Sinister: it's the ones with the sorest throats, laura, who have done the most singing.

[lindsey baker]

hello sinister.

i moved this past weekend.

i've always hated cleaning and packing everything away into boxes and bags, 
zipping and taping and sweeping and throwing out, being forced to decide 
what's worth keeping and what isn't. i put all the tasks off to the very 
last minute, giving myself about a day and a half to compress everything i 
own into four big boxes and about eight bags of varying sizes.

i got boozed when i was done on a bit too much wine, and then i started 
thinking.

saturday morning dawned bright and sunny, which was a welcome relief after 
the rain of friday. my parents and sister came down to lincoln, and as they 
carried my things outside, i listened to the sound of my life as i had known 
it pick up and leave.

i sat in the middle of the floor in my then empty room, and looked up and 
around. i remembered everything that had happened there, in between those 
four walls. i wondered how it had all happened, and i started to feel lost.

and out of it all, an entire year in a place, one boy remained in the paint, 
stuck in the cracks between the wooden floorboards. one boy was breathing 
along with me, and i thought for the first time that i loved him, and that 
the moon on his shoulder may as well have been a parrot.

***

i questioned, for the next few days, and probably still, when, exactly, 
memories gain weight. and once they do, once they have been assigned a place 
and number of importance, when do they fall in the rankings? do they? and 
what happens when you fall in love with a memory? what happens when the 
weight and significance of something increase merely because it is beautiful 
for that single memory to be beautiful?

these things trouble me, and i don't think i have any of the easy answers.

i wrote in a poem that is as yet unfinished that i am fond of questions 
without answers. and perhaps i am.

but my fondnesses always get me into another hole, somewhere, and each one 
is getting progressively deeper.

***

i drove to omaha last night, wearing a brownie girl scout blouse and the 
pink chucks for a bright eyes show. it was to be the first time i saw them, 
and i was nervous, chewing gum to calm my nerves and thinking that 
everything would be ok.

i would be ok, listening to my favorite band. i didn't have to talk to 
people who might or might not be there.

it wasn't like i hadn't seen him before the after part. i had.

i went to the show alone. i had never done that before, shown up at a venue 
sans little crowd of support. it was a night of firsts, apparently, but when 
i got there, i saw some kids i knew. and they hugged me, gave me high fives, 
liked my shoes and my hair and my glasses. perhaps they liked me.

they let me stand with them, at any rate.

the friend i had called in desparation showed up, and i stood with him, and 
he told me everything would be ok.

and it was great. the show.

and then.

conor sang a song to pass the time. and i remembered an afternoon in my old 
apartment, a chair, the sun filtering through the blinds, running like water 
across the floor and spilling over my feet and the ball of yarn tucked 
between them. i remembered the rainbow-colored coasters i made for another 
boy i had kissed before and after waiting for another to come home.

keeping my fingers busy. passing the time.

and then, the boy was there. that one. he parked himself in front of me and 
had an animated conversation with a kid i didn't know. but the boy waved his 
hands through the air, and i watched conor through the crook of his arm 
until i noticed that the hand waving in front of my eyes was wearing 
something of mine, still.

the bracelets of mine that i had looped together and put on his wrist the 
night i met him. we had been standing in the middle of my old room, and i 
gave them to him. he smiled, and kissed me, and then we danced. we danced, 
that night, with no music, just his soft counting and loose movements.

and so it was decided i would wait, and he would remember every moment every 
day, when he looked at his hands.

i danced last night during loose leaves.

and during a song to pass the time, i gulped air, trying to supress vomit 
and tears and everything else that said i should take his hand again and 
break the fingers with my broken own.

'come spend the night, we can jump on my bed. you can unwrap me like a 
birthday present, i will, i will be easy.'

***

i am in love with something, again, and perhaps it is not a boy, after all, 
but an idea and a song, notes written and sung.

and so i have moved, and am left reeling in attempts to find something 
pretty in the movement, a grasp among displaced boxes of shifted yesterdays.


i wish someone would teach me how to differentiate between real memories and 
imagined ones.

i wish someone would teach me how to write.

i wish someone would teach me how to sing.


i wish someone would

i wish someone could


and so she tapes the picture up again on the stand beside her bed, and 
turns, waiting for her head to stop splitting in two.

love, lou
xxx


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