2009 X-mas cards.

This year, instead of spending hours and hours agonizing over Christmas cards, I decided that simple and easy cards were what I wanted. Even though some might say they are TOO simple, I like the way they turned out. I got everything at either Michael’s or Paper Source (their deep red is my favorite red stationary-perfect for Christmas) and made all of them, including envelope liners, wrote on, and addressed them in less than 3 hours. Again, simple and easy.

The mess.

Close-up.

With the 2 different envelopes.

inviting trouble.

You’re supposed to be
out of my reach,
in that dimension beyond
the boundaries of safety,
my safety.

You’re supposed to be
complicated,
a bet not meant to gamble.

It’s the danger that should
drive me away,
the recklessness of a man
with your clear complacency.
Instead, it blinks in front of me
beautifully intoxicating
and waits for my outstretched fingertips.

Your own rough fingerprints
are left all over my body
as invisible evidence
of some lustful crime.

I should be smarter about you,
but as long as I know what to expect
I only have time
to lose.

I feel a sin coming on
every time I’m near you.

exhausted.

wisp wisp
slip down the slope
like a skier on his skis
tears wisp their way
clutching at the corners
of my lips
a testing stop for just a second
before falling to my chin
and avalanching
over that cliff

And oh,
how those tears are cold.

uncontrollable.

Half of my day is spent worrying,
a creep through my ribs into my chest
each time I hear a cough
worried it might not be stoppable,
each time I can’t hear a wheeze at night
worried maybe the breathing has stopped altogether.

Worry forces my eyes to snap open
with the slightest bump.

Worry should just be a person
perched heavily on my shoulder
taunting me with scenarios of the scary.

Worry might be a companion,
annoying and depressing at best,
definitely not a friend.

And there he goes again.

RIP Z.P.

“Come Again Tomorrow”

That quiet squeak
makes its way around the corner
sneaking up on me
as it does almost everyday
around this time.

A glance comes from the rider
quick and over his right shoulder
to me on the porch, book in my lap
as my own eyes pry themselves away
from the words on the page
to watch him pass.

Our daily routine
always includes each other,
strangers.

His earphones are back
playing some tune
I wish I knew.
Yesterday he rode without them,
an alarming nakedness of the ears.

I wonder where he’s come from,
where he’s going.
I wonder too, if he wonders about me
who I am,
what my own crazy story might include.

For an entire four seconds every warm afternoon
our lives intersect
and he is familiar,
this handsome nameless man.

I miss him
in the winter.

a missed opportunity.

I wrote a poem awhile back, sometime within the past year, that I can’t find. And I want it.

I sometimes sit outside when it’s warm, brainstorming, waiting for something to spark something in me enough to write. On one particular day, this guy came riding his bike around our house. He did almost every single afternoon, at almost 4 o’clock. Every single day. I wrote a poem about him that day. I had only talked to him once, a few weeks after I had written that poem, and it wasn’t even really a conversation. It was a quick introduction, and I remember making a crack about him riding by my house all the time. It was the only time we ever spoke.

Well, he died this weekend in a car accident (he was a passenger in a car that was in a police chase. They rolled, and he was killed). I think more than anything else, I am so sad that I didn’t get the chance to know him. He seemed nice and like the type of person you’d want to know. I didn’t even know his last name, and my brother is the one who finally told me who he was this morning. And he’s all I have thought about ever since. It’s sad. He just rode by last week again, on the first nice day after that short cold front we had.

So now I am scouring notebooks and journals, trying to find this poem. I have found many others that I might post sometime, but not the one I need. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

UPDATE: Found it! Wrote on June 22, 2009. I knew it was summertime. I’ll post it soon.

a little at a time.

Baby steps over bumpy clay
and a sight off-kilter to my eyes, the horizon
bright with snow
of majestic mammoth mountains
in air without oxygen
and light without sun.

Patience waited for me this time,
and I took it
for
my
own.

Baby steps is what I take.
Life is given to us slowly,
like sprinkles on a sweltering summer day
as our thirst aches for things to fall faster.

Thanksgiving + family.

Tink’s tootsies, November 25, 2009

Thanksgiving this year is going to be a bit different. For one, we aren’t having a dinner. I know, Thanksgiving with no family dinner? Well, considering that almost everyone is sick or has been sick within the past two weeks with this awful flu, my mom decided maybe it was best that we all just stay at home and keep the sicknesses from spreading even further. We definitely don’t need any more sick babies around here. I doubt anyone would feel up to cooking or eating as much food as we usually have on Thanksgiving anyway, so we’re waiting until we’re all healthy and hungry to do that. Plus we’re all collectively losing weight by not eating much! We’re gonna need good fattening food.

I never really appreciated family or family events when I was younger. As I have gotten older and became friends with my siblings and parents, it’s much easier to just hang out with them. We can sit around, have a beer, and laugh. I can really only speak for myself, but I think that the rest of them enjoy it and appreciate it more now too.

We are the type of family that has every personality type and too many stubborn heads. We have been known to argue, fight, scream, cry, and hold each other when it’s needed too. We are also the family that huddles together around whoever needs and protects that person from everything. We are the family that defends its own. We are strong and bonded, and we are that way because cracks that were there have been patched.

I hope this never changes. They are who I am thankful for.

handwritten craze.

I scribble your name
everywhere
my journal
junk mail
on imaginary lines on my pillow
with the tip of my finger
before I fall asleep
on napkins as I eat
when I’m alone
or not
across the sky with my eyes
when I’m in the car
with nowhere important to be
just so I don’t forget
the curves
or the sounds of its letters
or the feeling my heart feels
whenever I think about you.

I scribble your name
most illegibly
because I’m in such a hurry
to have it in front of me
to myself.

I miss seeing your face
and without your voice
I’m left with scribbling
your name everywhere.

patient.

You hold your heart right
in your front pocket for situations
just like this one,
when a pretty girl reaches her palm
outstretched and waiting.

You wait and hope
and wait and hope
and never get
what you wait and hope for.

You always get it back
broken shard by shard.
You never learn your lesson
and you’re never immune to the pain.

You just tape it back up,
get ready for the next one
and keep your heart still
there ready in your pocket.

I hope so.

Because that sure would be nice.

change of heart.

I thought I wanted you to hurry up and turn into winter, but I’m enjoying the colors (however dull they are becoming) and the soft cool wind. I’m enjoying the memories you make and the ones you conjure from my mind. I’m enjoying the bright, bright sun and the early evenings.

I’m enjoying you. Don’t hurry off. Stay awhile, please.

Oh, I need to.

I have been really busy despite not really having a long list of things to do. I managed to get my resumè redesigned, Ashley’s paper edited and ready to turn in, and all my fonts and brushes transferred over to my little old Macbook. Plus I’m on the last book of the Twilight saga. After putting it off for so long, I gave in and read the first book a few months ago. Payden had the rest of the collection, and it is addictive. I’m not usually a big fan of fantasy books or vampire-ish stories, but these books got me hooked in the way that The Notebook did. It’s about the love story. I can’t wait for the new movie to come out!

Also, the writing is slowing down. Many of the posts lately are scheduled, which makes life 10x easier to keep something new on here. We’ll see how long I can manage to do that!

future.

even when I can’t believe
a goddamn word you say,
I’ll still look at you and hope
hard that I’m wrong.

even when I feel you pull away,
I’ll tell myself it’s something else.

even when your smile
is only trying to smooth things over,
I’ll still look for some genuineness.

even when I want to leave,
I’ll always stay.

even when we say we don’t
love each other,
I always will.

knot.

It’s in you, right where
you always hide it,
and it’s waiting.
For you, it’s just waiting
whenever you are ready
and wherever you go,
it will too, still lingering,
for the day you are
finally ready.

It’s there and
you feel it.

just a little note.

It’s been a long week, a stressful week. I am so very looking forward to spending tomorrow doing nothing but reading New Moon and sipping tea. The weather will be warm though, so perhaps that the reading will happen outside. I’ve also been writing a lot. As if the crazy amount of poems posted lately didn’t give that away. The weight of words is sometimes forgotten until I finally get them out and onto paper (yea, I have to actually write them for them to feel real). It’s a good feeling.

Lindsay and I took Dayton today to snap some pictures. She was excited to get some new ones of him, and I just love taking them. Plus he can melt my heart with his little laugh and smirk. I can’t wait until he is old enough to sit up without help. That’s when the real fun starts. That’s when the pictures become never-ending.

cut.

–in response to the note in the front of AJ Rathbun’s book to me–

Well, cutting lines is much more fun
when wheels do the cutting
and nobody argues back
about the two feet they just lost
in a line that extends so far
around the room, dimmed down,
that the end and beginning
have no definite start or stop.

Just a line jumper,
line cutter am I.

heat.

If it doesn’t leave a little burning inside your chest,
it probably isn’t worth pursuing.

If it doesn’t leave you wanting more,
it’s not going anywhere.

That’s not you
and me.

When you and I are doing
does nothing less
than kill me every time we’re apart.

If it doesn’t do the same to you
just leave and put me out
of my misery now.

high hopes.

maybe we could do this,
change each other’s minds
about love.

could we be anymore
the same?
hurt and guarded,
seared but still waiting?

maybe we could get
each other through it
and find something new
on the other side.

maybe you could be
the one who finally
is able to break me.

drunken conversation.

I told him straight to his face
I don’t trust men–
well, except my daddy.
They all lie
and cheat
then lie about the cheating.

They all start out nice
and seem like a dream
right out of some fairy tale.
That’s what girls are supposed to want, right?
A Prince Charming?
Because that’s what society whispers
in tiny pierced ears as they are handed Barbies
and the boys get trucks.

I’m getting off topic.
Just like a woman, I suppose.

I can’t totally fault a man for being an ass.
Society says that’s okay too.

But basically I let him know
I hate men,
mostly because of their ways.

He smiled,
just as sweet as I knew he would
and promised to prove me wrong.

Right then, he was proving me right.

top ten.

With Halloween right on the heels of this week, I figured I’d do a little list of stuff that spooks me. Not necessarily in order.

10. Spiders
9. Breaking bones
8. Love
7. Drowning
6. Being trapped in a fire
5. Failure
4. Someone breaking into my house, especially when I am alone
3. Daddy Long Leg spiders
2. Car wreck/semi-trailer wreck
1. Losing a family member or close friend

grandma.

my grandmother always
had goolash and buttered bread,
green beans and mashed potatoes
waiting on Sunday afternoons after church
when my parents with us drove the 80 miles to visit.
That playground was across the street
and a pump stood in the backyard.

But change happens.

That playground is gone
and she lives in an apartment that can’t compete
with the old living room’s gas heater,
a bedroom with curtains for doors,
and an upstairs that allowed the Baileyville
winter winds to creep through its walls
beginning in November.
That house has been replaced,
a new one stands on its legs.

Mrs. Koch, the original,
is quiet and enduring.
I see her in me every so often
when someone tries to tell me what to do,
to dictate to me,
to offer negativity to those I love.
I see the stubborn
I see her spark
generosity unappreciated,
and pride immense.

The scope of her character
maybe even we can’t grasp.

How does one
become so beautiful?

I always thought of my grandmother
as a great pillar, poised for others,
firm and able to hold herself against
the greatest forces thrown,
even hurled at her, during this lifetime.
She is a worrier
without the tears.

I always thought my grandfather,
fixed and defiant in his own right I’m told,
was a lucky man to have been loved by her.

I always have
and I always will.

Night driving.

Traffic lights reflect on the street
bright and flickering
yellow, red, green
from the wetness that has filmed the concrete.

The cold isn’t quite enough
to form ice yet
but soon the day will come.

And I’m not ready.

golden.

Fall, even when it makes me miss things that happened in what seems like a previous life, is cleansing, and it makes me feel creative.

I finally picked up my camera yesterday. It felt good. I missed it. Does that sound weird? That I missed my camera? Well, if it does, then color me weird.

not on repeat.

Let’s go back to where we started
when you smiled
and I sang,
to where we got along
and talked about things
that actually mattered,
to where a friendship stood
strong and soft and silly
(before love ruined it),
to where we could still
make each other happy.

I want to say
let’s go back and start over
but what if I wasn’t okay
in the first place?