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Safety Joe and other Prophecies

August 6, 2016

Oh forfucksakes, goddammit.

It actually is.

Now what?

Can I evict them? Do they have somewhere to go? Will someone else look after them? Do they know how to get back if I let them out into the world? I gave them sandwiches, perhaps they will think to leave a trail of breadcrumbs. Or more likely the will just get lost and stay there. Lost boys get lost. Its what they do.

Not hard to understand why they moved in huh? I am getting nothing from this and they still get my genuine concern, somewhat divided attention and some love.

It is as though they know my heart is a church and if they knock and cry Sanctuary, I gotta let em in, and they can stay, indefinitely.

I am not saying they are all cowards, these people I keep in my heart.

But if the running shoe fits…

Gelfling bolted saying he couldn’t give me what I wanted even though he never did ask me what that was (very little for the record).
Young Un the first didn’t want to be in a relationship until a month after he left me and then he tripped over untied shoelaces and fell into a relationship.
The Poet was so afraid he ran back to his castle too.

So if the meme fits…write an article about it.

Giant came over to hang a chandelier, it’s still not up. He got shocked twice and we were missing a piece. We were missing lots of proverbial pieces but he keeps leaving them here one by one. As well as other assorted odds and tangible ends. I giggled the other day when I found his volt meter. Said “it’s cute that we keep leaving bits of ourselves at the other’s house. I don’t think we can sever our invisible thread but it’s nice to have something to hold onto.” He agreed. The bigger picture is getting clearer and clearer. Knots in the thread not withstanding.

We also had a good giggle about him calling himself Safety Joe.

He’s not a coward, he is Safety Joe.

One more puzzle piece.

A stranger with your door key explaining that I am just visiting. And I am finally seeing. Why I was the one worth leaving.
~The District Sleeps Alone Tonight, Postal Service

We talk, it’s what we do. Over vodka tonics this time instead of beer. It’s usually me babbling a little more. Reiterating things that I’ve written or Eurekas from therapy or venting about dates gone wrong. But when he talks I listen.

I was rubbing the knots from his back and asked him if he had ever been in love before. He said yes. He met a girl at 13 and dated her from 17 to 22 and then they broke up.

Of course I asked why. I like to untangle things.

He said

“I didn’t want to be in love in my early 20’s.”

Mmm, what you say?
That you only meant well? Well, of course you did
What you say?
That it’s all for the best? Because it is
What you say?
That it’s just what we need? And you decided this?
What you say?

(WAIT …)
WHAT DID YOU SAY?

Ransom notes keep falling out your mouth
Mid-sweet talk, newspaper word cut-outs
Speak no fear, no I don’t believe you…
(Imogen Heap, Hide & Seek) very funny.

You decided this? How in the ever-loving-fuck does one wake up one morning and just decide this?

Can you teach me?

I too fell in love at 13. I couldn’t find the breaker. Finally did.

He does speak in ransom notes and newspaper word cut outs. Pretends he doesn’t fear, but he does.

I asked him that too. If he was scared of me, he said yes.

“But you love me, don’t you.”

He said “yes, I do.”

And herein lies the epiphany/eureka that illuminated the room in place of the chandelier with the missing piece.

I sent him this the day before he came over.

I don’t think I am all that, but maybe that is what he sees. I am more like this…

He has no idea what I see in him. Tells me again and again how plain he is.
Average Joe, Safety Joe, “I’m just some guy”.
His reality is that I could see his truth at any moment and burn it all to the ground like the mystic he believes me to be.
So it is safer for him to hide from me behind her and her behind me.
I’ve done that, it’s called a rousing game of Human Shield.
He cannot possibly fall in love with either one of us if the other exists and takes up space in his life/heart/home.
But not too much space.
Hes too pragmatic for that.
He loves his cozy little life, as he should, he built it with his own two giant hands.

He IS a King dressed in rags who has amnesia. Of this I have no doubt.

I doubted everything else, but I always somehow knew that he loved me, he made it very plain that he wanted me, that was not hard to decipher, that wasn’t a secret.

What I didn’t understand is how he could love me/want me and not be with me.

Easy…

He made a choice. Not to fall in love.

Interesting use of a superpower. To plan your life out to the point that you can put a leash on your heart and tell it where to go.

15 days he leaves his early twenties.

I wonder what he has planned for himself then?

I could just ask him, I know he would tell me the truth, he is good like that. I think I already know.

Every prophet in her house, and he in his.

He has said many times that I will wander. I won’t stay.

He has made it near impossible for me to do so, maybe he is a prophet.
A self-fulfilling prophet.

I’ve done that. They’re going to leave so I am going to make sure of it.

I have memorized the lessons for loving a prophet* as well, someone has to, poor dears.
He speaks like one, like me. Creates reality with his thoughts and words.

The last prophecy I foretold was that one day soon I am going to figure him out and I am going to feel markedly better. That was 10 days ago.

Now if I can just get that chandelier up so I can have some actual/tangible illumination…but of course the missing piece is in a drawer in his house, he has been hanging onto it for a year, waiting to see where it fit.

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Who is this Masked Man?

August 4, 2016

Who is he really? I have no idea.

There exists a meme that makes the rounds about forgiving someone who isn’t sorry and how that’s strength.

It is.

I should know, I just did the thing.

It’s going to take longer for me to forgive myself. But only by a lil bit.

2 years it took me to come to the realization that I fell in love with a masked man.

And only the mask.

He’s kinda an asshole without it.

He is not the Batman, beyond the rich/hermit thing. He can’t even save himself.

The lightbulb that went off burned my retinas.

Sitting in therapist’s office, she was questioning why I even come to her at all.

“Sarah, you seem to be able to figure things out rather well on your own, why are you here…am I actually doing anything for you?”

She is, but I have to stop with the day-to-day and resurrect my past. I am afraid I did that thing that I warned her I would do which was twist the conversation into a new direction to get away from what I don’t want to deal with.

Recent past? I got this.

The time called ‘before’ like when I was married? I am actually alright with all of that too. I learned a lot, mostly what not to do. I shed skin that didn’t fit and itched something awful. I have already danced naked on that grave enough. I can’t even remember where I buried them.

Way back when I was a little girl with glasses, a huge vocabulary and skinned knees?
She needs some love and attention and then I think we are going to be okay.

Someday soon I will reach back and pull her out and tell her everything is going to be better than fine. It is going to be spectacular.

I hold onto ghosts, lawd knows I do. I feed them, water them and give them a place to manifest. My bedroom is a Ouija board and I commune with the dead on soft sheets, my hands are wandering planchettes that move with psychic, spiritual guidance and spell out sweet things on their skin or trace the constellations in their freckles trying to decipher maps to home or both.

At least when they appear I can recognize them, they remain true to the men I knew, and their newfound transparency is pretty sweet.

The golden rule with the dead is ask them what they want.

I said to the Giant “When I start to develop genuine feelings for someone it’s like a bell gets rung in my heart’s graveyard and all my skeletons get up and ask me to dance.” Via text the morning after we slow danced in my dining room.

Happened when I loved him, Jason too and the Hulk. Young Un the first was the first so he got immunity and I recovered alone.

I am doing that thing again. Talking (non)sensical nonsense in avoidance.

What of this masked man…

Well shit.

I can see it with abundant clarity now.

Flowed off my tongue as the truth tends to do.

I said

“The first night, the night we talked for 12 hours he was this attentive, excited, vulnerable man with this unyielding strength. I fell in love. I did. I fell in it and stayed there, wet up to my waist and waiting for his return.

But the man that called me the next day and every subsequent day or night after that, wasn’t him.”

Maybe the stars were aligned a certain way that first night, or it was the Fireball, blame it on the alcohol. Or maybe the doors of perception were either cleansed or filthy…filthy sounds more astute.

Or it could have been prima nocta. I was taken away and mindfucked by a man that wasn’t mine.

There it is.

Whatever happened, he never came back. Except to lord over me a bit.

I wanted that back so badly I couldn’t see the truth. I just wanted My Poet back. But My Poet didn’t actually exist outside of that time and place.

It was a well-constructed mask that fell away over the next two weeks and then he fell away too.

I did the same thing in my marriage. Fell for him in the first 3 months when it was summertime and we were new and life wasn’t hard. Then he turned into a video game playing couch-potato and I became a Fallout widow. But dammit I hung on to those 90 days for dear life and wasted my dear life for the next 2556.69539 days.

Until I landed in therapy.

I’ve worn masks too.

I wasn’t exactly myself when I’d go to work, but that veil was a fake name and more make up than I wear on a day to day basis. Geisha-face with stilettos basically. Salome in her war paint. Call it what you will but I was only selling the skin my soul came in, not my soul itself.

I’ve spent a lot of time teaching and training myself not to lie, I can happily say ‘what you see is what you get.’ I’m mutable and I have my moods, but I am always myself.

I wandered off again.

He claimed to be one of 4% of men who derive pleasure from sharing his woman with other men. We talked about it at great length, I sent stories and started a book about it.

I had yet another moment of clarity. They have been coming down from heaven like lightning strikes in the heat of July.

He’s never had what he wanted. What if the reality of it is actually more than he could bear?

That too feels like truth as it rolls off my tongue. It’s my truth as well. I am not sure I could be that girl/his girl, but I was willing to try.

I am all the things all these men ever wanted until they are confronted with the reality of it.

Be careful what you wish for.

This is my one true face.

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Enough Buddhas

July 28, 2016

Roommate (aka my Sunshine) says “We have enough Buddhas.”

Considering the size of our apartment, she is probably right. Considering who I am as a person, I have since bought one more Kuan Yin and will probably sneak another Buddha into my room.

We have one in the sanctuary we call ‘porch’ and he is the only one facing the right way. Funny if you think about it. Does Buddha really care? He might have a preference for early morning sunlight on his face, I do too. But he doesn’t actually give a shit where you put him. He is not an overly thin skinned prophet.

The emotional freedom I gained when I finally internalized the words “Everything is as it should be” was…all. I immediately stopped fighting. I couldn’t argue and I stopped wanting to.

I probably don’t have quite enough Buddhas. I still forget. I lose time thinking about what almost was.

So I am talking to my other girl. My North Carolina Mawmawolf. It’s killing me in small increments. She is my mirror image from my sad days on the farm. I want her outta there. Trying to rig up a tough love catapult to launch her out of the past.

She said she wrote something and confessed to attempted murder.

A) It was 17 years ago
B) She wrote an article about an ‘almost’.
Ergo…
C) All it is now is a really riveting story.

Sucks that it happened, awesome that she wrote about it so well.

https://letspretendblog.wordpress.com/2016/07/21/if-i-had/

I can’t find the words to get her to let go.

Closest I got was “BUT DID YOU DIE?”

There is an alternate reality where I have a crippling opioid addiction and I am still sitting on the stinky farm couch with an equally addicted sisterwife.

But it ain’t this reality.

Currently I am sitting in a house full of Buddhas, music and sunshine. And it’s clean and it smells good. I am only here because I changed how I think about things.

I wrote an article, feels like forever ago, about the times I almost died. It’s been a lot. Enough to write an article about it. I also wrote in “Regeneration, After the Fire” about how imagining what could have been worse about something that was already bad enough was a misuse of time, energy and imagination. Because it fucking is.

But did you die?

Nope.

Carry on then.

Why are we so addicted to drama and worst case scenarios? I know I used to be that girl but I have no interest in digging her up to glean the why. She smells like desperation and monkey shit from running around circus tents that weren’t hers.

Time is too precious.

I lost 3 days fussing over a move that didn’t go my way. I lost nothing but 3 jars and 3 days. Can’t get it back so…moving on.

I could very well have been raped on a Tinder date. But I wasn’t. Not dwelling on what happened other than fine tuning my collection of red flags and adding a few.
The Poet posted some poem about loose women looking for trouble in bars and getting what they deserved right after I posted what happened. Little lemon juice in a wound that was barely closed, but whatever. Chased it with a shot of tequila, had a chuckle and got on with my day.
(Hi honey. I’m fine thanks, and you?)

I saw this lovely British man do a short excerpt/talk about unrequited love.

https://www.facebook.com/CoachMatthewHussey/videos

I watched it until my eyes bled and it became my marrow.

Been turning that grain of sand over in my head like an oyster and I came up with this little pearl…

If he wanted me he would be here.
If any of them were supposed to stay and love me, they would be, right here right now.
Jason has been trying to get me to accept this for a while now. And I always came back with a “But, but, I understand why he is doing what he is doing.” Which translates to a very meek “I’m not worthy.”

Um, ya, I am.

I am a kind, funny, sweet, loving, understanding, talented woman who loves sex and values men as men. Plus I make killer sammiches.
And I am wicked smart.
Me hanging onto a future I manufactured in my own head is not sexy, is not romantic.
I hate martyrs and I am not going to be one. I have shit to do.
I am a good girl, I’m human and I make mistakes and sometimes I have to play dead to get out of bad situations. So be it. No harm no foul, I washed it off.

Poet bailed on me shortly after my birthday citing that I embarrassed him, no explanation, just a block.
Some harm, some foul.
But I don’t have a time machine and if I did I wouldn’t use it to go back and edit a 20 minute conversation I had with a strange woman about coffee cups. Again, I have better shit to do.

Like write a book inspired by my fantasy life that I made up in my head and is going rather nicely actually. Someone once told me sex sells on the internet, and he wasn’t wrong.

Shoulda done this years ago…tee hee.

Everything is as it should be and everything went the way it went.
No amount of fussing or self-flagellation over imaginary sins is going to change that.

You made it, here, to this moment. Enjoy.

I can play the coulda woulda shoulda game like a gold medalist, but it gets me nowhere. I should never have dated that psycho-wannabe-soldja-boy. I had the Giant. But who says if I had done anything any differently that Giant wouldn’t have left me for his safe traveling waitress anyways?

I did what I did. I am what I am and I own it.

I don’t have time to figure out what other people want me to be, I’m way too busy enjoying being myself.

Here and now.

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Digging in the Dirt

July 8, 2016

Every harlot was a virgin once. ~ William Blake

Everything changes, letting go is the only way.

I’ve been crawling on my belly
Clearing out what could’ve been.
I’ve been wallowing in my own chaotic
And insecure delusions.

I wanna feel the change consume me,
Feel the outside turning in.
I wanna feel the metamorphosis and
Cleansing I’ve endured within
~ Tool 46 &2

I can feel it. Mostly in the lack of things that were here before…and in the warmth that has replaced them.

I can control time, speed it up to get through the unpleasant, slow it down to savor the bliss. I have the blessing of not noticing the unpleasantness around me until it is time to get out of harm’s way…or just not at all.

It has been years since I had soul crushing panic attacks that would rob my breath and sanity and cause me to feel as though I would never be happy again. My limbs used to solidify into deadwood. No more. I am rooted in the ground and branch out to the sky collecting sunshine and rain.

I have succumbed to baby backslides now and again, but I accept them…learn from them and find great satisfaction in conquering them.

I’ve looked inside myself and found grace, peace, strength, bravery and love.

I know I must allow the universe to unfold as it will.
My responsibility is to think happy thoughts, work hard and follow my gut towards my desires.

I know I can only control my actions and my reactions to the actions of others.

I no longer feel the need to cloister myself in the nunneries of dry, sexless, loveless, passionless relationships.
Hiding my potential behind men who were never worthy or enough, just to justify my feelings of being unworthy and never enough.

I have freed myself from those prisons and somehow I feel my eyes are still adjusting to the light.

It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell. ~ Buddha

I do revel and rejoice in my victories over myself, no matter how small.

I cannot seem to shake this feeling of unworthiness, but it is lighter than before.
I am no longer crushed under the weight of it but I am still dragging it around.
Still laying my boots to long expired equines on occasion.

Past dictates that no matter how hard a hold of my heart someone once had I can learn to let go, or at least adapt and maneuver in the parameters given.

My heart is currently bound to someone worthy. I am working at becoming worthy back.
And regardless of outcome, that will be mine to keep.

The relationships I find myself cultivating in my present life are passionate, lovely, satisfying and yet my past dictates that I still anticipate the alternate piece of footwear will succumb to gravity at some point. I’ll just go barefoot.

It’s true, everyone comes and goes. It’s my job to love them.

I am hand shy I have to stop flinching.

So shed your skin and let’s get started ~ Hunters & Collectors

I am working on it.

Digging in the dirt, find the places we got hurt. ~ Peter Gabriel

All due respect to the process, the earth has been turned enough now. Time to plant and start growing up.

Those who sow in sorrow, reap in joy. ~ William Blake

I sowed in sorrow for a long time.
Always pouring concrete over the gardens I had planted right before the seeds broke the soil, so they never saw light. Self-sabotage.

I constantly find myself marveling in how far I have come and reveling in how far I have to go.

Sometimes I wallow.

I have been alternately wallowing and skating by for years.

What have I done?

A much easier question to answer than ‘what do I do now?’

It is time to live, breathe, move and work with purpose.

I will suffer fools, gladly. But I can no longer beat them nor join them.

I have no enemies in this place. You are with me or you are inconsequential.

My past does not dictate my future. I have conquered everything that has happened to me up until now and I am still here, with more grace and strength because of my trials and tribulations. They haven’t made me what I am, I have.

The time has come to thrive instead of barely surviving.

I am no longer scared of my potential.

I suppose by sitting here waiting to find patience I am, in fact, being patient…

men

Cyranos

May 16, 2016

I had one of the more fucked up conversations of my life today.

If my sister heard me say that she’d undoubtedly quip…”Well that must be pretty fucking weird coming from you Sarah.” I don’t think she reads this, probably best all things considered.

It was sister. It truly was.

It wasn’t the words so much as the source. All things in good time and in context.

I read a thing a while ago that I shall now paraphrase out of sheer exhaustion and laziness. I have been writing for 13 hours, I can’t seem to turn my brain off nor stop. I haven’t eaten save a few handfuls of M&M’s. I am running on caffeine alone. 4000 words of good copy.

Maybe it’s time for the fighter to be fought for, for the lover to be loved something something blah blah blah.

I read it a while ago and for a brief moment I allowed myself the luxury of hope.

Hope is a four letter word. I try not to indulge.

I posted today, something called Still Is. I tried to hide it over on my page.

Didn’t really work so good. And hour later…the ding in my inbox.

“It’s about him isn’t it.” Statement, not really a question.

I paused before answering, sometimes the truth needs a deep breath and a whiskey chaser.

“Yes.” Another statement, no question. Everything seems to be about him even when I don’t want it to be.

“So fucking call him already and stop torturing yourself. Or give me the number and I’ll do it.”

Ever get that feeling that hovers between awe and dread. Ya, I had that.

Desperate times call for desperate measures and all, but no. Bad idea.

The awe turned quickly to AWWWW.

Seriously? You would do that for me?

It’s not that far of a stretch for me. I do this shit all the time.

And it’s funny, I can easily set my ego and wants aside to help those I have coveted and fucked, no problem…never expected to have that happen to me. I always get the polar opposite. If they don’t have me, they hate me. For a while anyways.

And here is this man that by all rights I hurt rather badly and rather recently telling me “If he has any fucking ounce of a clue how valuable you are….he will swallow his pride and finally come get you…..if he’s half the man he claims he will hold on to you like it’s life or death….because it will be.”

It is such a strange sensation to be treated the way I treat others.

Case and point.

Young Un messaged me last week out of the pale blue.

We talk once a month sometimes more, rarely less, hence the paleness of the blue.

Been doing this for a while. Tripping in feelings and using the other as an opposite sex touch stone of sorts. Ego strokes and advice from someone who thinks differently enough to break the loops/bad mantras we both get stuck in.

Said he needed advice.

I love that he trusts me. I love him.

It’s been 2 years and 2 days since we met.

We had a rough go for a bit in the middle there.

But in my candy coated way of glossing things over, he was, and remains sweet as fuck.
Because he always was.

I credit him with my first steps of becoming. He was the first boy who was my choice. The first one in a long time that was of my tribe. In the brief time we had together he treated me like gold.
He made the transition from mundane to magic a lovely one and raised the bar.

He laid out his dilemma.

Said “the overthinking part of my Scorpio brain is having a meltdown”.

Oh baby, I know those.

His sounded like “what if what if what if”…

He is smitten you see, been talking to this girl since Christmas, but she had a boyfriend.

Now she doesn’t.

So the ‘what if’ was clearly labeled “what if I don’t say anything and I lose her?”
Followed closely by “what if I say something and I lose her?”

Conundrum.

I am Queen of the land known as SAY IT SAY IT SAY IT. It’s actually pretty hard to shut me up unless you put something fun in my mouth.

Young Un is fully aware of this. I practiced on him one time in late July and again in March.

I also have some shining examples of phrases that make girls swoon…

So I Cyrano’ed.

I said…

Here’s what you do.
Go look in the mirror.
Use my eyes so you can see what I see.
Realize how incredibly handsome and wonderful you are.
Then tell her what you just told me.
That you value her friendship but you are smitten as fuck and you don’t want to lose her.
Tell her she is worth waiting for if that is what she needs.
You used the term ‘head over heels’, tell her that, because honestly it is sweet as fuck coming out of your mouth.
And one more thing…tell her talking to her is the best part of your day…if that is the truth.

He told me it was the truth and he did SAY IT SAY IT SAY IT.

10 minutes later…

She said the same thing back to him. I could feel him glowing through my phone. And I glowed along with him.

That is what love is.
I’m not IN love with him, I don’t need him with me, his mess is mine and so is his joy.

He told me he is glad we stayed friends, I am too.

I forgive and have been forgiven.

And listen here all ye who are actually listening…if she/he is important, don’t let them go.

“And he had better grab onto you and hold you like you’re the fucking Holy Grail.”

I am beginning to believe I just might be.

It’s time to say what needs to be said, in my own words.

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Still Is

May 15, 2016

“Who knows” I said, “you and me…the idea of us might have been the knife that cut him out for good. I have no way of knowing.”

I don’t. I look and wonder, hope and faith fighting it out. But I know nothing.

And the moment I did know, was bittersweet. In the way of those horrid romance novels, I had to leave to see the truth.

And now I wait, and I work. Can we just skip to the end now, the happily ever after or something like it. A sort of fairy tale. Shaking sleeping beauty, wake the fuck up.

I saw and re-posted that Bukowski quote today and broke my own heart, hard. I did that and I’m bleeding out at the thought of it.

I am so fucking sorry.

As a teenager, I fancied myself a writer, dropping bad acid and dripping bad poetry on bad trips. Reading Bukowski made me realize I am not a poet. That sometimes less is more (but I can’t shut up) there is beauty in simplicity and I wasn’t the only one who thought the world was seven layers of fucked up. He made me fall even more in love with words. I saw that words are power, the can kill or heal depending. Like knives.

Silence does that too, kills or heals depending.

Limbo is a bitch.

I said before that my heart went away a year ago and never came back. It’s true. She bounced off a satellite or three, slipped away from me in middle of the night. Traveling through time zones and space, landed softly. She’s currently locked out of the house. This is me, helping her scratch at the door.

Every time he breaks me, and he does, I put myself back a little different. I like the person I am becoming, the one that heals and forgives, gets stronger and braver. Like a mosaic, or a stained glass window. But this time I broke him and I don’t know how he heals, I never did. To the naked eye it seems like something he cannot do, or maybe just not alone.

The only thing I know is he needs time, which I have and will gladly give. The other ingredients of his forgiveness elude me. I know he values loyalty and I fucked that one up, royally. Openness and honesty I can do. I have told him a few times that I fucked up, apologized with sincerity and then make a point of not making the same mistakes twice. He forgave me once.

It doesn’t help that I find new creative ways to fuck up or that he finds new things to look for and assume.

I’m tired of this dance, my feet hurt and I am a little dizzy, please can we just go to bed already, I’d rather dance with him there.

Accepting all I’ve done and said,
I want to stand and stare again,
til there’s nothing left out…

Peter Gabriel radio edit In Your Eyes.

men

Wide Open & Held Together

May 3, 2016

I told another man I loved him yesterday…not my boyfriend… (I think I hear a gasp from the audience)…so why is he not freaking out? My boyfriend I mean.*

Because he knew. It’s how he found me, loving that other man who had a penchant for leaving me, in a crying puddle on the floor.

My (now) boyfriend showed up in my inbox unannounced, simply said “you okay there puddle?”

I was exactly broken enough to answer, “No, no I am not.” With an implied ‘help me’.

So he did.

I needed him.

He didn’t pry or force, he just let me ramble. Asked a few poignant questions.
“2 years huh? That’s a long time Sarah.” And I realized he was right.
Never once said ‘fuck that guy’.
And he didn’t let go.

As it happens when I am treated with enough patience and given enough time, I got sick of my own shit. I knew I had done all I could do with the Poet short of getting on a plane and showing up at his house, which I knew wouldn’t have gone over well.

So Jason and I started talking about other things, there was some tentative flirting sparked by a pair of kitten crotch panties. I read his writing, he read mine and we realized we had a lot of common philosophies.

He then drove 5.5 hours to see me for one. Held my hand through the bustle of an airport when I was close to flying apart and didn’t let go.

He sat across from me and encouraged me to tell stories in the brief time we were given. His eyes lit up when mine did and basically, that was it. I was smitten as fuck.

Like any of those teen romance movies from the 80’s where our heroine sees that the one she really loves has been standing in front of her the whole time disguised as a friend.

Like the Princess Bride, where she realized every time he said “as you wish”, what he was really saying was “I love you.” And I love him back.

He is my farm boy, poor and perfect.

I had a psychic tell me I would have to make a choice in the spring, between a rich man and a poor man. Huh. Just remembered that now.

The other reason he is not freaking out is that he saw the article I posted before anyone else did.

I sent it to him.

His initial reaction?

“That was beautiful”.

Me: You understand?

Jason: Do I understand as in?

Me: What I said. Why I had to say it. And that it takes nothing away from how I feel about you?

Jason: Yes baby I understand that….You’re making peace.

Me: I believe that you are the kind of man who can extrapolate that if I can love the wrong person this much…then I can love you even more.

Jason: Peace with what was….what could’ve been….who and where you are now. I know exactly how that feels.

Me: It should be enough to know I tried. But…Ima writer.

So is Jason. We feel things, see them touch, them taste, them and then write about it.

It’s how I noticed him in the first place. How we first began to explore and show each other how we felt. And how we continue to do so. I paraphrased an article he wrote about me as the opener for this one.

https://thelithiumchronicles.org/2016/04/28/make-it-count-jason-king/ *

We joked yesterday about misplaced jealousy over our past.

“Do you really think I got this amazing by reading about sex and love in books while cloistered in a nunnery?”

I didn’t. I have fucked and loved a lot.

Nor did he. I know he loved his last one and she almost destroyed him, and baby I know exactly how that feels.

Rumi said, you must keep breaking your heart until it opens.

I am open.

Jason showed me how good it feels to be wide open and held together at the same time.

“Baby you have a good heart….and you love….it’s part of you being you…..but….I know you love me….and you know I love you….it’s that simple.”

Me: it really is. I swear to god we just leveled up, or I leveled up and caught up to you…and you know Ima blog about this too right?

Jason: Haha I would expect nothing less from my girl….I love our level ups

Me: Did I catch up or did you come with me? Either way I feel brave and happy and good

Jason: Honestly….I don’t think it matters….we are here….holding hands. And feeling brave and happy and good…..is what matters….

It is.

the poet

Open Letter to The Poet

May 2, 2016

I had plans to write just this one line.

~~I stayed, I tried and~~ I fucking love you…god knows I do.

The end.

But, there is always a ‘but’.
When she sent me over to your page to read ‘pretty damned sure this is about you Sarah’ and I found myself blocked, for the first time in 2 years, I knew beyond doubt and question that you loved me.
Not because of what you wrote, because you blocked me.

And honey, that is really fucking fucked up.

“If you love me, then love me.” Stephen King

Why is this hard?

What you wrote was glorious, and all of the things most women dream of hearing.

I am not most women. Nothing compared to hearing you whisper “you fucker” in my ear, that I gave you an ‘emotional boner’ or sighing when I said something that pleased you. That was the real you talking to the real me, that was us. That laugh when you’d call me a clever girl, like diamonds, but more precious.

I asked you out for coffee, 2 years ago tomorrow.

I remember the dancing dots, my hopes soaring that you might actually say yes.

You spent 20 minutes hunting through my profile pictures and found exactly what you were looking for, a reason to say no, a nipple.

You decided in that moment I was exactly like all the rest, an attention whore/exhibitionist who would do anything for social media likes.

You told me to fuck off.

You never asked me why I put it up. For the record, it was a show of solidarity for a female friend who had been put in Facebook jail over a nipple. Nothing more.

There was nothing to forgive. You were protecting yourself, I saw it. I understand. I feel protective over you too, viciously so, even in absentia I would allow no one to speak badly of you.
Even now, I still defend you. I always will. It’s my way.

The exact same amount of time you spent looking for reasons this would never work and making assumptions about me, I spent learning you. Gleaning why you are the way you are and trying to figure out ways to prove I loved you with the parameters given.
And lordy-fucking-lord there were a lot of parameters. I could barely move an inch without hitting a wall.

I think I realized, the third or fourth time you came back, that if you stayed, life as I knew it would be over. And I didn’t mind. I called you my life’s work and I meant it.

“…my love for you is so overpowering I’m afraid I will disappear.” Paul Simon

I wasn’t afraid.

I knew that once I laid eyes on you the rest of the world would fall away. And once you saw into mine you would trust me. My face would forever reflect that fact that I belonged to you alone. My body and mouth would back that up in their respective languages. I am yours, nothing more.

And I wasn’t afraid.

I started out being afraid of you. In awe. I chuckle to myself when I think back to my first idea of what and how you were. Some of it astute and the rest so far off.

I imagined you in a small apartment above a bodega. A desk overflowing with poetry and balled up pieces of paper, a few whiskey bottles and full ashtrays. A small iron balcony on which you would sit, smoke and drink your morning coffee or afternoon whiskey and just observe.
Pounding at the keyboard, trying to diffuse some love back into the world, one drop of your heart’s blood at a time.

Every time I bought a book or a piece of your work I thought I was helping you in some small way. Funny in retrospect, but it is the thought that counts.

Poor and lost and lovely to me. And I loved you, as is, or as I imagined. I still do.

When I realized how wrong I was, I just chuckled to myself and gleaned an even further understanding as to why those walls of yours are so damned high.

I wish I could remember the exact moment that I realized you were human. Flesh, blood and marrow. Fallible and fumbling, just like me. It was a good moment. I fell harder for you and became braver than I have ever been.

When you told me about your life I absorbed every word, every tone in your voice that said ‘this is what made me’. I learned you, even when you left, I kept studying our conversations. I wanted to be better at loving you. You were worth it.

You taught me I wasn’t worth it, to you.

Your safety is more important than the risk it was to just love me and see where it goes.

I understand, your safety is important to me too.

That is why 5 people know your name…and no one knows the secrets you told me in the dark.

I wouldn’t trade a minute of you.

Since last July I have had plane ticket money tucked away in a drawer, waiting for you to call me to you. But you never did.

You opened up a whole new world of possibilities as to how honest I can be with those around me about who and what I am, the things I want and the things I have done. You made me admit things out loud that I had hidden even from myself. You unlocked the cage society made for me and set me free. And I know you loved me for it.

So I will always love you. I had to flip the switch from active to passive. And now back again, there is nothing unlovable about you to me.

I am writing this to you, in blood red, dripping graffiti on one of the walls you threw up to block me with. And that is the best I can do, in the parameters given.

men

The Claiming

April 25, 2016

My relationship status on Facebook has been non-existent for over 5 years now.

I haven’t been single for 5 years mind you, but I left it blank.

I dated Pimp Daddy for 2 years and never felt the need to claim him, gee I wonder why.
(See the 3^rd word in the previous sentence.)

He never called me his girlfriend even after we moved in together, even after I got pregnant and then fired, rendering us gypsies. Even after I got us out of that mess and every subsequent mess after that.

He wasn’t that important.

End of story.

There was a method to my madness, or a reason for it.

I remember one day when ex hubby and I were fighting. I’d run away from home and was sequestered in a Pepto Bismol pink room above a strip club surrounded by everything I could possibly jam into my Jeep, including my laptop thank fuck. I was using it for evil, posting passive aggressive shit. Obsessively checking my relationship status on Facebook to see if maybe this was the time it would actually be over. It wasn’t. I mean, he DID dump me on Facebook that week, but it didn’t last.
And so it went, different locales, always the same game.
Is it my turn or hers?
Where am I sleeping tonight, and watching my status obsessively to assess how bad things were this time.

If I left 7 times I left 20. If he dumped me 17 times he dumped me 57. The center didn’t hold. It was never my circus and they weren’t my monkeys.

My monkeys fly.

And you know what? Fuck it. Fuck this, fuck that, fuck them.

Every time I start shit talking my exes, I hear Sophia from the Color Purple.

“He ain’t worf it.”

“Don’t trade places with what I’ve been through. Sat in that jail, sat in that jail till I about done rot to death.”

I did. A few times. And I was always the key.

Hell can get pretty comfortable if you have been there long enough.

But I was the key, the key to leaving, the key to the locks in my life.

The secret is all inside your head she said to me. The answer is easy if you take it logically. I’d like to help you in your struggle to be free. There must be 50 ways to leave your lover. ~ Paul Simon

The leaving, I have that down. Being left? Got that too, don’t want it but I get it.

But what about the in between?

How in the good lord’s name do I deal with that?

Where is that fine line between belonging with/to someone and territorial pissings?

Once upon a time I posted a profile pic of me in a doorway, wearing The grey dress. My corner of the internet exploded, compliments flying everywhere. But the one I fixated on was from Young Un. We had an inside joke about ‘man pants’, jeans I owned that hung off me rather than hugging my curves. He posted under said grey dress pic that I was beautiful no matter what I wore, even in my man pants.

It was the first time I had been claimed publicly by someone I was with, in what felt like forever.

And it felt amazing.

The Poet did the same, a few times, and it always elevated me. I felt wanted, like he was announcing his presence in my life. And I liked it.

I realized, I had lived without it for so long that I no longer need it, but I kinda want it.

With the new one, good god I wanted to brag. But I would restrain myself, mull over the comments I was leaving out for the world to see, and if I felt they might offend someone…inbox or not at all.

We talked about it, he makes it easy to talk about everything.

“I’m scared.” I said.

“It’s okay baby.” He replied.

I wanted to climb the air traffic control tower at O’Hare and announce how smitten I am with this man.
I told him that too.

“Okay baby.” He said.

Shortly after we each got called out by mutual friends…”so you seem really happy, what’s his/her name?” They already knew. I am so transparent it’s like trying to hide elephants inside a greenhouse.

I don’t want to hide anything, I don’t keep secrets nor am I one.

So I said it, out loud. Posted upon the Facebook that “I am smitten as fuck with Jason King.”

Took him nanoseconds to comment underneath “and I am smitten right back.”

And in that moment I allowed myself to be happy. Still am.

men

Smitten as Fuck (airports and kudzu)

April 24, 2016

When you live 9 hours away from the one you are smitten as fuck with, date-night takes on a whole new meaning.

Netflix+sweats, yesh. But my show stayed on pause for 5 hours while we talked about the universe, life, exes, work, our children, parents and grandparents. Feelings growing like kudzu, about a foot a day, wrapping us us in happy green and changing the landscape. Then we belly laughed for about an hour and made plans.

And it came to me then, that every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time. (Death Cab for Cutie)

It is.

And with every new relationship we must battle the demons of what came before and the cold, cruel, pessimistic leader of their army, Sargent-at -Arms “What If”, his never-ending arsenal, bombs and bullets labeled ‘pain’ and ‘hurt’.

What if it doesn’t work? What if he doesn’t like me anymore? What if he likes me and then stops?

I don’t have to pray to any God’s for that. They have given me the gift of ‘try one more time’. I am optimism walking around in human form. Now is blessed the rest remembered. 90% of the time I only remember the good anyways, so there is that then.

I don’t feel like I have a choice. It’s either that or be a nun or a lesbian considering how I’ve been treated by men.
And men on the internet? Fugedaboudit.
And (gasp) another poet sailing into my inbox? Nope nope nope.
2 years of Chinese water torture under my belt there. The slow drip left me fucking Thirsty.

But I opened the door and invited him in. Didn’t think of any possible outcome beyond friends. He knows everything because I told him.

“2 years?” He said.

“Yesh.” I replied.

“Well that makes no sense.”

I opened my mouth to argue but nothing came out. I allowed myself to briefly imagine how much loving and living could have transpired between the Poet and I in 2 years, and suddenly I was kinda angry.
Who does that?

It’s easy to find all the ways something won’t work out, especially when nothing ever has.

I have the Giant as recent (I think he is still living) proof. Perfection and compatibility and magic mean nothing when you dangle a nice safe waitress in front of a boy. I mean nothing. It hurts.

Men are sweet as fuck to me and then they run.

This one is sweet as fuck and he may yet run.

But why would I deny myself the possibility contained in his eyes, the ones that crinkle at the corners when he looks at me, smile going all the way up and lighting tiny fires there. Why run from that voice? The one that sounds like a young Elvis…low, southern twang, wrapped in velvet and says wonderful things. Why deny the pull between us?
Why turn my back on the body that drove half a day to see me for an hour, the one that radiates heat and looks and feels like home.

Yes, him.

Once upon a time in New Orleans I gave a stripper a lap-dance on around midnight and so began the day of opposites. I stopped adulting. T’was I who suggested getting massages less than an hour before check out from the hotel. T’was I who took a cemetery tour with no way of telling time, just so I could say hello to Marie Laveau and the other ghosts that wander St. Louis. T’was I who said yes to shrimp and grits, knowing we had to be on a plane within the hour.

And it was I who stood under a pillar at O’Hare, tucked in between terminals, wearing a red dress as not to be missed. Eyes darting from the door to the road and back again, like a tennis match, simultaneously waiting on my PIC and him with 2% battery and not a care in the world. I just knew it would all work out.

I wasn’t wrong.

I saw him before he saw me, and I just knew.

“I’m here”, I called out. Head down, studying his phone. “Jason.”
He looked up and smiled, kept coming towards me.

My walk became a run, I totally forgot about watching the door. I forgot about everything beyond closing the gap between us. He opened his arms and I fell into them like I belonged there. Airport chaos forgotten when I asked him to hold my hand and not let go.

He still hasn’t let go.

https://www.facebook.com/KingsPoetry1/photos/pb.1723932144510357.-2207520000.1461513578./1763620803874824/?type=3&theater

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