The Mosaic of My Life

 

"I pray that the little stones that I put into the mosaic of my life may make a worthwhile pattern. I pray that I may persevere and so find harmony and beauty."

I was an only child. I suppose I still am, in a way. Without many friends, I spent most of my time watching TV, reading books, and studying how people acted. Not really people—characters is more accurate. In all that solitude of my formative years, filled with fictional stories and fictional lives, I suppose at some point I split.

I knew, fundamentally, at some deep inner level, that I was not like my classmates—my peers—who so easily befriended, so easily talked, so easily moved through hallways and classrooms, who so easily completed assignments without a disdainful questioning: Why? Why am I being asked to do this? This worksheet. This project.

In elementary school, during a unit on Native Americans, we were tasked with choosing a “totem animal” to represent our family and explaining why. My father was in prison for child molestation. My mother was absent, working full-time and going to college full-time. I did not give two fucks what my family’s totem animal could or would be. The girl next to me chose wolves because they stick together and are pack animals. I don’t care. I told my teacher as much, loudly. I don’t care. Can I choose nothing?

I was difficult. I was a difficult child. I have no doubt the teacher planned to discuss this in some third-grade parent–teacher conference my mom did not attend.

As much as I felt different from my peers—loathsomely different—I also felt desperate for their acceptance. I still do.

For as long as I can remember, I have lived a fractured life.

There is my “real life.” Right now, that includes my marriage, my job, my friends. It’s tangible. It’s objective. Others would confirm that how I perceive it is how they perceive it. If you showed them a picture of my husband, they would say, “That’s Caroline’s husband.” I even have a paper from Madison County stating such.

Then there is my “inner world.” Mostly fiction, built on a handful of small moments I’ve twisted through funhouse mirrors and stretched again and again, like taffy. This is why, for years—years—I believed myself in love with someone who, at most, would call me a friend. If you showed a picture of them, others might say, “That’s someone Caroline knows.” Not even friend. And this is in a post-social media world where everyone you know is called one.

It was obsessive. Scanning pictures for hints of who they were, what they liked, what we could possibly have in common. Looking for the small gaps where I could fit—like a scarf tied around the neck at the last minute, technically present but not necessary. Something that could be removed without consequence. 

I filled those gaps however I could. I am just checking social media again. I am just liking a post. I am just sending a thumbs-up emoji. I am just the sideline screaming for attention I know I will not get. Not really.

It’s impossible to completely ignore someone screaming from the sidelines, and on some level these crushes—I'll use the word for lack of a better one—encouraged my indelible vulnerability. I’m not completely embarrassed. As a split person, I know that while internally I crossed too many lines—drowned in my lack of emotional boundaries—externally it likely read as nothing more than normal interaction. A moment of poor judgment. A brief impulse. An awkward phrase. 

I just don’t really know how to human. It would be easier if I could follow a script all the time. Even inside my head.

So I pull myself back from the past and return to the present. I had a few rough weeks. Rough is the only word that fits. Externally, my life is a well-oiled machine by design. At most, there was a brief hiccup. But internally, I was face-to-face with the stark reality of who I pretend to be.

I pretend to be a romantic. I genuinely believed this was about desire.
Yearning. Want. Even need. 

But, it was fear all along.

Fear of being alone.

At fourteen, I discovered that while I wasn’t very good at making friends, I was plenty good at attracting boyfriends. By then I had developed a 38DDD chest, and with my childhood training, I knew how to feign sexuality. I had seen enough movies to play a top-tier manic pixie dream girl to any guy who was, fundamentally, not in my league. Two to five levels below me. That was what made it easy.
And all those guys came with families who loved me.

I don’t know what it’s really like to be alone anymore. Not since I was fourteen. I have always had my left foot in the next relationship as I pulled my right foot out of the last.

I need to be frank. I actually like my life. My real life. More than the pretend ones I tried to plan with these crushes. And that scares me.

At seventy-four, I can assume my husband will die before me. Though arguments can be made that, based on family history, I may die first. Or maybe genetics don’t mean anything. Yeah. Science isn’t real.

Sometimes, the idea of dying before my husband is comforting. I would never be faced with being alone.

So where am I going with all this? I wasted time, energy—even money—on crushes in the vague hope that I could partially set something up now, in preparation for when my husband dies, so I could minimize my time alone. To prove that I could still find and trap someone. That someone other than him could love me. Whatever. Whatever!

I did not care whether this was wanted by my crush. The more I reflect on what I once framed as harmless, juvenile fun, the more I see how selfish, self-serving, and manipulative it was. In fear of losing what I have right now in some imagined future, I turned my back on my real life to force something that was not meant to be—forcing my will, psychically, onto another person, with complete disregard for their feelings and for my husband’s.

I was running from a future that looked like my lonely childhood.

Let as get real. If I genuinely wanted these people....I would have left my husband. I would have considered it. Leaving my husband for them was never on the table. It wasn't in the room. It wasn't outside the door. 
It wasn't a thing.

This blog is one of the few spaces where I have allowed all pieces of myself to run wild. And run wild they have—feral, in all directions. I don’t delete things, but I don’t want this to be the only place where I am fully myself anymore.

I believe my inner world can—and should—fit into my external world. That I don’t need to attach myself to random people in some parasocial emotional contingency plan. That my time, energy, and obsession can be devoted to those who are devoted to me, now.

Ignore the future. I’ll probably die in eleven years anyway. My husband will probably live another twenty. I can’t keep living in contingency plans. I can’t build a life on fear.

A life built on fear can never feel whole.
A life built in fantasy will never feel real.

I am taking a break from this blog. Not forever. A break—to give myself time to weave what I share here into my real life. A break from social media so I only see my real world: the dinner my husband made, the mortgage paid, the air in my lungs, the shampoo I like, the ritual and flow of our days together, the small laughs and inside jokes.

I have faith in the possibility of a real world I am fully in.

Touch You Like a Tiger

I hope he touches you like a tiger—
soft and rough, the way I imagined
you like. Yes, I want the next man
you make googly eyes at to take action,
decisive action, the way my horoscope
is always telling me: Dear indecisive Libra—
shit or get off the pot. But the stars know
I am purgatory-cursed, waffling in limbo,
torn between two incompatible wants.
I can’t have both, so I choose the closest,
most convenient, guaranteed option:
the one I am already in.

But you—
you sit at a buffet of choice,
gargling sweet drinks, tasting everything.
I hope he—whoever he is—kisses you
in a way that resurrects forgotten childhood
fantasies: playground dares, nervous giggles,
secrets whispered after dark—
that sudden feeling,
the click of remembering
what life is for,
how it lights itself.

Yes, I pray
he will do all the things I hesitate over,
never once drafting a pros-and-cons list.
Let him touch you like a tiger again—
not caged, not pacing,
not choosing safety over teeth.

For your sake,
he should be everything
I was too careful to be.

Gone Without a Trace

Last night, while cleaning the kitchen after dinner, I thought about what my life would be like if I had never met you.

It is strange how much space you once occupied, considering how little remains. Had we never met, almost nothing would be different. I would have eaten the same dinner, cleaned the same kitchen, used the same soap in the same bathroom, watched the same movie, and gone to sleep in the same bed beside the same man.

Did knowing you change me at all? The conversations, the intimacy—where did they go? And you—are you any different? Would your life look the same if I had never existed in it? I assume it would.

The only real difference is the time I lost believing otherwise.

Did you lose anything?

I’ll never know. I’m awake, my sheets just as fresh as if we had never met.

Resolution.

Betrayed myself,

to grovel at your feet,

but your eyes

were so fixed

on strangers

in the street

that your gaze never fell,

never saw me.

Either you knew

what I was doing

and ignored it—

if so, you are cruel.

Or you didn’t know,

which makes you

a thoughtless fool.

Either way,

I want no more.

See the problem

so clearly now:

It's me.

You won't read this, but goodbye!

Dear Crush,

You won’t read this, but it isn’t for you. For once, I am doing something with no hope of impressing you, seducing you, or accidentally auditioning for the role of Most Biggest Fool Alive....even if I won four years in a row!

To begin: what is love? My answer has evolved over the years. For too many years, I believed myself to be utterly, ardently, factually in love with you. I won’t revisit the journals or poems—reading them produces a tightness in my chest that, from close range, looks suspiciously like the opening act of a heart attack. But alas, like many things I’ve been absolutely certain about, time has proven me wrong. Again.

I am not angry anymore. I am not even hurt. I am simply disappointed in myself.

Again.

Still.

Consistently.

It was me. It was always me. It is impressively me.

How can one be angry or sad when the culprit keeps turning themself in?

With enough time and documentation, a pattern always emerges. At this point, I suspect most people live inside personalized hamster wheels, sprinting nowhere, and once in a while a bedding pellet flies onto the track. Look! We cry. I don't remember seeing that before! This is a new track! It's different this time!

(It is the same wheel. It has always been the same wheel.)

This pattern. My pattern. Some might call this emotional cheating. I wouldn’t. Cheating, even emotional cheating, requires mutual participation. This is more of a one-person interpretive dance. These are just crushes with no desire for them to go anywhere.

It’s like holding up a marriage proposal sign at a concert—the thrill is that it could capture a celebrity’s attention, but the courage only exists because you know it won’t. If I were ever called out on these crushes—these pitiful, anachronistic, middle-school-level infatuations—I’d probably need to lie down on the floor and stare at the ceiling until death arrived. Even le mort wouldn't ring my doorbell. He'd be busy that day.

It’s madness, but isn’t a little madness the selling point?

And here’s the important part: I don’t look insane. Externally, I behave exactly as I do with my regular, plain, old friends—people I am definitely, unequivocally not in love with. The chaos is purely internal. Like a duck gliding serenely across a pond while below the surface its feet are paddling like it’s late for a tax audit. IRS in a rowboat just behind me.

So again: what is love? By now, I should know. I know what it isn’t. It isn’t whatever I’m doing. Not really. I don’t give love—I hoard it. I stockpile it. I buy it little sweaters and never hand them out. There is a very warm garment rotting in the back of my closet that could comfort someone, but instead it exists as a monument to my inert fervor.  But isn't that how I've designed this endeavor? Flirt with the edge inside but never cross the line outwardly?

If I’m honest—and I sometimes am, usually while journaling at a speed that prevents self-awareness—over these years of thinking I loved you, I have struggled to even like you at times. I’m not fully convinced we’re friends. Not mutually at least.

Our lives are so incompatible they might as well exist in different ecosystems. An orca and a raven. A bird would eventually drown at sea. A whale could never fit in a nest.. That isn’t tragic. It isn’t toxic. It’s just logistics. They’ll both be happier staying exactly where they belong.

What I loved was not you—it was me. Or rather, the fantasy that somewhere out there you possessed special eyes capable of seeing the real me as I experience myself. I loved the idea of being recognized without the inconvenience of explanation. Isn't that what I've always wanted? Someone who loves me as much as I love me? Oh my God. I'm actually selfish! I'm probably self-centered! 

But I want someone to mirror my own thoughts back to me. And yes, I hear it now—why crave external confirmation if I already know who I am?

I don't know. Why does anyone check their work? I just want to know: Does anyone else see this great, intricate, and interesting person I made with so little?

But it doesn't work. You don't mirror me and you aren't enjoying this. Neither am I. Who is this for? It’s time to retire this emotional crutch before it files a restraining order. I don't need that on my record. 

This is a self-issued cease-and-desist. To myself.

If I ever felt heartbroken—by you, or her, or her—it was entirely self-inflicted. And what’s most jarring is that this “ending” will register nowhere but inside me. You won’t notice. Nothing will change. You’ll receive the same responses. The same gifts. The same letters. As I have always treated you as nothing but another friend. If this was anything at all, it was a private farce. I have always been the most persistent antagonist in my own life, and once again I’ve delivered a strong performance.

How pathetic, this tiny hope that you’ll sense the shift through some psychic tremor—confirming that yes, you do perceive me deeply, just silently, invisibly, and without evidence. It's laughable how little you'll notice me or my feelings or lack thereof.

But really—what is love? Love, I suspect, doesn’t live in feelings. It lives in what one does and says. And I will do and say the same things as ever. So will you. Another failed experiment, poorly designed, repeatedly executed, and somehow still funded. Sounds like something NEH might still support.

And the worst part? I have real love at home—love that shows up in action and in words—while I keep stealing from it to throw offerings at people who were never asking. I am looting my own house to decorate an empty altar to a false God.

Long, meandering letter you won't read just to say farewell to this thing you didn't know we were in. Adieu! Goodbye! This is the end! For real this time! Cross my heart and hope to die!

All that emotional energy—I swear to a kind and gracious God—this time, I will spend on my marriage where love sleeps, eats, makes coffee and toast, pays bills, mows lawns! 

Yes, I withdraw my emotional credit from a fantasy economy and reinvest it in reality—not because reality is more exciting, but because it is more honest. 

What is love? It is authentic.

What is love? Nothing I felt for you.

xoxo,

Caroline

I lived like a fuckboy in my own head. Can you forgive me?

     Oh, the things that masquerade as romantic in the haze of active alcoholism. Once, a homeless guy ordered a single Long Island Iced Tea with two straws. We split it like a milkshake, as if I were in a poodle skirt and he were cuffing his jeans. Swoon. Another time, at a Halloween party with a bowl of candy corn on my lap, a guy—always a guy—ate each piece color by color: white, yellow, orange. Then reversed it. He wanted to taste the colors.  And on some patio, between sips of $1 pints, a man explained the “complexity” of being a male feminist, which basically boiled down to believing abortion was okay. Oh god—there was even the guy who drew a family tree of the Saddle Creek Records bands on a napkin.

     In hindsight, none of it was romantic. At best it was nostalgic, but even that was aggressively generic. Build a fort. Pack a picnic. Take a walk. Play the guitar. Read her a poem. Show her your vinyl collection. Pluck a city-planted flower. Insert-girl-here. Rinse. Repeat.

     It’s the same kind of thinking that convinces someone to show up unannounced at a crush’s workplace—some hipster chimera trying to be a bar, a music venue, and a restaurant but failing at all three. In five years it’ll be closed, resurrected by the owner with a new gimmick: minigolf instead of arcade games, cowboys instead of aliens. Still “fresh” to local pseudo-artists clinging to poverty like it's a personality. It’s the difference between puking pizza and puking hamburgers: same taste, same smell, barely a variation.

     Keep those images in mind. Because I hadn’t wanted anything like that in a long time. I liked predictable. I basked in stable. I hadn’t thought about those shapeless, toxic gestures from active alcoholism in years—those little ploys that exploit whatever hole inside us is still chasing innocence. Manufactured intimacy performed by drunk, mediocre men and swallowed whole by romanticizing young women. The way an undergrad melts at a note slid across a sticky bar: Do you like me, yes or no? Circle one. How do we not see the manipulation in real time?
I didn't. And she wouldn't either.

     And yes—enter, stage right—her. A true ingénue. Naive, sweet, and gentle. Pretty and desirable.  Fawn-eyed innocent. The kind of girl who laughs with her whole ribcage and writes in the margins of books. Still holding tight to her childhood favorites, but aching to appear worldly. Outfits like a costume. She's slipping on a main character now.

     And suddenly I wanted to do fuckboy things. She was someone I could overpower with charm, someone on whom I could regurgitate all the gestures that once worked on me. Because she and I were so similar. You know, back when I was a young active alcoholic.
If I fell for it, she would too.

     I wanted to offer the faintly romantic gestures that mean nothing—little sticks and twigs pretending to be a bonfire. She stirred that in me. She made me want to be drunk again. Not for the buzz, but for the permission to be stupid. To act without thought or care. To be like a guy. Like a college guy. Swinging false confidence around like a dick. 

     I daydreamed truly unhealthy fantasies: her showing up at my door in tears—Fine, it’s just one night, sweetheart. Or me tagging along with her and her friends, something I’ve never done, imagining myself too cool, too above it all. Performing superiority, judging each one as some new variant of douchebag, and somehow feeling justified. Because I’m a girl. And sober. This is hamburgers-not-pizza puke. I’m not like those other guys.

     But I was. I was playing with her the way any drunk guy would—except I didn’t have alcohol or youth to blame. Just some cheap, calculating scene that could be applied to any other girl.

     The gestures were hollow, and so was the hunger behind them. I kept telling myself I could control it, that I was sober now, safe now. My God! I have a husband! A house! A career! I am better than this!

But the truth is uglier: sobriety didn’t change the instinct.

It only stripped away the illusion that harm requires intoxication.

The fuckboy wasn’t in the bottle.

It was in me the whole time.

And it just was waiting for a body soft enough to repeat itself on.
I still maintain, I could fuck her if I wanted to.

do you believe in fate?

not sure if fate is real
or if physics just makes like things
attract. maybe fate is a force—
like gravity, dropping us
into the same space:
you’d naturally
people-please,
and i’d naturally
come on too strong.

years ago, my friend’s friend
(they’re not friends anymore)
said i made her uncomfortable—
that i try too hard.
but if i didn’t try,
no one would notice.
why don’t they think of that?
if i weren’t overwhelming you,
you’d never see me at all.

like neighbors’ dogs—
unleashed, wandering, shock-collared—
they always find my yard.
i can’t call it fate exactly,
but we animals sense each other.
the dogs know i’ll be kind,
and i knew, from the start,
you might let me go too far—
while anyone else would let me
fade behind the fences they built..

i quit caring

when, oh when?
i can't recall.
sometime this week—
maybe.

no, not last week.
this week.
yes.

but when?
monday?
tuesday?
or was it
the weekend?

i can't recall.

i don't imagine
how you'd feel.
if you feel.

i don’t care.

i care
so little
i can’t even remember
when
i stopped caring.

the irony isn't lost on me — just on you.

Hi, Caroline! How Are You?

So easy to say—
a gesture so small
it vanishes
between notifications.

Try it, once,
before spilling sorrow
like wine
on my white carpet—
before sighing
that no one asks
how you are.

Yes, unburdening helps.
And lucky you—
I’ve been here,
again and again.

It’s just a shame
you never do the same.

Next time,
start with those five words:
Hi, Caroline! How are you?
Or don’t.

It’s been too long.
And now,
even if you asked,
I’d lie.

You’ve taught me
how little
truth is wanted.

I’m not saying
you don’t matter—
just wondering
if I do.

rookie year / bird season

---

You’d think this was my rookie year

The way I’m pulled into the games—

Like children’s games, where the rules

Never stay the same. I say,

“That’s not allowed.” But you stand square,

“Uh huh! I can do that now.”

This latest round has me praying

For the bench. Pull me from the game.

I’m tired. Sloppy passing. Missed shots.

Stumbling over my own feet.

Fouling myself.

It’s masturbation. I’m fucking myself—

Fucking myself over.

Me: d’objet du jour.

You: giggling audience,

Not even watching,

On your phone,

Taking a selfie.

#GoTeam.

This happens every quarter.

Till the buzzer sounds.

---

Brace yourself—this isn’t just a metaphor anymore.

Yesterday a bird died. I killed it.

I covered a blueberry bush with a net—

I followed the internet’s advice—

She went for a berry. For herself.

Her family. A sweet little treat.

A jeweled lie dressed as fruit.

Then tangled up. Died right there.

Not my intent, but the result.

How my husband and I cried

When he said, “Some mockingbird

Has lost its mate. Some eggs have lost

A mommy.” That is like you:

Careless attention,

Spread like wildflower seeds—

And me,

A hungry bird,

More reckless. More stupid.

Falling into it.

The only victims?

The ones abandoned in the nest.

The bird. Me. You.

Even the net—

strung to help, now in the trash

with a dead bird.

This game we made:

Everybody loses.

We are all rookies this year.

---

FREAKSHOW

Sometimes I feel like the silence before a scream.

A man in a white coat fused our veins—

Scalpel, laser—his assistant wiping his brow.

We emerged like one of Dr. Moreau’s beasts:

stitched and twitching,

snouts half-shaped, eyes too bright.

They beat us until we walked upright,

grunted greetings, mimicked them—

but inside, fur and fangs remained.

There were only two of us.

We didn’t know—

where my body ended,

where yours began.

I don’t know. But I have a knife—

lifted off a mess hall tray,

plastic, but sharp enough.

Its handle in my sweaty palm.

I can’t live this welded life.

Call me Frankenstein. You, Igor—

I’ll cut. You watch.

I flinch. You don't.

I’ll saw through the tendons; 

you keep the blood from my eyes.

I’ll free the beasts.

We’ll howl—

just not together.

In ten years, I’d like to swoop into your life like an Errol Flynn film and rescue you from boredom.

Imagine—
a decade from now,
our lives shed their skins,
emerge from the chrysalis
into something quieter.
Settled, like the weight
of a house resting
deep into its foundation—
cement, dirt, memory.

One morning, light breaks
through your kitchen window.
You pause—
and in the stillness,
remember:
my voice on an old message,
a letter folded in a drawer,
a strange little drawing
you once didn’t know what to do with.
These fragment gifts—
silent wallpaper
on the walls of your years.

But now they shimmer
under some unexpected filter.
You see them for what they are:
my slow construction
of one moment
meant only for you.

This one, when I appear—
swinging on a vine,
a ridiculous hero in tights,
half Robin Hood, half Ivanhoe,
a little bit Don Juan,
laughably vivid—
pulling you from grayscale days
into the kaleidoscope
I’ve been folding
for you all along.

And maybe—
you’ll reach for my hand.
And I’ll be ready
to play the hero.

If this story is any good—
it ends with a kiss.

Never Yours

Six minutes before the alarm,

I’m already dreading the list—

things I should’ve done last week

pressing in on today.

So I pray to my God for help.

But my God is ruthlessly practical.

My God reminds me cat patterns mirror the womb’s design—

symmetry born in silent cells dividing.

My God tells me to stay off the internet.

Says most of my problems are my own design.

My God says things like:

"Remember when you believed

in doing something today

to make tomorrow better?

Now you live in sandcastle dreams—

Buck up,

I’m telling you—

you’re stealing from your life

to serve a false prophet."

Then God says, like a gut punch:

"You aren’t fit to be hers.

I know the future—

she’ll never be yours."

The alarm goes off.

I lie still,

alone,

left to grapple

with the

dis / en / tanglement

no one else made.

How I long to wedge myself into every part of your life—

Yes, every corner of what you hold dear should carry a hint of me.

I suppose I’m a bit of a spoiled brat that way.

to the boys kissing her

 "I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. "

She—
slips in like fog through a cracked wedding teacup,
dissolves like spun sugar in the throat of a vow,
lingers like lamb's breath.
Oh my.
She’s the poltergeist in the plumbing.
The hum between walls.
The devil tap-tap on my breastbone xylophone.

And me?
A coat on a hook.
A peeling corner of wallpaper.
A little sigh watching from the corner.
Her parade floats: blinky-lashed dreamboats—
pearled and prancing.
They gleam half moon smiles. They reach
for wishbones. But always: almost.
Their hearts, pomegranate seeds
rolling under her bed.

O Revered Tribunal of the Unkissed,
know this—
I, too, have bowed at the altar of What If,
clutched glitter with raccoon-hands of want,
missed like a postcard lost en route to Paris.

Now—
the track ahead is lined in spilled salt
No detours. No delays.
Trains chug forward;
Trains do not detour for wishbones.
Tick, chug. Tock, chug. Forward.

We wove the days (foolishly, gloriously!)
from daisy chains and glass beads.
Soft! Silly! Scrumptious!
Yet somehow—they formed
fashionable handcuffs.

Today I must bend, I bendy-bend, a willow in a tutu,
as everything else remains static.
And maybe—you, too—
will find this strange path:
relentless, ridiculous,
and wide enough for the likes of us.

ciphers/sisters

the women in my life =
a wet web, shimmering—
               unsummarizable.

their messages:
grainy voicemails / emojied lists /
one-word texts / snail mail (still slimey)
humming beneath

a pond-surface plain—
but dive:
fish / algae /
eels—
a whole ecosystem fucking
in the stillness of a second.

one says:
“teaching summer PE”
[translation]
she wears the gay trope
like vintage jean jacket—
worn, wanting,
exactly hers &
her co-workers like it
('like' like liking a FB post)

another:
weight loss / shirt won’t fit—
nothing fits
anymore / new clothes?
—keep the old? how long?
and I’m brushing dust from vertebrae:
the bone-curve of her,
slipping
off the map
of who she's been.
the end = unknown.

a third:
condo listing / square footage / open house
she's selling it.....
I hear scissors snip:
thread cut.
gravity—optional.
maybe she floats past stars next month.

one sends a photo—
yes, a couch
(yes, perfect)
and in that Ikea angle, I see:
it’s about him
about how couch-shape / match
his absence.
home now = (her - him) + couch

another:
letter.
art again.
not for money.
not for clapping hands.
I read the ledger:
loss, subtracted.
herself, added.

and then me:
MBA class one.
then none.
my reply, plainspoken:
“I’m done with school."

but I trust them—
cartographers of the in between
my encrypted
~ notification ~
they’ll read
what I really sent:

a matching thread in their wet web—
pluck my meaning from the lake.
Sisters! Sisters!
I won't be
\\\weary\\\anymore\\\

women are a vast and wonderous thing.

The women in my life are a vast and wondrous thing—  

sending me the plainest of messages  

laced with the deepest codes,  

like the smooth surface of a pond  

teeming beneath with algae and eels,
and fish fucking.

One tells me she’ll teach Summer P.E.  

And like a detective dusting for prints,  

I read between the words: a lesbian so seen at work,  

she slips into the cliché like it was tailored for her.

Another texts about weight loss and clothes—  

but I, an archaeologist brushing bones,  

surmise her body is shifting fast.  

She doesn’t know how much or how long.

A third sends her condo listing.  

I, a coroner reading cause of death,  

see in the square footage and staged light  

that she's cutting every tether—  

might just float off the earth by May.

A friend sends a photo of “the perfect couch.”  

I, a WWII codebreaker with Enigma in hand,  

decipher her meaning: it fits perfectly—  

like a man once filled imperfectly, earlier this year.

Then a letter arrives, about making art again.  

The auditor in me reads her ledger lines:  

a woman no longer chasing approval or paychecks,  

but creating for herself. Finally.

Like a train conductor checking his pocket watch,  

I time my reply:  

“After one class, I’m quitting the MBA.”  

I trust these women will read what’s hidden  

in the simple words—  

the vast and wondrous thing  

I’ve sent in return.

riding in the saddle that stradles the line between fiction and fact

Outside your feelings,

your life, your thoughts,

your concerns—there lies

another world.

In it, I exist.

I am not frozen,

waiting for your call—

as you must think.

The self-centeredness

didn't hurt me as much

back when I was also

as you-centered as you.

It's a good thing she wants to talk about feeling unwanted and throwing yourself at someone because I can relate.

She posts photos from her apartment
Filled with fragments of me,
Scattered like confetti as décor,
Lovingly sent in the mail, fading fast,
As I trace the edge of a sole card received,
And remember it meant something,
When I felt grateful for that little crumb.

Now, I order this last thoughtful gift for her—
The final one—
But I don’t think she’ll notice.
She’s surrounded herself
With other people,
More than I ever could.

It’s not that I no longer want
To be her friend,
But I’m tired of convincing her
To be mine.

I won’t be there when she finally sees—
If she ever does—
How I was consumed,
Then left behind,
Like the owl that devours its prey,
Spitting out bones,
My remnants on the wall,
While she was busy
Throwing herself at others,
'Cause she felt unwanted.

Yeah, girl, I can relate.

No R.O.I. Friend

Disillusionment didn’t come overnight,

but crept in, like a chisel shaping stone.  

It was quiet, like you—  

who never ask about my life,  

who respond with half-formed words to my news—  

if you don’t leave my messages unread.  

Yet each time you reach out, I’m ready,  

as if I live in the pocket of your world,  

waiting to play the concerned villager  

in your “boy-who-cried-wolf” drama.

That's my own fault. I believed you—

that perhaps the sky was falling

each time you seemed to need me.

I hoped for a friendship that was mutual,  

but found myself on call—  

therapist, mentor, aunt, confidant, teacher—  

maybe a friend to you,  

but never one in return.  

Even a farm dog gets more  

than a pat once a month.  

Strangers feign interest.  

Enemies want updates.

I’m not usually like this—  

I give freely, without expectation.  

But the lack of gratitude,  

the sense that I care more than you do,  

the feeling that my time is wasted—  

years poured into a one-sided relationship—  

I give more, get less.  

Where’s the return on investment?

Is my time and energy just sunk cost?

Would you notice if I was the one

to leave you unanswered, unread?

So I cut the leash.  

I won’t be dragged around,  

won’t be weighed down anymore.  

Unlike you, I won’t say a word,  

won’t speak this hurtful truth,

won’t consult a single soul,  

won’t dwell on it.  

Instead,

I’ll fade away, a statue in the rain,  

weathered and worn,  

until I’m nothing more than  

a blurred face you can’t make out,  

so distant,  

you won’t even try

anymore.