I Can Do Bad All By Myself.

Oh You and Your Dark Roast

What does it mean to feel something on a day like today?

Just this morning I was grinding away to stop the beating of my dead dirty heart.

And then. I saw you. And I asked myself:

What emaciated butterflies have you set free between my crumpled ribs?

And who would have thought

Love’s shadow could lie at the bottom of a cappuccino cup?

Found between the foam and some ceramic bang 

on the marble counter-top.

You are so lovely, my dear

Glasses pushed halfway up your nose,

tortoise shell are they? And muttering something about psychology,

With a cup of cold water

around which stretch the most beautiful fingernails.

(Medium this time, we’ll split the difference).

You were wearing plaid,

And I, a vacant expression.

And yet, we dwelt among the sidelong breezes of paradise. 

After-Thoughts

Describe the thoughts, the feelings the bits and pieces.

The things you want to say as you scroll through the words of others, hopeful yesterday, in mourning today. America. The place you know. The place you loved. The place you left, where people say they don’t feel safe and you feel that way sometimes, forgetting that you’re a big dark ocean away from the barrel of a gun, as well as all the people you love that could be on the wrong side.

You went to bed at 2 and told your love to text you the results…the first polls had just closed. And you wake up to a horror story of green bleeping, a story unfolding, in slow secession, now splashed across your screen with a timestamp hours old.

I scared him this morning with strong words about Europe’s warm welcomes and ex-patriotism as a form of protest (words I try hard to feel as well as think) and tried not to let my voice crack as it caught on the disheartened look in his eyes. 

Today I cried, and cried, and cried. On a train to Segovia as my American friend and hid out from the world. As I sat in a cafe with a phone in my hand and a scowl on my face. 

And as I lay in bed, hour after hour. Sitting alone in my tiny Spanish apartment with my headphones on, avoiding my roommates who lend detached semi-frowns and looks of vague concern. I don’t want to talk to you. I want to talk to screens, hear voices with familiar accents and bright shiny solutions to problems I hadn’t thought of. I hold my hand against the glass, but alas, no good. Too far and too early, always too early. 

And so, I sit and I mope and I hope for the best. And I cry about that too, that hope, that word, crumbling in my mouth, because what does it even mean?

Don’t Artic Monkey Me

I told myself I was above missing you like this. Sidelong glances at crumpled T-shirts lying the corner, my body matching wrinkle for wrinkle. Trash crawling up the corners of my walls like ivy, reminding me of what just was, and now isn’t. And that 6 hours sure can suck all of the sunshine out of a Sunday afternoon. 

What is this world we live in? Where every other day I greet you with goodbye, and I don’t remember the last time the car we got in didn’t lead to the airport. Where I can think of at least 2 states, 2 countries, 2 continents in which I’ve kissed you but I’ve forgotten what it feels like to call you up and ask you to come over.

I told myself I was above missing you like this because I thought I was incapable of love on this scale. You don’t matter because nothing does, nothing can, and I’m too old and un-candid to believe otherwise.

Alas, I remain foolish, in spite of all low-key arguments and better judgement. And I stand there grinning as a way to circumvent tears at airport departure and arrival gates around the world. Nicole, the World Travelling Idiot in Love, coming soon to a theater near you. 

Jokes

Tell me its a phase, a passing unfancy, this feeling I have now, nestled deep in my gut though the opposite of a warm embrace.

How can I watch a candle burn to the wick, or stare out the window of my kitchen overlooking the monastery and think nothing at all except how divine it would be not to exist?

It’s not that I want death, it’s that I want a respite from the exhausting narrative of my own life. I’m looking for a few moments to be away from myself. Not through sleep, no, that monster that re-plays the low-light reel from the days of yore: nightmares of ringing phones and Microsoft Outlook and other such drudgery.

Tell me that things with get better. You’ll throw the candle away and buy curtains and glass to shield me from the eerie silence of the monastery, that you’d do this and more because you’d do anything for me and because, someway I surely will feel that elusive gift again.