shorthand, n. /ˈʃɔːthænd/ free writing, mostly.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Music loud like buzzing against the wind, when you don't want to go home because the sun meets your bare skin with a kiss. Or the cable-knit sweater rubbing opposite your skin, when you're alone in bed with legs inextricably tangled in the sheets. Dirt under your nails from days of unshowered, unadulterated nature, walking in the dust and breathing in air and looking at muted stars.
You wrote a story last night, one about the sun and how it spun, and how the earth followed it angrily, exerting a pull of its own. Gravity, where even the earth is equal to the sun. As in somehow, you are exerting an force equal to the loud buzzing of the music. Perhaps sound doesn't apply to gravity, or gravity doesn't apply to sound, but something about the music settling in your chest feels like heaviness--and while gravity isn't heavy, it feels that way.
The music keeps going, growing and growing, until it's the heady thrum behind your eyes in a migraine and you can't feel anything except your temples. Everything just needs to be beautiful, but it is loud, so loud, like a drum of cicadas, or a star thrusting itself into combustion, or all of these things echoing at the same time in the small pockets behind your eyes.
It has only been five minutes.
You try to scratch at the sweater rubbing against your skin, or swat at the sunlight that warms your body with the heady sense of ultra-violent cancer--violet, not violent, but still there is something persistently violent about the sun's rays' refusal to fall on the ground, how they pick and nip at every bit of skin until you are dry with white lips of skin pursing upwards with gravity.
Six minutes now. Breathe faster, smooth the sweater, ignore the sun, and maybe the music will slow.
It started when you were small, when your hands were still balls of white flesh that curled into themselves and never wanted to let go. It started as a light tickle against your stomach, and it was soft like when you pass over a cloud for the first time and realize its fragility. But as you grew, the tickle spread into something more like the thrum of a hummingbird--still impossibly small, yet now impossibly persistent and heavy and thick with energy. It grew hard, like when you pass through a cloud for the first time and realize that its fragility is actually hiding a wave of energy. Like passing over and then through a cloud, it happened in a second. You were a child with a tickling wisp against soft baby skin, and then you were you, chased down by a wild thrumming that wouldn't stop.
Sixteen minutes, one minute too long, but the music hasn't stopped.
You wrote a story last night, one about the sun and how it spun, and how the earth followed it angrily, exerting a pull of its own. Gravity, where even the earth is equal to the sun. As in somehow, you are exerting an force equal to the loud buzzing of the music. Perhaps sound doesn't apply to gravity, or gravity doesn't apply to sound, but something about the music settling in your chest feels like heaviness--and while gravity isn't heavy, it feels that way.
The music keeps going, growing and growing, until it's the heady thrum behind your eyes in a migraine and you can't feel anything except your temples. Everything just needs to be beautiful, but it is loud, so loud, like a drum of cicadas, or a star thrusting itself into combustion, or all of these things echoing at the same time in the small pockets behind your eyes.
It has only been five minutes.
You try to scratch at the sweater rubbing against your skin, or swat at the sunlight that warms your body with the heady sense of ultra-violent cancer--violet, not violent, but still there is something persistently violent about the sun's rays' refusal to fall on the ground, how they pick and nip at every bit of skin until you are dry with white lips of skin pursing upwards with gravity.
Six minutes now. Breathe faster, smooth the sweater, ignore the sun, and maybe the music will slow.
It started when you were small, when your hands were still balls of white flesh that curled into themselves and never wanted to let go. It started as a light tickle against your stomach, and it was soft like when you pass over a cloud for the first time and realize its fragility. But as you grew, the tickle spread into something more like the thrum of a hummingbird--still impossibly small, yet now impossibly persistent and heavy and thick with energy. It grew hard, like when you pass through a cloud for the first time and realize that its fragility is actually hiding a wave of energy. Like passing over and then through a cloud, it happened in a second. You were a child with a tickling wisp against soft baby skin, and then you were you, chased down by a wild thrumming that wouldn't stop.
Sixteen minutes, one minute too long, but the music hasn't stopped.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
first in awhile.
Lessons from Boys
He showed her that even in grey and a turtleneck, she was pretty. She would dance down the halls after seeing his smile, after seeing that he would drive three hours in a tiny truck with a love-struck couple for her. He taught her the meaning of flirting, although she didn’t realize it until later, when she needed it. His hair was red and ginger with a smile to match, and she would fall asleep sometimes dreaming of his grin. She didn’t realize that they were antics meant for middle school, not college. His attentions flustered her, and she waited each day for word from him, not able to sleep soundly if he didn’t say goodnight. She asked her friend one day, frustrated and angry, begging her to explain why boys had to exist. Yet he existed fervently. Once he grabbed her around the waist and pulled her towards the edge of the mountain, teasing that he would throw her over the side. She didn’t realize it was the edge. She only felt the simplicity of his cold, winter-warmed hands against her cheeks by the fire in the morning, the smell of wood smoke in the air, his eyes staring into hers, smiling.
And when they fell out of touch, as winter loves and youths tend to do, she kissed the love of her life. She first met him when his hand touched her mother's swollen belly. She had loved him for nearly as long. He kissed her on a summer night when the tops of her breasts were warm against the night pressing on the window panes. When she was seven, she had built a castle out of game pieces on his kitchen, and then she had laughed about it in his bed twelve years later. She spent one night in his arms, and one fervent morning trying to save the memory of what he was. She wouldn’t see him again, but his bed was where she first heard, “You are beautiful.”
One night in an attic of a house hidden in a street in Germany, she played a song that was too soft to reach the rafters. And he looked at her, a question, a half-smile on his lips, as if he couldn’t believe she had chosen this song for him. You’ve got me wrapped around your little finger—and she did, if only for a while. Not half a year later, he would meet a girl who was round and full and looked like a woman.
And when they fell out of touch, as winter loves and youths tend to do, she kissed the love of her life. She first met him when his hand touched her mother's swollen belly. She had loved him for nearly as long. He kissed her on a summer night when the tops of her breasts were warm against the night pressing on the window panes. When she was seven, she had built a castle out of game pieces on his kitchen, and then she had laughed about it in his bed twelve years later. She spent one night in his arms, and one fervent morning trying to save the memory of what he was. She wouldn’t see him again, but his bed was where she first heard, “You are beautiful.”
One night in an attic of a house hidden in a street in Germany, she played a song that was too soft to reach the rafters. And he looked at her, a question, a half-smile on his lips, as if he couldn’t believe she had chosen this song for him. You’ve got me wrapped around your little finger—and she did, if only for a while. Not half a year later, he would meet a girl who was round and full and looked like a woman.
Sex. Not a fragment nor moment of beauty, but a single moment of feeling. Of realizing that it’s not always about giving away under the moment, but experiencing every tangible feeling and realization and thought in a single moment to make the experience fuller, bolder, shockingly dirty.
Car lights through the rivets of a bridge, or the flickering of a liking for him. Their laughter is ridiculous, and she wonders often if the sound of it means anything to him. She forgets what it’s like to feel attractive, because she can’t stop wondering who she is. If he sees her as this, and all these before him have seen her as this and this and this…what is she.
She lies in bed some nights, scared because she no longer believes in love.
Monday, September 5, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
Friday, April 1, 2011
a rose by any other name would smell as sweet
another thing that scares me about writing is that once I release my words, they will never again be mine. they will be yours. these words are yours.
I spend so much time chasing words with my pen, and yet they aren't mine to keep. words must be given to become writing.
so I give these to you, these words that are no longer mine. you are free to see them as you please, as I sit patiently hoping that I've captured a rose is a rose is a rose.
oh, words.
I spend so much time chasing words with my pen, and yet they aren't mine to keep. words must be given to become writing.
so I give these to you, these words that are no longer mine. you are free to see them as you please, as I sit patiently hoping that I've captured a rose is a rose is a rose.
oh, words.
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