Music For Dancing Slow

Oh bunny.

All the feels.

I have been thinking about you a lot recently.

You’re just in the air.

In my dreams too.

My God. I really have had a lot of dreams about you recently.

I used to not dream so much about you.

I don’t know why now.

But there it is.

Maybe it’s because I was in Hawaii recently.

I wore the necklace that you gave to me, the little glass heart, the one that you handed to me that day we drove to Sonoma to have a picnic.

The day I gave you cuff links, out in the high grass while we picnicked and made out and I was shy about showing you the tattoo I had gotten for you.

You told me a story about having bought the glass heart with a little fold of yellow ribbon in the glass, from a jewelry vendor somewhere in Maui and how it pulled you to buy it and you didn’t know why you were buying it.

For someone you had not met yet.

I wear that heart a lot.

I wear the bracelet with the infinity sign on it, every day.

Every day.

I’m still in love with you, likely always will be, and that’s ok.

You in the ether, ephemeral and close and then far away.

In my dreams, in my thoughts.

I sometimes still think that I will end up back in your arms, years later, run into you and be once more with you.

Hopeless, die hard, romantic here.

I don’t cry as much over you as I used to and I try to date and I’m not always so upturned over you, I can say I’ve moved on, a little, but I “pray, every day, that you’ll be back in my arms once again.“

That just spun out into the air from my speaker.

It’s from one of the songs on one of your playlists that you made for me.

I haven’t listened to it in a very long time.

But.

I have been thinking about it.

Because.

Analytics.

What does that mean exactly, you ask?

Well.

Lover.

I could be wrong, maybe I am, but I also wonder, could he, is he, “it was not so long ago that you broke my heart, tears on my pillow, pain in my heart, caused by you, if we could start anew, I would take you back and tempt the hand of fate” is he out there reading my blogs?

Also.

Side bar.

Wow.

This playlist seems a little too prescient.

You made this for me for our six month anniversary, I asked you to make me a playlist for slow dancing with you.

I wanted love songs to dance to and these are love songs, but they’re also predicting heart break.

Did you know, even back then, that we would cause each other so much heartbreak?

So, so, so much.

Someday, someway, you’ll realize that you’ve been blind, yes darling, you’re going to need me again, it’s just a matter of time.

Fuck.

You knew this was going to happen, didn’t you, we would bash our hearts out on each other and hurt each other and try again and again, so many times.

GAH.

Maybe I should stop playing this.

That was like a side bar to the side bar.

Back to the analytics.

So, my blog lets me know a few things on the back end of the platform that no one except me can see.

I can’t see who reads my blogs.

But I can see where in the world my readers are coming in from.

I can see how many reads a day I get.

I can see if someone is in the archives.

And.

I can see what particular blogs are being read.

And.

Well.

I’ve been seeing something recently that makes me think a lot about you darling.

And maybe it’s not you.

But someone, once a week, on Thursdays, which are actually Fridays for me I think (WordPress is on a different time zone so I don’t know if it’s actually Thursdays when the blogs are read), reads a bunch of my blogs.

And two of them constantly pop up.

“Love Songs and Nail Salons.”

And.

“Hello, Stranger.”

It feels like you’re out there, quietly waving to me.

You haven’t called me or texted me or emailed me.

You did connect with me briefly, oh so damn briefly back in October, just days before my dissertation defense, and we could have talked, you called after receiving a card from me, but when I had to go into a client session you left a voice mail and that was it, not another call or text.

Despite telling you I could talk, I sent you a text later after my session ended, but you said you were on “East Coast time” and going to bed and you never reached out again.

I got damn angry.

That riled me up for a while.

Then I had my surgery and had to finish my dissertation and then it’s the holidays and my birthday and that’s when I wrote Love Songs and Nail Salons.

You are intertwined with my birthday and you might always be.

I’m not sure how long this person, you or someone else, I like to pretend it’s you, I like to pretend you’re reading this now.

Fantasy.

Hope.

Idiocy.

You pick.

I don’t care if you don’t want me, I’m here right now, I put a spell on you, because you’re mine.

Boy howdy, you put together one hell of playlist darling.

Shoo bop, shoo bop,

Hello stranger, it seems so good to see you back again, how long has it been?

Seems like a mighty long time.

Oh fuck.

Wow.

That pulled some tears up.

Hmmm.

Yeah.

I still have all the feels.

I am grateful to be writing this though.

You’re not going to read it.

Someone will though.

And maybe that’s ok.

When the love is this strong it doesn’t go away, the grief, the pain, the sorrow, time doesn’t heal all the wounds, the arrows of love from Cupid’s bow, my container to hold it all just got bigger.

You know.

What I used to tell you to make the hurt less, um, hurt”y”.

Sometimes God breaks your heart to break it open and make it bigger, all the better to hold more love.

Can what you’re thinking bring happiness, or will it bring misery?

Honey bunny.

You knew.

You knew we were doomed.

You don’t have to tell me pretty baby, you want me to try and forget you, I’ll do the best I can.

I should have listened to this closer.

I think I was just so damn enamored with you at the time. So fucking in love with you.

I remember when I was told, people will tell you all the time who they are and what they can offer, believe them.

Yeah.

“I want to fuck you,” someone told me recently. He’s not available for anything else, and I heard it loud and clear and expect nothing else from him.

Should that come to pass.

Repeat to self.

When someone tells you who they are, believe them.

I wanted so bad to believe that you would get out of your situation.

But you told me all along, you couldn’t, that you wouldn’t.

And here I am, still, wondering, but maybe….

Ah.

Big, deep breath.

I had a revery once, last March, and I can’t even believe I am going to write this, but I am, because that’s what I do.

(“I could never write a blog,” an ex-lover once told me, “you wear your heart on your sleeve, you tell things about your life I never could.”)

While I was in Joshua Tree being all woo woo with a bunch of girls in the desert doing a guided mediation and a sound bath, how much more woo can you get?

But once I stopped having contempt prior to investigation.

Something happened.

I had a vision of the two of us.

I‘m a fool to want you, I’m a fool to want you, to want a love that can’t be true, a love that’s there, for others too. I’m a fool to hold you, such a fool to hold you, to seek a kiss that’s mine a lone, to share a kiss the devil has known. Time and time again, I said I’d leave you. Time and time again. I went away.

I had a vision of us in Hawaii, living together at the end of our lives, on a lanai, or a porch, you had me in your arms, I had long, long, long hair, threaded with gray and I was so frail, and I died in your arms while the moon set over the ocean.

I can’t get along without you.

Oh love.

Maybe that’s all there is to this love, this exquisite pain that lets me know I have loved and lived and still have so much life yet to go.

I don’t know who’s reading those blogs of mine so assiduously for the last stretch of time, but it’s put you in my mind.

If you ever go, darling, I’ll be oh so lonely, I’ll be sad and blue, crying over you, dear only.

By the way.

I had that vision far before I was even thinking about Hawaii or going to Hawaii, and now having been and knowing how much I resonated with the islands and how much you do too, oh Maui baby, I do wonder.

Maybe one day, some day, far away in the future, in another life, in some other dream, I will see you on a beach somewhere and be once more in your arms.

Unforgettable, that is what is what you are…like a song of love that clings to me, ooh, how the thought of you does things to me. Never before has someone been more unforgettable.

Until then, sweet heart.

Be kind to you.

Love yourself.

Take care of yourself.

And I will do the same.

Are you lonesome tonight, do you miss me tonight, are you sorry we drifted apart?

You gave me something no one else ever has and I will never forget it.

Even if I never see you again.

I will always have you in my heart.

Always.

Because.

Love is strange.

Love Songs and Nail Salons

Today I was out and about.

I got my nails did!

It was so lovely.

I haven’t been to the nail salon since a few days prior to my surgery.

Now.

That’s been approximately 7 1/2 weeks.

A long time for this lady.

I love getting my nails done.

It has been a splurge of mine and also a bit of a living amends that I have been making for a while now.

So to go nearly two months without is saying something.

I don’t indulge in much.

No alcohol.

No sugar.

No drugs.

No flour.

I mean.

Let a girl get her nail salon on.

However.

Nail salons are also emotionally intense.

First.

One is held hostage for an hour to an hour and a half while the toes get painted and the finger nails are polished up.

And one, I mean I, I am forced to sit still and feel all the feelings that wish to flit through my mind.

And then there are the love songs.

I mean.

Is it just some romantic comedy trope, but do all nail salons have some sort of love song loop or playlist?

My salon does.

So I spend the entire time listening to love songs and trying to stay out of the dangerous neighborhood of my mind that is you.

You, my darling, you.

I seem to get more and more space from my heart ache and loss and longing for that old unrequited love siren song.

But get in me in a nail salon and I get teary.

Sigh.

I really am trying to more on, but I did seem to get walloped by it today.

Maybe it was just that I haven’t gotten my nails done for a while.

Maybe it’s that my birthday is next weekend.

49.

I am going to be 49 years old.

How the fuck did that happen?

My birthday last year was basically in lock down.

But we managed to spend most of the day together.

You cleared your calendar and I felt pretty damn special.

I won’t go into the details of the morning, although I can remember it very, very well.

We were supposed to go to a fancy French restaurant…..

Aside!

I’m going to Paris next year for my birthday and Christmas!

I figure, 50 years old is a milestone year and since I celebrated my 40th in Paris, why not my 50th?

I booked myself a pretty Air BnB in the Marais District.

My favorite neighborhood to stay in.

And it turns out to be a five minute walk to my best friends home!

I was in Paris for my 48th birthday too.

Missing you, although I was dating someone else.

A very short lived relationship.

I keep fucking hoping that one of these days I will actually be in Paris with a partner, not longing for unrequited love to come swoop me off to Cafe Charlot.

I mean.

The cheeseburgers there.

Divine.

Anyway.

We were supposed to go to a fancy French restaurant, but shelter in place happened again literally the day before my birthday.

So you scrambled and found a sushi place that was doing take out in Half Moon Bay.

We drove to Half Moon Bay and held hands and listened to our various playlists and I sat next to you, while you drove, intoxicated once again with you.

Trying.

Really trying.

To stay present and in the moment.

And I did pretty good, in hindsight, I know I was just compartmentalizing like a mad woman, but for that afternoon I managed ok.

Although, you caught me looking out at the ocean once and you knew, you always did, that I was sad.

We parked in Half Moon Bay’s cute little downtown and walked around and went to a florist shop and I got a painting that I just looked up at and a Christmas ornament–currently in a place of honor in my bedroom.

We walked past this ridiculously cute bed and breakfast and fantasized about going there next year.

“Let’s take a whole weekend next year for your birthday,” you said.

Which would be this year.

Except.

I broke up with you again.

I’ll never forget you saying, “I am so tired of breaking up with you,” the last time I saw you in person.

I’m tired of it too.

So.

I wasn’t too thrilled to be in the nail salon listening to love songs.

But.

I didn’t die.

I didn’t burst into tears.

I’ve definitely done that before.

Although.

One did slide down my face.

See.

The story goes.

I’ll be single forever and I’m getting old and you were the one and I can’t have you and I’m going to wither and die on the fucking vine.

But.

The thing is.

That is just a sad story my brain tells me.

Yes, baby, I miss you.

And baby, it’s cold outside.

And baby, I’ll always love you.

But I don’t have to be held to some cross of martyrdom and sadness alone and lost in my fantasy world of you, pining for some day, some day.

I’m allowed to be with someone.

And love will find me.

I know it will.

Even if I am haunted at the nail salon with love songs that make me think of you, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t other love songs out there for me.

Someone is singing one for me right now.

Maybe I’ll hang some mistletoe in my doorway and wait for the caroler’s to come.

I’ll be waiting.

Patiently.

By my pink Christmas tree.

Yeah.

I did that too.

heh.

I figure that I couldn’t go out and get a live one this year, too soon since the surgery, too much lifting and even thinking about getting one on the roof of my car was too overwhelming.

So I ordered a fake one.

And since, I mean, it’s fake, why not just fucking embrace it and really go fake.

I got a 7’5″ pink glitter Christmas tree.

I know.

I am not fucking around.

And today I decorated it.

It is beautiful.

And though, I thought, wouldn’t it be sweet to have you over, it would always be sweet to have you over, I can’t imagine that after 11 months of not seeing each other, you want to come over and look at my Christmas tree.

Even though the two ornaments you’ve given me are hanging up.

No one knows but me anyway.

Sigh.

Merry Christmas lover.

I hope you are well.

I still think of you.

You are often every where I look.

But like I said.

One day soon.

I’ll have a love to keep me warm.

I will weather the storm.

I thought you ought to know my heart’s on fire.

Listen to this blog on Spotify.

Odds and Ends

Bits and pieces.

I have not been here in a while.

And while that is not exactly true, I am here quite often, I have not written in a while.

Oh.

A poem every now and then.

I have one niggling at the back of my brain that I should have written on Friday afternoon when it struck me but I couldn’t quite get myself to sit down and do it.

So.

I find myself here, at the keyboard, writing and thinking and sometimes, oh, sometimes, dreaming.

Thinking about you and where you’re at and how is the pandemic treating you, things like that.

Or.

Do you ever walk past my apartment, slow, longingly, thinking about ringing the buzzer.

It happens once in a while.

Someone will buzz my door and I think it’s you, but it’s the wrong time of night or I am in a session with a client and cannot answer.

I do go and look.

But if it was you, well, you are long gone.

Other times I think, you drive by, you must, not that often, but often enough.

Do you see the lights on?

Do you look for the Marilyn Monroe print high up on the wall, the one you can see from the street through the top fo my window where there is not a blind, or maybe the top of the David Bowie book up on the ledge-the one you surprised me with, that you bought at Dog Eared Books in the Castro.

Do you?

I think you do.

But what do I know?

Not a lot it seems.

Even though I keep myself busy with all the things.

School, work, school, work, recovery, repeat.

Week after week.

And thoughts of you.

Urges to be seen by you, drive by and see me out for a walk around Jefferson Square Park, too far off your route even where you in my neighborhood.

Or.

Since the weather has changed, not much, but enough to drive people to the park to catch the sun before the inevitable fogs rolls right back in, see me sitting on a bench in Octavia Green reading a book and sipping a sugar free strawberry soda through a green and white striped straw in a Mason glass jar with a handle; the only drinking jar left in the group I bought aeons ago.

Every time I go to Octavia Green, I think, maybe today he will see me.

Stop.

Park the car.

Get out and walk to me.

Surprise me.

Face full of sun and hope.

Despite myself and all the years.

Four years now that I have had you in my heart, if not always present, no not always present, so not here, just there, over there, on the other side of a hill, watching the moon rise and set from a different part of the city.

Sometimes the moon annoys me.

Stop reminding me of him.

Go away now.

Leave me be.

And yet it goes on doing what moons do.

Wax.

Wane.

Repeat.

Ah.

I digress.

See.

I get lost, in the dreams and hopes, the fantasy and revery.

The longing, sigh, still in my heart a dark romantic thinking up poetry to write about you.

That hit me today.

The fact that the only poem you ever recited and recorded for me, a Pablo Neruda that wrecks me, that I can’t find the damn recording.

I thought I had it in a file with your name on it.

Messages and photos and emails.

But it’s not there.

And I remember the book of poetry I gave you on Christmas Eve last year and how you said, “we should read these to each other.”

Fuck my wayward heart.

Why today?

Why did that little bon mot pop into my head?

You’ve been on my mind.

When aren’t you I suppose.

But more so now than you have in months.

It’s been eight months since I saw you last.

Seven’ish months since your last text.

I was mad at you.

Told you to leave me alone until you figured it out.

Seems you haven’t.

Figured it out.

That’s what I tell myself.

He’s figuring it out.

Gah.

Even to myself that sounds asinine.

Yet.

Hope.

She springs eternal.

Fuck you hope.

I did something yesterday.

It felt feral and impulsive.

And I did not stop myself.

At first.

I did later.

I pulled a card from the metal heart on my desk that I bought for you over a year ago and wrote tu me manques.

“I miss you” in French.

I signed it.

Sealed it.

Wrote your address on it.

Stamped it.

With, oh apropos, the LOVE stamp.

Flipped it over and stuck a crow sticker with a rose in its mouth to the back of the envelope flap.

And then looked at it.

Propped it up on my computer.

What the fuck am I doing?

It was a little like the other night when I held my finger hovering over your private Instagram account.

I almost hit request.

I did not.

But fuck.

It was close.

The card was like that.

I asked God for a sign.

I know God doesn’t work like that.

Not usually.

I threw it in my bag and went to lunch with a friend.

I had coffee and told that friend what was in my bag.

I sat in the park.

I texted another friend and told on myself.

Although to be frank, honest, virtuous, vigorous with my truth, I knew the latter friend would cosign the card.

He thinks we should be together.

“He’s the love of your life, figure it out!”

He didn’t coax me to mail it or not mail it.

He did ask me if it was a love letter.

Sort of.

I walk around with it in my bag longer.

I waited for the sign that never came.

I walked past the German restaurant on the corner and put it in the mailbox.

I woke up this morning and thought to myself.

What that fuck did I do?

It’s Sunday, can I get it back?

And.

You know.

I don’t want it back.

I just want you back.

Same as fucking ever.

Sigh.

My heart.

I miss you.

Je te veux.

Tous les jours.

I probably always will.

I tried to run the numbers in my head.

How many days till the card reaches his PO box?

I mailed it late afternoon yesterday, a Saturday, which means it’s still in the mailbox on the corner, as it’s Sunday.

It will get picked up tomorrow.

Process Tuesday.

Maybe land in your PO box on Wednesday.

Maybe.

But the thing is.

Though I used to mail you things weekly.

I haven’t for eight months.

Maybe longer?

Do you even check the mail there anymore?

I wanted to send you a chip on your anniversary.

I didn’t.

I wanted to send you a birthday card on your birthday.

I didn’t.

I wanted to let you know when I landed in the ER.

But I couldn’t.

No other sound is quite the same as your name

Good grief.

I should stop listening to music, I get smacked with the sads sometimes.

Anyway.

I really tried to not reach out.

I deleted your number in my phone.

I don’t email you.

But I come close.

I thought.

I just have to make it through my dissertation defense.

I just need to heal from my next surgery in October.

And how long.

How long before you figure it out?

Or I do.

“Why can’t you be with him?” My friend asked.

I told him all the things and he just sighed, “I don’t like how this movie ends, you’re supposed to be together.”

You would think that.

I have only had one soul mate.

You.

I have only really loved one man.

You.

But sometimes you don’t get to be with the one you love.

I’ve read a lot of books, that seems to happen an awful, awful, awful lot.

It’s only in movies, spun sugar fairy tales, that we end up together.

And I swear we were our own little movie, the romance of it all was horrendous.

Heartbreaking.

And so delicious.

I remember one of the last things you said to me about Sabrina and Nick.

“That’s us.”

And I freaked out.

“They die at the end and get to be together in the afterlife! Is that how I get to be with you, when we’re dead?!”

I think I hung up the phone on you.

I was devastated.

But once in a while, I think, what if you meant what the characters said to each other.

“We’re end game.”

Is that what you meant?

That somehow we end up together, in the end?

I sure hope so.

I suppose I shouldn’t have wrote the card.

Had some fucking restraint.

But I didn’t.

Maybe I’ll regret it.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

Maybe I’ll regret writing another sad lonely hearts club blog about a man who is just there, over the hill, but not here where my heart beats still with longing and thoughts of what if, oh what if?

Sometimes I think that maybe it’s just this down time.

This little whiff of time after turning in my dissertation to my committee, this little jot of time before I have my final push to finish my PhD.

Maybe I’ve had a little more time than usual.

And the grief it sank in and got me again.

I suppose I shouldn’t take actions out of sorrow.

But that wouldn’t be very poetic.

Now would it?

The deed is done and I can’t take it back.

You’ve got mail.

Gutted

It’s been a day.

It’s been a god damn hard day.

It’s been three months to the day since the last time I saw you lover.

It was so hard, so unbelievably, excruciatingly hard to not reach out to you.

I wanted to all day long.

All day.

All.

Damn.

Day.

And I didn’t and I’m not proud of that, I feel too exhausted to feel proud of anything.

I am happy I made it through the discomfort though.  I literally prayed time and time again today to just be ok with being uncomfortable.

I looked at photos last night.

BAD IDEA.

I wept like no one’s business.

Especially looking at a photo of me kissing your cheek the last day I saw you.

You look so heartbroken.

I know how heartbroken I was.

Seeing that photo was like getting gut punched.

Smashed.

I wept so bitterly.

Every night for the past week or so I have literally fallen asleep crying.

Weeping with a mouth guard in is not sexy.

The moon in my window.

You in my heart.

The three months of not seeing your face.

The sad poetry I keep writing.

The tattoos I want to get but haven’t yet gotten.

I really haven’t had time.

But the idea is there.

Two crows, one on each side of my back, each holding a broken piece of heart.

I can’t stand how painful this has been.

Today at the laundry mat I thought I was going to lose it.

LOVE SONGS.

Too many fucking love songs.

Enough already.

Speaking of songs.

I made you a playlist.

No, I didn’t send it.

Yes, it’s on my Spotify.

You can find it should you look.

Like I did.

I looked I did.

I saw you had updated the playlist you made me.

Except.

Well.

Damn.

That song you put on the playlist.

Fuck.

That hurt.

That hurt a lot.

I can’t stop hearing it in my head.

I listened to it twice.

Once in horror and then once with tears streaming down my face on my drive home from my office.

Then I made myself stop listening and I drove home too fast listening to 2ManyDjs cranked up ridiculously loud on my stereo.

And.

I saw that you took it off the playlist.

But I saw it baby.

It was up long enough.

Shame on me for looking at your Spotify.

I know better.

Don’t I?

I take full responsibility for that.

But having seen it, having heard it, I can’t erase that experience out of my mind and I keep hearing that line, “what’s cooler than cool?  Ice cold”.

You think I’m ice cold don’t you?

That hurts so much.

I figure you’re angry.

And underneath that I figure you are sad.

Very sad.

I mean.

I know how sad I am and I was the one who said no more, it wasn’t your choice, you didn’t drive that one, although you certainly played a part.

I wouldn’t change a thing.

I still love you and I want only for your happiness and I get scared, terrified really, that one day you’ll just be over me, done with me, kaput.

You’ll move on.

And I will never see you again.

That really does hurt my heart.

So you can imagine how fucking hard it was today.

It felt like your hands were in my body, I could, I can still, feel you in my arms and in my back.   Like you literally have your hooks in me.

It’s painful darling.

It hurts a lot.

I feel you.

I really, really, really feel you.

So much I want to tell you, so much.

And it all just goes in my notebook.

I won’t text, I won’t call.

I will leave you alone.

Even though it’s the last thing in the world I want.

I don’t want to leave you at all.

And I don’t want to live in horrifying sadness, which I have to remember that I had.

I couldn’t shake that sadness of not being able to be with you completely.

So.

I just wrote you another card and this time I even put a stamp on it like I might send it.

I didn’t though, just like the other cards.

I just put them in my little metal heart box on my desk and know that they are there.

They are there if you’re ever free.

They are there if you ever decide to chose me.

They are there.

And know this.

There is no one else, no one else, no not at all.

Just you in the hollow skies of the night riding the moon with my heart in your hand.

Please be gentle with it baby.

I still have a lot of life to live yet.

Love always,

Your.

Baby girl.

Fifteen Minute Blog

That’s about all I got tonight.

Fifteen minutes.

I almost decided to not write, but then I thought, when am I going to have the opportunity again?

I mean.

PhD full tilt boogie.

38 hours a week at my day job.

I’ve also clocked 13 hours at my internship so far this week and I have a client tomorrow as well as three on Saturday.

This is it.

Take the moment.

I could, sure, do some homework.

But.

Well.

I’m pretty on top of it right now.

I wrote a paper over the last two days at work as I was left pretty much alone during the afternoons at work with the baby (who’s really not a baby anymore, 26 months tomorrow) who has been taking these great big fat three-hour naps.

I can knock out a lot of work in three hours.

It’s been a huge gift.

When people ask me how I’m doing it, that’s really the key right now, homework while the baby naps.

Of course I do homework at other times, but the three hours really gives me a way into staying abreast of the work.

I have plenty to do the next couple of days as well with school work, new module’s opened in one of my classes, which means obligations to post discussions and respond to others.

I have done the readings so it shouldn’t be too bad and if the baby naps well tomorrow and the mom’s out of the house, I’ll get it done.

I’m staying busy.

Maybe, sort of, on purpose.

I will say I was a little surprised today to not be as upset and sad as I thought I would.

Then again, when I have slowed down from school, work, clients, dealing with my car being in the shop for six days, OHMYGOD do I love having my car back, I have broken down pretty quick.

I’ve been very careful since the break up to not listen to certain music.

I’ve gotten caught once or twice when I was in a ride share on my way to work and the driver had something come on the stereo that knocked me for a loop.

Cue wearing my ear pods on all drives to and from where ever I was going.

As well as making sure to listen to music at work that’s very upbeat.

I’m sure there’s more grief to grieve.

I lost my best friend and we have a no contact agreement.

I have felt lonely  and lost and sad.

I have also felt some freedom I wasn’t expecting and some relief that it’s done.

Walking around last week for five and a half days knowing that I was about to break up was harrowing.

Just the relief of not having to do that is tremendous.

I haven’t looked at photos either.

And I’ve not gone looking through texts or emails.

Maybe I’m packing too much swaddling around myself.

I don’t know.

I just know that the first time we went through a break up it was so horrendously sad I walked around for days, weeks, feeling like I had been beaten.

And I couldn’t stop crying.

I have had a few moments of unbearable crying jags, but just not to the extent of last time.

I was also not practiced at the breakup.

He and I have gone through it two times officially from my side and once, in a sort of conditional way on his side.

Third times the charm I guess.

Oh.

I do sort of still hope that something miraculous will happen.

That he will decide to alter the things I asked him to alter and we’ll be together.

And I know I can’t wait around for that, it probably won’t happen, and I can’t live my life hoping.

I have to live my life in faith, I know that.

The situation I was in was untenable and I went on in for almost two years.

I’m lucky to have known the depth of love that I had but I also went through a lot of pain.

A lot.

Things were just never quite what I wanted.

Fuck.

Now I’m teary.

Shit.

I thought I’d make it through.

Oh well.

My person reminded me that it wasn’t that there was a lack of love if anything that was what made it so terrible to do, we were so in love with each other.

We’d frequently call the other the One, or soul mate, or magic, or love of my life.

So, it’s rather heartbreaking that we couldn’t get around the issues that broke us apart.

I could wish it different, but I couldn’t make it happen.

And man.

Did I try.

I really tried to be super flexible and not look at things with black and white thinking but in the end I wasn’t getting my needs met and he and I both knew it and he was guilty and sad for it and I was upset over it and it wasn’t working.

God I wish it had.

Ugh.

Now I know why I wasn’t wanting to blog.

I knew that I was going to process emotions doing this and now I’m typing and crying and the heart ache is there and it doesn’t matter what I’m playing on the stereo, it’s all love songs about him anyways.

Well, that was fun.

I just precipitated a crying jag with my head on my table.

Ugh.

I can’t really avoid myself and my emotions when I’m writing, they just naturally come up.

Sigh.

And I can have some compassion for the part of me that doesn’t want to feel and has kept mighty, mighty, mighty busy not thinking about it.

I am sad.

I am tender.

I miss him so much.

Fuck.

I miss you darling.

I miss you so bad.

Tattoos and Tears

I just want to write you poetry tonight.

I just want to talk to crows and croon love songs to the full moon.

I keep thinking about adding to my Coup de Foudre tattoo.

Hearts and lightning bolts.

More hearts.

An explosion of hearts.

I think about you.

I cry.

Sometimes I yell at you in the car.

“Don’t give up on me, don’t stop chasing me, this is it, this is the push, don’t stop.”

I want you to come for me.

I want to be the one.

I think about not having you for years.

I still dream about being with you for all my years.

I think about my impending PhD.

I ponder the thinking and reading and writing I will have to do.

And maybe you won’t be a distraction.

And maybe you will.

And maybe you will be the carrot I use to get through the program.

He’ll come back to me when I am a doctor.

He’ll come for me.

As though you’re the reward for doing the work.

I want to grow old with you and be stupid and silly and mad.

I want to have dumb arguments with you and then have make up sex.

God.

I haven’t really thought too much about the sex.

I think I am afraid to.

I will get lost in the glory of the memories and beat my heart harder on the wall around you.

I long for you.

I dream about you.

The moon full in the sky beckons me to you.

I think about you walking outside.

I think about you sleeping.

I wish to be wrapped up in your arms.

I long to not be heartbroken.

Heart broke open.

Heart in the mouth of crow flying across the miles to you.

That’s the tattoo I keep thinking about.

A crow on my back flying with a heart in its mouth.

An anatomical heart.

With wild daisies growing out from it.

I feel hollowed out.

I miss you baby.

I miss you much.

This isn’t even a poem.

This isn’t even a blog.

This is just a list, a litany, a compilations of thoughts about you.

I can’t stop thinking about you.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

I can’t go on without you.

And yet I keep going on.

I have changed and I can’t tell where it is leading me.

I just fervently hope.

Pray.

Wish.

That it leads me back to you.

I just want to be your Buttercup.

I just want to be your baby.

Baby.

I just want to be yours.

Always.

Forever.

Your.

Baby Girl.

Beautiful And Drunk

Intoxicated.

Tipsy on the way you look at me.

The way you hold me tight.

The feel of your arms around me.

Besotted with you face.

The way it is framed by the window pane behind you.

The view of the river and the dark limbs of trees wet with the falling snow.

Snow.

Magicked from above on your whim.

To sucker punch me with your charms, the brightness of your eyes.

The adoration there.

Dreamy and smitten with you.

There is nothing I could imbibe that would render me more inebriated.

Than your face.

Softly bombed and smote on the laughter that falls from your mouth into my eager ears.

God.

Damn.

How I love you.

I cannot tally all the moments that whirl in my head.

I have snap shots.

Photographs of you.

Kissing your cheek in front of a Rothko.

Holding your hand walking across red brick alleys.

The birds, out of nowhere, singing, harmonizing our love, trilling it loud to the sky.

I turned my face up to that sky and watched the clots of snow drift down, catching some on the tip of my tongue and laughing, knowing that soon you would kiss that self-same mouth.

Sitting across a table from you while music from the soundtrack of our love story played over the speakers.

Snatches of songs that we send one another.

Playlists of longing.

Songs of sorrow and sadness and desires.

Torch songs.

Blues songs.

Love songs for lovers.

All love songs remind me of you now.

But.

Some.

More than others.

You know the ones.

I am woozy with you.

You have gone to my head.

Once again.

Punch drunk on your love.

Enchanted and elated.

Enthralled.

And.

Though I may be foolish.

 

I hear music.

I think of fairy tales.

And.

I want your happily ever after.

I want your love always.

Forever.

I want you.

Won’t you want me too?

Just say you do.

Just please.

Say you do.

 

Hold me close and hold me fast
The magic spell you cast
This is La Vie En rose

When you kiss me heaven sighs
And though I close my eyes
I see La Vie En Rose

When you press me to your heart
I’m in a world apart
A world where roses bloom

And when you speak…angels sing from above
Everyday words seem…to turn into love songs

Give your heart and soul to me
And life will always be
La Vie En Rose.

 

 

 

You Are My

Eucastastrophe.

You are my euphoria.

You are my sudden joyous turn.

You are the opposition ending the couplet in Shakespeare.

You are the happy ending to the fairy tale.

You destroy me from within.

When all joy seems to be lost, you find me.

You grant me beauteous hope.

You light a fire in me.

You have burned me down and I am built back up.

I babble in tongues for you.

I am overwrought and emote arrows of hearts.

I flail in my fear and shake in my desperation.

And then.

You see me.

You show me the beauty of the story.

A narrative I thought I wrote alone.

For I have written my own dark ending so long ago, that I forgot.

Happily ever after is possible.

With you.

I can glimpse the underlying truth.

I am in awe of you.

Of us.

Of alchemy and passion and love songs.

You wield the sight of angels.

You see me.

I cannot lie.

I have tried.

I need to be truthful in all things.

I need to be passion.

I need to be fire for you.

You encompass me.

I will slay dragons for you.

You are the impossible problem overcome.

You resolve me.

You are the joy that brings tears.

You are the laughter after terrible adventures.

You.

Yes.

You.

Love.

Are my everything.

 

 

If You Could

See me now.

You would see how committed I am.

Fuck me.

The internet in my in-law sucks.

But.

Haha.

I found out there’s nothing wrong with it in the fucking hallway.

So.

Yes.

That is correct.

I am writing my blog in the hallway, the entryway to my house, basically I’m not in my fucking house, but the door is open.

It’s cold out here.

Fuck.

Not really how I want to be doing this, but at least I am online and I figure, well, I am a fast writer, I’ll have this done quick like and then go back in my house and not have internet some more.

I kind of am not cool with it.

But.

After the conversation with my housemate, this morning, I asked as I was trying to get online to look at my syllabus and start doing some homework for the class–she emphatically noted, “it’s must be your computer, because I’m getting online upstairs.”

It’s not my computer.

It’s apparently where my computer is.

Like in my house.

Or in the hallway.

Haha.

But I still needed to see what was on the syllabus.

Probably should have waited a little while though.

I wanted to throw up when I saw the reading.

Fuck me.

I really hope the reader is done tomorrow.

I want to be able to get them and not be reading this stuff online.

I need to underline and highlight, the stuff is not going to stick for me.

And if I have to jog out to the god damn hallway to get online I’m not going to be a very happy lady.

Ugh.

Maybe what I will do is go back inside and write this in word then come back out and get online and post.

It’s a pain, but at least I’ll be warm.

And the seating is more comfortable.

And I won’t have to listen to the noise coming from upstairs either, it’s distracting as all hell.

Ah.

It’s not the big things.

The big things.

They hurt, they’re hard, but I know how to deal with them, write it down, put it in the God box.

(pink bunny)

Let it go.

Surrender.

Maybe cry some.

Ok.

Shut up.

Cry a lot.

But hey, the feelings they pass faster that way, they do.

Call someone.

Make an inventory.

Call another someone.

Go do some service.

And the big stuff, I can navigate it.

The small shit, the little bump under the carpet, the daily grievances of life, sometimes that is the stuff that I cannot negotiate.

Like what is that sound?

It’s like a remote control car being driven around in a relentless circle.

It’s not the soundtrack to the movie, but it’s…

See.

I digress.

The little stuff can wallop the hell out of me.

I can’t fucking take it.

I’m freezing.

Back inside my little lair.

I like my little lair.

Even if the internet is not reciprocating with me, at least I am cozy.

And the sound track is so much better.

A little Al Green, “Let’s Stay Together.”

That’s more like it.

God damn I love some Reverend Green.

I remember dancing to it at the Angelic, once in a while getting spun around the front of the bar by this person or that, Charles, the bartender, who was not the best bartender but my God, he could lead a good partner dance.

For a moment, being twirled around in front of the band and throwing my head back and laughing.

I must have been a sight.

I still am a sight.

I am also having a heavy duty hair geographic itch.

Serious itch.

I have been reaching out about it to a few folks, looking for a new spot, I’ve been with my person for a long time but I have been encouraged to expand out towards other horizons.

I mean, it’s been heavily suggested and since I take suggestions, I need a new hairdresser.

Because.

I am thinking, yes, go all blonde.

Do it.

Blaze the shit out of my hair just once.

“Girl, it is getting big,” he said to me tonight after I checked in and let him know what was going on with me.

You know, some more crying, but good crying, relief crying.

Sometimes a girl has to get it out.

I’ve cried an awful lot lately, but I know how cathartic it is and how I have needed to let go and surrender.

And.

Oh.

I think I have!

I’ve done it!

I’ve let go!

Yippee!

Then.

Nope.

Ah fuck.

Feelings.

They just keep happening.

Ok.

So have them, make friends with them, the less I struggle, the more I surrender and I feel like I have finally laid it all down, put it all on the ground, said, hey you, feelings, you go on about your bad selves and I’ll just be laying here mushed out on the ground.

Contemplating Spring.

I’ll be watching the dogwood blossom and the blue sky ahead and maybe I’ll be breathing free and steady and full of love.

Nah.

Not maybe.

I will be.

I am now.

I feel lighter and looser and gladder, even though sad, in my person.

A loosening and letting go.

Love is a story that can’t be told.

Sing it Al.

The time is right.

It’s almost that time.

Though not quite, I still have a few days to go, but the revelations I have had this year around this anniversary, well, they are something.

(Oh, look at that, saving of my draft failed, yeah, I know, motherfucker, I can’t get internet in my hobbit hole today, or for the last five in a row, which yeah, fuck you, is not as relaxing as you think it would be.  If I wanted to be off the grid I would unplug on my own, thank you very much)

Am I going to have to write an inventory about my WiFi?

Bahahaha.

Oh.

I am a sick person.

Fuck.

At least I know it.

Back out to the hallway with you.

Where I am metaphorically, so often, in the hallway, in the dark, looking for the next door to open.

Free.

Though.

Free to move about.

Free to love.

Free to let go.

Free to move forward.

Because.

The best thing I can do is give you your love

 

PS.

The acoustic’s in the hallway are fantastic for singing.