November 2011
2 posts
james/oxford/i am such a bitch
appendix a
;
dates after class cuddling on the couch you yawn and your arm meets my shoulder i say really? and you say yes.
i lose interest and hurt your feelings and spend the rest of the time avoiding you.
appendix b
;
a date in the park knees pressed together in pubs a hobo tells us to stay in love, love is precious, later i say that was uncomfortable
and then i lose interest and hurt...
oxford, pt. 1
i remember the way your hand felt in mine—or, no, just the idea of the way your hand felt in mine, the thinness of your fingers, the way i didn’t mean to reach for you but somehow i did and somehow you interpreted the motion correctly—even though i didn’t—and the way we tumbled behind everyone else toward the staircase, confused around corners, through the door, up...
August 2011
1 post
March 2011
1 post
suddenly.
it is two in the morning and i am suddenly struck with the insatiable need for a summer evening with you. in my imagination we curl up on my bed and turn the lights off, listen to the fan and our combined breathing and the crescendo of the crickets who have always been there. we don’t speak, until i tell you about last summer, the night you came home and called me from below my window,...
February 2011
1 post
a concert.
dinner first—so hungry i go right to the soup, which is my go-to. no dilly-dallying by the main meal line, hoping something looks good.
and then a salad, because i’m trying to lose weight.
and then a bagel because i’m still hungry. marielle looks at her watch.
it snowed last night, and then rained, so the long passage beneath the FAC overhang is sheeted with ice. inside the...
January 2011
1 post
for my birthday.
i dip below the surface of the water and glide, softly, turn under water just so i can feel the light brush of my hair against my bare shoulders. then again, a breath, hands to my eyelids to wipe away the water. i want to be able to see where i’m going.
up ahead the buoy floats, bear island its steady backdrop. i know the evening-lit lives of its inhabitants intimately, i have watched them...
December 2010
1 post
breakfast.
we go to breakfast. the two of you talk about your lives.
i drink my water, and pretend i don’t exist.
it’s so very, very easy.
October 2010
1 post
the future.
i am hurtling along forward into this inevitable something, which i reach for and reach for but am too scared to actually grasp. i am choosing these paths and am being given these decisions to make and i, in myfinite youth, come to all the wrong ones. as i stumble i learn about that deep hole in the ground, and i grow to fear it, and i work to pull myself out of it. that hole will still be there,...
June 2010
0 posts
running, pt.3
i’ve been working out while you’ve been in new york city, visiting your girlfriend, so when we start i suggest we run instead of walk. we both gained the freshman fifteen in college, so it’s a glorified walk we’ve been doing, the few times we’ve done this since the summer started. i take off like a shot when you agree. your whoa, girl shouldn’t get my heart...
May 2010
2 posts
james.
“you’ve changed,” luke says, standing in line at the snack bar, “he’s changed you.” we’re talking about the boy who is liking me back, who is maybe going to kiss me sometime, who has asked me to go to prom with him. i am still in my euphoric stage, when the world is brighter because he’s in it and because, yes, he’s as interested in me as...
April 2010
1 post
vacations.
i don’t have any specific memories of orlando, florida. mostly, i think, it’s because i’ve been so many times that the visits themselves blur together until everything is vague walkings through sunlight. ridings in a rental convertible ( red ) with the top down and the smell of tar and new cars. standings in interminable lines in disney world. wadings through pools at resorts,...
March 2010
3 posts
running, part 2.
we’re at the part of our run where i begin to slow, just before we stop running and walk the whole way home. you’re telling me about india. i’m half-listening, because it is a beautiful day out and the woods we are making our way through are sun dappled and green, green, green.
you have to get a boyfriend this summer, you say, and i realize with a start that the conversation has...
beautiful.
i step out of the car to open the mailbox. i’m home from college for the weekend, and it seems as though everything’s normal again; mom nagging me on the ride home from the grocery store, making me get out of the car to get the mail from the mailbox when it’s cold out. the neighbors pull up just as we do, and the boy i used to babysit gets out, and it’s all awkward...
February 2010
3 posts
skin.
it’s the week before the summer session is going to start, and the staff eats together, girls and boys flirting and smiling, the undercurrent of tension that usually runs through the two camps out in the open, tangible. we’ve been sorted by birth month; senior staff tries hard to get us to intermingle, break the cliques that have been around since we were all ten. cliques which i was...
routine.
the first day back from winter break and we have already fallen back into routine: grudging acceptance of the workload, teasing bickering, the long walk home from class. i have to skip to catch up every couple of steps, because his legs are so much longer.
“i love this backpack,” he says, “i can pretend it’s a jet pack, fly away.”
i laugh but don’t say...
at first it was just a pizza party— the last...
January 2010
1 post
December 2009
2 posts
evolution.
i remember me, young and awkward with too much hair and metal teeth and a self-assuredness i’ve lost somehow, seeing you and your parents, your sister, standing in the driveway next door, talking to the real estate agent. i sat on the chair in my living room and i remember thinking that i had seen you before, wondering if you’d be nicer than the kids who were moving out. i remember,...
1 tag
November 2009
1 post
October 2009
2 posts
wishin' and hopin'.
this morning i am feeling as though i’m in new hampshire again, and it is a little drizzly out, and we are ordering ice cream at bailey’s. we are going to drive out somewhere far away and find some activity which is really not worth the hours in the car but because we are best friends it’s entertaining anyway.
only instead i am in my dorm room at a university which gets smaller and overwhelmingly...
initiation.
we’re told to dress all in black and make it to a bus stop on the far side of campus. we get there on time and then wait around for someone to appear or for a bus to roll in. we’re all a little nervous and we’re filled with a little bravado. the night is cold and we shiver while we wait.
we’re told to get on the bus, to stay silent. we are driven into the center of town,...
September 2009
1 post
first day.
you and i, we walk to my classes together and i pretend you are here. you are amorphous and sometimes you are not the same person in my mind but i am always, constantly, forever wanting you near me. but you are away in new york and just down the way and never here. and i am alone in a place where i could get lost and alone and alone and the world could crash in on me and i could drown. there is a...
August 2009
1 post
sunsets.
i drive around for a little while, trying to find the entrance to the water tower. it’s up at the top of a hill, with a wonderful view, and i’ve been intending to see the sunset from it all summer. the sun’s pretty much sunk beyond the horizon, but when i finally find the parking lot next to the water tower i can still see the golden clouds, far, far, infinitely far away. i park...
July 2009
2 posts
rite-aid.
the guy behind us in line is drunk. he keeps telling us about the under-21 night at the local bar that’s going on tonight, and he keeps trying to pick stuff off of julia’s shirt. we evade him eventually, by going outside, and then all of a sudden he comes running out the door.
as he goes tearing down the stairs and out across the parking lot, a man nearby shouts for him to stop—...
darkness.
we park at the top of the hill and have to walk back down in the dark. my cell phone is dead. thankfully, there aren’t many clouds, and it’s the best kind of night for picking our way between pitted areas in the worn, stoney camp road. i only turn my ankle once, and only a little.
June 2009
3 posts
ice cream.
we stop at coldstone’s on the way back from the mall. i can’t decide on what i want. the final decision is ‘all lovin’ no oven’, which makes me feel awkward when i order it. lauren gets cheesecake and hot fudge ice cream. we sit outside, because there is no way i’m driving home with a giant cup of melty ice cream in my lap. on the other side of the highway,...
sunday.
every other day, it’s camp songs. after breakfast, lunch, and dinner, right before our food is cleared away, we sing about fat albert’s funky drawers, mr. dundavon’s machine, a little canoe, the cannibal king, birdies and vultures. on sundays, however, we toss away our usual words and strike up disney. we raise our voices to don’t stop believing. we belt out build me up...
running.
we’re supposed to run at ten thirty, and you call me fifteen minutes before. at first i can’t understand you. “we still running?” you say, your voice muffled through the phone and probably a shirt and a deep layer of sleep. “yes,” i say, and grin helplessly. it’s not fair that you’re cute this early in the morning— the night before a late one,...
May 2009
2 posts
beaches.
on the way home from the beach, our bodies warm from the sun, we sat on towels in the back of gwennie’s mother’s van. we were in connecticut, and so we didn’t have any way of knowing what radio stations were good to listen to, because back then it mattered to us, but we didn’t have a scan button. in the end, her mother settled on a college radio station, and—what...
s'mores.
at first everyone was involved— kim, lauren, dev, veda, kate, eric, julia, and i. we’d linger in my backyard long into the night, chasing our words, hunting sardines and ghosts in the bushes. we roasted hot dogs, competed for the bragging rights entitled to the maker of the best brown marshmallow. sometimes we told ghost stories. then our numbers dwindled. the brief period of early...