This is an example of a post that should be longer

When I feel the plastic tube enter my vein I scream.  It’s impossible to hold it in.  The nurse looks at me startled as if pain was an exotic foreign concept.

I shake my head when he asks if I’ve ever had an IV before.  He looks at me knowingly. “It could be worse,” he explains.  Instead of this 18th century hospital with questionable hygeine, I could be in India, he says, where he had food poisoning during one of his missions.  His voice is soothing and calculating. I’d have thought him infantilizing otherwise.

This emergency room has peeling walls and not enough beds.  I’m propped up on this aging leather dentist’s chair.  When I have to vomit they give me this old carton like one of those egg crates you get at the grocery store.  Did they just find this on the ground somewhere?  Has somebody already used it?  They seem ill-prepared for somebody who is vomiting.  Are we in a hospital?  

The nurse wheels me over to an elderly lady who shouts in the middle of the night.  Bless her soul, she seems to be a regular in this place.  In her own world, her body is stuck in this one and she can’t escape.  

I’m seen by numerous doctors and among the blood drawing, pricking, and bodily fluids in plastic cups, I’m grateful each time someone says they know English because at this moment Portuguese makes me want to cry my eyes out.  Throughout the early morning hours, new people straggle in and others are moved in a sort of 3am game of zombie musical chairs.  There’s an inebriated girl on her study abroad program who fell on her head and doesn’t know where she is.  As she passes out next to me, the nurses poke fun at her, and I don’t need to understand the language to interpret “a nuisance to actual sick people in this place.”

Diabetes, food poisoning, pregnancy, 24-hour virus are among the suspicions of my ailments, and as the time passes, I really don’t care what’s going on because I feel the pain in my stomach fade away, and I fall asleep for maybe 5 minutes with the old lady angrily wailing next to me.  After the sun rises, I can sit up again (very slowly), and the jolly doctor who has the morning shift tells me to drink tea and come back if the nausea does, to which I respond “Thanks, but I think I’ll be going now.” I send weary thank yous to the nurses and hobble out of there too weak for a fist pump.  For the rest of the vacation, all I look at are tea bags.




11.1.13

Pipes

She puts my face between her old, stiff hands and plants a kiss on both my cheeks. Her lips are dry, but her smile is warm, and I can't help but hold onto her for just a second longer after our embrace.

"You look just like my granddaughter," she says, her kind eyes resting on my face.

Her vision, like the rest of her body, is deteriorating, and she isn't really seeing me like everyone else sees me (I look nothing like an Italian and I'm sure nothing like her granddaughter), but something about the way her face softens when I'm in her presence makes everything okay.

"The pipes in this building are breaking down," she comments, wiping a drop of sweat off her forehead with her wrist. I too am sweating, and I comment that the place also needs a new paint job. It looks like a run down psychiatric hospital, its stained sea foam green walls peeling and withering.

"This place is really old," I say.

"Not at all," she replies, dismissing my comment with a wave of her hand. I realize how absurd the term 'old' must sound to her.

Her soul houses a lifetime of painful memories - a lost childhood, a husband who taught her lessons with his fists (she still has the scars), and a mysterious killer in the 80's called aids that took away her daughter and son-in-law. Just to name a few.

Old has nothing on her soul.

She stands there in the hallway, her broom in hand, physically frail, but her mind is another story. The woman is nearly gone, but her memories live on, confirming my fear that the worst things in life you will never forget.

She asks about my boyfriend and how our first year of cohabitation is going.

"You're a good girl, and you love each other right?" she asks.

It's the one million dollar question, the one that all of the elderly residents in this complex ask me nearly every time they see me. After all the struggles I've suffered though as an immigrant - impossible legal documents, isolation, mean looks, and cruel behavior, love has never been quite enough to keep me happy here. And yet, they ask me, as if in the end, it's the only thing that matters.

I'm skeptical.

But maybe they know something we don't.

She's looking at me, without smiling, waiting for an answer. She's lasted this long, and she's lost everything, but she still thinks there's hope for us.

"Yes, we do," I nod, "very much."

"Good," she says, and for now it's enough.

In a way, I wish this moment could go on longer because I know that once she disappears behind her door, I may never see her again, and she'll never know that I care about everything she has been through, even though I don't know her. We say goodbye to each other and leave, each behind creaking doors - me in the elevator, and her in her apartment, both of us unwillingly, but forced, to face another day alone.




5.27.12
(conceived July 2011)

Nice Weather

It was the first time she had been late since they had known each other. He considered this. He knew that she loved being punctual and despised tardiness, so despite the feeling of betrayal that burned in his chest, he waited for her. Cars whizzed by, horns blared, scurrying citizens bumped into him wondering what he was loitering around for on a street corner, like an insipid teenager, in the middle of winter.

Presumably, he was waiting for the stoplight to turn green. The tourists were the only ones who waited for it, and everybody else was in too much of a hurry to explain the truth.

A stoplight that never turns green. Unusual but oddly romantic just like her. And just like him. Just like them together.

Minutes went by as he idly acted like an amateur traffic policeman directing the meek who hesitantly sauntered to his corner of the street. To his left, a couple from the north, to whom he mildly explained their ill-fate should they not cross when the light was red: an eternity of waiting.

There were others like them who arrived thereafter, their noses darting from side to side, bewildered expressions plastered on their faces as they watched the light change from yellow to red and then yellow again. He offered them scattered words of encouragement, half-amused at his power, and they wondered who this savior was who spoke English, with perfect intonation, perfect confidence, and how suddenly a stoplight that didn't turn green made perfect sense.

Everyone made it across eventually.

Three hours had passed since she sent him that precipitous text message. The one which nearly stopped his breathing, inducing a fiendish choking reflex:

I changed my mind. I'll be there at 12 o'clock. Meet me at the place in our dreams.

It was her trademark to get him running with an ambivalent gesture. He wasn't a believer in fate, in destiny, and he was no longer a believer in her, but her words clung to his insides, searing his heart, and realization dawned that he wasn't a man of regret until he met her. Every story needs an ending, but theirs was plagued with ambiguous moments that would never be again. He thought about how he wanted to touch her, transfer his heat into her flushed skin, like the last time they were together, stuck in an elevator for two minutes of nervous innocence. She couldn't even look at him, and he wanted to send her to hell and make her moan at the same time.

The traffic was evolving into a desperate situation and the sky a gray, volcanic hue. Via San Felice - Saint Happy Street - this was the place where she wanted to meet him. And then it happened.

Like a tiny red dot on a radar map, she appeared out of the crowd. The weather had been angry all week, buildings were painted with spiteful splatters, but finally, at this perfect moment in time, a sliver of sun began to emerge from the clouds illuminating her radiant smile as she waved frantically at him across the street.

A stoplight that never turns green. Confusing but enticing just like her. And just like him. Just like them together.

Who made the biggest mistake was debatable by the horrified onlookers, but the silence that followed after and the ringing in her ears was deafening. It was a sickening crunch, a collision of steel and a stench of smoke that echoed for blocks on end. Today his luck ran out.

And she was finally sorry.

Cradling his head on her lap, he murmured nonsense as his brain fought to tell his heart to pump. My eyes are just brown, I'm sorry....i hate christmas, he says, kids freak me out. She nodded, making sense of his garbling, stroking his hair while her mascara drew a map on her face.

She was a confessional, his confessional, because he always gave her everything, and she just listened.

What happened to our spring day under the sun, what happened to our sfogliatella?

I wanted it...she whispered, as a train of ambulances arrived screaming in a disjointed parade. I thought I could show up later...

As he fades away his mind goes to sleep asking himself, What was she doing? What kept her from coming? He'll never know. And it won't matter.

He blinks up at her and murmurs one last thought, a golden ray of sun blanketing them together.

"What nice weather."




2.13.11

The End

In my dreams I'm loved by you. We live by the ocean in a watercolor painting of longing and desire, where every morning we awaken together, lovers greeted by the warm sun on our faces, our bodies intertwined under light sheets and light sighs. You kiss my lashes and trace my back with your fingertips as outside our window the sun's rays tickle the sand and silently caress the waves meeting the shore. The sky is a mellow orange glow, and I memorize every line by your eyes as you tell me a story with no words, and your fingers gently turn the pages. I surrender to your silence and whisper to your lips that I am whoever you want me to be, heroine, damsel in distress, penniless maidservant, but please, I beg of you, don't finish the story. Every dream is the same, and when you reach the final punctuation mark the watercolors melt off the canvas, the sun blows out like a candle, and our flame, your love for me, is nothing but thin smoke fizzling into reality.


3.30.10

This Place Becomes You

I tell your mother that your family's house is beautiful, but she doesn't seem to believe me. It's too small, she says, we don't have much space.

Your apartment building, or palazzo, as they're called here in Italy, is of modest size and sits on a dusty street of sporadic loud noise and chaos, lingering evidence of its neighboring big sibling Naples, located just a few kilometers south of here. A large grey building sits right across the street, abandoned and graffitied, and I wonder if it's as dangerous inside as it is unsightly on the outside, and what types of people lurk around here after hours. When we go out at night, we drive past stretches of cornfields lined with prostitutes, some huddled together in packs, others standing further apart from each other, all waiting to pay the bills. This hamlet has a lot of history, and was even an American military base some years ago, but as we drive around I get the sense that the rest of the world doesn't even know about this place, or doesn't want to. There are real ancient ruins here, just as real and probably as important as the ones in majestic Rome, but here conservation is non-existent, and everything is falling apart.

The lake for which this hamlet was named is long and stretches out for miles. It gurgles tons of dark water, and is surrounded by wild, uncontrolled weeds and dry grass. This unkempt vegetation stretches out its wild arms and covers the entire right lane of an already small and winding road. It spanks our windshield as we pass, and we can't see if there is another car coming in the opposite direction. I momentarily fear for my safety until I notice that this is nothing out of the ordinary for you, and you have it under control. A sigh escapes your lips. Any other city would build pathways here to walk and enjoy the lake. There would be trees, and flowers, and places to rest. These plants wouldn't be blocking the road. It's a shame, you tell me.

I look out the window and can do nothing else but agree, but between your tired sighs I find beauty. They are merely sprinkles of disappointment based on a foundation of love. You come from a place of strong values, faith, and tradition, a place from which you can spend a lifetime away from, but never truly leave. It's a a deep-rooted affection that manifests itself sometimes only through lament. After all, we are only upset by the things we care about.

Where I come from, there aren't places like this.

Stretches of green farmland mix with residential housing and shops, and dirt roads that only locals know connect with paved asphalt and stoplights. I see buffalo prancing around in the fields, and shops of fresh, delicious mozzarella balls. Mozzarella di buffala could not get any fresher when the "buffala" are your neighbors. Everyone has that Neapolitan accent, the product of that cheery, but street tough dialect that sounds like standard Italian if it were knocked around a bit and stuck in a jar and shaken. It's made up of a lot of ooo's and shhhh's, sounds that melt together like the mozzarella does inside your cheeks. Campania is a region you have to wrestle with to understand, it's a place of unintentional juxtaposition, a place that half-heartedly chases the modern world without being sure that it wants to. It's a place where men are both religious and sexy, where the only fight that matters is the one for your family, yet the streets are full of squabbles and attitudes. To get along with this place, one must set aside any tendencies toward the prim and high-strung. One needs to know how to relax to survive in a place that doesn't.

The first thing your family does when I arrive is give me something to drink. You've had a long trip, have a seat, your mother says, as your sister hands me a cold glass bottle of orange soda. Tell us about America.

I smile and don't quite know what to say. I'd rather know about where they come from, about this place, about these four walls, because what's housed inside is the reason you have been able to survive, to live peacefully here. If ugly things exist in this country or in this region, they die at the door of your family's house. The chaos is just a backdrop, wallpaper for what is truly important. The kitchen sparkles of daily labor, the air is distinctly perfumed with your mother's heavy, hearty meals, the furniture is sparse, and the tv is tiny, but just good enough. Although it's not much, everything is lovingly taken care of and catered to. Your mother is right, it is small in here. But what fills this house does not need space.

You no longer live here, but even when you say goodbye to your family and return to work in your grey-skied, trend-setting, contemporary city to the north, this place is never pulled out of you. By the time I leave and say thank you to your family, I'm convinced that I won't soon forget this place either, and that I love you all.

This place becomes you.




3.7.10

Sicily

I feel a shadow pass over me, and my heart flutter. His balancing act breaks the equilibrium of my insides. Like a block of ice shattering at the mercy of a mallot. He walks the length of the elevated wall in his smudgy white sneakers. Dim street lamps electrify his face.

"This is madness!" he shouts at me, arms outstretched at his sides like an imitation airplane. "Let's just go!" he exclaims, his eyes shut tight, looking up to God and Heaven, or whatever is up there, letting the night air assault his face. "Let's run away together!"

Where have you taken me? I whisper to him from the other side of the world.

Your breath is quick and hot, I can feel you breathing on my face. You're panting and everything around us is fuzzy and sweaty, like static...and into me you exhale your life, and from under you I close my eyes. I'm suffocated by your being, by everything about you, drowning in dreams of who you are. I must be soaring as you're fading, and through your window in the cold,

There you are.

Of course. It always finishes just like this. The rain lightly paints the pavement, the sheets are smeared with your fluids, the smoke in your eyes fizzles away. A gray haze of nicotine caresses your cheeks. It's a phantom cloud. A ghost just like her. You've quit smoking yesterday.

Colors have disappeared. Real colors. Bright reds and turquoise blues. Everything is muted. I can see you. I can feel you. You touch me in places where others have only put their hands. I can taste you all over me...you're everywhere.

You aren't real

But with you I can feel something. You have such warmth in your eyes. Even through a picture. Sea foam greens and a speckle of punctured desire. I don't have to pretend you are anything else because you are you,

and because you just are.


10.28.08

Clocks

"Don't think about that guy!" 

You shouted to me over your shoulder as you ran toward the bus stop, your bright red sweater flashing as you disappeared into the crowd.

I must have shouted something back at you although I can't remember what it was.  Knowing me, it was probably a very weary but enthusiastic "OK!"  The enthusiasm was for you - my best effort to appease optimists - but the weariness was for me and the inevitable catch-22 of bullshit infatuations: to get over someone, you find someone else.  Don't think about that guy by thinking about another guy. 

Not that I was looking for you.  I always felt this strange ticking sensation deep within me whenever I'd run into you on campus.  Like a tiny grandfather clock was sitting inside my chest, and whenever I'd see you, it would strike midnight.  I still walk those same pathways where I used to glimpse you, and sometimes I expect to just see you striding toward me, headphones around your neck, a book in your face.  Even though I know it's impossible, I think that part of me secretly hopes that I will see you walking, completely unaware that you're about to bump into me like you did that afternoon you told me not to think about "that guy."  I guess it's for the better...because we all know what happens when twelve am rolls around.  The little bird jumps out and yells "Cuckoo!"

I have been forced to live a stationary life since I was born, and the frustration of it all has finally polluted me.  I think I've made up for the sedentary lifestyle that has throttled me throughout these years by finding romance in individuals who won't stay still.  Maybe it's from the hope they can make me free like them, and I can fly away from this self-defeating cage of unattainable dreams.  I'm always ready to leave, always ready to go somewhere, but the clock never strikes midnight when I'm alone.

"Don't think about that guy!" you shouted to me. 

I never would have thought that you would later become "that guy."  The guy that I would have to let go of, the guy I couldn't hold on to forever.

You're always ready to leave, always ready to go somewhere.

And sometimes, when I think about all of the memories we've made together, I still feel a pressing urgency to go chase you.  But I know I never will.  I found you without looking for you, and if I ever do find you again I don't want to hear the ticking of any clock. 

Most of our love was clocks.




7.29.07

Love should always be

I'm watching you pack your things in our apartment. You remind me of how few material possessions a person can own and still be completely happy. All of your stuff fits into two duffel bags.

You pick up this rock that's been sitting on the living room shelf for ten months. I mention how random I've always thought that rock was. You stand there, staring at it resting in your hands. It's just an ordinary rock. Grey and smooth and oval. Without looking up you say,

"This is from the first time Sheryl and I went to the beach together. We were sitting in the sand, and there was this giant rock just sitting there."

Sheryl is typing into her laptop a few feet away completely unaware that her boyfriend is quite possibly the sweetest guy in the world. I sigh and say something about sentiment and romance, and she looks up from her essay.

"Baby, remember this?" you say, holding up the rock.

Sheryl squints her eyes, "What is that?"

"It's the rock from when we went to the beach together for the first time..."

"I don't know what that is."

You have a hurt expression frozen on your face. "Remember...I picked it up and tried to scare you by saying it was a dead bird..."

"I don't remember that."

I think we have the same look of disappointment on our faces at this point. I say, "That's cold, you're lucky to have a boyfriend who is sentimental!" Then I laugh good-naturedly, but it's only to cover up the fact that I want to wring her neck.

My expression must be easy to read because the next thing she says is, "He forgets things too!"

Then she stands up and walks over to you because, well, you do look rather sad standing there with a rock in your hands.

It's just an ordinary rock.

She starts telling you about all of the sentimental knick-knacks she has saved from previous dates, and how she remembers just as much as you do. And you just hold her, with your eyes closed, and stroke her hair. She's wearing your t-shirt, and your arms are wrapped around her, and I think to myself,

Please kiss her. And never stop.


full title: Love should always be this simple
6.12.07

Scarlett

When his leg starts shaking under the table, all I can think of is not again, not again, and he looks up from his cell phone and says it:

"My girlfriend...she hates you."

I'd like to tell his girlfriend that when her boyfriend touches my ass, it doesn't make her less attractive.  It's her emotional bitchiness and guilt trips that cause him to ignore her calls, and her clever conquests of insatiable sexcapades that cause him to forget how to communicate with her on a verbal level.  I should know.  I am queen of talking with my body.

"I have to tell her that I'm having drinks with my mom right now because she doesn't want me seeing you. And if she found out I was at your apartment earlier..."  He doesn't finish his sentence. Just continues to move his leg up and down, and when I point out this nervous dance he says, "It's my dad's gift to me."

My mind wanders to a time last week when I spent an afternoon with another male friend playing pool and eating lunch.  By the time we got to dessert we were asking to see each other's underwear.  Actually, I asked him to show me his.  It was a whole "I'll show you mine if you show me yours first" kind of deal.  I don't give that stuff away for free.  I proceeded to describe the make and feel of my panties until he couldn't sit still, and was impulsively murmuring questions, which I couldn't really hear because my ego was cackling hysterically.  I heard something about "curvature" and "sexy," and as I idly touched his pant leg, he inadvertently proclaimed he could no longer go to class in five minutes.  Guess how I knew.

"It doesn't matter if you have one boyfriend or ten."  I blink and look up.  My friend is still talking, looking at me as though he expects more of a reaction.  His phone buzzes with another text message.  That's five in the last five minutes.  I ask if he thinks that's excessive.  He shrugs and says, "It's not like she's calling me."  

I sip my raspberry ice tea and marvel at the irony of it all.  If his girlfriend only knew that the woman who has the greatest chance of making her boyfriend leave her is herself, she wouldn't hate me so much.  

"She likes it when we're in bed and I mutter to her in a foreign language," he says to me.  I tell him, "Of course she does."

Then I look down at my cell phone sitting in my purse.  I wonder what my boyfriend is doing.


3.09.07

Goldfish

Keeping people at a distance is an art.  One that takes at least twenty years of practice.  I know this because I am 20. And I have mastered this art.  That isn't pride in my words.  It's loneliness.

Chances are, if I ever said I'd love you forever, it all faded in the end.  The love didn't melt away, but I did.  The duration of the love didn't matter anyway - If I loved you for only a second, I'm sure I chased you away.

I thought about this as I sipped cheap coffee that tasted like gasoline.  It was seven in the morning and I was in the main indoor foodcourt of my giant university.  A place that is always crowded and sweaty with people every hour of the day, every day of the week.  But not this day. It was summertime and school wasn't in session.  Nobody was there.  Except me.  I put my bag down on a small round table, and rested on a wooden bench against the wall.  The lighted restaurant signs glowed faintly. I looked at all the empty tables and chairs. I was alone.  And then a realization struck me: If there were a million people in that room, I'd feel exactly the same.

You must have seen me running.  I'm always running.  Not away from something, but to something.  I just don't know what it is yet.  Maybe you tried to run after me.  I never forget the people that do.  They're always beautiful.  I'm sorry I didn't stop for you.  

I don't really know who I am these days.  There are few things I know to be true about myself.  And most of them aren't very profound -

I like the rain.  I think miracles happen when it rains.  I like moving down a man's body and kissing the trail of hair that starts from under his belly button and leads to you know where.  I like feeling his eyes watching me as I do this.

I love anticipation.

I eat carne asada on my french fries and drink my milk through a straw.  It's because I like blowing bubbles until the glass overflows with white foam.  It makes me smile.  Like a child.

I laugh when I'm nervous.  I've spent most of my life laughing.

I'll always be that awkward girl in the corner who has a secret that nobody wants to ask about. The one who would steal your boyfriend if she thought her cleavage was impressive enough.  That's me.  And then I'll tell you I'm not superficial.  Everyone says that.

I'm probably not your ideal girlfriend.  I'm that beta that stares at the side of its bowl and fights its own reflection.  That's why I keep running.  I can barely take care of myself so how could I take care of you?

When I was a little kid I drowned my goldfish.
Yeah, I don't get how it happened either.

So much of everything is uncertainty. Maybe all I want is not somebody who will chase me or stop me from running.  Maybe what I want is someone to run with me.  That's really what love is.  It's not about your sexy sports car or your celebrity status.  It's about your courage.  And a comfortable pair of running shoes.

If you're brave enough, don't ask me to slow down.  Just find me and we'll run and run and run.  To the edge of the earth.  Or something incredibly corny like that.  There is no guarantee that you'll ever catch me because I may never find what I'm running to.  However, I'll leave you with this little window to my heart:

Meet me under the city lights.  I like running at night.


8.16.06