me and absorb what I'm saying to you. I'm scared for you, if you don't. If you go on living like this, thinking there's something wrong with you, thinking you're lacking something just because your aren't thinking the exact same levittown thoughts that everyone else is thinking. You're special, Ilion. Someday you'll find a girl that understands that and can show you that. You just have to look. She could be anywhere from the eastern coast to the western coast of the most eastern land, and the water that separates them. But she's out there. She's somewhere. Go look. Find her, and then come back and tell me you're not anything."

She just kept going. She was ranting now, vomiting words at ninety beats per minute. She threw so much emotion into the lecture that I couldn't interrupt. I didn't even know what to say when she finally finished. She couldn't even look at me; I thought she might be crying.

"Do you feel that way?"

"What? What do you mean? We're not talking about me. We're talking about you Ilion. Havne't you paid any attention? Honestly, I..."

"It was just a simple question, Tegan. I see no reason you should be so defensive. You speak from emotion, I can tell. You're not just speculating. You've found him, haven't you? The man that makes you feel that way? Who paints your rainbows?"

"I thought I had. Some of us can't build planes the way you can, Ilion."

She started away, head bowed and hair in her face. She walked as if she had been defeated, as if a tremendous failure had left her with nothing. She looked, just sad. She looked so incredibly sad. Perhaps even, possibly... heartbroken.

"Tegan, wait. Who was it? Who did this to you?"

"Don't worry about it, Ilion. It isn't his fault he favors standing around in this tiny town, playing afternoon chess with me when he should be out looking for a rainbow with more colors than just blue."

She left then, gone eons before I could even begin to process what she had told me. I touched the rock she had been sitting on and felt a breeze send a chill up my arm.

"She's right," I admitted finally. "I am puerile."

Nightmare of You

Last night, my dog had a nightmare. He stood up from the carpeted floor and barked in that heart-wrenching, blood curdling way that would make any conscious person jump in fright and produce a slightly greater amount of epinephrine. When my dog had this nightmare, I was sleeping. All at once, as I tried to leap the gap from a peaceful rest into a dream, something interrupted me.

Every horrible thing that has ever happened in a dream accosted me simultaneously. The horror-heroes from every terrifying move I have ever seen were knocking at the front door to my house. I was on fire. My flesh was crawling. There were snakes. There were screams. There was you. I'm not afraid of you, but all fear is rooted in the immediateness of death.

Heartbreak is as close to death as one can manage and still maintain a pulse.

A Pirate's Life for Me

Why does it still feel like there's a large leaden anchor trapped in my chest, affixed to the center bone and slowly, constantly, chronically leaking metallic poisons into the very blood which passes through and flows directly to the shredded, tired heart that beats beside it? It made sense, weeks ago. Months ago. It's natural to get nauseous if the boat keeps rocking, but the boat made a home at the sandy bottom of the sea a long time ago. It tried hard. The starboard sails flapped desperately in the wind and rain and storm. They billowed and creaked and were weighted down with terrible amounts of salty moisture from the sea.

But the ship still sank.

Why, do you ask? How, with all of the sweat and blood of the starboard sails did the ship still sink? Because every port side mechanism, from the rotted planks to the moth eaten sails, was completely numb and unresponsive. It watched the starboard sails strain with the weight of the rain and tear in the gailing winds, and sat quietly and unmoving in the storm.

As for the captain, he sat alone in the crow's nest, watching as the ship fought with itself, each side opposed while rightfully working toward the same goal, and cried coppery tears into his pirate garb,

nursing the leaded anchor in his old weary chest.

Sidewinder

I used to be a writer. In fact, I used to be a damn good writer. I'd sit down with determination, attentive and focused, and that'd be it. I'd place my fingers gently on the key pattern commonly noted as Home Row, and I'd let them fly. I'd let the words pour out of my fingertips at a rate faster than I could keep up in my mind, and I'd wander in thought. I'd float around the piece, surrounding each paragraph with notes to a million tiny references to my life. I'd watch, out of my own mind and body, until it was finished. Then I'd read it. I can't express the kind of pride and emotion one can absorb from the proofreading of a truly good piece of material and know that, however surreal it had seemed, those words had dripped from the same ten fingertips you have known and used for the entirety of your existence. It's like discovering a part of you you never knew existed.

Millions of people feel this way about millions of things. Anyone who creates is entitled to that overwhelming sense of self-importance and worth. Artists, musicians, athletes... computer programmers. It's all you. It's your day, your hour, your spotlight. Your muse.

Unfortunately, my muse is ill. She has been neglected, malnourished and mistreated. I am forever torn by guilt at the realization that I myself did this to her. Trivial unimportant things became too important, took too much time. I didn't feed her. I didn't attend to her.

Eventually I stopped thinking about her all together. It's been roughly 18 months since I've unchained the choke collar from around her neck and let her run free in the backyard of my mind. Now, I'm not sure I trust her. Things have changed a lot since she has been here. The grass is browning, the skies are dark, the rivers dry, the wildlife savage. There is no guarantee that Muse will be safe.

And still, is she safe? Is she thriving locked up and caged in the basement of my consciousness?

Am I to remedy the problem by freeing her or letting her die? Which would be the humane way? I loved Muse, once. We were like the child and puppy at the park who grow up and grow old and fade in their intense love for one another. I am guilty. I have betrayed the trust of my muse though she has remained loyal.

I am sorry, Muse. I am lost without you to tell me what to do.

And again, and again...

No matter what happens to me I will never be able to escape the haunting incorrigible realization that my first boyfriend never touched his lips to mine in that lusted display of affection known as a kiss.

My brother Loves Me

My brother bet me $5 that you and I would grow old together, and two days later when you broke up with me I bought five boxes of the most bittersweet twinkies I have ever eaten in my life.