the fear you won't fall

Fireflies

Tonight my yard is full of fireflies--a glitterfest of green, blinking by hundreds,

exactly like last year, when she and I

drove out into the Missouri countryside

to talk about our marriage. It was thick

with greenery. The air was hot and thick,

and we had decided to try and stay together,

though by first light she'd changed her mind again,

and, to be honest, our eleventh hour hope and promise lacked the weight of truth.

We wandered off the rocky dirt roadover weeds and brambles, through branches

and spiderwebs, and pressed into a clearing,

and it was like a pocket in the darkness that surrounded us--the misty night back

lit with thousands of glittering fireflies

bettering the stars. It was a mating dance,

and we gazed into a sputtering green sea of desire--such irresistible beckoning.

Ours was, too--a death-dance of mating,

a slower, indecisive tarantella,

and she asked me never to write about this,

but I knew then that I had nothing to lose,

that at that moment there was nothing I wanted

more than to write about the fireflies.

by Richard Newman

you punch like a girl:

my old live journal heliumglow deleted. without much fanfare. without tears. just on a whim really. no sparklers or fourth of July. i lie that I am sometimes not missing her. and she was the reason. for it. I clicked to read my "friends" journals. clicked and its all just cold and empty. maybe they will find me. maybe they won't and it doesn't matter all that much any way. do or don't. that's what I am always trying to tell her. so with an urgency i get to trying to put it all down. and I started to write her name. but it wasn't funny anymore. it wasn't sad either. It wasn't relate able to my life now. it wasn't a lesson learned or time served. It was fake and desolate, it was lying and redundant. it was saying it- to say it. and you deservedly missing me. me, I am somewhere out there too.

a life time ago. so it seems. and i tell myself- the dirty is gone from there.............

to here.

Ive fallen in love, over merely her beauty. have you? I think everyone has. who's to say if its right or wrong. what is love? someone who treats you good. do i not? have i not? this has always been my way of saying it. and it's funny, how it's never quite enough. I guess there is always that question. is it even real.

beauty

it is nothing but something to look at. it is a trick to make you love me. to make me love you. but what of the skin and bones and blood? what if she bled for you. what if she made you feel something, something that you would never never feel again. would you want it back. Is that love? just be happy you had it. just be happy.

you

you
never looked back

I'm not so great:

i stayed over. the first time. and i knew. I knew it right off. I looked over at her sleeping and I knew i was so utterly fucked with smitten. so fucked with a crush, with a sickness. I'd reach out and touch her skin. my warm hand on her cold shoulder and Id warm it. pull the blanket up over her. I would be seriously destroyed. i wasn't acting like myself. but maybe i didn't know me. I wanted to weep. I went to the bathroom just across the hall. trying to be quiet. trying to let the angel sleep. across the tile floor bare-foot. cold. in the bathroom i looked at myself. I wondered how she could let someone like me even fuck her. but i did. we did. in the mirror my eyes watery. hair tussled. I knew i had to do something. She wasn't so great. i had to tell myself that, so i wouldn't get hurt. I saw her tooth-brush in a pink cup on the sink. I saw her tongue scrapper beside it. This was it. my only hope. I took it out and put it under my nose. id have to remember this.

and When she finally told me goodbye. that it was done. over. that I wasn't the one. I wasn't even close to it. i put myself back there in the bathroom. just after the night of sweat and words and kisses. after the sleeping next to her skin that smelled of vanilla. there in the bathroom with that foul fucked up smell of her dirty mouth under my nose.