Sinister: but she walks with a limp.

[dagnyrae]

i told richard i didn't know as whom i should post.

i am still lost on that, and i feel old and
out-of-practice, that sheep who strayed just far
enough from the flock to be a member still, but not
part of the whole.

ya'll be hooked up now, and here i am, as hopeful as
ever, i suppose, but with a thousand different
identities and not one i can grasp.


huh.


looks like i'm to be me after all.

***

i wrote a poem once about tiles on a bathroom floor.
how, if you look at them long enough with an unfixed
gaze, the grout lines between sort of dissolve. eyes
playing tricks on the seer, i guess; at least it
happens to me. i was in the same tiled bathroom
tonight, the same one i wrote about, and i looked for
a minute or two at the tiles, thinking how perhaps all
life is like a tiled floor, small separate pieces held
together in this great chalky mass of solidarity. and
it looks new and even when freshly grouted; then,
after a while, the grout wears away, the pieces look
disjointed and some of them just fall away.

i'd like to think the moments i have, though, are not
uniformly shaped and spaced. though my grouted base is
measurable and ending, my moments aren't, shall we
say, communistic in nature. 

they are not all equal. but they are not all less
important.

***

when the boy got to my apartment last night i was
searching my drawers for a pair of knee socks. argyle,
to be sure. but the brown and orange didn't fit, for
some odd reason, so i went with the gray and white,
big, high-contrast diamonds curving around my calves
-- i felt conspicuous.

all the recent talk of patterned stockings has gotten
me thinking about my unmentionables drawer: hot pink
stockings, brown and black striped, two kinds of
rainbow-striped knee socks, white, navy, gray, black
lace and a multitude of faux-lacy flowers.
cream-colored, which i wore when i met miss mandee may
for the very first time (and subsequently smoked my
very first dunhill). plain black, of course, pink and
blue knee highs from the little girls' department and,
for the very cold and crazy days, full argyle
stockings.

i may have a bit of a patterned problem. or at least a
bit of a stocking problem.

perhaps i am turning my tiles into various kinds of
socks; some understated and, dare i say, typical, and
most really bright, rather trendy and fairly
expendable.


maybe that's too generalized, though.

maybe i just wish things could be as simple as socks
or tiles, threads interweaving and little rows of even
sqaures.

***

i made a friend quiz a week ago. remember when we did
those? yeah. i do.

i made one again and sent it out to all my friends.
the highest score was five out of ten. apparently my
quiz was too hard, and people thought i liked my
glasses more than my blue chuck taylors.

question number two:

how many boys have i dated (meaning: how many boys
would say they have dated me)?

question number three:

ok, so with how many boys have i gone on dates?

both multiple choice.

i had to count out myself for number three. i got out
my red editing pen and a note card and make tick marks
as i counted off the names in my head. twenty-one. 

now twenty-two, i guess, and that reminds me of a good
life song.


i kind of miss those twenty-one dates, when i woke up
the morning of and picked out a skirt and a pair of
cream-colored tights. is it bad to say i kind of miss
the dates in january? i kind of miss chicago in may,
too.


does that mean i miss my old life? or is there a
difference between then and now? between all the
twenty-one and the new number twenty-two?

or is it all just the same after all, the same tiles
in the same floor, the same size and shape and color,
just in a different spot with an exact measurement and
boundary.


maybe i am not a thousand names. maybe i am just one.


well. 

fuck.

nevermind.


*rae

(thanking fuck for the end and ken.)



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