Jane Doe

The therapists, the reporters,
The watchers, and me
Dig deep into the confines
Of your hollow mind and your empty wallet,
Trying desperately to find connections
Between the breadcrumbs left behind
From 18 years you have somehow,
And for some reason, forgotten—

On the news, they say your pretty mother died
Young, and your father, so very typical,
Bathed himself in the waters of whiskey.

But, if your father were my father,
All I can think is how mad he’d be
At seeing your hand cut, filthy bangs
Brush against my face. He would agonize
Over how I’d been eating, how and where
I’d been sleeping.

So I need to know. You need to tell me.
Before bed, did he ever bend down low and check
For monsters? What of your mother—
Did she ever sit up with you after bad dreams?
Or were yours the type too busy to discuss
Wockets, pockets, green eggs and ham?

The networks now they’ve found your name,
Your first and your middle, both equally
Unrecognized. They repeat them squished
And ran together, overlapping and rushed.

It makes me angry to hear it that way.
Makes it sound like you’re in trouble,
And it’s all your fault.

I worry that no matter
What you remember, you will never
Be able to explain how one night
You fell asleep on the street,
In the middle of Midtown, with no shoes
And a dirty face, cold, outside, and unfolded
Stretched out on pieces of cardboard dreaming.

Roswell Boys

Gone were the first borns, the kiss ups.
The short and tall alike. The pretty boy poets
And the silver screen stars.

Our prom dates, our neighbors, our paperboys too.
Our firsts and our last loves, each squeezed in between
Now nakedly missing off our paper milk boxes.

"Every man I've loved is lost.
Deserted Providence for good.
No map left to follow. No man left to curse.""

So said the radio last night. Pregnant
With the seedling of too many questions
Unable to be answered, barely able to be asked.

"What of the dead letter lost boys?
What will become of them now? What of their offices?
And their car lots? What of Romeo, oh Romeo--

Methinks, I see a man?" Any man, by any name,
Who could play your role as sweet. Does no such man exist?
Only we, the hollow, the lacking. The now mundane in our abundance.

Who will start up their stalled engines?
Take out their wedded wives? Who will bend on one knee
Bruised? Patch the roof? And hang the lights?

"Am I the unexpected Heathcliff? The sorry dear Viola
I never asked to be? Am I both sister and my brother?"
Am I the woman, who only in man's absence, shows her true horns

Her pointed tail too? Like a junebug in dry heat,
or an instinct drunk lemming. All it took was
A change in weather, whether I like it or not.

Mixed & Misused Margarita Messages

There's a nothingness that comes with twenty somethingness,
A blackness or a blankness to match with the last King drawn,
A solemness, a complete nakedness to walk beside my stacked up red cups,
A finality that rhymes beautifully with a table wiped clean, and a phone call disconnected,
A book end, a chapter end, a slammed door closed,
An empty bottle, or kicked tin can dry from its holes across the bottom,
From the netted screen door that's jingling and jangling on our hinges,
Of broken promises,
Missed messages,
Mixed signals,
And expensive excommunications,
Walky Talky Fuzziness that reminds me of you and reminds me of me,
Reminds me of a tunnel full of clocks and sitting room furniture,
That smells of Hedda Gabler's powdered hands, or Plath's misused oven,
That looks just like a doorway leading from the white to red queen,
Just as long as the street that leads to a job I can't believe is mine,
Like the commute I can't believe I bear, like my blazer with tweed patches I can't believe I wear,
Like the parade of exes I can't believe I dared, or all the reasons I don't have to care,
With a lined smile, stressed eyes, a dull tiredness I'm too young for,
I'll take my rock, paper, scissor hands and snip away at our shared, ribbon telephone wire,
Slap myself brutally and soberly aware,
Cancel my miles and forget about that which connects me to twentytwo,
Connects me to you.

Kiss and Tell: An Anthology

"Kiss and Tell" is a piece I began working on over four years ago. Hopefully, these ten vignettes will someday become the anthology I dream them to be. My original objective was to explore the way people define moments in their lives; I wanted to focus on the human use of metaphor and language as tools of interpretation. In many ways, these pieces acted as a writing exercise; it provided a venue for me to focus on capturing human reaction and human emotion. Its also my first attempt at interview work. The concept of the indefinable and its indeterminate interaction with our word based culture fascinates me. Each “Kiss and Tell” moment focuses on the same thing: a kiss; yet, each story is significantly different and not just because the players change. Sadly, I have yet to formally workshop the piece. This version is a significantly edited one, according to Word, it is officially known as “Kiss and Tell 5.0.” With no further ado:

I.

I can still hear the faint rhythm of his skateboard rolling hard against the pavement. Skittles and cherry coke. He’d ride home from the convenient store and I’d feel my stomach jump into my throat. In the Marco Polo fashion of memories, when I say, “first kiss,” I think, “maraschino.” I think sweet. I think sugary. I think sticky like summer. His father lived in Arizona: September, October, November, December, January, February, March, April, May. But his mother, his mother lived in California and every year for three months, he lived across the street from me.
Five feet tall and irresistible.
Five feet tall and irreplaceable.
Five feet tall and unbelievably, unmistakably, and unregrettably irrevocable.
This is the boy that taught me the secret about a boy’s bottom lip. He taught me to be wary of who I kiss and more importantly of who I don’t. Aaron taught me the best lesson I ever learned. In the summer of 1999, he taught me how to kiss. And although some people may consider first kisses inconsequential; I think to myself, you mustn’t have kissed Aaron Jeffrey by your parent’s poolside, because that kiss, that kiss was miles away from being inconsequential. This kiss, this first kiss, stuck to me like resin to the sides of a water pipe; it left a scent that could be tasted, that could be recognized, seen from miles around. It clung to me in difficult places- like the creases of my elbows, like the nape of my neck and the insides of my cheeks. It stayed there, lingering, clinging, grabbing on tightly to every edge of my fragile blown glass memory of childhood kisses. And I argue, to this day, that every sexual experience I’ve had since then, has simply been a re-creation of those events. When I lean across the table to kiss you on the cheek, it is a replayed vision of leaning across the couch toward a blonde haired, brown skinned boy child and bridging the gap between being a girl and becoming a young woman. And when we fall into your sheets in that pillow-biting, let the phone ring, let the dog bark, I didn’t like that shirt anyway kind of way it is a carbon copy of how my entire body was once set on fire by a simple boy laying his lips upon mine. Two thin lips parted in such a way that a match was struck and heat was spread, chasing up my legs, traveling from his tongue, down the arch of my spine wrapping around towards my belly button and finally residing in my curled toes. And with that, with clinched fists and a deep exhaled breath, I close with one simple request. To every man who has appreciated the taste of my mouth, please raise your glasses in honor of the day that should live on in infamy. A day, that as I recall, was absurdly warm. But now- you should tell me: When was your first dirty kiss?

II.
Patrick’s first kiss was on a bus. And as Pat remembers, everyone cheered. And as I remember, I had never seen Patrick look sweeter, or younger, than when he blushed in my back seat, at the ripe age of 22, and told me how awkward it had been.

III.

When I kissed you that first time, it felt like watching home videos that hadn’t been recorded yet. It was that big of a deal. And I remember driving you home afterward, and trying to deny it. You turned the radio off, looked me straight in the eyes and asked with a type of sexy, presumption that you wore like your father’s oversized blazer, “Erica, be my girlfriend.” And I closed my mouth and tried to shake you, tried to shake the memory of our mouths combining. Tried to pretend that I hadn’t seen what I saw, felt what I felt. You kissed me and the tape started rolling, the clock started ticking. I had wanted so many things, but you kissed me and everything changed. I threw out my old map, and I said, “Sure, let’s call today our anniversary.” Your mouth, your silly, funny, quirky, mouth breathed life into me that day and I suddenly wanted completely different things, I wanted you, to please you, to be everything you wanted me to be, everything you were asking me to be. When we kissed that night, with my legs folded in your lap, I think it surprised us both. Suddenly, we were moving very quickly. Falling even faster, so much faster than I had expected or wanted. Your tongue pushed me, and I tumbled. Tripped like Alice, head first into the abyss of my future, dragging you right behind me- into a rabbit hole you and I both weren’t ready for. But with closed eyes and a happy mouth, I kissed you back. There was no escaping the grasp your mouth had upon mine. My life. Your life. Our life. Tangled like virgin teenagers hopped up on broken curfews and cold pizza. When we kissed there were two lips that were mine and two more that were yours, but somehow, while you and I sat embroidered together at the mouth, we grew into a we.

And I look back now with girlfriends, with best friends, and I say, “perhaps it wasn’t the best kiss I ever had.” Perhaps it wasn’t dirty, it wasn’t all that wet, it didn’t even last that long, but it was life changing. Because within an instant, I loved you. I loved your mouth and I loved your soul. I loved all that you represented. I loved the idea of you. I loved you. And as that kiss continued, I realized that it was different, so much different than any other kiss. We were telling secrets. Sharing something underground, mouthing passwords indiscreet, with tongues tied, we hushed our closeted lists of expectations, our long lists of fears and anxieties. And to think, that that night, a night with all our emotions and excitement hidden cloak and dagger, draped behind blushing cheeks and sweaty palms, to think that that kiss would lead to so much more, is now just rather funny. First loves, first heartbreaks, first times. My first. My last. My everything. And when we started to get excited and our bodies quickened and we accidentally bumped our teeth into one another, I giggled, because I wanted to misstep with you, be confused and slip up with you. I wanted to learn from my mistakes with you. Build a life around you, swap your burdens for mine, sign Christmas cards with a shared last name. I wanted Sundays with you. And Monday through Saturday too. And since then, since that night five years ago, a night our mouths made promises our hearts were excited to keep, I have never, not once, stopped you from kissing me, not once. Not ever. And trust me, I don’t expect to start.

IV.
Sometimes we slip in and out of the loopholes that exist in drunken memories, shaded recollections of dorm rooms covered in empty beer bottles. We’ve never kissed. Never. Not even once. And I smile when I think of all the times we’ve dared, double dared and then backed down. Spun the bottle just to drink it instead. Sometimes, when we find ourselves sneaking up against the openings between time and space, we resort to the ways of the past, where we would, and sometimes still, look at each other a little too long-- tell old stories just a little too loud. But, no, we’ve never kissed. We are, as we have always been, at quite the impasse. Which is odd, two writers, two readers, two romantics, with matching mindsets on non verbal communication, on physicality, on mistakes, and yet, no, not once. You have, on the other hand, filled my ear with verse after verse of poetry, proclamations I have always had trouble believing, and although words, the beauty that both you and I have dedicated our art to, hold enormous significance for me, I still wonder. Wonder what it would be like to share with you that which should go untainted by grammar or pencil lead. At times, when you’re speaking, about this, or that, I have actually lost place in your words, distracted by the thought of your mouth and wondering whether or not it would appear more beautiful if used in a manner other than prose or poetry. Alas, you and I shall remain forever untangled. Separated like sentences, indented like paragraphs and drawn apart by dreaded parentheticals. One time, a long time ago, you said, that I was the type of a girl you could fall in love with. Well, maybe you should have let yourself. It would have been pretty to see. Maybe you should have reached out a little further, taken it one step farther, and convinced me that I was worth the struggle. How much would you have paid to feel my lips? To become my novel? My mouth’s magnum opus? To actually write the epic poem we deserve? Rather than the short story you and I have both wrote and rewrote several times each. However, in hindsight, I guess I must admit that I am pleased that you were never actually driven to cement our affections with your saliva.

Friends, right? But, just so you know. I would have made your soul come.

IV. (Companion)

The sun also rises in cramped San Francisco dorm rooms and I said something that still holds true—you’re the kind of girl I could fall in love with. And yet, we never kissed. I nearly let myself fall, easily and hard. I was away from home, our friendship was in its infancy and off to a start on the blurriest imaginable platonic line, promising but confusing. Many times over the years my lips would brush your cheek in a drunken flight of fancy, but there was never enough liquid courage on either of our parts to seal those lips together in a painfully, innocently, guilty forbidden act; one that would certainly be chronicled as the event that sent our friendship down a path dark as night. A night where the sun would not rise again. In that friendship’s unique beginning I would sometimes wonder if your tongue is as sweet as the words you speak and write, those strange combinations of significations called sentences that we thrive on in the pursuit of truth in fiction. The thought is nothing but fiction now, a hope of being your Garp recorded on Post-It notes archived away but not forgotten. Most of me is glad for it, but a part of me answers your question as such: I would have paid anything, on an uncertain timeline, to have just once held the burden of your heavy lips, to have them speak in silent, moist unison with mine. I could never bring myself to destroy something so beautiful, no matter how much I’ve had to drink.


V.

You were like a taller version of me. So much taller than me. Tallest boy I ever kissed. The second I met you, I felt like holding you, terrified that you would walk out of my life just as quickly as you had walked in. Quickly, is the perfect adverb to describe you and I. We fell quickly. We met quickly, suddenly and unexpectedly, spending every moment together in a world we created and drowned in. I still don’t understand how I survived that world’s end, with so much of love’s imbalanced remainder piled onto my thin shoulders. I spent months and months, after you decided, quickly, that you were no longer interested, I spent those months able to love you, looking to forgive you, dying to have you back. But, these few sentences, these sentences written today, are meant to chronicle the beginning, the good part, like the first three seconds of a gobstobber, before it turns blue and traipses over to the dark side. You did love me, for a little while, but your boredom snuck in. And I couldn’t fight it and then you left. You left me with only one kiss, a broken heart, an empty shell of a human being, one kiss, seventeen bands I can no longer listen to, an entire photo album that remains unopened and just one kiss. That one kiss, spread through me like a virus, like the flu, it worked quickly through my blood stream, searched each crevice of my body before finding an open cavity, where it could curl up and store itself. Like a Christmas sweater your grandmother gently crafts and knits for you, your lips were wrapped in colorful tissue paper and their memory then stored and kept ‘til Christmas. You resided within me for far too long. Sweetly curled up and hiding from me, until I finally grew strong enough to search through me, find you and throw you away.

VI.

When she said she kissed you, all I could see were the tattoos. All that ink. Perhaps that’s why you’re broken, jarred, unloving, and unable to be loved. All that ink. It must have sunk into your skin. Like poison. All that ink. Sleeves and sleeves of weightless words you laid out in front of her. I watched your penmanship; your artwork. Art she hook, lined, and sinkered. You were something she wanted to frame above a fireplace of the pipe dreams you had helped her inhale, she thought you special, unique, invaliuable. I saw you as a fraud. She would have been your easel; your Da Vinci, your paintbrush; whatever you needed. You would have been her David. The Sistine chapel for her mouth, strokes of genius by lips that didn’t know any better. Kisses that were colored and shaded, outlined by all that you promised. Pictures of images that now in this particular afterglow appear as omens. You sketched chemicals into your skin; mosaics of atoms you don’t understand. You were just a cataclysmic, catalyst searching for a base. Sometimes she calls me and cries. Says it still hurts when she thinks of you. You’ve left acid in her mouth and you don’t care. You were unbalanced, combustible, destructive. Highly flammable. We couldn’t see it beneath the make-up you permanently hide yourself beneath. Your shell of pretentiousness, impenetrable barriers of self obsession and dangerous jealousy. That ink is the lover’s clothing you wrap yourself within. If I had been the man that branded you; the man that drew for you all you wanted us to see. If I was the man who costumed you in ink, I would’ve engraved the words “CAUTION” across your forehead. So that no woman would ever love you again. But I didn’t get there in time. She didn’t know; she hadn’t read the warning label. Just like a picture book, she fell in love with every angle, each line, each dot, and page by page, she fell in love with all the inches of your body. You kissed her. Then you kissed others. You shared the pictures of your life, pictures you had said you’d framed only for her. Pictures that have now all come crashing down around you.


VII.

When it’s hypothetical, it always happens on an island. That’s where we met. A hypothetical, theoretical, imaginary island grounded with the many “should haves,” “would haves,” “wished it could have been that ways,” you’ve breathed down my neck. We took the hypothetical to the physical; to the physical again. And again. Which quickly grew so far past the metaphysical, we were stranded in a world of metaphor. An island where each grain of sand had been wished there. We were not accidental cast-aways. We were desperate fugitives. Hungry for the brazen rationalizations, inarticulate excuses, and blatant lies we became so good at creating with slips and twists of the tongue. And there we lied. For far too long. Tucked in between the sheets of nonexistent grays; a middle ground at in-between times: sudden moral relativists. On a beach of broken bottles, broken bonds, uncomfortable, confused, forgetful, broken hearts, it was shamelessly wrong. So we christened our boat in the honor of sin and set upon the sea of gin and tonics. And upon the capsizing tidal wave of unrestrained, uninhibited, unforgivable desire, that threw me up against you, I heard you whisper through clenched teeth that you loved me. “I love you.” You were drunk. We were drunk. And when I awoke in the morning thirsty, unsure if this story had happened at all, I recognized your taste in my mouth. A twist of lime. You were one hell of a four hour tour, friend. You were a ship that I unexpectedly lost control of. I had no intention of docking here, in a place where you think you love me. Where you run after me trying to savor the experience of corruption one more time and I can’t keep the fuck away from you. So I’ll blame it on the wind that blows me to your door step. But the problem is, that flavor that wakes me with a headache of guilt is something I don’t mind. A taste I like. Something I miss when you’re gone. And if you asked me to do it again, I would. I would swim through the waves of alcoholism and the rip currents of regret, across the depths of black outs and dizziness to find you and revive you. Mouth to mouth, body to body. Drink me, baby, just drink me in.

IIX.

Her car was pulled half way into the driveway. The end hung out. She was hesitant; unsure, scared, rather scared to commit. Unable to trust. And with two hands firmly glued onto the cold, relentless, unforgiving, black leather of the steering wheel, she struggled not to hold you. Restraining herself with herself. A seatbelt that she both hated and needed. I hope you let her know when the light changes colors, let her know when she’s your friend and when she’s more. She can’t figure it out by herself, can’t figure it out until you let her know, so she just sits there, two hands glued to the wheel. Sitting there, going nowhere. With a body torn down the center, a grand canyon of a fissure dividing what cannot stand by itself, she sits there, thinking of you with her hands at ten and two. With only a stick shift separating them, with the enemy lines drawn by separate seats, she surrendered that day. She decided to lose the battle- to bow out- to stop fighting for someone else’s boyfriend. She was the driver, and you suddenly became the passenger. And although most of her, a majority plus one, wanted to crawl into your lap and unfold herself, undress herself, claim herself and her love upon rooftops of hope and unreliable, heartbreaking love, she fought to stay silent. She fought and kept her hands glued. That was the night. The night her mouth opened and rather than being met with yours, with the brash, forward, blatant kiss you shamelessly handout like Jesus-Obsessed, pamphlet toting morons who deem themselves the providers of grace, those lips that deserve far more than you, were only met with her own warm tears.

And that was the evening she learned she could kiss herself. And she did it better anyway.

IX.

Such a writer, such a reader, I got lost in our first lines, last lines, and every letter of dialogue in between. But we didn’t have much of a novel. A short story? A single vignette? One single, magnificent sentence? One speechless moment, a single, floating paragraph, and then pages and pages of he said, she said. But even with a bookcase full of language to dissect, I can’t help but dwell on the muted moments-- moments that deserve to be shot in wide angle, slow motion-- moments that should be spread across pages and pages of Bronte-like prose, edited and re-edited with an Ezra-like eye, pampered and polished with an Eliot finish. I focus, especially now, on those moments. Moments I am too afraid to write down. Knowing I’ll ruin their perfection with the falsities of ink. I will slave over the placement of your commas, the exact right location of a period or semi colon, and I will, most certainly debate, for hours between chestnut and walnut as an appropriate adjective for the shade I recall your hair to be. And in case I hadn't told you, time and time again, I really enjoyed your hair. So don’t mind me, if I continue, for just a little while longer, to read and reread our chapters, especially those which haven’t been written yet, and even those that have. And forgive me if I still manage get lost in those moments, those, that if ever to be penned down, would be the ones talked about over coffee, in book clubs, and literary circles. Where girls would blush, turn to their friends and ask, “Did you read the part where they’re in the parking lot?” If you wanted to know, if you want my opinion on the matter, straight from the author’s mouth, “It was awfully sexy to know you. In the least awful way.” That moment, that one moment, was one for the records, even if all I can remember now, at least what I now remember the most distinctly, is the pattern of our breathing and how bright the stars were. Brightest stars I ever saw. And besides those stars, its just me, a closed book and a single memory of a single night, shared far too many nights ago. A night that deserves to be redone, done differently, done with more attention paid to the finer details, more attention paid to one another, more attention paid to expanding the fragments of time so one night could encompass a week. But really, that’s that. Just one night and the book comes to a close. The sweet chapters in the middle have been read. And, to be frank, I took pleasure in them. Probably too much pleasure-- took my time to read them, to pour over every edge of every page. Highlighted the high points, even reveled in the lows, but now the novel, like all novels I have ever read, comes to a close. And I sit, surprised, taken back, as the book heads quietly toward the shelf. Even with all its unread pages, chapters and chapters of unread this and that, the book quickly and quietly resigns itself to shelf life. As if it’s known, since the beginning. And somehow I did not. I am the one left surprised, the only one holding tight to the binding spine of leather. Surprised as I look around and realize it’s time for a chapter end. Holding fast to any and everything that could stand in the way of a last line. “In the spirit of nostalgia, I really enjoyed you.” And the last flap of bound leather flips closed and the book gets placed between this boy and that. And although this is not my first novel, this is far from easy for me. Especially not with you- not with a boy with such wonderful insight into horror films and under the table fiction, a boy with really quite beautiful hands- fast moving hands. Hands that sneak up on you in the exact, perfect way. This boy- you, boy, are a boy who makes me laugh. You are a boy, who I, for a lack of better words, really enjoyed.

X.
Last night I thought of you. Thought of college ruled notebooks. Thought of my derailed liner note imagination. Thought those old late night thoughts. Thought of rolling papers, stale tobacco, and colored lighters. Thought of breaking rules, curfews, and speed limits, thought of feeling reckless and careless, feeling really young and being happy about it. Thought about really adoring you sometimes. Last night I thought about all those bobby pins and rubber bands I’d had left in your car, all over your bedroom. We had built spots for one another. Built up the kind of friendship you can rely on, where you assume you’ll be together on Saturdays and Fridays, on federal holidays. Built up nicknames and stories, habits, and traditions. Built a hole for you in my life and kept it empty for a long time. Last night I said out loud that you were a hard boy to forget and I meant it. You made me warm like August at the beach, hot like dinner in the oven. You made my skin warm. You were my friend I’d kiss sometimes. Really quick kisses. Little kisses that can’t even be classified as kisses. We’d kiss with mouths closed and not talk about it. Last night I told a story about you. I realize I tell them a lot. Last night I remembered your face for the first time in a long time and realized it felt nice. Nice like driving by the ocean, like rolling all the windows down and melting into the upholstery. Last night I heard you died. And it hurt. Hurt worse than I think it maybe should. You passed over a year ago. Over a year and three days ago to be exact. And I hadn’t heard and I’m sorry. I should have known, should have heard about it some way. Somehow. But I hadn’t. Hadn’t thought to ask. Had imagined you being somewhere with some cute blonde, imagined hearing about you getting married soon, imagined feeling inappropriately jealous, but I hadn’t heard anything. Hadn’t heard you were no longer. You’re gone, they say. And I’ve asked everyone I can think of. Have begged them to say it’s not true. Last night I heard that you’re not coming back like you said you would. “If it’s meant to be, Erica, it’ll work out.” You hugged me goodbye. I’ll run into you one day at the grocery store, you said, maybe one day we’ll get into a fender bender. I kissed you goodbye. Another one of those rushed kisses. Those hushed kisses. Last night, I drove by your old house just to rub it in, to pour salt in the open wound of bad news heard late. Last night, I thought of the one time you kissed me and it mattered. Thought about that constant smell of ash in your hair, mixed with the scent of shampoo and face wash. Thought about the jackets you let me wear, they smelt like mother folded laundry. I thought of how you kissed me harder than I had ever been kissed before. You kissed me in an obvious way. That one was real and you wanted me to know it. You kissed me and I felt it all over. And in the midst of me kissing you back, you stopped.
I said, “Come On.”
I said, “What’s Wrong?”
I said, “It’s alright.”
Said I was enjoying it. Said I wanted to continue. Lied and said it was alright by me. One day we would meet again, in the produce aisle and all would turn out alright. In the parking lot one day, we’d smile and exchange licenses. But you drove me home that night. And we didn’t kiss again. Not that way you kissed me that night. And last night, last night I heard you died. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry to hear that. But I want you to know, just for the record, that you mattered. You mattered to me.

Thin Walls: A Draft

A pane of glass, spanning from floor to ceiling, is all that separates the workout room from the community pool. A barefoot hop, just a skip and a clichéd jump and then there’s the waterfront condos, the ones especially reserved for the family sell and that’s it.

That’s the thought that corners Ben as his breath quickens. His calves tighten, his throat dries, and Ben thinks, that’s all there is. A childhood scamper, the rush of a towel as it sneaks through a closing gate, and suddenly he’s standing in his very own three bedroom up-sell.

Ben calls this the Brody Gavin nightmare.

It’s the nightmare that chases him on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. The days he reserves time to work out on-- time to pity men like Brody Gavin.

Brody Gavin, balding, beer-belly Brody, otherwise known as the divorced guy: Brody Gavin, the only inhabitant of 101B and it is the image of Brody, in boxers one size too tight, that runs along with Ben on the tread mill-- an image that seems to appear all the more frequently as the number of days where Ben sleeps alone increase. Brody was, at first, a sight that only appeared in the workout room. He now intrudes upon the weekends. Intrudes upon Ben in the shower and at breakfast. Brody haunts him at the office, and whenever Ben thinks about the brunette on the third floor, Brody is there. He is at his most inescapable in those moments—moments where Ben clears his throat and attempts to talk to Myra with the brown hair, Myra on the third floor, Myra with the legs. Myra, who the card playing ladies twist up their mouths and shake their heads about. They wring their hands about the length of her skirt while muttering mean nothings.

“Who’s she trying to impress, anyway?” They huff and they puff.

“Hold on to your men, ladies. Here she comes.”

And Ben watches as she comes. And he watches as she goes. Watches as she walks from the garage, as she swims in the pool, as she laughs with the maintenance guys. And he jokes to himself, jokes to make it easier, jokes as he runs.

With neighbors like Brody, who needs condoms.

Because, wherever and whenever Ben thinks of meeting somebody, holding somebody, thinks about any body next to his own, he thinks about how badly Brody must hurt in the morning. He thinks about Brody and instead, instead of thinking about the way Myra’s thin hands move when she speaks, he runs. And when Myra matches and holds his eye contact, even for a split second longer than expected, Ben thinks about Brody—waking up as Brody Gavin-- waking up in a house he didn’t decorate. And perhaps worst of all, waking up one morning and no longer knowing the woman who did.

Enter the Brody Gavin Dilemma.

What Ben’s been feeling ever since his girlfriend left-- or since he left his girlfriend--or more accurately: since Ben walked in on a bare assed electrician leaving his girlfriend, who followed closely behind. Ever since then, he has been feeling Brody’s hurt. But Ben’s still trying. Still trying to realize that there are benefits to sleeping alone. Still trying to realize why there are seven pillows and only one Ben.

But nightly, as he lays awake in bed, there’s a girl, only two doors down, that silently dreams. Dreams of kissing and touching, dreams of boys in the day time, boys in the summer time, football boys, Jewish boys, and older boys, especially older boys.

So, this girl, a girl who is consumed by the brand new idea of being consumed, shifts the weight of her backpack, heavy with cosmo magazines, heavy with hairspray, hair brushes and hair pins. She stands up off the seat of her bike, thrusts her weight towards the center of her peddle-pushing feet and shakes her head out vigorously. The ground seems to crumble beneath the pressure of her rubber tire. Her breath shortens and she’s happy for it, she pushes her chest into the warm afternoon air and thinks of the cleavage she’s yet to grow. She thinks of mascara and she begins to cry. But with a single, sweaty hand, she smears that nasty drop off her face. She’s almost home and she’s refusing to cry.

The older women watch as she locks her bike up. And they wring their hands.

“Care Bear, what’s wrong? There are brownies inside.”

But Caroline’s only answer is the muffled sound of her sweatshirt zipper. Because today, Caroline is not Care Bear, nor is she Carrie Berry, she is an eighth grader. And regardless of how similarly her mother-cut bangs resemble the flat edge of a bowl, today, the first day of the eighth grade, Caroline is committed to acting her age. Especially after a twenty minute bike ride of silenced cursing and gentle bargaining. Twenty minutes where Caroline made the official decision to drag down the white flag of surrender and stuff her bra with it. And with a fervor especially reserved for unkissed, thirteen year old girls, Caroline becomes full heartedly committed to accomplishing her mission- her goal in life. So, she throws on a fresh t-shirt, spreads on a new coat of face, pins back her yellow brick hair and runs out the front door.

Caroline runs past the women and their dice. Runs fast enough to turn their poker faces, their curling cigarette smoke, and their home baked goods into a blur. She bee lines for the workout room so quickly that she clumsily tumbles into the third floor lady with a pretty face.

Caroline, who was born to be a good girl, apologizes before she realizes who it is. And once her mind catches up to how fast her short legs were running, she smirks.

“I could make rent awful easy too with breasts like those.” Caroline heard her mother’s voice echo.

Caroline’s mother was certain that this woman, the woman from the third floor, stripped for money and that very thought made Caroline hot in the face. A woman so pretty people paid to see her naked. Caroline blushed, apologized once again, and took off running even faster. Myra laughed. So young and in such a hurry. Myra smiled, waved to the card playing women and headed upstairs. It was a hot day, in the middle of a stagnant September, one of those days that came customary with a blown out sky, a sky that seems to have never heard of clouds before, painted up in a kind of blue that’s almost pompous, pompous and silly like kids in love. Unencumbered, unsuspecting, unprepared. And so pretty to look at, it nearly hurts. So hot she’d left the door open. Thought she’d harness the ocean breeze, the cool blue air and then lay around in it on her one day off. And when she finally reached the inside of her apartment, Myra stretched her arms out over her head and relished in the scent of summer’s last days, decided to leave the door open and began to undress.

Thirty minutes later, she came out of the shower with wet, brown hair clinging closely to her coffee creamer back. And as her hair dropped Easter bunny baskets of water on her tile floor, she found six inches of black and white fur crawl behind the back of her refrigerator. She felt her throat dry. Her eyelids itch, her pupils tighten. She felt the tears form before they fell. It was her one day off. She felt a childhood panic, the feeling of a temper tantrum, of disquiet, the feeling of unsure footing, the feeling of knowing that something was terribly off, that something was somewhere that it most certainly shouldn’t be. And she began to scream. She screamed before she knew it and once she started, she wasn’t able to stop.

She screamed and she screamed. Screamed out of a fear of going nowhere and taking too long to get there-- screamed because she didn’t know how she had ended up dancing, and then screamed because it was hard work and people should know it. She screamed because she hated her boss, hated the neighbors she only pretended to know, hated the faulty engine in her pre owned car, and she screamed finally for the guy who lived a few floors beneath her. Because for the first time in a long time, she had tried to do things traditionally, and slowly, and sweetly and had now, for a number of months, received no response.

And when the first scream, a quieter version of the others, came prancing through Ben’s front window, he closed the blinds and saw the unwelcome image of Brody. He had been annoyed by the girl with poorly cut bangs only a few minutes prior. Women were an unnecessary trouble. And he repeated it once again as the second scream tumbled through the cracks in his blinds. He thought of that young girl again, thought about how fast young girls turn into women, turn into wide open lovers, and then thought about the way those women look when they close their eyes, shake their heads hard, and squeeze out tears like hard earned, handmade juice. He thought of Brody, walked over to the window and closed the blinds one click tighter.

But then there was a third scream, wetter and louder than the others. Ben opened the front door, rolled his eyes at the goldilocks girl outside his door, and started up the stairs. Shrugged his shoulders, tucked his hair behind his ears and just barely dodged the thought of Brody. Ben started with the second story. This time, two at a time. As he approached the third floor, Ben shook Brody hard out of his head.

Caroline, smart for her age, Caroline, puffed up and excited, ran closely behind. Pause. And before Ben knew, Caroline did. She paused half way up the second stair case. Knowing she had lost the battle. And as the music stopped playing dizzily between her ears, she sunk to the step, followed the line of the hand rail with her lazy child spine, felt her size, felt the thin bones of her frame shake silently beneath the weight of her jealous. She thought of her shadow, felt the narrowness of her shoulders and saw how they matched her hips. She felt it all in her stomach, in her stomach, where she folded in the middle like lawn furniture. Sitting there, with the stones of the outside stairs digging deep into the soft skin that peeped out behind the corner of short shorts, she thought of her mother. Imagined the woman’s eyebrows cinch together and her forehead roll up, saw how angry her mother got when she complained of the third floor overnight guests, of the brunette chippy with the impossible body and the horrible way she parked her car. Caroline thought of her mother.

And as the brown haired woman who is forever categorized in the exact way she has to not be, screams and screams in her towel wrapped nakedness, Ben walks through the ajar door. And although Ben, is the kind of man who runs opening through his head several times before approaching, and although, he had genuinely thought, at least on those last few steps, that he could be charming, he says nothing. He quietly and uneventfully slips into Myra’s complicated scene. He quickly and swiftly eradicates the surface source of her screaming, coaxes the ferret from behind the refrigerator, and even, consequently, returns it to the girl child crushed on the outside stair case, but Myra still stands there crying. She is no longer screaming and when he walked outside, she managed to put on both a shirt and pants, but she is not right. And neither is Ben. But Ben thinks, as he stares at her, slightly confused, oddly distanced from women already, that she looks breathtaking, still wet from an afternoon shower, and Ben thinks, as he stares at her, that maybe waking up as Brody isn’t as bad as he may have thought. Because maybe Brody, just maybe Brody, enjoys his boxers one size too small.

A few hours after the ferret returns home, after Ben’s membrane moment, after Myra’s hair is towel dried, after the two of them have taken a purposeful moment to laugh off the ridiculousness of a bizarre weekday, Caroline, who’s already beginning to forget Ben’s too long hair, gets tucked in by a mother who doesn’t mean to be bitter. She gets kissed sweetly, as Care Bear, and not as Caroline, by a woman who would be a lot sweeter and could cut bangs a lot better if she didn’t work two jobs. And an hour after that, the ladies who play poker think about the men they’ve loved and lost, call children and then grandchildren, slip out of their eye glasses and into their comforters. Brody wages on for perhaps twenty minutes more. He stretches, he thinks of the daughters he’ll see on the weekend and slips cheerfully into the center of his own bed. And while the lights turn slowly off throughout the tangerine toned complex, and the blue toned bulbs in the swimming pool begin to sparkle in the darkness that is late evening, Ben is still at Myra’s apartment.

But they don’t kiss that evening. They don’t kiss for many evenings. They know, better than most, that a majority of relationships fail, that most kisses will lead to not kissing. That holding hands will one day lead to empty pockets and divided book cases, so they take their time, they push their foreheads together hard and breath in through their noses. They take those minutes to taste not tasting and even wrestle back and forth about not wrestling. And they think for a minute how awful, and how wonderful it is to not. And it’s not that they’re not willing to, not even that they aren’t prepared to rip their homes apart and move each other in just to move each other out, but for now they’re taking their time. Slowly appreciating these minutes, they days that can hopefully stretch on for weeks where no one fights and voices won’t be raised—where it’ll be about finding out one another’s eating and sleeping habits rather than the power of their emotive right hook. They take their time and they breathe in deeply.

Statement of Purpose. Take One.

“Let us go then, you and I” crackles T.S. Eliot in his particularly deep, unhurried manner. And I follow. I follow directly up to the love song he has generously “spread out like a patient etherized upon a table” for me and within moments, I am crawling up alongside him into the corners of an ever changing masterpiece, a poem that opens my eyes like none other, that leaves me spinning in place for hours. And even as a young girl, I felt this way. As a girl who bought the record for the fun of it, for the fun of owning a rare piece of memorabilia, I saw each raspy word, each cigarette burn of recording breathtakingly exciting. I felt exhilarated by the invitation of his opening line, felt as if Eliot’s eager fist was grasping out to me from the sea of black tar vinyl, hungry to drag my mind across the generational gap that separated his from mine. I could hear hunger as the poem searched, line by line, for a pair of willing ears. And was more than honored to answer the call, impatiently ready to dive deeper into poem after poem; eager to get lost in its dissection, lost to the point of no return, or more accurately: to the point where it becomes impossible to return to the surface unaffected. And that’s where I would pause the record, catch my breath, repeat the words, write it down, sink into my own thoughts, and then struggle my way out, attempt to wiggle my way into another perspective and then listen to it from the beginning. I would read along with the recording, read it with my own set of eyes and then read it again with his. And I would fall in love with literature letter by letter.

Looking back, now with the proverbial “bottoms of my trousers rolled,” it is obvious that those were the evenings, those spent at home repeatedly listening to the first track of T.S. Eliot Reading Poems and Choruses, where I first fell in love with literature. It’s where I first learned the art of exploring a poem, first learned how beautifully one syllable could fit with another and how those syllables, finally united, could blend into sentences that arrested a power so strong it could unite generations. It was on those nights, nights spent walking the “half deserted streets” of poetry that I first fell in love with American literature, with America, with the American story and the American people. I became fascinated by the soundtrack these artists had taken it upon themselves to create; they had supplied a generation of quiet suffering with its long awaited voice and I had nothing but a desire to sit and listen to it unfold on the page. A desire that still strangely consumes me, because like the art, my love for it is timeless, I found it magical in youth, mystical in school, found it beyond me several times, but have always found it standing right beside me when in need. In 8 minutes and 32 seconds, I hear volumes, I see places I’ve never seen, faces that can’t be imagined, and it is that voice, a voice that in such simple elegance can capture catalogues of photographs with a single omitted word that I find myself begging to study. I want to commit my life to studying the art of the lost generation and if given the opportunity to read the greatest generation of American prose and poetry with your esteemed staff of professors, I would consider myself beyond blessed. At this point, after proudly accomplishing all that I did with my undergraduate coursework, with a short but exciting tour of life outside of academia, I am starving to return to an arena where I can meet with colleagues who also feel the magic that lies bound between two hard covers of leather. I am forever in awe of art, of literature’s ability to insight chaos or ignite change and I find myself inspired daily by the magnitude not only writers, but of readers and desire nothing more than the opportunity to study at xx university.

Many years ago, on nights spent at home with T.S. Eliot on vinyl that I first decided to dedicate my life to reading, teaching, appreciating, critiquing and spreading literature in every facet I could possibly imagine. It was those nights I decided to become the woman who would come and go, talking of Eliot, Pound, Hemingway, and Stein. But today is the day I ask to pursue that dream. Please allow me to do so.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Inspired by Raymond Carver:

Melanie was talking. Melanie had only recently become Mel. And I hadn’t adjusted yet. Lots of things hadn't adjusted yet. Like in that odd time of summer where children's dirty hands sweat and people sleep out on their balconies because it’s too hot to sleep between sheets. Mel McGinnis. The girl who makes too many people too hot to sleep. The part-time poet. The full-time drunk who rolls her own smokes. She was a born beauty queen who knew it, but pretended to resent it. Raised in the burbs of Jersey right next door to me but had imported a mouth from cable TV that was dirty like a West Coast sailor. And when the rest of us joined girl scouts or the drama club, worked with the 4H and dreamed of a ranch style home like our parents’, Mel pledged allegiance to New York and longed for Los Angeles. She was that girl. The first to have her period. The first to have breasts. That bone-thin girl with too pretty of a face. That dark, dark, eyed girl with thick, matted lashes and brown hair that shamelessly hung down her back. But of all the things she once was, or even still struggled to be, she had now been reduced to playing the role of mourning girlfriend. The sad, desperate, still painfully bone thin girlfriend of the late Patrick Foley. And some of the time, most of the time, it gave her the right. The right to break into melodramatics and beg us to cross the Schuyllkill. The right to convince us to leave Jersey, to abandon all of it: swimming pools, double car garages, good morning pancakes and good evening parents. And we did. We exchanged it all, traded it in for a single bedroom apartment we couldn't afford and stale tobacco to fill it with. We did it because I felt committed and responsible, and because I asked Nick to join me.

The loss of Patrick gave her the right to be belligerent before noon and to break into tears before six. It gave her the right to ask us to reserve afternoon upon afternoon along with early evening to her and to drinking and to street lights and park benches.

And there we sat. Mel, with her long pendant earrings and corduroy backpack. Nick with thick eye brows and a dinner vest, always overdressed with nowhere to go. And me. The girl with freckles who used to stuff her bra.

When we had first seen that Christmas-like glow of break lights, street lamps and neon store fronts fill a park that was open and public and used past midnight, we had fallen in love. We had disowned Jersey and claimed to have found our messiah in Philly, cried that Patrick couldn’t see our Israel, and joked about building tree houses in the beautiful branches of Rittenhouse Square. But since then, I had grown weary of how the fluorescent hue highlighted Nick’s five o clock and accented the bags beneath my twenty one year old eyes. I could no longer find the romance in making love behind bushes or the fun in getting shitty while sitting in a fountain. The three of us sitting at Rittenhouse. Every night, sitting in the circle we sat in. More like light fixtures or bums, disabled veterans than artists. We would just sit locked in place by our make believe name cards, while always leaving room for a fourth.

There was a paper bag gin bottle on our make believe table that our make believe name cards sat on. A half empty bottle that for a split moment dragged me into the sepia toned memory of spinning Heinz ketchup in basements of unforgettable, seven minute love. A love that only dares to flirt with the edge of your belt and the tip of your tongue rather than the inside of your navel and the bend of your knee, the angle of your neck and the bottom of your soul. The gin kept going around. And around. And I thought about our mouths. And about our lips. We drank instead of talking and I thought about our saliva.

Gin dribbled down Mel’s chin as she coughed and Nick and I looked at each other. He scooted closer to me and each of us settled in to the roles we played nightly.

“I love you, I love you. You bitch, I love you.” Mel was speaking to me.

There was never a definitive pro noun used, there needed to be one. It was me she was speaking to. I had been hearing that a lot lately or at least versions of it.

“I love you so much I want to kill you sometimes.”

“Or kill myself.” Which was a threat that felt far worse to hear.

Whenever Nick would ask me for an explanation, I kept my mouth shut. She loved me. That part was most definitely true. She was my sister, the only thing besides Nick, and an old jean jacket I had left of home. And I was a bitch. That part was also most definitely true. I deserved that and she deserved the vindication of calling me one. Sometimes I felt like we had discussed it though, flushed it out, drained it of its mystery and misery, shared it, tried it on and walked a few miles. Like we had sat down and talked about that night and the reasons behind it and the real reason she was so angry still or confused or whatever she was. I felt like we had discussed it, but with our mouths closed, like I had sat her down and told her all of the sordid details and had finally explained why I felt tied to her now more than ever. And we had determined why I was a bitch and why she should call me one. But in all truth, we had never had that talk, and yet, when she sat there, with Indian style legs and Indian style cheek bones, and those dark, dark, eyes, I could have sworn she knew. The story was pushing right behind that word bitch, it was tangled around the final “ch,” that strong accent that thrashed up against her two front teeth.

“Nicky, What should I do with a love like this?” She swayed to an impossible tune of music that did not exist. She stared straight at me while speaking to him. Her lips were perpetually chapped and she bit into the lower one while she waited for an answer she knew she wouldn’t receive.

It wasn’t Nicky’s style to interrupt a rant or more importantly, it wasn’t his style to challenge either her or me. Which was one of the reasons Nick was still here. And if you had asked Nick, beautiful blonde Nick, whose beard never grew in fully, whose hair was especially soft at the nape of his neck, who blushed easily. Whose hands were a little too small and wore pants that hit before the neck of his shoes, well then Nick would tell you that he was in Philadelphia because he had met a girl once who stuffed her bra all through grade school and had shockingly grown into the girl of his dreams. This is the story he would tell you. He would tell you that his best friend had died in a tragic car accident the year he graduated high school and nothing since his death, other than making love to his girl, felt right. That’s how Nick would tell you the story.

“I’m the wrong person to ask, Mel.”

That was Nick’s attack. Like they both lived the same kind of love story, like they agreed that I was a crazy bitch who broke them both. Which was true. Which was viciously and completely true. Nick, or Nick Knack, or Nicky, my love, when I needed something, Nick-Knack-Paddy-Whack, give me a damn bone, or St. Nick, as Patrick sometimes called him—Nick, regardless of the nickname, was of the kick-me-so-I’ll-know-you-love-me school.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

I pushed him off my knee like the puppy he pretended to be.

He was a romantic, a hopeful one, a quality that made me nauseous and blissful, anxious, and tired, and giddy, and bashful, made me simultaneously love him and hate him.

“Neither of you know anything about love.”

And suddenly I was the drunk one.

They knew nothing of the love I was talking about. A love that had nothing to do with trying to kill people, but a love that at the end of the day, played a powerful part of the death of so many things.

And I choked out loud, shook my hands out, and drowned the last sip of gin, chased it with a handful of pretzels and decided to stand up. Because if I didn’t stand up and leave right then and there, then that was going to be the night we discussed it. And if that night was going to become the night that we talked about the night of all nights then that would be the last night I’d probably speak to either of them. And it would become the second most defining night of my young, now tragic life. It would end up ranking right up besides that last night, the night that was equal parts beautiful, equal parts heinous, that last night that I noticed that Patrick smelt like cream soda and Irish Spring. And I didn’t want to tell that story, the story of Patrick’s last night alive. Didn’t want to tell it to a lightheaded audience in shitty lighting, in a shitty park I had grown tired of. It was not the time. Not the place. Not for Patrick.

Mel turned the Styrofoam cup she always drank her liquor out of over. She spilled it out on to the grass.

“Gin’s gone and you’re just gonna walk out on us. I don’t think so, pretty, pretty, princess. I think you owe us something.”

Her mouth was paying a certain extra attention to the hard sounds. She was narrowing her eyes, struggling to sound intense, when the intention was already coming across loud and clear.

I could hear my heart beating in my eyes. And Nick, like a bad visioned little girl in the outfield, stared at the ground and picked at grass. There was no need for him to speak, Mel was did it for him. Mel was speaking for each of us. She was the only one pushing for momentum, while the world slowed to a halt. While the leaves stopped their rustling and the wheels stopped their turning, I watched each frozen drop of gin drop from the edge of her discarded glass, and she kept going.

“Tell him and tell me. Tell us, big sister. Tell us.”

She almost seemed to be enjoying it-- A thought that frightened me, flustered me, and as the skin tightened across my knuckles, I grabbed for straws, for only the edges of thoughts, at neuron misfires, at the fly away threads of old sweaters.

“I could eat something. I most definitely could go eat something. Yeah? Maye we’ll just go eat. Forget anything happened at all. We must just be hungry.”

I was stranded in quick sand, I was freezing, I was sweating. There went my footing. There went my life, my everything, my past, my last excuse and final attempt to turn around and avoid this moment.

“Well you’d like that wouldn’t you? I want to hear it. I want to hear it from that mouth of yours. Tell us how you fucked him that night. Tell Nick, especially Nick, how you got to be Patrick’s last fuck.”

“Shame on you, Mel.”

I began to cry, for my first time since that last time. I had cried a lot that last time and I cried a lot this time. I had cried when Patrick had knocked on my door unexpectedly and told me he was running away to New York. I was crying only a little bit when I asked about Mel. And the tears dried up a little when we sat down and discussed how he would leave her and why. And when he cried and said he was positive he didn't love her anymore, unsure if he ever did, I was foolish and overly honest. I told him that I’d always loved him, that I was positive enough for the both of us. I told him I'd go to New York in a heartbeat. I told him that even when he was covered in childish acne, I found him beautiful. I told him that I loved it when he shaved, loved it when he didn’t. Loved it when he had lost all that weight sophomore year, even more before he had. I told him that I had always loved him, that I always would. And when he asked to come inside me, I cried and I cried again when he left my house. And most certainly once again when Mel had called only an hour later worried and scared because Patrick had told her he was heading over to meet her at the coffee shop and that she didn’t know where he was or why he hadn’t arrived yet. And then I cried for the last time when Patrick’s brother told Mel first, then Nick and then finally me.

And as I was about to regain my final strand of dignity by allowing her hateful, ignorant statement, ignorant because what Patrick and I had shared was not fucking, to linger in the air untouched, she interrupted my moment with words that stung like mascara pooling in my eyes, like hunger pangs after midnight, like knowing that I was the tenth, fifteenth, or even twentieth person to find out that the love of my life died while remnants of him were still inside me.

“Did you know that? When he left your house? Did you know he was going to drive over to see me? To make up with me? To kiss me with the mouth he probably kissed you with? Had he told you that? Told you that he had tears in his eyes when he apologized?”

I could suddenly hear everyone’s heart beating. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the park went dark.