Remember

I remember painting lines across my face in lipstick, hollering and throwing tea over the balcony, home made Boston Tea Party. I remember the metallic taste of the spoon against my tongue, cream rich ice cream melting. I remember the heat of my cheeks, pushing tears back because the words wouldn't come and water loosened them. But sometimes
water just chokes the words out...


I remember clearing dirt of my fingernails, hiding them so no one thought I was unclean or dirty. I remember the size of my fingers, cracked doll hands against the long tapered hands of others. "So small!"
I'm not so small.
 I remember when he first towered over me and grinned wide as a mile and patted me on the head. "Hello, little sister."
I'm not so little.


I remember telling him I didn't agree, trembling because the word 'no!' was wrong, bitter, against. I remember yelling because, that was the only way my voice would come out. Loud against the backdrop.
Excuse me, but I couldn't hear you over the sound of my own thoughts.
But Excuse me, You couldn't hear me over the thoughts of you own thoughts, either.


Swirls. I remember the mouse pitch of a sneeze between vibrato. I remember blue eyes with ice twinkles, brown eyes like a baby calf, warm and soft. I remember wild sea green eyes, kelp colored pupils. 


I remember shivering because I was cold.
I remember being cold because no one was looking, no one saw me. 
I shivered against being invisible. 
Goosebumps for vision.


I remember the lyrics to the songs. I remember writing lyrics to the songs in my heads, but they fell out silent ink to paper. 
"I want to be an astronaut and get high, break the barriers to the sky..I just wanna be free from the confines of gravity." 
"I want to be the one to put it to a song."


You make the lyrics and the way I write, but no one knows. Inkheart, Little Woman, Paddington Bear with covers ripped off, dropped in bathtubs, thumbed, spined, dog-earred. 


I remember screaming the lyrics till they lost meaning, dancing in my room alone to the Killers, dancing with her. Fedora on and pose in front of mirror. I remember rapping out of tune, laughing at the fallacies of my white beatlessness.


I remember putting on hoop skirts and somersaulting, leather gloves and feathered masks. I remember forcing the zipper up, inching dresses on. 


I remembering buying the denim mini skirt and my dad saying I shouldn't wear it because he hated the idea. I wore leggings to cover the idea of exposure. I remember the first time I wore makeup and smeared eyeshadow all over my face. I vanished under the lids of brown paint eyes. I remember the hair on the floor, freedom and shake.


I remember the bright lights and the rise and falls of my voice. "It's an obvious fact to me..." The power as the words hit the air, mixing with static. I got this. I have this. Reaching out for the electricity in the room and sending the pulse through my skin.


I remember the stories told about my great grandmother, I remember her candy colored beads and the squeaky  parakeet. I read her Dr. Seuss on her deathbed and cried when she couldn't here it. 
"She's not listening, Mom!"


I remember the news "It's a boy!" and then crying, because I wanted "It's a girl!" I remember staying up late doing homework and yelling "GET OUT!" Trying to fix yelling by hugs: a sister remedy, mix and stir. 


I remember that I remember him too much. I remember that I remember her too much. I remember that no one really knows how much I remember and I remember that maybe that is good. 


I desired to be remembered in ink, in book spines, in the curve of your cheeks and the straightening of your wrinkles,broad shoulders, long hair. I remember that I came from matzah ball soup and yellow stars, history and the crash of destiny. I remember the silent vowels and the dropped syllables.


I remember me. I remember you. I remember us. I remember them.


I remember.


Remember that I'll remember you.


Red ribbon tied around the finger, promise-to remember.

This Is For All The Physically Untalented Dreamers

“Really, you did swim team?! You just don't seem like someone who does sports to me. You are just all..artsy.” she explains. I laugh and glance down at my attire. I am wearing a polka dotted pea coat, a pair of vintage heels I found in the back of a costume/antique shop and one of my customary hair ornaments: an oversized bow I made out of ribbon, in my short hair. You know, the usual.

“I guess I look like someone who wears heels to school.” I respond. We laugh again. I definitely do not look like a physically talented person. And that my dears, would be because I am most certainly not.

Which is not to say that I haven't tried to be. Maybe the years of dance, where teachers were graced with my lack of ability and probably left class wondering if I was the offspring of two left footed penguins, doesn't count. But surely the tennis lessons where I never hit the ball over the net, but instead over the fence of the court, repeatedly, counts for something. Not to mention the year I played basketball and lost the ball not to the other team, but from my own hands, rolling into the stands on various occasions. Or there was my short lived soccer career. In kindergarten, I was a proud member of the Fire Fairies. However, after being kicked in the head by an oversized first grader while protecting my ball, my short and inglorious career ended. I returned for a short stint in 4^th grade for the Poison Oaks and played a blazing season of absolutely no wins. Our pizza party was fun, though.

I've run the mile in dresses. As for my tree climbing skills in heels and a skirt, I am unparalleled. I've done all six levels of swim lessons, the only sport I show any aptitude for and my dreams of being a skater girl are but a dim, distant, improbable future. I can officially skate about eight feet and not fall off the board. While doing ballet, I appear none so much as a small polar bear in a cheap circus act. I am a ball magnet, balls are magnetically attracted to my head. I do not understand this attraction in the least, as it is a rather small head that doesn't seem like such a wonderful target. However, I am convinced that is has something to do with the look of terror on my face as I realize in shock “Dang, that ball is about to hit me...” I am the queen of mini-golf fails and embarrassing P.E. moments. The girl who ends up always doing simple stretches wrong? Guilty. The girl who slips in her mismatched socks on the gym floor? My hand is raised.

But, I can swim. I'm not particularly fast, but my strokes are strong and my form is good. When I swim, I feel powerful. I feel free. So of the course, the immediate course of action was to take swim team. However, soon swim team began to pose some problems. First: do you know how many interesting bugs and leaves are at the bottom of a pool?! I would swim a lap and soon vanish into the blue water, searching for and picking up the interesting wildlife on the bottom of the pool.When I wasn't searching for it, I was often saving the various poor bugs that had fallen into the pool. Needless to say, my lap times were no record. The second problem posed was: the sun would set while I was in the pool, every night. Soon I would be caught staring up at the golden and often purple, setting of the sun. Writing poetry in my head, I would forget to swim. I lasted about two months. Maybe one day I will return to swim team, but don't expect me not to save the drowning bees.

And yet, I was blessed or maybe cursed with two moderately athletically talented brothers. I have been party to too many basketball and soccer games to count in my short, physically untalented life. So usually after making a few sarcastic comments about how young boys playing basketball look like angry crabs or trying not to glare at the passionate father in the stands yelling “THAT'S MY BOY!”, I turn to whatever activity I have brought to maintain my sanity. I have the “cheering-supportive-sister' bit down to a science. Every five minutes or so, I turn away from my doodles of tree nymphs or angsty poetry and yell “Go -insert name here- KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE BALL! WOOH!” After fulfilling my supportive sisterly duty, I return to my world. Later in the car when my father beams about that shot brother 1 or brother 2 made, I will smile benevolently and reply:

“That was awesome!”

But the truth is, I have no idea what anyone is talking about. But it turns out, I am not alone. Through a few painful middle school memories (Um...teacher..I can't reach my toes...), and years of camp activities I have found that others share my issues. A race of nature loving-organized sport hating teenagers do exist. We're strange and not understand by a large percentage of the teenage population. We make cynical comments about the degradation of humanity at rallies and are often people incapable of walking in a straight line. We are the sort that when the entire camp begins to play volleyball, trail off into the fields and begin to make flower wreaths.

This is not to say my sort do not LIKE being active. In fact, I love being active and being surrounded by nature. We just don't like being forced like a pack of mules to sweat. We are the sort of people who tend to place themselves as far back in a line for kickball as possible. So this is for all the physically untalented dreamers who have no idea how to make a touchdown, who thought the Giants were just a baseball team and whose only experience with baseballs is through forced middle school games and Peanut episodes: you are not alone. 

Nowhere, Ca.

There is this town called Nowhere. That wasn't its name originally, oh no. Nowhere once had a respectable name of sorts, named after some explorer or such,the sort of name we glance over in an old textbook. But Nowhere wasn't content with such a respectable Anglo-Saxon name. Nowhere was precisely in the middle of well, nowhere and for this geographic placement the town became named. The town is by no city at all, Walmarts and convenient gas stations that stick to the hours they claim to be open  are foreign concepts. One is either remotely removed from all human life forms or uncomfortably close to one's neighbors. Nowhere is one of the last few beach towns untouched by corporations or surf chains, mostly due to the fact no one has paved the roads in years and the locals rip down all signs pointing to their town. Nowhere is a perfect slice of Nowhere. Conversations used to go as follows:


"Where do you live?"
"I live in the middle of nowhere"


And so the name stuck,the town became literally known as Nowhere and at that it remains to this day.
"Where do you live?"
"Nowhere."
"No, really, where do you live?"
"I live up on the hill, in Nowhere."


The center of Nowhere has always been Lulu's Cafe, owned by Nancy, now. Nancy is a heavy set middle aged woman who wears too much red lipstick, has greying brown hair and is drawn towards large floral print dresses and penny loafers. She makes a mean meatloaf and the best cinnamon bun and cup of steaming hot coffee you'll ever taste. Lulu's has been around for more years than anyone can remember, which is saying something. The original owner must have been named Lulu, and the nickname has stuck. Every subsequent owner has been nicknamed Lulu. Even the last owner, a nice man named Robert became the joke of the town, referred to as 'Lulu' by everyone. Robert had a good sense of humor and bore the nickname with a grin, though it's rumored it may have added to his eventual mental breakdown and selling of the cafe. Nowhere has that effect on some people. Time moves a bit more slowly here and stories get repeated and retold more often than some have patience for.


Lulu's Cafe technically opens at 7:00 am, or at least the sign says so. Sometimes Nancy 'Lulu' forgets to open the doors though and is rudely reminded by P.J. rapping his cane against the glass door, clamoring for his morning donut and cup of black coffee, no cream. 


P.J. is an old painter, who sometimes forgets to change out of his robe. He has a sharp tongue and wry sense of humor. He drives an old cranky Volvo that he refers to as 'Virginia'. Virginia sends out fumes of black steam and creaks and groans. He will click his tongue and look at his old decrepit car and sigh "Creaks and groans for us both..I always wonder whose back is going to go out first." and then turn back to his black coffee. He sits in the peeling red booth by the window, with a newspaper and watches as the other customers roll in.


Lily, the new librarian and yoga teacher in town usually comes in around 7:30. She orders her cup of green tea and wheat bread like every morning. She is a pretty young thing, long blonde hair swept back and large brown eyes  with a determined step and lively disposition. Her yoga classes have turned out to be surprisingly full, though mostly by the middle aged men of Nowhere, for reasons she seems completely naive to. P.J. himself has even been present at a few, though he does not do much besides sitting on his yoga ball complaining about how he is too old to do this kind of thing. Lily always greets Nancy with a  cheery good morning and sits by the fire as Nancy brings her "the usual" while urging her to eat more.
"Are you sure you don't want some eggs or some bacon..or I would even whip up some of my meatloaf for ya, hun."
"Oh, I'm just fine! Lula, I don't want anything else..don't worry!"
"Are you dieting, hun? Hun, you better not be dieting. I once tried to diet and believe me, the things diet do to a good figure like our own, well, let me tell you.."
Lily will laugh and listen to Nancy's horror tales of diets, like every morning and sip her green tea. P.J. always makes some comments as she leaves about her not lasting, her kind never lasting in Nowhere.


Nancy will click her tongue at P.J. and wag her apron at him as Bean walks in. Bean's real name is Elizabeth Jillian Clark. However P.J. has never had a good head for names, which has only worsened with age. He usually just calls people whatever they remind him of. Bean is tall and long with long features and a willowy walk that reminds one quite a lot of a bean stalk. That is exactly what P.J. christened her as soon as she appeared in town. As is the story with most of Nowhere, the name stuck.
Bean is an avid knitter and loves children, though she has none of her own. Hence she is constantly knitting some new contraption or scarf for some already overburdened child of Nowhere, getting ready to bequeath them with their umpteenth scarf or mitten from her. Bean is also the town gossip. She will stroll into the cafe with her tongue already wagging, not even bothering to say hello.
"Oh, Lula, you won't even BELIEVE what I just heard!! So you know Charles at the gas station, well as we all know he has been making eyes at the  cashier for years. Well, and it was about time if you ask me,  so yesterday I heard that..you won't even believe it! Well Delilah went to the gas station and she no one was there..well you wouldn't believe it but when she went 'round back.."


"No, I don't believe it!" P.J. will grumble just to bug Bean.


Bean will fix him with a glare and continue her story to whoever is listening and will continue to repeat the story to anyone who walks through the glass doors.


Alfred sometimes pulls his big old Harley into the parking lot outside of Lulu's, hollers and strolls in. He will pull Lulu into his arms to sound of her pretend shrieks, gives her a big wet kiss on the lips and laugh as she complains about his big brown beard. Alfred is Lulu's boyfriend of 15 years, a nomadic, leather clad motorcycle enthusiast who is completely and utterly in love with Lulu. Alfred proposes to her every year, on the same date, with the same ring, in the same manner. Usually he will swing his arm around her, over two cups of coffee when the restaurant has closed and holler
"Lulu, you are quite the fine looking woman and I really do love you. How about we get hitched?"
"Alfred, you know I love you, but you don't sit still, hun. You are my nomad. Life traveling around doesn't suit my settling bones. And do you really want to live in Nowhere? This is my home, I don't want to move and live in motel eights with you."
"But I bought you the motorcycle..you riding it?"
"Sometimes" Lula will lie.
"So is this a no?"
"Nah, I couldn't ever say no to you!"
"Well, good..so..uh..should I ask again next year?"
"That sounds like a fine idea, Allie."
And so he does and has done for fifteen years.


Jasmine is the local writer, a small girl with cropped blonde hair and big peering owl like eyes. She usually comes in after school and will order anything from a bagel and cream cheese to Lulu's fried chicken and waffles. She's a funny girl with an animated nature and funny perspective on the world. She loves to prop herself next to P.J. and tell him stories. She can always make the old man chuckle, despite his grouchy nature. They take turn swapping stories like two old chickadees, back and forth. Jasmine or Jazzy is a very high-strung, emotional child and will often pour out her entire heart to the old man. It's an unlikely friendship, but the two are as thick as cream. Jasmine once told P.J. an old fairytale about a girl who was born with two hearts and would fix hearts and broken dreams with a needle. P.J. looked her squarely in the eye and then pointed at the pen clasped in her hands and said in his low  gravely voice
"This is your needle, two heart- girl..now go fix the world."
And so Jazzy is. She comes into Lula's every afternoon and writes as much as she can, the observation arounds her. Lula always laughs at her and calls her the cafe sponge. But P.J. and Jazzy both know who she really is.


So this is Lulu's Cafe, a small coffee shop with big red peeling booths and movie posters of old films no one bothered to see, fraying hot pink fake rose bouquets and checkered floors. The inhabitants of Nowhere flock in and out of the cafe, day in and out, and time goes slowly as Lulu warms up her coffee pot, and the waves in the sea crash in and out as they have since back when Lulu's cafe was truly owned by a Lulu.


And times go on and on, as it always has in...


Nowhere, Ca.

Under The Scholar Tree-Historical Fiction

-Written for a final project For history Class-Historical Fiction Piece as the 'lost last chapter' of the fabulous work of nonfiction, Wild Swans. I didn't ever write historical fiction, but I've been trying it lately and it has been an interesting experience. This is FAR from my typical piece of writing.-
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29. Under The Scholar Tree
(1985)

She ushers me under the scholar tree and motions for me to sit. She is a small woman, her hair is loose and greying but well cared for. She reminds me vaguely of my grandmother and her religious brushing of her hair. I smile politely and sit down. May follows suit, sitting besides me. She looks out of place with her  dirty blond hair and blue eyes. I breath in deeply. I never expected to be back here. The teahouse is under the embrace of a tall canopy of trees, low wooden square tables are placed around, bamboo chairs that give off a sweet aroma. 


It's 1985 and I am back in Sichuan, visiting with a British friend. By now, I have embraced London, made my home there. London  confused and scared me at first. I remember being lost in the train systems, unable to understand common English expressions, bewildered by the sea of English faces and signs all around me.  Though my English was strong, nothing prepares you for the actual experience of being in an English speaking country. My scant experiences with the sailors in China had barely prepared me for fluent conversations. My thirst for knowledge has by no means  been sated by my new life. I continued to read incessantly. I still fondly page through Little Woman, the first book I ever read in English. My ability to read English had benefited me greatly in China, and would continue to help me improve my English in London. The more I read, the more my English improved. I would sometimes read lines in books out loud, when alone, pretending I was the one engaged in the conversation: 


 “I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine!” (Pride and Prejudice.)


And so I have made my home there though sometimes I feel I left my heart in China. China is becoming very different from when I moved,  stains completely erased. The teahouses have opened back up, the standards of living have improved.  Slowly the taint of the past is vanishing. As I look around, the people seem more at ease, I even catch a few smiles. This is quite different from the China I left. 
 
 I too am different. England has given me a chance at freedom untasted in China. Comfort and leisure is no longer something that I have to mentally convince myself is morally wrong. When I first moved there  and had moments to myself, moments to sit, I  almost had a physical aversion to it. Mao had taught us that we must always be trying to work to build a better China. This was the purpose of our lives, and now my purpose was altered. I've come to love stolen moments of leisure like this, though I've never  quite been able to shake the feeling that they are indeed stolen. 
 
 Simple things have become extremely important to me. For example I have developed an extreme love of flowers. I remember ripping them out in Sichuan, tearing out the roots, dirt caked beneath my fingers. Mao urged us to rip out any plant life that could be deemed 'bourgeoise.” Now, I can't help but smile every time I see a patch of especially beautiful flowers. I sit under the scholar tree and take in the lush green shade of its pods, the moment to sit underneath it and simply breath. 

 But I've kept many things inside, blocking out many memories. I don't want to confront my past. In China we had all learned how to be actors and actresses, hoping to play our cards right. I remember when Mao died and those around me sobbed hysterically. I still wonder how many of those tears were real, how convincing my own acting had been.  Tears are left unshed.

 But now I am in this little Sichuan teahouse. May makes a few comments on how charming the atmosphere is. We make polite conversation as the woman begins to fill our cups with a kettle from two feet away, steaming jasmine tea.   I stare at the steam dancing in front of me in white wisps.  An old man is playing 'majiang', Chinese chess. I stare at him closely, as if looking at a ghost.


He smiles at me, revealing an almost toothless grin. 
“You play?” He asks
“No.” I reply truthfully.


 I may have once, but tea houses were banned along with chess during the Cultural Revolution. If I ever knew, I've forgotten how. I avert my eyes. I told May that this visit might be hard for me. 
The last time that I was here was in 1966 and I wasn't ordering tea. I remember being with the other students as they had yelled “Leave this bourgeoise place!!” to the customers, the old men playing chess. I remember my shock at how these elders were treated, my refuse to act with such aggression. But gentleness was  considered bourgeoise along with teahouses and chess. And yet here I am in the teahouse again, the epitome of 'bourgeoise.' Those sitting in a teahouse drinking tea, chatting and playing chess are not out making revolution, they aren't out building a stronger China. 
I look down at my clothing, a simple black dress and patent leather shoes. The last time I was here I was a teenager dressed in trousers, covered in patches to look 'proletarian.” My hair hangs loose around my face, the last time I was here it was in two plaits, not a hair out of place. Soon it would be cut off by my grandmother, never to be adorned with silk flowers by her again. 
The old man playing chess addresses me again. “Would you like to learn?”
“Maijiang?”
“Yes..your friend too?” May nods at me encouragingly.

The old man gives me an eager look, taking a puff from his long stemmed pipe over a plate of nuts and melon seeds. I am elated by this simple fact..I am really truly in the very same teahouse that so many years ago I pasted slogans on the walls of.  I feel a wave of guilt, remembering asking a man quite like the man in front of me if he would go home.


My face must have given me away my troubled thoughts.
“Miss, are you alright?” Croaks the old man
“I'm fine..It's just..when I was younger myself and many other students, we invaded this tea house. We..we closed this place down. We were young..we..”
I feel May take my hand and squeeze it firmly for reassurance.
The man takes another puff at his pipe. He nods“Then you never got a chance to learn how to play Maijang, did you?”
I grin, widely. “No, I guess I never did.”
I take a sip of the jasmine tea, savoring its pungent flavor, feeling a cloud of steam against my face as I tip my cup towards my mouth. I place the cup and saucer down, careful not to burn my fingers. I grin again and sit down next to the old man.
He begins to point each of the characters, the elephant, the soldier etc. May is enraptured, I can tell she is taking in every instruction, rapt. I listen, politely. But my head is elsewhere. I think of when when Lin Bao called for everything that represented old culture to be destroyed.
All around me people are drinking tea and playing chess. A waiter is shuffling around the bamboo seats pouring hot water from a kettle, which he pours from feet away. His aim is accurate and pinpointed, hot water tumbling into the pale yellow tea cups. 
This is one of the happiest moments of my life, I decide. For who are we without our culture? Who are we without our teahouses, our libraries, our chess games and old men?
“You ready?” He asks.
I nod. 


I am a wonderful Maijong player.












Notes-
Jung Chang would not begin to write Wild Swans for two more years. Her mother visited her in London and told her the stories of her and her grandmother (as stated in epilogue). She would then reconcile with her past and begin to write Wild Swans. This fictional scene happens two years before this, as the 'lost chapter.” Jung Chang did in fact invade a teahouse in her youth , a scene she describes in her bool. And in 1985 she revisited it with an English friend, after it had re-opened. The book  Wild Swans makes the briefest of mentions to this visit, simply stating that she revisited it and it was the one of the happiest days of her life. I chose to imagine her scene at the teahouse and explore some of the thoughts she must have been thinking about the scene at hand and her experiences in London. I imagine what a shock it must have been to suddenly be in London, like discovering a new world. Jung Chang says that she chose to avoid thinking about the China she had left behind. However, her past would continue to catch up with her. I wrote this scene imagining how it would be like to reconnect with her past in ways that had been once deemed illegal by the Cultural Revolution.The Cultural Revolution was all about  'out with the old, in with the new.”  However, I believe that without our pasts we have no definition of our present. I believe Jung  Chang would say the same, leaving an amazing legacy in the form of  Wild Swans.

We'll Meet Again

 -When I grow up I want to be an old person.It is amazing how much of life..doesn't need any fiction added to it.-

We visited him today. He had lost weight and his skin was wrinkled  and pulled across his bones. His long gaunt hands were colored with purple veins. His eyes were bright, a cover of fog touching them. He was in the hospital, contained by white walls and smooth tile. He clutched a red pen in his hand, a note book of drawings at his side. When we walked in I clasped his old hand and he called us his family. He showed us paintings he was turning into place mats, still a business man with his gears turning. He said he went broke but he's turned out all right. He always says that. We always laugh. 

I told him that every morning when I wake up, in the room he used to sleep in the first thing I see is his painting of the birds and the sea. He told me those birds could be any bird I wanted them to be. They are. Sometimes I call them my silly geese, other days they are my swans. When he signed his name on that painting he added a little flag to the sail boat. I remember that every morning..what use is a boat without a proper sail? He's no different today.

He tells us about World War Two and his little white cap. He says everyone steals money. Everyone is a thief. But I know he loves them anyways. He talks about Carlos, who recently choked on his own vomit and died. He talks about how drunk Carlos could get. But when I think of Carlos, I think of the way he smiled shyly and always forgot my dog's name. He told me he had a dog once. The way Carlos said it, I know that dog was much more than a dog. I miss that old drunk with his greasy hair.

Sometimes I feel like I'm grasping at time, desperate to save these moments....because if I don't who will? He says no one calls and we write our number on a whiteboard and we ask if they'll let him hang his paintings on the wall. He says today the nurse said he could now. But his best painting is him. Every story is stretched across his forehead and his fingers are long like paintbrushes.

Last time I saw him, he demanded to know if the kids at school know how beautiful I am. I smiled.  But does he know how beautiful he looks to me right now? I wish I could bottle each of his queer funny sentences, his stories, and hang them from the ceiling of my room. When we leave he begins to sing in his croaky voice

"We'll meet again..

We join in, out of tune, smiling, filling the white hospital with loud flat notes..
"Don't know where, don't know when, but I know we'll meet again some sunny day."
See you then, Peter.

Bird Bones

Every time you close your eyes
what do you see?
Catch the moon and the sun
but too weak to see between the two
Sometime I feel inadequate like paper dolls
in a paper world
scissors through my white confidence
I don't bleed 
I just find the wind and sweep myself away into it
And I wonder if I seem too tongue tied around you
breaking into me
and all my mache walls
because I'm paper thin and waste deep
two steps forward and I'm your sinking sand
did I tell you I write because it's the only thing I'm true to?
the only thing I find myself as how
I want to be
I am
I will be
and I was
they said make your face delicate with bird bones
and I tried
But now i'm stuck with the feathers growing from my thoughts, hummingbird heart beat
and no where to fly
or maybe too many clouds to perch, but afraid of leaving my roost
Graffitied heart with pencil shavings between my nails
I'm a space cadet with a bad case of head dreams
and a broken image of skewed memories
I want them to write on my head stone 'She is Love'
not she was
but she is
But instead my life stone says 'she is a scatterbrained chatter bird with a mousy soul'
if you read my palm, you wouldn't see a fortune
just the pattern of a little girl with wide eyes and sheered hair, staring up at you
without the smallest clue of what she is doing, looking at you

                       ~Lady Of Bolinas~

Ode To My Dear Friend, Trouble.

-listening to Lenka's song  Trouble Is A Friend Of Mine..and voila..Trouble wanted me to write a story about my relationship with the imp.-


Trouble is a friend of mine. We first met at a young age. He was freckled, with sharp green eyes, an imp with long feet and even longer hands, which he never washed. I've found over time he has many forms, though. He recommended I steal marshmallows and feed them to my young brother.His logic was "You aren't allowed to eat them, but who said you can't feed them to your little brother?" No one. Once, Trouble told me to throw a banana at my mother. He was always imaginative like that.  To this day,Trouble convinces me to stay up late,till I rub my eyes and my eyelids threaten to peel off my face in the morning.


But the most annoying thing about Trouble is the fact that he makes me so mad at myself. I've never been a rebellious, radical child. But Trouble distracts me when I am supposed to be working and makes me forget simple things. Trouble convinces me that I have more time to waste then I do. His absolute favorite thing to do,  is hide my common sense from me. After that, he hides my lipgloss and logic from me. He tends to hide them in the nearest sock drawer (when he hasn't fed all my socks to a washing machine).


Trouble dropped my phone once and cracked it. He has a history of this. He also dropped my favorite book in the bathtub,a prior phone in the toilet and multiple favorite pieces of jewelry. This impertinent imp also rips up paper, loses assignments and stains my shirts when I'm not paying attention.  One of his proudest achievements is pouring bleach into a load of my favorite clothing. He is also quite proud of the time he put salt in my baking rather then sugar, while blowing up an entire tea kettle of hot cocoa. He even managed to make the hot cocoa explode all the way across the kitchen.


 Trouble is very skilled. I wouldn't suggest otherwise. The time he locked me out of my house, which was for sure unlocked ten seconds before, will attest to this.  This is not to mention how he likes to treat me to parental lectures on a weekly basis. 


And we seem to be inseparable. I should say that I don't like him very much. My record would say otherwise. Why just today he turned my alarm clock off and laughed as I had to get dressed and run to the bus in less than five minutes. He keeps me on my toes, if nothing else. He sat next to me on the bus and purposely dimmed the sun, so I couldn't study my math. He followed this up by hiding my gym shorts and stealing the lock for my locker. Sometimes I wonder if he is a magician. It would certainly seemed so today, when he ruined all the erasers on my pencils and blew my history papers onto the floor, without moving a muscle. 


Trouble, is a close friend of mine. Now, if you'll excuse me, he seems to be currently feeding papers the wrong way  into my printer.. ...