Strung together pearls of commotion
coil around her wrists
singed leaves fall to pad each footstep

a crinkling eyelid sinks into her sunken face
exposes the rivulets of blood
pacing the white globes encased
within that universe of olive-toned flesh

November's chill slides down her cheek
lavapools of May's sunshine depleted
drains lead to I know not which region

how do you embrace a creature of infinite
and endless points of detail of deathdefiance of
thought of soft downy hairs tickling down
the back of her neck of swamps in her irises
of burning lips and
tears which formed their source somewhere in
a gravelly playground or
her parents' king-size bed or pulled hair parking lot
arguments and incorrigible misunderstsndings
and untouchable untouchability
lurking ever just beneath the endless
rolling deserts of her skin

how do you hold just that
and comprehend
tell the story of exactly what
is breathing, encompassed by your
short and tree stump arms?

I don't know if I can write about my cat.  The more I realize how much I felt for him, I feel a little bit ridiculous.  I kept bursting into tears yesterday, could barely sleep last night for thinking that he was going to walk in through my open windows, and I found it hard to get to class with a straight face today.  I don't think I've cried so much for a person who's passed away before, but that's not because I haven't loved people or something like that...  it's just that I just haven't had anyone I know die since I was young and even then it was just older grandparents or great grandparents whom I had never really known.

This is the first time that a personality who figured so much into the daily part of my life has passed away.  I had even begun to think of my apartment as more his than mine because he technically lived here longer than I have.  He moved in right after my first roommate and I moved in, and he stayed there when I left to Germany (when my sister plus her roommates moved in,) and then through my moving back in with a new roommate.  My apartment was his domain--the only place he's lived except for the first few weeks of his life.

And he didn't seem like a normal cat.  I have a hundred stories about that damn cat, and even if he wasn't always the nicest or best-behaved fellow, there wasn't a person who couldn't help but like him in some capacity.  I always said he was such a charming bastard.

Meowing nearly every morning in the loudest, most obnoxious meow I've ever heard, Jared and I had so many battles of wills in seeing who would give in to mess with him first.  I'd have to throw him out of the apartment so his meowing would be mostly out of earshot, but sometimes I would let him into my bedroom and hope that he'd just be a good guy and sleep silently with me.  That's what I groggily hoped for anyway, but it rarely happened.


He never figured out how to keep from scratching, either... I don't think he meant to be such a complete bastard but he was born that way.  I have had so many scratches from him, and he always bit too hard.  He ate voraciously (sometimes so quickly that it'd come back, eck!) and would constantly scratch at the cupboard under the sink til he could open it and get to the bag of food.  I had to put the food in a plastic bin because he learned to tear up the paper bags that the food originally came in... but, he nevertheless continued to get under the sink one hundred times a day.  He just loved to be near his food (no matter how hungry he actually was,) and to get into places that he knew that I disliked.

He had such a knack for being in all the wrong places... on my face, on my homework, on my pile of clean clothes, running up the ladder into the attic, getting into the interior of the roof through my closet, ahhh, that cat thought of a million ways to get my attention.  You could try to ignore him so that you wouldn't reinforce his bad behavior, but he'd still think of a new way to get your attention that demanded that you stop what you're doing and scold him or toss him out or whatever.  He had that special talent.

He had his sweet moments though--it seemed especially so after his last fall off the roof.  I found him curled up on my bed more often and wanting to sleep with me at night than ever before.  I know it's silly sometimes to try and anthropomorphize animals, but I couldn't help but feel that he understood how much I cared for him and was willing to help him out when he hurt himself so badly.

I don't know.  He was really bad so many times, but he was also so entertaining.  He was always up for chasing whatever could be chased, for "boxing" with you between the bars as you walked down the stairs, for pouncing on Tally, for jumping on boxes, and always always for ripping up paper...  I don't know if that sounds endearing to anyone else but he was such a constant source of stories throughout every week.  Every weekend I went home to my parents', even Jared would have a new antic of Lucci's to tell me about that he'd performed.  Very often annoying, but it always got a laugh.

"What'd he do this time?" or "How early did he meow you out of bed?"


That cat.  I'll never forget that cat.  Like my mom said, he's going to kind of represent my life at college, especially in Denton.  I remember everything from the moment I stole him from his stray mother, how cute and fluffy he was as a baby, how we assumed he was a girl because he was so pretty and dainty-seeming (despite those growing masses under his tail, haha,) how his named changed from Lucy (short for Lucifer) to Lucci (lengthened sometimes to Luciano Pavarotti,) to how he grew up into a big, chubby cat that still retained so many of his kitten qualities, a never-ending energy for playfulness, and how he thought of so many ingenious acts of bastardism.


That cat.  There will never be another one like him.  I'm glad I've got Tally still; she's such a sweet and quiet cat.  But I'm sure our "cat stories" are going to be reduced one-hundred-fold.

It was tough to feed Tally the first time after he was gone... normally I go through this "ritual" of opening the soft food once a day for the cats at dinner time.  I open up the can, they hear the tell-tale noises and run up to me, Lucci pawing at my legs and reaching up at me while standing on his back paws, Tally less aggressive but still excited.  And if he wasn't there when I opened it I would go downstairs and find him ready and waiting at the front door, very aware that his beloved soft food had just been opened!  So then I'd take a knife, divide the food in half, and give each cat their half in this special bowl which had a divider down the middle.

Anyway, I burst into tears when feeding Tally.  There was no dividing up to do, and I just dumped the whole big can onto one side and ran away from the scene.

This'll take some getting used to.

I don't know if you're supposed to feel this much for a cat, or to shed so many tears for such a simple creature who was often very very bad.  Bad and sweet, good and bastardly.  That was Lucci.  (or Lu-Che Guevara as Jared came to call him.)

So, once again, good-bye dear cat.  The first of the two cats I ever really called my own.  An unforgettable cat.  A dumb cat, a reckless cat, a loved cat.  Good bye, and rest in peace, you dummy.

Things happen.

You get angry.  You pull hair.  You throw people around.  You scream.  You slap.  You cry.  You yell inside your room when nobody is around and cry "why God, why!?"  You wonder why it's happening to you, and you asked this God that you learned to stop talking to years ago.  You address him, just in case, I suppose.  Maybe it's out of habit.  Maybe there's a little hope despite the years of learning to put hope in other things.

You get jealous.  You tell people the meanest things you can possibly say.  You get drunk.  You dig out all the pain you've ever felt and redirect it at someone you love, though if you could stop yourself you would never hurt them as you are doing right now.  You love them.  You want to accept and to be accepted and to have all the leeway in the world to bend just as you need to bend under the force of the wind, or perhaps against it.  You want to be loved despite all your flaws.

You want that love to be unending, just as when you were a child.  You drop a glass vase; it shatters everywhere against the tiles; the shards reach every corner you never would have imagined it could; your sister's bare foot is pricked 3 weeks later, so unsuspectingly.  And yet your mother still loved you; your father got out the broom and the dust pan and helped you sweep up the pieces.  You disappoint you disappoint you disappoint, but you keep coming back to this point of caring for each other, of wanting the best, of sharing every bit of happiness that there is left to be gleaned in this world.  Just be happy, dear dearness, be happy, my love, and perhaps share what you find with me.

Be there when I cut myself, be there when I cry, be there when I scream at you to stay away, be there when I hate you, be there when  I betray you, be there when I spit at you all the curses I can scrape out of my skull.

 

I don't want to hurt you.  I don't want to contain you.  I was born with you being there beside me, and for better or for worse, I never want to let that go.  We may have been made of starstuff gathered from opposite sides of the universe, we may not understand each other in the slightest, but oh, we keep coming back to this little bit of common ground.  Standing on the slightest sandbar in the middle of the ocean just so we can be together and look each other once more in the face--so I may rub the back of my hand along your cheek and remember forever your face, though it changes over the years, imperceptibly but sadly over time.  Two decades and you know where this is all going.

Unasked for, unexpected tears.  Pain and ripping and I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry; please forgive me.

I love you.

 

I could never be the dictionary's writer for the word "love."  I think I would have to hang myself before I could commit to even the driest and most official of definitions.  What sacrilege is it to put that word down,
to contain it within the most sterile of meanings
in a single,
stilted paragraph?

 

Oh, this is family.

"Family:  All because two people fell in love."  I saw a framed picture with those words written towards the bottom at my sister and her husband's place.  They yell and fight with each other more than any other couple I know.  They are teaching their children to do the same.  I don't know what peace they ever have in their home.  And yet those words were there, framed in the middle of the  their entry room as the most prominent of sentiments.

 

Family, love, unconditional love that has so very very many conditions and relapses and breakings.  But they've never disowned me; we've all yet to disown each other.  What a powerful word, sentiment, action: Disowning.

How unfathomable. "I disown you."  I break every bond that ever was, because, oh, how you have disappointed me.
How heartbreaking.

 

I feel like my heart has broken a dozen times this week, and all for the most random of reasons.  A man loved a bull, had it cloned, put all his hopes and dreams in this second bull; it gored him twice and he still gives it 5 more years of goring, even if it kills him.  Mothers say the damndest things.  Sisters decide it is better to not feel anything at all, to not talk to you.  Or slap you out of bed.  Forced silence, separation.  Not having enough time or resources for a million things.

 

And oh, it's beautiful... and heartbreaking.  Music streams into my ears and I suddenly wanted to write all this, to transform all the pain and the things that brought my tears, to put all, or at least all I could capture into words,
and here I am.

 

This is all I wanted to do.  I am terrible at ending things, I've noticed.  Poems, paragraphs, entries, relationships, thoughts, conversations.  I get to the end, and I just run run run
away.

 

 

 

I hear them talking and I hear how fruitless it is.  One sister tries to convince the other to "snap out of it."  Just stop giving into the pain.

 

Stop it.  Stop hurting yourself.  You're hurting us by hurting yourself; stop it.  We can't handle it.

As if that makes a difference.  As if we could wake up from our pain to consider the pain we are radiating into others.  As if that could work.

As if anything but our own time and our own reasoning and our own floating from note to note to note in this song would ever get us anywhere but where we're going as if there were any other order but from note to note to note.  There is no other order.  There is no intervention.  There are no words or love or concern that intercede on the loved one's behalf and make it all alright.

There is no reaching into another one's heart and making it feel any differently from what it wants to feel.

There is no changing paths.

There is no changing self.

There is no way for me to stop listening to their words though I try to drown it out with my own music, my own madness, my own words, my own chosen piano pounding and rhythm beating into the anvils within my ears.  Oh, please, stop this pain and this radiation of ever expanding negativity and cycles of hopelessness and premature pregnancies and the unready begetting the unready and the hate begetting more hate and hurting.

 

Please let this silence never let their words seep back into my ears.  I cannot bear to hear it again.  Please make the silence stop coming around.  I cannot handle it.

 

I am a big being.  I am a hole surrounded by flesh.  I am the bones of trees with the wind for flesh.  I am I am I am a girl who wants and dreams like every other person wants and dreams and I am always reaching outwards whenever I am done collapsing from the weight of being alive everyday.

When do I stop wanting you?  When do I stop being vulnerable?  When do I discover that I have feet and that I have had them all along and that I get to walk out of this frame now?  That there is actually more outside this little movie set that I have created and that if I were to just stand and keep walking I'd be on other sets and then I'd be outside the movie production building and then I'd be out on the street and into a city and if I kept going I'd be out on the highway and then if I kept going I'd be out in I don't know where.  Some place that I hadn't imagined yet.  Maybe I'd walk out into space.  Maybe I'd walk out into the ocean.  Maybe I'd walk into the only frontiers that exist today.

Maybe I'll fall into your arms, and breathe easy.

Breathe easy, once again, like before when I knew nothing.  Like before when all I needed was a breast.

 

(Though I never had a breast, only ever had a bottle, and people making up for the things that my own uterus-mother was unable to give me, because I was taken away.  For my own safety, my own safety.)

The following is an e-mail from the past, composed on Tuesday, October 28, 2008, and sent via FutureMe.org
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Dear FutureMe,

It's October 28th, 2nd week of classes, and you're up at 1:35 AM for no good reason. Oh yeah, and you're (I'm?) in Germany.
And now I'm in good ol' Denton, Texas...

I am trying to make friends, and I have invited 2 people to hang out at our Halloween party this Friday, but dunno how that will go. I currently hope that I can be friends with my Shakespeare presentation partner (Lisa Sitterle) because she seems pretty cool.
Only one Irish girl named Fiona came and she was very shy so that didn't work out very well... I didn't make friends with Lisa either :(

I have nothing very important to say, but I have no idea where I will be one year from now. I am hoping to be somewhat closer to graduating, just to have a mark of accomplishment, and I hope I will be a lot more fluent in German.
Yeah, you're "closer" to graduating and a lot more fluent, but you're forgetting it rapidly.  And though I am "here" right now, I still am not very sure where that is...

I don't know why I picked German because once I leave Germany, I probably won't have too much chance to speak it. But who knows?
No, you won't have an opportunity to speak it.  You didn't even get into any German classes this semester and the German clubs kinda suck.  The German food in Texas generally sucks, too!  It's kind of depressing, actually...

I hope you will have written lots of poetry, maybe started a writing project of larger size, taken a bajillon photos (printed some out), learned lots of things, made some real friends, and I don't know what else. Know what I want to do in Linguistics?
Yeah, you've written a fair amount of poems, not a ton, though, and mostly all in Xanga, dang it.  No larger writing projects, but perhaps NaNoWriMo in November!  There's also been some photos taken but not quite a bajillion and you have not properly printed or displayed any.  I imagine I learned things, made a couple of friends... maybe... and I still am not certain what I want to do with linguistics!!  Ahh, sucka.

I am currently still with Sterling, but he is planning on leaving within the next couple of weeks to become a master guitar player. When he leaves, I am not sure that we will ever be together again. Sure we will probably visit, but this step seems so life changing for him, that I am not sure that I can be a part of that. I adore him on many levels, and I would like to tell him I love him again if it could be uncomplicated, but my heart is still too unsure and worried to do that.
Nope, no longer with Sterling.  And he did go off to audition for that master guitar teacher but that totally bombed... he still dropped out of German University and left earlier than you, but yeah...  this was a complicated ordeal you were going through.  You guys both meant well but I don't think it was ever meant to work out.

But, take this as this, I love him on several levels which I cannot exactly define, but I don't know that I need to. He is leaving and his life is his priority, and his happiness mine for him.
It was perhaps some type of love, but yeah, our lives took different priorities that became evident within the next half-year... or mine did, especially.

I should be asleep, but I felt like writing something to someone or nothing to no one... and here I am. Writing something to no one (jk self, jk.)
lame.

I yearn to write beautiful things and selfishly I want people to tell me it's beautiful, but I want it to be the right people. I don't know who they are, but I have a fantasy that I meet a boy and we fall in love reading to each other what we've written and are writing and letters are written, with necessarily some degree of separation, and then a final period of inseparability.
That was a terribly constructed sentence, Merrie, but I suppose I will have to forgive you.  This one was an interesting wish...

Also, I don't want to be contained, which is also what makes me hard to tell Sterling I love him, because I am afraid of trapping myself again. I don't want to lie to people, and I am comfortable with where we are right now, just enjoying each other and being loving friends. Well we are girlfriend and boyfriend, but it's so hard to say exactly unless we say the love word. I don't know... it's been so complicated. Shouldn't have to be.
Also, not really being "in love" with him was making it hard to tell him you love him, silly.  Why did you keep trying to convince yourself?  I can't imagine you were really very comfortable... it was so complicated and unnecessarily dramatic.

okay self, be better than me. You have 1 years of mistakes to have learned from, if you're not dead. I don't know what better is and you won't either, but don't get too sad. There's always more happinesses ahead, and beauty you've never seen.
"Happinesses?"  Geeze.  And yeah, still no idea what "better" is.  Good job on that prediction, Nostradamus.  But thanks for the reminder about more happiness and beauty lying ahead that I still have yet to see.

Love (a forced word, hard to love you futureself)
PastSelf

I may be a bit harsh on you PastSelf, but I can say that I love you, even if you had to force yourself to try to love me.