30 July 2013

this is how you excite me

this is how you excite me:

like an 11 year old
girl,
sneaking basement episodes of Real Sex 
on her aunt's HBO:
volume barely audible
and knees shaking, trembling.

like a new
unstamped
passport,
fluttering from the envelope
with promise
and uncertainty.

like a plastic flask
of cheap vodka from
your best
friend's older brother
in the summer night park ,
surrounded by fireflies
and ungiven kisses on fiery 80 proof lips.

like the encore,
pitch black-
then the lights and the kick-drum come
up and
through your body/ your veins,
knowing it is the end
but yearning for
more vibration and delight.

like you do
when you touch me
like you do




25 July 2013

blow

this summer
is all
rain (hard and soft)
and
hookah smoke,
perfumed.


16 July 2013

October Break

I drank too much at the wedding. Like I had too much to drink the weekend before, and the weekend before that. Surrounded by the celebration and long banquet tables, I downed glass after glass after glass of champagne and danced under the moonlit trees, because at one time that made me happy.  One more glass to happiness.

I remember leaving the wedding but I don't remember getting to your place across town. The in-between was a blur of highway lights and your hip hop on the radio. I knew you were angry. But you wouldn't say so. You never said so. You would just look at me so heartbroken, so let down, as if I was the greatest disappointment. I believe you thought this was kind; but I wanted instead to feel the sting of your words, like I wanted to feel the sting of your hand against my thighs. But you, in your infinite gentleness, would never give me either.

I awoke in your bed in the earliest of morning hours, my deep purple bridesmaid dress crumpled on the floor, bobby pins scattered amok. The red wine stain on the sheet was a messy reminder that I was still searching for that liquid exuberance when we got home. I put my hand to my aching forehead and grasped behind me to the nightstand for a glass of water. After a year and a half in that bed I didn't need to turn the light on. I knew every foot of your studio, like I knew every inch of your body. Every centimeter of your soft lips. I don't remember if I had you that night. I probably did. I probably wanted to feel that closeness from you that only came from your body and not your mind.

You rustled from my movement and faced me. I could see your long dark eyelashes unobscured by your glasses. My face flushed and my eyes welled up with salty tears.

I thought about how scared I was that I was turning 30, and how terrified I was of being back in my hometown, and how devastated I was in my myriad of disappointments. At the time I thought you could make all that better. I thought if I loved you enough I would love myself again. I could not have loved you more, yet I was still covered in layers of heavy worry.

I cried harder, sobbing, burying my head in the blankets.
Then I made you say it. I made you give me those hard, merciless, necessary words.

 "Tell me you don't love me. Tell me you don't want to be with me anymore," I pleaded.

So you did. You said it. It was over. Of course you said you did love me but I could, perhaps for the first time, hear the ting of emptiness in those words.  I cried until I fell asleep from exhaustion, and when I awoke again a few hours later I kissed your beautiful face for the last time, held your solid, tall body in my arms for a last embrace, then walked out of your apartment and your life.




15 July 2013

why I turn my phone off at night

alternate title:
that was 6 years ago how did you get this number?



Pretty sure it is XI. He was only brave when drunk.

silly silly silly boys. 



12 July 2013

diving bell



in
silence of
July in the morning

I'm awake in
my
white empty sheets

feeling as
the diving bell spider -

what a life
so complicated:
the gift of the sea,

but the beach
excitedly shouts
surrender?





09 July 2013

What Happened To Paris, prologue



If you have been so kind to read my writing with any sort of regularity over the past years you may have noticed that I spent a long time traveling back and forth to Paris, which abruptly stopped the last time I left France in March of 2011. I have decided that it has been long enough that I can write up what happened there, and why I may never be able to go back there. I do this for posterity, to clarify how I feel about it, and perhaps as a personal reference. For a long time I wouldn't talk about leaving Paris and why and how, because the sadness weighed so heavy on me the only option was to block it out of my mind and crawl into bed (or someone else's bed). Even some of my closest friends new only the vague details.

I realize based on that paragraph it may sound that something awful and dramatic happened in Paris, and while I suffered many little tragedies that is not the case. But if failure and disappointment could hold a weight I never would have been able to check my luggage coming back home. 

Since I was a little girl I dreamed of moving to France and living life as an expat there. I thought I had planned my life in such a way that it was inevitable. But life often has other plans for us. 

I have started writing the piece and I think it will be three parts, so perhaps another mini series. It may take a bit to finish putting it together but I will try to post it as I complete it. I'll put a link in the sidebar as well. 

I hope you read it and enjoy it, so that at least something good can come out of this, the most difficult time in my life. 

As usual thanks for following this little blog, even though my writing has dropped off significantly these past few years. Perhaps starting with this will inspire me to write more like I used to. 

Bisous partout  -Lucie


PS I am also updating my favorites for the last two years in the favorites list, for easy viewing