Conversations Among the Ruins

I don't remember
a whole lot about
being a kid.

But I
remember how
I would get
obsessed.

Obsessed at
age eight that
I wasn't as skinny

as the girls on
90210. Obsessed
with a boy

named John.
Obsessed with
twirling my hair

on my fingers
in a freezer - the
feeling of my cold

hair in my fingers
gave me a rush
and took me

somewhere else.

I grew up, the
nineties happened
and I was obsessed

with the size of
my arms, happy meal
toys from thrift stores,

deflated foil ballons
and covering
the walls

of my bedroom.
I was obsessed with
daydreaming about

how someday I
would speak
to people.

I didn't know about
what I just pictured
myself

thin and
pretty and the
center of

the rooms focus.

I was obsessed
with shopping in
thrift stores and

when I turned
sixteen I met a boy.
His name was Alex

and I was obsessed
with him. I believed
in him.

I believed
the things
he said that I was

which was
not much but
nothing;

nobody
at all.

For a spell
he was the spell.

He is the reason
I didn't pick up
my first drug

until after my
eighteenth birthday.
I didn't

need them; the
insanity of each of
us in a room together

sufficed.

I was obsessed with
lemon pepsi and
big league chew.

I had over three
hundred flavors
of lip smacker.

I couldn't have one
of anything. I needed
to have them all,

and each was to have
a name, a personality
a story.

I was obsessed with
three inch thick glitter
on my eyelids and

white out bleaching
my hair
every Thursday - obsessed

with the hurt.
With the abuse.

With the
words.

I learned to
fucking write
because I was obsessed

with eloquently
making sure
you could fucking

hear me after you'd
fuck me and
beat me up and
dump me for the

seventh day that
week.

I was obsessed with
forgetting. Obsessed
with the raves.

Obsessed with Love.
Or whatever I thought
it was. Obsessed with

feeling like a train hit me
the night before
the current morning because

that was funny and
just so typical.

I was obsessed with being
ok with beating on a man
that loved me and never

hit me back in a trailer
park just as the sun
rose. Because if

I was fucking nuts
I was at least

something.

I was obsessed with
ecstasy - chewing
up double digited

numbers of pills -
of having a blotter
for breakfast and

watching the walls
melt. I was obsessed

with some shit head
primadonna LA based
bitch because the

fantasy of him
as an actual real person
that could save me

or gave a fuck
was another obsessive
fantasy.

I got obsessed with
cocaine and smoking
crystal meth and I

was obsessed with
a blonde med student
named Robb.

Who actually tricked me
into conscious life.

Into a waking life
to be

obsessed with.
I missed a lot
of a few years of my

life because I was
focused on how
obsessed with Robb's
death

so many people
told me I
was.

I was fixated on
blow torches,

melting glass and
wax together and
sticking thousands of

stickers onto
things. I was obsessed
with
melting

hundreds of
toothbrushed
together

after I
boiled them.

I was obsessed
with electronic
dance music and

pronouncing
the names of
the foreigners
that make

that shit.

I was obsessed
with trying
to belong

in a sub culture
of

snobs and
spiky boots.

Anything to just
hate
myself.

To not be
good enough.

I am obsessed with
self growth and
coffee and my

weight and what I
do or do not
eat, at what time

of the day.

I am obsessed
with my job and my
lover and my

dog.

I fix on yogartland
and in & out burger

and eloquently
written
insanity.

So it gets better
but I swear it

never goes away.

I am an addict.

In a few weeks I'll
take a two year
cake and next

week I'm actually
speaking.

I won't have any
flashy lights or
clothes - I will

likely probably not
even shower but

that's something.

I'm flattered and
privileged and

soundly
awake

tonight.

(Thank you Suzette)

I don't know how to write.
Or treat people that I love.

I don't make the coffee right.
My hair is a mess.

Not one of those cool
messes
either.

Like. I

feel like I need to
throw up a lot more
often lately.

I don't know how to
go back to Chicago
because I don't

recognize it and I
don't know what to do
to motivate

myself. In regards
to everything.

Some days I
wake up a lot more
sick than

others.
So I lay in bed,
but I can't lay there

still
either.

Somedays
something

big

is
missing.

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.

Nothing keeps
leaving me
voicemails and

all it says is
"I'm here. Here
with you in your

giant orange
shawl and
three sizes too

big sweat
pants."

Nothing says
"Just stare out
at the gray

sky and eventually
you will see me.

Sometimes I
am all you feel
and I was just

calling to
remind you that
no matter what

it seems
I am always
here."

Nothing tells me
to do it tomorrow.

Nothing keeps
the canvas
on the floor

six hundred
of the wrong
layers because

it isn't done.
Nothing grips

to my job,
as that is a

massive something
to consume
my self growth

with. Nothing
stares at my
phone with me

and tells me
"You don't feel
like talking."

Nothing is a
straight jacket
I cuddle up in

like a toddler.
I cannot accept
nothing but it

shows up and we
sit quietly
together.

It is never ok
in my mind

to be
exhausted -
no matter how

many hours I
work in a week or

how many times I
take out the
trash, do the

dishes, water the
plants.

A long time ago
a girl had

nothing. So she
made
nothing

everything and
nothing loves

to keep sending out
it's manuscripts.

To this head.
On this chilly
gray afternoon.

Nothing is a nice
bath tub that when
sat in for too long

drowns you.

Slow comfort.

Absent of
life.

Click out double
pen and a fresh pad
of paper and oh - yes

my hair was missing so
I did some coke and
forgot all about

that.

Forgot about the tracks
on my head and how
my body felt and

I forgot that I was
eighteen and gone
to another

universe. I hated it
in that room I remember
thinking but I hit

the hit of ecstasy and
for the first time in my
life I felt

loved and
a part of and

accepted and

it
was concise.

Today it is a
decade later and I
cry for all of my

missing cut off
and pulled

out hair - for

my cracked out
party putty pasted
doll

self that believed
in some sick ass
party scene as

my
life and my
love and my

acceptance.

Adolescents is
a little fucking complicated
for me when I write

that I never drank
in high school and a
year and a half later I

I was smoking a
crack pipe in an
alley way and aren't

you just so
silly sick of me

saying that?

Who am I at the
bottom of my purse
within my locker on the

inside of my job in a
life within a building
of which there are not

windows that I am
shutting this notebook
to go to?

Whose feet are these
in these healed boots

where I

unwind it again it's this
giant black
yarn ball of energy

that I started to
unwind years ago -

with words.

Whose fear is this
did it come with my
happy meal and how

much tax
did they charge me?

Who are they and
what am
I and how come they

got the better
manicure?

Writing it all out
during the day really

chaps my lips
and my thumbs and
I wonder

a lot

if anybody ever
trips like I
do.

Plays hide and
seek

like I do.

Feels

like I do

when this pen
hits that paper and

it all gets
simple enough to

accept and just stare out the
window and like,

fuck go to work and
come home seven hours
later to make some

sense of it all
over

again.