October 2009
8 posts
i will remember her:
October first. the day i was to see Bayside play a home show at Irving Plaza, the band that seemed to know the highs and lows, the lilts and curls of our rollercoaster. i will remember the sketch sent, the apology text, the opening of that door. it meant everything because it meant i could heal and she would help me do it. it meant everything because it meant a break in the...
i will remember her:
all the times she took care of me like i took care of her. for every late night vigilance outside her door, every cab ride i bought because of her train schedule impatience, every time i held her hair back, for every cancelled plan and held hand and kissed tear, there she was, holding me on Lexington, wanting to kill that girl at Subculture, reciting movies back to me,...
i will remember her:
sleepy eyes as she rolled out of bed at 7:45 to take me to the train for work. the elevator stopped for us unkindly, we shuffled into the box, she leaned against the frame of it, and i leaned into her, tousling her hair. like a cat, she pushed her head into me, face slack and tired, eyelashes lowered, caring enough to do this day after day. the car cold, defrosting as we held...
i will remember her:
on mondays most of all. monday nights and House is on. a show that framed us, laced our drinks and stories. when she couldn’t watch it, i taped it, brought it over, saw it on dvd later in the week. but mostly we watched it together that second semester; she had no night class. we learned our lips and hands, the skin of our sides, by the television broadcast. we needed...
i will remember her:
playing pong with tangerine nails, Family Guy on like static noise. we played a lot, just the two of us, or whoever else happened to be there, sometimes Mike, sometimes more. it felt like a college throwback, Asher Roth through the computer speakers, ‘that party last night was awfully crazy, i wish we’d taped it.’ she almost always owned the table, except...
i will remember her:
before i knew her, when she was just a vendor with peanuts, and i was just a ballpark fan with an excuse. i’d noticed her once before but this time i saw her circling the stands and thought, what have i to lose? i must have spent ten minutes with my nerves shaking me, repeating that question, standing behind the pillar at 203, before i worked up the balls to buy peanuts...
i will remember her:
in food. in how she loves pork chops, breaded, and i hate them. in her choice of Chinese, the same order every time, in fortune cookies. in Taco Bell and Wendy’s, fast food i don’t eat. in crepes and bubble tea, in Cascarino’s, the best pizza i’ve ever had. in how she dislikes fish but loved seafood risotto. in Outback, in Applebee’s, in...
1 tag
i will remember her:
the day after Halloween, that saturday night, i couldn’t make my train home, i had to stay the night, i felt like a horrible imposition. she went to a party, i watched her dog, i fell asleep in her bed. at two in the morning i woke to her hands trailing my side, her behind me. for the first time i knew her skin so intimately, a surprise that floored me, i thought i was...
September 2009
29 posts
i will remember her:
tentative after our first date movie, not ready to call it a night, she drove us to the rooftop of my first job, a movie theatre. i wanted to share that with her, it had been a home away from home. we stared at the sky and found no stars, just rolling shifts of navy and darker. we talked but didn’t touch, the tension painted us. i ordered domino’s to the roof and...
1 tag
i will remember her:
new haircut in the dead of winter, the snow all around us. we went to the dorms at her school to pick up her friend. she wanted to know what i thought of her hair. i kissed her. she smiled. i kissed her again. we made heat in the car, amplified by keeping our clothes on but our hands never off each other as we waited for her friend to come to the car. that’s what i...
i will remember her:
cornered between her door and the hallway wall, as i laughed, close to her, half exasperated: ‘just pick! order in, go out?’ indecisive as always, we settled on Outback, recalling our goal. we grabbed the keys, hit the lights, and rolled up hungry. but the Outback triumph was bittersweet: when we got back, the dog had eaten my medication, my makeup—and my...
i will remember her:
walking past a Sephora in the city, remarking offhand that she wanted to learn to use black eyeliner, one of the few makeups i used. i grinned, happy to help, toured her through the Urban Decay section. along with the eyeliner, we wound up with three eyeshadows and god knows what else that amounted to a hundred dollars, though she didn’t know that. it was worth it,...
i will remember her:
texting me as i had my hands full, cooking with my best friend at her boyfriend’s dinner party. she was running late and her road rage was full throttle; the traffic was slow enough for her to send news updates. ‘it’s a freakin retard parade on the LIE,’ she wrote, all tact. she went on and had us in stitches as i switched between the chicken, the...
i will remember her:
leaning up against the railing at our corner of section 204, not far behind home plate. i was there with my best friend, we always made our own game of the game: boozeball. we’d drink a certain number of seconds for a run, a foul, so forth. she’d laugh at us, joking it’d be the only way you could get her at work after hours. she rested her heavy beer carrier...
i will remember her:
with her short, short hair, her badge of pride when i met her. she’d shaved it all off for charity in honour of her late brother. raised a lot of money for St. Baldrick’s, the only girl to shear her long locks that chilly spring day in front of the cafe. i hadn’t known her, hadn’t seen it, but i would have loved to be there; i swore that this time...
i will remember her:
browsing the racks of Forever 21. i hated shopping but i couldn’t get enough of her. she’d surprised me that morning, some weekend, out of slumber, and invited me to the mall. i fought off sleep and so we went. in her arms, her new winter coat: blue plaid, fuzzy inside, and i laughed only in my head. it looked better on, everything looks good on her. i got two...
i will remember her:
in certain words, arrangements of consonants and vowels and spaces that will forever carry the undertone, the unbearable lightness of her. Neruda’s Sonnet XVII will never mean more to me than the feeling of sharing it with her. Sunsets and Car Crashes will never mean anything other than the feeling of arriving on the train as she ends my day, all kinds of beautiful....
1 tag
i will remember her:
every time i drive by the stadium. i’d been avoiding it; i haven’t been there since that night. but last night, there i was, following my friend home. i cried the whole way. i talked to her out loud, told her i still loved her, even though she wasn’t there to hear me, and even though she hasn’t been to the stadium in over a month. she moved back to Queens, back to our sheets,...
i will remember her:
as we rolled up to the mall near my house. we had been craving Outback Steakhouse for weeks and we were stoked to have found the time to go while she was out east on the island. as we drove closer, anticipation as palpable as our hunger, we realized: i was mistaken, it was a Boulder Creek. our hopes dashed, we settled for Friday’s. we vowed that soon, soon we would...
1 tag
i will remember her:
excitement over arts and crafts night. we’d talked about it for hours, breeding nostalgia. i brought over beads, hemp, inks, watercolours, acrylics, papers, sculpture bases, glass paint, sealers—everything i could think of. on her dining table we laid it all out, decided to spray paint glass in greens and reds and violets. the red didn’t survive the evening....
1 tag
i will remember her:
for our last kiss, though i didn’t know it then. we were driver’s side of her car out back behind the stadium on her birthday after work. my usual spot on her door sill, she in her seat, just tore open the birthday gifts; a Fox tee, sign language books, concert tickets. she said she loved them all, and she kissed me, and we kissed in ways that are seared into my...
1 tag
i will remember her:
being so patient as she tried to teach me Halo—me, whose gamer experience was limited to Spyro circa some five years ago—because i’d wanted to share in what she loved. i was awful. i couldn’t turn and walk at the same time. that sort of awful. but she was so patient, so patient with me. until the third hour. then, every time i turned around, she was...
1 tag
i will remember her:
rolling away from me to the sounds of You, Me, and the Bourgeoisie as my alarm rang clear through her bedroom at seven-thirty am every time. every time i’d groan, hit snooze, and curl into her back, her neck, for just five more minutes. she’d press against me and many mornings we traded silent wishes with our sleepy hands in hopes that the currency would mean i...
i will remember her:
lying on her stomach in bed, propped up, lounging, and with slow, steady hands she marked my skin, designs in pastels and neons. my left forearm glowed with the luminescent ink of her work, i’d smiled because of her freeform freedom. after the incident of the Sharpie and her couch, i’d bought milky pens. my skill was not in freeform, but in replicas. she was a...
i will remember her:
sitting, swinging slowly on the wooden swing, beside me in our second summer, still may. she was fresh out of work and tired as hell that night. sleepless, restless, she often longed for dreamless sleep. instead she’d settled on applebee’s and then come over anyway. my head was on her shoulder and her hand was on my thigh. the stars were hidden by clouds and trees...
i will remember her:
walking toward the door, alert: ‘i’ll be right back.’ wouldn’t tell me where she was going, wouldn’t let me come. she housed a whirlwind in her body, the weather vane’s swing could have been caused by anything. alone, i waited for her return, anxious. in fifteen minutes she was back, a half-moon half-sad smile. ‘the food store was closed,’ she said, ‘no brownie mix.’ she’d...
i will remember her:
drunk and waiting for our train to her place, we were early or it was too late to care. everything was alive, the lights and sounds of fast food and newspapers, a city full of insomniacs or worse. we made friends with an MTA cop and his police dog Scar. we must have seemed sober because neither of us look legal. she scratched behind Scar’s ears; we smirked at each...
i will remember her:
through buzzed haze as we walked manhattan back from a march saturday showing of Avenue Q. arm in mine, she joked, remarking i still hadn’t given her back her black pants i’d borrowed in january. i said i didn’t intend to. the solution was a broadway Billabong dressing room and late night laughter. i knew some things, like those pants, had no replacements. buying her a...
1 tag
i will remember her:
like it would never change. there she’ll be, waiting for me, playing with games on her samsung alias, standing out front of Friday’s in penn. she’ll look like she doesn’t notice me, or maybe she doesn’t, but when i’m beside her she smiles and a small candle is lit under her skin. she’ll put her phone away, i’ll turn off my...
i will remember her:
in the hotel room the morning after my birthday. she’d felt ill late that night, we’d barely slept, the television droning in black and white peripheral. when the sun rose, we drew back the curtains and stared down dozens of stories to the honking matchbox cars on the way to early church lit up like spring-shot ladybugs. we shut the curtains tight and laid...
1 tag
i will remember her:
laughing at me from the bathroom because of my double bowl of mac and cheese. a wednesday, we readied for the first of our Halloween parties. over her shoulder, i met the eyes of her reflection in the mirror as they formed exasperated moons: she couldn’t sort out the corset pinafore. laughing back at her, i put down my food and laced her up. between mock-hatred and...
i will remember her: that next morning, lying in her bed trying to keep quiet, to not wake her mom, but the time wore on, and we did, and we got up shyly dressing, going down those heavily carpeted stairs full of our own new light. unknowing and unable to know, her mom smiled at me for the first and last time i’d meet her. her mom made us chocolate chip pancakes and the morning that shone...
1 tag
i will remember her:
in her old bedroom, at her mom’s house, after we’d gotten home from watching Mirrors, where she’d hid her head from the film and held my hand tight. her dog slept on the trundle, me beside her on the bed in the dog’s place. i knew she wanted me to kiss her first, i could feel it, and it was such a now-or-never moment. i looked up in the dark to find her levelling,...
1 tag
i will remember her:
stepping inside from off the balcony, the bite of winter behind her, the gust of air though small she brought with her made me shiver. the smoke all but dissipated, just a loose cloud behind her smile. her dimples showed as i went to meet her, we kissed and the cold from her lips was delicious. she closed the slider, put her crisp coat on the chair, and we curled arm in arm...
1 tag
i will remember her:
sleeping beside me, i was at her back nearly always, one arm around her waist and she’d hold it. i kissed novels into her neck, her shoulders. she liked to run her feet down my ankles to meet my toes, testing out the length of us. she smelled like orchids and sour mix and fresh laundry. in her sleep she made hushes of noises, a language i loved but could not speak, so...
i will remember her:
on the way to get her haircut by my hairdresser. we walked there; it was close by and beautiful out, mid-afternoon heat. seeing her gave me butterflies: it became our motif. i folded a hundred origami butterflies, gave them to her in a box that cradled a necklace with half a monarch in it. i have the other half. some people say poets pay too much attention to the weather,...
i will remember her:
sitting in the cab beside me, my body curled into her left side, her arm around me, hand in my hair, comforting. it was the early afternoon the day after my birthday. i was stressed from the ordeal with hotel complications and anything involving money makes me feel inadequate. she knew without asking and she held me as we headed downtown to a hole-in-the-wall crepe place. all...
i will remember her:
the first night we went to the city together, last august: she was underage, but my friend got her into Bourbon Street on a favour. at the door, the bouncer looked her over hard, decided he liked her breasts. let her in, hit on her, but she begged off as my girlfriend. on our way back, we sat on the station floor, separate trains then. ‘i don’t want to be your...
August 2009
24 posts
1 tag
i will remember her:
at the beginning, when i was still resisting, when i’d only seen her once, maybe twice. i was at my desk at work and my phone buzzed against my monitor. flipped open, it showed a picture text of her stomach, beautiful. along with it were the words: “i’m not usually this forward.” i liked that she was, but i’d deleted the photo all the same. later...
i will remember her:
wandering beside me in the food store by her apartment, aisles unfamiliar to me. i had a recipe in hand that i wouldn’t let her see. dairy aisle, frozen aisle, baking aisle. chocolate, chocolate, more chocolate, two ramekins. at her place, she watched television and checked on me with curious kisses now and again as i baked. a surprise: lava cakes, her favourite...
i will remember her:
with her head on the floor of my best friend’s bathroom. a night full of fun but also of reminders of past monsters; in small hours, she drank to put them back beneath the bed of her mind. she liked to sleep like that when she got trashed: on the bathroom floor, without pants. a slow sun rising let me move her to bed. when she couldn’t sleep through the wailing of...
i will remember her:
walking downtown on the way to crepes. on the way, we stopped in on one of those low-price “fashionista” hotspots, i think it was Rainbow, and she wove through the racks toward the sunglasses by the cashier. rows of bright colours, she pulled the most obnoxious ones, tried them on with a smirk. she walked out with orange and black boxy wayfarers in hand, but...
1 tag
i will remember her:
lying in the light on her bed, her hands in my hair, my head on her stomach. it was a sunday in march. she’s a jump-start girl; when she wakes, she stands. that morning she humoured me and we stayed in bed, talking. we talked of travel. australia, ireland, brazil. i had planned to give her brazil. i wanted to give her countries, continents and oceans too, because she...
i will remember her:
with her skin slithering over her muscles, not at home in her own body, her OCD kicking in as we sat on the couch and i had no idea her blood felt like boiling. everything was tainted to her; she could not touch nor be touched. the television droned on, noise to the noise behind her wide open eyes. in time she slept, curled against me; in time we laid there, and on the...
i will remember her:
sitting next to me, toying her katsu don with a fork, forgoing chopsticks as we ate at Azuki with my friend sometime in december. between sake bombs and buzzed logic jumps, my friend’s phone buzzed with a text from the girlfriend. we laughed and my girl said that we couldn’t make fun: her inbox was kept half-full by locked texts from me. i smiled, because i...
1 tag
i will remember her:
studying for an exam for class the next day. i sat behind her, straddled around her hips, her shoulderblades in my cheek, i waited. i got bored. i got a sharpie, she took her shirt off and let me draw on her back while she worked. i gave her wings, i gave her words, i loved her then as i always had. but in secret. i was wearing a To Write Love on Her Arms shirt that wound up...
i will remember her:
in the back of the night club, her first time out dancing, couches lined the far walls. we were hot on the floor and hotter in each others’ arms. the chemistry of us could have destroyed our lives, and maybe it did but we wouldn’t know it then. in the darkness we found the couches and i remember nothing but her skin. we must have been a show because someone threw...
1 tag
i will remember her:
crying in the bathroom of Bourbon Street one of our earlier times uptown. she was saying things that made me ache, like she deserved to be cheated on, deserved what she got, and how could i understand? nothing gold can stay. relationships break, people break. she’d been marked by pain, scarred starry eyes. divorce, death, they’d laid claim before i could, so i...
i will remember her:
trying to finish some art homework on my dining room table as the votes rolled in on Election Day. worried for the results, there were folks at my house drinking, shot for shot in mourning or in celebration, too soon to tell. she sat beside me on the floor and did tequila, kamikazes, swedish fish, any number of flavors got us through it. when they called it, we shook and...
i will remember her:
in the parking lot behind Taco Bell, laughing that we’d matched without meaning to, jeans and white tanks. we met with her co-worker friends for a game of mini golf, smartass remarks and small-time holes. no golfer by trade or hobby, the fun of it was amplified by the way she held me in her eyes, held my hand as we weaved the course. i lost but felt like a king over all...