"How about, 'Sex, Lies, and Burning Guitars OR How I Spent My Summer Vacation'?"

[Diana]: maybe she'll say, "i'll call you, okay?"
[Lena]: yeah!
[Diana]: or
[Diana]: "But I'll call you"
[Lena]: or
[Lena]: "Don't let the door hit your ass"

I've spent more time than usual in fiction today - "But WHY would she lie?" I ask, sandwich forgotten, passerbys with fluffy dogs irrelevant. We pause for a moment to discuss how creepy it can be when people speak of their fictional characters as if they're real.

But I'd be lying if I said that my heart didn't speed up as I wrote how Nick begins to find out what has happened.

I've spent more time than usual on beam today - "Are you implying that I just saved your life?" I ask, putting my hand to her back for the next back handspring. "Yes," she says with a laugh.

I've spent just enough time in reality today - the four of us in one room, a conversation that began with Heroes and then tears and rough days and then turned, somehow, to bra sizes.

"At least you know what you want," my mom said this morning. "Yes, but I don't think it helps," I said.

But it does. It makes things clearer, although harder. I know what I want. And so I must do the opposite.

The rest is silence.

autumn lens

I'd thought that I certainly couldn't look more attractive than I did last night: sopping wet hair smelling of dye, glasses rubbed hastily on shirt, saturated jeans sticking to legs. Today could be a close second, though: messy hair air-dryed after rain, slow blinks of bleary eyes, purple socks, chipped nail polish, and still, the glasses.


Between the black eye and running out of right eye contacts, this is the first time I've worn my glasses for more than a day since I was fifteen. Sure, this pair isn't quite as round. But I can't quite shake those ninth-grade connotations: uncomfortable, uncertain, unpretty.


"You look different now with glasses," Kim says as we walk under late-afternoon sun on the Rocky Point track. "I remember when you had the bangs..."


"And really long hair..."


"Yeah!"

"I was such a loser," I say, watching my shadow grow taller on blue track.

"No, no! You were a dork," she says with a smile, "but so am I."

I still am.

We begin to run and my legs move quickly through the mind's fog.

I always think of goals, a purpose to this - the same difficulty with nights at Spins this summer - and by lap three I remember the Thanksgiving Day Races and that there's one I've never tried: the five mile. It might be lame compared to Joy's marathon in Athens, I think as I round a curve, but it sounds just about right for me ahora.

Glasses bounce on the bridge of my nose. I ran at Ridgewood with glasses, around and around the indoor track at Suffolk West, in the woods with Kelsey as snow began to fall.

Feet bounce to the beat in my ears. I hear less, see more. The breathing's more than all right though the training's been less than regular...

I hit that final curve - "One more!" I call to her as she walks - today will be one of those perfect kicks -

Do it for yourself.

I'm breathless but the best I've felt in awhile. I saw all of the bulky black braces while I ran but today my legs are strong. The knees turn in and the scar's pink as ever, but these are my legs and this is my strength.

And isn't that lovely?

raindrops

I want to always be this girl.

such a day

Between el dia de los muertos and festive skulls (I can't believe I ran out!), delicious wraps, free hugs, papers placed in my mailbox offering such free hugs, wrestling, napkins with professions of love for me, M&M's picked from trail mix, having another week to plot where the heck this novel is going, the blue bruise now wrapping under my eye, the hint of an excellent approaching weekend, sore legs, Tanya's e-mail about parentheses, real laughter between young and old, the ability to finally just relax and hang out, having one last year to break free (so they say), a new toothbrush, and one of the two ninja parking spots...

This life is treating me pretty well, you know?

Just to note

"For the record, you're still beautiful with a shiner."

Well, thank you! :-)

small roads with small names

Nothing will change the highways I've taken. I could care less for gas or miles or money.

It was always worth the drive.

And now?

Dark fields, stars, one headlight that flickers on and off.

Would you believe me if I said I was happy?

soft, round

One's enough to take the edge off this night. White dashes flick past - past - past. Goo Goo Dolls sing the soundtrack for this short drive.

And you're not thinking 'bout tomorrow
'cause you were the same as me.

Everything so soft, so round. Friends so close to me minutes before and they will be again shortly.

This aloneness is all right.

When I step out into the parking lot to walk back, the cold wind hits my face, taunts my strides and takes my hair. The same wind as a year ago. The one that knew, The world you are living in is not real.

Swipe in, open door, I nod to wind and step inside.

Perhaps still not quite real, these situations and circumstances here. But closer, I think with beautiful music still singing softly.

This is my life now.

And I'll become
what you became to me.

That girl is so dangerous

"You look even more brawlic," KC notes.

I'll take that.

raising everything

completely dare be beautiful

-e.e. cummings

An hour ago the shoulder of my UTEP T-shirt was wet from her tears. I lose it altogether when we dance - the room's so warm, our shouts and music raising everything anyway -

"I need a miracle!" we sing again and again, and she's smiling for real and I'm sorry to keep anyone awake but we need this -

I pause briefly when he needs to talk - What should I do? he wants to know - Be who you are, I say sincerely - and then we dance, we dance -

And right then, what more could I want?

Not surprisingly,

Ed Gal knows what's what once again: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27201084/