Tomorrow is Crying for You, Later Still

All of the followers had gone, sucked up into the girl’s funnel cloud and carried off to god knows where.  What remained lay on the ground, broken.  The restaurant would not be serving again.

I was wondering with a pang of regret where Marietta had gone when a dishevelled figure with a lopsided purple hairdo and an old face limped over to me.  The cruelty in her expression had now become mingled with resentment.  We just stood and looked at each other for a while, until she said, “You think you have won.  But the spell is broken for you, too.”

“I know,” I answered.  “But at least I can live with myself.”

“We’ll see about that,” she replied.  She then disappeared, rather against her will, I thought, into a cloud of foul-smelling smoke.

Floating

Letter from Suzy, 1992

I'm gonna miss you so much it sucks (lame card, they closed the bookstore early).  Thanks for the stickers & take care of yourself.

I'll be thinking of you - you're like the friend I've always wanted, but never found, till now.

Thank someone (NOT GOD) we were roommates!  I'll miss you tons!  I'll be home this weekend if you want to call.

Love, Suzy

P.S.  You're not ugly either & I DO believe you and I know how you're not crazy.  You were there, too, thank you so much.

Diary entry, April 29, 2004

No bad dreams last night, but I’m feeling anxious today.  I’m glad it’s Thursday and I get to talk to Carrie.

I had an unpleasant conversation with Ella last night about medication.  Certainly I’m defensive on the subject, and I know her general attitude toward it, so I should probably just avoid the subject with her.  She wasn’t mean or anything—she just told me two stories of women she knew who were on Prozak, and how fake and annoyingly happy they seemed.  Not that I'm on Prozak, but still.

She’s a great friend to me, but sometimes I wish I had someone to talk to who understood this stuff.  It can feel very lonely at times.  

Lost

There is no point asserting and reasserting what the heart cannot believe.

--Aleksander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn

Henry Street, early 1990s

I have considered you as

I watch the creeping

mould overtake the

fading paint on

the walls.

As the dampness of an

unventilated room drowns

each molecule of

air.

And I wonder which certainty

chased conviction away.

But whatever took me down the

other road—

it becomes simply another irrelevant,

better left unknown.

And just when I thought I had made

myself old over wishing for

something to whisper

like a kind stranger into

my ear,

            I understand, and I do not

            blame you

I find myself catching the edge of

every movement of

atmosphere even the leaves

have forgotten.

Listening,

waiting.

But you will not send me any dreams tonight,

when there are already so few left believing.

So it is here any chance for 

you to find me 

again.

It is here.

Just me and the mould,

listening,

waiting...

Release

You always feel when you look it straight in the eye that you could have put more into it, could have let yourself go and dug harder.

--Emily Carr