Waiting.

(I wrote the beginning of this while sitting in a coffee shop about a year ago. My friend, Tyler, and I picked an older woman sitting alone and decided to write a story about who she might be. I finally just found a way to finish it.)

The date was September 26^th but that was the only thing that had changed. Every day, nothing changed but the numbers. The days, weeks, months and years added up to a number far too large to comprehend but she was not interested in the math.

The days moved on but she stayed still. Her posture, hairstyle, and even her coffee order stayed the same. As the days raced on like an athlete determined to be the first to feel the finish line absorb the weight of their final triumphant step, her feet stayed still. Crossed at the ankles, under the same table in the same coffee shop. She waited.

He had left her in that coffee shop, and now she waited for him to come back for her. She was determined that it would be in that exact place that he would find her again. His path had taken him away from her, but hers had come to a halt the moment he walked out the door.

She had still been a young woman on that day. She had dressed in green because it was his favorite color on her. She remember flirting with the mirror as she applied her light makeup, he always said she looked much prettier without a layer of stuff on her face. She had been excited to go to “their place” and loved it almost as much as she loved the idea that there was a place that they called theirs. Looking in the mirror, she had wondered if they would go for a walk or maybe just sit and talk for hours. She had looked forward to the day because she knew that it would be full of him.

She had been making sure to arrive at their coffee shop early ever since he casually remarked how he loved entering to the sight of her sitting there. How he loved seeing her sitting at the dimly lit table in the corner, holding onto and taking comfort from her warm caffeinated beverage until he could take its place. He loved to see her sitting and waiting, loved knowing that it was he she was waiting for.

The day had held so much promise as it stretched itself lazily before her. It had been a gift waiting to be opened, a treasure waiting to be found. She had enjoyed taking time to revel in the anticipation of their time together.

She watched him walk in and could not stop her face from stretching into a grin to greet his. Her girlhood dreams danced in her eyes like fire flues caught in a jar on a warm summer night. It was another thing that he had told her he always loved about her. She was incapable of keeping her emotions from dancing around her face, especially the happy ones.

His eyes had seemed a shade darker than usual, but it was hard to be sure because they refused to meet hers. Now, she realized that this had been a sign but it was one that she had chosen to ignore at the time. When he finally pushed out the words that he was leaving, they had been directed to the table rather than at her. As he rambled on, she thought it sounded as if a deep fog had drifted in to push against his words as they fought to reach her ears.

He looked at her briefly before pushing away from the table and retracing his steps to the door. She called after him that she would wait. That there would never be another for her, that when he returned home it would be to his favorite image of her. She promised that her top would be green and that her eyes would light up with love for him. He had started to leave before she had finished, but she knew that he had heard her. She had watched his back and shoulders absorb the weight of her words.

The street around the shop had changed over the years. The park that they used to walk in had become a parking lot and the bookstore was now a bank of America. The young faces of the people behind the counter had not aged; they simply morphed into new faces. But they did not interest her; there was only one face that she wanted to see. She often wondered how time might have inflicted itself on him. She pictured him standing tall as always, but with streaks of white in his hair. Would he have wrinkles to echo hers? Would time have worked his voice to a lower tone, would it rumble a bit when he spoke?

She wondered when he would come back, but never if. She debated whether it would take a moment for him to scan the faces around him before landing on hers with recognition. Sometimes she pictured the long moment of watching his face fall while he worried that she was not there only to see him light up from the inside with joy. Other times, she imagined that he would be as sure as she was, that he would simply know that she would be at their table, and would walk in with the same confidence as always.

She would have nothing exciting to tell him, he paused her life when he left her. The world had shifted around her, and she had stayed completely still at the center of its rotation. She knew that he would fill her in on the details of his life. She could not wait to hear what he had done to make his journey back to her. She could not wait to meet the man that he had grown into. She pictured a more distinguished version of the boy she had known and hoped that he had not grown up entirely. She wondered what she would say to bring out his soft chuckle for the first time, and a soft smile flitted on her lips. It was as if she was recalling a memory rather than creating a moment that had yet to occur. She sat still every day, but her mind jumped form the past to the future, leaping decades. Never doubting, just waiting.

One day, she did not enter through the front doors of the coffee shop. The young woman behind the counter, Carrie, had been about to prepare her coffee and was shocked by the silence. She had been expecting the bells of the door to chime, but when the door opened twenty minuets later it was for a young woman and her child. The old woman never came in. Just before her shift ended, Carrie learned that the old woman had died in her sleep. It was supposed to be the most peaceful way to go, but Carrie knew that there was never any peace for someone who is always waiting and wanting. Carrie hoped that she had passed while having the dream in which her lover had never left and their children and grandchildren surrounded them in the home they had made together.

The next day an old man entered the coffee shop. Carrie watched his eyes move slowly over every face inside. When they landed on the empty table, they filled with an endless amount of emotion that seemed to age him another decade. With a deep breath, he walked over to the table and decided that he would simply wait for his lover to come in. She had promised that she would be there, after all.

The day after that, Carrie proposed to her boyfriend. They were in love and she knew that he was waiting for the perfect moment to ask her, but she had had enough of waiting, She did not want to wait; she wanted to live.

New story that I made up for the boys.

Once upon a time there was a village with a wonderful little cheese shop. The family who owned the shop loved to create new cheeses every night. One night, the father created a new cheese that was so smelly that no one could bare to sample it. In fact, in the morning, the cheese was so stinky that they could not even get close enough to throw it out. They simply locked it down in the basement and tried to forget about it.

As the days passed, the smell got worse and worse until finally, the family had to leave the shop and move in with their in-laws in a nearby village. In a matter of weeks, the smell had gotten so bad that the entire shop smelled like the stinky cheese. After a month, the entire village had moved away because no one could get close enough to simply throw the cheese away. Soon, the entire state was empty and in less than a year, the entire half of the country had moved to the other half to escape the horrible, awfully, stinky cheese.

Eventually, the entire populating of the world had moved into boats on the ocean because it was the only place to live without constant eye watering from the stinky cheesy smell. Eventually, all the Kings, Queens, and Presidents of the world got together to discuss how to solve the problem. No one was brave enough to go back to the Country, travel to the village, find the cheese shop, go down into the basement, and take care of the cheese. What they didn't know was that the reason the smell had become so strong was that the cheese had been growing.

When the last villager had moved away, the cheese had taken over the entire bottom half of the shop. When the state had emptied, the whole shop and the nearby buildings were covered in the dairy mold. When the entire continent was abandoned, half of it had been nothing but cheese.

Finally, the world knew that there was nothing to do but leave their beloved planet. As soon as they had built enough rocket ships, they all took off for a nearby planet that had been discovered by a brilliant astronomer. The new planet had plenty of water and trees, and they named it Earth.

At night, when the sun went down and they were able to see their old home, they saw that the entire thing had been consumed by the white cheese. They marveled at how beautiful it was, and decided to name it the moon. Every night, they were thankful that there were just enough miles between their new and old home that they did not have to smell it.

The end.

I don't think you can call it poetry, but it's what i've been writing lately

A 20-something year-old with a security blanket would raise eyebrows

A ratty stuffed animal clutched in the arms of a woman dressed in her "sexy sophisticated" work clothes would cause stares

This is the age where you must quiet your own tears

Kiss your own boo boos

And sing yourself to sleep at night

So Ill be my own blankie

Sew myself a cape to be my own hero

Polish up my armor and slay my own dragons

Until I find you

and then,

we can split the work 50/50

Monday Afternoon

Monday afternoon is a good time to try to be all alone in a museum gallery.

All these paintings and pottery and sculptures are having their intended effect on my emotions.

I feel incredibly young and very small.

They are all staring at me as I shuffle through, averting my eyes, landing them on the objects in the cases for just the briefest of moments. Our roles have been switched and I am now the one being judged.

"What have you done with you life?" they ask me. "What, written a few girlie poems and short stories? Maybe written a clever paper that you were particularly proud of?"

"These are photographs of lovers and soul mates. Lovingly depicted at the height of torrid love affairs and marriages spanning decades."

I come to these museums with other people boyfriends and girlfriends or all alone.

I search desperately for the impressionist wing. Looking for something lovely and familiar to ground me. But I refuse to ask for directions because I wont admit that maybe I don't belong here. I like to play the role of the educated young woman strolling along with confidence as she thinks her important thoughts.

Instead I am stranded in Asia.

Not even Ancient Egypt or Greece, which are much more to my liking.

So I sit and dig around in my purse for my pen.

I write words, because that is my own form of art,

I ignore the creations around me as they look on and squint to better pass judgement on me.

I let them surround me and make my own form of art.

Because if you cant beat em, join em.

Hunt through an old journal, and you will find some interesting stories barely started and way too much introspection

Once upon a time, there was a girl locked in a tower. Everywhere she went, whether it was to work, to school, or even to a local bar; she carried the tower with her.

She had been imprisoned in the tower by something that could be as dark as she could be light. She had been put there by someone who could be as bold as she could be meek, as boisterous as she was quiet. She had put herself in the tower several years ago. She had selected the tower for it's heavy stone walls, which were perfect protection. They easily kept her separated from those moving around her. She thought the climbing ivy added a nice aesthetic to her carefully selected segregation.

The tower protected her, just as she had hoped it would. She always had layers of concrete encasing her at all times. Even her dreams were kept secret and safe from the prying eyes of strangers. But the walls also kept her in, as such protective means tend to do.

She never had to feel the discomfort of cold, leering stares from men that so many women living in a city have to endure daily. Whistles and cat calls were simply not a part of the symphony of her life. But she also never felt the warmth of a smile or wink from a friend, people generally do not spare a smile for a young woman who chooses concrete to human company.

She had, of course, heard the occasional request to "Let down your hair" or at least a rope of some sort. But she knew better than to take time to seriously contemplate these words. She knew it was possible that some of these men were genuine and true in their intention, but how was she to separate the real from the fake? She had become accustomed to her little tower built for one and could not imagine the intrusion of another person in her space. All that human feeling and personality, pumping blood and noise. She had forgotten what it was like to feel the closeness of skin that belonged to someone else. The only way to discover the truth about a person would be to expose herself to them, and that was just too risky. She knew that many men felt compelled to obtain the elusive and unattainable, she couldn't imagine that her sparse, confined home would keep anyone entertained for long.

She reminded herself that it was in everyone's best interest for everyone to just stay put. She in her tower, and them on the outside of it. The tower was not perfect, it came with it's own list of problems. She always had to find two seats together at a bar and crowded subway cars were out of the question. But when she became agitated, she looked to her happy unbroken heart and smiled. She had never loved, but more importantly; she had never lost. She could not think of a single musical artist who sang love songs and did not have at least one sad song in their repertoire. Who needed happy memories when they would almost certainly be followed by sad ones?

Her tower was just like her. It was smart, careful, and strong. Her tower was just like her, it was cold, impossible to break into, and alone.

The ending needs work. Really the whole thing does, I just like the visual...

poetry break?

Is it too juvenile for me to write a little poem about my morning cup of coffee?

What if I insist that it is actually a metaphor?

What if it just looks like a silly poem about a cup of coffee?

But in reality

I'm writing about warmth

about comfort and familiarity

What if it's really about having forty minutes to myself

time to

sit still.

sip.

sigh.

and just enjoy

It's about the joy of heavy ceramic between my hands

instead of disposable paper or Styrofoam

So is it okay?

Can I smile and write my silly little poem?

Even though

It's not quite as strong as I like my coffee

and just a little bit more sweet

I should thank the girl sitting at the table next to me last week for this one

The 12-year-old girl looks up briefly from the intoxicating blue light of her cell phone to glance at her father. She had quickly taken in the sight of his bald patch at her last glance, his head was bent down closely to the screen of his own phone because he didn't want to put on his glasses. But now his phone is down, he is looking up at their waitress with a smirk on his face as he makes a joke about the beer list. She isn't sure exactly why, but something about that smirk makes her want to smack him in the mouth, preferably in view of the pretty blond waitress. She does't make eye contact with the woman as she orders her orange soda and mac&cheese.

The restaurant is fairly busy and it makes it hard for her to concentrate on her phone as she scrolls down to answer a text from one of her friends. She and her father are content with their own devises. She was happy to read his text earlier that they would be going out for dinner after he picked her up from school.

Minutes later, while still waiting for their food, her world comes crashing down around her. Her father has calmly put down his phone, she noticed with resentment when he bought it that it had more applications than hers, and informed her that there are errands to be run and she will be missing the next episode of American Idol. Tears sting her eyes as she takes in his calm face and relaxed posture. How could he expect her to miss the show? Doesn't he understand that all anyone will be talking about at school the next day is the horrible auditions? Does he think there is immediate free streaming on her phone? She can feel the eyes of other diners on her as her as her voice gets louder and begins to shake. But the more her father cautions her to calm down, the angrier she becomes. It is not until her father promises to do whatever he has to to insure that TiVo captures the episode and that she will be able to watch it as soon as possible that she is able to breath again.

Taking deep breaths, they put their phones aside to eat their food. Once the waitress has left again, the smirk reappeared and she bends her head to her food to ignore it, she smiles and tells her father about her friends. She feels like a walking Facebook feed as she explains who is dating whom.

Years from now, she will text her parents pictures of her new baby girl. Her father will email her back a string of sentimental memories that he has stored up in his hard-drive; the text she sent from her seat during graduation, the forward of the text that her husband sent her when he proposed, the pictures she tweeted during her wedding reception, the ultrasound picture she sent to inform him that she was pregnant. She wont remember that meal that they shared at the small restaurant, it was just one of many nights where she listened to her father flirt with a young waitress in between the clicks of the small computer in her hand.

She will look up from her computer screen where she is e-mailing her children to remind them to come home right from school for dinner and think of how happy she is and how much she loves them. She will smile as she shoots off a quick "ily" to her father to thank him for everything he has done for her.

a story about growing up

As a little boy, Johnnie loved sitting in his mother’s grand bathroom with his sister watching her get ready to go out with their father. Sitting on the cold marble floor, his back pressed against the corner of her vanity, he felt that her cloud of perfume protected him from everything dark and dangerous in the world. As she smiled down at him and his sister, he knew that her face was the most beautiful one in the world. The three of them laughed as she draped herself in feminine scents and fabrics, then turned to do the same to his sister. He could sit still for hours as he watched the two of them parade around in heels and pearls, his sister’s feet barely big enough to keep the shoes in place as she shuffled from corner to corner, he felt his heart pump pure love through his body.
As Johnnie and his sister grew, the ritual became less frequent. His sister lost interest in their mother’s routine, preferring to go out with friends. The loud music thumping out from under her closed door narrated the fast pace with which she was insisting on becoming her own adult; her own woman. Johnnie still wanted to sit in awe, looking up at his mother who was still beautiful, still the epitome of femininity. But now that he was older, she closed the door to him, no longer comfortable walking around in front of a 12-year-old boy in her slip. When he asked her to watch, to feel the weight of the pearls around his neck, the shadow that passed in front of her eyes confused him. He wondered why the passing of a few years had changed an act that once brought closeness between a mother and son into something she saw as wrong and unsettling.
Watching his sister and her friends’ parade around at a sleep over, he felt a longing that confused him. His sister too now pulled away from him, closing doors that had previously remained just cracked enough for him to slip inside whenever he desired. The two remained close, but when her friends entered the house Johnnie was expected to disappear. He was expected to go be the young boy that his father bought baseball gloves and slingshots for. With each gift, his father would tell a story of the trouble he had gotten into as a young man, and Johnnie wondered how he could make himself become the man his father expected to see in him. He watched through the slightly open door as his sister and her friends danced and jumped around the room, watching their bodies starting to develop into young women, he held his own chest. He felt the absence of the soft curves that came so naturally to the young women around him. Seeing him lurking outside, his sister’s friend pulled him into the warmth and light of the room. The music pounded in his ears and the girls giggled, dressing him in their silky pajamas and making him join them. For any boy it would be punishment, mortifying to be brought in and surrounded by girls. But Johnnie, and the flash in her eyes told him that his sister noticed as well, was struck by how unembarrassed he was. Not since to sweet fragrance of his mother’s perfume all those years ago, had Johnnie felt so secure and serene.
The next day, Johnnie walked to the park with his friend. They threw around a ball and played in the mud. Johnnie listened as his friend explained what he had heard about sex as he eavesdropped on his brother. The story was meant to entice Johnnie, to make him notice the girls in school the way his friends were beginning to. But as his friend talked about sex, an act that seemed incredibly adult, Johnnie had never felt younger. The more his friend talked, the smaller and younger Johnnie felt. He had never felt the need to experiment with himself as his friend had, in fact he rarely touched himself at all. He thought of the part of his body that he was told was the difference between him and his sister. He felt that it was barely part of him. He thought it was ugly, something separate from himself. Then he thought of his sister and her friends again. Even in their awkwardness at moving around in bodies that seemed to move themselves as they grew, they had a comfort in their bodies that Johnnie had never felt.
He remembered walking in on his sister in the bathroom one night. The shape of her body was only just beginning to resemble her mother’s, but as she stared at herself in the mirror, Johnnie thought the expression on her face looked like their mother was peering out from it. The confidence in knowing that it was her body, the confidence in knowing that she belonged to it and it to her, it was an expression that Johnnie knew he had never made. As she grew into her body, Johnnie felt that he was growing apart from his own. He shared his space with it, but could not recognize it at night when he lay in bed with his eyes closed.
In his dreams, he always found himself back in his mother’s bathroom. But the position changed. Rather than pressing against the cold tile, feeling it against his back as it contrasted with the warmth emanating from her on his front, he was above. No, not above but within. He was now the one creating the soft cloud feminine haze, draped in fabrics and cold precious gems. He ran his hands down his side and felt the skin give way to soft curves rather than boney angles. His hands trailed across the counter tops in soft long patterns. The dream haunted him, not because he felt embarrassed by the feminine image of himself drawn up in his subconscious; but because he didn’t.

As the years continued to pass and Johnnie’s body continued to grow and develop, he began to look more like his father. However, on the inside he still clung to the comfort and of his mother. Each new muscle or extra inch of height felt like a step backwards and away from what he truly wanted to see when he looked in the mirror, rather than a step closer to the manhood he was expected to crave. Seeing the grins of triumph on his friends’ faces as they studied their own bodies only made him feel more alone and insecure.
His father often reminded him that it was time to “grow up” and “be a man,” but Johnnie couldn’t find the words to express the deep longing within him. So isolated, he felt that he might as well be one of the princesses from his favorite book of fairy tales. His fingers danced over the images of the pale young women in delicate gowns, their beautiful hair flowing in waves down their back as they paused in time forever, having mastered the perfect expression of beautiful desperation. Always and forever waiting for the young prince to rescue them from their solitude and reintroduce them to the world as a bride. They were destined for their happily-ever-after, Johnnie could rarely bring himself to turn the page and look at the new painting of the happier brighter princess. A part of him knew that he was meant to identify with the prince, handsome and strong ready and willing to fight for his young bride. Instead, Johnnie spent hours with the sad young women who were trapped just like him. He looked down at his body; his own tower keeping him from feeling the joy expressed on those faces hovering just above the elegantly scripted words “The End.”

After high school, Johnnie left to attend college in New York City. He was walking home from class one day when he was stopped in his tracks by the sight of a beautiful Amazon of a woman. He was caught up in staring at her height and glamour, blue-black hair tumbling down her back like the Wonder Woman comics that he had spent hours reading as a boy. However, it was the Adam’s apple floating above the deep plunge of her top that made him stop walking altogether. The flash of recognition almost made him cry out, instead he instantly allowed his feet to fall into step behind hers.
She arrived the back entrance of a club, unaware that she had a shaky shadow entering right behind her as she headed to her mirror. As he let the door close behind him, Johnnie was instantly assaulted by the row of lit mirrors and a smell so familiar he could practically feel the corner of his mother’s vanity digging into his back. He finally allowed the tears to fill his eyes as he approached the woman who had unknowingly led him to the answer to the question he had been asking for over a decade.
She looked at him and felt as if she were looking at a mirror into her past when she had been a sad little boy full of questions that no one had the answer to. She took him under her wing; it felt to him like being wrapped up in gold, glitter, and warmth. Stepping out as a woman, Johnnie finally felt the pulls of puberty. It was as if it had just accidentally skipped past him the first time around.
As a boy, Johnnies’ friends had teasingly called him asexual, joking that he would never grow up. But a gossamer gown and a wig created an image very much like those princesses so elegantly displayed in picture books. Finally, Johnnie stepped out of the tower that he had carried around with him his entire life. Turning the last page in his story, he became the woman he had dreamed about becoming. Johnnie knew that it had never been her destiny to follow her father’s footsteps and be a man, but to finally welcome adulthood as a woman.