Merry Go Round...

She played every carnival game like it was her destiny to win.

She hoped and gasped 

and jumped up and down and bit her bottom lip.

It was almost tragic when she lost.

Even her freckles seemed to fade.

The hardened carnies always always took pity 

and gave her the grand prize. 

She thought about them as she sat across from him

at what would be their last dinner together.

As much as she'd played like he was her destiny...

as much as she'd hoped and gasped

and jumped up and down and bit her bottom lip raw...

Odd, he thought. It's as though her freckles just faded.

Right before my eyes.

She never ever won the ring toss.

love

Test Of Time...

It was only a test.

Even though we were golden together, I wasn't sure I was made to be your only. So I blamed life's timing and whispered a someday promise, believing that might hold you forever until I could. And every second after you nodded and agreed with me marked another piece of my heart breaking away. 

I saw you a few nights later at sushi with that ridiculously cute girl. There was no need to swallow my sobs; her laughter was the only sound you heard. 

I wish I could have been sure of you. I wish I'd followed my heart just one more time and let my brain close her eyes. It's one of my most profound regrets. Because you were my heart.

But I'm sure now. Dead sure that I want to be that girl sipping saki next to you, stopping your heart with my love.

love

More...

We were always just friends, except for the few times when we were more. Those moments still play reruns in my memory when nothing else is on, but friends is mostly how we'd describe us.

I saved your texts and I save them still. Just in case I need a good morning and a sweet dreams. I can always count on you for those. Without fail, you are my first in the morning and my last at night.

But nothing more than that, anymore. Not even early-morning pancakes at the dive. Not even "Come hear me play." Not even grab a bite after all the afters. 

And that's enough. That's who you were meant to be for me. My early morning and my late night.  

Can't really begin or end without you...

love

Write...

He told me he was writing a series of short stories. Much like David Sedaris or Jonathan  Safran Foer. Only better. Funnier. He mailed me lines that should have been in the New Yorker, and promised I'd be the first to see a more rounded-out draft. I'm still waiting. The rejection letters weren't disheartening. They were an honor. He was this close, his ideas upon ideas littering the papers lazing about in the afternoon breezes.

I left a longtime love to be with this dreamer, throwing away stable for everything but...

I doubted myself and him every minute of the day until four o'clock hit. Because that's when inspiration hit, too, with the uncorking of a cheap table red. 

Together, we built epic sentences that meant nothing in the morning.

Story of our life.

When I finally left him, there were pieces of me littering his loft...lazing about in the afternoon breezes. I wonder if he ever picked them up.

love

Roots That Grow Deep...

We were seventeen and both of us had cruising parents. Yours were hippies. Mine were just crazy gypsies.

It was easy to sneak away on the Island and do all the things we weren't suppose to do in the States. Everything seemed normal enough here, in comparison. I made love for the first time with a local boy. I learned about medicine from a lady who healed with a can of shark's teeth. I smoked what the locals smoked and drank where they drank. The joints they used to take me to had juke boxes with 1980s R-n-B and old country songs.  A juxtaposition to the tribal beats that came down from the edge of the water.

I walked in the place, this one owned by man who could wind his hips like a clock. It was  just another night my parents wanted to be alone on the boat to "do their thing" and I ordered my favorite mixed drink to celebrate my independence and forget my loneliness. A whiskey and ginger ale. Somehow I got something purple that tasted like mangos and pineapple, and only one got me totally messed up. 

You walked in too that night. Your parents had just docked their boat. You were from Baltimore. I was from N.Y. Feeling like a stranger on an island forever, I finally felt at home. We knew each other in just one glance.

You been here long? You asked me.

A month. 

You staying much longer?

As long as my parents want to. We're headed south. Turks and Caicos, I think. My dad wants to live there, maybe. Who knows. They're crazy.

Wanna go for a walk?

And since that night, we knew. We just knew. Buttercup Baby playing on repeat in the background. Old Mr. Bassie winding his hips after too many. The sea art clinging to our spirits, but our ache for home in our hearts. We knew we'd both seen the world in ways nobody else had. The grime and grit and beauty of the island life, of being nomads with our home in the deep blue.

And now you and I have roots. Roots that grow deep in one place. We traveled far to find each other.  

Now we just stay put.

love

Tightrope...

He leaves for work before the sun comes up, and lets me sleep in his one-room apartment on Las Palmas smack in the middle of Hollywood. I work nights, and come by his place around two a.m., waking him up with a bang on the window.

I sleep for a while and then stumble to the kitchen and pour the coffee he made hours before. I stop at the turntables and put on a scratched up copy of Rockers to Rockers. He always tells me to be careful with that one. Place the needle on the record very carefully. I always try. It's my favorite.

I light a smoke and open his front window. Kids walk by who should be in school. The streets in Los Angles already hot and wild.

I grab a notebook and a pen and do for him what I do every single morning.

I write him a love note. I lay on the couch and remember the night before and how he held me so close and whispered how hard he loved me and how my lips were perfect.

I write him: You are cool. The coolest guy I'd ever been with. For one, you don't treat me like crap. Secondly, you make me feel like a queen. These are two things I've never felt before. So this means a lot. 

And the curve in your lower back is perfect to lay my hands on.

And the blue in your eyes are a pool to dive into.

And your hands. Your hands can build dreams against my skin. They are the only hands I ever want to hold me in that way.

Thank you for the strawberry milkshake you made me this morning after I was done serving pasta on Melrose to a bunch of drunks.

I write things like that. I poured it all in. I did this every morning, leaving  it on his pillow for him to find in a few hours. The one that smelled like a mix of me and him. And I'd go about my day.

And now, I don't have time to write him love notes.The work the kids the life. I am full.  But now, he comes home from work every day and hands one to me. A love note to make up for the years he never did.

Life is a perfect balance when you find true love.

love

I'll Wait Forever...

He told me he loved me so much that he'd set me free. That he couldn't touch my body the way I wanted. That his heart couldn't touch my heart the way it needed. He said his love for me was so true that he'd let me go.

Go. He said. Be free. I'm holding you back.

From what?

From your dreams.

Bullshit, I told him.

This is what it really is: You're too scared to touch me that deep. Too scared to open your heart so it digs into mine and imprints within the echo chamber and sounds throughout my body forever. You're a wimp. This is your easy way out of Love. Easy way out of working at us.

You aren't mine, he said. I can feel the walls between us. Become who you need to be...without me. I'll never be good enough for you.

Bullshit. You are everything you are, and I love you just that way. I'm not yours, but we are ours. Our stars align like mirror images and my heart beats on your off-beat. You figure out how to smash those walls your own fear built. You just need to let go. Not let me go.

But I walked out anyway because what's a girl to do?

I got some paint. I painted the city that night. Tagged it with flowers. There. I found myself because I was never lost. Sometimes love needs a moment or two to settle into itself. I could have done anything under that full moon, but I painted beauty and thought of him and his shoulders. His smile. His potential.

And because I am the woman I am, I will wait.  I'll wait forever until he gets it.

I went back home when the sun was rising, covered in paint, and climbed into bed and marked his body with graffiti that said Mine. All Mine.

love