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Suburban Ennui

In the winter, we cannot recognize ourselves dressed in our mother's lace. Shrouded in gold, and you in pearls, we’re whisked away by our fathers cinching, leather grips to the old fishing district. With its nose turned up high on the hill, looking down at the rest our desolate, iced-over tourist town, sits the yacht club. A setting as lively in the summer as it is in winter, where the events held to keep the ennui at bay are disguised as something more-something meaningful. Every wine tasting night, every father-daughter dance, every Christmas dinner all just excuses keeping the townsfolk from their own perilous restlessness until the sun shines over our brimming little beach town again. It’s a place where you and I have to play pretend just to survive. Exploited and used by our families like props and trophies, we’re paraded around like cattle, forced to carve out our widest smiles for the wolves dressed in bow ties and boat shoes. I swear I can still feel the sting, well into the warmer months, from where the old widows slap our hands and hiss “stupid girls! Not like that, smile with your teeth!” Our cheeks would burn, abashed and sore. Nevertheless, we’d comply, too afraid of the consequences that would ensue had we not. With our bare bones exposed, the wolves could carry on gawking, our fathers bragging, and our mothers could breathe poised sighs of relief knowing their daughters were safe for another season.

“There’s something unsettling about their eyes,” You declared one night at a dinner dance, cookie swap, fundraising event or whatever it was at the time. Sometimes we found refuge, hugging our knees underneath tables devoid of any place cards or centerpiece. “It’s like staring into the very nights that claimed their lovers.”

“The widows?”

“If you catch a close enough look, you can see them capsize.”

In spring, we shed our skin between the trees and wash away girlhood in the creek. The world around us is still aside from the trembling in our knees, scraped and laced with diamond pavement and concrete. We’d welcome the season's respite with offerings carried away on the backs of bugs. We’d feast on blood oranges, rip them apart with our nails and wince at the metallic taste. Still, we couldn’t get enough. The entire town couldn’t get enough. The widows thaw back into witches, the wolves suspiciously retreat. Spring was a renaissance, and from high up in the trees-our kingdoms away from home-we had front row seats. I wore mud smeared cheeks well, you wore grass stains better. We used the threads from the tears in the knees on our jeans to reinforce our own loose threads, we used our t-shirts as tourniquets. Naked and raw, running in the woods like infants who just discovered their legs capabilities, all we had to fear then were our mothers. Still numb from the winter, the wolves would run off with their rabbits, leaving them empty nesting, scathing and bitter. They wouldn't like what we got up to in the forests.

“My mom is gonna kill me,” you’d say, with dirty hands mimicking a knife to your throat.

“Don’t joke like that.”

The response to my demand did not pass through your lips. It was not your voice who carried the question, nor was it one that you and I recognized. But we could recognize the feeling it had brought with it, and the butterflies who made their cocoons in the pits of our stomachs began to beat against our insides.

“Who’s joking?”

Come summer, our town becomes overrun like the invasive plants down by the marshes, the ones that swallow you whole lest you got too close. We could never see the tourists coming. It would start with the faint footsteps in late May, only to be heard in symphony with the night owl’s cries. Never bring it up at breakfast, the point would be moot. Even when they get closer and the footsteps began to sound like a stampede, nobody else seemed to notice. Or if they did, they’d never admit to it. We could never see the tourists coming, all we could do was fall asleep to sound of their deafening march and wake up on June first to crowded beaches and congested streets. The mosquitos came with them, moving through the heavy humidity in thick sheets. Bug spray was never enough, but you and I were smart enough to even bother with that stuff, and the witches in the lighthouses were too wise to. We’d make our way through the crowded streets-hiding from more than just the sun underneath the wide brims of our hats-to find them. We’d find them, only after ascending the rusty lighthouse stairs for what seemed like an eternity, concocting spells in the same, casual way that old ladies like to bake. Mud and moss, moth wings and cicada shells, crushed berries that looked less like berries and more like blood. Things we couldn’t quite explain.

“It’s protection,” explained one witch.

“Keep it close, and cherish it like your youth,” said another.

They only ever spoke in metaphors, riddles, or in abstract language that only elicited quizzical expressions from you and me. We’d thank them all the same.

On our way back to town, we’d take the detour route to test out our new protection spells. Far off underneath the canopies of the red cedar swamp where they gathered to store the blood they collect, the mosquitoes avoided us like a plague, disgusted by the vials that hung around our necks.

“If you listen, I mean if you really listen closely and if you stay quiet enough…” You grabbed my hand, trying to quiet me and at the very moment our skin made contact, a blinding thread of heat lightning weaved its way across the sky. Followed by a clap of thunder with all too perfect timing. You simply carried on with what you were trying to say and to this day, you’ve never said a word about the electric hum that followed us home that evening.

“...you can hear the mosquitos whispering.”

I heard them cursing the witches, telling secrets...and I could’ve sworn I heard something about love.

Then came fall, when we’d sit in the graveyards at sunset. There, we’d count the number of new names and unmarked graves, taken by the bugs or the masses. We could never see them coming, but from the graveyards, we had a perfect view of the bridge that guided away the tourists. Oh, how we loved to watch them leave.

“They’re the lucky ones” you’d say.

“Sure are...” I’d solemnly agree, and we’d carry on watching and living vicariously.

You’d inform me of the brightness in my eyes quickly fading, and I’d inform you of the sorry state of your sun-kissed cheeks. As the sun went down over our little beach town, I’d study you closely, thinking in blueprints and escape plans. The trees would shed their own skin, and bend to the will of the wind like skeletons. While the wolves would reemerge, well rested and mean, the witches snuck goodbye letters into our hiding spots by the creek. Ignoring the weather reports that kept our fathers glued to the TV, we’d judge how bad the winter would be by how hungry the wolves were. Our mothers were always far too busy to even think of winter, blind to any impending doom ahead. They frantically packed and prepped our oldest siblings for university, getting ready to send them off, over the bridge with the last of the tourists.

“They’re the lucky ones…” I’d whisper, waving goodbye at the edge of my driveway.

“Sure are…” you mouthed from across the street.

As soon as the minivans were out of sight, as soon as our mothers retreated and our fathers were back inside glued to their TVs, we’d make our way to the creek one last time. Before the ice came to claim it, before our mothers could catch on to where we disappear to in the spring, we retrieved the letters-left by witches and signed by widows, apologizing for what they might do come winter-and left in haste, without any trace to ever tie us to having been there. Come the fall, we fall asleep clutching letters left by witches and signed by widows, holding on to empty vials of what was once protection spell and gripping the notion that one day, we’ll escape ourselves.

“Such imaginations those girls have…”I heard my mother whisper into the telephone one night as she poked her head into my bedroom.

“Isn’t it something?” your mother asked and answered into the receiver.

Pretending to be asleep was both a natural talent and a survival tactic.

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Capsized

In the winter, we cannot recognize ourselves dressed in our mother's lace. Shrouded in diamonds, and you in pearls, we’re whisked away by our fathers cinching, leather grips to the old fishing district. With its nose turned up high on the hill, looking down at the rest our desolate, iced-over tourist town, sits the yacht club. A setting as lively in the summer as it is in winter, where the events held to keep the ennui at bay are disguised as something more-something meaningful. Every wine tasting night, every father-daughter dance, every Christmas dinner all just excuses keeping the townsfolk from their own perilous restlessness until the sun shines over our brimming little beach town again. It’s a place where you and I have to play pretend just to survive. Exploited and used by our families like props and trophies, we’re paraded around like cattle, forced to carve out our widest smiles for the wolves dressed in bow ties and boat shoes. I swear I can still feel the sting, well into the warmer months, from where the old widows slap our hands and hiss “stupid girls! Not like that, smile with your teeth!” Our cheeks would burn, abashed and sore. Nevertheless, we’d comply, too afraid of the consequences that would ensue had we not. With our bare bones exposed, the wolves could carry on gawking, our fathers bragging, and our mothers could breath poised sighs of relief knowing their daughters were safe for another season.

“There’s something unsettling about their eyes,” You declared one night at a dinner dance, cookie swap, fundraising event or whatever it was at the time. Sometimes we found refuge, hugging our knees underneath tables devoid of any place cards or centerpiece. “It’s like staring into the very nights that claimed their lovers.”

“The widows?”

“If you catch a close enough look, you can see them capsize.”

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Very Girl Interrupted

Juvenile words and a coming of age curse A little girl learned to flirt In attempts to subdue malicious white coats Force-feeding Depakote Clipboard carrying devils in disguise -r.m.

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She burns with a nervous brightness that at times is unbearable to watch.

Alexander Walker, on Vivien Leigh’s character in A Streetcar Named Desire (via violentwavesofemotion)

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I’m Running Away Again

oddities

commodities

things of great importance

bright with nostalgic presence

from junk drawer beauties

with no real significance

to trinkets and tidbits

odds and ends and pictures now plagued with indifference

to pack or to leave?

the great debate

postcards, posters patching up walls

forbidden fruit and plush snakes hanging from trees

tiny glowing Apple screens

tote bins in attics and eves

bedside necessities

all packed up in what were once cardboard kingdoms

in a little place called

Adolescence

covered in band-aid packing tape and Sharpie ABC’s  

forget a BiC pen

I’m playing getaway driver

you’re burning rubber

scraping knees

You are unconditional love

in the form of old Nickelodeon game show reruns

let’s forget the ice cream cake in the freezer

let’s watch Legends of the Hidden Temple until our eyes bleed

Depakote dust settles on our spines like LSD

and we’ll melt into the floorboards

only to then collect enough of ourselves in empty moving boxes

enough to pretend were optimists

you’ll help me put away my books on my shelves

and together we’ll find ourselves

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Houses and Homes

B, I loved you every day for an entire season. Even if I am considered selfish for it, even if I am in the business of metaphorical real estate, I’m not quite ready to let you go. Nor will I ever be. You are the cold ghost of hardwood floors meeting fireplace warmth. You are everything rustic and lovely wrapped up into one little mountainside home. How are you so comfortable being so vulnerable, B, with your bare, log cabin bones and heart on your sleeve? You, hidden deep beneath heavy blankets of snow. You, the warmest place one could ever come to know.

A, you were the rare sight of an eviction notice hanging on the door of a luxe, upper east side apartment. You were rubble and diamond and tar and everything that glittered and yet, nothing about you was gold. You were both the foundation of gentrified streets and the fire escapes where the rich kids went to weep; their tears as much a part of you as the rust and the madness and every spec of dust you never had to clean. The inner workings of you bore close similarities to the inner workings of large cities. You learned early on how cold the “real world” could be. The way your father said “the real world,” always with some dreary, far away sigh, felt like a knife in your side. You learned early on to function on too many, too strong, too expensive cups of coffee. There was never a lack of high-end commodities and everything was a luxury necessity, like your temperature controlled shower with all those excessive features. One more thing your father liked to brag about. And still, despite your perfect water pressure, you could never wash away decisions that stuck to your skin like that tattoo you told me you can never recall getting. A, you were Calacatta countertops, cold to the touch and lined with an endless supply of blow to blow through. Nobody ever stayed for visiting hours, did they? You had everything, once upon a time, but you never wanted any of it. You, just in search of a dining table and for someone to know how to help you. Or at least be willing to…

What is there to say about you, E? You are a glass house and I came to throw stones. What is the mailing address again? I’d like to send an apology letter. Though I suppose it wouldn’t matter much anyways, mail always got lost on its way to you. You, hidden deep within the woods underneath a dark canopy. You, skinny like the dirt road that ends too abruptly. I was misguided, misunderstood and misdirected. Or was that you? Or was that us? It’s been so long, hasn’t it? Misery loves company, so let’s throw a dinner party. Your place or mine? I know you’re still rebuilding walls from that one failed trust fall.

N, you are a not a singular house and you are not a singular home. You are every house that makes up every home in a neighborhood where I wish to reside in some far off time. M, you were neither a house nor a home, nor a neighborhood made up of a mix of the two. You were the congested streets that wrapped around the busy city that is my mind. S, a house is not a home but I never could teach you the difference. G, for a long time you felt like my own house, but it’s important for every individual to be their very own home, so I had to leave.

And then there's me, a lonely metaphorical real-estate agent or a creative carpenter, depending on who you ask. Me, an introvert no matter who you ask. Me, trying to navigate through a world that depends on who you know. These are the ones I have known as houses and as homes, places where I’ve left bits and pieces of myself for better or for worse.