I know her real name but I'll call her M.alice.
M.alice doesn't fit under the mold of classic beauty. Her hair stands out in my freshman memories, the siren red highlights blaring out of the black locks. That's nothing special. Any chick can dye her hair in those bright electrifying hues. Not every chick has the guts to spike it into a mohawk, into a crimson and ebony razor crown.
I was a hopeless victim of Wishful Thinking as a child. I always wanted to believe my dreams could prophesize. Maybe then wings could sprout out of my back or I'd find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
This week has been one strange leap down the rabbit hole.
The beginning of Winter Break was marked with a vivid dream of Ai getting abducted by Mro. I watched her getting beat up by MrO with a baseball bat. I was sitting in the backseat of the minivan as my mother drove away from the gruesome scene. Moments later Ai and I were talking in front of a house that was supposed to be mine but looked nothing like it. I was on my knees begging for forgiveness for ditching Ai during her abduction. Ai simply shrugged it off, saying how Mro let her beat him up and gave her an award for knocking him out so fast. I distinctly remember her boasting proudly, "That was my glory day!"
I dreamt my guitar teacher, who has been remarkably sympathetic and patient with my lack of practice, revealed her Hyde. I played the flamenco better than usual, hitting all the right notes for once. Instead of praise, she screamed about how I didn't play it like a Debussy piece. I retorted that Debussy never wrote a flamenco in his life and in response, she picked up her guitar and sent the whole thing crashing down on my head.
M.alice has never appeared in my dreams before, yet she appeared twice this week. She completely ignored me the first night. The second night, she was standing in my closet. Her hair is jet black now (she dyed over the red streaks long ago) yet in that dream her hair had golden streaks. She was wearing a complete school spirit get-up with blue and gold. Someday I will attend a school that does not have blue and gold (which usually ends up being yellow) as school colors, because frankly I am sick of yellow and blue spirit days.
M.alice pointed at the beige leather jacket of mine hanging on the coat hook in my closet. "Wear this. It's gold."
The rest of the dream was a murky mess where M.alice and J verbally abused K-idiot while I laughed on the sidelines.
I should have learned by now not to take my dreams so literally. Yet I stood in my closet yesterday afternoon, wondering if I should listen to my "M.alice-in-dreamland." I shamefully admit giving in to paranoia and wearing the beige jacket to my piano lesson.
December 22, 2006
December 10, 2006
Dear John
Dear John letter n. informal – a letter from a woman to a man, ending a personal relationship.
We are locked in this stalemate, two solitary kings on the battlefield, daring the other to move. Remember those roses? They still sit in that vase by the window. Their fragrance, so sweet and strong at first, has but disappeared. I'd imagine they're off with you, fucking with that girl in Paris, Milan, Tokyo, wherever.
I doubt you remember these roses. you wanted the crimson ones, read some shit in the magazines about red symbolizing love or some other sweet despair. i wanted white, pure and innocent like i'd never be. pink became our compromise, blushing under the sunlight next to the crystal windchimes.
I've played the script a thousand times, carrying imaginary conversations with you in my mind. i know all my lines by heart and i can recite every single word you'll say. You'd give me that wry smile of yours and ask me about the roses, i'd smile and ask why you've never come back.
farewell exits were never my style, so i end it here with these scentless petals, hand-picked one by one especially for you. count them, they equal to He Loves Me Not.
Stop and smell the roses sometime.
We are locked in this stalemate, two solitary kings on the battlefield, daring the other to move. Remember those roses? They still sit in that vase by the window. Their fragrance, so sweet and strong at first, has but disappeared. I'd imagine they're off with you, fucking with that girl in Paris, Milan, Tokyo, wherever.
I doubt you remember these roses. you wanted the crimson ones, read some shit in the magazines about red symbolizing love or some other sweet despair. i wanted white, pure and innocent like i'd never be. pink became our compromise, blushing under the sunlight next to the crystal windchimes.
I've played the script a thousand times, carrying imaginary conversations with you in my mind. i know all my lines by heart and i can recite every single word you'll say. You'd give me that wry smile of yours and ask me about the roses, i'd smile and ask why you've never come back.
farewell exits were never my style, so i end it here with these scentless petals, hand-picked one by one especially for you. count them, they equal to He Loves Me Not.
Stop and smell the roses sometime.
December 7, 2006
Flicker
so there you are in these photographs. there's that face with those chocolate saucer eyes, the cherry lips with that whisper of a smile of yours that seems to flicker like a flame. models never smile; how can they smile with that armor of glitter coated on their lips? you had it all down even before they found you, long before they exposed you, ripped you apart until that flame of yours smoldered to ashes and dust.
November 30, 2006
Laughing Gas
Her nametag reads Dresea.
Short raven hair that looks dyed, somehow strange paired up with her celery colored eyes. She has a pretty smile. They say it takes 17 muscles to smile; I'm too tired to use them and simply nod as I pick up my backpack. The magazine pages shut on a perfume ad for "Mysterious." She waits for you to notice her, fall for her, and then before you know it, she has disappered from your life.
I sit in that leather dentist chair. Hate how it squeals and squeaks as you climb into it, as if advertising your weight. Anxiety has completely vanished, replaced by an eerie sense of calm. I wonder how Marie Antoinette felt as the blade loomed over her head.
He walks in wearing the standard white crisply-laundered coat. You would think these medical professionals would learn to wear red coats by now. Blood stains would not be easy to hide on this wonderful canvas. He briefly explains the surgical procedure. I can see his mouth move but I can't hear the words. He seems to be behind a pane of glass.
The gas mask is placed over my nose. I feel a shortage of breath as the gas works its way down my throat. Dresea's words completely evade me as I feel the pulse in my neck beating harder and harder. I am dying I am suffocating breathing through a tube attached to tanks in this oral surgeon's office while this woman lulls on about thinking happy thoughts.
My limbs no longer respond. I half-expect to turn around and see my own body, eyes wide and dead like a doll's as I float off. Sleep overtakes fear. I am so tired I just want to shut my eyes and forgot about the operation. I hear him ask if the gas is too powerful but I simply stare. He cracks a joke. I smile and it sticks, pasted behind like a Chesire smile. Dresea laughs and says I can close my mouth.
Shots of anisthetic shoot through in my mouth. I feel the needles piercing my gum but my mind has zoned out. Suddenly nothing matters- my mother's short temper, the disgraceful grades at school, the upcoming recital - nothing matters anymore.
As the gum numbs it gets harder to swallow. I ask Dresea if this is supposed to happen. She laughs and says It'd Better Be Or You'll Be Screaming Bloody Murder In A Few Minutes. The conversation turns to school and meanders off to guys from Leigh. Amazing what the gas can do - I would never have been caught dead talking about hot guys while I was sane.
He opens my mouth. I can hear nasty scraping of metal to bone yet I cannot feel a thing. I sit there, lost in my own daydreams as they cut away the gum and expose the tooth underneath. The noises stop as I feel string repeatedly brush against my lip. I know they have begun to stitch the skin upwards, yet I am completely out of it, dreaming of things I'd never do.
The trip to Wonderland ended in 40 minutes.
Short raven hair that looks dyed, somehow strange paired up with her celery colored eyes. She has a pretty smile. They say it takes 17 muscles to smile; I'm too tired to use them and simply nod as I pick up my backpack. The magazine pages shut on a perfume ad for "Mysterious." She waits for you to notice her, fall for her, and then before you know it, she has disappered from your life.
I sit in that leather dentist chair. Hate how it squeals and squeaks as you climb into it, as if advertising your weight. Anxiety has completely vanished, replaced by an eerie sense of calm. I wonder how Marie Antoinette felt as the blade loomed over her head.
He walks in wearing the standard white crisply-laundered coat. You would think these medical professionals would learn to wear red coats by now. Blood stains would not be easy to hide on this wonderful canvas. He briefly explains the surgical procedure. I can see his mouth move but I can't hear the words. He seems to be behind a pane of glass.
The gas mask is placed over my nose. I feel a shortage of breath as the gas works its way down my throat. Dresea's words completely evade me as I feel the pulse in my neck beating harder and harder. I am dying I am suffocating breathing through a tube attached to tanks in this oral surgeon's office while this woman lulls on about thinking happy thoughts.
My limbs no longer respond. I half-expect to turn around and see my own body, eyes wide and dead like a doll's as I float off. Sleep overtakes fear. I am so tired I just want to shut my eyes and forgot about the operation. I hear him ask if the gas is too powerful but I simply stare. He cracks a joke. I smile and it sticks, pasted behind like a Chesire smile. Dresea laughs and says I can close my mouth.
Shots of anisthetic shoot through in my mouth. I feel the needles piercing my gum but my mind has zoned out. Suddenly nothing matters- my mother's short temper, the disgraceful grades at school, the upcoming recital - nothing matters anymore.
As the gum numbs it gets harder to swallow. I ask Dresea if this is supposed to happen. She laughs and says It'd Better Be Or You'll Be Screaming Bloody Murder In A Few Minutes. The conversation turns to school and meanders off to guys from Leigh. Amazing what the gas can do - I would never have been caught dead talking about hot guys while I was sane.
He opens my mouth. I can hear nasty scraping of metal to bone yet I cannot feel a thing. I sit there, lost in my own daydreams as they cut away the gum and expose the tooth underneath. The noises stop as I feel string repeatedly brush against my lip. I know they have begun to stitch the skin upwards, yet I am completely out of it, dreaming of things I'd never do.
The trip to Wonderland ended in 40 minutes.
November 16, 2006
Juliet's Last Letter
Dear Rose Mortmain,
You left with the autumn's golden gilded pages, the scent of coffee and chocolate lingering in a trail of whispering footsteps. I watch your figure growing distant, ascending somewhere I cannot belong.
You could taste the scent of other flowers out there, superficial pleasures of crystal sugar petals and wisps of perfumery, meeting the Lilly, the Daisy, the Orchid, because you are Rose. Why stay rooted to the soil to the dirt when the sunlight favors your beauty and no one will notice those prickly thorns?
I am Juliet. I watched you turn to plastic, dancing in that plastic masquerade, surrounded by those faces we worshipped and those faces we hated. The pendulum heart once swung in my favor has now recoiled.
I waited a year for your reply but by then the mask sunk into your skin.
Without you, Rose, Juliet no longer exists. Juliet lives through letters, but without correspondants, letters are but memories fading to dust. Girls in black moth dresses sifting through our dust. Who? Rose Mortmain has long disappeared.
A Capulet once followed a Montague to the grave.
Die Juliet.
You left with the autumn's golden gilded pages, the scent of coffee and chocolate lingering in a trail of whispering footsteps. I watch your figure growing distant, ascending somewhere I cannot belong.
You could taste the scent of other flowers out there, superficial pleasures of crystal sugar petals and wisps of perfumery, meeting the Lilly, the Daisy, the Orchid, because you are Rose. Why stay rooted to the soil to the dirt when the sunlight favors your beauty and no one will notice those prickly thorns?
I am Juliet. I watched you turn to plastic, dancing in that plastic masquerade, surrounded by those faces we worshipped and those faces we hated. The pendulum heart once swung in my favor has now recoiled.
I waited a year for your reply but by then the mask sunk into your skin.
Without you, Rose, Juliet no longer exists. Juliet lives through letters, but without correspondants, letters are but memories fading to dust. Girls in black moth dresses sifting through our dust. Who? Rose Mortmain has long disappeared.
A Capulet once followed a Montague to the grave.
Die Juliet.
-J. Kitteridge
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