Sometimes, because he is forgetful, she will ask questions with answers she already knows. Most times, he will say something different than what she’s heard before. She enjoys overthinking which is true.

Behind door number one is the Princess Diana TY Beanie Baby he gave her that his sister collected.

Behind door number two is the Princess Diana TY Beanie Baby he gave her that belonged to his dead mother.

Behind door number three is the skeptical thought that maybe it is neither door, and he doesn’t remember giving her a TY Beanie Baby at all.

Sometimes, because she likes to play sick for attention, he tends to her needs regardless, without irony. When she thanks him for his kindness and patience, he tells her a dad joke to avoid feelings.

Sometimes, she will compliment him, and she will wait to see how he replies. Because he shows his affection with actions and not words, he will thank her, or parrot the sentiment.

Sometimes he looks at her when she’s otherwise occupied. When she catches his stare, she will smile and ask, “What?” It is rhetorical because she knows he will either A) Coyly tell her, “Nothin’”, 2) Sweetly say she’s pretty while she internally wonders why he never says “hot” or “beautiful.” Or C) If his words could grin they’d say, “Just lookin’ at you.”

Sometimes, she is quiet and he will think she is moody. When he asks her if she’s okay, she chirps, “yeah!”. They both know when you’re fine you’re never really fine. Both of them will wonder when fine became a term to describe sex appeal.

Sometimes, while she has her lips wrapped around his cock, she gets caught up in a ticker tape of internal dialog, “my hair is in my face, should I put my hair up?” She feels a rumble of begrudgement, “is all this hair just for him?”

Once, he asked if he could tousel her hair around his erection, after that, he never did ask her again. Because she wants to know, he tells her it’s something he’s done before. She will be helpless but to picture the long blonde cascade of his exwife’s hair caressing his penis. She feels bad about her wiry tangles, a cache of curls. A tumbleweed compared to a silk scarf.

She will give him massages and hold doubt in every touch. She will press and wonder if he rather a caress. Her palms will be damp with anxious sweat and the gesture is more of a wipe than a stroke. A skipping stone rather a water slider’s smooth glide.

----------

unfinished.

That isn’t normal, huh? A screaming match with your mom. Shrieks of I hate you. She hates me too. A knife. Struggling. I had no intent (did I?), did she? Somewhere my brain has smoothed all these battles out. We just didn’t get along. But oh, I see now, it was so much more. Than that.

Watering tomato plants to whet my pallet in your absence.

If I can keep them alive so will we survive.

Ragged, skin pocked things; tired and mauled by sun and pests.

I pluck and dice to impress, a smeary mush mess.

Enter me, become part of me, only to quickly make the inevitable exit.

It is never enough, and I have never liked tomatos anyway.

I’ve got a pay-per-view pussy.

Sex on demand.

I open my hot flesh to you,

dripping with the pineapple juices, word has it, enhances flavor.

When we fuck I dream of others

because I crave your jealous thrusts.

But the stars that burst between my eyelids and the room always bring me back to you.

I am just in the worst mood. Probably pms. Doesn’t make it any less. I don’t want to see her face around anymore. It makes me irrationally angry. It’s irrational only when I deny the reasons why. Insecure insecure insecure. Unhappy. Not making changes. Stuck. I worry about the amount I worry and complain. I don’t want to seem like I’m always negative, it feels like I am. Searching for something wrong always. But it’s real and valid. “I hear ya” makes me mad. You don’t you don’t. I don’t want the bubble to burst. I don’t want the dream to end. I must confess these unhappiness.

A bar, dark and made of dark wood -- almost medieval. Tall tall ceilings like a church, I can’t see the ceiling because it’s so dark. The light source is unknown but it feels like moonlight. Seating all around the rectangular perimeter. The bar is in the middle of the room, shaped like an island, rectangular. I both work there and don’t. I can picture myself on the outside of the bar, sitting and milling around the cavernous room. There are familiar faces -- Greta, Jon, Keely. I don’t remember our conversations. I didn’t feel threatened by them but I remember feeling like I was in danger. I can’t remember if this was before or after the car -- something with a car that I’m driving, it wasn’t working or I was lost. I think I was looking for someone or trying to get to someone -- my mom? I was on US1 and it looked kind of like Rockledge but it wasn’t, the highway was very close to the water, a river? There was the parking lot that was like a Walmart parking lot, big. I don’t remember parking there but I remember the two black sedans parked side by side, closer to the entrance of what I assume was a Walmart -- big box front with the sliding doors. Early 2000 model something cars. Nondescript. I think one had an out of state license plate -- maybe Illinois. I remember after I escape running like a bat out of hell to those cars. I don’t remember having keys but I must have. I have a feeling because the cars were the same it was like the keys I had worked in either car. I remember the intense panic and not knowing which car was mine but I had to get out of there. I was running from two men -- one was black and I think the other was white; a big man and a smaller man. Their faces are so hard to see now. I remember a baseball cap. I remember he was big and so much bigger than me. I think they had seen me at the bar. I don’t remember how they got me, how I got in their car or if they were waiting by my car. It makes sense that the cars looked the same -- maybe they tricked me and I got in theirs thinking it was mine, or maybe they helped me when I was lost on US1. It was both night and not night throughout the dream. Just dark. It was like someone had placed their hand over a flashlight  and the sky was red orange filtered and bleak. Either way I end up being kidnapped and the memory of what happened to me and what they did is blocked now. I can’t remember it or picture it, but I can feel it. The terror and the hate and the disgust and the absolute feeling of being violated and trapped, terrified and exposed. Weak. My skin crawls. I was in what was maybe an apartment, it feels like I was upstairs. It reminds me of old 30s/40s dens. Holes in the wall with peeling paint and the walls and floor just have a look of being wet. Grime. Exposed pipes. A small metal framed bed and a gross thin pallet of a mattress. I’m restrained. And I somehow get out and I run and when I get outside I’m in that parking lot with the two black cars and I know I have to get away fast. I drive and there’s snow. It’s snowing hard and I end up at these houses lining the snow banked street, they remind me of houses in Chicago. Two story duplex/walkups. Taller than they are wide. And Dan is there -- it’s his house maybe. I’m panicked but I remember not being able to say what happened or wanting to tell him -- I didn’t want him to judge me or think I was lying or think badly of me -- something wouldn’t let me say what was wrong. He seemed nonchalant. I was insistent that he  didn’t leave me. I can remember the fear rising and rising, don’t go don’t go don’t go. I can’t remember why he’s leaving. I’m not mad -- I didn’t confess why I was so scared to be left alone so of course he doesn’t know. But I am begging. I’m following him out the door to the detached garage of this place that isn’t a place I have been. A home I don’t know but is reminiscent of Chicago. Then they’re there, they’ve caught up to me. I remember screaming and I’m getting in the driver’s side of the car and trying to convince Dan to get in with me on the passenger side but he fades from the scene as they’re trying to get to me, to grab me and pull me out. I’m hysterical. I remember the bigger one’s large hand and his angry leer coming at me through the windshield. It was like he was powerful enough to punch through it and grab me and I’m screaming and then I woke up. My stomach is sour and my shoulders are pulled up to my ears and tight. My ribs are knit around my chest and I have a buzzing feeling on my skin that I could get up and run if I wanted to but I’m cementing myself down. It’s not real but it reminds me of what is real and I hate it. I don’t hate me though. I just feel like I can’t look behind me, I feel a grip of someone I don’t want touching me. I feel open in ways I don’t want to be. I feel like I have no control. I feel like no one knows how to save me so I have to save myself. I feel small and like I want to hide. My hands default to fists. My teeth grind and my jaw locks and I’ve chipped teeth this way. I’ve dug my nails into my palms until it wakes me up. This time I didn’t wake up. I had in earplugs that blocked all sound and pulled me deep deep down into an unconscious I have not explored.  I could go on but I feel so tired.

Where does a thought begin or end or 

is it like a line in math, infinitely stretching in either direction even when it loops back on itself

Now that is a novel idea 

The original sin, original thinking

-- origin, originator, the first

A new dawn, day, life 

is supposed to feel good

Instead it saddles on like an untrained loafer.

Love yourself first

Open the door for yourself;

lay your own jacket across a puddle

& guide yourself across.

Hand in heart

outside & inside known, Thyself.