The wrong words.

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

cakebeef:

The Avett Brothers - I Would Be Sad

(via cakebeef)

cakebeef:

In the spaces between things. In the snap and flutter and the sounds of movement.

That is where I wait for you.

A memory of a conversation, the voices penciled in.

cakebeef:

You have to at least understand that you are capable of understanding. That even if it must be threaded through such a dense thicket of self-deception, defense mechanisms, poorly concealed regret, illogical optimism and ingrained mannerisms and mores, there is a relative truth that will almost always cause harm if you refuse to accept or acknowledge it. No one is saying you have to embrace it, or rush to weild the implement that cracks your sternum, but when you feel yourself immediately and reflexively denying something, or catch yourself thinking cruel or petulant thoughts about those you do not know or claim to love, it’s imperative you look first to your own darkened corners for the source of your discomfort.

You’re never wholly right, and most disquiet comes when your pride is jeapordized. Abandon it or, if you are wiser, tame it, and there is very little in all the world you have left to fear.

cakebeef:

I’ve been standing around for days. Watching you water the houseplants. Watching you kiss him goodbye. I’ve been quietly humming, like old machinery, unmoving and unnoticed. If you listened, there was the faintest noise, like an eggshell breaking under heavy cloth. That was my heart. That is what it sounds like.

Scrawled in the margins. Page 86.

cakebeef:

“So the parade had to be postponed

So we could watch the balloons ascend

Though we all know that they explode

As they get closer to Him.”

You have always been wrong about my intentions. If I wanted I could fill the basic void with any number of relatively interchangeable women. What hurts, what sits like a hot stone against my chest and makes my eyes moisten, is that I do not want a woman. I want you, you fumbling, misguided, spoiled little girl. Because that is who I love, better judgement notwithstanding. I don’t chase phantoms. I don’t believe in a human lottery.

Practical possibility. Simple gestures. Fidelity. Work.

I love with my hands.

You wait for birds to bring you word of pretty princes.

Old notebooks, older ideas.

cakebeef:

There’s this thing that happens, independent of my attempts to control or contain it. There is a brightening of the edges of objects. A photo filter for my retinas which may from time to time apply itself, turning everything mundane slightly magical, or at least unoppressive.

Sometimes, I am in love. It makes me childish, in the good way. I become silly with love. Stupid. I become ten years old, only I know what sex is and it’s not illegal for me to have it. I become a man of Post-Its and piggybacking. I sing songs about the food I cook. I cut my hair. I write notes a lot.

I have an entire file folder full of notes that got coffee on them, or a spot where the ink smeared. Notes and sticky notes and love notes and grocery lists and little pictures of robots for no reason. Some are wrinkled. Most are stained here and there. Imperfections that sent them to the recesses of my desk drawer.

I went looking for an old story outline and they got me like fishhooks.

There’s the other kind of photo filter that happens. The watery one, where the edges of things blur and warp. It comes with an accompanying feeling like a strong weight on your sternum and ragged breathing.

Then it subsides, and you go make provencal chicken with olives and capers.

Or maybe that mustard chive sauce with the bourbon and shallots.

Or whatever.

The weather is the weather on either side of the glass.

cakebeef:

She looked like you. Not in any particular way. Her carriage, the tilt of her head, style without flash, hair in need of washing. I watched her mouth as she talked stocks into some freakishly small cellular telephone. It wasn’t yours.

I had to hold my chest, my fingers pressing this way and that, reaching for the part that hurt.

There is physical discomfort in missing you, which I needn’t point out rhymes with kissing you.

Then the rains came.

“Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.”

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld (via cakebeef)

Rest/pause.

cakebeef:

You were looking for something. Food, maybe. An ink pen. A word on the tip of your tongue.

Maybe it was just an itch. A couple of eyeblinks. The silence before a commercial.

I am there, in all your brief pauses, in the air between your words.

I love you.

There is nowhere else I can be.