I'm going to get her back.

I went to first through fourth grade at the same school. After that it was one year here, one year there, one and a half, two and a half, two… Then university became one here, one home, one there… I was usually the nerdy outcast. All of this is to say, some people have things in their lives that others don’t. And that’s okay. Some people have nice cars. Other people have fifty year marriages. I had a fascination with books. Other kids had friends.

Not a big deal, I didn’t have close friends. Not long term anyway, but it didn’t really upset me that much. I had other things they didn’t have. I learned about philosophy while they had sleepovers. Who cares. That’s life.

One thing I do have is extremely vivid dreams. Quite frequently I have a memory and I’m not sure if it actually happened or if I dreamed it. I mean to say these dreams are indistinguishable from reality. I wake up disoriented and confused. Last night I could fly. I should be able to fly now. Sometimes I’m in waking life and realize what just happened was in my dream the night before. That’s disorienting, too.

The first person who became a real, long-term, close friend was A______ W_______. I don’t know why she picked me. We were working together, and she was simply kind to me. She’d share some of the food she brought in. Then she started bringing in special things just for me. I didn’t understand what was happening. I thought she was hitting on me. I didn’t know how friendship worked. After the third time we hung out I walked her back to her car and asked to kiss her. She laughed and asked for a hug instead. She wasn’t scared off. She helped me understand what friendship could be like. She was my friendship teacher. She moved to Florida before social media was a huge thing. I was sad. We still loved each other very much but the distance meant we drifted a little.

Another thing I have that some other people don’t is cooking skills. I mean I’m really good. I don’t know how to make bad food. What does a lifelong friendship matter when I can rock your world with chicken saltimbocca? You know how people make food with weed, and it always tastes like compost? Not my cookies. I make the butter first with a secret trick, and then I add delicious strong spices. Maybe ginger, orange peel, and lemongrass. Maybe cinnamon, clove, and vanilla bean. My pot cookies are the talk of the town at any party they decide to visit.

I think Andrea found another queer student before she found me. We were at university, and I had just changed from social chairperson to president of the campus queer straight alliance. If I remember our first encounter correctly, it was a sunny day in a long hallway, well-lit with natural light from windows the whole way down. It was one of those days, it was some of that light, that just gets inside you and lifts you up. And there they were sitting, the beautiful pair of them, and maybe someone had told them I was the QSA president, and they shouted out to me, and in that magical way that only exists in oppressed communities, we instantly fell in love and became friends. We started planning our “wedding.” It wasn’t real, of course, except that it was. If you know, you know.

That’s a thing I have. A skill at making communities. At bringing people together. You have family vacations at Hawaii every winter? I put people together who support one another and stay in touch for life. That changes the world, you know.

How exactly did Andrea and I become so close? What were the steps? I can’t retrace them. One thing I don’t have is a great memory. Seriously, I can forget anything. Once, a friend told me that the two years we spent having nightly conversations on the phone had meant so much to them. I have no memory of that at all. This is to say, I cannot remember a time when Andrea Milligan was not my very best friend in the entire world. Once it happened, it had always been that way.

I still wasn’t one of those long term friend people yet though. Andrea and I were friends in university, but I was only there three years. But somehow, it lasted. Bless technology I guess, the introduction of social media, messaging through phones, video chats. We were never not in touch. She was my best friend, and it lasted and lasted.

We used to do everything together. I mean we were a single unit item. You didn’t see one of us without the other. More people than I can count assumed we were a couple. I mean it happened a lot. Straight people, queer people, people who knew us well, people we’d just met. They would either ask outright, “Are you together?” or they would invite one of us to something and say, “Bring your girlfriend.” We would collapse into laughter and fall upon one another, which maybe didn’t help their perception but we didn’t care.

We’d have sleepovers four-fifths naked. She helped me unlearn my shame around my body. Look, sleeping in your underwear is just more comfortable than sleeping with clothes on. And one thing we had in common was how much we embraced how lazy we were. We could sleep all day. One of us would wake up and take video of the other one snoring, then fall asleep and the other would take video of the first one snoring. We’d share it later and laugh.

We’d cook together and laugh. We’d go to movies together and laugh. We’d go to protests and chant and march. We’d get new partners and gush over them. We’d go through breakups and have nasty cries and get sloppy drunk. I’d host parties with my famous cookies and all our local community and beloved chosen family would come and eat and giggle. After 7 years as friends she shared with me an article she read that says, if a friendship makes it to seven years, you’re going all the way. We were going all the way.

So much so in fact that when she got a new partner that refused to meet me on my trips home from the opposite side of the globe (I think Andrea never forgave me for moving so far away from her, but she still loved me), I didn’t mind. We’d both seen each other through terrible choices in relationships. This, too, would pass. I mean, the woman was literally married. That’s not sustainable, right?

My friend Keith killed himself over depression. My roommate Angela killed herself over depression. My roommate Tommy had an accidental overdose. My classmate Aaron fell asleep driving and crossed the median. My dear friend Sean killed himself over trauma. My adopted baby Nic killed himself over depression. Lucie laid down to sleep and never woke up and we never found out why. This is a short sample of the long list. Death must be one cool motherfucker. She takes all my favorite people to hang out with her. My first brush with a suicide was in sixth grade. My grandparents were dying before I was born, when I was two, when I was in fourth grade. Death has always been close by, eyeing my nearest and dearest. We’re very well acquainted. I am quite accomplished and practiced with grief.

Once after my roommate Angela died I had one of those vivid dreams. She was dancing around in a corset and a billowing skirt, her famous red lipstick flaring across her smiling mouth. But I thought you died, I said. She threw her head back and laughed. Please, she said, like something as weak as death could stop me. Then she kept dancing and I just watched and watched. I woke up disoriented and confused. It was so real. Was she back?

When I finally met Andrea’s new partner, who I will not name, she seemed nervous. Things seemed off. Whatever. Then she flew off the handle over something that was nothing. Weird. Then she demanded Andrea leave my vehicle and go into hers and talk about how horrible I was for the better part of an hour while I waited. Okay.

I had come back for another visit and to finally meet the partner. The spin was, some friends and I were actually having an intervention for Andrea the next day and she didn’t know it. We thought she might be abusing painkillers. We didn’t know we were having an intervention for the wrong substance.

Yeah, the painkillers didn’t help. But now we know who was placing them in her palms to be swallowed down. If that woman, who is already in trouble for physical assault with a deadly weapon, doesn’t stand trial for the murder of my best friend, … it’ll be her loss. As many people as loved Andrea, the woman would be safer in jail honestly. This is not a threat, it’s just a fact.

Have you ever met a person that just… like was the literal embodiment of unconditional love and support and who would celebrate and affirm you exactly who and how you are at all times? Maybe you think you have, but if you never met Andrea, no you really didn’t. That person you’re thinking of wasn’t a third what Andrea was. Honestly, fuck that person. How dare they pale in comparison to the greatest platonic love of my entire life? They should just retire and stop failing to hold a candle to my Andrea.

That was the thing that Andrea had that no one else had.

She once went to a party with red duct tape across her mouth. She managed, without ever speaking, to simply gesture and convey her meaning to enough people that an entire photo album exists of her “kissing” random strangers at this party. She would find lost kids and bring them to our QSA. She was in touch with more people than I have ever met, at all times, telling everyone sincerely and thoroughly how much she loved them. She brought me so many wounded birds that we would nurse back to self love together. Once a meeting at my house spontaneously devolved into a party where three of us were naked and the other six were painting all over the naked ones. This magical joy would just happen around her, and you felt loved and accepted and part of something, something good, something whole. That was her thing. She had that.

We did the intervention. It was hard. She agreed to go to a facility for an intake interview. She aced it because of course she did. She was a boss at stuff like that. They sent her home. I went back to the other side of the planet. I heard The Girlfriend had Andrea locked in a bathroom with a gun. Another friend went over to try and save her. The Girlfriend almost murdered two of my closest long term friends. Andrea didn’t file a restraining order. I get it. I was in an abusive relationship before. It happens. They make you crazy. You think only you understand your relationship. The outsiders, they don’t get it. They don’t understand what you have. It’s you two against the world.

During all of this, Andrea lost her mother. They were thick as thieves. It’s the kind of loss you just don’t heal from. And I couldn’t console her. I had to stay away. I had to wait until she was free from That Woman.

I didn’t mind waiting. I would wait for her. She’d get this relationship out of her system just like we both had all the other shitty partners and then we’d be back together again, good as new. Four of us, friends of Andrea’s, had united to try to do the intervention and we stayed in touch afterward. We all tried different methods repeatedly to try and help. We each played different roles. We figured, eventually she’d wake up, or we’d get through. We would get her back. We were going to get her back.

I don’t know what time Andrea laid down with The Girlfriend. I assume there were pills involved. The Girlfriend posted that the love of her life died in her arms as they slept. What time was it? Was it the same time that I became inexplicably tired very early in the evening and went to bed? It was 3 or 4am local time when I woke up to the “news.” It was still speculation at that point, the reports were coming in. I sobbed well past sunrise. Denial, anger, bargaining all at once. She isn’t dead. We can still get her back. I hate that woman. The wrong person woke up.

Around 7 I went back to sleep. I had a dream Andrea and I were in bed together. I got so excited. She was laying in the bed four-fifths naked under a thick blanket. I got on top of her and bounced and bounced. She was laughing like crazy. I was snuggling in all her chubby bits, tickling her with my nose and kissing her everywhere. I’m so glad you aren’t dead, I said. I knew it wasn’t real. She said, I did it to bring my mom back. She said, I knew if I faked my death she’d come back. Her mom was there too. We all laughed and bounced and cuddled four-fifths naked and the best friend I’ve ever had, the longest the truest, Love walking in human flesh and touching everyone she met, she was there again right beneath me. I woke up disoriented and confused. My friend is not really dead. I’m going to get her back. This isn’t real. I haven’t seen any obit or autopsy. Love can’t die, right? We’re going to get her back. I get to keep my best friend. I get to have that after all. Andrea, call me. I’m confused. Remember the article? How we're going all the way? I’m waiting. I’ll keep waiting as long as it takes.

12/30: After Jan Beatty's "Shooter"

Poem Removed because Wicked Banshee Press is going to publish it!  Link up when it happens.

Today is the 24th.

Back on the 18th I wrote four poems.  I figured that didn't put me ahead, as I still wanted to write every day.

I got a little behind on the weekend.  Been working on an application for a master's degree.

So, I still want to write for the days I missed.  I'm two behind, plus today I haven't written yet either.  

I'll post two tonight, and we'll see what happens tomorrow, as I work a double then.

I’m not excited about tonight’s quality, but then, the April 30/30 has never been about quality, I don’t think, as much about writing every single day no matter what.  Or, missing a couple days and then writing two afterward ;)

She Dreamed of an Old Shoe:

Comfort, said her daughter.

Shedding layers, said her friend.

Your childhood, said her therapist.

You’re tired, said the quiet voice within.

It’s me, her tired husband.

The urge to run, said her lover.

From this prompt by Nicole Homer:

First, she lost her comb,

the one her mother left her.  “You must not have really

loved it,” said her husband.  How quickly the flames

consumed him.  Out of the ashes crawled a spider, carrying a song

her mother used to sing, and faster than light, she realized

she had to swallow the song.  When the comb reappeared,

she did not cry, said only, “I knew you’d come back.”

5/30, just before midnight, from an accidental ghost line by Sonya Renee

I love that there is an answer to all things.

Look long enough, hard enough, look

in the closet behind the box of your father’s

ashes.   Look inside your father’s ashes.

Under  the graduation cap

and gown, try flossing, who knows,

it could be tucked inside a popcorn kernel.

Answers like Of course you can and No,

it will cost too much.  Answers like blue and tomorrow

or never, answers like thundering rivers,

like the smell of yeast bread, like drinking

to forget, like oak.  And so, I know, there must

be an answer for me there, somewhere, I love

that there is, I search when you’re sleeping, peek

between your knobby toes, the chaos of covers

twisted around you, a shelter of turmoil, run

my fingers through your hair, search behind

your earlobes, sift through the smoke

of your dreams and find,

just there, in the right corner

of your primal,

godly mouth:
YES.

3/30

In the dream you were a coal-dust kitten, tiny beetles for eyes,
sitting on the corner, crying, each mew another spider falling
out of your mouth and onto the floor. You clung so quickly
with those tiny new claws. When I brought you water, you
asked me for whiskey. When I poured it,
it turned into blood in the bowl.

I made you a bed and fed you love songs for dinner until
one morning you woke up, rubbed your eyes, and called me
(accidentally) "mother." I drove you out to the country. Left you
at the first farmhouse I found, only glanced in the rearview
once.

sleeping until 4pm can be risky

In the dream I run into you
with a new girlfriend and she's
everything you ever want in a flame.
1) Easy on the eyes and
2) Stuck to your side.
In the dream, bits of her skin begin
to peel off and float away like ashes until
she's left with only
a pretty dress, sculpted hair and smile.
You wrap your arm around what's left
pull her in for a kiss
and beam, so happy, so proud.

napowrimo: april 3: last night's dream

Last night’s dream had me back in my father’s kitchen.

Which also was once my childhood kitchen, but isn’t anymore:
I’m no longer a child, I don’t live there, things have changed

and the only person still there
is my father.
It’s my father’s kitchen today, and so that’s the way it was in the dream.

Except my sister was back too, and so was my father’s ex-wife:
my ex-mother.
She also once was my mother, but she isn’t anymore.
Certain things happened and
I had to live my life without her in it.
Sometimes families are funny that way.

Last night’s dream had me scared and overwhelmed.

Which should have therefore had me brave,
but sometimes dreams are funny that way.
They show us things we think we’ve learned
but haven’t yet mastered.
We all want to learn things;
I want to learn how to be brave, keep my head,
be wise, even-tempered, live above anger.
It’s something I’d been proud of improving until last night’s dream,

Which started with a fish.
I was at my father’s sink,
the sink i grew up with, cleaning a fish that was huge it had
skin and eyes and gills and i
couldn’t even pick it up and
she was there, yelling at me i was
taking too long the
fish was going bad.
Last night’s dream had me screaming:
Please stop it!
and heaving the fish in a rank garbage can
I see color in dreams and sometimes even smell
and this horrible garbage was stinking to hell
so I ran.

Last night, in the dream, my ex-mother was pregnant.
At sixty. Hiding it well until
I came round a corner to run into her big exposed belly
in a striped shirt where lines became waves;
Her face was so many things at once…
it was shock, it was fear, it was anger, betrayal,
confrontation and guilt: her face was a novel
of feelings without names.
3 black crows that used to be her soul
screamed at me through a hole in the mouth of her face
"don’t judge me, don’t judge me, don’t judge me."

Screaming it like she wanted me to, to somehow justify
the judgement she'd already given herself, but I won't.
Woman, your justice would freeze beer.
I'd thought I'd awken then with that realization
but the dream went on and there was an altercation.
I’m not proud to say it: I joined in
lost my head, blew my cool
and woke up with my voice coming out of her three mouths:
"I’m not ready for her yet, I’m not ready for her yet, I’m not ready for her yet…"
Kissing my sleeping father goodbye in the dream,
telling him I wish I could stay and work things out but
I’m not ready for her yet.

Sometimes life's messages can be funny that way.
I want a mommy that loves me for me but she’s not
Ready for me yet I wonder if
She’s having dreams in which she’s a pregnant fish,
stinking and gasping for a breath of cool water
but she’s not ready for it yet.
Guilt runs through her veins like ribbons
and they’re all tied up in knots.

Tonight in her dreams I’ll untie them.
So she can become a baby
in her mother’s kitchen and I’ll defend her
until she’s strong enough she’s ready for love.
I’ll tie her heart to my apron strings
and we’ll forget all about last night’s dream.

Last Night's Dream...

If you've heard me talking about my dreams before, you've heard me say: they're always epic. Always a journey, a quest, a battle, something to escape, something to evade... I'm sure that fact itself means something too, but I'm no one to interpret it.

Last night's dream was no exception. I don't remember nearly what I did upon just waking up, which is why I'm scolding myself for misplacing my dream journal again... but I remember being royalty and having to duck and cover a bit. I remember being outside in deep snowdrifts upon hills, and having to hide myself in them and pretend to be dead. While in these snowdrifts, it became apparent that the only person between me and the throne was my dream-sister. I'd like to clarify that this dream sister did not resemble my real sister in appearance or personality. Sometimes my actual sister does appear in my dreams, but this wasn't her. So I had no problem killing her.

I don't die much in my dreams. In fact, I can't recall ever waking and having dreamed of my death. I have done a lot of killing in my dreams. It's not a frequent theme or anything, but it does happen. This murder was really curious. It involved beating her head until I knew that the previously uniform mass within it had ... not dissolved or even shattered but somehow separated... hitting her skull, I felt its contents move around like marbles made of jello... I left her body in the snow and went back to my people's great hall.

I made it back there but didn't want to be spotted immediately for some reason. I was trying to overhear some comments on the state of things and where I stood. I tried to pass as someone serving ale or something alcoholic in a pitcher, and one fellow took too much of a liking to me and keeping my honor was looking difficult. So I stood up and threw up my arms and said something to the effect of "Do you not know your Queen?" and he did a lot of cowering and I did a lot of ordering his tortured death.

I remember laying down in my big bed in my big chamber with a couple of small dogs. I remember one of the dogs acting funny, and when I put my hands on her, I could tell she had about half of the marble-brain problem my dead sister had had. I was sad about it, but shrugged in the dream, and somehow justified this dog's suffering by saying sometimes people are going to get hurt.

I believe that our brain uses sleep-time to do sorting and cleanup and subconsciously make decisions by putting ourselves into situations that represent the ones we won't make consciously. I believe my brain is a little crazy, yes, but that I am supposed to have woken knowing that I will be okay, all the time. I'm the kind of girl who won't give up and will do what she has to to make sure she's alright. It was a weird way to get the message (and weird is being used to describe my current situation with increasing frequency) but it's a good message to get.

Sorry, dream-sister.