I am grateful. I couldn't ask for more. I won't.

except everyone's desire is to be known. as close as you can come anyway. what this indicates is complicated. played out so many ways. I remember going through the bible in Ms. Robertson's class. so and so knew so and so. that was short for sex.

maybe the desire to get close. closer. everyone's desire also to be loved. to form relationships. connections. inserting our lives tenderly sometimes violently into the stories of others. and we're not alone. we're a little closer to something. maybe ourselves.

sometimes I am lonely without realizing it. sometimes I catch myself on the brink of no longer being lonely. and that person in me wants to draw closer and is not ashamed. of this need.

I'd like to joke at myself and my language my loneliness, because what I've just written has made me fidgety and vulnerable.

I won't because sometimes we shoot for honesty and fall short. Then we go home and write about it, bravely resisting deletion.

things you shouldn't put in your mouth

hunks of rosewood and ebony were what you brought me this october the reason parents won't let children on halloween the soft sweet candy with something extra in-between 

i knew better than to carve myself into it but there were things i wanted to scream (FUCK YOU) some accusations but mostly just a robins egg or two that never hatched and i cried you were upset

Camp Caravan, NST - My first course.

the people and the space they provided allowed me to be. neither good, nor bad. I was there to learn as a beginner, not pay for my deficiencies as a person. and because I allowed my self to be, I was what I needed most. and even more surprisingly magical, by my being my self, I also became what others needed.

that's all I want in a relationship. any kind of relationship.
what about love, you ask?
that is love.

force

tonight I am a prisoner in this house. paper mache breasts exposed. 
exonerate my true body under the light, words betray us. not birth-
mark fingerprints on a mirror or extra glasses emptied then edited
out or swallowed down it wasn't my real heart that stopped beating
but another. layers of glue and smeared headlines. a woman kid-
napped. taken into custody gunned down choking. on silence

letters

Azar means scarlet in Farsi. Though I've studied Farsi I didn't know that until I looked it up just now. I had drinks at The Standard with Paul this evening. You can see the capital from there and Azar, which I guess is a liquor store. Z is a seldom-used letter in the English alphabet. I can imagine the proprietor of Azar having trouble purchasing the neon Z required for his sign. Perhaps they don't bother to make Zs. Perhaps Zs are more expensive. In any case, it's clear that the Z in this sign is really a horizontal N. I contemplated that this evening while feeling mildly impressed with myself for having noticed.

Barber, Concerto for Violin and Orchestra op. 14

I walked into the orchestra room one afternoon for rehearsal and heard this. It was one of Mr. Kim's many gifts to me. I was floored. I sat motionless in front of the speakers, completely fixated. I still can't listen to it without having galaxies swirl around in my head - fabulous, colorful nebulae, with me floating amongst them. This and the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2 used to put me to sleep every night in high school. If I could gift these two recordings to you people right now I would. We could all lie on our backs and stargaze.

P.

the story of a girl silhouetted by lamplight and mist. smoke swirling from her lit cigarette. a blotted scrap of paper she holds up to the light (trying to decipher its code). she thinks it means nothing and is right.