Your voice was perfect for waking up to. I liked talking with you in the car, the sound of surrounding traffic drowned out your voice.

If you took your eyes off the road I knew you were making an important point, I furrowed my brow and nodded, urging you to continue.

I'd think about how much happier I'd be if I was married to Thom Yorke or better yet what if I was pregnant with Nietzsche's baby. I'd sit and trace letters on my knee. I'd trace words on my knee.

I write his name over and over.

The person you're fucking and the person you're in love with usually aren't the same person. It's easy to tell, after you orgasm, whose name do you want to scream after Jesus?

The first time I knew I was in love with him he spilled his coffee on the sidewalk in front of me.

The first time I knew I didn't love him was when he fell asleep during a documentary about the Holocaust. The second time was when I saw how he peeled a mango.

And the reason I left was because I saw a Stephen King book on his nightstand, I'd rather have seen a black dildo.

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"If you've never held your own heart in your hand, you're luckier than me."

"What?"

"Nothing."

He kissed me hard, our teeth clanked together. I pulled away and laughed. He kissed me harder. 

One of his hands on the back of my neck, his other hand spreading my knees apart. 

I thought about how much I would have wanted this 5 years ago. 

"Hey, I think I'm going to vomit."

In the restroom I made convincing regurgitation sounds. I sat in the bathtub. And waited. 

By the time I came out he was asleep. I curled up next to him, pretended we had come home from a long day at work. I grabbed one of his arms and draped it over my waist. I pressed my head against his chest and thought about soap. 

Fine.

I'm okay. 

You say this after a car accident. When you realize you aren't moving anymore. When everything is still. 

You say this after a break-up. The moments after someone says that they don't love you, they never did and they never want to see you again. 

"I'm okay." And you tell yourself you left three pairs of panties, half a carton of orange juice and a bottle of shampoo in their apartment. You decide not to go back for any of these things. 

"I'm okay." is sometimes whispered when you wake up in an unfamiliar place, like a park or a Denny's restroom. Unsure of how you got there. You check to see if you still have panties on, you push your fingers in your vagina. You check to see if you smell anything other than that familiar pussy smell. You're bra is still on. You're okay, now you just have to figure out where your car is. 

"I'm okay." when someone asks how your day was. And you get the feeling that no matter what you said, they wouldn't care. 

I'm not okay. I'm not okay. I'm not okay. But I will be. 

Girls

Push.

She is a silly foolish girl, the kind that cries while watching Wall-E, she cries when she sees children being scolded at the grocery store. She cries when something ends. The stupid little thing who looks up at you with glassy eyes and says simply, “Hold me, I’m scared.”

The aliens are coming and all she cares about are arms and kisses.

Who can blame our girl? Those little hands grabbing for anything. 
How can we blame her for taking things that are willingly given to her?

That coy voice and light laughter. The phone calls, breathy and needy, “Please talk to me for a little while longer, just this once.”

She needs that voice on the other end reassuring her that the moon will not fall out of the sky if she closes her eyes, she needs that voice to tell her that it isn’t ever really dark. When you have her attention, she’ll follow your voice to the edge of the volcano. And with a light tap she’ll fall into oblivion, happy and content.

And this is who she is until she isn't. 

Until she's a women and in a dark room she listens to her breath and feels her own pulse. 

She isn't scared anymore because all she was ever scared of was herself. 

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Wine makes my vagina feel funny.

I sit on a rocking chair and slowly drink a glass of wine.

I'm not where I want to be, but I know how to get there.

When I turned 26 I spent the day forgetting it was my birthday. I was somewhere in West Virginia. A place I couldn't find again if I tried. With people whose last names I never learned. Holding a nameless baby.

You won't understand this, sometimes I don't understand it either. But there it is, our life taking us into strange places if we allow it to.

This baby felt weightless in my arms. Dressed only in a diaper, the baby's skin stuck to mine. It was about 99 degrees. The grandmother had placed the child in my arms before I could protest.

I asked if she had ever been in love. She said she was married at 15. She said she was scared and didn't even know what love really felt like until she had her first child. And then she liked the feeling so much, she kept having children. She said the man she married had never loved her, but that her children did and that sometimes, that's all that a woman could ask for.

She told me I looked good holding a baby.

I told her I wanted to fall in love, she said not to look for love. She said that sometimes we have to make our own love and sometimes love finds us. I asked her how I would know if I should make my own love or find it.  She said if she knew that, she'd be a millionaire.

She moved behind me and began to separate my hair into three parts and then proceeded to braid it. She said not to worry. She said that love was already looking for me.

I silently cried as she braided my hair.

You have to sit perfectly still, because if you move you might fall, and this time you may never get back up. 

Your eyes fill with tears and you think of many things.

The last kiss you had that you didn't know was your last. You tell yourself what it was like, the lips, the warmth, the moisture. But you don't remember his eyes that you had once gazed into, those blue eyes with flecks of yellow. There was a time when you could recall every speck, when you named every freckle on his nose. The particular shade of his eyelashes. But now, it's out of focus, and everything is bright and unclear. 

You think about being in the 1st grade and losing your best friend, her name was Patty. She had light brown hair and her eyes were too big for her face. She invited you to her birthday party over the weekend and you couldn't go because your mom made you go to your grandma's house. On Monday Patty told you Rene was her best friend now. At lunch time you sit on the bench by the swings, there is sand in your sandals and you are alone. You look around and wait for a swing to be free. The bench is warm and your feet dangle and hover a few inches from the ground.

You think about holding your grandfather's hand while he died. You can see his chest move up and down, slower and slower. His chest becomes still and everything stops. His hand is still warm in your hand and you wait for him to breath. And when he doesn’t, you hold onto his hand tighter.

You think about everything that has broken your heart. You think about all the new ways your heart can be broken. And you wonder how much more you can take.

So you sit very still and you wait for love.

You wait for something to hold you and nurture you, whisper in your ear, “Everything will be fine.”

You hardly notice tears are streaming down your face. And you hope with your whole heart that things will be different someday.

And to an empty room, you whisper a plea to no one in particular:

“Please hurry.”

Time

Running. 

I can feel my breath quicken. My throat has a pulse. 

I'm thinking about the last time I spoke with you. We were at a cafe whose name I couldn't pronounce. 

"Why do you have to have so many opinions? Why do you have to be so different?"

I sat quietly. I didn't know who to be. I didn't know what to say. 

I looked at you and waited for a prompt. I waited for you to give me the answer. 

At that moment, I would have been anything you wanted. I just didn't want to be alone. I didn't know who I could be without you. 

The first time we kissed you held my face and kissed me hard. Your tongue pushed hard into my mouth and pushed against the roof of my mouth. 

You said, "You're different from anyone I've ever met. You're amazing."

And now we were here, and you were breaking up with me. You asked if I wanted a coffee, I said no. I couldn't talk. I just wanted everything to be okay. 

"I'll change. I just get excited and I don't think before I talk. It's a bad habit, I'm working on it. I'm sorry."

I waited, hoping this would be enough to make you stay. 

"You won't change. That's not who you are."

"Please, I love you."

"I love you too. You're just too different."

"But that's why you liked me in the first place. I don't understand. How can you be rejecting me for being different when the reason you asked me out was because I was different? How does that make any fucking sense?"

"You have so many opinions, you have so many things you want to do and see and everything. I like it here, I want to spend weekends having barbecue's with friends. I don't want to be going everywhere and seeing everything."

"What the fuck are you even talking about? I love you. Doesn't that mean anything? Don't you know how rare this is?"

"It's not working."

"That's it."

"Yeah, that's it."

"Okay, you're a fucking disappointment. You're weak and pathetic. I wish I'd never met you. I don't care how old you are, you will always be a scared child. You're boring and you'll lead a boring life. I will never love you again. I don't ever want to see you again. If you see me, walk right past me. There is nothing between us anymore. I don't even feel sorry for you or angry, you're nothing. You're a waste of time. I was an idiot to think you could ever be anything other than ordinary."

I got up and left. I never saw you again. 

---------------------------

My throat has it's own heartbeat. I run farther and the heat from the sun makes the top of my head warm to the touch.