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We sit in long, long moments of silence that neither of us are quite comfortable with. Not with those whimpering, crying sounds going on in the background. Nothing sounds right against that. Certainly not the things I’d like to say. That I’m sorry his dad is an ass. That I’m sorry he can’t get away from it and that everybody knows what nobody should ever have to know. That I’m sorry I know, because I didn’t mean to. It just happened, and it’s still really the only thing I know about him, and I’m sorry about that too.

But I know that none of that will sound the way it does in my head. I don’t know if he wants to hear it anyway. Because the only other thing al I know is that the bruise on his forearm is shaped like a handprint and it’s the only part of him that seems safe to look at.

-the alphabet goes like this


We don’t get a lot of mail aside from junk mail. Bills every month from the superintendent and some magazines filled with coupons. We don’t get packages like the woman who lives next door or letters from Russia like the bearded man downstairs. Itachi doesn’t even glance at the mailboxes more than twice a week, Wednesdays and Saturday, certain that there’s nothing there to see. I check every day. Not our mailbox, because Itachi’s right on that, but the rest of the mailboxes, our neighbors below and next door. I don’t know why I still do it. It used to be that I checked just our mailbox every day, when letters from our family in California came for me, letters I prayed would take me to San Francisco and away from Itachi. All I ever got were condolences and apologies. Itachi got whatever else came after the first few lines that always mentioned how unfortunate I was to be an orphan already, poor thing, and even though I knew the rest of the story was hidden under Itachi’s prudently placed hand, I kept hoping. They came further and further apart, but I kept hoping I’d read the next one all the way through and see that I had a ticket to California.

These days, I still check, just to see if the man’s family in Russia still loves him.

-December

There’s this tree down by the overpass that’s got to be the most infamous tree in Kittsboro, if not the most telling. It’s got all these names carved into it, misshapen vowels and pointed curves on the s’s, because curves are real damned hard to make with a pen knife if you’re not good at it. N+B4ever and ILuvUDean memorialized. But it’s not all Romeo and Juliet, Joanie loves Chachi shit. Sakura knows for a fact that the I in IBlewB stands for Ino blew Billy because the BBlewS right underneath it stand for Billy blew Shane, and Sakura was there when Ino wrote it.

-a drink to your health

Take this room. It’s small, made out of crumbling brick and concrete, and has a huge crack in the one window that faces another crumbling brick wall. In my old world, this would never have been allowed. Things that crumble are swept away and things that crack are put back together as quickly as possible, hidden from view until then. Here, nobody bothers to hide the cracks and fissures, pretend they aren’t there. And I couldn’t make sense of it, the not caring who saw your flaws. I couldn’t make sense of it for years until one day a month or two after Dom left, the same day I made sense of the dull, lingering ache in my body that drove me crazy trying to ignore. Unable to concentrate on my history homework, I laid back on my bed and let myself think about him for a few idle seconds. Just a few, but it was in those few seconds I understood; there’s more to this room than a crack in the glass. This is the room where I heard the good things smoke can do to someone’s voice when it’s in your ear, and what to do with your hands in the meantime. The room where I got to know someone who’s convinced that there’s more to me.

-how to catch on fire


Because

The sound is a scratch, a tap,
A clack, a note.
A word. Le mot on the streets
Is my pencil, your piano keys,
Our weapons of validation
In the face of monosyllabic atheists.
Give me a pen and
I’ll show you that gods still exist
In cadence.

-the sound where

Mother, mother where’s the hurry?
The night is young for the long day.
The summer sun, it’s going to your head while
The wine is going to your blood,
Carousing there, like the thoughts from your mouth.
On the radio there’s a song you know but
You can’t remember the words right now.
It’s your favorite. You whisper nonsense until
The chorus comes. Midnight runs around as you
Hum along with fond remembrance.
The world rocks under you, pulls you to a place
Where nothing is still and everything is loud.

Mother, mother, where’s the hurry to create
A memory you have now forsaken?

-the chorus is the part you know

Therefore

"I won't pretend to love you when I don't. You're the only person I don't lie to. The honesty is a compliment. We live in an 'age of apology'- don't confuse it with authenticity. At least my lies are honest- at least I know when I'm lying and why I'm doing it. Would you prefer me to be a hypocrite? It's easily done and terribly vogue."

-Partick Marber, Don Juan in Soho

"He spent less time asleep and more time awake to hear the bimbomushi sing their symphony. It grew less bearable than it had been when he was younger, as he spent the time to wonder what kind of poverty they chose for him - how long he had until it would befall him."

-Vougueanthem, 'Round and 'round

"A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction."

-Oscar Wilde.

I am

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