Sunning on the back deck with popsicles and X on vinyl.

Tiding the time.

Decline: From Latin "declinare", to turn aside.

For a good while, there was nothing to tell. Still restlessly riding in the passengers seat, watching someone else's life in motion. I watched my body move satellite from my conscious being. The quiet seemed to emanate from the closing doors of your greyhound bus.

What had started as a drinking problem transitioned into extensive, exhaustive alcoholism. The nature of our relationship changed completely. In what felt like an instant, I didn't know you. Wild mood swings and black-out nights left you confused in the mornings. I would be the receiver of countless messages and phone calls that you would never remember; and the things you said, I would never forget. I felt gravity wane as I bloodied my fingers trying frantically to grab hold of the pavement, of our foundation, of what I wanted but couldn't take. You visited again, but this time things were different. There was a distance between us. Instead of trying to remember, I was looking for someone I could forget. As you walked out the door, I took a long, hard look at the person exiting my apartment. I knew it would be a long time before I saw you again. I knew we would not be the same.

My health began to spiral. Was it excess? Was I the cat that got the cream? I was as fat as royalty. I had never been a small girl and this has become something of a defining and defeating element of who I was then and, despite enormous weight loss, who I am now. For whatever reason, I had a difficult time blaming your regression on the absence of your good-natured being. I turned the blame, like a gun, toward myself. Unlovable, undesirable; I couldn't exude the charms I contained. I couldn't make you want good for yourself. I couldn't be the one to make you right. I was a damaged package, and my allegiance was deniable. I began to look at myself not as a human, but as some kind of monster. I regressed to a state of hyper-egocentrism, believing that everyone I came in contact with saw me as this derivation of what should be human; a mutation of "woman". I took your emotional and psychological blows with little resistance from then on. Submissive, I began abusing laxatives, purging and starving myself. You became the center of my universe, and my only motivation.

I spent the next two years painfully in love with a ghost I couldn't shake.

Brothers of the Head (2005)

Doo Wop Doughnut Shop

I dream of baking and frying fluffy, fresh confections and hoop-shaped culinary concoctions. Great American Doughnut Shop, open 24 hours. Surely there is a 3am shift I can fill. Sprinkles and powdered sugar, and hot coffee (no experience required.)

Today I have made it my personal goal to work as a doughnut-slinging waitress, cashier and baker(ella) at the small doughnut joint around the corner. Four booths. Cigarette stained wallpaper and drop ceiling. Men in denim slacks and suspenders with gummy, toothless grins. A short stack of soft doughnuts for each.

Loosen your "Bible belt" Kentucky, you've got room for one more.

In the red corner...

Though I had recognized my need for a sabbatical from our friendship, distancing myself became something of an impossibility. I credit the distractions associated with moving for the short-lived success of my existing relationship. Nursing kittens, selecting the perfect hanging flower basket and the attendance of my first official college classes occupied the bulk of my time. I saw endless possibilities in my new surroundings; among these possibilities was chance for the re-birth of a psychological connection with my "ordinary" man. Together we were treading water, for these few months at best. A postmortem heartbeat, but no pulse.

While "I'd still jump in front of a flying bullet for you", it was easier for me to say "what difference does it make?" I was in the business of embracing the "here-and-now", and in doing so, reducing my universe to a more manageable size. My mission called for the compression of our ever expanding, abstract relationship. Categorization. Marginalization. Assimilation. But you were the square peg; unwilling to join the ranks of ordinary men.

So we planned your first visit. You arrived on a late night bus. I remember watching you descend through the folded doors of public transport. Breathless, I took a mental photograph and stored it somewhere safe. You were no longer a ribbon of fluid on my post-frontal cortex. It had been well over a year, and I had missed you more than you could have possibly known.

The few days we spent together were pegged with moments I vowed never to forget. Drunk and in pajamas, we would stay up late discussing everything and nothing; connecting the dots and discovering a common language. We lay on the kitchen floor in the dark, sharing a bottle of Jameson Irish whiskey and you grab my face, giving a hard look and say

"I would defend you to anyone. You know that right?" You held my body tight.

A 1-2 punch. I was yours. A moment I would never forget. You would change me. Define me. Own me. I still remember how soft the hairs at the nape of your neck were as I clung to your body, my arms around your shoulders, running my hands down the back of your head.

When you left, I couldn't watch. R walked you into the bus station, even shook your hand. I sat in the passengers seat. It was a quiet ride home.

We were unclassified, and we would remain unclassified.

Pat Kelly- If it Don't Work Out

"A man say to his woman: I got me a dream. His woman say: Eat your eggs."

I expected this summer to bloom like a stem of Kentucky goldenrod, with blossoms opening in both tandem and mosaic patterns, synonymous with our dreams and plans; nonlinear, and with no particular goal. It has become something of our fashion, a "laissez-faire" approach to an abstract end. "Happiness", for whatever it's worth.

I have rarely been spoon-fed the products of my efforts. My goals continue to lay in abstract and less conceptual works. To make you "warm", to aid in the ease of your slumber; muse, to make you want the things you need and need the things you love. In these first two weeks, I've seen failures in my efforts, non-efforts, spoken and non-spoken desires and the fruits of all, raisins in the sun.

His criticisms make me feel negligible. I find myself questioning this prospect of "love", juxtaposed against his uncanny ability to reduce me. Yesterday I was questioning the mistakes I'd made. Today, I am questioning the mistakes I am bound to make if I continue on this path.

I fear total collapse.

Tonight, I feel faded hues of a watercolor backdrop with its foreground unfinished. Uninspired. Microscopic. Have I been wrong all along?