I Wish I Was Him

It's dark and rainy today. There was a wind tunnel on the front porch blowing my hair into my eyes while I waited for the bus.

James called last night and a tiny part of me fell apart, jumping up from my seat in Mike's room and sprinting down the hall. I thrust my phone into Karen's face and she said, "Calm down, find your inhaler, go tell Shiree."

I called him back and we spoke for what I think might be the last time. He said, "I've decided I can't take it here anymore. I'm leaving on the 14th." And maybe a month ago, I would have been sad, but last night I was just relieved, hanging up and lying face down on my bed, my heart trembling from all of the Albuterol.

Today I went to the library and stayed there exactly long enough to listen to: "Wave of Mutilation," "I Bleed," and "Here Comes Your Man." I checked out six books of poetry and walked to work where I listened to my three favorite Kathleen Hanna songs: "I Wish I Was Him," "Heartbeat with a Message to Mike Watt," and "Steppin' Up to the Mic." There's something safe and comforting about Kathleen's solo songs, but at the same time they remain deeply powerful and dangerous for me. When I listen, I never know whether I'm going to sing along or start crying.

Today in Mary's class we had a writing workshop. We listened to mediocre music and wrote about whatever we wanted to. I wrote five pages that ended like this:

It's around one thirty when Dave's truck pulls up. Kayla hugs me and says, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," runs down the front steps - still in her pajamas - and they drive away. I have trouble sleeping that night. I can't stop thinking about Kayla - the two of us sitting on the floor of her mother's room, sharing a slice of cassata cake, the strawberries cut up like little hearts.

I wish that I could really write.

I've been reading a lot of poetry lately and sometimes I think that reading poetry is one of my favorite things to do. I've been writing lately. Not poetry, but sentence fragments. I've been trying to reconstruct and, sometimes, deconstruct my own History. I am trying to make sense of myself. Most of this happens in sentence fragments, like this:

Remember February, 2003:
The year that Dave was frosting cakes part-time and talking about dropping out?
Britt and I were planning our own escape-
we had it all mapped out on a white board.
I woke up on Valentine's Day to find a stolen garden gnome on my front steps.
Later, I broke up with him (for good this time - except later we got back together.)
Dave made me a cake, frosted: "Congratulations, Kathee" on it
and we threw a dance party at my house and Kayla dyed her hair in the kitchen sink and Jason broke the gnome while dancing.
Later on, Britt's steady hands pieced him back together.

And even though it is my own writing, it will never reflect my feelings and memories quite as accurately as this stanza from "Archipelago" by Marge Piercy:

Yet always we do meet
as we grow older and more
ourselves, we meet
flashing in and out
of trouble, we meet
as the decades swell and buckle,
openly in cafes, clandestinely
on corners, at apartments
camped in overnight
scattered through ramshackle cities,
we meet and always
you are one of the friends
I think of in my life.