Rolling My Eyes

What was it we were listening to? Do you remember now? As we made our eyes and lips up in your bathroom mirror, kissing our reflections, then throwing ourselves down on your sister's bed, flattening our stomachs until it felt like they were touching the mattress, to get our bubble jeans zipped up? I always envied your purple ones, even though I knew I looked better in the blue. Sometimes I wonder if we caused damage, that some of our internal organs have never sat in the right spot again. Sometimes I think I get more stomach aches and that are more painful than the average person. But I am still the kind of person who wonders what she might be dying from. Not that I really want to know. I really hope when it is my time to go that I go in my sleep; no clue beforehand, just good night and good bye. But let’s get back to this: what were we listening to? The usual? Guns 'n' Roses? Dr. Hook? April Wine? Or maybe we were on our Kenny Rogers kick? Our friends teased us and our mo...

She picks up the phone and she hears his voice again and it says, Hey, Lill. Let's have a drink and a laugh. She answers back, Yes, Sir Stranger, let's do, choking back that small, laugh that she has when she is laughing at herself, trying to force itself out between her words. Where and when? He hears it. Hey, now. C'mon, I'm sorry. You know how it is. But we both miss each other right? I was dumb. I mean, I'm always dumb, but this time I was off the charts dumb. No, no, Robbie, you're not dumb, she reassures him with a sigh directed more at herself than him. Defeat. She isn't even mad at herself that she has agreed to see him so quickly. They are over-played arguments in her head (You fucking bastard), enough-so, she doesn't want to make them real. And yes. Very much so, yes. She misses him. No, I am. I really am dumb. You have no idea, Lill, he tells her. Can we get together like right now? I can tell you why I have finally reached this conclusion w...

At one point or another, and maybe even still. It was something they all could say. Some did. Some didn't. Dean. He moved to town in the third grade. He was short and had glasses and brown hair that never stayed slicked down. Ellen had to be his 'special friend' for the first week and had to show and tell him everything about the school. Ellen was very nice to him, so Dean thought to sneak her a kiss behind one of the bookshelves during library time. But instead of being in love with him now, Ellen got mad. "You shouldn't have done that! Now I might have a baby! Do you want a baby with me?" Yes, ma’am, he would, if that's what she wanted. "I don't want a fucking baby,Stupid" she said, slamming her foot down onto his. "Don't ever talk to me again!" So he didn't. But he looked at her an awful lot. Like even still. Mark. He had her as a girlfriend for about three months. He’s pretty sure she only agreed to date him so...

"Jesus Christ, we can never tell your mother," he seethed into her ear. Or anyone else ever, he thought. No one can ever know this. He had just been promoted to supervisor in his town job. No. He sure wasn't going to let his newly delinquent daughter with her poofed-up hair and frosted lipstick—his obvious tart of a daughter—ruin him. "And your bastard friends better keep their mouths shut too. And this time, you better find new ones because those people are no longer your friends. I will kill all of you little shits. Kill you all and they won't find the goddamn bodies. Do. You. Understand. Me?" Ellen nodded, cowering herself away from him, putting her forearms over her ears. She didn’t want to hear anymore. She didn't believe her father would kill anyone, but she wasn't entirely sure she was right about that either. What her father really wanted to do was slap her upside the head, three good whacks for some common sense, but he left the room instea...

Perhaps it is because she sits with the dying that she hears it more than most. "Life's too short," they all say to her eventually, "Live, laugh, love", or some variation of the theme. She just sits, holding their hands and nodding her head, pseudo-understanding; her days are long, so long. Every one of them is like she is trudging up to her hips through a wasteland of sand that never ends. "You're still so young," they whisper, they croak, they accuse her with their eyes. But no, she is 36 now. Not so young, if she ever was. She rubs her own hands together more often for the warmth these days and she can feel them papering, like wax paper now and she wonders if they will ever feel as thin as pages from the Bible. She nods with her friends, with her co-workers, with anyone actually. "Where does the time go?" they ask and then answer themselves. In college, one day I started and the next I had my papers and now I sell cars, manage the g...

We like games of randomness the most. I frequent the card tables, poker and euchre usually. Kevlar and I like to play Scrabble together; a word board game where you pick up certain amounts of upside down, lettered tiles and try to make words out of what you have grabbed. Because you can build new words off what others have played, the game often ends up looking like a crossword. Sometimes Kevlar and I will put four or more boards together and add in extra sets of tiles so we can try to make bigger words. Others may play more physical games such as hockey, long distance speed skating, running or swimming and other forms of endurance competition. One week of every year is the Games of Olympus. The biggest event is always the pesticleous climb. 400 participants are given three days to see how far up one of the trees they can climb. Some things I do by myself are to practice my lettering of ancient languages on my GSlab and read the Global Daily with its news of Elousa and the lists of w...

Tommy knows the day because he can remember something of it. Not the whole day or anything, but what he does remember, he see just like he is at the movies. Third row and centre, staring at the back of his family's heads, even his own. Sometimes he wonders if that makes it a false memory. Momma has never described the blood splatters on the wall, the spit coming out of his father's mouth, though this is what Tommy remembers the most. He doesn't know why he standing beside them in the middle of the living room, when his father ordered him to his bedroom to nap, because the memory begins with him sitting beside his father on the couch. Tommy also remembers on the way to his bed, touching his mother’s blood while his own raced straight to his heart, so scared he'd be caught, pressing his whole palm in the mess on the wall quickly as he walked by, but he wasn’t. Momma tells him that it happened a few weeks before his Dad was set to move out, when the little one-bedroom apa...

Prowl, just prowl and dig it up and eat it all. Before the meal is me. Someday the meal will be me. Dead or alive though, them fuckers gonna have to work real hard to get me. I wear my shadow like it's the real me. Merge and blur, baby. I can do that. So come at me, yo. Bring all your Brittanys, Bitches. Let’s do this thing. I don't even know you fuckers, but all you fuckers think you've known me for so long. Oh, my God. Like seriously. It's strange. Like forever..... so, here, let me tell you my tales of this and that and tit for tat and why would I tell anyone that? Weasels, all those small tasty, stolen morsels between your chattering teeth. Yum, yum, like bubble gum until the taste is gone, spit them out and don't look to see where it lands. Tonight let me Show and Tell about... who? Hey all you loose-lip fuckers out there, I don't care about truths not your own. So you get no limbs from me, but go ahead, air your laundry, and their laundry and the...

Weekly Journal Entry English-9b Mr. Bates Your name here Q-What do you think is the best thing and the worst thing about living in a small town? The very worst part, I have found, of living in a small town is the older you get, the more people you get to know. Like at first my world must have been pretty small, just Mom and Dad and my older sister. Same for all of us. Then maybe a few people your parents know are suddenly there. If you're lucky, a kid or two lives next door. And if you're a super lucky kid like me, you get to meet people like Baby and Princess Poo-Poo too. But then it is like BAM when you start school. All of a sudden you know 30 people your own age. Then 30 more and 30 more of all ages. By third grade you know everyone in the school. And some of their parents and some of their friends and the teachers, the people on your streets. It just keeps going on and on. There's 600 kids at this high school, there were only 200 in my elementary. So many new ...

Minnie is 14. She likes wearing bright red lipstick and getting high. Right now, Tommy is arguing with her. "Vitto will be waiting for me then." "He can wait longer," she tells him. "Tell him there was too many cops following you around or something." "Yeah," Tommy says. "That might work. Vitto would believe that. Three different cops stopped me on the street this week." "What?" Minnie almost shouted. "Oh, Tommy. They are on to you." “No, they aren't." But she knew. "For sure they are. Listen. Meet me outside the pool hall at 9:30. I'll havethe dope then, Tommy." “No. I really should go see Vitto first.” He kisses her quickly on the forehead and then runs home to make himself some Kraft Dinner for supper. When he walks in the front door, there is Momma with a bottle of whiskey tucked between her legs, her head rolled to the back of the couch, her mouth open. "What the fuck, Mom...

When it's springtime, that's when it all flows back into her. When she can pick up the guitar again. Every song she has ever sold has been written in the spring. It's not really surprising that when you coop up, every chance you get, from the weather 5 months of the year that you get to know the ugliness of people, of yourself. That first winter living together, the first time she sold a song, she told him over dinner, her smile so wide, her hands a-flutter, until she realised he wasn't listening, just muttering, "Uh-huh. Mmmhmm." She snapped, What, Daniel? This is the best day of my life... And he told her, Listen, I don't give a shit what happened today. Every day is always the best day of your life. All you do is chirp, chirp, chirp and I wasn't even listening. You really screwed up my day. He was mad at her for not ironing his work clothes right again. Didn't she realise he got ready in the dark, so she could continue sleeping and he needed he...

She hasn't told anyone. Not her friends, co-workers, not what's left of her family: a brother, an Aunt Mo, a father in a nursing home. Her father would be the easiest because he wouldn't understand anyway. He rarely remembers his own name these days, three months since he has remembered hers. But then there's the nurses, the cleaning staff, the other visitors visiting. What if they heard her? What if that reverend heard her? No thanks, that's too many people and any audience that includes God is far too big for her. But it screams up from her belly at the worst times. When her mouth is full of muffin, or when she's in the grocery store's meat department, or at a red light during rush hour, too many times to count at work. Swallowing a scream burns the whole body. She's popping into bathrooms a lot more these days because if a scream can't roar out the mouth, its gonna leak out of somewhere. Come to think of it, her ears have been hurting lately too,...

It started happening right from the first one. Jack, that's his name. Well, not his real name either, but that should have been his name, so that's what I'm gonna to call him here. He wasn't all that good looking, he had a lot of pimples, but he had his man voice and it was deep and slow. Really easy to listen to. Talking to him on the phone was the best thing about him. I still love talking on the phone. With anyone. I guess that's why I'm honestly here. I know it sounds silly, but I wonder if that was the start of where I went wrong, ten years ago talking to Jack. I was learning the arousals of conversation, when I should have been learning to arouse boys. He made out with Emerald Johnson. Forever why? I still ask myself that. I remember him making all kinds of weird and nasty jokes about her—because she was weird and nasty—and then he went and kissed her? The last one said he was going to leave his wife for me. A week after we started dating, and two weeks a...

Along the path, she can run the length of her small city and back again. Everyone at home knows that when she says she is going for a run that she won't be back for around two hours. They do not know it takes her far less time to make the run, but some of her friends do. Sometimes she's worried she has told the wrong people. Today, as she does her warm-up stretches in the grass, she watches from behind her sunglassed eyes as another woman walks down the park path. The woman is tall and willowy, wearing a faded flowered skirt, a newer brown shirt, cinched at the waist. Her long brown hair is slightly disheveled; maybe. Brown, sensible sandals on her feet. A modern day hippie. That woman probably has only sensible thoughts in her head too. Drinks homemade carrot and wheatgrass juice in the mornings. She is probably everything Jolene has ever wanted to be. She has never wanted to be this tiny, blonde-bodied shell that she is housed in. A pat on the head and warm, sweet smiles. F...

Her husband has been adding women to his Facebook. The kind of women considered whores when they were in high school and still appeared to seem so. Selfishly, her husband likes their 100s of half-naked photos and leaves them risqué—no, lewd—comments, passing by on homepage tickers everywhere. The children see and become uncomfortable around him. His parents see and become uncomfortable around her. It’s been too long since she’s been a comfort to herself. She starts moving her stuff into the guest bedroom. Her favourite blue sweater on Tuesday. Tubes of her lipstick on Wednesday. A bookshelf by Saturday. He is happy because he thinks books are ugly décor, so he notices that, but nothing else. She notices that the purple shade she painted the guest room years ago doesn’t look good at any time of the day, so she covers the walls with more of her bookcases and buys two new lamps and a dark green blanket for the bed. 28 days later, Lyndsay officially moves out. Her husband doesn’t n...

I wake up this morning and I sit in bed and I hope and I pray something Like this: Please, Jackie, please bring me coffee. I always want coffee, so it is never far from my mind; therefore, not an unusual thought, but my neighbour has only brought me coffee four times in eight months, so hoping she would be my supplier seemed futile. I do not want to drink that packet of instant-decaf lurking in the back of my kitchen cupboards. I hear amazing is a word that is used wrong a lot. Apparently, things like crab apples bombing and breaking your cell phone and your sister's new hair-do are not amazing things. But whatever: when I received a text less than 15 minutes later from Jackie asking if I wanted some of her coffee because it was stunning; the best ever made pot, I thought it was amazing. And the coffee? Well, it was amazing too. And so was the morning front porch: the sunlight. The blue sky. The trees and the leaves and what? Why would anyone care about dandelions, Jackie? It...

We watch the news and she laughs about the wars. They ways by which we legally and morally kill each other Everyday. Cleverly, she says inappropriate things to catch me off-guard. She likes to watch the shock on my face; I know it, but it comes out anyway. I gape. And then she'll laugh at me, and I know she does not really mean it-but sometimes I am certain she's evil. She goes to work early just to brew a fresh pot of coffee for the early newspaper readers. There is only 6 of them these days. All of them are older than 50. This should make her sad, but the younger people come in during the evenings to sit with the 6 computers. As she wonders around her library, she sees them studying. They add her to Facebook. Two or three, sometimes ten, one time 300, each month. People she doesn't know. She adds the tally up inside her head. 1029, 1030, 1031. Sometimes she looks at their profile. Sometimes she thinks she would like some of these people; she thinks about adding the...

There just wasn't any reason to hold him longer, so Tommy was released from the jail two days short from the end of October. The skies threatened rain, but the sun, a bright orb, was up for the battle against the steely grey. Tommy was waiting outside of the gates smoking the cigarette the lady guard, Bonnie, had palmed him on his way out. 'Fuck, kid, calm down. Most kids are excited to be leaving here.' She shook her head at him. Poor fucking kid. Tommy didn't really want to leave the jail. He liked it there. At least better than home. In jail, he had food every day and his body felt good. There was lots of time to think in jail and that was good too. He wanted a different future, one that didn't include Momma. "Thanks for coming to get me, Momma", he still said, When she pulled herself out of the backseat of the taxi. She fussed with her hair; a brighter blonde than he had seen on her before. "What a bunch of bastards, Tommy," she decla...

She doesn't know what to do. She doesn't expect this at all. She wants to cry out, instead she chokes on the heart in her throat. The very worst and the best in her life have always happened together. She remembers it all. The fear. The anxiety. Wanting to vomit from something she could not yet describe, and from the snot. And then there is Johnny at her window. He would have been 13 years old then, and she had to have been just turning four, her birthday in late spring and she is wearing her Tuesday panties and she is warm; she remembers her hair slicked to her forehead. Sweat. Or maybe it is more blood. God is punishing her for being disrepectful to thou parents. Because she dropped her glass and broke it. Because she told her mother what to do. 'Stop yelling at me!'. And as she cried, she wondered why Mother was not going to bed right now too. And she knows god wants you to cause no one harm. And Samatha's mother had throw the butterknife at her and t...

It would be me who cannot follow the simple Blogger templates and screw it all up, despite the fact they practically do everything for you. I fixed the white links by repeatedly copying and pasting and retyping the very basic html code I learned years ago. From a boy. Who used to fix shit like this. And when I look over on his site, I see he is under construction and having issues with blogrolls too. The difference is that his template is so much more advanced than mine (not that I want mine to look advanced; I like it plain), but I know he will fully fix his someday--he is smart like that (despite the fact he is American). Me: Well, I will just keep banging my head and trying to steal design off blogs I like and never get it right. And when I am fully sick and tired of doing that, maybe I will post something worthwhile.

Why are some of my links along my sidebar in f-ing white? Sigh. This makes me unhappy. I am going to bed.

Have you ever had that feeling, the one where you tell everyone that your real ambition is to write, when really all you do is read what other people write?