Me: “Do you want me to just send you the ensemble [to wear for the wedding] and you go get it? Or do you want to just go pick out your own tux? It’s really up to you, I’m not going to make you wear anything.”

Bob: “So, if he showed up naked to your wedding, you’re not going to do anything about it? I mean, that’s what I’m hearing. You did say you’re ‘not going to make him wear anything.’”

Me: “Heh, maybe I should append that statement with ‘any tux in particular.’ I’m not going to make you wear any tux in particular.”

Dad: “Well, I was going to wear my grass skirt before Bob said anything…”

Always out of breath.
The door
left open
just in time for the monsters to creep in.

Everything that morning was white and grey,
even the plants showed up in their palest
for an April wedding.

My chest bones ache when I wake up,
stretched after a night of being curled
in sleepless blinking.

A man walked up to me with tears in his hands
that were larger than snowfalls, smaller than marbles
“I made these for you.”

Never had my soul held such concord and pain.

Sitting in the restaurant that poses
as the town centre
You eyes are now a forest on the eastern seaboard
Clarity, growing like sound

You stand in line fishing change out of the oceans of your purse. As you fumble for a fourth penny you blame your habit on an aunt who once cooked a meal for an army of men that was never there. Her house makes you cry. It’s been locked for years but we all bet the curtains still wear her perfume and the ghost of the cat still bites invisible guests’ hands. Whether rooms slumber in completed asphyxia or the walls still live and breathe, homes are always partially frozen in our minds and are remembered while standing in line looking for four dollars and one more copper penny.

Everything is covered once again with the most
brilliant, immaculate glitter
Our breath turns to smoke

The hands that have gone unnoticed all year
are stiff, are frozen

You are missing your gloves

The fingertips and knuckles that have gone unnoticed all year
are finally felt at the gas station, the gas pump

You can feel your toes in your shoes

She is grieving for the first time,
all over again

Every freezing breath she takes
is a breath left behind,
a breath not taken

Winter is a birth of the brightest or the darkest kind.

It’s all about the cinnamon left at the bottom of the mug
I’m not sure I’m alive

The sun is dialed up too bright
And the clouds are wallpaper

There’s barely a breeze
Everything is neutral
benign
silent

I am an empty jar with a spirit trapped inside growing younger

All I wanted was to escape gravity
To be walking in the parking lot and
have stepped above the pavement and be walking upwards
to find the purest of white craft feathers growing out of my shoulder blades

Instead you are behind me
calling
holding onto the string
the spine
and I feel my knees

lock
unlock

lock
unlock

the raw and unbending vertigo, gravity
pulling my shin bones

Where are the keys to my ribcage? I need to find them.

My soul is slowly leaving my body, again.

“I’m usually not a fan of Tim Burton’s style, but for Alice in Wonderland (03/05/10) it seems about as appropriate as appropriate gets. And I’m quite excited. I will be officially annoyed if it’s takes a Narnia turn and becomes one of those loved books that was made to be really pretty but strayed so far from the book that I feel like destroying the DVD in an Office Space manner.”

I posted the previous paragraph on Facebook as my status and within minutes one of my friends, Tim, commented, “I’ll take this as a rave review for Narnia. Maybe I should actually see it now.” My first thought is, Not exactly. That might be a bad idea. I’ve never had good experiences with Naria.

For Prince Caspian, I went to see it with my sister and boyfriend. I then proceeded to make the mistake of sitting between them. My sister and I and my boyfriend and I have vastly different methods of movie-going. My sister and I go to movies and either heckle the characters through the entire movie. My boyfriend? No talking. Even when we watch TV together the only way I can ask questions or make a comment is when there is no dialogue going on and I’m quick about it. If I get too talkative or start asking too many questions, he loving pats me on the head which I know is a nice way of telling me to be quiet. So, you can imagine what it would have been like to be with both of these parties at a movie at the same time.

For the The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, the situation was entirely different. At the time, the previously mentioned Tim and I were together. We were together for about two months, and sometime during the said two months I went to go see the first Narnia movie with some of my acting friends. One of my dearest friends, Kate, organized this. We went with a group of about fifteen. We sat in the third to top row; I was sitting two seats in from the aisle and Kate was sitting on my right.

Kenny, a blond curly haired college guy who embodied the description of “dreamy” was going to be late and asked that we hold a seat for him. This seat was next to me. The last time I had seen Kenny was three weeks prior, he had a girlfriend named Sam. In a wee corner of my brain, I thought Oh, wouldn’t it be funny if he was single now and tried to hold my hand or something? Haha.

So, the previews come on, the movie started, and Dreamy came in and sat down in the empty seat next to me shortly thereafter. During one of the scenes in the White Witch’s home, I felt something on my pinky finger. I glanced down and there was Dreamy’s finger trying to weasel its way around mine.

I froze.

And why did I freeze?

BECAUSE MY “WOULDN’T IT BE FUNNY IF” THOUGHT CAME TRUE.

That’s not supposed to happen! What was he doing? Didn’t he know Tim and I were together? Didn’t he have a girlfriend? What would possess him to try to hold my hand during the movie? Why did my innocent funny thought actually happen? I didn’t want it to happen, I just thought it would be funny if it did happen. This isn’t right. What in the world is going on here? WHY IS HE STILL HOLDING ONTO MY PINKY FINGER?

Finally my nervous system kicked into gear and pulled my hand away. I then, still weirded out, leaned over to Kate and nonchalantly whispered to her:

“So um… Doesn’t Kenny have a girlfriend?”
“He did, but they broke up a week or two ago.”
“Oh.”
“Why?”

I explained what was going on. She said: “Don’t worry, I’ll talk to him.”

The movie ended. Kenny stepped out into the aisle and I followed, but Kate grabbed the sleeve of his shirt and pulled him back behind me. As we’re going down the steps, and all she had to say was, “Yeah um, you know Tim?”

If I ever watch another Narnia film, it will be a rental.

I know people tell me things will change when I’m older. I won’t be as open-minded, my metabolism will suddenly slow down to a slug-like speed at 12:01am on my 30th birthday, that I will no longer have the energy or desire to stay up until 4am, that if I am proud of the fact that I can sometimes out eat any guy I know that I will suddenly wake up with at least another ten points in my BMI if I don’t watch what I eat RIGHT NOW, and that I won’t view love or the person I am with the same way.

The problem is that I feel like I won’t be alive in two years. Not that I’m going to die, or that I have some prophetic feeling that I will die young and I remain fixated on the fact that I don’t have much time. What I mean is that I have absolutely concept or foresight into my life in two years. I don’t have the foggiest idea what it means to live another two years. I don’t have any understand of what it would feel like to live to be 30, 40, 50, and so on. My understanding of time and how long it feels is limited by my own biological age. My only concept of time, of age, of life, of death, is what the point of reference built from a little over two decades.

This, I believe, is the beautiful curse and blessing of the human understanding of time.

We all demand that the other person see time from a different frame of reference, yet I have serious doubts about whether any person can actually begin to understand a frame beyond what they have lived. People my parent’s age either expect me to “Be young, have fun, flirt a lot, play.” Which, is speaking out of the fact that they are reaching mid-life, and have understood the deeply desire to return to childhood, and the wish to live in a simpler state of life and naivety. Or, I, behaving out of my understanding of time for my age, make a few basic statements, and they so quickly pipe up in conversation to correct me and emphasize the importance and weight of where I am in my life. Which, lately seems to be mostly useless, considering I do not have any concept of how the decisions I make right now will effect me when I’m 60, because I’m not 60.

I’m not claiming ignorance, nor am I saying that simply because I have a different understanding of time that I am not responsible for having common sense or that I need to be responsible for my own actions. It’s just that I have the unfortunate opportunity to glean conceptual information from people who have lived longer than I have, I then must make sense of it and make the “best” decision based on such information. Which, is fine and good, but most (if not all) of the life advice conversations I have, or advice that is given but never asked for, always is tinted with time.

That is because we speak out of the time we exist inside of.

It’s the one variable that constantly confuses me, and yet is always demanded of me even though I’m almost sure it’s supposed to confuse me.

When you see people in the rain, most often the point is not to ridicule them, ask them why they are in the rain, or to tell them about when you were in the rain once; it’s to give them an umbrella and ask them to come inside.