rojerono Blog

Today you grasped
the stars as
they were slipping off
the edge of my horizon
and shook them back
into the sky.

You are
quicksilver
can leave me
slow-footed
wordless.

My skin is alive
with the soft imprint
of your mouth.
How many miracles
can there be?

As I burnt your letters
the pages spread and curled
bloomed
like fire roses

Cynthia Fuller

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Can't get here soon enough.

I want to be bitten. I want to be chilled.

Sedate me.

Oversized sweaters and blankets and mugs filled with steaming chocolate. Or hot buttered rum.

I want to hibernate my heart.

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A phantom
A memory
An echo
A trick your mind plays on you
on long trips far from home
Catherine at your window
Let me in.

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The Mean Girls Are Rarely What You Might Expect.

The fairest of my friends - the ones with killer smiles, perfect skin and shiny hair - are the sweetest. They are not threatened by the idea of anyone usurping their friendships, their lives, their loves. Confident in who they are and what they have.

The mean girls are the gaggle who hide behind their hands whispering malicious gossip. Terrified that without the bond created by cruelty they may have nothing. They know how empty they are - despite the proclamations to the contrary.

And I am a perfect target.

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Sometimes words shatter me.

Not because they apply to me - but because they are just RIGHT. You can feel what the writer was feeling. It makes you ache.

It also makes my fingers itch because I need to write. I need to make that person who felt that song into a living character.

This song does that to me:

Bury all your secrets in my skin
Come away with innocence and leave me with my sins
The air around me still feels like a cage
And love is just a camouflage for what resembles rage again

So if you love me let me go
And run away before I know
My heart is just too dark to care
I can't destroy what isn't there

Deliver me into my fate
If I'm alone I cannot hate
I don't deserve to have you
Ooh, my smile was taken long ago
If I can change I hope I never know

I still press your letters to my lips
And cherish them in parts of me that savor every kiss
I couldn't face a life without your lights
But all of that was ripped apart when you refused to fight

So save your breath, I will not care
I think I made it very clear
You couldn't hate enough to love
Is that supposed to be enough?

I only wish you weren't my friend
Then I could hurt you in the end
I never claimed to be a saint
Ooh, my own was banished long ago
It took the death of hope to let you go

So break yourself against my stones
And spit your pity in my soul
You never needed any help
You sold me out to save yourself

And I won't listen to your shame
You ran away, you're all the same
Angels lie to keep control
Ooh, my love was punished long ago
If you still care don't ever let me know

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I love Ani. This is one reason why:

"Untouchable Face"

think i'm going for a walk now
i feel a little unsteady
i don't want nobody to follow me
'cept maybe you
i could make you happy you know
if you weren't already
i could do a lot of things
and i do

tell you the truth i prefer
the worst of you
too bad you had to have a better half
she's not really my type
but i think you two are forever
and i hate to say it but
you're perfect together

so F$@% you
and your untouchable face
and F$@% you
for existing in the first place
and who am i
that i should be vying for your touch
and who am i
i bet you can't even tell me that much

two-thirty in the morning
and my gas tank will be empty soon
neon sign on the horizon
rubbing elbows with the moon
a safe haven of sleepless
where the deep fryer's always on
radio is counting down
the top 20 country songs
and out on the porch the fly strip is
waving like a flag in the wind
y'know, i don't look forward
to seeing you again soon
you'll look like a photograph of yourself
taken from far far away
and i won't know what to do
and i won't know what to say

except F$@% you...

i see you and i'm so perplexed
what was i thinking
what will i think of next
where can i hide
in the back room there's a lamp
that hangs over the pool table
and when the fan is on it swings
gently side to side
there's a changing constellation
of balls as we are playing
i see orion and say nothing
the only thing i can think of saying

is F$@% you...

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It is a lifetime ago. It is yesterday.
I am a woman. I am a child. I am trying to be coy and flirtatious. My heart is hammering in my chest so hard that my hands are trembling with the reverberation. You are smiling and I think that I know what the writers mean when they say someone is sloe eyed. I can smell you. It is not the cologne on your skin or the beer on your breath. It is something underneath everything and I am wondering how I can discern it. I am wondering why this secret sense of mine has never played forth before.

"You are the smartest hot girl I've ever met." I know the words are only half a compliment and I want to be affronted or at least **** my eyebrow to show some pretense of displeasure - but I can feel my skin burn with pleasure and I turn away and look for the safety of my boyfriend before you take too much note.

I did not touch you. My mind held you and I could not remember why I did not recall the feel of your skin. I am a tactile girl.

Later - the first time - I knew for a fact I hadn't touched you then. I would never have forgotten if I had. Your hand burning my flesh without heat. An invisible imprint.

It was not a lifetime ago. it was not yesterday. It is forever.

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Talk to me J-Bird. Tell me what's on your mind. Tell me what your thinking.

But I do.

I tell you all the time. Every single second that we share space I tell you everything that matters.

Sometimes there are volumes spoken in silence.

Learn to listen before you open your lips.

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I want to stop writing.

I stopped... for a time. But it didn't stick. It didn't last.

I want to stop writing.

I can't do it anymore. Little cuts. Nicks in the surface of who I am. I let me bleed out every single time. How many times can I rip my heart out and lay it exposed at your feet before the day comes that I simply can't get it back in? What if I were to walk around like this all the time? Broken, bruised, gasping for air in a vacuum that I created?

I want to stop writing.

I want to stop writing.

I want to stop breathing. I want to stop the itch but it's INSIDE my skin. And no matter which way I wear my clothes I can't stop tearing at them. I can't stop the words from pouring out of my fingertips. They always find a way.

I want to stop writing.

But the words will out. Seeping out of my pores. The phrases running through my head and whispering "tell me, tell me, tell me..."

How can I deny them? How can I bottle them back up? How can I stop this burning?

I want to stop writing.

But I won't let me.

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I read this to Rob on our wedding day...

It is truer today than it was then.

Each day.. it absorbs me more. One day i will be the words and the words only. A sweet echo - low in timbre - a memory he holds until we breathe in sync again.

Here it is.. it's by Gloria Fuertes.

when I hear your name

When I hear your name
I feel a little robbed of it;
it seems unbelievable
that half a dozen letters could say so much.
My compulsion is to blast down every wall with your name,
I'd paint it on all the houses,
there wouldn't be a well
I hadn't leaned into
to shout your name there,
nor a stone mountain
where I hadn't uttered
those six separate letters
that are echoed back.

My compulsion is
to teach the birds to sing it,
to teach the fish to drink it,
to teach men that there is nothing
like the madness of repeating your name.

My compulsion is to forgot altogether
the other 22 letters, all the numbers,
the books I've read, the poems I've written.
To say hello with your name.
To beg bread with your name.
'She always says the same thing,' they'd say when they saw me,
and I'd be so proud, so happy, so self-contained.

And I'll go to the other world with your name on my tongue,
and all their questions I'll answer with your name
-- the judges and saints will understand nothing --
God will sentence me to repeating it endlessly and forever.

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My parents had one of those giant 'show' bibles when I was little. It was a huge, daunting tome with a white leather cover and gold leafing.

My parents were somewhat permissive and I was allowed to hold the heirloom bible and 'read' through it at my leisure.

I remember rubbing the corners of the pages and marveling at how slim the paper was. Contorting myself so I could hold one page up and peer through it to the window and how it amazed me that I could see the yellow blob of the sun straight through with almost no challenge. And later.. when I started to be taught what that book meant and what it was about.. I remember thinking that the onion skin was stronger than it looked to bear the weight of those words. I imagined that had someone written the stories of creation and destruction, of trials and survival and of unspeakable anger and unfathomable love on lesser paper it would have disintegrated in shame.

But mostly I remember the pictures. I remember the conflicting feelings of terror and awe I felt from flipping to the heavier pages. The thick, shiny ones where the paintings of angels with flaming swords and Mary ascending like Venus were portrayed. And Jesus. A picture of The Christ - with a glowing pierced heart his hands open and held up in forgiveness, his eyes heavenward. It was - in some ways a frightening picture - the stigmata was clear on his palms. But for some reason I loved him best. I was known to lay my cheek against that smooth page and fall asleep next to the fair haired man that my father told me probably did not really look like the real Christ.

Sometimes I am lost. Sometimes I feel untethered and awash in uncertaintly and fear. I feel doubts and castigate myself for those doubts.

The bible is gone now. Heirlooms are not meant to withstand hours of grape jelly fingers and years of constant page turning, stroking and manipulation. I've looked for a new one - but trying to decide which bible is best is not the same as having it just be there.

I long for the days of holding a magic book and having all worries assuaged by the picture of that man with kind eyes. But I don't suppose it works for grown ups..

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I think that I am a thief. I have moved through life snatching up shards of other people's personalities. Fictional people and real people.

A little bit of Jo March and some Meg - but not so much Amy or Beth. A fragment of Angela Chase with a smidgeon of Rayanne for good measure. Skip the Sharon Cherski. Katy from first grade over here and a piece of Alex from Mrs. Brophy's class right there.

Like some alien lifeform, I sew these shiny bits over me like a coat of armor. Hiding the void beneath.

My talent is mirroring the right things back. Knowing which part of a person they want to see reflected in someone else Recognizing their own self loathing and turning so the light never hits that piece in their presense.

And underneath there is no *I*. Only emply air. A question and a bit of glue.

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