...there are squirrels in my head...

how do you know?
you asked in the dark
after i'd closed
my eyes and leaped

i do
is what i murmured

but how?

how does my heart
fill the silence
with a thunder
echoing your own?

how does everything
hold its breath
awaiting yours?

how do you hold me
here, now, like this
as if we'd never stopped?

we never stopped

I know you're talking.

What you're saying might even be important.

The politics of healthcare, laundry at home that needs folding, the senseless war in Afghanistan, what groceries we need to pick up.

I'm sorry. I don't really hear any of it.

I'm watching the way your mouth moves, fighting the urge to raise my hand and trace the lines of your lips. I'm looking at a vaguely hidden kiss, there - in the dimple as you smile, it's there - and it's mine, and I want to remind you that I've claimed it. My eyes are following the motion of your hands over the table, and I want them on me. I want them, now. I want you, now.

Your eyes narrow. Your talking pauses.

"You haven't heard a word I've said, have you?"

I smile, shrug, stand up; I lean across the table; I kiss you on the forehead.

"Tell me again. Later. Right now? Take me home."

I died.

I died because I knew too much, and he pushed me, and I died.

That's a hard thing to forget.

You bit and pushed and pulled me back into something different. Something he didn't recognize. Something he can't destroy.

And oh, it was assuredly hell here. But everything - everything changes, Miss Kitty. I am once-dead proof.

What was half in me has become deliciously whole.

He won't know what hit him if he pushes me again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Inspired by:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46249182/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/#.TyvWUs117mc

Sticks and stones lay scattered across the altar-of-sorts that covers the top of my bureau.

They are treasures. If you know their stories.

This bit of charred wood, burnt from below by a fire never seen. We visited tragic Centralia in early winter. Smoke rose from the shriveled trees, from the mostly-condemned roads, and I rescued this scrap of bewildered plant life while my husband stood beside the car.

This bit of sparkly green rock, built from foreign sediment. The man my heart calls 'father' brought this back from the shores of Loch Ness. My child-self was ecstatic. Oh, Nessie, I still dream of finding you..

Here, a small round stone. A humble pebble. It arrived in a padded envelope, sent by a friend who plucked it from Hobbiton itself. I may be a homeless hobbit, but oh, here is a fragment of my fantasy ancestral home.

And there, a small padded stick - a drumstick mismatched to its accompanying bodhran. Adorned by a friend-no-longer with a unique design that blends Irish and Native American styles, the bodhran is tiny and remains unplayed. I'm unsure why the drumstick is here. I touch it, frown, move on.

My hand passes over fossils and bits of shining somethings until it reaches a quartz crystal. Fingers wrap around the stone's coolness, rubbing at its slight length-long flaw.

Last year, at this time, I slept with this crystal in my right hand nearly every night. Curled into a ball, I prayed in please...please let me not be wrong, please help me through this, please let him figure it out...

The history of our planet is written, in part, in its rocks and trees.

And the history of my heart is scattered here, in part, in this collection of sticks and stones.

"They're saying you tried to kidnap our brother."

"..Wait, what?"

"When you took Charlie and me out to lunch and left a note saying we were with you and you'd bring us back later? Charlie was grounded. He didn't tell us. So now the family story is that you tried to kidnap him."

There was more to the conversation, I'm sure. But these are the only words I remember. These, and the words that echoed in my head.

I don't deserve to eat.

If the people that had raised me could create this sort of fiction surrounding my actions...well, my god. My god. What kind of person must I be?

None of it was, of course, logical. Welcome to the workings of a dysfunctional family, where logic is a mythical beast, and personal accountability is non-existent. I grew up apologizing for everything, anything, longing for approval, and ended up here, in a life those I raised could never relate to, still being blamed for things I had never, would never, have done.

I don't deserve to eat led to my starving myself - not to the point of anorexia, but definitely to the point of needing help to start to eat correctly again. And sometimes the feeling of being hungry is a sensation I still find oddly addictive, still find oddly deserving.

I can't say that, even now, well over a decade after the above phone call occurred, that there is not still a part of me which longs for my family's approval. Family is still my holy grail. But when I look over my familial history, this is the point that I know I made a decision that saved my life...because it was at this point that I realized I had to stop trying to be a part of my father's dysfunctional world.

The newest voting poll for the writing thingala I'm doing is up.

My entry is here:
http://elionwyr.livejournal.com/2370024.html

Voting happens here:
http://www.livejournal.com/poll/?id=1803391

If you read my post and you liked it, I'd appreciate you taking a sec to make with the clickity and vote for me. :)

My sweetheart has proposed that instead of stuff-giving for $WINTERHOLIDAY, people should give experiences. His (rather sound) theory is that when you think of things that have mattered, experiences are what come to mind rather than trinkets.

I admit to having a great childish love of presents. But perhaps he has a point.

Several years ago, someone gifted me with a lovely suede purse. The front was decorated with a Celtic knotwork deer, beautifully crafted, and I would never have put that much money out for something for myself...but oh heavens, was it worth every penny.

It became my carrying vessel of choice, regardless of the occasion. And when I was hired to assist with a promotional event at a local mall, I grabbed my vaguely expensive bag on the way out the door.

Which sounds appropriate, until you consider that the event consisted of handling varied wild animals.

To be specific, our zoo had been tapped by Disney to provide critters for a TV personality to use during local appearances geared towards promoting his new television show. This was a great opportunity (as well as a novel one) and I was, frankly, thrilled to be a part of it.

The TV personality in question would do half hour shows, followed by a break of an hour or so. We would retreat to an unused store front, where our critters were being kept in varied carriers, until our next scheduled collective appearance. To reduce stress on the exotic animals we'd brought, we made sure no one was used twice in a row, and took advantage of those breaks to do spot cleaning as needed, or to give selective beasties a chance to get out of their carriers and exercise a little.

During one of those breaks, I succumbed to the siren call of the mall and asked my coworker if she minded me ducking out for a few minutes. "No problem," she replied, as she proceeded to open the door of a carrier containing an armadillo. "I'm just gonna let Armie stretch her legs."

"Sounds good!" I grabbed my wallet and stashed my much-loved purse in a corner of the room.

Perhaps you have not been up close and personal with an armadillo. She is a difficult creature with whom to have a warm fuzzy relationship. She's a prehistoric creature - apparently Evolution took one look at the armadillo and said, "Yeeah..I got nuffin." She has very little hair on her body, relying instead on her hard armor-like skin for protection. She doesn't see very well. She has less than impressive teeth. She has very sharp hard claws with which she tears apart whatever is keeping her from her chosen meal of bug, and she relies on her sense of smell more than sight to help her find her way. She has an odd vaguely musky sort of scent.

She's also lactose intolerant. Which, um, the zookeeping community didn't realize at the time this story took place. Which means milk products were a part of her daily diet.

(Yes, this is relevant.)

So Armie - a schnuffly, jumpy, powerful older lady - was given the run of the room for *just* long enough to decide that she needed to..well..do something secret.

In my suede purse.

I returned after a 15 minute absence to find a panic-stricken co-worker hiding something behind her back.
"Um. Hi. So...what did I miss?"

"I didn't know I didn't see what she was doing oh my God I'm so sorry I couldn't stop her maybe we can clean it I'm so so sorry..."

And she handed me my purse, artfully filled with something that is never, NEVER going to come out of suede.

So, Gentle Readers, yes, my very wise boyfriend has a point. When it comes to the things that have long-term value in our lives, it may indeed be that the experiences we give each other are more long-lasting, are worth more than the gifts we purchase and exchange (and may lose) with our loved ones.


*sigh*

I don't know what I'm doing here.

I'm here because of a man, and a courtship that's hiccuped across the pages of my calendar. We've spent hours upon hours on the phone and in pixels, and exactly ten seconds alone in person. And there's no damned way I'm good enough for him. I've driven across three states to this inexpensive hotel room; I've fussed at my hair, pulled on a dress, and texted him to say, "Ok, this is as good as it gets. I'm ready."

I'm not. I'm so not. If someone were right now to offer me a transformative fix, I'd say 'yes' before the finished sentence had left her faery lips. But there is just me, caught in the mirror, hiding none of my doubt and terror.

Too late to run. He's at the door.

I ask him for a hug. He obliges. I stand shivering in his arms, surrounded by his strength, finally able to breathe. We leave in search of dinner and tea, talking about my trip, about his job, about our lives. I am hypnotized by his hands as they cut graceful lines through the air over his meal.

He catches me staring.

"I'm - I'm sorry. You're just so pretty," I stammer. Dammit. Why does anyone let me talk?

He smiles, changes the subject.

And later, back at my room, he takes my hands in his own. "Have I told you I'm really happy that you're here?"

"Well...not recently."

"I'm really happy you're here," he murmurs. And he kisses me.

There are kisses that are awkward, that mean nothing, that are forgettable.

There are kisses that change your world.

We kiss, and it's inconceivable that we have never kissed before.

We kiss, and it's as if we have been kissing each other for forever with a 40 year-long pause to breathe.

We kiss, and need no glass slipper to know that we are a perfect seamless fit.

At the end of every seven years,
We pay a tithe to Hell

I'd read the stories. I knew to resist sweets and sex.

Faeries can read, too, and they don't like how their tales have been told. Immortal and amoral, with an eternity to consider seduction, he found a way around the warnings to lay claim to my heart.

We became friends.

Maybe you have been spared the experience - the dazzling focus, the promise of importance. When a narcissist is courting you..oh, nothing could be more gradually addictive. And with his fingers in my hair, his laughter in my ears, it was no difficulty to leave my Lost Boys for the fantasies of pirates.

But faerie food does not feed you. Isolation does not nurture you. Living in a world created to feed another's ego, watching the yearly sacrifice...seven years is more than enough time to shake off the enchantment.

"I'm sure you saw this coming." Well, yes. And no - tragically, no. I stumbled back to the city, reconstructed an unenchanted life.

What does narcissism have to do with me?

Not a damned thing, anymore.

In the basement of our house, my father had positioned his huge metal desk just outside my bedroom. I never saw him sit there. I have no idea where it came from. Grey and cold, it looked like something rescued from an office building's dumpster, though we never had a vehicle big enough to transport such a monstrosity home.

With a child's disregard for privacy, I sometimes rifled through the drawers. Nothing I found made much sense. A cheap plastic magnifying glass...a charm bracelet...a log book chronicling a short list of parachute jumps...none of these things had any obvious-to-me connection to the man who spent more time driving to and from his IT job in Philadelphia than he did with his family. And it never occurred to me to ask him to tell me his stories of the past.

The top of the desk was covered by a large piece of tempered glass, bordered along two edges with black and silver checkered tape. Underneath the glass - the thickest glass I'd ever seen - were photos and bits of paper. My memory has dismissed the recollection of all but two of those mementos.

Upstairs, in the stylish living room with the picture window, hung family and school portraits. But here, in the basement, where living was allowed to occur, were the images I assume my father held to be more precious. Younger versions of my brother and me, dressed in plastic Halloween costumes, stared at me from behind the glass. He was the cuter sibling. I was tousled, gap-toothed. We both looked startled by the camera.

Oh, and believe me when I say that describing what we wore as "costumes" is my being generous. This was the era of boxed Halloween outfits made of vinyl tunics and plastic masks. We were Mickey Mouse and Frankenstein; we were a princess and a cowboy. Heavy winter jackets hide the travesties of "costumes," perhaps helping to inspire those vaguely dismayed expressions.

These images of a discontinued life were the ones I looked at the most as a child. I've gotten better at hiding the layers of warm clothing under October's festive garb, and my father wouldn't recognize me as I prowl through haunted halls. And the secret I've never told anyone is that I think of those photographs a lot this time of year.

Halloween, horror, and my father comingle in my memories, and in those three little words...

"Trick or treat."




(eta: photographic evidence here.)