“Wait!” she exclaimed, popping her torso into an upright position and grabbing his hand. “Before you continue that thought we have to establish some roots of friendship.”
His blue eyes peeped at her beneath his thick, brindle lashes. Pink lips apart, he sat astonished at being interrupted while in the midst of such loftiness. The milk steamer on the espresso machine launched into full-on screeching, foam-making mode. Coffee patrons in the background stood straining their necks to read the myriad latte concoctions. She let go of his hand. He took a sip of his coffee. Intrigued though, he smiled and nestled back into his chair, intertwining his fingers in his lap. “Alright,” he said.
“See,” she began. “if we don’t make some kind of connection before we talk about politics, then when you say what I sense you’re going to say and I feel like punching you, I won’t. Because I’ll remember that we have a deeper connection. I want to care about you first.”
Donning a toothy grin that squinched the outer corners of his eyes handsomely, he leaned forward, smoothing his beard. ”Well,” he replied softly, looking right at her, “what do you want to know?”
‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘at what point it is advisable to admit to liking you a great deal more than I planned.’
-Leigh Standley
Sometimes I just want to see your face.
I pull up your profile. A quick click and your smile,
though it has nothing to do with me, is comforting.
Somehow it’s enough.
I think my love life is done.
My story has been written. The book is closed.
Bummer…
Does that mean I should have married I, or J, or C…? No. They are as they should be.
I am stuck. Stuck between remembering being loved. Loved.
Loved.
Loved.
Loved.
And being the object of non-reciprocal inclinations towards….
the ones my nonsensical heart picks.
For whatever reasons. For reasons I can’t explain.
I don’t even want them right now
for family picutes at Disney World.
That might never be my life.
I just need them.
“I need to use you,” I’ll say.
Just pretend for a moment that I am yours.
And let me be comforted by you.
And then we can go separate…
You have your crazy ways.
And I have mine.
Sometimes
a girl just wants to be held.
Ugh. This is when I hate being single.
Sometimes
a girl just feels exposed. Like she needs a giant rock to hide behind. Or a thick coat to wrap around her.
Shielding her from…nothing really. Just the feeling. The tricky, slippery, comes-on-for-no-reason feeling that maybe she is unsafe. That maybe things won’t be ok. That maybe this ache won’t go away. That maybe she is alone.
Sometimes
she just needs a chest to lay her head on. To close her eyes against and feel safe inside of…
Arms. Tight, soothing away that ache. That’s all. Just a few minutes. Doesn’t even have to be a boyfriend.
Sometimes
I just want to ask strangers. Men I don’t know. Or even ones I do. “Could you just hold me for a few minutes?”
It could be their kind deed of the day. Like walking an elderly person across the street. Or picking up something that someone dropped. An act of compassion. A humanitarian effort.
Sometimes.
I went to church this morning for the first time in a long time.
This is nothing monumental. It just means I chose something good, rather than something selfish. Everyone has their reasons for not going to church. Mine were two parts laziness. One part frustration. I’ve grown up in church. Various churches, in fact. I’ve had good experiences and bad ones. This is nothing new.
The hill I got tired of attempting to climb was the same hill I encountered during high school. The hill of popularity and coolness. Usually I’d climb that hill and end up on a train back down it. A swift retreat from all of the crap, that may or may not be just in my head. I realize that I am a sensitive person. But it really ticks me off.
Nevertheless. I’ve just come to conclude that I am a bonehead for not having gone to church. I have missed listening to the Word being taught. And singing collectively to the God who has given me more than I can even realize at this moment.
And the very message I need to hear is that I am loved for who I am. And that is the very message of the God who gave up so much for me.
And people are either friendly or fake. And that is life. They are not one or the other all the time. And neither am I. That is being human. But it’s still a struggle of mine.
Some people are friendly / but they’ll never be your friend / Sometimes this has bent me to the ground… -Rich Mullins
At least I’m not alone in my thoughts…
The point is though, and it’s the point whether or not you go to church. The point is that there was a man who was born on this planet about 2000 years ago. And history tells me that he said some pretty radical things. But I don’t know that I would have been one who was moved by his radical claims.
I’ve known since I was a little girl, broken at a young age, who Jesus of Nazareth is. He is the dream I wanted to wake up to every day. He is the one who never tires of my personality, because he made me this way. He is the lover of the not-so-stable, not-so-cool, not-so-’with it’ people. Who struggle. And feel ashamed. And desperately, desperately want to be loved anyway.
I wouldn’t have been the one on the side of the crowd, listening to him teach people. I would have been the one to run screaming to him. I would have been like Lazarus’s sister who was so full of grief that she took off for him. And who he caught as she fell at his feet sobbing. And he would call me sweetheart.
Because He Knows My Heart I am Never Alone
I’ve got it in me at thirty-two
to be reminded You don’t change.
If I’d been there long ago
in some Jewish town
I’d have made my move.
Nosing my way
Through the multitude,
slick minnow jerks separating cloaks.
Their dusty thickness blocking out the sun.
I am not outwardly lame
or blind
or bleeding
but I belong there.
Years of not being heard
stretching out my throat.
You heal.
New beginnings. New beginnings. New beginnings.
I’m not sure.
I have looked super close.
And I really can’t tell what the point in eye cream is.
When I blink, they are still there. The little sand dune ripples of thirty-almost-two years of forgetting to apply adequate sunblock. I guess I should have begun reading Vogue as a preschooler.
It wouldn’t have mattered.
I get up early. Enjoying the crisp smell of ice dew and birds chirping and sun lifting itself just barely over the trees. And I imagine I’m in New York. I always do this.
Whoever ends up loving me will have to love these eyes now. As opposed to say…realizing that my once taut skin has begun it’s decent, giving me character. Making me beautiful.
He’ll say, “I’ve loved those eyes that I met in their thirties.” And I’ll smile, proving his point.
Isn’t it wonderful to have Fall arrive? Thin cotton long sleeve shirts. Hoodies. pajamas. Smiling for no reason because the cool snap electricity beckons you to feel alive!!!!!!!!
I’m so grateful. Me and my eyecream. And spf 15 daytime face lotion. To look pretty for you. And you.
And walking in the morning. Frozen dew on the red berry bushes. Feeling jazzed.
Dear Mr. Tarantino,
Upon seeing your movie “Inglorious Basterds” three times now, I feel compelled to express my deep gratitude to you for having written it.
Art is sometimes for those who are broken enough to be healed by it. And I’ve sat through many World War II movies and done my share of nursing the pain of the realities portrayed. Particularly, and it all started, when I was in the fifth grade and we had to watch the movie “The Hiding Place.” The movie itself is about Nazi occupied Holland and the bravery, faith and omniscience of God in regard to one family in particular. But this wasn’t my problem. My problem was that in my little suburban world I didn’t know that there were or had been places in history where men armed and steel cut could come into your home and take your family to their slaughter. I am the oldest sibling of three. And I became paralyzed with fear at night from the images of atrocity I witnessed and the reality that it once was and why would it not be again…? My parents, my little brother, my baby sister… It was my initiation into the horrors possible in the world of humans!
I have since grown up. While I no longer lie paralyzed at night, I do remember that feeling. I am still horrified at the notion that Hitler rose to such power and it is my secret fear that something similar could happen again.
That’s where you come in.
As I said before, art is sometimes (and often) for those who are broken enough to be healed by it. And this is what “Inglorious Basterds” did for me. It healed me a little. From that trauma that began in the fifth grade. While I know the possibilities of such extremism are still real, and I do believe in a good God for the record, for the time being your movie has eased the sting of panic. Just being able to see the good guys actually killing Hilter…blowing his face off…to be more exact, was so gratifying. And for that I am thankful. Life is often so tragic and I’m pretty sure that’s why we have art. Purposeful art does have powerful possibilities.
Your movie is beautiful and heart-breaking and hilarious and suspenseful and satisfying and heart-breaking and hilarious all over again. The narrative alone is wonderful! Each time I’ve seen it I’ve appreciated the dialogue more and more! It is my favorite fairy tale of all time now. Forget Cinderella. Forget the dwarfs. I’d rather….much rather be a Basterd.
Thank you again.
Sincerely,
Faith
I spent the rest of the evening being sad.
It’s comical really. How a person’s feelings can dictate her mood, her actions, the positions of the corners of her mouth. How in her mind, she knows that feelings are misleading. Or are they?
This is exactly where she didn’t want to be.
There is nothing wrong. There is just nothing.
Maybe I just go about things the wrong way. Think too much. Get carried away. As much as I’d like to think I’m not a romantic. I know I am. Deeply. Perhaps too swiftly. But I don’t think that’s entirely irrational.
There is nothing wrong. There is just nothing.
It does take a long time to learn someone. But there is positive and there is negative and there is neutral.
There is nothing wrong. There is just nothing.
I feel, in my gut, there should be more.
So I guess that leaves me with neutral. And that isn’t deeply, swiftly, wanting to move towards …positive.
There is nothing wrong. There is just nothing.
And the rest of the evening spent in that old familiar heartache.
Texas summers mean sleeping in cotton briefs and a see-through nightshirt, positioning yourself so the oscillating fan brushes over all your exposed skin with it’s soothing coolness.
It can’t be explained. (Not now anyway.)
Why some things happen. Or fail to happen correctly (with poise and decorum and cleanliness). Assuredly, these things happen to people, or don’t happen correctly, all over the world and if there could be a reality show with back to back comedic mis-happenings of varying degrees and proportions involving jungles and cities and mountains and remote wooden dimly-lit bathrooms in Yemen…I’d watch it non-stop.
Instead I’m busy surviving my own contribution. Are you laughing yet?
You might be.
When I unfold the happenings of one sixty minute period of avoiding, or trying to, the great green slime bucket from dumping its regurgitations upon my unsuspecting head. Can you see it tipping? You never know apparently.
She pulled lightly on the white shower curtain and wiped the overflow of water from her face. The day was over, everything in it’s place for the night and she, newly washed and smelling flowery, reached for the white bath towel that hung on the towel rack adjacent to the shower. White, with little bits of pink floral, was her luxury. At the end of the day, swathed in peony, rose, pink, lavender; swirling in perfumed whisps, she could finally relax and sink into the gentle plumes of pillowtop bliss that carried her off to dreams and beauty sleep.
(Ha.)
Opening the towel, ready to bury her face in its soft fabric, she spotted some rather disturbing markings. Strange and yet defined by pattern, unmistakeable to some species, though not of her genus, she wrinkled her floral-scented brow in wonderment. Black and round. As if someone had taken a Sharpie and dabbed its tip into the towel making a somewhat irregular circular pattern.
“What the….?” Her thoughts trailed. Nye a half second later her questioning was interrupted by the synapse that relays to the brain varying degrees of shock and awe, in this case and on a scale from one to ten (ten being the most frightening), an exact ten. I think her scream was delayed by half a second as it took a moment to register into her consciousness what exactly was unfolding, or should I say scurrying, in front of (in approximate relation to) her.
Gargantuan, in her estimation, was the word used in later re-telling of this tale. Something from that cafe in “Star Wars IV” was also mentioned. A pretty accurate description, for the roach was probably 2 1/2 inches long. (Are we IN the Amazon?) And running, as it happened, across the towel that was in her hands. THAT WAS IN HER HANDS!!!
Screaming, dropping the towel into the tub, running out of the bathroom soaking wet, coming back into the pristine, white/pink “happy place” now turned hellish, the getting of shoes, mops, paper towels and if she had thought to do it, a shot of bourbon, were the events that immediately followed the towel hitting the tub bottom. The roach, in all of its ghastly, reaper-esque appearance, fell to the ground wounded but still extending it’s fifteen legs rapidly into the air groping for something to inoculate its last microbial disease onto.
Whew.
After clean-up, disinfecting the bathroom, bathtub, and taking another shower, our shaking heroine ate a handful of cinnamon cereal and drank a glass of white wine before retiring into a hopefully non-Kafka-esque slumber.
