A Sonnet of Invented Memories

1.

I told you that I was a roadway of potholes, not safe to cross. You said nothing, showed up in my driveway wearing roller-skates.

2.

The first time I asked you on a date, after you hung up, I held the air between our phones against my ear and whispered, “You will fall in love with me. Then, just months later, you will fall out. I will pretend the entire time that I don’t know it’s coming.”

3.

Once, I got naked and danced around your bedroom, awkward and safe. You did the same. We held each other without hesitation and flailed lovely. This was vulnerability foreplay.

4.

The last eight times I told you I loved you, they sounded like apologies.

5.

You recorded me a CD of you repeating, “You are beautiful.” I listened to it until I no longer thought in my own voice.

6.

Into the half-empty phone line, I whispered, “We will wake up believing the worst in each other. We will spit shrapnel at each other’s hearts. The bruises will lodge somewhere we don’t know how to look for and I will still pretend I don’t know its coming.”

7.

You photographed my eyebrow shapes and turned them into flashcards: mood on one side, correct response on the other. You studied them until you knew when to stay silent.

8.

I bought you an entire bakery so that we could eat nothing but breakfast for a week. Breakfast, untainted by the day ahead, was when we still smiled at each other as if we meant it.

9.

I whispered, “I will latch on like a deadbolt to a door and tell you it is only because I want to protect you. Really, I’m afraid that without you I mean nothing.”

10.

I gave you a bouquet of plane tickets so I could practice the feeling of watching you leave.

11.

I picked you up from the airport limping. In your absence, I’d forgotten how to walk. When I collapsed at your feet, you refused to look at me until I learned to stand up without your help.

12.

Too scared to move, I stared while you set fire to your apartment – its walls decaying beyond repair, roaches invading the corpse of your bedroom. You tossed all the faulty appliances through the smoke out your window, screaming that you couldn’t handle choking on one more thing that wouldn’t just fix himself.

13.

I whispered, “We will each weed through the last year and try to spot the moment we began breaking. We will repel sprint away from each other. Your voice will take months to drain out from my ears. You will throw away your notebook of tally marks from each time you wondered if I was worth the work. The invisible bruises will finally surface and I will still pretend that I didn’t know it was coming.”

14.

The entire time, I was only pretending that I knew it was coming.

- Miles Walser

 Coffee + cigarettes + Mozart's Wolfgang Amadeus.

Speak of beauty, and elevated emotion.

"I was in the winter of my life — and the men I met along the road were my only summer. At night I fell asleep with visions of myself dancing and laughing and crying with them. Three years down the line of being on an endless world tour and my memories of them were the only things that sustained me, and my only real happy times. I was a singer, not a very popular one, who once had dreams of becoming a beautiful poet — but upon an unfortunate series of events, saw those dreams dashed and divided like a million stars in the night sky that I wished on over and over again — sparkling and broken. But I didn’t really mind because I knew that it takes getting everything you ever wanted and then losing it to know what true freedom is.

When the people I used to know found out what I had been doing, how I had been living — they asked me why. But there’s no use in talking to people who have a home, they have no idea what it’s like to seek safety in other people, for home to be wherever you lie your head.

I was always an unusual girl, my mother told me I had a chameleon soul. No moral compass pointing due north, no fixed personality. Just an inner indecisiveness that was as wide and as wavering as the ocean. And if I said that I didn’t plan for it to turn out this way, I’d be lying — because I was born to be the other woman. I belonged to no one — who belonged to everyone, who had nothing — who wanted everything with a fire for every experience and an obsession for freedom that terrified me to the point that I couldn’t even talk about — and pushed me to a nomadic point of madness that both dazzled and dizzied me.

Every night I used to pray that I’d find my people — and finally I did — on the open road. We had nothing to lose, nothing to gain, nothing we desired anymore — except to make our lives a work of art. Live fast. Die young. Be wild. And have fun.

I believe in the country America used to be. I believe in the person I want to become. I believe in the freedom of the open road. And my motto is the same as ever — I believe in the kindness of strangers. And when I’m at war with myself — I ride. I just ride.

Who are you? Are you in touch with all of your darkest fantasies? Have you created a life for yourself where you’re free to experience them? I have. I am fucking crazy. But I am free."

- Lana Del Rey, Ride

Dear time, bring back the past, please. Thank-you. 

Sincerely, girl obsessed with these photographs. 

It's Friday, 3:59 PM. It's finally starting to feel like Autumn. I cannot explain to you how happy that makes me feel. I haven't been on here as much as I used to or as much as I'd want to. I've promised myself to make more of an effort on spending time on the things I enjoy. I have a puppy now, her name is Marley. I know what you're thinking, Marley of all names? But yes, my nephews decided on Marley, so Marley it is. I love my nephews, and I love Marley, too. I'm listening to Sixty-Forty by Nico. God, I love that woman. Her voice is fucking ridiculous...too cool, it's almost unfair. My boyfriend said "I love you" to me a few days ago. It was so alien to me, I didn't know how to react. Truth is, intimacy and emotions freak me the fuck out. Relationships are just as horrid as they are lovely. I'd like to believe I love him, too. I'd like to believe I am capable of loving. My passion are words, sound,  and books. It's my sisters baby-shower tomorrow, sort of dreading it and looking forward to it all at once. Dreading it because I've been feeling those nervous shitty anxiety feelings I get, again. Feeling those feelings around people, especially around people you actually want to be around, can be quite a shit thing to deal with. You have to put up this front and greet and smile, when all you really want to do is go to the park, smoke a cigarette and cry. I hate putting up fronts. Hate it. But at times, it's just necessary. And the looking forward to it part, well, I'm looking forward to my sister with a smile. 
It's funny how that works. How you put aside yourself just to see a person you love smile.