i feel like a ball of curled up kitten.

i've got a silver ring on a black thread. what's it signify?
a silvery fancy that caught my heart on a sunday afternoon.

a little fish found me mid-way a book.
i think of warm oceans. the sun set on one end of the world, as the moon rose on the other, and i was a girl playing with the little fishes, in the light & color between.

i have a feeling, & it puts the dance in my step.
all the alleyways & side streets.

they are dark & old stone in city shadows, lit only by the high-gleaming windows that only have eyes, for the late summer blue. all the old men and strangers catch my smile.

i feel like the wind and liquid sunshine.

--

it's the way you grow up. your parents only bickered, or were quiet and bored. they ignored each other, with never a kiss or a hug, or those things that you see couples do on t.v., and then one day, as a ennui'd seven year old, as you came trudging up the stairs from playing outside, thirsty for water,

and summer was ending,

in a sun-soaked bedroom, you saw your father pick up your mother. and she was lovely, in a blue, periwinkle skirt. he hugged her close. he spun her around in the air, and they were like dancers in a lovely movie. and on their faces, you saw it, happiness & bliss. you were still thirsty for water, but the smart cookie you were, you slipped quietly back down the stairs, and back outside, before anyone knew that you knew, that love was real.

i wanted to talk about love, but said nothing worth saying.


there was a boy i was in love with, three years back, and he did not love me back, so when i woke up in the middle of the night beside him, i curled up safely into myself, and watched him sleep. and he coughed in his sleep, so i gently massaged his chest until he stopped. and in his sleep, he took my hand, and held it close to his heart, as if we were already close, as if he had done this for years. and right then i knew, that if he could've loved me back, he would've, but he didn't. he was already in love with someone, and she wasn't with him. when the sun came up, i kissed him goodbye, and promised myself i wouldn't see him again. i never knew if he wanted me to stay, or to go, or what he was looking for. maybe it was intimacy, or someone to take his mind off the special one that was gone. i could do neither.

more than a year later, i'd meet someone else. i'd write him off as a distraction, laugh often, at others, with him, at him, at myself. i'd leave. and then i'd leave, wondering if i wanted to stay, or to go, wondering if he wanted me to stay, or to go. and then he'd ask me to stay, so i stayed, and there was ice cream from cartons on countertops in the dark, and rain on fire escapes, and i think, love, but i would never use the word because i didn't know whether it was even important to talk about love, when the feeling was there and not. and then the whole thing made me sad, so i left, and he let me leave, because i don't think he was happy anymore either.

it took a long time before i could walk in rain and be happy again.

some days i wake up, and the only thing i want to do is go home.
the problem is, i'm already home.

say anything. i'm full of shit. it's like a bad dream i'm trying to forget, except instead of a bad dream, it's a pretty little facet i can't make peace with. sparse threads to the world, but at least i'm not lying to myself. the truth is a stupid thing to have alone. flickering lights, & trains that don't come. i'm tired of waiting, but i do it anyway. i always take the long route home, ride sleepy in the corner of the light, long, blue seats. what is the difference between ten minutes or two hours, when you don't know how to get home? is it the journey, or the getting there? even in  my bed, on the softness of black sheets, i'm still on some midnight train, and i don't know where i'm going.

ha. i'm happy.

things that help:

sitting in the space of shaun tan,
showers,
strumming end of summertime songs on the guitar,
tech startups,
storyboarding drafts,
stretching,
shanghai restoration project & other chaotic soul-auditory pretties,

things:

listening to the heartbeat on the sheets of a bed with a pressed ear,
three types of banana bread,
a man found love & hot sex and vanished into the world with his not-so-secret secret, mid-aged mistress, leaving your sick mother and three younger siblings & all their bills & rent for someone else,
work,
work,
other work,
art,
pixel ink on white light,

the future is here.