my back pages

glassy. like my eyes when I bolted to the mirror this morning, panicked through brushing my teeth and when I put my contacts in, could see the light glance right off my irises back into the mirror. morning light shining on my eyes like they weren’t eyes but mirrors too. seeing them with a frame now, light coat of mascara, they are liquid-like steel pools that differ and invert all light, like prisms that make rainbows. surrounded by black rushes and willow plants. and that’s what the world looks like right now, like rainbows that have reflected off of all surfaces, but I am hazy, taking them in from behind the glass. 

if I could pick up all of the lightbulbs in the world - walking out over Lake Michigan and placing them one by one pointed at the sky, watch them light up the water underneath them, each a small circumference of warm light and shadow. if I could pick up all of the lightbulbs in the world I’d fasten them into every outlet in your office at the University and help you grade your papers. 

when I was little I would have done it for you, I would have got down on my little knees and crawled around picking up lightbulbs that had fallen out of trash bins in the street, that were lost in a basement storage unit, I would climb up on furniture and reach my little hands and unscrew the lightbulb from the ceiling fans. 

I would have put them all in your room by your bed, so that you would always have enough light to trim your hangnails or read a book at night. 

I want to pick up all of the lightbulbs in the world, I want to hang a flagpole over your head and attach them all and light you up day and night -

I want you to have enough light. I want you to have enough light so that you will be happy and warm and bright. I want you to have enough light so that someday when I walk by you after years of never saying a word to each other you will see me and you will know who I am. 

My eyes are a little droopy but I don’t want to go to bed. 

I am caught up with the paleness of the skin on my legs, I am caught up with hearing sharp fresh words roll over and rebound in my head. 

people are simple, people are easy to understand. You can watch a whole parade of them go by as clearly as you can sometimes see yourself if you try. you can watch them glance ahead as others around them slip and fall but nobody ever learns a damn thing, you know.

we as individuals have become so accustomed to being betrayed and abandoned and mistreated that I wonder if it’s our own fault that we’ve let it get this far. 

you are young, they said, you are wise but be careful, they said, be careful with your heart they said - oh they didn’t know how uncareful I was, how I went around with my heart out on a javelin in front of me pieces of it falling to the ground trampled under my bare feet in the grass -

what a mistake! mistakes are meant to be made unwisely, are meant to be made knowingly, eagerly, earnestly, they are meant to be made in dark rooms and they are meant to be made in front of crowds. mistakes are meant to be made in the beginning of summer when the heat gets to your head and the sun starts to melt your winter heart!

I wonder what it was like for you to watch me turn inside out, you didn’t even shed a tear - I bet you kept it all inside didn’t you, I bet you’re dying now a little bit at a time, it must have been so hard for you, it must be hard for you now to listen to my words bite. 

you’re kind of a dragon, hidden away in your cave way up there and sometimes you look down and blow smoke in my eyes. I’ve forgotten what you were like, what it was to be glad just to miss you until you came home and put down your bags and took off your coat.

god, I bet it was real hard for you. it was real hard for you, wasn’t it, to stand there and not flinch and not say a single word as I just melted into the carpet at your feet 

I’m reading a book, I’m writing a novel, I’m brushing up, on learning the art of leaving and never being found - it’s harder than it looks, the whole wide world with its eyes on you, or at least you’re pretty sure the sun can see you, that’s why I prefer clouds. 

I prefer clouds and long fat sweaters and fingerless mittens, the facts therefore lead me to believe that I might enjoy never being seen. 

Looking back now I would rather have never been seen, never been in a dim room with a light peaking out to shine in my eyes, a little blinding, never watched that bright eye open at me through the darkness after we had clutched at each other and kept them closed for so long - I would rather the night had never ended, that I had never deftly exhaustedly nervously pulled on a shirt and walked out the door with you, I would rather we had never been seen -

I’m afraid to turn around. I’m afraid to look behind me and watch myself be seen, to relive again those moments of being discovered and condemned -

someday when I learn the art of leaving and never being found, I will write you a dozen letters that you will never read, I will keep them in the corner of the last page of my novel and one day I will stand on a mountain and toss them to the wind and watch them get caught up as they fly away like wolves howling to the moon goodbye goodbye goodbye

new running shorts always get me motivated to train even harder. 

YES.