I built the longest sidewalk from my bedroom to your bedroom so you could come over anytime.
You never knew the clock was tired
until you didn’t know what time it was
and i would like to think that you never knew you loved me
until you woke up alone
which is just like that time the sun promised the moon it wouldn’t rise again because the last time it did everything set on fire
kari freitag
my brief affair with the hearing impaired -adam himebauch
I fell in love with a deaf girl once. She had straw colored hair with curls that hung low and loose and misguided. I wrote things out for her and her for me. It was easier that way. Her notepad and pen were worn from constant use. The paper’s edges had become soft where once they were sharp.
‘Everything sounds like a whisper,’ she wrote.
‘Oh.,’ I said. ‘Even when I talk loud?
She told me not to raise my voice, that it’s obnoxious when people raise their voice.
‘It doesn’t make a difference,’ She wrote.
‘Oh.’ I said in a voice neither loud nor soft.
But she could talk and when she did, I remember her talking with an accent. Canadian or maybe eastern european.
‘Where are you from?’
‘St. Louis.’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘No reason, just wondering.’
She didn’t really have an accent.
We went swimming in her parent’s pool one day. It was early October and the sun had been showing it’s face all afternoon. She motioned for me to go first. I held up three fingers and counted down. The air was warmer than the water. Soft colors surrounded the pool, our bodies framed by autumn. Beneath the surface we opened our eyes and held our breathe until we couldn’t. Suspended between green tile and everything else, dead leaves floated in front and behind and below and above. Her hair was darker underwater. Like spilled ink it twisted and curled and snaked its way through the water and across her body. Her mouth moved but I couldn’t hear anything. I shouted back. She shouted again then grabbed my wrist and looked into my eyes. All noise, except the persistent hum of the world above, was cancelled out. She motioned upward. Breaking the surface, she wiped the water from her face and spoke with her impaired speech, ‘Lets stay under as long as we can.’
The first day we met, the day when she took the seat next to mine on the 76 bus, I asked if I could have the piece on which I had first written my name. She shook her head no and wrote, ‘but you can have this one.’ She tore it out and gave it to me. It had the indentations instead.
Please remember not to repeat disasters and please do not do the same thing five times and please remember how you felt and do not allow the sugar to overtake the sour. -adam himebauch
What is love? -ian michael lopez
Its seemingly warming grasp has found itself around my better senses time and time again, whether incognito for lust and desperation or the real deal; the first “real” girlfriend, who found harmonious notes on the strings of my heart before ripping it out of my chest, leaving it out of tune; the first “love”, who made me want to change and believe I never knew what love was, but had found the ying to my yang, the Abbott to my Costello, my Robin, my soul mate – to find out it was a facade and falter to similar bullshit over and over.
One mustn’t forget recklessly driving down the road that follows, stops along including the fuck buddies, laying one call away; the initially-so-promising yet quickly disintegrated flings, of which nothing results but getting back behind the wheel. You’ll sit in the driver’s seat, thinking, “Fuck it”: you’ve been broken-hearted, thus are entitled to carelessly swerve through love’s pathways. Most exhausting are those whom reach “girlfriend” status, reinforcing, “This is life; deal.” But you keep trying.
The older I get and farther lost, I find love to be a perversion of nature, a sick game played hoping for ultimate victory that’s unattainable because of our ways. Everywhere I look, signs point in favor of this: sky high divorce rates plague those past the horrid rounds of dating; those piously treading through married life unload years of pent up energy upon one another through bloodbath-esque arguments; those wanting to have their cake and eat it scour Craigslist for cheap sex-capades.
But you keep trying.
We’re eternally doomed to chase that forever distant goal lying beyond a finish line glistened in promises made yet seldom kept from whoever we sink our claws in and unload our excess baggage upon. Blame easy targets - Disney movies, parents, whoever painted a picture full of unrealistic promises based on abstract cookie cutter ideals – but no matter how hard the truth is beaten into your thick skull, you’ll tread toward the finish line. And you know what? Every missed attempt at happiness, that moment you’re laying in bed with that sad excuse of a lover you once awaited a ring from but now see as the nuisance he/she always was – it’s your fault. Here’s why.
Love is akin to a drug. Your first encounters will be ecstatic; smiles widen when the momentary object of your affection feeds you rehearsed lines to help you believe you’ve found something special; your mind, blocked from better judgment, wards off the world as you await texts. The sex, ecstatic; conversation, meaningful (enough); interests (close enough to) hand-in-hand; the problem?
Like the finest drugs, love’s first intoxication is what we unattainably chase. Auditioning for constant sex and an ear for your bantering occurs that first date; you’ll sit over a meal, looking your best (if you don’t wear a suit or dress and say this doesn’t apply to you, it does), work your achievements into conversation, all while working your best characteristics like a beaten horse and abusing your wit and charm like life depended on it. Slip in smiles and act interested in your date’s ramblings and you’re in like Flint.
Sound familiar? Work every time?
That’s because first impression is the key to the gates and what we subscribe to until the key no longer fits the lock. Therefore, months down the road, you’re staring into that face beyond the first date mask, now scratched beyond recognition, tarnished so you see this person is, like you, imperfect. Due to our refusal to dismount our high horses, this is reason enough to set sail in search of your next victim masquerading around the bar. Like a new drug, they’ll intoxicate you with some foreign orgasmic high until it becomes routine and necessary for survival, like relapsing with any drug.
Yet we keep trying.
Love’s rules, simple: play dress up, spew pro’s to fucking us while keeping con’s behind the mask; tear the opponent down, gnaw at their flaws, corrode their life force on our bad days, until both players lose or settle.
But you still try. We try.
No matter how obvious the truth, I refuse to let it sink in. I’ll play the game, deluding myself, and thinking, “this may be the one”, to find that she’s not and we annoy each other more than anything; or settle as my partner and I put up with one another until death. But divorce is optional.
Happy Valentine’s Day.
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