Iron and Salt

Well there's this hole in my guts where the churning begins
makes its way through my veins
and gets caught in my brain
then the hole in my head from where the words spew forth
thoughts or unguided there is never a loss
and I ramble on to fill the silence
what remains in the void you left behind
and I scramble to the sheets where you once lay
and I place my head on your pillow and drown myself
in tears and thoughts of your return

A confusing message with a typo
that changed the whole meaning
and I'm choking and sputtering these realizations
and missing you so clearly and sharply
that I begin to bleed straight from my chest

Everything fades to a shade without color
your face is empty, eyes broken and grey
a mouth parts but there are no red lips to kiss
just an empty hole that leads to a frightening place
and I see my future unfold in the pockets of your throat
it is grey and bleak
winter runs into summer and I walk barefoot through the snow
wear a scarf in the pool
because nothing makes sense when you leave
colorless water flows down my face
and I scrub this away
the blood that flows through my veins is a matching hue
the only difference is iron versus salt.

Meat and Muscle Cars

*I was going to change the name to protect the “innocent.” Forget that noise. You beat me up with words, I’m only going to return the favor.

People always joke about guys comparing girls to meat like “Oh check that out- that is a grade A piece of ass”. I’m willing to bet however, that most girls aren’t told to their face what cut of beef they are. Or what kind of car. I have. I’m a steak and a Ferrari, if you’re wondering. This is the story of how I found that out.

When I was fifteen I fell for an eighteen year old who, because he had the emotional maturity of a thirteen year old, found me following him around smelling him during a choir concert amusing.  My enjoyment of his scent and his entertainment by this led to a relationship.
To the rest of the world, I was the lucky girl dating the doting preacher’s son. He was such a nice boy that people didn’t seem disturbed that had it been a sexual relationship he’d have gone to jail. He’d take me to dinner and to the movies, all the traditional dating essentials. This is who the world saw. The boy (or man really, as he was a legal adult) that I saw was someone else. The person I saw took every availability to tear down my self esteem and beat me down emotionally. Even I didn’t see it initially; I was a young girl in her fist real relationship.
Joe* was really great at manipulating my emotions and in this confusion I didn’t realize at first how cruel he could be.  At first he would tell me that I was special and not the kind of girl you would rush things with, so he didn’t pressure me sexually. (He actually never did, for that I give him props.  People often say that at fifteen and eighteen the boy wants very different things and that they will try to push themselves onto the girl. Joe tried to push himself on me in a more permanent way, making odd comments like “We’re going to have a little girl like Boo [from Monsters, Inc,]”. And I was like, dude, I just want to pass this Algebra test. We definitely had different goals.) 
One day we went out to eat even though I said I wasn’t really hungry, so I didn’t order anything. His response was “That’s good, you really don’t need any more” and patted my belly. Mind you, at the time I was about five eight and less than a hundred and twenty pounds- clearly a cow.  He was an art student and thought everything he did was amazing and that others should praise him for it, often bringing his work around for me to applaud. I’ve always been into art, so one day I showed him something I had drawn and had been pretty proud of. He looked at it quickly and said, “It’s not that bad, you know, considering you have no talent.” Aw gee, that’s so sweet of you. Wait, what?
I went to church with him once to listen to his dad preach. In all honesty, I don’t really remember what was said, all I remember was that I felt like I was being judged the entire time by a lot of people. (He had a lot of siblings.) Afterward, his family came back to meet mine (another weird thing, like the in-laws were meeting each other even though I’d only been with this guy for a few months tops.) At any rate, while our parents were talking, we went back to my room to hang out and I snuggled him on my couch, like ya do, while we talked. When we stood up for him to leave, I saw that my very fashionable tank topped velvet dress with its glitter butterflies (oh early 2000’s fashion, you so silly) had left little fuzzies and glitter on his white dress shirt. When he realized this he got really angry, like I had deliberately sullied his shirt. “Way to go, idiot.” So I got tape and removed all the black fuzz and sparkles, playing the dutiful housewife.
As our relationship went on, he got more and more possessive, and bizarre with said possessiveness. He told me that other people said that even though he was in a relationship didn’t mean he couldn’t look at other girls. His response to them apparently was “Why go out for burgers when you’ve got steak at home?” I don’t know, I guess this comment was supposed to make me feel good. At another point, this topic was brought up again, only this time it was “Why would I test drive a junker when I’ve got a Ferrari in the garage?”  Again, thanks for the sentiment, but no. I’m not a piece of meat, or metal, and you don’t have me at your house. That makes me sound like a beaten down, kept woman, keeping the house clean and staring out the window, awaiting her husband’s return from work so he can eat the dinner she prepared for him. Yeah, no. Maybe some girls would be flattered by the idea, but I was uncomfortable. You have to remember here, I was fifteen years old and instead of dating, I was being prepared to be someone’s wife. At least, that’s how he acted.
We went to the Homecoming dance together, but he never gave me the pictures until the very end of our relationship. Included in the bag of pictures was a picture of him with his arm around another girl. I think it was supposed to make me realize how very lucky I was to have his affections, showing that he could be with someone else if he so choose. I chalked it up to an accident and handed it back to him. His awkward response was “Oh, I thought you’d like to see what I looked like with long hair.”
If I wanted to hang out with my friends, I’d get a lecture about how I should have been hanging out with him instead. I made plans to spend the day with a friend of mine and he called, demanding that I tell her not to come over, because it was our “seven month anniversary” and I should be spending the day with him. At this point, I began to realize that he was a clingy little girl.
He was really big on anniversaries. For our six month anniversary, I got a ring.
Nothing could top the three month anniversary though. I still get uncomfortable over ten years later just thinking about it. We were both singers, (anyone who knows me at all knows that I can’t go a few hours without singing multiple times) and we met in choir. He sang to me all the time when we were dating and I was supposed to be all gaga about it. Which, initially I was. But I wasn’t allowed to sing. If I sang to or around him I was told to stop.  At any rate, for our three month anniversary (a ridiculous notion, really) he showed up to my choir class with three roses, and asked me down to the front of the room. This was a big class, there were probably close to a hundred girls in it. He then proceeded to hand me the roses and serenade me in front of the entire class. I could feel the blood instantly rise to just below the surface of my skin; I was blushing so hard that I thought my face might explode. I was blushing all the way down to my feet. This was mortifying to me- I hate being the center of attention like that. He obviously knew nothing about me if he thought I would appreciate this extremely romantic gesture.  Joe left, feeling like the ultimate master of romance because all the girls swooned and wished he was their boyfriend. I was so uncomfortable I would have happily given him to any one of them if it meant not having lived through that moment.
After school one day, I hugged him goodbye and he walked away, waving, seeming to be sobbing, and saying “I love you so much.” I was horrified. Judging by the look on others' faces in the hall, I wasn’t the only one. I went home and begged my mom to take me to his house so I could break it off. I just couldn’t take it anymore. She obliged, even though she didn’t understand my sudden need to do this. I cried all the way home and into the evening because I felt bad. I hate hurting people’s feelings. Joe called and when I finally picked up the phone, instead of making me feel worse he somehow made me feel better about everything, so I ended up taking him back and we decided to pretend the breakup didn’t happen, or we would make jokes about it.
I think I lasted about a week before fully coming to my senses and re-breaking up with him and not feeling bad anymore. I somehow recognized how horrible he made me feel about myself, even the ways he attempted to make me feel good still made me unhappy. I lost all my feelings for him, and I was just done.
His response to the breakup was to give me a stack of pictures he’d borrowed from my brother for reference images for art, again with bonus pictures. He “accidentally” left in random pictures of him with other girls. Very smooth. Oh, was I supposed to feel jealous? Or maybe bad about myself because it showed he had moved on or had other girls? Instead it solidified the fact that though he was three years my senior, he had a long way to go in maturity. I was done letting him make me feel bad about myself.
Bro, please. I am fabulous. I do not need you or any other man to tell me so.

Skateboarding and Stitches

   
    I was laying on my back and some woman I’d never met, was taking scissors and cutting off pieces of my chin.  Everything was numb at this point and I clung to Jessica- my safe point.

    It was a gorgeous sunny day- I forget whether the month was April or May- but that doesn’t really seem relevant.  It was the first nice day I could remember in a long time.  I was wearing a skirt that day- I hated skirts.  Jordan had a broken foot, and that should have served as an omen.  It didn’t.
    I changed into pants and stood on his skateboard, rolling myself back and forth.  I want to Olly, I told them.  I tried and tried, but after an hour, my most successful jump only got one side of board the in the air.  Soon enough, like all of us with short attention spans do, I grew bored with my failed attempts at being a successful skateboarder.  Try transferring, suggested Jordan, then we’ll start trying to do tricks.  So I stood on the board with one foot and pushed myself with the other and attempted to get both feet on the board and ride without falling off.  After just a few tries, I had gotten the idea down, and in my excitement, grew a little too sure of myself.  I rode along then jumped up and landed back on the board, I learned that this was called a “Hippy Olly.”  Jordan held out one of his crutches and jokingly suggested that I jump over it- I liked the idea, but they all said it was too dangerous.  Frustrated, I focused on transferring and occasional Olly attempts.  Then Jeremy came up to me and wanted to go down the steep hill in the sidewalk.  I was excited, but Jordan told me to try going down the small hill first.  As I picked up the board to walk up the hill, Michael walked over and lifted up his shirt revealing a series of large cuts along his ribs from falling down the stairs.  I laughed and made a joke about how I’d never broken anything or gotten stitches and that maybe I would today.  So I reached the top of the hill and sat the skateboard down.  I climbed on the board and started riding down the hill, and I was so excited that I was actually being successful for once.  The next thing I knew however, I was launched forward and my hands skidded across the pavement, one arm twisted around and my head hit the concrete with a great amount of force.  I got up and laughed, brushed my hand on my pants and winced at the stinging sensation that immediately shot through my palms.  The top of my left arm and hand were a little bloody, but for the most part, I was impressed at how little I had gotten hurt.  My chin stung a little, and I reached up and touched it, only a small amount of blood was passed onto my fingertips, so I walked over to the guys laughing, and they laughed at me too and suggested that I may not be ready for the big hill just yet. 
    Jessica rushed over to me, like a worried mother.  She seemed relieved that I was laughing, but then she looked at my chin and paused.  Um, you’re going to have blood dripping onto your shirt in about five seconds, she warned.  With her, I went into the building and into the bathroom to assess the damage to my face.  I lifted up my chin and saw a small, circular puncture in the skin just above the bone.  She grabbed me a wet paper towel which I used to clean up some of the blood, but it didn’t help much, as it just continued to bleed.  As I inspected the wound a little more closely, I saw a strange glob of a yellowish orange tint.  I reached up and pulled the glob out, and upon doing so, realized that it was a piece of fat that had been dislodged from my face.  Jessica insisted that I go to the nurse, swearing that I was going to need stitches.  I resisted, saying it’s fine, I’ll just slap a band-aid on it, but she wouldn’t let up.  Finally I gave in and walked with her toward the health center, just beyond the oak tree where all the guys were sitting.  They inquired about my chin and I informed them of Jessica’s insistence upon my needing stitches and they all said, suck it up and just put a band-aid on it.  Thank you, I replied, that is what I said.  But I went over there anyway, and the nurse laid me down and looked at my injury.  She said that it was very deep and would indeed need stitches, but she was unable to do such a procedure.  So she attempted to use plastic stitches, the kind that stick on, to hold my chin together, but there was too much blood and they wouldn’t stay on.  So she put a couple more plastic stitches on and put a large band-aid over them to keep them in place, and gave us directions to the hospital.
    How were we going to get there?  Nobody had a car.  After a few moments, we remembered a friend of ours who had a car and she allowed us to borrow it to make the trip to the hospital.  The journey there was an adventure in and of itself, trying to make it through downtown Jackson at 5:30 in the afternoon, having no idea where we were going.  Thankfully, my other friend Juli was there as well and she is amazing at reading and decoding maps, a talent I am not blessed to behold. 

    So there I was, laying on a table, staring at the ceiling, and Dr. So and So was shooting my chin with a numbing solution, which was close to being the most intense pain I’d felt in a long time, as she was sticking a large needle directly into the wound.  She cut off excess skin and held my chin together with three well-placed stitches, insisting that I return in a week to have them removed, that a campus nurse would not know how to do this, but I ignored her advice and had the same lady who’d suggested a trip to the hospital remove the stitches several days later. Unfortunately, it appeared as though the stitches were sewn to each other and not just my skin, resulting in a reopening of the wound, and extra time with thread in my face.
 
  In class, Michael asked to see the damage and laughed, saying, weren't you hoping to end up with stitches or something?  The worst part of the whole situation was that it appeared as though I was growing a beard for a week.

Say Goodnight Gracie

It was a bright sunny day, and we had been lured outside for an assembly on the disadvantages of drinking and driving (you know, death.)  My thighs were burning on the hot metal bleachers of our high school’s football field as I searched the area around me for a friendly face.  Finally after the assembly was over and we were all nice and uncomfortable, we were set free to return to the building and classes within.
    I met up with Angel and Laura and headed back toward the building.
    “Why are you wearing a skirt?” Laura inquired.
    “Because, I own no other form of khaki.” God bless Mr. Bushey and his insistence that we wear khaki bottoms and blue shirts in anticipation of the choir concert that night.  We continued walking, me clunking along in my trendy chunk heeled sandals.  We were soon surrounded by a myriad of other friends, talking about anything and everything but the assembly as we walked the five minute distance back to the high school building.
    We were some of the first to escape the bleachers, so we would be the first back to school.
    We reached a curb that needed stepping over in order to cross the parking lot.  My sandals met with the concrete, and suddenly, I was no longer standing on my feet.  Instead, my face was grazing a “Handicapped Parking Only” sign and my hands were skidding through the dirt while five hundred to a thousand pairs of eyes behind me got a view of my Winnie the Pooh underwear. 
    Stunned silence.
    Laughter.
    Hilarity.
   Humiliation.
    Soon, I too was cracking up laughing, although seething on the inside.  I stood up, brushed my hands together, pushed my skirt back down, and continued my fake laughter until we made it back to school. 
    This event may seem like nothing more than an embarrassing moment.  However, we have all been that awkward teenager (and if you haven’t yet, hold on, you’ll get there,) desperate to be accepted by our peers.  I, however, was and am an extremely clumsy girl.  Until this point, I was too embarrassed at constantly tripping and falling to find humor in the situations.  Even at this point, I was still incredibly humiliated.
    I have had many experiences similar to this, but most were not quite so extravagant.  In middle school, Laura and I were standing on top of the bleachers in the gym, and my foot slipped, allowing me the exciting and painful experience of falling head over heels down the entire length of the bleachers, landing next to a boy who remarked, in language that I am not comfortable repeating, that I was not a very smart or graceful girl.
    That same year, while I was at a youth group event in the gymnasium of my church, we were listening to a song that rapped “Jump in the house of God.”  I had an excessive amount of energy and thought, “Hey, I’m in the house of God, I’ll jump.”  Well, in my jumping and spastic “dancing” I lost the ability to properly see in front of myself and did not realize my proximity to a neighboring classroom.  As a result, I was suddenly bouncing backward from a doorframe after hitting my head on it, landing on my backside.  I was laughing, but only to cover up the fact that I was crying, both out of embarrassment and pain.  Amazingly enough, my forehead suffered less damage than the thick metal doorframe that it had been introduced to moments before.  I walked away with a slight scratch and a bump; the doorframe remains permanently dented.
    Sometimes I wonder when all of this clumsiness began.  It seems to me that it began the moment I learned to move.  When I was very young, during my elementary years, I experienced perhaps some of the original instances in which I was able to allow my face to meet other objects—doors tables, sidewalks.  On one particular morning, I got off the bus and headed into school, and someone ahead of me pulled the door open very strongly, hitting me in the forehead, knocking me flat on my butt.  Slightly confused and hurting, I stood up and walked into the building.  That afternoon the temperature dropped significantly, depositing layers of snow and ice around at what seemed like random intervals.  As I stepped off the bus to return home, my foot reached one of these ice patches, causing me to slip and fall landing, of course, face first onto the road, hitting my head in the same spot as it had been hit that morning.
    I think what is most surprising about all of this, is that I have never suffered a concussion.
    I have fallen through chairs, hit my head on flower planters (landing in other flower planters), tripped over stairs, tripped over my own feet, tripped over nothing at all.  All in all, I have led a very clumsy life, but like most of us struggling to deal with uncomfortable moments, I was never able to laugh at myself.  I only saw the pain and the embarrassment of being laughed at, and was constantly ashamed of myself for my awkwardness.
    At last, I had been given the opportunity to laugh at myself rather than just be humiliated.
    A few hours after the lovely outdoors presentation, (plus that whole don’t drink and drive thing,) Angel and I were headed into the cafeteria for lunch. 
    I paused and grabbed her arm at the door.  “I’m still so embarrassed.”
    “Don’t worry,” she comforted me, “nobody even remembers.”
    You’ve seen movies before where something awkward happens to a character and there is an over the top reaction, right?  This next moment, I felt, was straight out of a movie.
    I was surrounded on both sides by rows and rows of tables of students.  The moment I walked in, there were all those eyes again.  A pause… then fingers pointing and laughing.  I particularly remember one red-headed boy who was standing and pointing, laughing, and yelling obscenities at me.
    “Or… maybe they do remember,” she chuckled.  I walked head down, to our back corner to eat.  Once we were back there, we laughed about how ridiculous the entire situation had been. 
    This day was an important day to me, because this was the day I learned to laugh at myself.  If I would laugh about something later, why not laugh now?  Rather than allow my pride to be bruised along with the rest of me, I could find enjoyment in it.  Because lets face it—I was going to fall again in the future.  So I laughed along with everyone else.  I told the story to the few who were not there to witness my moment of grace, and laughed when they did. 
    Now, I take a small sense of pride in my complete and utter lack of poise.  When I fall, I might get up and take a bow.  Thank you folks, I’m here all week.  Try the roast beef.  Seriously though, who doesn’t take some sort of pleasure in seeing somebody fall?  (With the obvious exception of children, the elderly, and those with handicaps.)  I’m one of the lucky few who get to witness these things on a regular basis.  I then get to enjoy a laugh at my own expense and if I make somebody else laugh, that’s even better.