Shit, Autumn

I can't explain it, but I should start with me being drunk and not crying as I'm reading through every conversation that I have documented, all the miserable drunk nights of your's, the fear of marriage, the ambition and excitement of trips to Europe and Northern Africa, all the times you told me you couldn't stand him, the fear in my feet of going where they wanted right beside yours. There's this thing that doesn't seem right with what happened, you dropping off and my mental state growing worse. There's all these things that my brain doesn't do, all these things that my hands don't register, I can't seem to figure out if it's my heart or something else because I can't seem to connect on any level with other humans, and the only time I ever really have was with you, and maybe that's why my jeans are still sewn with threads of your hair maybe that's why I bite my nails, maybe that's why I can't wipe the smell of you from my clothes, maybe that's why I'm drunk, maybe I've fucked up everything.

There was this conversation that we had, it started because you were telling me things and I wasn't remembering them and you told me that I had been acting "cloudy/weird" lately, and for some reason in my post-drunkeness that seems so fucking important. Like it was just the beginning of my personal destruction, like you were helping me find myself, crawl out of this cave I call home and when you cut me off, all progress was cut off, like fuck me, all I want is to revisit your old blogs, the ones where you called yourself Penelope, the ones that broke my heart but gave me hope.

There was this one conversation that we had, in the middle of it you told me not to write about it, but I'm going to write now: I was drunk and just wanted to talk to you, hear your voice but I didn't want you to know how drunk I was, I told you "happy birthday" and you thought I was your kid brother, and I was just wanted to tell you that I don't feel the same as I used to, but I feel far worse, I just wanted to tell you that I'd do anything to see you again, but I settled for curiosity on why he felt the way he felt about me in the beginning. I have the conversation written down in my notebook.

There was this one conversation that we had, you were drunk on wine and I wanted to see you but I was seventeen and I didn't have a driver's license, I told you to do what your hands and eyes and legs and feet and chest wanted to do, clearly it was to cut me off, get married without ever planning on telling me.

There was this one conversation that I had with myself, it went like this:

Go home and go to sleep, you'll wake up hungover but you'll wake up.

For Penelope

Susan never fell in  love with me;
She fell in love with the way I write about you.

Rum

Hungover on the twenty-first of  December, my fingers taste like cigarettes and for some reason I'm reading her kid sister's blog, scrolling through pieces of my own poems, reading a re-post of "Into The Thicket" that has the spacing all fucked up, the computer screen is a terrible thing for a hangover, but my curiosity kept me looking. And every now and then I felt like I was getting glimpses of three years back, glimpses of a time when my mind didn't need to be consumed by substance to get me through the night, or the day. I'll be back tonight, or maybe tomorrow morning with more rum.

What I really want to know is: Does she have any idea that every one of them is about her sister? And maybe what I want to know even more is: Does her sister know that they're about her?

My Lovely Friend

I'm happy for you.