Conversations Among the Ruins

I am not the sort
for a glittery dress and
curls in my hair

on a packed floor
somewhere - at an
expensive dinner table

somewhere, with a
drink in my hand
somewhere

for when it turns
midnight again.

I've never been impressed
by cheering or
fireworks, and I actually

don't like noise - especially
when made
by paper products

assembled in a country
I never learned about.

I don't like parties or
crowds as they make me
uncomfortable.

For the new year I
worked
myself

stupid. A five hundred
dollar night, not the best

but not bad.

I saw all sorts of people -
bored people, happy people,
people that couldn't
believe where they were and

who they were with. People that
bitched about tuna and
people that were beautiful and

well dressed and fancy,
with real smiles.

My job is a window
into my very own world.

I cannot stand
New Years Eve. I got

beaten up
pretty badly one year
and so I make sure I work

so that I can forget
about the hope I had
for that night, and about

what really happened.

Like I was just a teenager
in a glittery dress
with curls

in my hair.

This morning my feet
are covered in blisters

just the same
as they would be

if I were that girl
instead. The past is void.

It actually doesn't matter.
None of it matters.

What matters is my inept
ability to feel

the things that got dressed up,
trashed, and high over feeling

for my entire adult life.

(Adult. Had to think about
that for a second.)

My feelings matter,
the past does not, and

sometimes, on a roof top
staring silently at fireworks,

I choose to just be grateful
for my own still silence
in a yelling crowd

that I can feel
at all.

Her body was full
of crooked
faded tattoos,
bullet holes and

pale.

She had this
cropped

inky black
dyed hair and

she wore a
nose ring; a
lip ring; an

eye brow ring
and
glasses

sometimes.

She stopped
talking to her

six year old
daughter and

slept in that
heroin house
over on

Ogden.

Her hair it
would be in

big purple
braids. Men

would beat her
and leave her
in gas station

parking lots
and
when I would

"rescue" her
she'd scoff at
my crooked

lip liner, taking
great care
in fixing it as I

would try not
to look
at the bruises

dotting her eyes -
the dried blood
on her mouth.

For her birthday
ten years ago
we split

a bottle of Jack
in a cub foods
parking lot.

It was November -
the cold

void of notice.

That chain of
stores shut down

and so did her
body.

She died
alone

in the projects
over on

Halsted.

"Where am I from."

That's a lot
of places you

wouldn't ever
imagine - as I

walk into a
bakery in the
sun to buy

a single
red velvet
dark chocolate

cupcake.

For my girl - and
all

our

heart.

"What I really feel like is a ham cooking in the oven.
You know, how it's some massive slab of meat without any limbs,
in a pan that it barely fits in,

and it's all pink and awkward and ugly. I don't even
like ham. But I feel like one. Just gigantic and
uncomfortable. With no pineapple slices to keep me
company, either."

"You aren't a ham you are beautiful."

"Ham.

"I wish you would come back to Nevada already.
So you could bring me an animal style double double,
and a tube of chocolate syrup. Hersheys, to cover it in.
While I lay in bed and complain."

"You aren't a ham you are beautiful. Like a flower.
A sassy power flower. With a fantastic sense of humor.
You aren't any size bigger in the least. Your body is
delicate. Like a flower."

"In a ham's body. Where the pan is too small.
With no pineapple slices for company. It's
eighty degrees out and the

chirping birds sound like a football
pep squad. I want to sleep until
August."

Three thousand miles away and he
laughs as a train passes him.

We hang up,
I call my mother,
to further bitch about my cramps
and suddenly

I'm in a memory of a time where
I stopped doing drugs and had
cramps for the first time in years.

I was in so much pain in Arizona,
calling her from a bath tub to
sob. I didn't have the sense to take
advil. It was as if I had no idea

what was happening to me. I had
thought that I had been pregnant,
not known it,

and was in labor
again.

"Mom. Am I having
a baby right now?"

Was what I had cried out.
I don't remember what she
had said all I remember is

Robb coming home and
explaining to me that it
was just my own body,

as I sat with a knife
in one hand and a
bottle of asprin

in another. I had called him
brilliant that day,

because he knew
why my stomach hurt
when I didn't and today

my body is the same,
my life, a hundred chapters
different.

And I smile
for the silly credits
I gave him.

In my ham pan,
without any pineapple
slices

to keep me
a little
company.

It always turns to that conversation.

That conversation where he looks at me sincerely, stares, and laughs slightly. I wait for it, like a bell on an oven.

He's Las Vegas Strip drunk, exhausted, laying on my living room floor. Paint, canvas, brushes, and more canvas surrounds us. He takes hundreds of pictures of this. I don't ask why.

Angela is in the bathroom, putting on her fire and ice lipstick with a smile, clicking her chic boots, asking if she should wear her skinny jeans or tights out.

The bell dings, he says

"You are alive today. Do you know how amazing that is? Do you know how much it means to me to see you sitting in this mess making things? You made it out and you're functional, responsible, and even nice. Look at where you live. I never imagined such a thing because it was unimaginable. You sitting here like this right now is one of the most important things I have ever seen."

Instead of looking at him I concentrate very hard at throwing paint.

"Melissa is dead. Do you remember her?"

"Yes. Not surprising. She's dead and you're not. I'm sorry to hear that. You cared about her a lot but she took you to a lot of places away from any form of this place ever happening. She was a profound mess, but she loved you, and I know how you felt about her."

"I think about her when I use the color red in my paintings because that wasn't ever her color, but she dyed her hair and tattooed so much of herself in it anyway. The red got all over her, and it didn't ever come out. Whenever I put red on a picture it totally fucks it up."

"Why were you thinking about frosted flakes so much today?"

I stare at him.

"What did you say?"

"I just keep thinking about frosted flakes."

Calmly I place down the paint brush.

"You make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in a career you love. You live in Los Angeles and you love it. You have a beautiful woman that loves you in the other room putting on lipstick to look like she wants to look next to you. So why the fuck are you still wasted on my floor, huh? Talking about how alive I am like it's impossible. It isn't impossible. We're on the same goddamn floor in the same world, from the same world.

You have everything, and you treat it like nothing, and I'm not going to beat your face in with a skol bottle any more, I'm going to tell you that it's painful that I can't say the things to you that you say to me. So if you want to read my head, read my head, if you want to read my written work read my written work, but watch out for what you'll find regarding both of those machines, because

as you know, I get a bit sociopath about things, and you aren't going to like what you hear. It'll eat away at you and you will not want to talk to me any more. He places his wrist over his eyes. Sighs.

"I know."

"I fuckin love you dude, a lot of people do, but your funeral would be really boring. Like nobody trendy would be there at all. The music would be dull, and nobody would let you wear your toe sneakers. No guest list, just mauve flowers."

"I love you too Heather."

I squeeze half of a red tube of paint to the canvas, smearing it with my hand, void of reply.