They are mostly gone. 1 & 2.

1.

Some television with knobs

two

sits in the corner and protects me

from the poodle that is going to attack while

I dig my nails into a carpet that runs

under a wall and into a house where

I

Alone

decide I need pink chalk bullshit medicine for my tummy

and the oozy insides of some long prickly leaf to dull the burn on my skin from being outside

chasing cars

little girls in skirts

and this boy who has a toy I want

and a nest of wasps that some poor kid would die from fucking with in the movies.

Don't make fucking eye contact with the poodle.

Steal the soap from under the sink and pour it into the gas tank of my lawnmower

cuz we all need some goddamn bubbles

and that girl in the blue skirt will only look at me then.

Blonde hair.

Big grin.

Boy muscles.

Pushes that lawnmower so fast the bubbles don't even fucking show up.

The blue skirt girl doesn't either.

She is mostly gone.

They are mostly gone.

2.

"What about your frustration levels?"

Buy a lunch you can't afford and steal

french fries from a guy you admire for reasons you will never

admit or understand but appreciate that his plan is a plan and your plan is not dying.

"Or you'll have an emotional breakdown..."

Let tears well up enough that if you didn't have glasses on someone would ask about them.

The glasses, of course. Not the tears.

Keep the glasses.

Avoid the questions.

"We're good on trips, right"

There was a video of a river from really high up with no sound.

Be that river.

Be that video.

Be that answer to the question that says which person you know will be the mostly like to..

"You call at the worst times."

You can count on your arm the things left from that very first

house,

You.

Some combination of money, love, cat poison, personal safety, old age, the environment, social improvement systems and your own bullshit ideals leave just you.

That house is mostly gone.

You are mostly gone.

T is for Time...

The train was full of punks. And Greeks. And heart broken women. And rail weary men. And me. I had the biggest smile on my face.

You've developed this talent lately, of making me smile, the biggest, goofiest smile of my life. It would show up at work, at shows, in bed, driving, and right then. There aren't words for the excitement that was running through my veins. It had only been a week, but it felt like forever.

I saw an old window from the train. It was the one I woke up under the first morning of me being engaged. That house is empty now, or at least not populated by the people who I spent Christmas mornings with. There are a lot of windows like that in my life, looking into houses full of people that I don't know anymore. My stomach dropped as the train went by.

I also saw the hotel where we had our first night together. Back when I was throwing up for no reason. When I was drunk all day. When you were just another woman. Back before I fell for you.

We spent hours on the beach together. We found our own little spot and just let time slip away. I erased it from my head. And I erased location. And I erased my existence. I saw birds and angels and the boldest rays of sun in the sky. The words on my skin rearranged. I reaffirmed my love. I realigned my hate. We didn't talk for hours but every time I kissed you, or our eyes met, you smiled.

The sun burned my skin. I got uncomfortable with some of your friends. A stamp on the ceiling reminded me of an ex. Things got rough in my head. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I wanted you to hold me.

We talked about all of this when we went back to your place. You have a better understanding of yourself. You know to be warm is to be happy. I couldn't sleep. I tossed and turned. I couldn't be close enough to you. I couldn't hold you tight enough. I couldn't kiss you hard enough. I couldn't be anywhere else right then. I couldn't let this all go. I couldn't fail again.

But I did. And I am. Failing.

I didn't want it to be different. I didn't want us to change. But we had.

(playing on repeat: House of Cards by Radiohead. It explains even more.)

20/26

P is for Passion...

My skin was hot in the water. You used ice to try and cool it down or show me a different way of feeling. The bottles had long given up their contents and sat in the distance like the skyline of that city I go back to every few months to make sure it is still there; to make sure I am still alive. Friends of years of yours and minutes of mine slept soundly in the living room, a slight hum from another continent the only sound. If you were me you'd be lost in your eyes too. I keep my hands above the water, rubbing the tips of my fingers, the sensation recalls other nights with you and this is the closest I will get to ever crossing my fingers again. The sky is getting closer to bright blue by the second. You have to feel my heart pounding out of my chest. The shock waves bounce of the walls and crash back into me. Maybe you are immune to it. Maybe you don't notice it, constantly being bombarded with things like this. Maybe your heart beats just as hard and it cancels mine out. When I kiss you I taste copper, the blood from hours of trying to get the most out of life as we possibly can. I let you go and you curse the sun for taking away the night. I silently curse it for taking you away from me.

16/26

M is for Miles...

I stood on the roof of a venue last night. My pupils were big, my eyes were wider. I looked up at a building where friends and friends of friends do drugs different then the ones I was on right then. If it wasn't the breeze on my skin, or the cigarette smoke filling my lungs, then the chills had to be from some combination of her eyes, voice and hands. Sweet words were whispered into my ears about manifest destiny or the secret spots in our hearts that you need more than one map to find. Our hands were locked in a death grip, sweaty from the beating of hearts full of possible love and drugs, fingers rubbing together to keep the sense of security alive. The brown of her eyes was being over taken by the black of her pupil, and they said everything I knew. Past, present, and future laid end to end counting the steps to a heart.

I rub my hands sometimes to remind me of how it felt to be so close.

13/26

My First Shot

It was my junior year in high school. I was 16. It was Easter break. Not spring break. Spring break was brought into the lexicon by people who want to remove all aspects of Jesus Christ from American culture, the same people who write x-mas on their Christmas decoration boxes after the holiday is done. (See? I can totally pull off all that crazy christian school stuff I was subjected to all those years!)

My friend Nick and I were across the street from his house, at his neighbor Cade's place. We had bought weed (for the first time!) a couple of days before and we were picking it up from Cade. He was nice enough to break it all down for us, so we didn't smoke any stems or anything. He probably took some for himself, but that's what happens when you let someone else handle your drugs. We were probably going to go BBQ or something else that day, but at the moment we had nothing going on.

Cade was 18, a senior at another high school, and lived alone. Yup. He had his own little 2 bedroom house. He was artsy, dark, and a little nuts. He blew away my 16 year old mind. And he got laid ALL THE TIME. By very attractive girls, and women.

So Nick and I are standing around in his bedroom, probably listening to Dr. Octagon, hearing some story about SOMA's, fucking, and hamburger meat. (Maybe.) We decide to leave, so Cade opens his sock drawer to get our weed, and there is a bottle of liquor there too. I say "What's that?"

Goldschlager.

Cade tells us about it. I had never heard of it before. My family like their Jack Daniels. And Smirnoff. And Beefeater. And Bud Light. But not this stuff! Cade asks if we'd like some. I decline, but then, he sells it.

"That stuff floating around in there, that's real gold."

Done. I say sure.

Warm. Straight from the bottle. Goldschalger.

My shot virginity was gone.

I coughed, rub my chest and shook my head. (I still do that.) There were gold flakes on my lips.

It was wonderful.

We said our goodbye's and thank you's and I drove home, buzzed, from my first shot of liquor.

youtube is the new crack

meaning it was introduced to innercity neighborhoods by the CIA.

I watch some of the most ridiculous things on youtube. I just watched the first 45 seconds of a "summer's over" slide show video set to an Atari's song. Nothing like anime drawings of beach volleyball to let you know your life is slipping out of your grasp.

I will now go make my own "summer's over" slide show. It will be a first.

i keep wanting to blog....

about how the antelope valley is stuck in 1986 with the amount of blow that seems to be going into people's noses, but then I realize it's probably not that interesting to anyone who isn't from here or isn't doing it. It seems people who enjoy their coke enjoy the fact that they do it almost as much as doing the actual drug, and that doesn't even compare to how excited they are to tell you about it.

Which is funny, because I like being a drunk, and talking about it, but I don't see it as that big of a deal. Must be all of that christian hypocrisy left over from the glory days.

God bless the Antelope Valley, I wish it was closer to the ocean so my dreams of it falling in wouldn't be so far fetched.