Once Upon A Time

I spent the last two hours writing to you. 

It's long and drawn out and I'm not going to post it here.  It was an attempt to make sense of the last year of my life.  But after I wrote it and tied it up all nice and pretty with a shiny red bow, I realized I wasn't really interested in making sense of the last year of my life.  

Why bother?   

Why do we feel the need to make sense of things?

Sometimes things just don't make sense. 

You can find an answer or a reason for anything but it's not always the right answer or the real reason.  It's just a thing we latch onto to make ourselves feel better.  

To ease our load just a little bit.  

The truth is, I'm not interested in easing this load yet.

When the load eases so do my memories and thoughts of you. 

 

Maybe none of it was real for you.

Maybe you made the whole thing up.

 

I didn't.

 

It was real to me.

I loved you.

And that's all that truly matters in the story of my life.

 

Stephanie loved Noah.

Once Upon A Time.

 

Love Letters to Stephanie

 Dear Stephanie,

It's me, Stephanie.

I've been reading your blog over the last year and.....Whoa, Sister.

You're a bit of a mess aren't you?  Maybe a little ship wrecked?  Train wrecked? I-don't-remember-how-I-got-here-wrecked?

How many more years in a row are you gonna welcome the new year with the 'ol achey breaky heart?  Hmmm?

Got anybody lined up to do the honors come December?

Listen, I need to let you know something that apparently everyone EXCEPT YOU already knows.  It's going to change your life, maybe even save it.  

It's what everyone your age is doing now so you need to do it too.

Okay, here goes.

 

Stephanie.

Don't put your eggs in one basket.

That way when someone is done with you, you will have scattered your eggs around to several different baskets and you can just chill in one of those for a while.  

This will prevent you from giving too many Fucks.  Giving too many Fucks causes you to feel things.  Feeling things causes you to give your Fucks to people who might actually deserve them.  

But listen, you don't have that kind of time.

You're old as shit now and your birthday is in 6 days and you better not even pretend to turn 29 again because, BIIITCH! ain't nobody falling for that now.  Just be honest  with yourself for once in your life and put 36 candles on the cake this year.  For fucks sake, Stephanie.  Everyone already knows you'll be turning 36 anyway.

AND FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY go put your eggs in as many baskets as possible!

Like RIGHT NOW!!!! YESTERDAY EVEN!!!

Look, I don't know who this mysterious person is that you're gonna eventually want to give all your Fucks to but you need to at least be operating at your Max Basket Capacity so you'll have a way better chance at recognizing him when he shows up.  Max Basket Capacity varies for everyone.  Some people are able to operate upwards of 10 or more baskets at one time.  Others can only handle 5 or less.  Since you're a rookie and don't know your MBC (that's Max Basket Capacity), I'm gonna suggest you start big.  You can always narrow it down later.  

NOOOOO, Stephanie.  This is purely math and science here.  Get outta English Lit and walk your ass back across the hall.  

Listen, it doesn't matter if they catch feelings for you, Stephanie.  You are not giving them any of your Fucks, remember?  Right.  So fuck 'em!  That's not your problem.  They'll have to figure out how to cope after you're done with them.  Because YOU WILL be done with them eventually.  They'll learn.  It's not your job to teach them. 

 Repeat after me:  Fuck 'em!  

They're just human beings with feelings and emotions, blah, blah, freaking blah they haven't learned to regulate yet because they haven't taken all the personality and love tests we've taken or gone to hardly any TED talks or webinars or zoom conferences where EXPERTS, Stephanie, EXPERTS tell us what to feel and then  how and when to feel it. 

STEPHANIE  

STEPHANIE 

STEPHANIE

They haven't even set up their Boundary Box!  They don't even have one!  They're just out there -  all willy-nilly and EXPOSED for everyone and anyone.  

THE AUDACITY!!!

Please tell me you have a Boundary Box, Stephanie.  It's the box we keep ourselves in until we get ready to give our Fucks to someone.  No one, and I do mean NO ONE, is allowed inside the Boundary Box.  In fact, if you're a pro like me, you will have a Boundary Box inside a Boundary Box inside another Boundary Box, kinda like those Chinese nesting dolls.  

Listen.  This is important:

The Basket Eggs are allowed to approach the Boundary Box but must never attempt to infiltrate it even a tiny bit.  If that is to happen, you must go NO CONTACT immediately.  Right away.  No questions or explanations are needed for the vile and filthy person who would even think about getting inside your Boundary Box.  

GHOST THEM, STEPHANIE!!!!  It's the only way.  They are EVIL.  They will try to make you feel things for them!  They will try to make you give them all your Fucks!!!!  

Do Not Fall For Their Manipulation Tactics!  

Walk Away Walk Away Walk Away 

Then RUN, bitch!

As fast as you can!

There IS a better egg in one of those baskets and you deserve that egg, Stephanie!

DO NOT settle for just any Basket Egg.  

But absolutely DO let them entertain you until you have found your GOLDEN basket egg.  It makes them feel important and when they feel good they're more fun to be around.  

Win/Win.

No, Stephanie.  They'll be fine!  They're just crying right now but they'll get over it.  Remember?  Fuck 'em!

Repeat after me:  Fuck 'em!  

STEPHANIE!  I'm telling you right now that giving them even half a Fuck will cause you to feel something and feeling something will cause an avalanche of all your Fucks and then you will love them unconditionally forever and ever amen until the end of time because that is what you do and I am tired of saying hello to all the January's of all the years with a broken goddamn heart because you can not stay inside your Boundary Box!

Stop flopping around in the mud puddle and come look at these potted plants from the Home Depot and then bake cookies and sip tea and talk about your crafts and your kids like the rest of the middle aged ladies do!  God!

LYLAS,

Stephanie

 

P.S.  BIIITCH!! We all know you're not turning 36 in 6 days either and if you don't lock yourself up in that boundary box, I'm going to expose you!

 

 

Dear Stephanie,

Hey, it's me, Stephanie!

What's up, ho?  

What the hell did I just read?  You sound a bit unhinged.

Look, I've got this ok?

I have it on good authority that I am a REAL BAD BITCH.  As such, I can handle our shit.  

I'm sorry but you're gonna have to sit this one out, sis. I appreciate your Fucks and MCBs and BBs and the really sage advice about treating people like shit so I can get what I want but that's not really how we operate, is it?  I mean, we didn't make it all the way to 37 (you got me) with our heart still tender and malleable by being a total douchebag, did we?

We didn't.  And I don't intend to make it another 37 years by being one either.

So calm the fuck down already.

We're going to keep right on loving people who may or may not also love us back and then we're going to write about it here on this blog after we have fallen all the way off the cliff, just like the 16 year olds we never grew out of would do.  After a few months of total despair and heartache, we'll find love again.  Or we won't.  In which case this blog will sit dormant for another 10 years.  Maybe forever. 

Or. 

Or, Stephanie.  There's always an 'or.'  Maybe, just maybe, someone will eventually love us back the way we love them and then we can rename our blog "UntangledOrder."

You just never know.  The future is alive with possibilities.

But, in the meantime, you and I will work on neglecting and killing potted plants from the Home Depot, burning the baked cookies, staring at the crafts that we bought but don't give two shits to actually try and, most importantly, avoiding the other old ladies that don't look like us because NO WAY WE LOOK THAT OLD, sister.

Now, let's go listen to Em's new album and try to say the words along with him. That fool is never gonna stop rapping. And we'll never stop listening.

Stephanie, we are beautiful and transparent.

Probably from all that time we spent splashing around in the mud puddles when we were 36, almost 37.

We've got this.

LYLAS,

Stephanie

P.S.  HO, if you tell anyone how old I actually am, I am going to stuff you inside your boundary box inside the other boundary box inside the other boundary box so you can't ever get out and then I can really spread all my Fucks around!  

You can't even imagine how many Fucks I have!  

So very many Fucks.

Fucks for Everyone

Fucks for Days

Fucks Forever

Fucks Unlimited

.................

A Dignified Queen, I Am Not

Every single day I think of you and every single day I think of some different thing I did or didn't do while we were together that made you think "hmmm, you know what?  FUCK THIS."

Because obviously it was a big Fuck This from you.

Right?

What's that stupid shit they love to throw around all over Reddit?

If it's not a HELL YES it's a HELL NO.

I guess it wasn't a HELL YES for you then.

I go back and forth between being sad and heartbroken to angry and confused.  I don't know which place I'm supposed to dwell in until I don't think about you anymore because I've stopped caring one way or the other if I was a HELL YES or a FUCK THIS.

I want to ask you how come you couldn't love me but I don't dare because that is considered weak and pathetic and I'm supposed to know that I'm a QUEEN who doesn't need answers because obviously it's your loss only and 

this one is my absolute favorite:  IT'S NOT ME, IT'S YOU.  

But also, there's this thing called DIGNITY and apparently I'm supposed to want to possess it and therefore can not go flailing about all out of control (who makes these fucking rules!) because that will look bad to the person who broke my heart (you) and I am supposed to want them to RESPECT me later on down the road when they're with someone who is NOT ME!

DIGNITY!

Have some motherfucking dignity, Stephanie.  Make her your bitch  and walk around town with her tattooed across your forehead so everyone will know that when your heart breaks in half you do not fall down or even stumble.  

Why?  

BECAUSE YOU ARE DIGNIFIED! 
AND A QUEEN!  

And when that man asked you to take your final bow for him, you curtsied all the way across the stage like the good little girl you've always been and let him go gently into that good night, back from whence he came.  

Good Day, SIR.

That's how someone with DIGNITY behaves when her heart shatters. 

 

What a load of absolute molasses!!!

 

But, Stephanie! TWENTY SEVEN people on this one post on the internet said it's true and there was also an article on Medium written by an accountant who almost majored in psychology but didn't and she said it was true too.  Plus, there's this sad old woman who writes this pathetic blog about how much she loves all the men who don't love her and she said it's true too....

Wait....

No, she didn't.  

She definitely didn't say it was true.

She says all the things that no one really wants to hear because we've all convinced ourselves that we are gods and goddesses and anyone who thinks otherwise was simply just too dull to bathe in the beauty of our light so they need to GET GONE.  We have bigger fish to fry than to worry about a thing like self-reflection.  FUCK THAT.  The only person who needs to do any kind of self-reflecting is the absolute moron who could have possibly taken a pass on you, Queen.  There is obviously something wrong with him.

It's not you, Stephanie.  Of course it isn't you.  

He only thought you were amazing for a whole year before he met you in person.

Do you think it was your chin?  Or  that you wore too many clothes?  Maybe you should have let your titties hang out more?

But seriously.

What the fuck did I really think was going to go down when you met me?  I mean, the week before you said "This feels more like a dead end than a new beginning because it would be an insurmountable challenge for you to move to Corn City and I don't want to move to Loserville so....."

I will tell you what I thought.  Honestly and Sincerely.  From the bottom of my overflowing heart.

I really and truly thought we'd fall madly in love.

Or, at the very least, we'd like each other so much that we'd want to see each other again.

That's what I thought.

FUCK ME SIXTEEN WAYS TO FOREVER, I never imagined it would be a one and done.  Totally did not see that freight train barreling right on through the station.  I guess I was too busy looking at you and laughing when we stared at that map of Mobile on the wall of that little house we stayed in.

 

I was really hoping I'd see you again sometime....

 

I'd give you back my whole heart if I could rewind time to that day in October when you left your apartment up there to drive down here.  I wish when you locked your door behind you, you were just on your way to the market and not on your way to me.  Then your name would still light up my phone and your voice would still be in my head.

 

I miss you.

 

I hope 2021 is everything you need it to be.

 

 

Unraveling

JANUARY 1

2021

I don't peddle sunshine.
That's the first thing you need to know about me.
If you're here looking for a dose of dopamine,

please exit stage left.

Or
take a seat.

Maybe a dopamine rush is not really what you're looking for anyway.

Maybe you want to be entertained in some other way. 

Some dark horse,
some black night,
some stale bread,
some congealed soup left on the kitchen table for one too many days in a row now.

Maybe that's the kind of rush you're after

Maybe that's the thrill you're seeking.

Check underneath that coffee pot over on the counter. 
I bet you'll find last weeks coffee grounds still under there. 
Don't open the pantry door unless you want to see yesterdays trash still on the floor. 
It fell out when the trash can overflowed and we didn't bother picking it up. 
That makes too much sense, you see. 
And we don't make sense around here. 

We're feral.

We're all the way up in the mess and we don't bother dusting that dirt of our shoulders like Jay-Z told us to do.

Nah.

We wear that shit like a mother fucking badge.

We take it with us out into the world when we open the front door and let the sunshine all the way in to every corner of our unmade house.

Our unmade house.
Our unmade beds.
Our unmade lives.

The First Taste

How do I tell you I love you?  What language do you understand?

I'd speak it to you if only I knew.

I know it's absurd,

unheard of.

I know it's pathetic,

this silly rhetoric

 

How do I tell you I love you when you're so far away from me now?

You're gone, baby.  

I don't know if you'll ever be back.  

And these declarations of love I want to give to you seem like pathetic attempts at holding you.

I don't want to hold you.

 

I can't hold you.

You wouldn't let me if I tried.

I wouldn't want you if I did.

 

Love is never holding. 

Love is a release.

It's a letting go, 

a protrusion,

never an intrusion

but often a recess.

 

I'd be your recess.  

I'd be your place to lay down when the road got too weary.  

I'd be your pot of soup on a cold, dark winters night.  

 

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

 

I did not struggle in your web.

It was always my aim to get caught. 

 

The Last Chapter

 It's 7:19 a.m.

Saturday.

I've been awake since 2:22 a.m.  

I've read and re-read the messages we sent yesterday seventy two million times already and will likely read them seventy two million more before I can accept this dark, new reality I have to prepare myself to live in after an entire year of living in your light.  

That's the pits.  

And it will be the pits for an unknown amount of time until my heart and my brain align and resurrect themselves into an even more beautiful version of me.

That's what will happen.

And I will shine just a little bit brighter and my glow will radiate just a little more warmth. 

I will love harder and faster and truer.

Love makes us better.  Never worse.

You made me better.

I didn't want to tell you goodbye.  I tried very hard not to have to.  I wanted to keep you around, floating in my atmosphere forever.  I could have done that.  I wanted to do that.  

But it was so hard.  

It hurt so much.  

The non existent conversations with you, that before had been so filled with life and humor and love, became unbearable.  I knew you were over it before the week even began but I tried to hold on for dear life. I clung to every sign of hope I thought I saw in your words until I realized those weren't signs of hope at all.  They were just the dying embers of our burning ship, the one we accidentally set fire to the week we met.

You on a life boat over there and me on a life boat over here, each of us drifting to a separate island, our eyes strained against the dying of the light and the distance between us until we each disappeared from view.

 An image of you just now:

There's a room covered in white canvas drop cloths.  There are several buckets of paint lined up in the middle of the floor.  I'm standing just out of frame.  You walk in, kneel down in front of one of the cans of paint and before you open it, you look up at me with a grin and a slight nod of your head and say "You ready?"  You open all the cans and stand up.  "We don't need a paint brush." We each grab a can of paint and splash all the colors all over those white canvas drop cloths until they are radiant and beautiful.  And we laugh.  And we are covered in paint.  And you look over at me and raise your eyebrows and say the only word there is to say.  

"Yeah?"

Yeah, Noah. 

Those white canvas drop cloths are me.  

I was tired and empty.

Stripped bare.

You knew what to do.

Noah,

You said it wasn't a conscious decision to drift away from me.

I believe you.

Love leads and you follow.  You held on to me as long as you could and gave me a safe space to explore a side of myself that I never knew existed. 

"I wish every woman could be lucky enough to experience you."  I remember telling you that on more than one occasion.

I hope she treasures you for the gift you are. 

Thank you, Noah.

From the bottom of my aching but grateful heart.

I will always love you.

I miss you.

I sat down to write something to you but something else came out instead.  So, this is my second attempt at getting all this stuff out of me that I can't keep inside.  It takes up all the spaces that are vacant inside me, like hot lava flowing from a volcano and pooling in all the cracks on the ground.  That's what the stuff inside me feels like and then I have to get it out.  Sometimes I cry to release it.  Sometimes I'm angry and I yell.  Sometimes I write to you here.  I have pages and pages of unpublished words that I just float out into the nether.  They hang around out there or around here but at least they're not in here any longer.  I never know how much time I'll have before the hot lava stuff starts pooling up again.

It always starts pooling up again.

 

It's the bad-gunky.  And this is my blood-bool.

 

Maybe I should rename my blog "STEPHANIE'S BLOOD-BOOL."  

It has a nice ring to it. 

 

 

CLEAN SLATES

I really can't believe I spent several months writing things to you here in the hopes you would read them and come back.  

Wait.

That's not true.  

I really CAN believe I spent several months writing things to you here in the hopes you would read them and come back.

That's who I am.

Did you ever read any of it?

Are you dead?

Do you know I still check my email every single day, multiple times a day, to see if your name will appear in my inbox?

Gerard.

And the fake last name you gave me because the president of France died on that same day you sent me the first email so you took his last name as your own.

I didn't know that then.

It was only after you left that I figured it out.

Remember that one time you were sick with the flu (I wonder if it was actually Covid) and in the hospital and I didn't hear from you for several days?

Yeah.  I thought you were dead.

I called every hospital google told me was around you and gave them your name and your fake last name.  Only I didn't know at the time that your last name was fake so every time the person on the other end of the line said "No, we do not have a patient here by that name" I breathed a huge sigh of relief. 

And here is where the old me would say something like "God, I was such a dumbass."

But I'm not going to say that this time because I'm not such a dumbass.

Listen.

I don't hate you or anything and I'd forgive you in a millisecond if you came back around.  Actually, I don't have to forgive you because I already have.  I don't not forgive people for anything ever.  Unless you hurt Max, then I might have to kill you.  But you never hurt Max so your slate is clean with me.

A clean slate.

That's what I would give you because that's what I would give anyone.

Well, not Max's dad.  I ran out of clean slates to give him.  I was giving him one about every other day towards the end and probably from the beginning too.  He'd scribble all over it immediately and hand it back to me like some 6 year olds artwork hanging in the hallway of the school.  Except the hallway was in my heart and I hung all his slates there for far too long.

But you?  You deserve another one.  

Most people do.

So here.  Take it, ok?

And then you can get back to telling me about Una and Robinson Jeffers and if you ever finished that book about the silent film actresses you were writing.  I'd really like to know. 

 

But...

Maybe you’re dead? 

Well.

If you're not dead, you should come back around so I can make you a hot plate of fries and feed them to you while I straddle your lap in the kitchen.

And.

If you are dead, I hope there's some sort of afterlife and you're drinking Jameson while listening to punk music and reading poetry in bed with a sexy ghost.  Maybe you'll think of me from time to time.

 

Either way, I mostly just came here to say

You're rad.

Like super rad.

And I'm still out here.  

I really hope you're still out there too.

DEAR DIARY

DEAR DIARY,

Remember that one time I stumbled across that boy on Reddit and I sent him a message about filling up pages of notebooks with all the things that stir in my soul and then burning those pages in barrels on the beach because I was obsessed with that song 'smoke signals' by Phoebe Bridgers?  

And I thought there was no way he'd write back.

But he did.

He wrote back.

And then we wrote to each other again and again until he called me one Wednesday night at 8:30 and I stood in my kitchen, my heart thumping in my chest, his voice in my ear, thick - like the molasses in that jar on the shelf of my pantry.

And he kept calling.  

For some reason, he kept calling.

And then I got to meet him!

And I was so scared!  

My heart was thumping in my chest, his voice was in my ear - thick like the molasses in that jar - only this time not on the phone but in a bed 

in some remodeled fire station 

on a street named Mobile.

.....

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

I read one time on Reddit that when you make a dating profile it is sometimes helpful, and also a little fun, to list three things about yourself; two that are true and one that is not.  The idea is that your potential suitor will have a blast guessing which thing about you is not true. 

And that is one reason out of 964 that I don't have a dating profile.

I'm not doing that.

I'm never going to do that.

But if I were going to do that, here are the three things I'd list:

• I enjoy human liver smothered in gravy over the regular beef liver smothered in gravy.

• I asked the insanely ripped uncle of a friend to help me get in shape over the course of a summer before I went on a date with this man from the internet.  He  promised me he could get me ripped too.  And he didn't lie.  I was super fly be the time the date happened.

• While on that date, I reverted to a 16 year old girl and ugly cried during a game of disc golf so JuJu's hard work of running football fields and turning over giant tires was a complete waste. I feel bad for him but he doesn't know yet so I need you to keep that on the down low.
  

Can you guess which one is not true?  

If so, hit me up.  

We might be forever.  

I promise not to eat your liver until after you've fallen in love with me.

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

The Summer of You

I lost myself for you this summer.    

"Stephanie, I want to rip your clothes off.  I want to fuck you hard and make you cum on my cock over and over again. But the only reason I want to do that is because of you.  When I rip your clothes off, I'm not just exposing your breasts and thighs.  No, it's everything.  The way you lay in bed with Max when he doesn't feel good.  And the way you talk to him.  The way you show him how to love and be kind.  The way you admit when you're wrong.  I'm ripping off your clothes to take everything you are in."

 

I wanted your hands on my body.  

I wanted your hands on every part of my body.

I wanted your hands inside my body. 

I wanted your hands all over me. 

And when you put those hands on my body, I wanted to feel them. I did not want to  think about them.  I did not want to think about the way my flesh underneath them might feel just a little too soft.

I only wanted to feel everything you'd promised me I'd feel.

 

So yeah.

I got a little lost for you this summer.

 

But I don't think anyone could blame me, really. 

Goddammit Diane. Signed, The Internet.

There are 36 trillion self help books and everyone on the internet has read them all.

BUT WAIT 

THERE'S MORE!

Not only have they read them,

they have applied them and adopted them and molded them 

into the very fiber of their being 

so that when they go out into the wild and interact with other humans who have also read the 36 trillion self help books, they will know how to behave precisely so as not to show any, or maybe just not too much, emotion because

That 

Is 

A

Giant 

Red 

Flag or a GRF

and we don't wave those fuckers around here, you guuuys.  

We bury them six feet underground 

and plant rows of daisies and begonias and tulips on top of the fresh dirt so that when a motherfucker comes along and stumbles upon us, they will only smell the roses, as it were, 

and not the dank shit that is the very reason

for the vibrancy of their leaves.

 

Everyone is doing this now 

so you need to do it too 

because it's just unheard of to be 41 years old 

and still have unresolved issues from your past because 

THERAPY, Diane! 

GET THERAPY 

and work all those kinks right the fuck out because after talking to our therapist for 26 years, we are finally ready to give ourselves to someone but we can't give ourselves to you until you go to THERAPY because you are just a little too emotional and we are 41 years old for gods sake!  

God, Diane.  You're so fucking yesterday.

 

But 

 

you're also super hot

and hilarious 

and you give the best head 

and you're fun in the bedroom 

and we laugh constantly 

and something about you just feels so goddamn familiar. 

And your tits!  They're just the right amount of perky and sag for a 41 year old mom.  They're kinda perfect, Diane.  

In fact, you're kinda perfect,Diane.

 

But only just kinda.

 

That shit you pulled at that park in Mobile CANCELS OUT your generosity and kindness and overall hotness. 

Get yourself together now Diane and DO NOT UGLY CRY AT PICNIC TABLES IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GODDAMNED PARK!

You are embarrassing yourself

And everyone else on the internet who does yoga at 6 a.m. and drinks hot lemon water for breakfast and laughs at appropriate jokes only and has a rich and full life and who does not actually need us at all (being needed is so 1950 now, Diane) because their life is so full of wonder and joy and enriching things like museums and enlightenment. 

 

What   do   you   even   mean   that

the light shining off this crevice in his forehead 

reminds you of that canyon 

you went down in 

when you were 14 

and  it was so dark, so dark, so dark

except for that tiny shaft of light 

peeking through at the top.  

 

FUCK, DIANE!

That's so fucking weird! 

 

Now

PLEASE CONSULT THIS SELF HELP APP  WE, THE INTERNET, HAVE DOWNLOADED AND PUT ON THE HOME SCREEN OF YOUR PHONE WHILE YOU WERE CRYING IN THE SHOWER.

You're kind of a psycho, Diane.

Kind of like for real, Diane.

 

But god you're so pretty! 

And you're so funny.  

And you're so sweet.  

And you liked that Indian food you had never tried 

and you climb fire towers in the middle of the forest when it's raining

and you rub our arms when we're not expecting you to 

and you play with our beard 

and scratch our head 

and you put your arms around us just because 

and we've never had a woman feel so soft and so warm.

 

 

Fuck, Diane.

Can't you just get it together for now?  

He came all the way down here 

from all the way up there.

Diane?

Why'd you have to go and drive across four states for him?

Didn't your brothers ever tell you not to do a thing like that?

Didn't your daddy ever tell you a man who wants you will come and get you?

Didn't your mama ever tell you to hide your crazy?

Diane?

He almost 

Sort of

Could have

Wanted to

Love you.

Diane.  

He maybe

Sort of

Can

But won't

Ever

Love you again.

 

Because 

Everyone on the internet has read all 36 trillion self help books and have applied them and adopted them and molded them into the very fiber of their being.

And we don't live here in this space where lines get blurred

and greens give way to browns in the same square of grass 

and ketchup clumps at the top of the bottle and we  don't wipe it off 

and t-shirts get torn from that splinter of wood on the picnic table 

and everyone is a walking disaster all done up in their Sunday best and when they take those dresses off there are tears in the stockings underneath and sweat stains on the armpits of their slips.  

 

No, Diane.

 

We live on the internet where we behave precisely 

and choose our words carefully 

and time our responses perfectly.  

We live on the internet where we've all been in therapy for the past 26 years and are finally ready to give ourselves to someone who has also tied up all their loose ends and cut off all the frayed edges.  

We are just sitting here waiting for our perfect match.

 

We thought it was going to be you, Diane.

 

But that shit you pulled at that park in Mobile.......

GODDAMMIT DIANE

 

One Hundred Forty Hours

We were two for one hundred forty hours

give or take

subtract the hours you slept

you're down to one hundred four hours now

give or take 

subtract the hours i slept

i'm somewhere around one hundred twenty

give or take

you picked my towel up from off the floor

not once 

but twice

the slight nod of your head

when you told that man 'thank you'

i wanted to take my towel off for you then

let it fall back to the floor

of course, i wasn't in a towel 

we were in my car

and you didn't notice

the desire that dripped 

like the ice cream down the sides of those cones

we licked and licked

on that red bench 

the same color as my nose

from crying all that morning

and most of that day

"well where can this go"

and

"someone will get hurt"

this street we took from 'hello' to 'goodbye' 

long and winding

partly uphill

the road signs all overgrown

and

you the navigator

and

i the helmsman

going up and up

to that fire tower we weren't supposed to climb

but did 

and that other one back there in the forest somewhere

a notebook with our names written together

blue ink

the only evidence

that we ever existed anywhere

together

for one hundred forty hours

give or take