Once Upon a Time Anyways Once upon a time tomorrow you will
look at me and I will know your name I
will not run away when you take my
hand and you will not cry when I forget
my emotions and if it never happens
that's okay I can remember things that
way anyways.  ¶ 11:13 PM 0 comments

  Killing My Doppelganger I dreampt I was in the city again, traveling with a pack of kids in a section that was all overgrown with plants. And there was no food and we were running out and hungry. There was a family of birds, sort of like dark-brown chickens that inhabited this same city-island and years of mythology told us we were not supposed to kill them but we were so hungry so we started going through and trying to kill them for food and I remember someone, I'm not sure if it was me, getting an arrow stuck in one and the absolute injured look it gave us, like 'why' . And then as it happened the poultry bird, when we were trying tom kill it, would turn into a person, and it happened that each kid in that space had a twin in the birds except me, and they were so happy in finding each other they weren't hungry anymore, except me. So I found the last bird and started trying to kill it, and it turned into a girl. But I was still trying to kill it and it was leaning up against these glass doors and I couldn't see anything beyond them but I realized at some point I just wanted it to get on the other side of those doors or die and I could throw it through them and I was kicking it over and over 'cause I didn't even want to touch it with my hands and at one point I kicked it in the crotch and it half-opened it's eyes and said "Please don't kick me there, you don't have to kick me there." So I went back to kicking at its neck and head and I was afraid it was never going to die and then from the weight of it leaning on them the glass doors started [to] come open so I was trying to find a way to push it behind them but I was scared what if I fell too. And the whole time I was attacking it didn't react or do anything the whole time except to say that.  ¶ 9:50 PM 0 comments

  Alice used to wear her hair in braids -- long
braids. She doesn't anymore. She isn't mine
anymore either. Hasn't been in years. I miss
her being mine. I miss being with a girl
and the open fresh. J. doesn't let me fuck him.
Doesn't let me in him, hardly. Not my
fingers in his mouth, nor anywhere else either.
I miss flesh closed tight and wet around me.
I miss having a penise, which I must
have had sometimes 'cause otherwise how could
I miss it? Malaise.  ¶ 12:08 AM 0 comments

  No One Will Dare Let Me Grow Up When I grow up I shall be the threat too
awful to speak to your children they will
dream of me anyways I will displace the
monster beneath the bed the ghost in the
closet the bogeyman in the hall and without
drawing a second breath I will dispel every
nightmare creature there will be no room
left for any kind of fear but that of
me the Grim Reaper will take a holiday
and no one will dare name me let alone touch.  ¶ 10:46 PM 0 comments

  Sleeping With Monsters It’s my bedroom in my parent’s house, like always of course there is no bed. I cannot sleep in beds beneath their roof. There’s a couch they got me for my twenty-third birthday, massive, on scale with nothing in this room or house, makes an entire length of wall completely unavailable for bookshelves, that’s where my bear and blanket and bad-dreams sleep. I sleep facing a window, usually opened at least a crack, at least at night, at least at the part of night when I first lie down for sleep or sleep attempts, which is nearly always very early morning, If monsters haunt my room they should have away out. You can’t keep out the ghosts, the nightmare-smells, the things that go ugghh in the night, any child knows, all can be done is ensure clear exit, pray they don’t get trapped. Leave the doors and windows ajar and pray they’ll be gone before it’s day again; anything left in your bed when the sun comes up isn’t likely soon to disappear. May linger until you cannot remember a time your bedspace was not shared with monster-smells, your pillow night-breath damp. Oh monster-licked children, what have you done to attract such awful friends? When prayers fail you’ll create spells to dispel them. Barricade your door with fairy-tales and bootleg stacks of sound. Curl blanket-headed in attempts to sleep. The grown-ups cannot hear your crying at night, you know the grown-ups are never going to come. After your bedtime the grownups grow powerless, disappear cease to exist 'til breakfast-morning-day; when the sun comes up smelling like burnt bread and blue-jeans your parents will reappear at the foot of your sleepy bed, calling your name, unaware of the time they missed—each night-time there are just monsters and you.  ¶ 10:41 PM 0 comments

  The Night She Met Beau I think about cutting my wrists but it's too passé I'm too old for that now and besides I want to be a model when I grow up do you accumulate scars from one life to the next do they carry over, I mean if you haven't managed to resolve everything from how you got them in the first place I picture scars as little discolored spots on people's fractal auras sometimes they're pretty and interesting and distinguishing/unique but sometimes they're puckery and shadowy and scare me I want to go sit in the closet but then I won't get up I should go work on my homework my meds make me feel sick I should calm down my roommate’s mad at me supermad I didn't just call Dan for sex I like him I do last night he started talking about his dream house--we were being silly and I asked him to choose between a huge house and working toilets he chose working toilets I think that's what started it anyways he described his dream home tunnels and tunnels for hallways to a geodesic bedroom and I just sat there and stared at him with my thumb in my mouth 'cause it was just exactly precisely like what Alice said years and years ago when we were together when we sat in the old red plastic tunnels that aren't there anymore in the park that isn't there anymore the night she met Beau..  ¶ 10:37 PM 0 comments

  Future Framed 01.21(?).2000
12.23.2004



I spent the night at Sir's house
last night and dreampt, when I woke I
tried to fix it in my mind until I
should have a chance to write it down.

I dreampt Sir was going to cane me,
and I was frightened of it, and
both of us had our hands outstretched
and between them feel a series of
frames of pictures, like frames of a movie,
almost, in a pattern like this


-- n --
-- --
-- --
-- --
-- --
-- --
-- --
-- --
-- --
--



only much longer. And
all the frames on the downward side of
the V showed me getting more and more
into the submissive role, starting at a
point a few minutes from what we were
actually doing, so that Sir was caning me
as he'd been about to do. And I could see
me in the frozen frame and realized I'd
be allright, since after all it was
my own future I was seeing. And then
I looked at the others all the way to
the point in which I was just
sort of kneeling with an enigmatic,
almost cat-like sort of smile. And
totally balanced and at rest, like I
was in a place that was perfectly
aligned. The frames going back up
showed me taking on more and more
of a Dom mode, but those were
less focused and harder to see. It was
just so cool though, all those frames
hanging tangibly in the space between us,
I remember thinking in my dream that
it was almost like a pack of
cards suspended in midair. And I
want to remember this dream as
clearly as possible, because I woke
up feeling very comforted from it.
So often I seem to get dreams
of messages for other people, it
was extraordinarily nice to have one
for myself.  ¶ 9:56 PM 0 comments

  I Am Going to Be in Mud Puddles I am going to be a duck when I
grow up I shall float about on a medium
sized lake and eat bread-crumbs and insects
and feel the water puddling about beneath
my flippers and if any humans come by I shall
fly away and remember the spot and come
back later to seize the crumbs they
throw if any other birds come by
me I shall fly at them and attack them
and then fly off and splash in mud puddles.  ¶ 9:48 PM 0 comments

  Someday No-one Will Ever Touch Me Again Someday I will grow up and live in a
green cottage nearly all of which will be a
nice sunny kitchen and there will be a
big shady porch out front with a swing and a
rocking chair and out front will be a garden
with lilac and rose-of-sharon and forsythia and
peaches visions of wild violets and pre-school
smiles of dandelions and mouthfuls of
wild blackberries everywhere there will be no
roses and I shall sit on the porch in
my rocking chair the wood will be warm from
the sun and I shall just rock back and forth
all afternoon perhaps I shall share some of
my fruit and flowers with people
walking by I will wear a soft cotton dress
and no one will ever touch me again.  ¶ 9:46 PM 0 comments

  The Lullabye-Man I dreampt of the lullabye-man; a man composed of angry despair, the desperate addictive longings of others--not his own. More obsession than flesh. And he could slithe through the space beneath cheap doors when the frame is too warped to fit smoothly against the floor, or the crack a door on a a chain can open. You had to leave out money for him, twenty dollar bills, because if you didn't leave it out for him he would touch you to take and that was worse than destruction. A strange dream of addiction. I woke up screaming, trying to hide myself beneathe the blankets. Sean turned to hold me but I pulled away, too scared for touch.  ¶ 11:18 PM 0 comments

  Imagining Myself for You I am imagining myself much older, a housewife bustling in a kitchen, my hair a little longer and a bit frizzy from oven and steam, my aproned waist plumper than it is currently. I am making soup, and bread, and vegetable something,the kitchen smells pleasantly but not overpoweringly of food. Whose wife am I here? It takes two to keep up this kind of make-believe, to exist in this co-created fantasy. To have one person's only concern be work, and let the other worry about the home. Not that either is more important but how do you get it to work? Do you switch off every three years or what?  ¶ 10:57 PM 0 comments

  Razor Burn and Peach Perfume I am tired of wanting you, lusting after you, appeasing you. I am tired of entertaining and amusing you. Of making myself over for you. Razor burn and peach perfume. You said we are holding each other back and I picture you holding me locked in a closet, your back against the door while I suffocate in a pile of dresses, silk scarves insinuating their way down my throat banging against the mirror of my side of the door that pulls parts of me into each break. The air is smoggy with perfume musk and talcum dust and insects attracted by my sweet puncturing ripe-rot need slithe out of shaggy carpet corners to slick long rashy kisses against my thighs. And you are still standing with your back held against the goddamn door. Saying over and over again: "You are a girl. Shayna Maydela, you are a girl. You wouldn't have that if you weren't a girl, now would you? This wouldn't feel good if you were not a girl." But I am not a girl and it does not feel good.  ¶ 10:47 PM 0 comments

  Leather Wallets and Plastic Money I remember when we were little my sister and I would play Ladies Dressing Up with old cracked leather wallets or purses, stuffing them fat with coupons and plastic money. I always put the coupons in the credit card section because I thought they worked like money. I don't know how old I was when I finally learned that you couldn't just buy things with those enticingly bright bits of paper in the Sunday ad. I remember when they used to come all pre-perforated at the edges so you could just tear them out neatly without hunting for scissors. Back when neatness still counted, in Ohio. Though it never got more than novelty points for me. Do they still teach kids penmanship in schools?  ¶ 10:42 PM 0 comments

  Postcards FRom Home 10.11.05

This is a story. This is the story of you and me and countless foul bottles of listering chartreuse we drank pretending it was absinthe after too many Poppy Brite stories. This is a story set to a Billy Holliday CD set on endless loop with occasional interjections of the Cure. This is a story with too many small details and not enough end. It is a book put down two chapters before the resolution and I do not know where it is going, nor am I positive you do. This is a story meant to unravel slowly, over years. I will forget the colour of your eyes and how your skin smelled of cedar, you will forget the way I held a cigarette while lighting it and how I cocked my head when asking to be spanked. You will go on to New York and resume the story I so rudely interrupted; I will stay here, learning to be a housewife. Will we exchange cards at Christmas, will I remember your son's birthday and how you looked holding him?  ¶ 10:39 PM 0 comments

  Half the Distance I am remembering how about a week or so ago a man in my work told me "She travels farthest who travels alone." But I am not sure at all where it is I am traveling to nor if I'll know when I get there. And I have that song "Around the world/around the world./Around the world...." stuck in my head and it occurs to me that in a world of jet liners and space ships where the new luxury thing is long drawn out cruises just to make the journey last longer the farther I travel the closer I'll be to where I came from and I'm not sure I like it here, either. Couldn't I go half the distance knowing I'm going to someone I love?  ¶ 10:18 PM 0 comments

  The walls have tongues In my father's house the walls are
talking in our sleep. At night
when bricks return the sun's heat
they absorbed all day and
at midnight the asphalt
street will burn your hand
the walls return the sounds
they've heard all day. A
creaky glossalalia my mom calls
the house settng. What will
they tell the people who live
here after my parents have
gone? Will they whisper our
secrets for years aftre our mail
is forwarded elsewhere? I'm
afraid of the night I will
hear the room whispering back
arguments in my own voice.
Is that why everyone in this
stunted runt belly of a state is
so determined to live ina
brand new house? So they
won't have to sit up awake
listening all night being reminded
hearing strangers voice familiar words
listening to strangers who used to
sleep in their rooms? It's too
quiet that way for anyone to
sleep, so they leave the tv
on to drone and perhaps after
enough years of talking-head nights
those voices wil soak up
into the walls themselves.
Imagine living in a house for
years and leaving no legacy
but a newscaster's voice. What
kind of ghost would that be?  ¶ 11:59 PM 0 comments

  Granted Living alone I miss
the calming presence of other men....certain people I
just have to be calm around. I had that with Jay
and it’s something I miss a lot. We used each other
like drugs, and I do know it. Still. Sometimes
weeks go by without my thinking of him much, but
last night my mom started asking me about him and
just brought all that back. And it was silly and
cheesy and weird and most terribly fucked-up but it
was fun. I want to remember, I just always
want to remember sitting with him in the dark,
listening to music, smoking cigarettes or cloves or
pot and telling each other story after story
for hours. No one has ever told me stories
like Jay, or at such appropriate moments. Sometimes
I think if I could see him again I would want to
give him a hug and say “I’m sorry – I tried to
push you into being something you weren’t but I
truely never meant to take you for granted and I
rarely meant to hurt you.” Other times I think
I would just want to shake him and ask “What
the fuck were you thinking, treating me like that?”
There are simple questions just about as often as
simple answers.  ¶ 12:01 AM 0 comments

  Solitude Dear X,
I'm always meeting people whom
I think are you. I don't know
if it's a relief or a disappointment
to discover they're not. Maybe
both. Maybe it's reassuring to think
of each person my feeling are
mistaken for as being one more
step towards you. Maybe sometimes
it's difficult not to wonder if
I have met you, already,
after all.
Yours,
Shoshana Meigh  ¶ 11:54 PM 0 comments

  Over the Hills and Gone Away 05.10.05

Dear X,
You have no idea how far away you seem sometimes. Like right now, for instance, when all my friends and everyone I know seems terribly faraway. Jay is at his lover’s house tonight, which is farther than Malaysia, just now. Ayden is farther away than a letter can reach. Which is pretty goddamn far. My roommate, Shane, is sleeping, though to be honest with you, Shane never feels that close when he's awake. Alice is in Phoenix and anyways Alice is a person who comes over to put a disk in the computer and not smoke. And my parents are my father who calls me once a week on Shabbes to say goodbye and my mother who does not call at all, but sends a letter I cannot bring myself to read. Yesterday was Mother's Day and I spent it mostly at home, mute and drunk. And I am just now engaged in reading Pastoralia, by George Saunders, the man who wrote Civil War Land in Bad Decline which I liked wonderfully well, but Pastoralia less so. I a liking the fact that I am reading a new adult book far more than I am enjoying the book itself. Which is sort of like wearing a hair-shirt because you got it on sale. Anyways, it's a stale depressing book and reading it feels like eating a tin of old saltine crackers all at once in a single sitting and you look up and the sky's gray with dawn and there's
crumbs all down your front but your tummy growls. It's the kind of book that sort of seals you away in a clear little bubble and the air runs out and all your friends are on the other side. It's the sort of book that could ruin the taste of steak. The sort of book that makes being lonely dull. A make-work book. But I'm a good ways through and going to go back and finish it anyways. Who knows--maybe it's one of your favorites. Maybe some day I’ll give you this and you'll put it down half-way
through in amazement and say 'Girl, you didn't like Pastoralia? Are you crazy?' And we'll argue back and forth fussy/joking for ten minutes and maybe it'll end with us throwing popcorn at each other and laughing and maybe it'll end with one of us going up stiffly to bed and the other just nodding off alone on the couch, but either way I'm looking forward to that just now.
Optomessedicly Yours,
Shoshana Meigh  ¶ 11:52 PM 0 comments

  Detente Got an e-mail from Ayden earlier today. Sent a meager response to his usual mass of puzzled vitriol. It took me at least half hour to write a few lines--I deleted more than I sent. It will not be enough but I'm hopeful enough to keep trying. Sometimes it seems like I read about war and I watch about war and my friendships and family are an uneasy truce at best--what else is there in the world but this? I drink too much but it's mostly wine and I dream of crystal and all of my plans are past tense and I try not to think of these things being interrelated. I miss D.J. and wish I had done a better job of staying friends before everything else fell apart and then I remember my glassine tweaker dreams and am deeply afraid that....I wish I had been friends with D.J. before I ever knew what crystal was. I miss my friends and I miss my drugs and I miss greatly the certainty that the two were not the same. I miss being happy I miss being me. Sometimes I even miss being all alone. At least I'd trade the silent company of Shane for drugs and happily--at least some nights. I hope he feels the same way about me. I miss the chalky company of Dominic and what he did for all dynamics. I liked the night we went out drinking and Dominic came back to hang out with Jay and I. That was so much fun. And yet it was also a night Shane went home silent and hurt. The Quadratic Theory of bitterness amongst friends?  ¶ 11:32 PM 0 comments

  Dear Jay You were right. Trevor was right. I hate admitting that. I ignored you and took you for granted and decided that all I used you for was sex. I convinced myself I didn't need you and waved that in your face. Now I don't have you. Now I can't need you. When I was fourteen I convinced myself I didn't need meat and I haven't eaten it in the six years since. And some days I don't eat at all because the only thing that sounds appealing is steak.

I keep thinking back over a conversation we had a few months ago where you said you needed me and was upset that I did not need you. I have spent the time since trying to reconcile it all out....do I need you for this....do I need you for that....Do I need you to put your arm around me when another guy is leering at my breasts? Do I need you to tell me to take care of myself? Do I need you to make me feel pretty, desirable, cared for, wanted? Do I need you to love me? These are all things that you do, and that I love you doing. But I have spent most of my life practicing and checking and going without to ensure I do not need things. I have, at various points in my life discovered that I do not need: beds, meat, salt, sugar, alcohol, chocolate, drugs, cigarettes, blankets, sunlight, rain, warmth, trees, TV, books, writing, math, friends, sex, new clothes, speech, acting, jewelry, make-up, family, security, food. The only thing I have discovered I cannot give up is my concept of God. I need to know that somewhere, something in this world loves me. If there is anything I can need you for it is that, to know that you love me, to know that no matter what, even if I never speak to or hear from you again, you will always love me. But we are both teenagers, and that is a squishy thought at best and not one I'm sure is possible. Coming home on the bus tonight I had a new idea; perhaps you are practicing not needing me.  ¶ 10:27 PM 0 comments

  Lost and Gone Forever I love you. I want you I miss you. You're gone and I'm here and I'm not sure what all I did wrong except to take you at your word when you said "I love you, and I want you to know that there's nothing I want or need that we can't have together." I believed you. Fucker--why don't you call? Why are you leaving me all twisted and soggy like this. I could kick your ass if you were here. I could lean against you and cry [against] under the pillow if you were here. I want you to comfort me for the things you yourself have done. I'm growing into being a girl and it hurts so much worse than cramps -- sticks in my throat like strangled cum. Goddamn you why don't you call? I want to get drunk enough to cry. I want to get too stoned to give a fuck. I want to feel your arms around my shoulders like you're protecting me from something I'm not yet aware of. I want to be kneeling on the floor between your legs feeling your stubby face rubbing against my own. I never got to hear you sing, or find out what your cum tasted like. You never taught me to swing dance -- we never made absinthe or got drunk together -- you've never seen me dance, you never gave me the spanking you owed me, I never finished telling you my fantasy. I'll never get to tie you up or make you breakfast or any other meal for that matter. I'm never going to get to tell Alex all the weird and silly and beautiful things you did when you were his age. I'm never going to get to tell you how much it meant to me that last time you slept at my parents' house and I got so weird and upset when we 69'd and you just held me and rubbed my back and told me it was okay until I was normal and better. It meant a lot. I'm never going to get to wash your hair--you never saw evidence of my ability to swim. I bought a double-bed for you -- we only used it once. We never got to go to California together -- we won't go to a strip-club for your eighteenth birthday -- I'll never get to see you buy your own cigarettes -- we never broke up a couple. I'll never hear the songs you made from my poems and I know those aren’t things I can ask to have back but I want them anyways. I still have your hair -- you aren't getting it back either -- I'm holding it hostage. I want to kick your ass and I want you to hold me, I want you to hold me and I want to kick your ass -- violence and need is all I have or am. I hate this all. I want last summer back. .......  ¶ 10:23 PM 0 comments

  I Remember I Let Him I remember one time Jay and I were having sex so it hurt and I told him perhaps my orifices weren't meant for fucking. He replied, grunting "some of them were." I always wonder which "some" he meant. My cunt, asshole, mouth, these are assumed. Would he fuck my ears if he could, nostrils, the enlarged pores at my forehead, the tight ones over my cheekbones? Would I let him?  ¶ 10:16 PM 0 comments