Flashback Friday- Ghosts

it's 1030
i've written something already today
checked in with social media "friends"
eaten a full meal AND prepped a snack
drank enough red wine that my lips and tongue are stained
i just finished unpacking my overnight bag though i've been home for 8 hours
i just finished unpacking my overnight bag 'cause a part of me wants to still be where I spent the night
but i'm not there
i'm here
i'm here in my square footage trying to ignore the ghosts that are suffocating me in the ether.
i should be asleep.
i didn't sleep much last night.

Or the night before. 

i should be asleep,
but i'm not.
i'm here and i can hear the ghosts of the arguments i've had with my past
the laments
the promises made
and broken.

The ghosts are deafeningly loud.
i haven't slept in my new bed in a week
my new bed
instead,
i've slept in the bed i shared with the man i shared a name with for more than a week 

To appease the ghosts.

I've offered my peace as a sacrificial lamb to the others who invisibly dwell in my apartment.

#ThirstyThursday: Making Out With Strangers

Some friends and I sat around chatting recently. One of the ladies I chatted called me a prude because I'd never made out with a stranger. I laughed. That has NEVER happened to me. Prudes are frigid and mean. Prudes make demands of their lovers. I'm far from cold, but I do like to think of myself as a cautious hedonist and a serial monogamist. I hate dating for sport. But I do LOVE the touch of a man I've deemed worthy of becoming mine, even if only for a little while. It's not my fault that he, whoever he may be doesn't want to remain a stranger...
There was this one time in undergrad.....

#41014 Love's Sophomore, aka Don't Fck It Up

After watching HIM walk, everything else seems sub par.
Everything else is just everything else.
He will either be my greatest love or my greatest ruin.
He who I will make legend.
He who I will make mine.
I just want to drink wine and eat decadent foods with him and fuck and drink and eat some more until we are both completely spent.
He makes me believe again.
      makes me think my happily ever after could be a tangible thing
      makes me want to spit blessings instead of heart broken curses on the page.

Am I to be the fool again?
If I am to be love's fool, at least let me be love's sophomore.
At least let me be old enough to know better and young enough not want to.
To know better than to listen to or believe any and everything I'm listening to and believing,
but I'm still here
Ignorance is bliss & I've already said how overjoyed I am to be HIS fool.

I may have said the wrong thing to the right man,

Again.
I doubt too often,
long for too much,
drink too much,
spend too much,
and love much too easily
with too little to show for it.
& now I may make another bad decision instead of spending another night alone.

May make another poor life choice for the sake of warm arms around me.
May claim another empty notch on my lipstick case to preserve pretend pride.
Taste the tongue of another in the name of licking my own wounds

Said the wrong thing again.
Now I may be sleeping solo again,
Not for lack of choice,
But because I may have made the wrong one again.
Let the wrong one affect me and fck up with the right one,
Again.
Said the wrong thing to the right man, again.
Lacked patience and been hasty.
I've heard that doing the same shit over and over and expecting different results is the definition of Insanity.
I've read this script before with different cast members, more than a few times...
Doesn't that make me batshit crazy or just a writer in desperate need of a rewrite?

#030614 No (Good) Reason to Refuse a Lover

The 1st twelve hours after refusing a lover are the hardest
whatever your reasons were seem ridiculous,
                                             seem futile...
and you worry if he'll call again
       you worry if you'll hear from him again
when you can still smell him on your skin,
even after you've bathed,
when the longing is so ripe you are sodden with lust
when touching yourself does not satisfy
no matter how many times you writhe in your bed alone
THOSE are the worst hours

#022714 In My Cups

Who's gonna take you home if it isn't me?

I was too drunk to still be out.  Too drunk to interact with strangers. He didn't feel like a stranger since we'd been talking so closely for so long. For him to hold my attention for as long as he had, he must have been able to hold his own in conversation. He certainly was pretty, but I wasn't sure if this was someone I wanted to wake up next to. There was too much 80 proof in my veins and too many nights of sleeping alone weighing on my mind... I really only wanted to feel someone's feet next to mine at the end of the bed.  Wanted to nuzzle into someone's who wanted to hold me's arms. I couldn't tell if the man I was sloppily flirting with was that person or not, but he would do. Right?

#112314 Smells Like Teen Spirit

Growing up, we were almost never away from my mother. My father's work caused him to have countless business trips, but Mommalily was almost always home with us.  When we were little, every night, she would either tuck us in our respective beds and snuggle with us until we each fell asleep, or if we'd whined and coerced enough, let the three of us pile up in her bed and fight over who got to snuggle closest to her.  That was what I knew love to be; seeing the person you loved most before you closed your eyes at night with their scent curled up in your nose. The few times Mommy did have a conference to attend, I'd stave off missing her by nuzzling with a shirt or slip of hers, trying to make it easier to bear being away from her. I didn't realize until much later in life how that coping mechanism conditioned me, how innate smells became to me and those I loved.

A few weeks ago, I was stealthily collecting clothes for some of my more less financially secure students and for some of the homeless in my neighborhood I try to help out.  I know my friends cycle through their clothes and trends faster than these kids do, so I put out an APB to homies, lovers, and friends to aid in my collection.  The Muse was always well connected, but beyond that, was always kind.  After one text conversation, he assembled a huge box of clothes and shoes when I told him about how one of my favorite students was being teased for coming to school slightly stinky and in dingy shirts; they did wear the same size after all.

#010114 I'm Back...

10 years ago began one of the rockiest decades of my life.  In the space of 60 days, I lost 2 grandparents, broke up with one of the best boyfriends I ever had for reasons that seem positively ridiculous now, and allowed all of the worries of a quarter life crisis to kick into full throttle. These stresses would strangle me nightly. I had debilitating insomnia, manic anxiety episodes, and other slightly OCD behaviors that could only be  “cured” by a high twice daily dosage of anticonvulsant/mood stabilizers, copious drinking and constant attention from would-be-lovers.  To call them suitors would have been an insult to men who actually court women. All of this took place before through low self esteem, I met, fell in love with and married the wrong person.  That (discussed ad nauseam) relationship was five-year roller-coaster whose aftermath ricocheted through my life (and finances) longer than the marriage itself. 

#051111 Recycling

I wanted to know.

I needed to know.

There is something to be said about someone who knows exactly when and how to touch you. Then again, when you've had over a decade's worth of touches, is it a testament to someone's skill or their ability to adapt to routine?

Was it availability or desire that kept us boomeranging towards each other?

It was easy to get lost in him. 

There was so little offered, I could imagine or make up the rest.

I invented a world between us and he did not protest.

He always knew just where to put his hands.

Much to my dismay,

he ALWAYS knew just where to put his hands and my well formed protest would evaporate, becoming extraterrestrial to my mind.

I tried to have all serious conversations at a distance.  Even the phone would become one of his tools of manipulation and control.

Inevitably, I'd find myself touching myself simply from feeling the gravel in his voice and remembering what it felt like with breath pouring across my neck 

as he'd beckon me

as he'd implore me

as he'd command me to do his bidding.  

Thing is, 

he never even had to say anything.

Just look at me and I would know exactly what and how we were about to do things.

In person, 

I couldn't resist him.

On the phone,

he tortured my imagination with unwilling reminisces about the countless times shared between us.

I had to find a way to talk to him without talking.

Text or email would be the only way I could fortify myself when I had something of import to say to him.

Whether he'd memorized the map of pleasure he'd inked in kisses along my body over time

or 

if he was still discovering new ways to make me pant did not matter.

This time,

I would hold strong and speak to him in a font that conveyed my seriousness.

I would stray from the flowery language he'd make me spout.

My tongue would be leaden and expository instead of made from cotton candy and metaphor.

I would not exhale poetry during this conversation.

I would not sweat verse.

If he answered correctly,

if he took the silly girl seriously, 

then we'd resume our irregular existence in the never never land we created amidst the soft fabric of high thread counts.

I wanted to know

I needed to know.

#51711 Junkie

 
he'd ruined music for me...
i was out with another. trying to enjoy myself, but really enjoying him enjoying me. across the table. i knew what his looks meant.

then a song came on and i couldn't look at this man across from me with anything other than bewilderment that he wasn't the right man.


because of my muse this one's time would be as short lived as all the others.
there was no escaping the inevitable.

i had been fated to love him even when he didn't love me.
i had been fated to think of him even when i couldn't be further from his thoughts.

other kisses were hollow in comparison
their mouths lacked the fullness of his.
their intensity never matched or surpassed mine.

they made it too easy to conquer them while he remained unnavigable.

i loved getting lost in the maze that was his mind
and signed up to do so time and time and time again.

i kept swearing him off
but like the junkie i am,
i've never kicked him...
he is my greatest vice
my favorite drug....

he ruined music for me.

me who has an eternal soundtrack for my life.
me who hears music in conversations
me who sings even without opening my mouth....

other's arms couldn't hold on strong enough.
other's embraces felt oppressive.
other's kisses tasted nasty to me.

they made it soo easy to be mean to them while he always got the best of me.

i wanted to get him out of my system,
then the chords of a song i'd forgotten would bring me right back
right back to the first time i realized i'd fallen in a well i couldn't get out of
right back to the first time he gave me goosebumps in body parts i didn't know existed.

i loved getting lost in the maze that was his heart
and signed up to do so time and time and time again.

the intricasies of his patterns
a creature of habit who confirms to none.


i kept swearing him off
but like the junkie i am,
i've never kicked him...
he is my greatest vice
my favorite drug....

i am addicted and there is no substitute for the high he gives me...
even at my worst,
i am my best for him and him alone....
i can't get him out of my system....
i've known a life without him and don't want to see those days again...
i don't wanna....