Here.

i wish you could see me. here. doing what you told me i could not do. bringing men to their knees with a kiss to their ankle or a breath to the nape of, oh, well, anywhere. from the first time i did it i knew i would be foolish, no, ignorant, no, wrong, to do anything else. he used to be the master, used to be the one i had to beg for food or shelter or relief — just a second outside, just a moment in the bathroom or oh, no, you bitch nigger and the loudest crack i ever heard, right in my ear but strangely distant, i imagine like a cannon boom a few miles away, then mmm warmth, at least blood is warm. but after i let him come into me, his piece like a dead jellyfish, his face like a contorted weasel, after i saw he was just like all the other men in the world and he saw me as i had never seen myself, a treasure, a cleopatra, a vixen, a woman, there were more breaths outside, more breaths inside, too, or behind the barn or sometimes just out in the field just before dinner, less holding the urine till all the insides were up in hell's flames, less blisters and headcracks and more food (just enough so i would know) and sometimes even a kiss, on the lips, like a lttle boy. give your fruit to the world, they say. i do, and mine is the most succulent.

Dog in the closet.

i went down to complain. i didn't have a closet. she'd promised me a closet. she'd said, here's where your room will be, imagine the walls, and there will be a closet, right there. and the price was a bit high, but she said, oh, you're a good girl, i can tell you raised right, just like new roommate Jen, and you deserve it. dark eyes and fat glasses and flyaway hair and mud-colored skin and loose folds on her arms, covered in tiny white hairs, a few on her chin, she was my lebanese grandmother but thinner and with an accent i couldn't identify and without the eight children and the two dead children and the three almost-dead children and the suffering, well maybe not without the suffering but with a different kind of suffering (i'd asked her and she'd had no children). you come home long day at work and relax, and open window and sit on patio and relax and oh, beautiful garden in back, too, down there, flowers and we keep it real nice, real clean for down here in city. can i cook on that grill there? no, that is someone else's, but you buy one, cheap. i would not grill anyway. i took the place. i bought it all. the good girl, the patio, the closet. but when i unlocked the door, there was no closet. so i went down to complain. to yell. she kept the door mostly closed, "sorry, it's messy, it's such a mess," she said, her fat white husband in the background blocking the view, the sound of little dogs yapping and fighting. i told her about the closet, and she denied it. "i never said," she said. "yes, you did," i said. "what you want to do?" she said. "move out?" after loops of logic she wasn't getting through it was hopeless. she'd used the accent and the lebanese grandmother and the messy apartment and the fat husband and glasses to beat me. i lost with light hair, ghost-white skin, blue eyes, a college degree and assumption. one of her dogs slipped out the door (she'd left it cracked). it was bone-thin and one-eyed and the eye it had was glossy with a layer of milk and nearly hairless but the hair it had was mangy, and it had two teeth (i could count them) so it couldn't hold its tongue in so it flopped out, you could touch it (i did) and it wouldn't go back in. he was 18 years old (four years younger than me), she said. "see what time does?" she said. i forgot the closet.

Lying.

she is tired of this hair and this face and these thoughts. why can't she just laugh like they do? pin the hair back, pin the smile back and just laugh, just ha! falling ha! dying ha! shaking ha! spinning ha! ha! all and all of it. it's all over in a minute, dear, they say, so drink and laugh with me. but it is all there is, darling, and i can't feel it with drink, she thinks, and hopes that she is lying.

Contuining The Last Post

i rarely do this, but I was inspired to carry my last post on a bit. this could potentially turn into a longer story. what do you think?


for proof, her name. sam. not samantha, just sam, just big fat sam, blob sam. sam on her birth certificate. sam wilson. no middle name, either, to make it prettier. or less common. there was a boy in her third grade class with the same name, and it embarrassed her when role call came and the ugly "sam wilson" was called and they both stood up. she could not ask her mother to change it. cindy wasn't around much and when she was the conversation went: cindy: "drive me now." (ugly) sam: "but it's late, cindy." cindy: "drive your fucking mother to the damn bar or you'll end up with the tires." father scrapped tires for money, stole them off the bum cars that lined the main drag of mason, indiana, where they lived. the ones that didn't sell or had some defect were burned in a pit in the back yard, which was also home to some kittens that died trying to make it out of the placental bag they came out in. kind of like the people in this town, she thought. dying before they even breathe. she couldn't reach the pedal so she used a broomstick, which was shaky but enough to drive the two required miles. a few hours later, her mother would stumble out of the Mason Jar, usually on the arm of some man sam recognized but couldn't remember his name. "hello, honey," she'd say to sam, then kiss the man for a few seconds. "take me home, dear." as much as sam hated the idea of cindy spending their hard-earned money at the Mason Jar, she did relish this trip a bit. one, she got to sleep in the back seat of the car for a few hours, which was worn and warm and quiet and all her own. two: her mom was always especially nice to her when the deed was done, and would call her nice names like "honey" and "sweetie" and "daughter" and "dear." even if she didn't mean them, they were still nice to hear. and they were better than sam.


i think i need to change part I a bit now that i've decided sam lives in a small town. in the first part, i had her in the city, hence the towers and the girl with the big bug glasses. easy fixes. thoughts?

Squeeze.

she always returns to the same square. on the top of the building, not a fancy building, not the tallest building, but a tall-enough building, where she can see all the towers above her, a few churches below her, and the cars .. she captures one between her thumb and pointer and squeezes it like the pocks she wasn't supposed to squeeze on her face when she was a few years younger, there are still a few now and there is still that temptation to just squeeze them and just let it all come out, all the wonderful warmth on the inside. she does it to some of the people she doesn't like, too. but no warmth comes from them. that girl with the long blond hair and the big sunglasses that make her look like an overly primped dog or an ugly martian, where did she get those and who told her they looked good, who told her she looked good why do i think she looks good and why didn't i get that hair. hers doesn't grow, or not fast enough, and in waiting for it to get there she hacks it off, and smiles to herself as the florets hit the ground like fat brown rain. then she goes home and runs her hands through it, all two inches of it, and prays on stars that it will come back faster this time. stars, yes. god never did much for her.

Google Image Search, First Result.

cut open veins write.

write something every day.

my favorite writers.














me.

I'll fit in eventually.

Revamp.

I'm a journalist, so of course I write. something. every. day. But I write about bras and panties and fashion shows and CFOs and dollars and cents and nonsense. How often do I write something I want to write? Write something for me? Cut open a vein and write, as they say? (Makes it sound fun.) Rarely. I do try to pour my passion into all of my work but it's indefinitely hard when your work isn't something you're passionate about.

So here's a new attempt at reviving this dead blog. A literal name change that tells all exactly what I'm going to do: Write. something. Before the focus was on actual pieces, but those are hard to whip up on a whim, when you're tired and gross from the humdrum.

I cannot do one of those thematic blogs, where one writes some little quip every day about fashion or design. I was never a person to be so obsessed or passionate about one topic, one thing, besides writing. So that's what you're going to get.