i post.

and 2 minutes later you text me.

hilarious you blame everyone but yourself always. hilarious. man the fuck up.

oh look who has found her way here. i am thinking of you, i always think of you, i can not stop thinking of you even when i am not thinking of you.

but my life is not about you, my life is beautiful. my life is everything i have ever wanted it to be. it is april and in a few days i will be 26. 26 and i was 19 when you draped your arm so casually around my shoulder when we walked those dark streets, the first few minutes declaring we are soul mates. soul mates should be one word not auto corrected to two words.

it would be fucking amazing to know you read this. DO YOU READ THIS? DID YOU EVER?

i am so happy, i am just so happy with where i am, i am exactly where i’ve always wanted to be. there isn’t a diamond ring on my finger, there is no child laughing somewhere, i have not cooked dinner in 4 nights although i have a fridge full of grocery’s because cereal or salami sandwiches sound so much better.

and you? ahahahahah and you. you are not my problem anymore. our matching tattoo is covered up and now it is only MY square. it’s mine just like i am mine. the hours you spend and the way you spend are not my problem, well, they were up until march 2nd when you told.. and at least you told me.

my god, how in love with you i was.

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.