September 27, 2011

I’m going home!  I’ve just received my notice of eligibility for leave of duty. I’m going home, away from the heat, away from the stress of surviving, away from the violence, away from the killing. I’m going back to civility. It’s been six months since I’ve been home and tasted my mother’s cooking. It’s been six months since I’ve been able to horse around with my brother and kick his ass in Call of Duty. It’s going to be great now that I’ve got field experience. He doesn’t stand a chance. It’s been six months, one week, and three days since I’ve last felt my girlfriend’s lips anywhere on my skin. I can’t wait to feel that again! I’ve been gone six months and I get to have fifteen days in paradise.

I’m going home!

October 7, 2011

I got back home on a Friday. All of my friends came to see me for the welcome home party. I was pretty tired from the international flight; but, when I saw everyone there for me, I found the energy I needed to power through. A party is just as important as any battle, right? It was so good to be back with the people that loved me.

The dynamics were a little weird though. Mom and Dad seemed a little preoccupied with their thoughts, my brother seemed like he was just anxious to get out of the house, and my girlfriend came showed up with my best friend. I guess he needed a ride though, that guy never did bother to get one.

October 9, 2011

I rested today. It was nice to just be in my bed. It was familiar. I find it a little odd that she didn’t come to keep me company in it though…

October 10, 2011

I just realized that no one is ever home. When they are, no one speaks. I don’t remember this kind of silence. On base there’s never a quiet moment until we sleep. My brother never seems to be in the house at all. His Xbox is gone too. Come to think of it, his room is pretty bare. Did he leave? No one told me anything. This silence is so foreign to me now. And on the topic of silence, she still hasn’t called.

October 14, 2011

I guess he did leave. He got tired of dealing with the emptiness here. I guess he wanted to feel something. And I get it. Being here should feel warmer than this. Being here shouldn’t make me feel hollow. This is my home. This is where my substance comes from. Why don’t I feel like this place has had life in it for as long as I’ve been gone? How could six months change what should be a constant so drastically? This place doesn’t make any sense to me. I don’t like it here. At least she’s here. Or at least she should be.

October 15, 2011

I was wrong. She’s not here anymore. It seems as though she was empty. Or maybe she just needed her hole filled. I’m glad she fell onto my best friend. He said he’d always take care of her if something happened. I didn’t realize something happening meant my deployment. I’m sick of this place. There’s nothing for me here.

October 18, 2011

I’m leaving early. I can’t deal with being here. I can’t deal with this hollowness that seems to have enveloped this town. I need to keep moving, the same way they did when I left. There’s so much anger stewing in my chest. I can’t wait to be back in the barracks. I can’t wait to be back in the field. The world is real out there. All you have is yourself and your team. You know they won’t let you down. You know they won’t abandon you because you’ve disappeared for a while. They’ll search.  They will pull you, kicking and screaming, from whatever has stopped you from keeping up.

I miss the violence now. I miss the feeling of my rifle in my hand. I miss the sounds of carnage. They were real. They made me feel alive. Seeing death is a true reminder of what it is to be alive. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go back to this suburban life. I need the commotion now. I need the chaos. It just feels right.

I’m going back now. I’m going home, my real home. I’m going to die there.

One glass.

I hope this burns me on the way down. I need something to sear you out of me. I need the antiseptic properties to eradicate the infection that has grown itself into my lungs. I need to feel your grasp wrenched free from every part of me because I can feel you in every part of me. I need you gone. I want you gone.

One pill.

I hope this makes the pain go away. I had become so accustomed to your presence that I’d forgotten what it was like to stand on my own. I had forgotten how heavy a spine could be. I forgot the way I was cracking before you decided I held interest. I miss you. The air burns on the spots you left exposed. I wasn’t ready. Not for this.

One coffin.

At least I won’t have to feel what it is to have you infiltrate me again. At least I won’t have to miss you anymore. The dirt will keep me company. My spirit will set me free. One glass. One pill. No more your cheap thrill.

            I started to panic because I had less than half a day to find something romantic to do, and no one within my circle of friends knew anything worth a damn about being romantic outside of commanding two characters in The Sims to have sex with each other in the middle of a public school. Beyond the world of computers and binary code, I was essentially without an advisor. I had already relinquished my aspirations to impress Sheila with my creativity after a very pitiful thirty minutes, and I’d decided that preparing a failure speech was a good course of action to kill the next eight and a half hours. And then came my Godsend. I’d forgotten about her, as our conversations never extended further than shouting for time in the bathroom, or her asking for my help with some medial technological hitch. Bonded by blood, and severed by puberty, my deus ex machina would come in no other form than my older sister, Karen. When the solution presented itself to me, I had to rationalize it first, because, as any sibling knows, calling in a favor comes with a high price; sometimes it’s just easier to hire a professional. But I remembered all the little fixes I had done for her over the years, and it seemed fair to ask her for one solution of my own. And still, I felt like I was selling my soul to Lucifer himself.

I think it was three summers ago, the first time we saw each other. Well, it was the first time I saw you. You hadn’t seen me yet. I had only passed across your field of vision, just another cog in the machine of the masses. That’s the way you saw me. I, on the other hand, saw you as the product. You were the final prize that we were all working toward, whether or not we knew it.

I knew it though, from the instant I saw you; I knew it was you. You were the person I knew existed but couldn’t find without a place to start looking. But there you were, three summers ago, as plain as day, right under my nose, tickling my senses like the hairs on my mustache. I just needed you to know me as more than part of the mechanism. I needed you to know me as the one who beheld you.

That’s when it hit me. Literally, hit me. You’d made me pause in the middle of the street, frozen by the immensity of your presence, long enough to be hit by a car. That’s what happens when a gear stops moving, it gets taken out. But, it seems that what I needed. You noticed me then. You noticed a piece was missing from what kept you moving. You noticed your piece was missing. I was the piece you wanted to take care of. I was the piece you wanted to fix.

That was the first time you saw me the way I saw you. That was the moment you realized that I was essential. I think it was three summers ago when we found each other in the labyrinthine heat of the masses. But, we’ve been burning alone ever since.

I’d love to walk a mile in your shoes; but, I’m afraid the size of my feet would destroy their small frames. You can try drowning in mine, though.

Women who write are sexy too.

There, I said it. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Women. who write. are sexy. Not in the way that you would call a stripper sexy because of the way you think about how they might let you penetrate them. No, they are sexy because there’s something about the way women coax ink out of a pen with their every stroke that makes you wonder how they might coax ink out of you. The manner in which they labor over every line on a page makes you want them to labor over every inch of you.

Strippers can get a rise out of you, and depending on the nature of the words, an authoress can too. But, it’s a different kind of rise, something less carnal and more cerebrally stimulating. The impression is lasting, much like the words they write, leaving you to ponder them for hours or even days after the first contact. The stripper might get you to throw your money at her; but, the authoress…she gets you to throw your mind at her, a mind that contemplates more than the spaces between words.

Women who write are sexy too.

I’m not speaking of the ones who wrote a couple (hundred) angry poems at the boy who stood her up on her prom night. I’m sure that that woman could be sexy too; but, she doesn’t hold a candle to her class of allure. She can write a poem about it.

I’m speaking of the woman who would pen out their own diatribe for the sake of exercise. I’m speaking of the women that use their words to speak in a world where their bodies would work so much faster. The woman that would challenge convention. That fierceness, that defiance is titillating and tantalizing. That fierceness is vitality.

Women who write are unrelenting. They aren’t prisoners of the stigma attached to their gender, and if you try to pigeonhole them to that, they’ll stab you with a pen and use your blood to explain exactly why they don’t fit into that frame. They’ll do it with a smile. And you imagine that they unleash that kind of fervor on your flesh in the same way you imagine a stripper would grind on your flesh. The thought sends tingles up your spine that dance around inside your skull. You’re rigid.

You couldn’t give a damn about what she looks like; you only care about her pen strokes.

You just want her to be stroking yours.

-A sexy male writer

When writing, I often toe the line between a glum functionality and depression. To draw from within, to leave my pain on the page, I find that I need to look into the abyss that has formed over the years of my life. It’s a scary place, and because of its considerable size, it has a drawing effect, much like that of a black hole. But, most days, I’m able to keep my footing, making sure that I don’t fall inside. Other times, like yesterday, I get careless, lost in my pondering gaze, lean too far over, draw too deep, and eventually, I get sucked in. It’s crushing; it feels as though I can’t breathe beneath the weight of my thoughts and buried emotions. It makes me want to give up and let the pain have me, but for somehow, every time, I find a way to climb out, from beneath it all. I’m resilient and resurgent. It hurts like hell to do it, but I do it, because I know eventually, someone will need me in some capacity, and I’m useless in my weakened state. So know this, to all of you, I fall into myself, but I get up back up for you.

When I was younger, I had a teacher tell me that I should be careful with the things I say because they could be taken as threats, even if I was only kidding. I had always been good with my words; but, I figured to avoid getting into any trouble, I would learn a new way to communicate. Ever since then I became proficient in communicating my thoughts and feelings with the use of my eyes. It amazes me how much the subtle flex of an ocular muscle can aid in conveying a message.

Though, the teacher was wrong about one thing that day. They were never threats. They were warnings.

We all have cool stories; we just aren’t always the best at telling them, bro.