12 of 31: (too early to be) giving

Somewhere the sun is brewing it's coffee and for reasons unknown to me I am already awake, wide awake despite the screaming headache that sent me to bed early or the melatonin supplement I took before I buried my face into a pile of pillows meant to simulate the shape of him next to me.  It's freezing in my house as Winter simply will not give up its reign - 38 degree highs, possible snow.  Give me a break.

Perhaps it was the chill that stirred me from restless sleep, except that on one side of me was my dog and huddled against my other leg was my tabby cat, not to mention the oversized hoodie I'm still wearing, stolen from The Staff Sergeant's closet.  

Before pushing back the covers I laid still, trying to recall the last time I had gotten up before sunrise.  It was prior to his leaving, all those mornings of PT, incessant snoozing of his cell phone alarm in the darkness, a reason to pull in closer to him, just a few more minutes.  It was the first memory in at least a week that I didn't snarl at or hold at arm's length.  I let myself feel it, the up and down of his chest, how warm his body would be beneath the covers, the way he would eventually ease away from my arms, trying not to wake me up as he headed for his closet or a shower, his first-thing kiss meant to be so weightless that I wouldn't really notice, not until the one before he left for the day.   

I know better than to fight these circumstances; losing is inevitable.  The army will always win.  Similarly, my emotions will always trump an attempt to hold them down for the sake of looking the part.  I miss him like crazy, some days so much that I don't know what to do with myself.  And I assure you that there are things he is perfectly capable of and willing to do to help make this easier for me.  It's just a matter of having enough time on the phone to work it out, and maybe not being disconnected next time.

wasting time

It's almost four in the morning and I can't sleep.  My mind is empty - alert but empty.  And it's really cold outside [and in].  If I didn't have Mom here, I'd clank around in the kitchen and make his cookies, watch the early sun burn the sky into rosy pinks, and fire up every stove eye for its bright orange heat.

Soon and very soon

Sucking low and full into empty lungs, a breath is held. The first seconds are uneventful, novel even, before the warm burning in your core begins. The fire spreads, igniting concern that soon sets ablaze panic and desperation. Skin flushes then glows, and theoretically turns a plummy shade of purple. Following the climactic peak - air, a theatrical and exaggerated inhale preceding a return to natural rhythm.

Hurry up! [and wait]

Pensive, waiting, timing the captive lungful. Days never pass fast enough. Twenty-four hours double and triple themselves into grueling painstaking barriers. And I tell myself his jokes once more. And imagine the reunion, play my scripted Hollywood versions over and over and over. Even my mental cast is tired of running through the scenes.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Eyes shut tight to relive hungry, deliberate kisses. Reread the letters, each word artfully plucked from fathoms too deep to measure. Over and over and over... Try on the first-time-we-meet-again wide-leg jeans and floral halter. Try on the buttercup wedges for full effect. It doesn't matter that we're eons away from reunion. Try them on just one more time. 1200 calories, it's crunch time. Perfection. Shoot for the moon. Be stunning.

Holy blue-in-the-face!

Maybe he will...[not a chance, dreamer]. Walk five miles to imagine how he could but won't. Knowing that reality is the first to go before fantasy takes the driver's seat doesn't stop the imagination. What if he remembers me in some inflated form? What if that last letter said too much? What about meeting his mother? What about heart palpitations from self-induced anxiety? What about irrational fears? Fitful is the new Restful sleep.

Nobody's lost but nobody wins

Happiness
comes from
contentment.

I fear tearing open the paper pouch because it seems that more brilliance and truth lies in the packaging of a tea bag than in my own emotional scope. I'm trying. I'm trying so hard not to want more than I've got, more than I get to have. I'm trying and failing so well that grace is an unimaginable attribute today. I'm not even trying to fake it, rather I'm trying to keep from slamming the cell phone messenger into the wall or surrendering my attempted composure to primal screams or to just slip into a warm bath of hysterics. What a relief it would be to just let it go and to have it gone and then to be able to go on as the sunny version of me.

I feel feeble and small. I feel helpless next to the piled obstacles. And clumsy. I feel more clumsy now than at any other time I've ever tried walking this road. I've slipped and tumbled and scraped and bruised, then risen to break again. I don't know why I am so bad at this.

[and all this like a message comes to shift my point of view. and watching through my own light. as it tints the shade of you]

neither kindness, mercy or forgiveness.

"If this is too much for you...," he exhales, but never finishes the thought to which we both know its conclusion.

Maybe this time it is. I can't help feeling awkwardly out of place in the company of his hissed curses and my panicked, flailing arms desperately searching for a rewind button that doesn't exist. I am no longer leaking water, but taking on pools of lead and the stifled sobs within me would rather overtake my person like hungry depths of sea. At maximum capacity my words become lost to reckless breaths, my face is hot and contorted with tears. I know that this pending eruption will poison my soul if I cannot release it so I plead with him to hang up until he concedes.

His exasperation is so palpable that it has taken on a presence in even my room. I imagine his stoic order of ale, a timeless solution to the midnight lover's quarrel. I know him and yet I am bewildered by the means of this transaction, how it came to this intersection and failed to yield. We were whole before we were wreckage...

[we were, right?]

Closing my phone, I place it delicately onto my nightstand, turn away from it and bury myself in all 600 threads. No one else is home and I don't care if I can be heard beyond my walls. For every fairytale that this is not, for every inflated tax paid to distance and time, for every four letter word combination that would never encompass this fury and heartbreak, for every war ever waged, I protest in choking wails.

false alert

I've mangled a once perfectly cylindrical straw while slowly sipping a triple-shot-iced-americano-with-room-for-cream. I'm full of poor choices, this being tonight's most pronounced. Last night's being the 3am bedtime and the 4 hours of sleep, thus producing the need for three robust hits of concentrated caffeine.

...and so begins the self-destructive cycle of semester's end.

Long distance information, give me Memphis Tennessee

Back last night from a weekend in Memphis now to sloth through the painful hours of a Monday morning. I am not embracing its new day promises, rather I scowled at its sunrise. If ever I have wanted to stay in bed, this morning was the epitome of such. I am so sleepy - even the marrow of my bones is tired. I shouldn't have tarried till 4am in the Beale St. bars with all of the beer and booty music. No, I should have and I did and it was rich - migrating from one fine establishment to another with a pack of girls.

Oh!, the sanctity of a night and the Beale St. beer and booty music. Sometimes even the classiest of girls needs a period of raw ridiculousness. The high points will go down in the eternal list of remember-whens, but will be omitted from the public eye. True incrimination would not be their product, yet they're best left to pad the walls of the verbal histories that later leave us weeping with laughter over Cracker Barrel biscuits and hangover hot tea.

[I should have napped in my car between classes instead of writing...]

I've been waiting for this si-lence all. night. long.

Against the better choice: to accept the emotional state of right now as the mere result of sleep deprivation and one of the less flattering aspects of femininity - I sit, fingers resting on tired keys, poised and ready to release whatever it is that is contained.

Instead, I am a heavy hollow, all of my insides alarmingly dry, yet I could drain a tear or two.  Dare me.  I would do it.  I realize that this is the furthest I will ever be from his return.  I'm still laughing at last night's jokes, still looking into the memory of his eyes.  Every lucid bit of recollection hangs vibrant and vividly in the boughs before it succumbs to the dilution process, one atom at a time.  I hate that, and I hate that I haven't heard from him yet, to know that he's there [safe].

careful now.

Nekot cookies now finished, my apple slices abound. I swear today that each moment will not be strung along by the next handful of whatever little tasty my fingers can grasp. Stress eating, anxiety, whatever name it cowers beneath - the my apple wedges remain, and a Nalgene three-quarters full.

[full].

I am unsure of the roots of that lunar pull, the one that hurls my ravenous mind in one concise direction and later jerks it back again, why there are weeks when I have nothing to write and then minutes where it seems that to not [write] threatens my very survival. I am and then am not. Currently I am. Compulsively I sit before this little window with head dutifully bowed to the glowing screen. I don't much care about the quality of content...well, I do and don't. Some things are just too hairy to write, too vital to the core for removal.

Later, something positive...and perhaps a nap.