05/23/2009

she says you smell nice, which is the best compliment this side of your personality, and the right side of your body feels cold as an ice chest. eyelids and lips and five o’clock shadows sleep. there is no movement. fingernails smooth themselves and hair grows. and skin fills in. and air slides silently in/out. a slender silent sponge superheated in symbiosis.

you have to concentrate hard, you know that this won’t last and you have to be able to remember. you try to record it all. to pass your eye over every detail. make every nerve touch every nerve. it works.

you remember but you know you can’t relive. it is but a memory. memories fade like old films and after a while you remember the lines differently than they were. the boring ones are forgotten, and the good ones become greater than they ever were. but the good ones still get foggier as time passes. the celluloid becomes brittle. one day it will crack, and the memory will slip down the slide out the bottom of your mind, into the darkness, out of sight.

it doesn’t do any good try to recreate the memory. you change and the socket isn’t quite the shape it was that day. you can’t lie in the same place and feel the same thing, it’s like trying to squeeze into your 4th grade baseball shirt.

you can’t pull memories out of your pocket and crawl back in them.

if you could do that, we’d all be on the carpet in our apartments all day long.

you just hope to remember to jam the record button down just as hard. but you know too that you won’t have to be reminded.

I imagine driving up to the north shore. Driving all the way there without stopping, driving down a ramp off the highway. down to the water’s edge and just getting out and sitting amongst the rocks without saying a word for a while. Maybe sleeping there and rising whenever the sun decides. but i guess you probably can’t drive right down to the water like that. some memories don’t fit, even in advance. daydreams, methodone

but if you want a pillow i’ve got seventeen

if you need a blanket i’ve got two more than i need

you can sit in the chair outside the window and hear the sound of sleep

Whiskiwoman

May 23, 2009

I ALWAYS love to read when you write like this.

convoyeur

So good.

And if you ever need a shoulder to rest that heavy head down on…mine’s always open to you… *HUGS* Beautifully written, Mark. Thank you for sharing this with us.

TheDiva

May 24, 2009

Lil’ bit scary, but calming too.

catch the sparks

May 25, 2009

What your first noter said. These entries are gold. You are gold.

(don’t you just hate it when someone doesn’t type anything here, just leaving his/her diary name)

i was coming back to this entry to tell you i think i remembered about the line ‘she says you smell nice…’ from one of your entries when i first started to read you–one of the entries that kept me reading you. but rereading this, i don’t think it is referencing what i thought afterall. if i’m right, you said you hoped she didn’t feel you shaking, and i said she should find it endearing.

(because i’m not an OD+, i have to leave more than one note when i’m wordy) i wish i could climb back into so many memories and stay there–safe and young and happy and warm. where nothing dies and nothing changes for that moment…frozen. happy.