I was at the movie theatre with my dad (I know, I still frequently go to movies with my Dad; if this makes me a loser, so be it) two days ago and I saw a preview for a movie that totally got my attention.

I'm sure someone, somewhere on this site, has already mentioned this movie. I'm talking about it anyway.

Two cowboys out in the middle of nowhere herding sheep or something, fall in love and have a fling. Years later they settle down with their respective women, but still have feelings for each other that they simply can’t deny.

The other night something happened, but not really.

We were standing in some sort of shadow in her hallway, the CD I burned for her a few years ago was playing in a faraway room, probably her bedroom, and the music floated over to my eardrums underneath all the lovely tones of her voice. I don’t know how we ended up that way, but it got so there was no distance in between us (and man, you know, this is huge. that distance has killed me and killed me for years…it’s the kind of thing you hate most about life). There were more words volleying back and forth between us in a hushed, almost frantic sort of way, until it was over and the faraway music - which had been the last song of the CD this whole time - stopped abruptly, like someone had slit its throat and threw it in a dumpster. Bam.

There is this red lava lamp in my room, and it still has her fingerprints on it from the time we laid on my bed talking about how Elvis really wasn’t that great looking and all of a sudden the red light caught her eye.

First I should tell you that I used to think she was gorgeous, hard to breathe around. That changes everything, of course.

I brought the thing down from a high shelf so she could touch it and so I could see how she looked with the crimson making her face glow more than it already did. She said she always thought lava lamps were beautiful, and I just shrugged. I said comets and stars were beautiful. She shrugged. And laughed. And we ended up outside that night, both of us looking for something in the other that we never really found. I wonder if she knew how close I was to kissing her.

I read something that really pissed me off today.
(Which, coincidentally, seems to be happening a lot lately *cough* lostangryyouth *cough*.)

Apparently military officials are now using sites like Gay.com and PlanetOut to find out if soldiers are gay. All they’ve got to do is suspect you, scan the sites for your name, and report you. If you have anything on the internet advertising the fact that you’re gay, you’re in violation of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy.

Not that I’m sick of myself, but I just don’t write down what I feel as much anymore. Well, maybe I’m a little sick of myself. But nothing sits well in words.

Instead, here is what it is...this whole not writing thing. I watch the people in the mall buy clothes that they don’t need or can’t afford. My friends call me, but I don’t always check the caller ID even though its green light blinks in the dark when I get home from being out in the city by myself. Soon some sort of door in the world will creek open and either let me through…out of this funk, or swallow me up so that I don’t know the difference anymore. To think about it is good. Writing all of that down makes it sound silly, like old news.

You believe there’s something wrong with you, and I get that.

I can’t tell you how much I trouble myself about your emotions,
cause, see, you wouldn’t understand my interest in your feelings and instead you’d question me, and then everything would get lost in the fact that I care too much for all of this to be platonic
and it would suddenly be about my homosexual feelings
instead of about how you sit outside in your backyard at night trying to rock yourself to calmness…

In all my life, I have never seen so many miles burned away in two days. We drove forever, Dad and I, and the stars were only there for a third of it.

I kept looking out the window and only seeing my thoughts out there on the mountains or in the fields. There was me, reacting pleasantly to the genuine, awesome people we were visiting, and there was Dad who protected me. I wished a lot of things could happen when we got back home. I was happier, as one always is after a good trip, and probably a little wiser though I had nothing beautiful to say about the whole thing in any of my 4 notebooks that I drug along in a backpack.

It occurred to me earlier that I am some sort of metaphorical feather and don’t quite know it. My view changes with the winds. It only makes sense.

A few years ago I liked boys. They intrigued me like an orbiting world could, just out of reach and just beyond my concrete familiarity. It was nice to have them like me; nice to have them chase me. I kicked one in a…fragile spot on the playground. This was all normal.

Ran into you today.

Probably got you confused with god or something for a moment when I saw you standing with your back against some lucky concrete structure. Those familiar chemicals were released again, more than ever, splashing and crashing through my system. What a girl, I thought, when I saw you. What intoxication with gorgeous eyes. In an instant, the entire obsessive year came flooding back into my consciousness and I remembered how you looked with your hair wet, body warm and content as I chased you out of the lake and around the little cabin. And how you laughed (that amazing, unfathomable expression of yours appearing in your eyes) at me as I stumbled and tripped over to you by our midnight bonfires, drunk with infatuation and guessing at the right path to take to your heart. My god, I loved this girl, I thought…all in that instant.

Haiku, in the morning

so this is the bus,
fast-paced like the driver’s heart
as she forgets men

and a business man
in a suit, immaculate
fresh, like a science…

the bus belches up
toxins and flatlined dreams,
they all sleep through it

and i think (my god)
what the hell are the wheels for…
people go nowhere.

[That was one of my rare attempts at haiku-writing... I found, oddly enough, that instead of limiting my thoughts it almost seemed to expand them. Weird thing. Good experience.]

Yesterday was not interesting, but my thoughts were.

(At this point I think I was standing on a street corner—not looking for that you dirty-minded...—when I noticed the time after noticing a man who was noticing a large digital clock in the sky).

“Everyone likes to talk about dreams.

Damn Sylvia Plath for being an addicting author. I have to read her, get my fix, but I always leave with my spirits 6 feet lower than where they were when I started. But what the hell, who needs [colors, good music, confidence, laughter, and general feelings of contentedness] anyhow…

When I open my bedroom curtains, I see a poorly kept apple orchard. Every time. Any season…it’s always there, behind the curtains. I keep thinking one of these times I’ll look out and it will be gone…replaced by the offspring buildings of some capitalistic maniac’s thriving business. But it never is. And maybe that’s why I keep looking out there. I think I’m kind of afraid for it.

I'd like to think
that if I were a queen
I'd still remember how to be
humble
and kind
like the goodly fisherman
who'll give me my supper for free
just because he likes me.

I mean,
(girl...girl, I love you)
you have some kind of
faith
in me, right?
After all, I wrote a
song about you.

(((I wrote a song. About you.)))
And maybe that's nothing
in this age where
you can take a stack of green paper

“a body should’n walk in a field alone

I don't know what to say to you. So I write.

I think I’m folding over, here, and somehow my head is still balanced on my shoulders with all those heavy thoughts inside it. I’m sure I’m folding down, crumbling like the buildings of ancient civilizations that just couldn’t take the never-ending pressure of time and all that it brings.

You could take my hand in a moment or two, and maybe if I felt the touch I’d thank you for it. But you won’t.