Love is like

When I think about love, I think about pressed leaves. We stack things on them, we dry up all the life they could have had, we cut short what they grew up to do. We preserve them, delicately from decay, but they are never more than pieces of memories, when it comes down to what we have left. When I see leaves change color, I am reminded of my own mortality, I cannot pretend any longer that I may live forever. I cannot pretend that I will love eternally either. My whims are of the seasons, not the generation. I'm still a child, I just haven't acted like one lately. Sometimes I think about how much I cared for him, but it remains effortless, careless. I don't love him, I swear. I don't love anymore. Not like I did. Love to me is synonymous with limerance, its great fresh, but it wears off, so I guess I've never loved, only hated.

In high school, I was the girl that tore people out of her way to meet my ends. I tore friendships to pieces over boys; I tore them down over things they kept me from. Honesty, I think Fight Club planted a seed of nonchalance inside me. I never have given two bits of a care about what other girls thought of me. It's a dog eat dog world to me, and I'm the one with a stash of bones. They may hate me, but what to I care? I mean, no one’s going to be there for me forever, why prolong the inevitable? I've never been the girl who cares about those who stand in the way, I will knock anyone down if I have to, and vicious as it sounds it's only ever happened once.

I'm competitive, I'm determined, I play fair, but I will fight for my life if I have to.

I used to file his teeth into fangs, and buy him jars of blood from the shack shop by the river. I knew my blood was clean, and that the stuff I brought him probably wasn't, but when his family comes, Shaun is going to pretend they were together, they're democrats, they'll prefer that to the truth. Most people block out the existence of lifestyles they consider mythical, when the truth is, it's thriving under their stuck up noses. Animal found me in an alley just after he left home, he was 17, and I was 13, but that never mattered. What mattered was my mother was dead and no one knew I existed anymore. He introduced himself to me as Monster, but I saw through his ruse. He looked too kindly into my eyes, he loved me. He knew I was just a hungry kid. My mom was a fugitive and an alien to this country, and I was imaginary, I'd never been to school, never gone to the grocery store or a doctor and I'd certainly never eaten a hamburger, he fed me, clothed me and took me to a motel. Eventually he'd gotten an apartment, and gotten me an identity, but not before I'd grown tired of watching him file his teeth, of following him around at parties, looking for someone like him. I gave in, started filing them for him, finding people like him while he slept until he got sick of their company, even the best of them weren't good enough for him, he only wanted the blood, one day he stopped speaking. 

He communicated with snips and growls, no more until he got what he wanted. But it was never enough, he still wanted his teeth sharp enough to cut his own lips and tongue, and be refused my blood every time I tried to give it to him, no matter how careful I was. He always knew when it was me. He was so angry when I started boiling the blood, it changed the flavor, I knew, but it was safer for him, my Monster, my Animal. He was what I knew; I had to do something to save him. Two years he was silent, never more than a growl came my way when I'd make him eat his beans and rice, when I'd give him his blood. I knew he'd been leaving and getting his own when he actually said he'd had enough of me mothering him. He couldn't drink the cleaned blood, and he said he'd had some real bad drink that day. I knew what he meant, he meant he met someone dirty. He was scared. He was 17 again and realizing what he'd done wrong. "No, no," I'd said, "it can't hurt you without an open wound" and he flashed me a crooked smile with the glint of his filed fangs. My fault. I let him keep them that way. Oh how they used to bleed, everything I knew about him was flashing through my mind; he was going to die. I was just barely turning 18, he had taught me everything I knew, him and Shaun, and he was going to die. I spent four years of my life boiling blood because I loved him, and he was dying anyway. He was never scared; he believed unto his deathbed that he'd live forever. Right now, there's a thick layer of plastic between us, he's bleeding to death and I can't take it. Shaun's plan is to say they were lovers, to get the doctor to explain that some people are immune, and Shaun will say that their son had been acting strange and kept him from becoming infected, they would accept it, waiting years to ask questions. I couldn't even accept the truth when it was presented to me months ago. He picked me that day because he was lonely and he knew I would do what had to be done, and I did everything for him for five years. That was it. Five years. A long full life to me was 22 years at that point. Animal was my brother and my father and my keeper. I took care of him just as he did me, but I never expected him to die. Vampires were immortal, now they were infections and rogue cells eating his body alive. Shaun had been around for two years, he was my age and he loved me while I was devoted to Animal. He's sitting next to me, he knew

Animal was the only thing I really had anymore, of the girl I was in that alley. Shaun was going to save me; I could see it in his eyes. He wanted me to leave, didn't want to see my heart break when Animal was covered in a bed sheet, I didn't know what to do, I wanted to lay with him, one last time while he drifted to sleep, but the doctors said it was a bad idea. The baby, got to do what's best for the baby. Animal is dying, but another grows inside me. Shaun knows. I know. Animal has no idea. I have to tell him, damn it; he's slipping away.

I lay with him while he died his bleeding body next to my pristine skin, I took his hand and put it to my stomach, "you" I said, "you", and he died, with that stupid smile on his face. A nurse came running, scared for my baby, for me, and I let her take me away, I let her change my clothes, and clean me off while Animals family arrived. They're here now, she's crying, he wants to hit something, and I have to say something. I said how he saved my life, how he took care of me, they knew we lied to them, but they didn't mind. He nodded as if to say "whatever you're covering must be awful" and I fell to the floor. Four months pregnant, I was having another flashback. The day he said he'd flashed me that smile, that bleeding smile, that scared smile; there was a pregnancy test in my pocket. It was the day after my first date with Shaun. The disease took him swiftly because we stopped trying to save him. He eagerly drank everything I put in front of him, I never tried giving him mine, I'd given up in every way I could have, he would have licked dogs blood from the floor if I'd told him it was all he was getting. I was killing him, and he was panicking, struggling, grasping for the immortality his plan had promised him. I became cruel to cope but it failed. Up until he really started dying, I didn't want the thing growing inside me, but once I knew I had no choice. As far as I'd come, there was no going back. Not without losing too much of myself. It was hard enough to look in my mirror; I had age written in my face from fighting so hard. "Mommy needs you now," I whispered to myself almost expecting an answer, "Mommy is going to love you no matter what, little Ryan, little creature" I'll never forget how sick I was that morning, I felt like I was turning inside out, my insides were re-arranging, I was cuddling my stomach as if I could save the poor thing from myself, and then Animal's confession came and I thought I was going to throw up rocks, it felt like something was trying to escape, and I knew I had to keep it. Now I can practically hold a conversation with her. My little girl named Ryan. She was draining all I had, but I loved her. Annie the animal child. Calling her Ryan was so, reminiscent of watching him die. It was like losing my mother again. She was going to be so evil, I knew, but I would love her for it.

Emergency exit strategies.

So I'm sitting in a room, alone, three stories above downtown Nashville thinking about how every relationship has ended in one of very few ways. There's the "I can't be this close to you anymore" and the "I hate your guts" and

Of course, "I've been sleeping with someone else," which I've come to know as the most heartbreaking, most effective way out of any relationship. There's an art to leaving people, one day, I just found myself sitting here alone, waiting for Mr. Whomever to come home, wanting to know how my day was and why there was a gun on the table. This wasn't a tale of 'he had it coming' he was so innocent, so perfect, never done a thing wrong by me, but that was the problem. I was a drifter, and I'd met Mr. Right, Mr. Great Job and insurance policy with a luxury apartment, and I was really hoping he'd just smack me around and give me a reason to leave him. He was in line for a promotion, and I was looking for a ride out of town. What this was about to become was what scam-artists call the long haul, I'd been settled for two years with this one, and I was tired of sitting still. When I said all this to him, his only words where "oh," and "that's it then?" and only

After he handed me his keys to his beautiful muscle car that rode like a mid-life crisis, did it occur to him to ask if we could work this out? He said he'd give me anything to stay, when I said I wanted something to destroy, his eyes glanced back at the keys to his car. He knew better, but he questioned everything, he wanted me to stay, so I did what I always do when they are about to say those three little words that lose meaning after you say them on the phone too many times, I say "you know Bill? Your boss? There's a reason why you're looking at promotion," and I wink. Sometimes the eyes tear up, sometimes they say "no, no, you don't mean that" in a real solemn tone. There's always a chance for the words ' marriage' or 'counseling' red flags, I promise you. Girls like me hate all of that. At age 28, with 14 years of experience building guys up just to tear them down, I'm a professional.

I grabbed my suitcase, the keys, and I made him promise he wouldn't try to hurt me. I say "who gets the gun?" and start walking towards the door, a click notes the bullet sliding into place from the clip, and a sigh means 'you take it, you need it more' in the event of a small click, drop everything, break up sex is better than any other sex ever, and if he gives a small sigh, keep walking. There's no reason to look back at a man as weak as that.

Leave. Get into the car, drive east. Sleep in bar parking lots and stop at Love's truck stops when you need to. When you finally hit that coastline, you know you're free. It was a ritual I'd finished a few times; most relationships just weren't as great as the one I'd just torn down. It really wasn't much short of marriage. I don't know if I loved him, towards the end I hated him for being so good to me. I didn't know why, or if there was a reason at all. I just had to leave. There was someone on that coast I needed to see. The first guy I ever tried to destroy, I mean really tried. We were in high school, and he was posing a challenge, I had set my sights on my best friends boyfriend, and he'd set his on me. It was definitely a decent size problem, and was going to cause a great amount of destruction, both of us being like-minded we became best friends and eventually we were seeing each other on the side. He was the first guy I fucked, he was the father

Of the first thing that grew inside of me, he was perfect, because he never got attached. We never got attached. The sex was a waste of effort, I never saw a reason why to do it, or why not to, so sometimes we did, sometimes we didn't. I loved him, in a way. Not true love, just, like you love a close friend.  Going back to see him was like having a time machine, I always felt like a little girl again when he answered his door in boxers with that big grin on his face, but lacking the courtesy to invite me in or you know, put pants on. It wasn't hard to invite oneself into his house, or to make breakfast in his kitchen regardless of the hour, the hard part was the shock of the words "I've got a kid now" when I tripped over a Big Wheel when he was 24, or the wedding band tan he sported, though I knew he'd never been married. We'd play catch-up for days, telling about the latest conquest or whatever you want to call it. I loved the stories, the

Descriptions of the girls he tore down, he was always surprised I held up so well, the asshole he was. This time when I knocked on his door, a little girl answered, his baby girl of four years old, yelling for her daddy, and I scooped her up and took her inside, I'd always had a soft spot for children, when I looked at this little girl, it made me miss him. I went into the kitchen and made pancakes like I always do and fixed her a plate before Mr. Mom showed up, wearing jeans and a t-shirt just like he did in high school, I was surprised, honestly, he was 29 years old, a little old to dress like a kid, but I wasn't dressed much better, leather pants and half a shirt. What a pair we made, my beautiful 72 charger, and I wouldn't be surprised if he had a car seat strapped to a motorcycle in the garage. I asked why he had her, all he said was "suicide" he looked at her as if she was the only girl for him, he was in love alright. Knowing him, he considered her

his first love, that's just who he was. He was having a hard time being the single dad, he'd preferred split custody because it gave them both time to work, now it wasn't an option, he'd quit his job but his savings were drying up quicker than he thought. On one hand, I wanted to stay here and help him, on the other I wanted to be free. I cried at the thought of leaving this little girl. She tore at my heartstrings as if she was the baby I'd lost so many years ago, she was this tiny little black haired angel with her green eyes, I'd loved her instantly, I knew that. It couldn't last though. It was too good for me. My exes were funding my life, I didn't know if they'd notice a slight raise in my bills, or if I'd get cut off, but I had a few ideas on how to keep things up like I had, and things ran smoothly. I lived in the spare bedroom, I took care of her while he worked, her grandma came to visit us once a week and eventually decided she wanted custody.

We were "spoiling her" and "she'd never grow up to take care of herself" she called me a con and a skank and took my baby from me on her fifth birthday, I'd been living there for seven months, the same length of time I'd been seeing him in high school. The next morning when I woke up, there was a voicemail on my cellphone and his bike was gone, he'd done the same thing I'd done time after time. I cleaned the house, put a key under the mat, packed what I had left and left the next week. They call it running when it gets like this, the text messages that we traded, riddles to where we were, I wasn't sure if I was looking for him or trying to get away, but I was running. It was love and it was hate that kept us going, but I went back to check on her and her greedy grandma and I found him, holding her above her bed, his one true love, and when Grandma walked by and saw our silhouettes, she screamed her last breath, and fell to the floor. He didn't see me

Until I grabbed her bear and said 'let's go,' but that was all it took. We ran then, driving in no particular direction until I ran out of gas in Fremont, Ohio. We walked to a gas station and got a gallon, and I decided that it was a sign; we were supposed to be there, so we stayed. His girl was school age, I was tired of moving around for the moment, and it seemed like all at once we just sat down and relaxed, and we didn't have any more problems. We learned how to breathe. Something most people take for granted.      

“Can you do me a favor?”

I knew what I wanted before he even answered the question, which was rare for me.

“I know I said I wanted to wait, but I really just- can’t do it. I don't want to.”

"Why", he asked,

 I thought about the nicest way to say, ‘you used to make me great like Shakespeare, now I can only paint scribbles and memorize chords,

 “I want to be a writer again” I said finally, and he didn’t say anything for a long time.

“We ruined ourselves, didn’t we?”

  “No,” I said, “I don’t think so; we just messed up a little. I became dependent on your torture, unable to fight back and it just took so much out of me that we can’t continue on this way”

A normal day was a normal day. This girl had become so worthless to everyone that she turned him into a weapon.

A lady dressed in steel.

First, I knew the cold, then I knew the look of love in someone’s eyes, the way they saw my sharp curves, and my glistening smile, the way that I could spin when someone wanted to dance. I learned about the realm of human consciousness, and before, it had never occurred to me that I should remember these things. I had no memories of what came before. I heard a lot of talk about being straight to the point, and I saw a lot of fear, a lot of anguish, I couldn’t control my own actions. I was made to do things that made me cold to the core, being with him. He dictated my every move, and my idea of freedom, whatever idea of it remained from before, was lost.

I loved the way he washed me down, and I felt it made me shine, like his evil teeth. Late at night, and sometimes in the afternoon when he’d come home, he’d sit and talk to me, as if he picked me apart piece by piece to learn something new about his companion, when he was gone, only the dog was there to keep me company, but the dog never looked my way.

I suppose maybe I took his attention away, but we were both told all about how he was biding his time, waiting for the right day, he said, he had to wait until the morning that started right. That even the slightest thing going wrong, like stubbing his toe on the coffee table before his morning coffee meant that he would go to jail. He called me beautiful when he ran his hands over me, told me that I was going to be his saving grace.

Sometimes he took me out, into the world, but not often. He told me how the world was dangerous, and that people would be tempted to take something so beautiful away from a man like him. Tell him he didn’t deserve such a beauty.

He was a gambler, I knew this. He called me Ace, he called the dog Jack, and he was a drinker. I assumed he was either paid well at work, or a winner, but we never really spoke about his day. We talked about the plan. His plan. The plan that was going to make our life together complete. He rubbed me down, over and over one night, after he came home late, looking down on his luck pulling his lucky chip out of his jacket pocket, he was always dressed so well. He said he could feel it, tomorrow was the day, and I was excited, for the first time, I was going to get to go to the place he always told me I’d really shine, like a star in the night. The place he always said I wasn’t ready to go yet.

The next evening as he got ready to go out, he made me watch as he shaved his face, as if I’d keep him from nicking himself, and he was so proud that today had gone so smooth, he bragged on and on about how none of the little things got him, like they usually do. He spun me around and looked at me with vengeance in his eyes, and out we went. Down the stairs out the door, up three blocks and down an alley to the back door of a club, where we went inside, sat down at a table, and played with the cards. I didn’t know what game we were playing, or why I was there, until the night had worn into morning, and we were accused of cheating. He’d won big, lost it all and come back out on top, but there was no crowd left, the cash was on the table, the doorman had left, he reached for me, in my flashing glory, I was hot, there were explosions, one, two, three, four, five, six; and there was blood everywhere. He carefully scooped up all the cash from the table, and very carefully checked the pockets of the other men, and then we fled. Up the alley, up three blocks, in the door, up the stairs and into the apartment we called home, where a man sat, with a lovely lady like myself in his lap, and then he aimed his lady at my man, and fired.

I knew what I was as I hit the floor. I rested that night, in his blood, my man who cared so about me, and in the morning, the police picked me up, called me a killer, and took me to live with them. I was unhappy.

My life flashed away, just like that. So here I am, riding under the arm of a new man, who found me too beautiful to go to auction. 

Adding Fuel to the Fire

or maybe you lit me on fire when I was putting yours out,
either way, we're both burning now.
it started like a match, and became something greater,
like a raindrop that becomes a part of the flood.
You had ideas like you had nothing else, your hard day of working gave you time to think,
I had words like I had nothing else, a long day alone in our home left me to my musings,
when we were together, it was like a small revolutionary army,
or that's what you were, I was the voice of reason.
We lived in what many people called my Nihilist's Dream House,

the roof leaked, the floor warped,
It was everything I loved, down to the remnant scent of Mothballs.
Unrest grew.