Just another dirty face

I saw you yesterday. You didn't see me, at least im pretty sure of that. In your own world high up in that stupid truck you own. Its been years. Truley years since I've even thought of you. Anger and shame is long gone baby, cause your not worth my time. You weren't worth it all that time ago either, but try telling that to a beautiful disaster. One look at your face and the floodgates of memory open and the lingering smell of wet concrete and old red seats come in. Long nights shared with you. Never to my face. No not to my face and if I'm really honest with myself, I can say that I truly don't know if that was more for your benefit or mine. Desperate to feel needed I took it too far. Desperate to feel satisfied you let it come in. Your fault or mine?

I was a young girl trying to be grown. Long blonde hair, small waist, and an ignorence for truth. You smelled the wetness behind my ears a mile away. Preyed on it, got high off it. I was self destructive, trying to find a way out, out of what im not sure. Life? Reality? The sheer normalcy of the yellow painted house called home? But you knew what to do, you knew how to work me, you knew I would break.

Children of technology it started simply enough. Too late summer nights spent behind that screen. Hours we would talk. Typing fast, the world falling away around us. I wish I could say I shared my soul with you. But I cant. I shared lies with you. I rehearsed the words that I knew you would want to hear. But all this time later I take solace in knowing that you didn't know me. You never knew me and you never broke me. I wasn't attracted to you. But you didn't want me and that was too much to accept. Boys wanted me. Plenty of them. Not new to the sideways glances of young brown eyes I waited for yours to come calling.

And of course they came. My body was present, my mind a mile away. Away from that night, away from the cheapness, the sickening truth of it all. It was October and much like the rain, I was falling. Splattered on the concrete I was forgotten. It was over before it started but the effects of it just begining. As if I needed any other reason to lower myself that night. As if I needed any other reason to be nobody. A Truce made true between two friends, between us this will stay. Of course just another lie spoken that late October night.

Ironically enough the car was parked in the parking lot of my youth. Middle school, not long ago yet a million miles from where I sat. Not much had changed really. Hips wider, and an inch taller, but mentally, just the same. I let you bother me too long. I let your shallow poison drip into the torn innocence of my heart. But one day I laid myself to sleep, and upon the bright sun of the morning let you go. Let you go, let that time go. I realized that the decisions you make in the vulnerability of your youth don't define you. You change and you grow and the dirtiness accrued at one time or another drips off your back and fall to the ground. You can be new. You can be clean, you can be free of mistakes of your past.

I dont know why I saw you that day. I dont know why old memories were stirred or why our paths crossed. But I do know that it left me with a smirk. Because Ive made it and you havent. In a few days Ill be on my way to California. On may way to the dream of my life. I'll be free and careless, sand between my toes and my soul being cleansed by the goodness of the sun. And once again, you'll be nothing but an old memory, filed away in the dusty corners of my brain. You'll be alone, and lonely, and ill be flushed with the love of another. You may have shook me for a time half a decade ago, but you didn't break me. You tried but you failed. You fell into the abyss that is nothing.

In the eyes of innocence

In the eyes of innocence
Dominic, seven months old

He came and he went

I retreat inside myself. During times of sadness. Confusion, stress, anger, fear, its all the same to me. Its not something that I do with intention and it has always been something that does nothing but separate me from family and friends during times that I should be reaching out with tentacles of emotion and latching on to the only people that have really ever been there for me. The only people who have ever truly wanted to be there for me. But hard as I try its just not how I'm made. I would prefer late nights of inward agony to long heartfelt talks over steaming cups of tea that I hate, any day. To me, pain is private, my pain is private and it makes me an anxious pile of short breaths and upset stomachs to come anywhere close to sharing my pain. Huge wedges driven between those closest to me, wedges that I'm not sure I can ever mend. More to come in the future, that I'm sure of but the more I cause others pain from my isolations the more I want to isolate.

I cannot pretend that I felt any regret
Cause each broken heart will eventually mend
As the blood runs red down the needle and thread
Someday you will be loved
-Death Cab for Cutie
Someday she will be loved


Sitting cross legged on the faded brown carpet of my childhood; my sister next to me a strong, strong pillar bracing for whats about to come. There for support for the round bellied straight banged sister she wanted nothing but to protect. Nothing but a bright eyed hopeful child of seven I was. Ignorant, and un-foreseeing of the ability of others to hurt you. The ability of others to tip toe with torn heals on the hearts hidden within the chest of small children and big children alike. It had been several weeks since I had seen him. Not all that uncommon if it weren't for the fact that it was her birthday and the time for celebration, for party hats promised, came and went. Anticipation to kiss those chubby cheeks of the one year old that was less of a niece and more of a sister to me built and built, and the nagging questions came and came until it all came to a head. At this moment, right here, sitting on this shabby carpet looking up into the eyes of my trusted parents, this was the moment that changed everything. Unable to stall anymore, unable to create and recreate the bent truths and fabricated lies meant to protect me it finally had to be said. He would like it if we didnt see him anymore. Him and her, and that precious baby we love, well no more he said. The particulars and the mechanics, and the words and the hate of the situation omitted of course. But it didn't matter. He wanted me no longer and it was said and it was done thats all that did matter.

My big brother, my very big brother at fifteen years my senior had not always been a constant in my life. Living in a different state the state that birthed me, eventually making the move north, but always having his own life. I mean how involved can you be in the life of a sister fifteen years younger than yourself? But it didn't matter, all I saw through the glossy blue eyes of youth was my big brother. My brother that would always protect me and love me. Always be there for me and never leave. I sat there that day, a moment that I can still remember now, almost fifteen years later. I sat there with a very distinct feeling of being in a tunnel. A tunnel that encompassed only me, a tunnel that blacked out the corners of my eyes creating a round viewpoint, a tunnel that dulled sounds making everything seem very far away. A tunnel that created surround sound of the strong steady beat that was my heart. I listened, I sat very still and I listened counting the beats, wondering if it were true. If it were true that your heart could break. Did I hear a tearing sound? Was it ripping at the seams? Did it pop like a clear plastic bag filled too full with air? A new emotion to me, A feeling never felt in seven years, a feeling that I didn't know at the time but that would never go away. Only to be repeated and replaced over and over again through many years of life.

So I sat there alone, alone in my tunnel where no one could reach me and as I sat there I realized that I wasn't alone. I parted the darkness and swam through the weight, and I remembered that in the dully lit room with the brown shabby carpet was my family. My sister next to me I looked at first. Was she on the right or the left? I cant quite remember but the wet tears dripping from her chin I do remember. And when I looked at her I realized that I should do something. And not knowing what to do, I cried. I cried and I cried and I retreated and I retreated and I cried some more until I was scooped up and hugged and held and I could feel their arms but I couldn't see them from outside of my tunnel but they were there and I knew they were so there was no need for me to speak.