Unwritten ROARS never get heard

excuse_me___ @ 2004-07-22T16:46:00

2004-07-22T20:43:48Z

you don't miss the person, you miss their presence &about five million other topics that came before.
----
like honey,
the alcohol works its way
to her belly. with trembling
hands, she collects the phone
&curls on the couch.
her fingers pulse along the same
seven familiar numbers,
&her breath bates for the chance
of hearing his warm voice. there is nothing but
the empty ring tone. still, words slip from her tongue
and catch along the key with the pound sign.

i just--
i wanted you to know
i remember
the time we walked for ice cream
and i pushed you in the wheelchair.
remember, you pretended your legs were broken
just to see the funny looks from older ladies
when you rose from the chair
like it was nothing strange.
i remember your crazy stories and the way you always
lied. you wanted to burn away your fingertips to find
a new identity, and i always worried so much for you
when you said winter was a season
for sadness.
i thought maybe then our tangled webs would enclose us
like a tiny cocoon
but destiny walked, instead,
to the vending machine
for a diet coke.

you always said
you had better things to do
than spend time with me
while we ate pancakes at the dollar buffet.
we sat on your couch
eating cupcakes i had baked--my attempt to
wiggle
into the cold of your crumbling apricot heart,
and you asked, with a sly grin, what time it was that i was leaving.

but i'll never forget the warmth from your sleeve
pressed into my arm
or the glow of your smile and bright chocolate eyes
at the one thing i ever said that was funny.
you were always the orange-pink of a sunset,
the aching beat of my heart when you were too afraid to hold me.
every time i left you, i always wept
but i was glad for the tears,
glad to feel anything for you.
my heart aches for you--
for being fourteen and struck with love--
but with you, i was always blue.

&i just wanted to tell you
that maybe i won't always dream
the scent of your house--that maybe you won't always
be the first--that maybe i will forget the ice cream flavor (moose tracks),
the days i visited you (always wednesday and sunday),
&the person that you were--
but i will never forget
the way you made me feel
every second that i knew you.

(i'm back)

2004-07-08T09:21:51Z

Fingertips drum against a restaurant's table, just a few feet away. He's staring out the window, but somewhere between the murmur of voices and the clink of ice on glass, he hears it.

He imagines that it's her, even though she left a month ago, and even though two days ago she called him from a hotel in Paris.

"Hello?"

"It's me."

He let the receiver brush his lips as if he could taste hers on it, five thousand miles away. Neither of them said a word, and in the silence he swore he heard her fingers tapping. He wanted to ask her if life there was like the movies she watched, but by the time he thought of it, either he or she had already hung up the phone.

--

The rhythm of fingernails on tabletops is the anthem of the restless. It was her anthem, her fingers and a hard surface the only instruments, drumming incessantly until she was travelling, or until she was intently reading the subtitles of a foreign film.

The sound of one hand tapping rises above classic restaurant clatter, and he wonders who here is restless. Maybe there is something like an army of tapping fingers that he just can't hear. Maybe if everything else in the world stopped, he would hear them marching toward some foreign place, any place other than where they are now.

Four weeks ago, she was leaning out the window of their apartment, her eyes to the crescent moon.

"It's morning on the other side of the world," she whispered, as he crept up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. He rested his chin on her shoulder, listening to the sound of her fingers against the windowsill.

"I quit my job," she said. "I gave my two week's notice two weeks ago."

It's still the same sky whether it's light or dark, he could have said, but he knew it wouldn't have mattered.

The next afternoon, before she returned from her last day at work, he withdrew more than half of the money from his savings account, and left it on her pillow with a note. He left her empty suitcases open and arranged carefully by the bed. When everything was ready, he opened a bottle of wine and proceeded to drink himself into unconsciousness. The last thing he remembered was raising a lonely toast to her and her health and whatever it was that she was looking for.

Before he opened his eyes the next morning, he knew the suitcases, the money, and the note were gone. Hope this will at least get you halfway around the world, he had written.

He mentioned nothing about her coming back, because he's not sure what restless people do when they realize that everything is under the same sky.

The entire restaurant seems to crescendo now, and the drumming fingers are lost in a chorus of voices and ice on glass. He is still staring out the window, at a sky that is light on another side of the world.

excuse_me___ @ 2004-07-06T22:37:00

2004-07-07T02:47:20Z

Fingertips lightly jump across keys, spreading messages of love and peace throughout the world, long, sparkley threads across the huge web.

The same fingertips he kissed, he loved.

The same fingertips that scratched and clawed, that felt trapped and killed for an escape from the freaking ordinary.

The same fingertips that wrote the note, the note containing eloquent phrases that caused heartbreak and pain, and eventually the death of the blue-haired neighbor.

The same fingertips that know not what to do, know not how to stop pain yet try so hard to give everything to anyone..
That failed once again.

excuse_me___ @ 2004-07-07T01:43:00

2004-07-07T00:47:17Z

Fingertips

Her fingers are ink-stained, blackness buried in the whorls and grooves of her fingertips as though it is leaking out of her rather than trying to get in. She imagines drowning in ink, floating in a dark that swallows you up. You wouldn't sink to the bottom, you'd be eaten alive instead, ink crawling inside you until you vanished into thin air.

fingertips

2004-07-05T21:41:15Z

Harsh winter falls
away with swollen berries.
My winter-worn tongue gray
with waiting,
dull with no color all
winter long.
Small deep-red watermelon berries
full of blue sky
and all the unfathomable
flavor of spring,
tart green gooseberries and
peach-colored cloud berries
in the fall,
wild blueberries on my chin,
the blush of cranberries high in their bushes.

Stop alongside
the canyon's edge,
lose my fingers in the tangles
of the wild strawberry patch,
my hands deep in
thorny rose hips and raspberries.
Knots of swollen berries
sticking to my stained palms.

August spent
filling empty milk cartons,
canning and preserving
the syrups, jams and jellies
that would sustain us
through another pale December.

~Jewel

excuse_me___ @ 2004-07-03T10:22:00

2004-07-03T14:25:06Z

Fingertips brush against my forehead. I'm brushing my hair out of my face to see the sunlight. You're cold now, and my euphoria gets lost underneath your sadness. I would kiss you if I knew you were open to sexual advances. Here now, don't give me that look. You know as well as I do you're angry more at yourself than at me. You must be for I cannot place blame on myself, anymore. I have no one to dance to, now.

New topic

2004-07-03T00:56:09Z

As of 07.02.04

Fingertips.

Happy Fourth of July guys!