it gets stuck between my fingernails
all coffee grit and stale money and
last summer and the awakening earth
once again

the floorboards have a years' worth of
dirt, a new layer to add to the old, the same
old same old, and these days
my pants cling loosely to my legs,
as if afraid of coming too close to my skin,
and the cars shine like fresh quarters
in the parking lot on a rainy day where
i sit on the old gray porch
rickety and solitary and stained
sipping coffee, watching the days go by.

***

i need to really learn how to accept that when people come, they usually go, too, sooner or later.

persephone rising.

it was bare-boned reality, the coffee so
black & so cold in my paper cup. the
cotton-ball snow in the branches caught my breath,
i ran and i ran and i ran and i ran and ran until

beneath the window in New York you
counted my rib bones with your bare hands
in rooms of mattresses on the floors and i watched
its tears and stains like grit between my teeth. there were
walls and rattling, rusting heaters and your greedy eyes all
peeling off the lace of my bra
undoing what had so delicately been embroidered
in place, so precise, just-so,
thread by thread, bare.


jeans on greedy jeans
a wood floor, a February bedroom, beneath
your window in New York your lips against
my rib as though you could devour it, grind me
like candy between your teeth. cracked and crest-fallen.
chalk dust white. ashes & teeth-chilling snow.
you'd find
i am not hollow.

i pieced my ribs back together that
were strewn about among the empty
beer bottles & dirty socks.

I returned to my Place like fallen snow.

and now, when the road's arms no longer stretch far enough,
the coffee is no longer black enough, the snow
fades from the ground like ancient chalk on aged blackboards,
when the sky's veins begin to stretch and bleed
red again at sunset
i am Persephone rising,
i am weeping away the snow
and my tattered, withered lace.



**

lately, i am searching for answers to questions that I don't even know.
i can feel myself rising into something else.
even the weirdest music isn't weird enough. the spiciest food not spicy enough, the coffee not hot enough, the running and running
and driving and driving not long enough,
the hours too fast.
raw limes and lemon teas and avocados and animal collective and how i can feel
the new heat seeping into the walls, cascading with the sunlight into
the orange walls of the cafe, giving the ice
purpose once again.

in two months, i will have been there for a year.

vivid dreams.

last night i dreamed i was driving down a steep sloping hill, and that my brakes gave out & i was suddenly vertical to the ground. when i hit, my car flew far through the air, and i was driving over icy ground when i landed, trying so hard to maintain control of my car. as i drove over tree the rocky terrain, there were suddenly cars coming at my from the opposite directions, and i couldn't avoid them, so i veered even further away from the road. when the trees became too thick to drive through, i ran out of my car into the cold and tried to run back up the steep hill i'd come down, but i my shoes had no traction and i couldn't climb back up. i was in the middle of a forest. i just kept climbing up and sliding back down, falling into ice.

i also dreamed that i was trying to take a picture of a snow covered path somewhere in Ithaca, but I couldn't quite get the angel I wanted, and I my camera ran out of batteries, and when i returned to the spot to take the picture again, it was no longer there. The lake had turned into a sea. There were gates everywhere, and they all lead to this sea, and everything was so snowy.

i recently dreamed about her, as well. she was sitting at the center table when i walked into the office, talking to her mom, my boss. My boss looked at me, who stared in disbelief and confusion, and said, "it's okay sara, she's been here with me for a while now, and you can now see her too." I watched from my desk as they talked.

Later, when i went to the area where the water bubbler is, she followed me over and pulled me aside. I can honestly say, I've never had anybody be so overly vivid in a dream as she was - her eyes just pierced me. She asked me how her mother was doing. I told her that I think she's holding up okay, at least at work. She teared up. I told her it wasn't fair what had happened to her. She hugged me.

This one will stick with me for a long time.

on being alone.

last night, i went to a show at the Middle East in Boston. After walking through sexual harassment Central, I finally found the place and the proceeded to wait a good half hour for my friends to get there while they were out on their respective dates. I stood in the middle of the restaurant area for a good ten minutes and felt ridiculously awkward, so I decided to go wait outside and make a few phone calls in the mean time. Of course, nobody answers, and I suddenly have a homeless woman asking me for money and it suddenly hit me.

I am always by myself. Literally. Any social event, any sort of...anything! I always wind up walking through cities completely alone at night; I go on dates with guys & they try to do things like take me into the woods to drink beers (hence why I am Single); I am most often alone in my house when I'm not at work, running solo during my runs, running errands by myself, eating lunches and dinners and drinking coffees and beers and wines with myself, cooking by myself, singing by myself, working by myself, sleeping by myself, shopping by myself.

This has been a year of serious Alone Time with myself. I'm ready for it to end.

After everyone finally got there & I'd spent enough time alone with myself in public in what I realized was an incredibly bad area, the night turned out to be so eye opening for me. I ran into old Ithaca friends I hadn't seen since graduating; my high school friends met my college friends, and everyone had some sort of 6th degree of separation and turned out to get along really well, and the band was fantastic. Of course, I looked around and realized every person around me was coupled off with a Significant Other of some sort. Naturally, I felt a twang of Alone once again, but it was okay because I'm so used to this. I mean, maybe it's who I am. A solo runner. I can't say I'm not happy - I've learned to become so content with myself, and with entertaining myself and just with Being Myself. But at one point, I just looked around and wondered how on earth was every person around me finding all this love and excitement and complete wonder in some other person? Like, this still happens? How? I want to know how. Part of me is so terrified that I am incapable of falling in love, of ever letting anybody get that close to me. I can't help but wonder what it's like. & part of me is so terrified because I feel as though this is what I'm supposed to be doing right now. Falling in love. Letting someone in.

Now, my nights never end without some sort of awkwardly strange encounter with a potential for filling this Love void, as I'll call it. As I'm looking around realizing I am the tenth wheel here, I do happen to notice a relatively attractive guy across the room. About an hour later, I realize he is standing right behind me. Another ten minutes later, he's standing right next to me. Now, I never assume a guy is interested in me, because whenever I do, I'm always wrong & it winds up being embarrassing. So I was sure to ignore him and figured if he wanted to talk to me, he probably would. Five minutes later, he turns to me and says something completely incomprehensible, so I yell, "What??"

And he turns to me and says, "this is going to sound really weird. But could I offer you a piece of gum??"
"uhh.... sure?" Do I have bad breath? Most likely. I was drinking a beer, after all.
"oh no, you don't have bad breath at all, but I just have a hyper sensitivity to breath and I'm a very breath conscious person."

I'm pretty sure this guy was incredibly stoned, but we actually did have a good time. Because he was even more awkward than I am, it actually worked out quite well, conversation wise. Of course, though, I meet someone who's very breath conscious, of all things. Good thing?

Looking back on my dating patterns, this shouldn't have been anything out of the ordinary. In fact, this conversation starter, along with the fact he proceeded to do the hand jive after this, was possibly very normal. I've been on (more than one) date where a guy attempts to bring me into the WOODS of all places to drink beer (this occurs on very formal dates), or to "go see a really cool spot" at midnight in, of course, the middle of the woods. I've had men pick me up to take me out to a movie, or to dinner, only to find they are completely and utterly trashed to no end, or if I'm really lucky, high on coke. I've been left at a mechanic in the middle of nowhere upstate New York; I've been slammed against a brick wall and I know how a firm grip bruises; the only Valentine's Day dinner I've ever been on, I paid for because the guy was broke and apparently coked out, his eyes popping out of his head- he couldn't even look at me; I've been cheated on, & I've more than once unknowingly been the girl he's cheating with; I've seen some dark places, far worse.

So as I walked to the T at midnight, alone in Central after a night of being surrounded by people but estranged from the love connections occurring around me, (aside from Breath Boy, of course), it hit me, along with the bitter cold, that here I am, walking alone yet again. And this time, I really don't think I should be alone. And as I walked by men who got in my face and told me I was pretty and made moaning noises at me, I began to run. I could hear men laughing at me. I ran, and the T was so far away, and their noises and actions and words came hurtling at me, and one of them even tried to follow me. And it was just laughter and cold and this panicky fear I've only felt a few times, the kind of fear that clutches your chest and shakes you; it's raw.

I was terrified. And I realized, (safely?) on the T, that I really should not be alone. Not anymore. Not on nights like these.

Why is it that I increasingly find myself alone in dangerous situations? Why, at age 23, with a (usually) level head and a body I care about and goals and financial independence and passion for life and an education, am I walking down these dark streets and into subway stations and emptied parking garages, alone at midnight? Why am I paying for coffees and paying for dinners and driving to the ends of the earth and calling to say hello all while sitting and waiting for the phone calls that never come?

The sad part is, I know how lucky I am. How easy I have it. But I speak on behalf of all girls who find themselves walking alone at night, running from men, being stood up under restaurant awnings.