welcome to my writing journal, thank you for reading my stories. a word of suggestion: if a song is listed in the 'music' section of an entry, i highly recommend you listen to it while you read said entry. it'll make everything make more sense.

love,
k.

He feels like he can hold the air in his hand, cupped in his palm: hot and humid and heavy. He knows he should be in bed by now, but he thinks it's a crime to have to go to sleep before the sun has set all the way. He'd rather sit here, by the pond with the fireflies and the crickets and the frogs and the deep orange sky, and of course, her. Little Sadie.

Her hair is thin and strawberry blond and he doesn't really know why it's called that, but he does knows that it's his most favorite color in the whole damn world. Her eyes are the brown of wet mud, and while that might sound bad, he means it in the best way possible. Splattered over her nose and her cheeks and her forehead are big, pink freckles. Some boys at school tease her about them, but he loves them because they're like a map of all the cities they want to go to: the city of angels, the windy one, the big apple.

She smiles at him now and says, Hey, do you hear that?

He looks at her and says, No, but he's not really listening because he's looking at her in her overalls and hand-me-down shirt and thinking about how pretty she is and how she's prettier than all the girls in their dresses and high heels. 'Sides, you can't run in high heels, and you can't play in the mud in high heels, so what's the point?

Sadie frowns and says, Listen! Uncle Jack's playing the harmonica, you hear it now, right?

Her frown makes him pay attention and he hears it - the loud whistle-blow sound of a harmonica, and quieter, he hears the gentle twing-twangs of a banjo. He imagines the crickets and the bullfrongs are joining in as a chorus.

Sadie laughs her southern-belle laugh when he tells her this, and she gets up to dance her southern-belle dance, and the mud squishes beneath her toes and the tall grass dances with her, but the air weighs him down all hot and heavy and humid so he just sits and watches. The light sky is fading fast and he can see some of the stars now. In the city, they say you can't hardly see the stars, and he thinks how that'll be the only thing he's gonna miss about Louisiana.

As she twirls and spins, he thinks how Sadie's eyes are like stars on fire and how her teeth are like diamonds. The old men keep playing their music, so she keeps dancing, and he keeps watching. He hears his mother calling him in for bed but he pretends not to notice because some part of him - some ancient, wiser part of his soul - realizes that he'll grow up and he'll moves to the city just like he always wanted, but he'll drink too much and Sadie will leave him and he'll be left alone in a cold, crowded world, and all he will miss will be moments like these.

Someday when all he has are regrets, he'll wish for just one more moment at the end of summer where the girl he loves dances for him on the edge of the lake to a four-part harmony of a banjo and a harmonica and crickets and frogs. Someday all he'll miss is little Sadie's fire.

The poster of a dead rock star was so cliche. What was even worse was that she ordered it online. She didn't find it second-hand at a garage sale. No friend leaving for college had given it to her before moving. She hadn't even stumbled upon it in the adult novelty store among the creaking poster rack. No. It had come to her, UPS, in a big brown tube to keep it from getting crushed. And it had gone straight up on the wall - by me, no less, since she couldn't reach - and it hung there ever since.

We'd only been living together three days.

It was partially my fault, I guess. I encouraged her to move her things in. I told her, "This will be our house, babe." But I didn't know Kurt Cobain would be coming with her.

I tell myself I could tolerate the Nirvana frontman hanging on my (our?) wall if she had been alive when grunge was big. Well, OK, she had been alive back then, but she wasn't old enough to be a part of the grunge movement. She was still in elementary school, for fuck's sake. She was listening to the Backstreet Boys or N'Sync or some other pop singer when grunge was blowing up. She didn't even hear of Nirvana until long after Kurt was dead.

I don't know. Even if she had grown up listening to The Melvins and Nirvana and Sonic Youth, I don't know if I could respect her ordering a poster of them online just because she thought it would "fit our room," whatever the hell that means. If it was a piece of nostalgia, maybe that I could understand, but she only bought it because she felt like she was supposed to buy it. I mean, how can anyone respect that?


Still, as much as I hated him, I got used to Kurt Cobain being on my wall. Frozen in time. Forever more inhaling his cigarette. He smoked as I smoked. He held his guitar as I tuned mine. He had the decency to cast his eyes down and away as I fucked my girlfriend, doggy-style, just on the bed.

And then she just had to go and screw everything up by talking about Love and Marriage and Commitment. So she yelled, and I yelled, and I left the room. My fucking room. I should have told her to get out, but she was sobbing on the bed and I didn't want to have to deal with that indecent choking noise anymore. So I left. I went outside. And I smoked my cigarette and I knew that in the room, Kurt Cobain was smoking his. At least, I thought he was.

When I came back to the room, Kurt Cobain was gone. And so was she.



I don't understand how you can hate something so much, and then miss it when it's gone.

The Christmas lights are tiny golden circles that reflect in the corner of your eyes. The star lamps are made of paper, hand-crafted in India, and they glow above our heads in shades of magenta and navy and purple. The candle that's burning is apple cinnamon - it smells like winter, and that's why you like it. Your skin is dry and burnt: kissed too many times by the sun last week when you planted trees for money. Your sunburn is fading into a tan that will peel and fall off in time, and I tease you about it, because I never burn, I never peel.

I run my fingers over your back and feel the mountains of your shoulderblades and the valley of your spine, and I feel the edges where the dead skin meets the new. Your lips are soft and you press them into my neck as your hands cup my breasts and somewhere by our feet, the cat stirs and leaves to find a quieter spot to sleep. His fur is white and orange and it's been falling off more and more now as the temperature climbs. We find his fur everywhere these days: in your hair, in mine, on our jeans, on the insides of our shirts, on my guitar, in the sink. When you kiss me, I have to laugh and push you away to pull a single strand of orange fur off of your lips.

The night air is heavy and bears down on us with the weight of existence. My hands smell like cheap Japanese cherry blossoms and your hair smells like coconut shampoo. Our breaths are short and quiet and hot, and our eyes close and the pillows fall off the bed, and the world keeps turning on its axis, turning slowly, turning forever.

For Erin

My mouth is bleeding. Is it my gums? Is it my lips? Did I bite my tongue? I don't know, but I taste blood.

My ears are ringing. I can't hear the words she's whispering to me. Or maybe she's yelling. I don't know. I can't hear. She sounds like the buzz of a faraway intercom. Those hospital intercoms, or those department store ones. Paging Doctor So-and-so to the Electronics department. Doctor So-and-so, Electronics department. It always makes me wonder what is so goddamn important about electronics. Maybe there's some kind of electronic emergency. Oh no, we're out of batteries. The worst type of intercom announcement is for those lost kids who are waiting for their parents at the customer service desk. What if their parents never come? What if the wrong parents come? Those poor fucking kids. They teach me a lesson. Don't get lost.

I'd like to think more about lost kids, I really would, but I can't. An elbow is slamming into my ribs and I wonder, briefly, are they cracking? That would suck. Broken ribs take forever to heal, and there's no way that Doctor So-and-so can speed up the process, especially if he doesn't have those batteries. There's nothing you can do for broken ribs but wait.

Now a hand is grabbing my shirt and pulling me back in, so my conversation
with the whispering girl is cut short. Oh well. She wasn't that hot anyway. Maybe I'll be more interested after a couple of beers. Maybe she'll get lucky when I'm drunk.

I headbutt someone. A fleshy someone. Someone fat. Alfred? He reels back and shoves me. The hurt is good. The pain is nice. There are fists everywhere. And shins. And feet. And more of those fucking elbows. And sweat. No one told me about the sweat. My blows just slide off of everyone else because they're so fucking wet. It's disgusting. And intoxicating.

The singer is leaping around on the stage. He's not playing an instrument, so he's free to hold the mic in both hands as if it were a tiny neck that he's trying to choke the life out of. The cord trails behind him and he's tripping over it but he doesn't care, he's still singing. Screaming might be a better word for it. I don't know, I can't hear.

The bass is loud and the guitar is loud and the drums are louder than it all, and the music is whipping us into a frenzy of wild hyenas tearing at a kill, and it's good. I like it. Whisper-Girl is watching from the sidelines. I guess she doesn't want to sweat or bleed, and isn't that a pity? What's life without a little salt? Poor girl. Lost kid. She's still waiting for someone at the customer service desk.

I think I'm drunk and I like it.

For hidoken

We were five years old. Oh, we thought we were so old. We thought we knew everything. We were invincible. We went to school with Velcro laces and three quarters in our pockets, exactly three, never more. We thought lunch would always be 75 cents, and we thought that if you forgot your quarters, then your teacher would lend you some for the day. We thought we'd never go hungry.

It was June when we went to the beach. My family picked you up from your house, but it wasn't a house, it was an apartment. And I didn't understand why your family would want to live somewhere that didn't have a yard. Why would you live somewhere that strangers lived, too? And I had thought I knew everything.

We clambered out of the backseat when we could smell the salty air. It enticed us, it called us. We couldn't wait to answer. We raced ahead of my parents so we could get there first. We buried our toes in the sand and gulped down sea water - at first, on accident, and then on purpose, because we liked the salty burn in our throats. We had to drink fresh water after that, and the bottled water was so soothing that we drank more sea water so we could feel the soothe again.

After lunch, we sat on the shore so we could be in the water without having to swim because our legs were so tired from kick kick kicking. We picked up globs of wet sand and then let them drop back into the water while we talked about the sort of things that 5 year olds talk about. Remember when you pulled out your hand out from under the water, and we marveled at how dark your skin had become? I said we looked like monkeys with palms so stark white in contrast to our new tan. We loved our new dark skin. We wanted to get darker.

We thought life would always be simple. We thought life would always be good. We thought beaches would always be beautiful and clean, and you know, Michelle, I think we thought wrong. But it's okay. Do you think it's okay? I believe it will be okay.

Hello everyone who reads this journal; I am having trouble writing. I am void of ideas but not of enthusiasm, so please, give me a word or phrase or theme to run with, and I will write you something!

Love,
K

the wolf, the
only beast who
ever killed
an old lady, then
charmed
her granddaughter
into
sleeping
with
him.

the lion, the
only beast who
ever chose
a senseless
death
over
swallowing
his
pride.

the jackal, the
only beast who
ever loved
a woman enough
to stab
her
in
the
back.

the howling beasts, they
roar and shriek, and
wallow in their
selfishness. I
close the window to
dim their cries, so
I can
get
some
sleep.

It was a slow-motion rat race of spinning camera angles and close-ups of our faces. My fists clenched and my suitcases were lined up like soldiers behind me. Her hair fell in her face as she screamed at me with eyelids stiff and make up caking. Her string of pearls around her neck, my sneakers beneath old jeans: the weapons of our choice. Her thin wrists and my middle finger in the air: the constant back and forth attacks. We were wildcats, a pack of wolves, warring countries with grenades and B-52s.

From the doorway, my little brother cowered on the bottom stair with his white knuckles gripping the frame. He didn't want to sit and listen, he didn't want to cry anymore, he wished we could stop arguing and everything could be okay again, everything could be like when we were young and the summers were long and our bikes rang with bells. He let go of the doorway and collapsed in on himself, a hand-me down shirt and tiny hands that covered his ears, my brother, my brother the sacrifice.

On the patio, my sister sat in jeans-torn-shorts, a tank top, her hair in a bun and eyes as dead as the dull glow of the cigarette that escaped her lips in a slow curl of smoke. Socially, chain, she never smoked until our senior year came to an end and the stress was too much to bear. She didn't want to feel anymore, think anymore, think of the life she didn't know what to do with, the brother she was losing to a far away city, the blonde boy who always listened but had left her behind. Her mind was elsewhere - not on our back porch staring at a sky filled with tacky stars and poisoned lungs, but on a beach with a boy holding her hand and telling her the reason that sharks have to swim always, how tiring, my sister, my sister the martyr.

In an airplane, dozing off a thousand miles above our head, in a pressed and dry-cleaned gleaming uniform, my father was flying a jet. If he could only get one more hour of sleep - maybe two - then maybe he'd be in a good enough mood to come home to his bitchy, demanding wife and smile at her. And maybe, maybe he'd be able to remember how good things used to be when they were young, and maybe he could tell her how much he still cared for her, and maybe he could muster up some affection for the children he loved but had no patience for. His children, his children, but no, there was turbulence ahead and he had to wake up and keep flying the plane. My father, the hermit.

Everything fell back into normal speed when my mother slapped my face. That was it, I was done, I picked up my bags and stormed across the living room with the ceilings so high we once made a tower of three people - me on Caleb's shoulders, Carrie on mine - and we still couldn't reach the top. Caleb, his red hair, his brown hair, his shining eyes, his eyes shining with tears, screaming at me, kissing me, fucking me, fuck! this! town! Heavy varnished oak slammed behind me, followed by the creak of the door opening again, a patter of tiny footsteps and tinier fists closing around the back of my shirt: the sacrifice.

I held my brother's head against my chest and buried my nose in his dark hair and promised him the years would fly by soon, they will, you have to believe me, and he would graduate and he could come and live with me and we would be away from this town and these worn-out faces and the same day that played over and over and over and...

And rubbing the cigarette out on the porch rail, my sister turned around and walked inside to my crying mother who was screaming obscenities at the ghost of me. My sister's mouth opened and words in my defense fell out of it, and suddenly my mother's hysteria turned to her instead of chasing after me. The sound of hand hitting cheek was identical to the one that rang out seconds earlier. My sister's eyes did not even blink at the collision: the martyr.

In the airport with teenage angst and a swollen jaw and one-way tickets to New York, I saw him walk out of the terminal with eyes ringed redder than mine. Pupil to pupil, locked, he recognized me, I know it, he knew why I was there alone with my arms crossed across my chest and all of my possessions in luggage around me. We stared at each other and I challenged him to try and stop me, old man, do you still have the balls? He looked away first and walked out the sliding automatic doors without a word to me. He was too tired, he couldn't, he had no strength, he would choose solitude over his family over and over again, for he was the hermit. We were dead to each other then.

Half an hour later with a backpack slung over my shoulder, I boarded a red-eye to a city to follow the boy I used to be. Alone and broke and too angry to be afraid, I vowed to find him again.