I'm a superhero who burns people with cigarette butts. I only burn people who are already having a bad day so they can blame me for it, that's why I'm a hero. When I am done burning people I sit down and I cross my legs and I wink, sometimes I eat a cookie. When I stay home the world gets cranky. I have a nemesis. His name is Hank. Read all about me! Cigarette Burn Girl!

Saturday, April 28, 2007

Fragments of a Dinner Party Conversation: Linda and Todd

And a stale refrigerator fell from the top story of the apartment building but I only looked once, only for a second, because I was thinking about that time in November after midnight.

“Pass me the matchbox.” She was trying hard not to look at him. Her eyes were dark and warm like spoonfuls of grape jelly. She wore sandals and she studied her toes. She liked to read travel books. There was one open on the coffee table next to the remote. She pretended to be looking at it.

I thought the cigarette would go up in flames and I thought that’s what she wanted to happen. I thought I knew her.

The girl ran one of her fingertips over each knuckle. She took turns with the knuckles, to be fair. She smoked and he stood by the fireplace, watching her. His eyes seemed to rush to no place. In her hand she held the porcelain urn. She held it like it was any object in the room. Inside the ashes made the sound of a child playing in a sandbox. She liked that sound and she liked to read about different kinds of sand in her travel books.

“You’re rushing me. You’ve got your own ideas of how things should be. The heartache comes and you take a Tylenol, you call your mother, you move on. But the kind of heartache this is…” Her voice trailed into the kitchen. The tile was outdated but she liked the colors. The little geometric red and yellow squares reminded her of college.

Jealousy and guilt seemed to go hand and hand ever since Junior High. Spending all night thinking about a girl. Going to school the next day. Seeing her stare at Johnny Turner. Staring at Johnny Turner with a pencil in her mouth. I raise my hand and say I have to go to the bathroom. When I come back the war has already started. The television is on and the whole world gathers around it and forgets everything else. Melissa McBrady tells me three people died while I was peeing. My eyes landed on Johnny Turner on the way to the television. It’s the same thing now, with your dead ex-boyfriend.

She couldn’t read his expression. She didn’t want to try. She wanted to think about the dark purple constellation of plants on the mother’s tablecloth. They were plants that did not exist, they were mysteries. She thought about the woman and her too-tight shoes. Crying on the tablecloth. Then she was lost in it, the web of memories. He cut his arm with the broken wine glass but she didn’t look once because she was thinking about that afternoon in July and her ex-boyfriend’s gray-black pick-up.

She knew it was love. She knew it wouldn’t last.

Monday, April 16, 2007

Popcorn Shrimp?

Today a pelican arrived on my doorstep! I opened the door and he looked very angry so I threw my grilled cheese sandwich at him, but it turns out he wasn't angry, his face just permanently looks like that, and then I looked at it longer and decided he was cute. He dropped an envelope for me and said thank you and made a good boy bow. I said Thanks but I don't think he could hear me because his wings were flapping too hard in his ears. I imagine this is very loud. The letter said this:

COME TO MY HOUSE FOR DINNER TONIGHT OR DIE TOMORROW

-HANK

What does he want for me? And is it wrong for me to be making pro/con lists about this option? I wonder what he's having for dinner?

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Come down off your high horse, Robert!

I have a trojan horse on my computer. I have always dreamed of having a horse but not like this. Not a malicious horse that is impossible to delete and constantly downloads new spyware and adware programs to my computer. I'm infected, Robert! I'm infected! I wanted to tell my Dad life makes me feel like a zombie but I didn't think he'd believe me, and i'm not a zombie but I AM infected. Anyway, if I don't write in a while, it's because the horse tied one end of a rope to my neck and the other to his leg and took off. Neigh! Snort!

<3 Your Friend Cigarette Burn Girl

Saturday, April 7, 2007

Louise

Here is the story on my friend Louise. I need some ideas on how to help her.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Louise walked around with a spoon in her head like it was something to show off. The hair on the back of her head was bloody. Mothers snapped their daughters’ barrettes and wrapped their fingers hard around the wire of their shopping carts as they passed. Louise dressed dinner with a white tablecloth and the memory of a child that would have stared at his reflection in the empty white plate. She lit her candle and noticed the ruffle on her dress was stained.

It was unfortunate, the spoon getting stuck there so many years ago. Aunts and Uncles were crying with each other back then, hospital rooms were cleared back then. Louise used her brain to turn on the stove back at home and blow up the place. The words “It’s stuck” make some people want to drop their eyeballs into little pots. Louise remembered a yellow blanket wrapped around her head screaming “this life”, and then said to her sister “it gets worse”. Her sister remembered to curl her hair this morning.

Babies would grab onto the spoon handle now. The tranquilizers kept the cat from pawing. Soup was to be eaten alternative ways. She missed sleeping on her back. She missed looking in the mirror and seeing all of her. Babies would point to her head and say “spoon” now. Journalists would strain their necks to see the back of her.

When Louise wanted to sit on the grass, the mother ducks would take their babies far away from her. Mostly it was loneliness and not the spoon that hurt her; eventually she thought about it over a glass of lemonade with her niece; eventually she decided the spoon was irrelevant. She wished she would find someone she didn’t have to explain herself to.

Every day she would sit on her bed and try to get courage. She would fold back the covers over her heart and imagine God reaching her. The doctor said one day. ONE DAY the spoon will have to come out. She tried to remember what it felt like to grip the spoon handle; she tried not to think about taking spoonfuls of brain matter from the place that stung her. Her only hope was that one day someone would hate her enough to yank it out with the worst of intentions.

So she couldn’t help but notice the man with the fork in his heart. Yes, she thought, well yes, well I think these things happen. I guess these kinds of things happen to people. Then she cried for the things that kept on happening.

When the spoon came out finally it was in one swoop of the hand. It embarrassed her how anticlimactic it all was; she pressed the towel to her head hoping for more blood, but there was only a small red circle to prove the five years; she wanted to bleed from every pore just then. It was very unfortunate that she didn’t, she thought that night at dinner, the white plate glaring at her in disgust. She didn’t want to show herself off anymore. The ducks in the park approached her and approached her…she shooed them away away away away

Friday, April 6, 2007

Feeling Stupid

I may be a superhero but I get embarassed very easily. At times I wish my bed was right next to me so I can crawl under the covers and yell at myself for hours. I like the song that says "I can stop punching my own face because of you."

Things that make me feel stupid:
1. When I drop one of my cigarettes by accident
2. When I wake up and look really ugly
3. When I spill something that smells bad on my shirt
4. When I tell a joke that no one gets
5. When I think about the night before and can't remember what I said
6. When I go to sleep after a day when nothing happened
7. When I buy things off ebay without thinking
8. When someone forgets about me
9. When I forget to return something before the thirty days
10. When I see a picture of someone who left me without a word
11. When I see a picture of myself and I look stupid
12. When I start talking too loudly and then forget what I am saying
13. When I am wrong about someone
14. When I can't figure out why I'm in a bad mood and I can't cheer up
15. When I stumble, stutter, trip, or knock over something valuable
16. When Hank punches me in the neck and I still love him afterwards.

I wonder if Hank ever feels stupid, too. Do you ever feel stupid?