things we talk about

tunamelts
limbs
river
French
coffee
illness
plays
translation
college
white hair
regret
cinnamon tans
vocabulary
laundry
noise
New Orleans
cats
moving away
sex
brains
babies
shirts
periods
breakfast
sadness
money

in summer

regretless

I fell in love with a boy who told me I smelled better when I hadn't bathed

I used all of these products from the body shop,

we didn't have the body shop yet, in idaho.

I wasn't quite a vegetarian

and I didn't really smoke cigarettes

but he was, and did
he smoked parliaments.

and he'd come over almost every day, though we weren't dating

and we weren't fucking

and he'd give me a hug when he got upstairs to the apartment

on kedzie blvd

I was blowdrying my hair

and I smelled like candy coconut and candy pear and all of the most exotic candy fruits

and he said, You'll smell better in a couple of days

I felt like he'd given me permission

for the first time in 19 years

to smell like a human being.

I was excited

because he hardly bathed

or washed his hair

or changed out of his russian military sweater

or his pleated pants

and I thought he smelled like the best thing in the world.

I met him in a photography class, and he told me later that he'd noticed me for awhile

he'd thought, Who is that sad girl

I just liked his sweater

and I was excited to see what he'd wear the next week

but I never in all of our time together

saw him wear anything else. 

we spent two true nights together

and on the third, I went to his house

and he told me that he couldn't do it anymore, that I should leave

and he went into the next room and put on sigur ros

and was crying and writing.

I sat in his kitchen, on his blowup mattress

and I cried, too

and I composed a letter to him

and I refused to leave because he was too important to me

and I already loved him with everything in me.

I forced myself to start smoking. marlboro reds, I thought they seemed tough.

and one day I stopped him at school, and I told him that he was too important

that we were too important to not know each other

and he agreed to have coffee with me.

he showed up. we talked & talked like nothing had changed

he asked if I wanted to go with him to take pictures

and so we drove to indianapolis.

we ate caffeine pills and smoked cigarettes

and I watched the midwestern middle-of-nowhere constellations

and I watched the sunrise 

over the chicago cityscape.

he left me at my house

and we hugged for a long time

and we were inseparable

later on we told each other that we loved each other

and we were best friends

but I crumbled when he'd fuck other girls

and refuse to sleep in my bed with me

and eventually I crumbled so badly

that I couldn't keep anything together anymore

so we lost each other

but I will never, ever regret

the millions of things learned.

i woke up here, today

finally coffee & roses, a wide old stoop. nickey had to move out from the mansionhouse. I slept so as not to be too far away, ever. in a cornerroom, many windows, and I feel like all I do is mention windows. I feel like my relations are sort of bedlamy. there is no adjective for it, maybe. uproar, confusion? scenes of madness? it must be me, I'm the common denominator. ha ha it's all about me. when I moved to chicago I went to my first urban outfitters. wait... no, I went to an urban outfitters with my dad when I was 15 in bend, oregon. I was grounded so he forced me to go on a ski trip with him over springbreak, which was actually quite fine, we listened to the wall in the car and I read all of the lyrics, and I was like, man who knew pink floyd was so relevant, I just thought dead kennedys and anti-flag were relevant, and afi who helped me veer in later years to some emo place. we went to the urban outfitters, I had a meager allowance at the time though I doubt it was terribly meager because my mom gave it to me so it was probably pretty hefty. I mostly spent it on pot. but I bought a blue skirt with birds on it. birds on clothing and tattoos has been done for hundreds of thousands of years. it's one of those eternitrends. we went to portland, too, and I'd never been there before. britta was there, her brother bought me a pipe & a blue plastic bong (with my allowance). I named my pipe princess symphony and I named my bong sgt. bongo after my friend stacie. my dad let me drive the car awhile on the way home. I got ungrounded when I came back to boise. for a little while, like a couple of weeks. but in chicago I was never grounded again, so I went with this girl named cindy who I thought might become my best friend. she was like, Let's go to urban outfitters and I was like, Ya, that sounds pretty cool. we met a girl named mary who was with jean, who immediately became my best friend. jean told me a couple of weeks ago that she is pregnant. the year after I met jean we moved into a brownstone on kedzie blvd in logan square and she was the baby machine for halloween. she had babies all over her, and she was pregnant, and she had this phone cord attached to her and was dragging around this baby that we'd covered in fake blood. I was a dead bride. at the party I made out with two boys and fell in love with one of them. he was my best friend for awhile, but I was always terribly in love with him. at urban outfitters, the day I met jean, I bought a book called ALL ABOUT ME. you answer questions like who do you love what are your favorite colors, etc. I think I threw it away after I filled it out because I thought it was embarrassing. the things that don't embarrass me that should make me wonder, sometimes. I don't wish I still had it, I'm sure it was hopeful & maudlin & very, very teen. can I blame my parents? did they not teach me to think of others, ever? when I was a kid my grandmother told my dad that she didn't think that I liked her and my grandfather. my dad told me, and I felt this feeling I'd maybe never felt before. I think it was regret. I'd already felt guilt one million times. it was likely a combination of the two. from then on I tried really hard to show them that I loved them. I think it worked. I still can't imagine what I'd done as a child to make my grandparents think that I didn't like them. the thought makes me feel creeped. I must have isolated myself & never smiled. but what's smiling, anyway? when I moved to highlands elementary in the middle of 6th grade my mom told me that she thought I'd make friends at my new school if I smiled more. I thought that sounded like a reasonable plan, so I tried, I really smiled, I smiled a lot at everyone, I was friendly. but I didn't make any friends. in fact, I had enemies which I'd never really had. one of those enemies was kari, with whom I am temporarily living now. her friends monica & teri & jessica-marie would dare kari to do things, like cutting her hair and taping it to my desk and writing cryptic notes to me. I didn't know how to react to that, so I hung by myself on the playground. on the first day of school, the popular girls asked me to sit with them at lunch. I smiled a lot, but I was very shy. I tried not to be weird. jessica opened her milkcarton and asked me if I knew megan, who went to my old school. I don't think I could smile, then. megan was my archrival since kindergarten. jessica asked me if I thought she was a bitch. I said yes, I did. it was over for me with the popular girls. jessica would come to school and yell across the playground, Molly, I heard you dye your hair. I totally did but I said, No, I don't. none of them really talked to me after that. I stopped smiling pretty fast, decided again not to brush my hair. it wasn't very fun at the new school. I wanted to write stories and plays and have my friends act them out at recess like I used to do at roosevelt elementary. but all everyone else did was play tag. I didn't like running, or being chased, or feeling like I was losing. so I would go and sit on the hill and watch the two groups of girls who hated me. but they also hated each other. I would listen to them talk shit about each other. jessica would laugh at how kari was a cow and how jessica-marie was a stick figure. I thought it was mean, but that they deserved it. 

I've liked the album the wall for my whole life. it's one of kyle's favorite albums, we listened to it on the way back from raunchfest, we listened to it when he came to family dinner. I haven't been into urban outfitters for awhile, I tried to steal a bra from there but I got nervous and just paid for it. I also tried on some stretchy floral pants to make bikeshorts from one time, but there was mad blood in the crotch and I was so disgusted I just left without telling them. it did make me laugh. I feel like everyone then had a convoluted idea about who they were & we're a confused people, but it's all about us. 

"it sort of seems like we fell in love"

  or,

"love is for lo$ers"

  

   I don't know

I mean idk how to put it?

                      now, how would you put it

you fell in love with your own image from across the street

you fell in love across a table, mussels

I fell in love with long bones

I fell in love with stringytough muscles

you fell in love with the sound of your own voice

you fell in love with the rain

I fell in love with attention

I fell in love with those grips on me

you fell in love with regret

you fell in love with the frozen future

I fell in love with possibility

I fell in love with bedding

you fell in love with disappear

you fell in love with surprise-I'm-sad

I fell in love with hazy hair

I fell in love with the mouth of the world

you fell in love with let-me-break-your-heart

you fell in love with the lovers

I fell in love with memories

I fell in love with booze

you fell in love with booze

you fell in love with what

I fell in love with pain

I fell in love with me, again?

you fell in love with poems

you fell in love with I'm-not-writing

I fell in love with trying
I fell in love with crylaughing

you fell in love with giving up

you fell in love off the overhang

  I just think we fell in love, totally

   and that we're scratching our ways back

     to whatever dregs we already were

       before we had to look up the words

        in our well masturbated dictionaries