Usagi's blog

(Written in the truck.)

i.
I’ve given up trying to make conversation with my dad.
My mind’s flitting back, back and forward again,
flicking from moment to moment, playing-card memories
spilling from my shaking hands. I’m buzzing,
coming down from a root-beer-
high.

ii.
Where does body, mind merge? You know
the person you talked to online.
Whispered comments, but more said
in the language of movement, of hands.
How long have you been waiting for this?

iii.
You asked if it was okay, and I said
I don’t know. I didn’t. I’d never
done that before. I don’t
have anything to compare against. “Okay”
is relative.

You said I’m sorry
but you shouldn’t be.
I said It’s alright and I
meant it.

iv.
I was as unsteady as you were when we stood up;
I didn’t show it.
I think I was more nervous than you
at the beginning. Could you tell?

v.
This is all new to me.

Sign right here, sign your life away.
Sign on the dotted line.
We could use your hands,
we could use your eyes,
and we’re gonna take your mind. We’ll pay
fifteen dollars a day.
We know you didn’t need it anyway.

You don’t have a choice.
You don't have a voice.
But if you did, we’re sure that you’d agree:
yes, you’re a mindless drone
but you’ll never be alone.
You’ve got a whole world’s worth of company.

Sign right here, sign your life away.
We’ll assure you it’s okay.
Talent like yours we always need.
Score another for corporate greed!
Sign, sign, sign your life away.

Sign right here, sign on the dotted line.
We’ll assure you that it’s fine.
Resign your life to nine-to-five
and you’ll forget you were alive.
Sign, sign, sign on the dotted line.

You don’t have a choice.
You don’t have a voice.
Call 1-800-SHUT UP and we’ll put you on hold.
You’re almost sixty now
and you’re wondering how

i.
I’ve heard rules are made
to be broken
and it’s true, ‘cause
their only purpose is to keep us in line
and a universe made of lines

is
per
fect
ly
flat.

Let me decide what the rules are
or better yet,
have none at all.
No lines.

A universe

per
fect
ly

blank.

ii.
There’s a certain beauty
in nothing, in whiteness,
in paper without a stroke
of ink.
Nothing is perfect.
Something
can never come close.

‘Course, there’s no such thing
as nothing.

iii.
I live in complications.
My rules twist and tangle with each other,
twining into
roads I stumble down
barefoot, shoes in hand—
parallel lines that always meet
in the distance.
Why do I try to pin it down,
catch my writhing world
between my palms, within my head?
It’s too big to hold.

iv.
Nothing takes up no space at all.

v.
No wonder I retreat to the
safety
(the safety?)
of the world I set up for myself,
the one where what I think
is the law, so huge,

How much of it is circumstance?

Not me, just some coincidence of right-place-right-time, some trick of the coordinates of my footsteps. What part do I play

in my life?

I like to think that there's no such thing as fate. That I'm the only one controlling where I go.

Roll the die. Move me forward two squares.

No wonder I jumped at the chance to steer myself. To test the limits of the rules, to see how far I could go.

Too far.

What do I do without direction? Where do I go

when I've strayed from the path?

I skip three spaces to the right.

No rules here. No boundaries. Nothing keeping me in, nothing keeping me

from falling.

Testing the limits only to find they aren't there.

One square back.

No wonder I've set up these rules for myself, these rigid walls I pound against

because I know they'll hold.

Didn't realize I was so easy to read.

So easy to control.

Roll the die.

You’ve waited so long,
waited—for me.
But am I worth waiting for?
You’ve witnessed firsthand
my cruelty
and I’ve been cruel before.

My answer to your questions
so nervous new
has given me a power
over you.
And I’ve hurt you in the past.
This won’t be the last.

What we so shyly started
in the theater’s glow
began with conversations
from months ago.
You gotta remember what I’ve done since then.
Do you really want to go through that again?

You’ve waited so long,
waited—for me,
the one who leads you on.
You’ve waited so long
for me to agree
and just as soon I’m gone.
(gone again.)

My answer to your questions
so nervous new
has given me a power
over you.
And I’ve hurt you in the past.
This won’t be the last.
(just warning you.)

My addiction, my religion. This tiny screen, this pixel-world I can’t stand to be away from. I worship late at night, when everyone else is asleep. Should be asleep. I thought she was asleep.

There wasn’t anger in her voice, just betrayal. How could you. Tired, bleeding. Shock and disappointment.

“I’m sorry,” I said into the dark. Own up. “I did it. I’m sorry.” No response. Darkness. “I’m sorry.”

Sorry now. Wasn’t sorry when I did it.

Staring so long at the online world. Couldn’t break away. Didn’t want to, didn’t think of what would happen when I was found in the incriminating glow of my own secret ritual. Bathed in the light of my drug.

i.
I never drank my City Market ginger ale
smuggled into the already-dark theater.
After the credits started rolling
and the lights came up, startling us back into reality
and we staggered outside, dazed,
weak-legged and grinning,

I found it dripping through my bag
and onto the floor.

Even my notebook was soaked.
I didn’t care.

ii.
I want to tell Caila, I’m sorry
for pushing past her in the dark.
I pretended I hadn’t seen her,
hadn’t known she was there.
Really: my night vision is fine.
It’s just there was someone
I wanted to sit next to.

iii.
I think you were as nervous as I was.

iv.
I’m so high and elated right now,
floating, flying, feet not on the ground.
Who needs drugs?
I’m still grinning,
braces flashing in the weak light of my room.
[I love this feeling.]

v.
We missed the last scene of the movie.
Maybe one day I’ll rent it and find out how it ends.

Facial--a very female thing to do. Specifically, my mother. She brought me along and I lay on a short bed with special lumps in it and got lotion’d and mint’d and rose-water’d to within an inch of my life, which is a silly expression. After an hour we wobbled out, glowing slightly and smelling like an explosion in an aromatherapy shop.

You’re too young to know you’re a lemon--there’s a few moments right after I wake up when the most random, nonsensical phrases flash through my mind, and I never remember them because in that half-awake state “idiots incarnate” doesn’t make any less sense than “pick up the milk on the way out, will you, dear?” This was the only one I could recall to write down.

SNAFU--Small Ninjas Always Fuck Utensils, of course. This is one of the few things I can remember from my TDI Quotes Wall, which has sadly gone AWOL.

Immortality comes in being remembered
but such is the cruel irony of everlasting life:
we can’t be alive
to live it.
We’ll be dead. We’ll be corpses
rotting under some monument of our deeds
as perceived by those who write us
into textbooks
to be read and studied and cursed
by students a century from now.
Those historical figures we’re taught about:
long gone.
They don’t know they’re part of our curriculum,
though they might’ve once thought they would be.
In death, life stops.
Consciousness stops. Awareness stops.
Only some outside view of our character, our deeds
can remain, carved into a tombstone,
printed on student-defaced pages.
Ah, but how is that different from life?
People see only the outside—what we project.
Their view of us is what matters in their mind
and after we’re gone, that’s all that’s left.
We die. Their views live on, unaltered,
except by the erosion of time.
Our opinion of ourselves is lost

You who arrived on my porch
with your hair you cut yourself
and dyed dark brown
yesterday. You’re afraid
it’s too dark; that it looks purple
[it does, but
it suits you].
You with your long-voweled voice
that slurs through syllables
without the help of alcohol;
I recognize it instantly on the phone.
You, so embarrassed on Sunday,
you who came out to me
through a friend who already knew.
You who sat, one leg up,
on the couch next to me,
confessing your crush on a senior girl
while I fiddled with the Wii condom
and nodded, trying to convey
I understood.
We slid a Monty Python DVD into the player
and let The Man Who Speaks In Anagrams
erase the awkwardness between us.
You, you who tried on so many identities,
you who might’ve found the one
that fits. I hope so.
I met you in preschool
[you hair was lighter then].
There’s pictures of us side-by-side,
arms around the other’s shoulders,
hearts painted on our cheeks
for Valentine’s Day.

i.
How easy it is to ignore these
hidden tensions,
these secrets-under-the-surface
everyone knows.
Miss Oblivious to the last.

ii.
Fine. It's fine.
I'm done, I've given up--
I can't live on this
stomach-flipping adrenaline:--
I'll leave that to you.
You know what you want. And I--
I don't, not anymore.

iii.
Come Sunday, I'll be at camp,
three weeks computer-less
surrounded by small children
and nonsensical Girl Scout rituals
I never learned.
I still don't know why I'm doing this,
but I'm bound by obligation:
too late now.

iv.
When did half my life become online?
I type as fast as I think, while
I still can't always speak.
I shade to red when eyes turn to me.
My words scatter in my mouth--yet
in this comforting anonymity
I can say what I want.

His two-year-old cousins danced around him and he found it hard to believe he was ever that innocent.

Every time the verb "benkyoshimasu" came up, she couldn't stop giggling until the proctor leaned over and asked if everything was okay.

I spent two days studying for a test that took less than an hour and I'm only just starting to think of this course as a waste of time.

The difference between she and I is she wouldn't regret saying what only I did.

I want to plead insanity for the events of the past year.

Why are our futures determined by graphite and bubbles and number two pencils?

I was once that girl to my left, the one who hunts for the right letters on the library keyboard and thinks all poetry should rhyme.

Maybe I don't need to be
just one person.
Maybe it's okay if I'm--not--if I'm--more--
maybe it's okay to change [adjust!] with
this constant garbled input of information
To Be Processed.
Maybe I can be different selves
at once.

Feist concert, Sunday night--
I'm sprawled atop a curl-cornered blanket on the grass
with middle school's graduation dress cutting off my breath
[who needs corsets?].
Last year, so timid, I sat in the gym,
legs crossed, half-hearing awards
announced and handed to classmates who didn't remember me.
This year, I'm looking at the sun
and watching conversation-threads
tangle on without me.
Spot The Difference. I can't.

We're so helpless
We're slaves to our impulses
We're afraid of our emotions...

Don't dare let anything out where it can hurt me, incriminate me,
make me vulnerable and open to attack
[no one attacks but me].
I'm so afraid of what won't happen, so unprepared for what does--

The tightrope-walker stands with tiptoed poise atop her familiar platform. The crowd roars. They want to watch her fall, see her white-clad body tumble to the sawdust and packed dirt of the ring. She dips a defiant bow.

The girl uncovers the bark-shorn maple pole lying prone among the ferns. One side is encrusted with dirt; she grasps it anyway. The slackline curls into a mocking smile. Deer flies swirl around her head. The sun attempts to light her hair aflame.

The daughter muffles the mouthpiece of the phone with a clumsy hand. The girl on the other end can still hear her friend's tired voice, punctuating the mother's deeper explanations, rising with frustration: "I don't know what you mean." The friend reflects, listening hard: it seems nobody wants to understand.

The tightrope-walker shifts her careful weight, steps onto the line. The crowd goes silent. She's near the beginning, the steadiest point. But further out...Concentrate. Concentrate. She hasn't fallen yet.

She loves perfection; she craves simplicity.
She wants the world to collapse into one equation, one neat algebraic expression
that explains everything.
She’s never found it.

She was born into complications,
loops of complexity that catch on her fingernails and give under her feet.
Strip them away
and there’s nothing left.
Perfection is meaningless by definition.