The Book of Emeline

In regards to an F&V paper:
"Maybe it will 'flow' better this way..... although even smoothies are chunky at times."

In regards to The Future:
"Why can't we both take a year off and make money doing nothing and then go to Bingo and be roommates?"
-I can't think of anything better! :-)

driving home

Arm dangles out the window, indifferent. (But this is summer.)

Stations come in clearer at night. Blue and white digital screen pauses at nearly every number. (You wouldn't want to overlook a chance, would you?)

Silent lightning blinks but the tension is dull, distant. The first wind before the storm sighs.

I am restless, too.

Low murmur and buzz from softly swaying trees - not urgent but not silent.

Headlights on the curve and my foot leaves the gas. AC/DC's on the highway to hell, but still I hear the buzz beyond the noise -

Too many words.

I need to listen to the night.

These dreams both nights:

Menace at the doors or the window. I do not know why. I run back and forth - but where to?

I am never alone. They look at me calmly. One continues to read.

The answer is up. But I never see myself take the stairs.

fiction.

When I was younger - nine, ten, eleven, twelve - I'd sit down at the laptop on the dining room table on Saturday mornngs. I had no real interest in the Internet, found instant communication awkward, and instead did what came so naturally then.

I wrote.

I wrote epic tales of the Key West Suns. There must be over thirty stories. As Lena remembers, one was 200 pages. Size 14 font, single-spaced.

And then I started middle school and my writing began to turn to gymnastics tales that were essentially actual people with different names and semi-fictitious situations.

And then long fiction faded into bursts of poetry. And then I don't remember fiction at all. I began a few stories here and there, got to ten or forty pages, and stopped. I did not know how they should end. So I ended before they had the chance to.

At sixteen, everything became real. Friends, night skies, burning limbs, thoughts of love, tired mornings, and the tension already - here-or-elsewhere, this-or-more.

It's been that way for six years. I needed to live instead of spinning fiction from more fiction. What did I know, anyway?

I wanted to write in fiction so many times this year, hoping to maybe be slightly less vague through clear metaphors, but it happened again - that ending thing. I still don't know.

So I settle for flashes - urgent writings to be done in a few hours or a few days where something happens and ends. Like the writing I get paid for: start, story, done.

Because what do I know, anyway? I'd like to think a little bit more, at least.

I woke up this morning and realized I'd dreamt of love with someone who does not exist and unrealistic monologues and movie danger. Not grad school, not whatever-this-is, not strange-events-that-I-somewhat-dread-to-cover-but-know-will-be-fine.

What a relief it was: to dream in fiction.

relentless momentum (still)

"This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object."

I reject calm, it seems. So much has changed. Do you see that? Even my face, the one that won't convince a stranger that I'm over 16 without proof. The one that's nearly always amused, shifting theatrically, or listening intently.

I saw it tonight in the movie theater bathroom. I saw it when I walked into the gym this fall, winter, spring, glancing at the mirror - after scanning to see if my shorts length was appropriate - before looking down inevitably to the scar on my knee -

The face: emotionless, observant, and yes - older.

We left this place more or less equal, and now I see it split down the middle - those with nothing, floating, searching, grasping. And those sprinting. Dreams. Distance. Desire.

And I am in the middle, split.

So much is wrong with every choice and I will still want to run, but the slightly amused, slightly tired look of these eyes in that older face shrug at me:

It does not matter.

moving the stars

"...Human speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to move the stars."
-Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

I could be wrong.

And today is just lovely: resoundingly deep blue sky. A mind decided. A pulse that tingles eagerly now, not deliriously. A light yet solid touch of the hand in mine, swinging.

And I could be wrong. I could be wrong.

And I will always wonder.

But now, I will see.