one day, you'll be somewhere

talking to me as if you knew me

[lanosta]

With that, she offers me a contract and we arrange a time for me to come over and move in. Before we part ways, she says, “Are you superstitious?”

“Like…with feng shui and shit?”

“Feng shui is Chinese,” she says. “I’m Japanese. If you’re gonna be fake racist, at least get the race right.”

“Feng shui is pan-Asian,” I say. “And I’m not superstitious.”

“Good,” she says. “Since we moved here, everyone in my family who is dead has died in that house. It’s like they sense their time is coming and decide to stay there, and what do you know, in the morning they’re dead. Hope that doesn’t freak you out.”

[lanosta]

everything disjointed, disjointed but connected, little vignettes instead of full stories. Can't write what I need-want to write, something about it all a little too try-hard and not trying hard enough. My roommate calls me a friendship ruiner in jest. Laughing and half-serious, I say she's not wrong.

Twenty minutes into a two hour drive, I have to pull over. I shove my car door open and run around to the other side so I can throw up without anyone seeing. I don't know why I was worried. The road is dark in both directions and all around; even with my emergency lights on, no one sees me.

I think about driving into the desert all the time. I think about driving into the dirt and cactus toward the foothills and never coming back. He moved out of state because the desert is too dangerous a place to raise children. He won't admit he was afraid of drying up.

In hindsight, I see where things got fucked up. It goes back two or three years, but it always starts with this:

[lanosta]

commitment.

as soon as I start crying, he pulls me into his chest, smoothing down my hair. If this were any other situation, his gesture would be comforting and I would fall in love with it. But now, I don’t want him touching me. I wriggle out of his arms and bury my face into my hands. I feel him still hovering close.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I say between my sniffling. He was right--they were all right: I couldn’t handle this. It was fine, while it lasted, but as soon as we were done, I realized that I needed that love. I needed the reciprocity. I couldn’t handle the immediacy of the loss.

I cry harder, reassuring him that he was fine, that everything about him was fine, that he was good and kind and gentle. But it was me. I couldn’t handle not having more, not being more.

He told me once, that he didn’t believe in college relationships because they were either meaningless hook-ups or longterm commitments that eventually led to marriage. It sounded bitter when he said it, and sounds bitter when I think about it. I want to tell him that I don’t care either way, that it didn’t have to be one or the other. But he wouldn’t believe me anyway. My tears won’t let him.

[lanosta]

the thing I like best about coming home is you’re here. or maybe I should say there, since home isn’t an immediate for me, anymore, it’s not just here or here, it’s always somewhere in the near-distant future, always somewhere I’m going instead of somewhere I am.

the thing I like best about coming home is you call me as soon as I disable airplane mode. you ask when the next time you can see me is. the eagerness in your voice makes me cry because I never thought I would have someone like you, someone who comes after me even when I run. someone who catches me and leaves me enough room to breathe.

the thing I like best about you is you are home for me.

[lanosta]

what made you think he liked you, what made you believe you had a fighting chance? asked with a furrowed brow, the kind that would be construed as confusion or genuine curiosity if it weren’t for huge doe eyes, which tell me more than I need to know about what exactly she thinks I think, what she thinks I believe what made you get your hopes up, accusatory and condescending, what made you read so much into something that was easy, natural, why did you want so badly for something you couldn't earn why did you ruin this good thing

better off as friends

[lanosta]

feel like those poems where every word is its own line, disjointed and disorganized, the kind you write in high school before you knew any better.

[lanosta]

my room glows yellow I think it would be something like warmth something like home yet there's something a little off.

miss ya

[lanosta]

I get so sad when I see it: black waves that draw me in and out and you would expect me to know better than to dive headfirst into murky waters, but here I am again and again– not waving, but drowning.

the way your hair curls (via lanosta)

[lanosta]

I want to talk to you about a lot of things, but I'm afraid once you know everything about me, I'll start thinking we're more than we are, that you love me more than you do, just because you took the time to listen.

I think about calling you every day.

[lanosta]

I won’t like anything you like for my own sake, so I won’t watch a movie and wonder why you think it’s so special, or hear a song and wonder how you feel the beat, feel the heat of your body against mine, your hands skimming my thighs.

I won’t like anything you do

[lanosta]

I wanna drive through Colorado again up the winding roads where my ears will pop a million times in a row and the trees will stand jagged against the horizon even more rugged than the mountains that we go up and over and through and we’ll ride through little towns with buildings made out of logs cut and stacked on top of each other like something straight out of a children’s book and we’ll breathe air so fresh it’s like taking our first breath and see little churches tucked into the hillside, these little sanctuaries even in the middle of a huge sanctuary because there’s a difference between nothingness and emptiness and I think there was a moment when I realized that. We’d talk about going to psychics and having our palms read and how sometimes the smell of our grandfathers’ pipe tobacco would come out of nowhere and we’d know despite what they teach us that he’s there with us somehow and we’d come down from the mountains and still be a mile high, tired but not quite ready to go home.

not quite a road trip.

[lanosta]

Around the deck of this old public pool on the western edge of Tucson is a Cyclone fence the color of pewter, decorated with a bright tangle of locked bicycles. Beyond this a hot black parking lot full of white lines and glittering cars. A dull field of dry grass and hard weeds, old dandelions’ downy heads exploding and snowing up in a rising wind. And past all this, reddened by a round slow September sun, are mountains, jagged, their tops’ sharp angles darkening into definition against a deep red tired light. Against the red their sharp connected tops form a spiked line, an EKG of the dying day.

David Foster Wallace, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

[lanosta]

The problem is you think everyone is like you. You think you're the norm but you're not.

Chimamanda Adichie Ngozi, Americanah

[lanosta]

I shake my head and laugh. "Those aren't things people actually say to each other." "Well, I'm saying it now," she says. "And that makes it real."

I've always wondered what they meant.

[lanosta]

I get so sad when I see it: black waves that draw me in and out and you would expect me to know better than to dive headfirst into murky waters, but here I am again and again-- not waving, but drowning.

the way your hair curls

[lanosta]

haven’t done this in so long I’ve forgotten the way it makes me feel, heart racing warm all over laughter loud/reverberating a cross between carpe diem and settle down and loving the (bad) choices in between

cognac is 80 proof

[lanosta]

wanna take you by the shoulders and shake you tell you listen listen until you say I do I do but did you hear me