Gave up the Old Life

The sounds of "Only the Good Die Young" start up and I'm dancing barefoot with my arms in the air, knotted long hair spinning and every toe is feeling the scratchy embrace of the familiar green carpet. 

Feels so free, feels so good. 

It's just a select few of us upstairs, happier together then, before the great bunch of 100 people come pounding up the stairs from below. Happy still together then. 

It'll roar in here soon, in the haze of Lucky Strike smoke and junk ...and the sounds of heavy breathing on the dance floor, on the futon, in all the little hideaways I'd found in the two floors below over a year's time. Creaky openings of the old doors - furniture being slid up behind them as locks. 

I'll soak it up in every pour, squeezing tresses of my hair off of my sweat-filled neck...and grasping onto his skin-sticky with tequila-as we dance, and he sniffs -and twitches-and sniffs again-and whispers the lyrics into my ear with a nibble. 

I'll kiss him with her lipstick still on mine and we'll all be so happy.

Down I went so many times like that. 

Down baby, down, down, ohhh thought it felt so good. 

And now I wake sometimes in the dead of night and stare out at the city from the otherside of a kind, soft shoulder ...or just a lump of blankets ....and I remember being that woman. I wake suddenly as if I'm waking up the very morning after. Yet months and mistakes and irreparable damage to a couple hearts lies in between. 

Fell in love and gave up the old life. 

Ran away half-way across the country.

Now everyday is one farther from the last cigarette, and one more in a beautiful, cleaner city life. 

I don't know who I'm gonna be next - but tomorrow I'll get up at dawn again and chase my dreams. 

It's the funniest damn thing. 

Batty Things

For the first time in months I've got the window cracked enough to hear that wonderful street hum, - wearing my favorite little flannel shorts - with so much bare skin shy in the sudden bask of light. 

So much soft-blue and yellow coming through the blinds, and bouncing off the dusty ledges and the dirty carpet...and the scattered clothes and the strands of hair.

I should be able to breathe today. 

It's funny - just yesterday the snow was falling; making cracks in all the Valentine's window fronts. There seemed to be a hands-holding idea suddenly come into fashion again (and less scary?) ...and after two buses and an hour subway ride I decided to take  the long walk past the park. 

And I'm thinking of it again with that batty old smile - passing in my heeled boots rush all those couples...remembering the park when the grass was steaming up from  humidity where there's an ice rink now, and children squealed playing in the fountain that's now covered in a coating of grey ice dust.

I was in love in this city once. 

And now, it's this city that I do so very much love. 

And that's not sad. Well - maybe it is. (What can you do? hah) 

But Happy Valentine's, or something like that, to all you folks. Cause I'm here to tell you this year I'm celebrating with a batty old smile - because I know a very dangerous secret. > > >

It's actually real. 

And it actually sucks. 

And it actually changes you. 

And who am I kidding? I'll do it all again. Just not today!

Like that second when cars whirl past, the wind switches directions, and the lightest bit of snow comes down again - and everyone pretends they didn't just look up into the sky for a moment -- We need to break the rules.

We need to look up. 

We need isolation. 

Because honestly, we need the winds to change and something beautiful to distract us from ourselves for just a brief period. 

And then, it's easier to breathe. 

Icicles & Comics

See it's alright. It's really o.k.
Don't say another word.
I haven't hardly been listening anyhow.
Cause you see I'm just a memory of some other heroine in this comic book town - when I'm playing, like we're playing; once again in someone else's arms, (so surprisingly warm) - it's already gone...


And just like that we're all walking with our own bedtime stories, - when the icicles smash to the ground around invisible footsteps, and the cold just gets colder inside...and traveling home and hunched against the wind; it's all so sinister that for just a moment I catch, the black&white outlines and exaggerated movement strokes stuck to my own arms and strands of hair.
Wondering where they all are.


So I pretend sometimes I'm headed to any of the other places where's there's (maybe) a little scrap of my breath...climbing the sandy stairs two-at-a-time to that first apartment at the beach,..
sliding the latch closed on a scorching and weathered sailboat door,..
pulling into the driveway of a wooded suburban rancher hideaway,..
climbing through the second-story porch window of a townhouse in Baltimore...or maybe I'm turning the lock in a rickety doorknob of a basement-floor apartment in Brooklyn, or buzzing up apartmemt 1B as I shake off the cold...
or sliding the keycard to the Marriot hotel room a quick cab ride from here...


But all those places are so far away.


See? It's alright, it's really o.k.
Shouldn't say another word.
You haven't hardly been listening anyhow.
Just been skimming over the pages for the various boxes of plot happenings'.
Catch a quote here or there, or a POW! or a Shmacckk!
And down we go.
Not even really remembering to duck.
"[cause] once you've had the good stuff, never gonna fill you up. I just wanna be the one who gives 'em all the world..just a little taste of it" ("the End" Kings of Leon)








Headphones: KOL "The End", Arcade Fire "We Used to Wait", Bruno Mars "Talking to the Moon"