Calypso

Long before I sank myself into the ocean
I was a very jealous woman.
I wore lipstick made of roses,
And scowled every time my lover’s eyes
Strayed to the soft pale skin of another’s breasts.

“It must be her,” I thought to myself,
“she’s the one he runs to late at night.”

Day after day,
I would kill myself with changes to my body
To keep him from wandering off with
The obvious temptations around him.

Until one morning,
When I, myself wandered off
And in the cold grey hues of the ocean at dawn
I tore my dress on the jagged rock
Inhaled the sea salt brine
And dove down deep
To a forgotten world where I became
Calypso.

I rolled and tumbled with the waves
And each beat of the ocean against the cliffs
Was in time with the beats between my lungs.
I pounded my fists against my chest
In an act of defiance to my lovers
Who failed to fill me with moonlight
And romance.

I have ten thousand hearts now.
They float in and out between my ribs
Like fishes through the coral reef.
They come to rest on my tongue,
Like sunlight dappling across the waterlogged sails
Of sunken ships.
Bits of me littering the sea floor.

And nobody is more young
Or beautiful
Or free than me.

The threat of being left for another is insignificant
When sailors jump from their decks
Just to catch a glimpse of my radiance.

I’ll throw my head back with laughter
And out of my mouth you will hear the thunder of a tempest.
And when the sky blackens,
You will shudder to behold the gods.

Thunder and Lightning

Lightning struck the beach one time when I was just a kid and turned the sand into glass.
Something like lightning struck again recently, but not on the beach.
Where I press my smooth skin like glass up against your thighs.
I think I know what you’re thinking.
And though I’ve had you,
I’ve not really had you.

Your thunderous words are what got me here,
So don’t you dare abandon them now.
Last Friday, as you slid your lips along my collarbone, you discovered
The fireflies that dance up and down in syncopated rhythm in the fields behind my house. Your thumb ran across the hem of my shorts and I know you saw the tiny white lightning streaks still visible after these years but had the tact not to mention them. They were from another lifetime. A scattering of pale tattoos that I’ll wear like gold crowns, yet you’ll wonder if I’m so royal.

Lightning flashes outside my window, and a few seconds later, I hear the thunder, but I don’t know if it’s the thunder of static electricity created by heavy negative particles sinking into the bottom of clouds, or the pounding in my own ears causing electric sparks to charge in the silence between your words. I think it belongs outside.

This could be us. We don’t quite fit together. My curves won’t align with your angles and my ankles brush your knees as we tangle in sheets together. As you tangle your fingers into my hair and I tangle my words into thin air because I know you’re not listening but the way your lips tug at my earlobe makes me forget what I was saying anyway.

Sparks do fly but not for lovers. Sparks dance up and down like the fireflies (lightning bugs, you call them) do in the fields. Sparks crack and shatter the sky for us outside my window at 6:36 a.m. while it’s still mostly dark and you’ve got me wrapped in your Herculean arms.

You did not let me gently warm up to the idea of you but you crashed into me at a terrible time and I tore my own sky apart in hopes I would hear, not silence from you, but a booming declaration.

I am the lightning that strikes down, and you are the thunder. You are the sound that follows me but disappears all too soon once the summer ends. And I’m still waiting for that booming declaration. And I’ll wait until the summer storms are over.

Pinpricks

I was cleaning out my purse today
And before I got through all the gum wrappers
And your old empty cigarette packs,

I pricked myself on a leftover needle
From when I sewed your name
Into my sleeve and accidentally –
Without realizing it
Sewed it onto my skin.

And that needle, when it pricked me
Felt like that day two years ago
On the porch behind your house
When you touched my left shoulder
And crashed through the
Maze of my synapses and I felt
Every single part of me crack and shatter
And heal all at once

Don’t kiss girls the way you do
Because you don’t know how many
Out there are like me and have become addicted to the
Pinprick of your mouth like the drug you are,
Shooting through the blue-black veins underneath my skin,
And with every pulse, the need to relapse grows
Stronger, and
Stronger

Until all that’s left to hear
Is the whisper of your breath between our
Clasped hands, clutched hands, grasping -gasping for you,
And all that’s left to see are the brilliant
Yellows and oranges of the
Sun and the stars and the moonshine
That you brew in the still that holds me captivated
And boiling.

Don’t kiss girls the way you do
Because these are my lips and when you kiss them
I demand that you hold me in that way that makes me feel
Like I will never have to feel the stabbing pain that you dealt me when you left.
Don’t kiss girls the way you do,
Because your arms are occupied
And not with me.

You leave and you don’t bother saying goodbye
And I am left with all of the pinpricks, all of the gum wrappers,
And empty cigarette packs,
The empty silhouette past the point
Of any hope or chance of you returning.

Anyway, while I was cleaning out my purse
I found one of your lighters.

I thought you might want it back.

 

I tell myself I’ll be okay;

that I won’t fall for every boy with
soft lips and long eyelashes and strong hands.

I tell myself that it’s safe to fall
for taken boys who love their girlfriends.

“It must be nice.” I tell him with a smile and two blinks,
and he looks at me quizzically and replies with a “sometimes”
and I look back towards the lake as he blushes and the sunlight burns my skin.

I’m not saying that loving me will be any better. In fact,
It will probably be worse and there will be more bad times than good.
I’d get clingy and become too attached to his cinnamon eyes and his milk-and-honey smile. I’d skip classes to run my fingers along his “swim to the moon” chest tattoo, which he explains to me is about a man lost at sea and coming to terms with his life and eventually, his death.
And I wonder what that would be like, but not for too long because I would get sad.

His mother died when he was nine years old, he explains to me, and that’s why he gets so introspective. And I know all about introspection, but nothing about dead mothers so I don’t say anything.

He laughs off the moment before it becomes too heavy, and I continue puling the grass out of the ground, as I always do when I don’t know what to say.

Yes, it’s a good thing to fall for taken boys, because you can blame their rejection on the other girl, and not yourself.

So I stand to leave, with shaky knees and pinpricks in my feet from sitting too long, and I hope I don’t accidentally try to hug him because it would make things awkward and we would stop sitting together by the lake after class.

I walk home and hope he passes his drug test, so that he can get hired at Wal-Mart for the summer and move in with his girlfriend, whom he loves.

And I will fly to Paris one weekend, and meet someone else with stronger hands and softer lips, who would also have a girlfriend.

I think you were high the first time I told you I loved you.

You must have been because you just laughed at me like it was some kind of joke.

“Maybe you should get some help.”

I told you one day.

“Like what, therapy? Rehab?”

“Yeah,” I said “something like that.”

You shrugged, noncommittally.

“You’re going to kill yourself someday.”

“I know.”

 

 

 

Body Language

My confusion never really lasts very long.
When I stand in the sun with numb fingers.
Regardless of my insecurities and understatements,
I hide my glowing eyes behind lids less opaque
Than I’d anticipated.

You don’t see my lips move as I whisper-sing to the wind
And try to breathe pure sunshine. I clasp my hands
Around my prayers, and ask that you were here
So we could both drown in silence.

I only want to stand next to you for a while.
And maybe, if that wasn’t enough,
I’d let you hold me in the palms of your hands,
And I’d trace along your life lines.

Show me that you know what I’m not saying.
I’d write you the most beautiful love letter,
But the meaning gets lost between the subjects
And predicates of these compound-complex sentences.

So let’s throw out my ink and my notebooks
That I can stop trying to write it all out
On a page that you would never end up reading anyway.
Dance with me.

I was young when I was introduced to the life of a vagabond. Most of us were. You’ve seen us before. Dirty kids, clutching desperately to cardboard signs and pipe dreams. Of course, none of us were real vagabonds, because we did have a home to go back to, but it was far away, and we all had our sights set elsewhere.

The spring after my 21st birthday, I was hopelessly in love with a young man who wasn’t the safest option for me. Every move he made whispered of adventure and danger, and when he kissed me, it was always with a goodbye on his lips. He was not a person I should have been with, but he was fascinating.

One sleepy morning in May, he informed me that he would be leaving my side to venture across the country and see the opposite coastline with his friends. He left two days later. I was devastated, but hopeful that he would return and take me with him as he had promised. And he did. Sort of.

Two months after his initial departure, he came back full of stories about all of the places he had been. I was in awe and just as much in love. And this time, he was going to take me with him. The morning we were supposed to leave, however, his friend showed up with opiates, and they both took part in poisoning themselves. As he clambered into my car that evening, five hours after we should have taken off, he was sick, hungover, and in poor shape. I spent the night driving northeast without a single word from him, other than instructions to stop at rest stops along the way.

I was furious. I was livid. I had been dreaming of a beautiful adventure for years, and planning this particular one for months. I had a backpack and a tent. I had a change of clothes, and a toothbrush. And I had a vomiting lover as my companion, ruining this. We were supposed to go north, from Pennsylvania to Maine, and then down to Kentucky for the Rainbow Festival. But he was in no shape to travel, and he sensed my fury.

At the time, I had never known what “spanging” or “busking” meant. But I did find out that way. This lover of mine had mentioned that I was not to bring any money with me on this road trip. I was intrigued and a little nervous. I didn’t have much money, anyway. When I asked why, he said that it wasn’t an adventure until something went wrong, and the only way to travel is to just do it. I thought it was a stupid idea at first. I had always been very cautious about having enough money to last me through road trips. But our first morning on the road, he gave me my first lesson on how to travel with no money. Spanging is a mashup of the words “spare change” and it essentially means flying cardboard signs in public areas asking for spare change. I was uncomfortable with the idea. I didn’t like begging for money if I was able to earn it. So I switched to busking, which meant playing music in the streets for donations. With that, I made enough money to fill up my tank every few days, with some left over for food. My ex-lover and his junkie friend would spend some of this money on cigarettes and weed, which was frustrating, but we still had enough to survive if we were thrifty with everything else.
We made it as far as Ithaca, NY. We camped there for a few days in June. We hiked around the beautiful trails and waterfalls that upstate New York had to offer. The most beautiful of all being Watkins Glen. I walked along the stone paths, underneath waterfalls and through ferns. I had never seen any place like it. It felt like I had immediately left earth and traveled to a set of some far-off fantasy novel. The hike was not a long one, but it certainly was a glorious one. I walked barefoot over slippery stones to the very top of the mountain, and gazed upon miles and miles of greenery. I felt as though this could never end. But it did.

On the fourth day, my previous lover informed me that we no longer wanted to travel with me, and that we were to return home so that he could go to Kentucky with his friends.  He told me this in the parking lot of a supermarket, as the friend who had supplied him the drugs paced around the lot, making calls to unknown people.

“I’m sorry,” he said, as I climbed the steps to my front porch. An empty apology. He didn’t mean it.

I walked back into my empty house and screamed in frustration. Pacing my kitchen like a lunatic, I considered my options. I could stay home for the summer and let the dream of travel slip through my fingers. I could call him up and beg for him to take me to Kentucky with him, but probably be miserable the whole time. Or, I could set out without him, now knowing how to earn money while on the road. It was not the smartest option. It certainly wasn’t the safest option. But it was the best.

I called up a friend of mine that day. Her name was Julianna and she had stayed with me for two weeks while she was taking summer courses at college. I asked her if she had found a job yet, and if not, would she join me on a road trip. As crazy as the proposal had been, she agreed. We left the next morning for North Carolina, to visit the dusty roads and camp in the Great Smokey Mountains.

That is how my adventures began. With heartbreak-turned-fire. Determined to prove I was not helpless, and that I could lick my wounds and move on, I loaded up my trunk once again, and left. Without a plan. Without money. And with a heart full of hope.

What came after that was a world of wild adventure. It changed my life. It healed my heart. It restored my faith in humanity. And it will be documented here, in the blogs to come.

I had the idea to start a blog documenting my many travels around the United States. Soon, I will be traveling to various locations around the world. When I travel, I do so without much of a plan and with little money. I feel like that’s the only real way to travel. Doing this has allowed me to experience things I never would have imagined and meet people who have changed my view of the world to a supremely positive one. As I sit and write this first post, sipping on a mug of fresly-brewed coffee, and trying to keep my cat from walking across my keyboard, I am trying to remember every detail of the many places I’ve visited. Some details are clearer than others, so I will be enlisting the help of those I have traveled with. So far, it is a short list. Most of my adventures have been alongside my closest and most favored companion, Tilly. She will appear quite often here. The stories will be told chronologically, according to my memory, which may falter occasionally. But this is what I know, and what I remember. I hope you all enjoy.