Concert

She's unquestionably talented. It's nearly cliche, the way her fingers dance over the strings, the way she dips and moves with the bow. The music is elegant, beautiful, perfect. She's an extension of the instrument, perfectly angled and graceful. All but her face. Her expression is straight, pulled taunt across her face. There's a dull fog of boredom in her eyes.

Suddenly, her finger slips, and her hand splays up, quickly, away from the neck of the violin. Just as fast, she recovers, and her fingers take their places again, with just a quick a break in the music. I glance around to see if others noticed.

The feelings in the room remain much the same, all except for hers. She smiles softly now, just to herself. In this moment, I love her the most.

New Blog

I've created a new blog!  I didn't want to ruin Organized Chaos with weird campy craft stuff and knitting, so I made a craft blog on the side. Go check it out!

For Old Times' Sake

how dare you
how dare you throw around so carelessly
an idiom you've already broken.
for old times' sake.
in memory of former times; in acknowledgment of a shared past.


there is no past i will admit to sharing with you.
i wanted to cherish the memories
but for as much as i did,
you destroyed them.
you rewrote the past,
declared you had other motivations
and never meant what was said.

you reached into the past,
and turned memories into weapons
accusations
and guilt

how dare you
for old times' sake.

Arts and Crafts: short story

The selection is nice, she thinks to herself. Surface area is multiplied in rows and shelves and displays. Realistically, it's just the same thing repeated, in different colors, with different labels, but the endlessness is calming. Her row is cut off from the rest of the world, as though everyone else has realized that there is something wrong. She doesn't notice.

Her entire world is in front of her, the entire world here, and slowly she works through each basket, each section, carefully choosing each color, as though the right color will be solid enough to fixate on and hold to.

She leans forward to run her fingers over the yellow felt in the bottom row, and the lanyard around her neck swings out with a jingle. She doesn't trust pockets. The lanyard is cumbersome and dowdy, but she carries with with a reassurance, something she's able to hold onto, something strapped into place. The yellow, looking closer, is too sweet, too washed out. She puts it back and stands upright again, the lanyard falling against her breasts. She tries again until she gets it right.

Walking to the front of the store, the path is still a lonely one. There are voices in other rows, but no faces. There's only one cashier, topped with harshly dyed hair, brassy in the store lighting. Her face was drawn on with a matching severity, but the aim was off, and the smudged makeup gives the effect that her face is slowly slipping off. 

She raises her penciled eyebrows at the girl's armful of colors, all perfectly selected. The yellow is now perfectly lemon. She scans the white over and over again, instead of each alone, which the girl is happy about, relieved she doesn't have to let go of the others. 

"It's two fifty," the cashier tells the girl, sounding bored and confused at the same time, as though if she had the effort to care, she might've wondered why. With one hand, the girl opens the pouch on the lanyard, and pulls out three crumpled bills. She hands them over the counter without making eye contact.

The two quarters clink in the pouch strapped onto the lanyard as she walks back outside, but now she grasps the bag instead. It's nice being able to hold onto something.

Poem: Marionette

each of his hands seems too big, 

but not for his arms, 

or for his chest,

or his legs or feet or head, all of which seem too big alone.

but not together.

the pieces never come together. 

they don't move together,

they move alone, like the cut limbs of a marionette

just pieces tied to someone else's hand.

his hands never connect to his arms, 

and no matter how big it all seems for each other,

he seems small, overall

and he seems alone.

and sad.

Poem: Birthday

a year passed. another orbit.
a circle around the sun.
hurtling through space and nothingness
exists my everything.

all it means is that i've returned
and for a day, i'm hurtling through the same space
i came into.

before that, i was still here
just split into halves
clinging to the fecund fragments of my parents
before that, in quarters of theirs,
cut smaller and smaller by the past.

if you trace back far enough,
i've always been here.
and when i fall apart into smaller pieces
the pieces will have always existed

we're older than the world itself.

Only Fingertips

Only my fingertips show.

It is spring today. I walk slowly up the hill, slow progress, following the leading shadow with my own footprints. The others lie spread on the young grass, sleeveless and shoeless, all still pale, like corn shucked prematurely.

The laces of my well-worn shoes reach to brush the fraying legs of my pants. Above, my legs are just suggested, just ideas that might have been, blurry shapes up to the hem of the sweatshirt, which replaces all shape with itself. The sleeves are too long, leaving only my fingertips. Only my fingertips show.

The breeze whistles softly through my fingers, as though my sleeves open to the mouths of empty glass bottles, held upside down, inviting resonance.

It looks funny. I know that. But being shucked invites all the wind at once. Being shucked allows too much. I prefer the wind in little pieces I can hold. Only on my fingertips.

Facebook

i figured out
why im avoiding it

by seeing
what i didnt want to see

and finding
what i didnt want to find

and now im sad
deflated almost

but i cant tell
if its jealousy
or disgust

Telling

I want to tell him, to show him what I have, what I mean, and what I'm made of. I pull his hand, pull him towards me and open my world to him. I throw open the doors and the shutters and the shades and it all falls out at once, having been stuffed too full for too long.

He laughs it off as the mess sinks to his feet. He kicks it around, like fallen confetti and streamers after a party, and my face sinks as it settles. With a hand on my shoulder, he tells me simply, "You're crazy."

And he means it well. He means it jokingly. He means it to collect the mess and put it away, hand it back to me. A dismissive, quick, analysis. Sometimes, he says it more to himself, though he doesn't know I think so. He notes it, tucks it away in his own mind's closet, which is probably neat and organized, with each bit sealed in boxes and taped shut. He might have a shoebox, reserved for me. About me. Maybe. Maybe it's filled with little notes. Crazy, they probably say, she's crazy. Buried at the bottom are the things he might not want to know. The lid is kept shut. But I wouldn't know. I've never seen it.

He doesn't understand. He sees a tangle of yarn without a beginning or an end to unravel. He sees letters that don't make words in languages that don't exist. He sees doorless rooms and staircases that don't go down. A past that won't be remembered and a future that doesn't have a chance.

Even now, I can't explain. I think in shades the rest of the world seems to be colorblind to.

Why I Haven't Blogged

The internet got too big for me. Walking outside, I looked up to find it towering above, having taken over the sky. I wasn't sure where it began, I just knew it overshadowed me, overshadowed everything, sat in every corner and crevice. So I left it. And I'm having a hard time finding my way back.