Dissatisfied

You only smile when you sleep
but somehow you think
you are happy.

Moving On

I carry my past
with me in scars
and thought patterns
but when the phantasma
has nothing to hold onto,
does it really matter?

Untitled

At least I have my words.

Your Fool

I am a fool for you,

let you lead me
to the brink
when I know
where the edge is,
let you speak to me
of our past
and possible futures
knowing you will
disappear
when the future comes.

I am a fool for you,
but this fool laughs
at your lack of clothes

Hotel Kisses

I think you are my addiction,
a craving in my stomach,
and a veneer of wanting.
But when we kiss,
the wanting
is enveloped by the shroud
of your warmth

Tongue Piercing

The scared-brave face
of the girl who walked in,
contrasted
with the frantic boredom
of the woman
asking for her money.

Cody

You liked the thought
of me
thinking of you.

I liked the thought
of you
being who I'd hoped for.

Untitled

Yes, I did love you once.

Driving Rain

The heat storm
that drove the leaves
from the branches
and my car
from whence it came,

smelled of impetuous youth
and excitement.

As I beat the rain home,
I knew the water
had followed me
to restore my calm
before my exuberance
could overtake me.

Father

I will admit
to having exacerbated
my abuse:

that does not make you
any less my abuser.


And though
I have trusted you
with my secrets,

is it not the person
who knows you best
hurts you worst?

Gesher

Where the power lines
ended
and the road
swerved
to the left
there was a clearing
so verdant
and lively
as to invoke
Narnia

Jewish Center

There are three doors out
and one door in,
watch the bottleneck
As the people
realize
that the exit
won't let them in

Second

I heard the dissonance
of my words
when I told you
I didn't want you to be her second choice,
that you deserved better.

Luckily,
you don't know what irony means.

Sper

The way her minivan
drove on the wrong
side of the road
so she could get
into the turn lane
at the red light,
made me realize
why her children
were so terrible.

Botany

Do not call me a rose.
I am not
to be shorn
of my thorns
and admired for my beauty.

Instead

call me a cactus
self-reliant
and needing little
of your care.

Drink from me
the cool water
which quenches your thirst.

Dashed

Part of me was hopeful

that you wanted
to call me after work
to say you had made a decision

but the other part,

the part that had
fucked her best guyfriend
in the front seat of a car
this weekend

realized that was highly unlikely.

Hoarding

My truck
is a depository
for discarded garments.

The shirts and shorts
that kept me company,
now returned,

were first replaced
by the sweater of your housemate,
her ex,

and now the shorts
of your ex
and former roommate.

Have my discarded clothes
ever been testament
to a failure?

Unpacking

Inside the black trash bags
were rumpled clothes
and overturned toiletries,
half-filled sketchpads
and a bottle of cuervo gold.

You shucked those of his clothes
which had crawled into your wardrobe
onto a pile on the floor
and spoke of Albany
and the Marines.

Later,
when we threw
the newspaper bags filled
with his trespassing things
at his doorstep,

we watched him walk
into the house and
out of our lives for the night.

Packing

As we piled
the black bags of your life together
in the bed of my truck,
I made sure
not to crush the remnants
of your folded hopes.

As you spoke on the phone
to the man who abused you
in preference to the man
whom you loved,
I wrote this
and hoped it would
all work out.

ODU

I got into my Masters Program!

Now I'm just waiting for a final verdict from DCPS so I know if I'm going to work for them or if I'm going to ODU in the fall

Wreckages

The limbs of the trees
that fell from the wind
were my wreckages

lying on the road
waiting for you
to run them over.

Recap

Over the past couple of weeks I've been pretty out of it. Most likely because, as usual, I have over scheduled myself. I am working two jobs which equal a little over full time (45 hours/ week plus some weekends), am taking 15 law credits, go to the gym six times a week for an hour, try to see my friends at least once a week, try to get to see my boy outside of work at least once a week, am Minister of Minors for my barony, and am in the middle of interviewing to become a DC Teaching Fellow. I also want to eat and sleep somewhere in there.
I need to cut down, but what's going to go? All non-essentials. So, first thing to be cut is gym workouts until my schedule opens up a bit more. Next, all SCA events where I am not in charge of something. After that? One of my classes is done next week so I can get some extra time there, but I can't cut anything else. If I get rid of my friends, I go crazy, already am only seeing them once a week. If I don't see the boy, I'm distinctly unhappy.

More about the boy.
He's wonderful, charming, witty, sarcastic, smart, funny, sensitive, very moral, and cute to boot. He's also shy, physically reserved and just as busy as I am. He and I have an emotionally entangled, non-sexual relationship. How non-sexual, you ask. He hasn't kissed me yet. I know, shock and awe. I've been on 6 dates in a month with a guy who hasn't kissed me yet. This is, strange. More than strange, it is unprecedented. I haven't had a non sexual relationship with someone since junior year of high school. And that worked out well, right?

I am a physical touch kind of girl. It's my dominant language according to that 5 love languages test thingy, with as many points in the category as possible (12). Please believe that I like quality time and acts of service (which he's really good at) but I feel insecure in a relationship if there's little or no physical touch. I just got him comfortable with hugging, so kissing is going to be a challenge, which is a bit of a trouble. My friendships are highly based on touch. I hug everyone and kiss my closest friends.

Because we're so non-sexual, this could very easily be seen as a friendship, in a certain light. I'm more sexual with my closest friends than with him. Tigger and I flirt constantly and we're friends, only because distance poses more of a problem than either of us can fix, but he and I talk about sex, and sexually, much more than M and I. I want M and I to work out. I want to be with him, and I'm half in love with him. Only half because the other half is convinced that he's just not that into me. To resolve this he has until the 1st to kiss me or I ask if I can kiss him. That's one full month of dating, seven dates, hours of phone calls and texts (of which I apparently take more of his phone time than his family and best friend combined) for him to figure out if he wants to kiss me. After that, I'm asking him. If he says no, that at the very least I know where I stand with him and know to move on. If he says yes, then that's something and he has until the 15th to figure out what we're doing.

I just want to know where we stand. If you give me rules, I can follow them, but when I'm unsure of where we stand, I go a little crazy trying to figure it out. And while I've been the agressor in most of this not-relationship thing (asked him out, first make sure we see each other at least once a week outside of work, text him every once in a while to see how his day is going) I'm not forcing him into this. He gets to make up his own mind, I'm just not going to wait forever for him to figure it out.

But I really hope he figures it out.

For Mireille, on her birthday

Between the glasses of Merlot

      and Bodington's
we knew the words we spoke
     should be written
between caesura
     and enjambment

But we lost our thoughts
    between smiles and laughter
All we remembered was
mango sticky rice
               and poetry

Untitled

You, dear sir, give me palpitations,

anxiety-ridden spasms,
gut-wrenching tremblings
of your love.
And these sudden bursts
of belonging
have saved me for you.
For my hesitant invasion
has been only further enticed
by your convulsions.

Untitled

While my friends

may laugh at
my affection for you
before even our
lips have met,
it is because
they do not know
the delicious
provocation when
our hands brush.

Prayer

I have prayed

every night
since we met
that things
would work out
well and while
you are not so
religious as I,
I know that
you are glad of it.

The Collected Tough Love Rules

Ok, bitches. Some of us watch this fantastic show called Tough Love with the super sexy Steve Ward. Here are his rules, collected for your convenience.

Collected Tough Love Rules:

1: Don’t be weird.
2: Communication is tough.

4: Remember you date's name.

8: Never let a pretty face fool you.

12: Don’t go fishing for compliments

14a: Ladies, if you want to kiss a guy, get a little closer. Send the guy some signals.
14b: If you want a guy to kiss you; kiss him. Remember it takes two to tango.

19: No room for hypocrisy in dating. If you don’t date down, don’t expect dudes to.

20: If you never keep your ear to the ground, you'll never hear the buffalo coming.
21: Only text on a need to know basis

26: Approach everything with an open mind.

31: When revealing a secret, turn a negative into a positive.

33: When asking out a guy, try not to be nervous.

36: A partial truth is still a lie.

40: When a guy says something nice to you, it's a good thing. Don't argue with him, just say thank you.

44: Keep the past in the past.

48: Put a cork in it. Telling a guy how much you like to drink makes you sound like a loser.

55: Stop staring please.

58: Don’t bring up your wedding plans

59: Under any circumstances, do not fist-bump anyone you might wanna have sex with; it’s like having a tattoo on your knuckles that says “Just Friends”.

70: Less is more, especially when it comes to sexual partners.
71: Most guys love a good catfight. But none of them want to date the “cat”.

73: Don’t try to out think love. Love is emotional, not cerebral.

75: Shut your yap. Don’t give too much information
76: First date is never the time to air your dirty laundry
77: Don't try to hard. Faking sexy is like bad plastic surgery. It only takes a glance to know it ain't real.

84: Don’t assume that the guy you’re dating looks at a dollar bill the same way you do.

87: If you want to get to know a guy, don't speak with your mouth full.

91: Don’t use a secret as a weapon.

100: Everyone gets rejected.

12:37am

It is 12:37 on Monday morning

and I don't want to sleep
because I am excited
that I get to see you today.

Untitled

Clenched behind teeth

talking of thai
and tetris were the
words I wanted to ask:
Would you like to
go out sometime?

Colorblind

Tasting the sweet bite

on your tongue from
the Mexican Coke I
introduced you to is
somewhere between
green and red in
your world of
black, white and blue,
subtle and flavorful
simplistic and colorful
on lips still humming
from my kiss