re:(stitution)(tribution)

fuck that family. fuck those "friends".

i bite my tongue
i make excuses for the followers. your church friends and cousins.
i can only imagine the things you say. i don't want to know those people who keep your company. no one like you could ever be like me.

what i meant to say all those years though is that i hate you.
you are incredibly unattractive people. outside and in.
you disgust me.

the ways you talk of me while all those years you beat him. did you know his therapist said you were toxic. narcissists. almost sadistic with the things you did. did you know a professional told him to limit contact with you. perhaps its because you walked around naked in front of your 20 year old son. or the names you called him. or the father fists making things come undone. the years you gave christmas presents to everyone but him. how can you call yourself christian and then treat us that way? judge so many?

you called us names for trying to make it work while teen after teen in your family had babies. how does that work? how were we the heathens?

you called me a temptation of the devil, left your crazy religious bull shit in our car, my fathers car, on our computer. i honestly think you are crazy. outside and in.

and you pretend now to know me/us/your son/what happened. he saw my family before yours on christmas. he has not slept in your house in three years. maybe four. you have seen him less than a handful of times in two years. he is sick and broken and angry because of you. he might even hate you. that is why we didn't tell you anything. let you find out from friends of friends on facebook. that must have been humiliating but perhaps you finally listened when he said 'it's not me it's you. it's them.'

so don't say my name one more time.
or i don't care. my god also has plans for you.

thailand

home sick with a summer fever and a more-fucked-up-than-originally-anticipated hand and in these moments of novel reading and plan b planning i imagine myself alone on distant shores eating with strangers and forgetting to be afraid of things. of the easiest times when no one is there for you and you don't have to wonder cause you know you are alone. and sleeping close to best friends in matching cami's and mirabelle has the best laugh and i have been sicker sunk lower and believed more grotesque lies.

i will pass my life like i pass my time thankful but burdened by this gift of living.

prayers

all i could think when i closed my eyes was

please help me.

finger licking good

yeah, so, i sprained my pointer finger and i am allergic to pretty things like flowers but the humidity has lifted and we - joe and i have gotten through so much and i spent friday at walden pond just feeling the sun on my face and eating grapes with a good friend. i am actually excited for my lsat class and then to have the rest of the seasons to just relax and be happy with the days because the next stuff is ready when we're done.

(joe has the softest hands and the wisest eyes and tells me things i don't want to hear but need to know like eat-eat-eat and the summer always reminds me of those younger days hanging around in beach dunes and main street doorways with those forever friends that i will never see marry because they are dead or worse yet dead-to-the-world so i feel trapped in time remembering remembering and wishing we could meet up now all grown and wise and beautiful. i think they would have had things to say that i would want to hear if they could have just held their breath or learned to tread water shoulder touching sun & shine).

let's be honest

you never loved me.

you just wanted to not be alone.

six years i lived with your inertia.

closed my eyes and turned my head and took my place outside of the world.

the thing is,

i don't want to be right.

i just want to be happy.

(and grief is heavy and thick and suffocating. colds even the warmest sun. and i will never again on this earth in this body speak to or hold or touch one thing from ivan. and every day that i talked to or didn't talk to ivan in his life he reminded me that i was able to be loved. and that meant something. and i wanted to be enough. i want who i am with all these mistakes i make to be enough.)

and i believe in now. in the bike rides and the dinners we make. the vegetables we grow and the things he tells me i am and the things he asks me to stop being.

i am allowed to need and give and hate and take.

and mostly i believe that we all try our best and some of us fall and most of us break but some of us make it anyway. all skinned knees and black eyes and open hands.

but i won't ask you to wait for me. i won't tell you what i can do. i don't know what tomorrow will bring.

i only know that i need this. a park bench and a lunch date and that lady who gives you her seat when she can see you need it more.

reality bites

i just watched the end of reality bites on tv and it reminds me of things like kira and chunky monkey ben & jerrys and those rolls with the flour on top that ivan used to bring to me from the tedeschis in dennis when that was the only thing i wanted inside me. soft bread.

and its kinda the story of me and joe though not really at all. but i am feeling sentimental. and my day off would be so much better if he was here.

i am fragile.

and i used to sing that lisa loeb song to ivan all the time and when i was sixteen he hated it but when i was 31 he would text me the lyrics when he was getting coffee in the morning and i was at work.

he died before i turned 32.

and when i dream of ivan now i am no longer taking the gun from his hand. i am laying on the bed next to him with my arms on his shoulders telling him again and again that he is not alone. that if he has to go at least he should know that.

and i wonder if he knew how much i loved him. how i would have done anything for him. i wonder if he knew that then?