from the pages of my black leather-bound notebook

I knew it was pretentious, but I bought a little black leather notebook filled with cream-colored paper anyway. And then I proceeded to fill it full of all my trite, over-dramatic, achingly honest thoughts. Now they're here on Tumblr.

[notebookfullofthoughts]

Morning yoga to center me. It did - dead center in a morass of silent longing. Central in a maelstrom of chaotic emotion. Central in a room in a chair closer to its companion than is ethical. Central in my bed, sinking aching spine first into dismay and sleep.

[notebookfullofthoughts]

Is there anything more subjective, more changeable, than “you”? You were citrus and profanity and pineapple juice, and then you weren’t. You were cheekbones like a shale wall and a fierce open smile, but only momentarily.  You were a pair of deceptively innocent tilted brown eyes, gone in a blink.

You are brown curls, carelessly tangled on the back of a neck, a profusion of fresh growth, the wild exuberance of my untouched lawn in the spring, begging for the touch of bare skin. You are the yawning gulf of mistakes carved deep between two office chairs, a hand pressed against mine for a comparison that feels magnetic, passably hazel eyes a heartbeat too close to me.

You don’t know when you become signified, but the pit of my stomach always does.

[notebookfullofthoughts]

Write, I think. Just write. The pen is in my hand but the notebook is dusty and I am shaking. You are a permanent smudge, left indistinct at the edges of my awareness, and I am some intimidating stranger who cannot be competed with. It’s two am and the taste of stale sugar coats my mouth. You loom insignificant. I ramble.

[notebookfullofthoughts]

How many years will it take to forget you? If I ran now, I think I could recover in a matter of months - but every day I’m around you is going to make it harder.

[notebookfullofthoughts]

They spent most of history thinking that this was it - finally the end near, the sins too many, apocalypse imminent. Now when we really have broken our world, maybe beyond repair, we laugh at the doomsayers and think only of the greatness ahead and the sci fi miracles that await. This, I think, is irony at its finest.

[notebookfullofthoughts]

I feel like I’ve been running constantly, trying to stay so busy I don’t have a chance to think. I thought I was avoiding the growing list of things I need to do, but then I sat still for a moment and realized it’s being alone with myself that I’m terrified of.

[notebookfullofthoughts]

I can’t shake a feeling that if we were just in a different geographic space, things would be different. Smoother.

[notebookfullofthoughts]

How odd to realize I used to think my life could be organized into the plot of a story. Nothing too glamorous, of course; something Austen-esque, maybe, where the love story drove the plot but was not the center of my existence. And now to find myself coasting into one “and they lived happily(ish) ever after” sentence that will drag on for 50 or 60 years, to have it already ended - it’s blank and hopeless.

I crave nothing so much as new material.

[notebookfullofthoughts]

I told you about this notebook today - just that it exists. Then I left my bag sitting by you and wanted to throw up when I realized you could have read this. This isn't for you, even if it's fun to think of laying my soul bare.

[notebookfullofthoughts]

It's hard for me to believe in people who believe in something. I only really believe in one thing, and that's love. Not trite roses and soulmates and I-am-nothing-without-you love, but messy love, that aching tenderness a particle away from disgust that you feel for other humans when you see their naivete and mistakes. It isn't romantic or tender and it might be the first thing to go when a crisis hits, but it's also the only real thing we have.

[notebookfullofthoughts]

I can't decide if I'd rather be bitterly angry at you or just a little bit head over heels for you. I wish neutral was an option.

[notebookfullofthoughts]

My professor said to write something and to leave it in existence, instead of immediately burning or destroying it, is to intend something to be read. I won't deny it. I think the question is more who I intend to do the reading. A stranger? The internet? (Are those one and the same?) Maybe you - but that sounds messy and I don't even know which you I mean.

[notebookfullofthoughts]

Sometimes it's hard to think deep thoughts. Sometimes you just want rum to taste a little less vile so you can get good and drunk and ignore your sore throat.

[notebookfullofthoughts]

My favorite blanket smells like you now. Maybe a week ago I would have reveled in it, but now I'm just trying to ignore how comfortingly painfully comfortable that citrusy scent you wear is. Almost like hugging my mother.

[notebookfullofthoughts]

He said "the unraveling of a life" like that's some way to describe a potential disaster. I think that's a stupid way to look at things, because that implies some kind of backward movement. I can tell you right now, if life is a blanket on a loom or a macrame friendship bracelet, the tragedy is not the unraveling. The real terror is when you find yourself holding threads you would have sworn don't have any place in your project, when you can't let go of them and they just don't fit, and to boot you have no fucking idea what the pattern was supposed to be.

[notebookfullofthoughts]

I think the greatest heartbreak of my life was slowly coming to realize that I could, in fact, manipulate even you.

[notebookfullofthoughts]

I wonder sometimes if we've ruined desire, with our movies and romance novels and poems. Maybe we've created such a blank canvas of the body - by seeing so many that they've all merged into one - that all we can see in the specific is the aberration. We've left ourselves such a polished empty invention of smooth airbrushed skin and well-matched eyes and breasts and skin not only hairless but stubble-free that reality must become horrific. How can you look at someone, really see them and the moles on their back and the acne on their cheeks and smell the faint odor of dinner on their breath and be anything but repulsed? The specificity makes it so personal you can't help but be afraid.