the view from one of my windows. past the last row of palm tree's is the venice beach and the pacific ocean. i'm home and i feel like i never left, like nothing has changed, and early-mornings in my sea foam green bedroom are still the same. i'm finishing the last of my packing and out of the thousands of songs in my ipod, only the ones that have meant to me most seem to coming out, reminding me of so much, too much, that i sit here longing for los angeles. for a clean slate, for empty walls, for the chance to pick-and-choose who i want to become. i've learned so much the last five years of being back, the last six years of being with you, that it would be impossible to not completely turn my life around. i can't believe my luck- this job i want, the apartment that i swear was built in 1926 with me in mind. the hunger in me is subsiding, you know? seeing you, laying there with you, kissing you, looking at the corner of your bedroom and wondering how many accumulated hours of my life i have spent doing all those things, that's when i asked you about our matching square tattoo's. what i didn't say is this: we will always have that square together, and a little piece of me will always be with you and for you, but beyond that is me, all of me and only me, and i will always leave it empty and blank, for you. i guess there was more, but i was higher than any kite i have ever seen and no matter how much i blinked and breathed and opened up all my senses too you, i still wasn't high enough. not high enough for leaving, for seeing you for who you really are, us for who we've become, and myself for who i am and what it took for me to get here. who knows, who knows, who knows? but i had to put that distance between us, i had to give myself a world with out you and give you and world with out me. a true test, i suppose. but i am not concerned with our relationship, i am concerned with me, because at the end of the day all i will ever have is me, and i have had very little of you.

---

Slow Leak - Ellen Dore Watson

I don’t know how to wish you well.
Your hair is out of control, you are downgraded and strange.
You used to be the man who whopped open his chest,
wandered on a happy shoestring, made a nearly
perfect girl. Times we were electric.
Our talks teased out newness, mixed surprising
pigment. Our battles were not over ground
that mattered, so we walked away from them
with invisible limps, beautiful sticks
with no blood. Thinking ourselves
a perfect fit, we began to forget each other.
The way the roots of a perfect lawn watered too much
get lazy. You thought you should not
have to ask. I thought my private fizzings
and stirrings weightless, but you got sapped.
Your secret began as a scar and turned
to a decision flavored with payback.
The size of my thirst, your silence!
Between us now is the continent we didn’t
finish, and one person’s regret.
Because you have none, this is what I will never
tell you: I took too many days off
from loving you. And: I thought we could both
get larger. And: Neither of us was the right one
to unlock the other’s body. My iron lung
of a father has become soft tissue,
joshing and washing the woman not quite still
my mother—a long tack in a small, hand-made boat.
You and I were so full of beans and promise—
I’m ashamed we failed at forever.

i did it.

At Twenty-Eight - Amy Fleury

It seems I get by on more luck than sense,
not the kind brought on by knuckle to wood,
breath on dice, or pennies found in the mud.
I shimmy and slip by on pure fool chance.
At turns charmed and cursed, a girl knows romance
as coffee, red wine, and books; solitude
she counts as daylight virtue and muted
evenings, the inventory of absence.
But this is no sorry spinster story,
just the way days string together a life.
Sometimes I eat soup right out of the pan.
Sometimes I don’t care if I will marry.
I dance in my kitchen on Friday nights,
singing like only a lucky girl can.

frank o'hara always puts me in a funk. which is cool because i am in a funk, so i sought him out (.. just kidding, richard siken is my funk, not frank). tonight i realized maybe i should be worried about how much wine i consume, or why i need to consume it, or why i've done nothing but complain and hate everything around me for the last 12 days i've been here. here, chapter 5 of my life.

ANIMALS

Have you forgotten what we were like then     
when we were still first rate    
and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth            
it's no use worrying about Time    
but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves     
and turned some sharp corners           
the whole pasture looked like our meal     
we didn't need speedometers     
we could manage cocktails out of ice and water            
I wouldn't want to be faster     
or greener than now if you were with me O you     
were the best of all my days 

---

the rest of today, i do not want to talk about, i don't want to remember weeks or months or years from now when i wont understand this underlined meaning. i'll be curious, but there's nothing worth remembering here, olivia.

ps; i loved how today you said "i told you not to go to new york, and you did. i told you not to go to europe, and you did. i told you not to move to los angeles, and you did." -- do you realize, that at my age, including the rest of the states and cities and caverns, i have traveled and lived and seen more than people double my age? i have, i have, i have. i am full of fucking stories at only 25.

flipping through my bukowski books and through saved files in my computer, these two jumped out at me. balancing each other, life, and everything else out. i made the mistake of texting you last night, and i always know how things will go before they even begin.

i ran this morning, ran and ran, until my legs wanted to give out beneath me and until my lungs what to explode. but i kept on running in that one spot, watching the sweat drip down my chest, feeling the burning in my lungs, legs weakening, my heart pounding so hard it was literally shaking me. so i stopped and walked into a corner and laughed, all of it like a metaphor for the last six years of my life with you. running in one spot, running and running, and never getting anywhere; weak legs, burning lungs, pounding heart. no where.

Lovesong - Ted Huges

He loved her and she loved him.
His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to
He had no other appetite
She bit him she gnawed him she sucked
She wanted him complete inside her
Safe and sure forever and ever
Their little cries fluttered into the curtains

Her eyes wanted nothing to get away
Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows
He gripped her hard so that life
Should not drag her from that moment
He wanted all future to cease
He wanted to topple with his arms round her
Off that moment’s brink and into nothing
Or everlasting or whatever there was

Her embrace was an immense press
To print him into her bones
His smiles were the garrets of a fairy palace
Where the real world would never come
Her smiles were spider bites
So he would lie still till she felt hungry
His words were occupying armies
Her laughs were an assassin’s attempts
His looks were bullets daggers of revenge
His glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets
His whispers were whips and jackboots
Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing
His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway
Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks
And their deep cries crawled over the floors
Like an animal dragging a great trap
His promises were the surgeon’s gag
Her promises took the top off his skull
She would get a brooch made of it
His vows pulled out all her sinews
He showed her how to make a love-knot
Her vows put his eyes in formalin
At the back of her secret drawer
Their screams stuck in the wall

Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves
Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop

In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs
In their dreams their brains took each other hostage

In the morning they wore each other’s face

---

Gamblers All - Charles Bukowksi

sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think,
I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside
remembering all the times you've felt that way, and
you walk to the bathroom, do your toilet, see that face
in the mirror, oh my oh my oh my, but you comb your hair anyway,
get into your street clothes, feed the cats, fetch the
newspaper of horror, place it on the coffee table, kiss your
wife goodbye, and then you are backing the car out into life itself,
like millions of others you enter the arena once more.

you are on the freeway threading through traffic now,
moving both towards something and towards nothing at all as you punch
the radio on and get Mozart, which is something, and you will somehow
get through the slow days and the busy days and the dull
days and the hateful days and the rare days, all both so delightful
and so disappointing because
we are all so alike and so different.

you find the turn-off, drive through the most dangerous
part of town, feel momentarily wonderful as Mozart works
his way into your brain and slides down along your bones and
out through your shoes.

it's been a tough fight worth fighting
as we all drive along
betting on another day.

surprise, surprise, another wine-drunk night for me. the apartment is empty and it's just me and the cats, i've finished off a whole bottle and listening to foo fighters is probably the worst decision i could be making. well, second, the first could be texting you.

do you read this? i'm assuming no, because you don't bother much when it comes to me. and just like with everything else, i am speaking to myself, the words going off into another realm you will never be able to grasp. i look like some love sick dumbass broad, when i'm not (ok, i am)- crying over a guy who is clearly incapable of being good to her- let alone himself.

you know, whatever. i'm not going to bother tonight. i straightened my hair today, it's to the middle of my boobs! then i took myself shopping: a cute new teal dress, a pair of boots, and some sexy ass black strappy heals. my body is getting thinner and thinner, it's the only part of my life that i can control now (i sound like i have an eating disorder), the lack of food and the increase of my going to the gym (in which i have no idea what i'm actually doing, other than i do it for long enough until my body feels like jello and there is actual sweat dripping down me). the scale has tipped down to 118lbs, 6lbs more and i'll be the size i was when i met you.

weeks later, i got call backs for two interviews. one is tomorrow at 315 and the other is monday at 130. it means so much to hear dad saying "bravo, baby", the way it meant when he wrapped his arm around my shoulder as i was marching out with the rest of the graduates.

you're the only one who has yet to say congratulations. that has yet to say good job. that has yet to say i'm proud of you. goddamn, i hate you. and here i am, still, for you.

writing is nice, but i'm going to get a new little "blog" spot and get myself away from you. slowly, little by little, i love you less and less.

monday rolled around and i couldn't lie to myself about wanting the job. it's hours and set schedule and traveling and health insurance and bonuses.. i couldn't do it, it's not what i wanted, not even for the 6 months duration of a lease. something in my gut is saying wait it out, there is something better coming along for you, so i did. after calling my parents and hearing their supportive ways, after sitting around crying for a while, i called and thanked them for the opportunity but that i was declining, cried some more. i promised myself i wouldn't settle anymore, so, i'm not. call it stupidity, call it bravery. more poetry because it's all i've been able to stomach for over a year now. i bet you didn't know that, did you? of course you didn't. i am not 19 anymore.

because of all of this, i'm going into the friday's downtown and accepting the transfer, i feel worthless just sitting around filling out applications, i miss making money. god, i am so tired and i haven't done much of anything in the last 8 days except drive and drive and lay at the beach. there is this hunger and void inside of me that i have never been able to fill, but i know exactly what it's for.

what's done is done. i keep writing to you like you still exist.

---

read this months before i knew i was leaving to europe, it came back to me days before while on the swing bench in the garden, holding my breath wondering who i would be after europe, and now it's made a home inside of me, constantly repeating a few of the lines to myself. i always thought people who walked around saying how much europe changed them were full of it.. and then i went and i spent four weeks alone with a notebook full of scribbles. i came back and nothing had changed except for me, i had outgrown everything, including myself. it was around that time you started taking note at how much i changed. you'll never know, because you never asked, not for a picture and not for a story. i've got so much resentment for you and so much love for who i became. so much love for who i'll become because of all this resentment for you. you've made me stand still, so incredibly still, but it's not for you.

Survival Poem # 17 - Marty McConnell

because this is what you do. get up.
blame the liquor for the heaviness. call in late
to work. go to the couch because the bed
is too empty. watch people scream about love
on Jerry Springer. count the ways
it could be worse. it could be last week
when the missing got so big
you wrote him a letter
and sent it. it could be yesterday, no work
to go to, whole day looming.
it could be last month
or the month before, when you still
thought maybe. still carried plans
around with you like talismans.
you could have kissed him last night.
could have gone home with him, given in,
cried after, softly, face to the wall, his heavy arm
around you, hand on your stomach, rubbing.
shower. remember your body. water
hotter than you can stand. sit
on the shower floor. the word
devastated ringing the tub. buildings
collapsed into themselves. ribs
caving toward the spine. recite
the strongest poem you know. a spell
against the lonely that gets you
in crowds and on three hours’ sleep.
wonder where the gods are now.
get up. because death is not
an alternative. because this is what you do.
air like soup, move. door, hallway, room.
pants, socks, shoes. sweater. coat. cold.
wish you were a bird. remember you
are not you, now. you are you
a year from now. how does that
woman walk? she is not sick or sad.
doesn’t even remember today.
has been to Europe. what song
is she humming? now. right now.
that’s it.

i'm taking that job, for all obvious reasons. i have to start somewhere and it comes as no surprise that i get no support or even a pat on the back from you. more sappy-ass poetry:


Red Meat - Staceyann Chin

I have given up meat
the way I have given up you
without enthusiasm

The flesh still pulls at me
and I am trying to refuse
because no one is ever the better
for acting against the urge of self preservation

My body is screaming
its mantra of enough is enough

We are less likely to kill each other
if we bleed in different zip codes
if we ration our intake of one another

Dying is sometimes faster
than the living
lessons have to be taught
lifetime after lifetime

some animals never learn
and so they return to the table as steak
not rare enough or over done
no one enjoys the stubborn ass of an animal
standing its ground out of habit

the time has come for us to move on
to pull something from this cycle of will contesting fate

So I am letting you go
we both know how the dried crust of our passion
pulled us this way and that
it matters not whether we were in love
or whether we often compromised with ground turkey
the jive is up
our cups are filled with new possibilities
other comic tragedies are yet to be conjured
let us push our injured carcasses toward healing
let us forsake this glut of obligatory feeling
threatening to leave us heavy and poisoned by our choices

---

eventually, eventually, eventually. this will stop, and i will stop, and we.. well, we've already stopped. i can not believe that there is no one else out there that i could love that is a great as you. and you're not even that great, it's just those handsome good looks of yours that i can't get over. ok, or the way we fit. but everything else has grown and evolved with time. and it will diminish with time as well. looking forward to it.

before leaving i had gathered myself up into the biggest sense-of-self i had ever felt, and now, only 8 days in, i've become a total stranger to myself. except i am radiating out this false confidence into the world that everyone seems to be accepting. i go to the beach daily now.. and now matter how shitty i feel, i am still one of the realest bitches around. no fake tan and no fake boobs and not a smear of make-up on me and my screeching laugh can't be heard from 3 miles away. you'd be in heaven here, i was never your type. but oh well, it all makes me love myself that much more.

it's still hot, i'm still lonely, and i'm still drinking wine. an email to my father:

hi.

i've thought and thought and thought about it...... i'm not going to be taking that job. as nice as the 9 - 5, monday - friday, traveling, and benefits sound.. it's not something i want to do, to even try, even for 6 months. i don't want to settle on the first job that comes along, i want to be excited about going to work and with this job, i don't feel it at all. there is something else better out there for me and i need to keep trying to find it. los angeles is too big of a city for me not to be able to find something else.
what do you think? i am trying to make you and mom proud of me and me at the same time, too, but i still need your advice.

daughter

ps- i found a orthodox church near by, will be going there tomorrow for mamie <3

---

there is all this bravery growing inside of me, there is no other way.

---

One Art - Elizabeth Bishop The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn't hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. --Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

it's hot and i'm lonely on a friday night. momma called and sat on the phone with me while i opened up my bottle of wine, said a little toast to me, and continued talking while i drank my first glass so i wouldn't feel as lonely as i do.

today i joined the corporate world, that monday - friday, 9-5 i wrote about a year ago, the one i'll have to eventually grow to like. i'm signing a 6 month lease on a small one bedroom apartment in the middle of downtown on monday, the kind of downtown with side walk cafe's and restaurant's where people ride their bikes past one another and wave hello.

again, i forgot i even had this, when did i start it and why, if i just keep wondering off? cleaning out documents in my computer, i found this saved on my notepad. how fitting to find these both in the same day. i haven't changed, you haven't changed, we haven't change, and the only solid evidence in that is the 533 miles i've put between us.

i ventured out this afternoon to go explore my new surroundings and came home an hour later after being lost in the maze of freeways and too much gas wasted. this isn't easy for me, the constant lump in my throat and always on the verge of tears from all the missing growing inside of me. the unknown of how i'm going to jump-start my career, my dwindling bank account. what am i doing here? i have no appetite (-4lbs) and insomnia has taken over my body, i am so goddamn lonely and this new world is so spread out, i am sitting between the desert and the blue and warm pacific ocean. i don't belong here and i don't belong to anyone and i don't know myself anymore. but i've learned to walk with my head up and my parent's daily phone calls of "you're not coming home, olivia, you're going to stay there and try no matter how much you miss", fuck.

anyway:

I'm moving in 10 days. How is that even real? How is any of this possible? Where am I going to work? How will I figure life out? Or will it figure me out?

There's this picture of me in my head, sitting on a long couch in the middle of my apartment, reading a book with my legs draped over the edge, a cat somewhere near by. The apartment is cold and it smells like Spring in a forest, but it is fall in Los Angeles and it's raining outside.

He kisses me and which ever lip his small lips don't fold over gets jealous, begs me to ask him for a second kiss. How am I going to leave him? This? The comfort? His piano fingers and ocean blue eyes? A warmth rushes through me from the bottom of my belly into my heart and all of me starts to pulsate, creating a hunger for him inside of me, or maybe it's fear.

Don't know how to begin packing my material possessions. What am I supposed to do with my ticket stubs, old letters, magazine clips, yearly planners? All these things that I'll only briefly glanced at years and years apart, to know they're there? Solid proof of my existence- the places I've seen, the air I've shared, the places I've sat, the screens I've watched. And the love letters, the dramatic letters, the apologetic letters, the gossip letters, the happy letters? I can't bring myself to read them, I open them quickly enough to glance at the name and fold them right back up. I miss so much, I want to call them all and ask who they've become and let me remember who I was when I loved them.

The words seem to finally be coming back to me. This whole year I've been stuck and mute and now I've got nothing to show for it. God, please help me find a job.

---

i'm going to text you now and let you read all of this. i don't know how to get across to you anymore. i don't know you and you don't know me and yet i still write you into all my future plans.