Twenty Step Guide to Falling
1. The boy falls for the girl.
2. The girl receives roses and lackluster daydreams. She thanks the boy.
3. The boy, ever hopeful, pursues the girl.
4. The girl, ever lonely, does not see his wistful eyes.
5. The girl meets a boy. Another boy.
6. The girl falls for the boy.
7. The boy stands by, for her.
8. He waits.
9. And waits.
10. The boy meets a girl. Another girl.
11. The boy realizes what love feels like. It is not the ice cubes clinking against the glass heart he'd know before. It is fireflies at nine o'clock by a bonfire on the rivers edge.
12. The girl, hair mussed and mascara-stained, looks up momentarily.
13. The girl, ever lonely, looks for the boy with the wistful eyes.
14. The boy kisses a girl's forehead. The boy does not see the girl.
15. The girl picks strawberries for the boy in a white wicker basket. The girl knows the boy will come.
16. The girl stands by, for him.
17. She waits.
18. And waits.
19. The boy comes to her, introducing another girl with a sparkly ring on her finger. The boy thanks the girl for the strawberries. They taste like Summer.
20. The boy is unapologetic. The girl was blind. The girl lost the one true thing she had.
I feel like falling
Into love, or out of it,
the direction doesn't matter
so long as I do fall.
Love and loss are more similar
than my own eyes
and my sisters.
I regret not taking hold of
the opportunity
you gave me, a chance to
hold you close against my breast, my chest
heaving when you say
goodbye.
to feel is the greatest of life's
tragedies,
be my shakespeare
take my heart
twist it as you would the playbill
to our opera.
They first appeared in adolescence. Each of us can describe in sickening detail the searing pain that woke us from our rest late at night; and the first were quite generic, simple variations on a single piece of art. If you woke soon enough, you could see the ink on swelling skin that rose before your eyes. They were all simple.
A friend of mine woke in the witching hours on her sixteenth birthday to find parallel lines running the length of her forearm, with a dashed line running down the center and onto her palm. She came to us the next morning rejoicing, jingling in front of my nose a shiny key- her first car. Naivety was overwhelming in those days, when we assumed literal meanings of the tattoos. Sarah wrecked that day. The road came to an abrupt halt just as she threw her head back in song. Her car rolled down a hill and another fifteen feet before stopping in a muddled field of daisies. The pain in the palm of her hand that night, as an X marked itself permanently at the end of the dashed line would not be felt; nothing would be felt. I visit her from time to time, when I can manage it. I pull up to her front door and catch myself wondering why she hasn't run into the yard to greet me. Sometimes she is on her front porch, if her mother feels that the weather is nice enough. We sit together and I talk. I'm not sure if she can hear me, but I remind her about before.
Reader, I hope you haven't gotten the wrong idea about the tattoos. They are not all prophetic; in fact, most are predictable, and utterly benign. Circles on the left hand signal engagements, hearts around the navel tell you more than any pregnancy test could. Most mark the moments a normal person longs for. I, unfortunately, was not so lucky.
I am told that the more intricate a design is, the more difficult the situation that arises. Darker tattoos are the most difficult to predict- the designs often look more stick-n-poke- blurred, almost.
I am tired, Reader. My skin is covered and burns like hellfire. My secrets have not been uncovered.
Crushed
Brisk air brushes through birch trees,
Tracing fingertip circles in the dust
Atop the mountain where lips pressed lips.
Peaks of snow in moonlit dusk,
Cameras clicking to the rhythm
Of heartbeats bleating as they fall.
Hours await for mascara rivers,
Weeks rush on for Q-tip rafts,
Rippling rapids knocking over,
Such lust, lovers never last.