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.....

#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?

#021714: The Other Side of the Tracks

It's midnight Saturday night on the Brooklyn bound A train platform at West 4th Street. I'd just left a birthday dinner for a friend. It's cold as a witch's tit in a cast iron bra outside and being on the platform only offers brief solace from the bitter, biting cold. As I walked up to a spot I deemed safe enough to wait for the train to take me to my second job, I saw him. Lanky and passably attractive at a distance, but up close, not so much.

"I was telling him about our amazing date."  The woman on the uptown bound platform yelled to him across the tracks. First, he chuckled, then it seemed that somehow, her discussing their date with a stranger invited a pantomimed conversation with him.  Initially, his performance led me to believe that he was autistic.  The whole exchange felt like a missing scene from The Other Sister.