Snazzy Babble

My services are no longer required;
It’s time for me to move on.
It’s clear now you’ll be unhappy,
Whether I’m here or gone—
You claim that you need me
As you’re walking away.
Why do you insist on calling
When you have nothing to say?
It’s funny how your need to be right
Used to be something I admired—
Sense I clearly can’t make you happy,
I suppose it’s time to retire.
Because even when you’re right your not content;
You’re not satisfied till you’re sure I know.
Cowering in the corner while you vent—
I’m weary from you’re mental blows.
My services are no longer required;
Lucky for you, anyone can take my place.
It won’t be hard to find another foolish face.
Someone who can stand there and take the blame
Whenever you’re in pain.
She’ll distract you by playing your favorite game;
The one where you both walk away screaming…
The one where there’s no gain, so you never stop playing.
Better hurry and fill the vacancy;
I wonder which fool you’ll hire.
It’s time for me to take my leave;
My services are no longer required.

I sat Indian style on the bed, naked with my mind stripped of thoughts. I stared up at the single light bulb that flickered above the bed and wondered why it just didn’t give into the darkness. I stole a glance at your bare back and watched your eyes in the mirror you were looking in. I whispered that I was sorry, and you gruffly asked what for. I replied for being sad. I looked down at the angry scars on my thighs and stomach and wished I could take back the night. You followed my eyes and scowled at the marks. “I thought you loved me.” “You know I do.” “Then why hurt yourself?” It was a valid question but one I could not answer without the use of a device that projected the vivid thoughts in my mind. I needed to show him the tangled knots inside of me that connected me to the world. The ones that wrapped around my veins and strangled them effortlessly. Why did I hurt myself? The same reason I got up in the morning; I had to. “I don’t know,” I answered. “I don’t know either. Can you stop?” Another reasonable question. It would have been so easy to say yes. I wanted to stop because I hated pain. I had no tolerance for it; paper cuts brought me to tears. But giving it up would have been giving up my control, and I’m sure I would have spiraled to an even darker state of mind. Why can’t I stop? Why can’t the lightbulb give in to the darkness? It’s the same question. “I don’t know,” I answered. I took the next few moments to compose myself. I told myself that I didn’t need him to be happy because I was never happy anyway. I walked out the door and with each step felt the string connecting him to me pull tighter. I listened closely for the sound of footsteps following but there were none. The only thing I can’t remember about that night is who was the first one to leave.

“What a pretty little thing,” they sigh,
She succeeds at everything she tries.
Perfect grades, perfect posture,
Perfect girl, perfect daughter,
“Such a pretty little thing,” they chide.

“Such a pretty little thing,” they mutter,
As they watch her smooth her dress
And suppress her shutter.
Little words hurt the most—
“Pretty little thing,” they utter.

“Such a pretty little thing,” they note,
Unaware of how dead she is inside.
Scars and secrets aren’t hard to hide,
And even if anyone saw the pain,
“Such a pretty little thing,” they’d lie.

A burden, a burden—
That among all is certain,
Her sanity dangles on a string—
(Your burden, your burden)
“Pretty damn thing,”

Robotics

“You know, I forgive you for not loving me. Really, it’s okay.”

“Really? Why is that, Adrienne?”

“Because I don’t think anyone could love anyone the way I love you.”

“Really? Why is that, Adrienne?”

“Because I loved the idea of you more than I loved the finished product. I put everything I had into making you, and now when I look at you I’m horribly depressed with mself.”

“Really? Why is that, Adrienne?”

“Because I made you too damn, perfect. You always say the right things and that drives me insane. I programed you to take care of me. To cook ramen for me. To finish my sentences for me. To hold the door open for me. To sing me to sleep at night. I programed you to do everything I ever wanted!”

“Really? Why is that, Adrienne?”

“Stop saying that! Because I wanted someone who knew everything about me! But now you only know trivial facts. You don’t know how I feel because you don’t feel anything yourself. I can’t tell you what I think because I was the one who put all the thoughts in your head. I can’t talk to you because I always know what you’re going to say!”

“Really? Why is—”

“‘Why Is that, Adrienne,’ do you ask? Because I made you! I created you and now you are destroying me! You are too damn perfect! We never fight because you don’t have any spirit in you. We never make up because we never break up. And now, when all I want is for you to walk out that door and never come back, you won’t. Why? Because I ordered you to never leave!”

“Really? Why is that, Adrienne?”

“Because I wanted one thing in my life to stay! Just one damn thing…just one.”

“I’m sorry, Adrienne. Don’t be sad.”

“Oh, like you care. You don’t know what sad is. You don’t know what it’s like to feel completly empty because you’ve never been full. You can do everything except for sympathize. The thing is though just like everything else in my life that is bad for me, I love you. I love you I think simply because I can’t have you. That’s a trend with me, you see. It’s impossible for me to have a guy who is both perfect and willing to love me.”

“I love you, Adrienne.”

“No, you don’t. You can’t. I have to thank you though. You’ve made me realize that it’s not love if you don’t have an option.”

“Yes, I do, Adrienne. I love you.”

“No you don’t! Shut up!”

“I love you, Adrienne. I love you, Adrienne. I love you, Adrienne. I love you, Adrienne. I love you, Adrienne—”

“Shit…I should have just bought a vibrator.”

“We hold the preciousness of the moment in this parking lot of good-byes. And I expect we’re not done seeing each other…At the end, maybe I can meet you. And in the meantime I’ll write you things that keep us from falling apart. The light rushes out and floods this parking lot…I love and cannot follow her. She turns around and I see the physical space between us.”

Once again, I am driving. I’m pretty sure driving in rage is up there with driving while intoxicated, but at this point I really don’t care. I need to see Blake. He’s working today, but he always has time to talk, especially when I really need to rant. I’ve been thinking a lot these last few hours. There comes a time in a mans life that causes him to remember the people he knew and consider the people he knows, or thinks he knows. I mean, how well does a person know another person? People say “Yeah, I know him,” all the time, when really they mean, “I know his name and he lent me a pencil in pre calc once,”. Going by that I know a lot of people. But wouldn’t those people we “know” also be ones we knew? I’m never going to be in pre calc again; I’m never going to talk to that guy I use to “know”. How can I compare him, this meaningless unknown, next to someone whom I’ve though to have known and loved? I thought I knew Ruby. I knew her laugh, and the way her eyes crinkled. I knew her cherry scent and her sway. I knew her favorite bands and her best friends. I knew everything…but that hasn’t changed. I still know all those things. I know her voice and the shape of her lips. I know her taste, her eager mouth. I know everything, except for her. It’s not fair that guys get accused of being the careless ones. Girls always blame the guys for the end of a relationship. If a guy breaks up with a girl, it’s because we are “heartless lowlifes who don’t care about a girls feelings”, according to the girl at least. For one thing, why would anyone want to stay with a person who just broke up with you? There’s always that girl who begs and pleads, claiming she’ll change and be better. Change what? If you have to change for a guy to stay with you, why be with that guy? When we break up with you, all you hear is “I’m not good enough,”. It never even crosses your mind that we’re not good enough for you. Breaking up with you is giving you a chance to be with the one meant to love you. We don’t want to hurt you, we want to let you go, so that both of us can be happy. It’s also interesting how often guys are accused of cheating. First off, there is a difference between “guys” and “men”. A guy has no self-control, where as a man gives his whole self to you. I believe that the only thing a girl fears more than being cheated on is having her love look at her with regret. When a guy cheats, you girls act like you saw it coming. “Well, he was a guy,”. Though it hurts and ruins you, you still find the need to act like you knew it was going to happen. You mend so quickly though: You cry, you eat, you rant, you vent, you move on. We realize that it hurts, and we’re sorry that it has to. But you will feel so much better when you’re with the right guy, the one who doesn’t ever have to hurt you. However, when a girl cheats on a man, it brings a pain that can only be compared to the stitching of the heart. Each time she hurts you the needle digs in, puncturing a once perfectly happy vessel. It stings and pulls; but you know that with each tiny stitch you’re getting stronger. The more stitching you have, the harder it will be for your heart to be ripped apart again. Being cheated on is the last thing a man expects to happen to him. Girls are suppose to be lovely and sensible. When guys cheat on girls, their excuse is usually “I didn’t want to hurt you,”. Girls have no problem hurting guys; nothing can stop a girl who is searching for her soul mate. She may feel guilty, but that won’t make her stay. When she cheats on you it’s basically saying that you weren’t even worth having an ending with. It’s also strange how people seem to not think of cheating as leaving. It’s leaving; just because their body is with you and the words are spoken to you doesn’t mean they’re thinking of you. No, their thoughts have left to stroll through sweet memories of secret kisses and hushed words shared with their other. There have been two girls whom I have loved with passion and sincerity…there have been two girls who have left me to re-stitch my wounds. People walk in and out of lives every damn day. They step on memories as they walk out the door, they blow away sweet words with the screeches of truths, and they make you forget the spark in their eyes, leaving only the image of them leaving you. And what is the moment you are left? Was it that last kiss you shared? Or maybe more of a number of memories, compiled to form a bitter short film: Looking for her in a crowded stadium, watching her walk down the halls oblivious to you, seeing her eyes pass over you slowly and then light up when she spots her new friends? Leah and Ruby have only ever inadvertently shared one thing, and that is being loved by me. They are so different that not even I can compare the two in a way that does justice. …And when it comes down to it, out of all the people who have left…Leah is the one whom I wish had stayed.

I’ve locked my mind in an attic, And I’ve thrown away the key. This may seem like a strange tactic, But it insures that you can’t get to me. Your voice echoes off the walls, Your footsteps pace downstairs. It’s no use; I will not answer your call I refuse to let you think I care. I’ve hidden my mind in an attic, To protect it from your lovely lies; Your voice is a constant static, On a station that plays only lullabies. This attic is small and cramped; Filled with dust and memories. The walls are cracked, the floors damp, It’s the only thing that keeps out your discrepancies. I’ve lost my mind in an attic, I can’t seem to fight out the sound Your voice makes me ecstatic, To you it seems I am ever bound. Your voice is sweet and tender, Your calls are just so tempting… No! To your “love” I will not surrender; There’s just too much pain that needs venting. I’ve locked my mind in an attic, And I’ve kept it away from pain. Oh! but my heart God dammit. Was left outside in the rain.

Everything is so simple when you’re young; There’s no vanity or jealousy to get in the way. No one cares about who you are or what you’re going to be. You’re just you, an innocent being in the world; a potential friend. As you get older though, people start to use your potential. Often it’s wasted on trying to be something you’re not. And feelings begin to get in the way. You start to feel things with more intensity and passion. Suddenly, something as simple as holding someone’s hand is new and complex. I use to have this music box in my room. It played a wordless melody and had a tiny ballerina twirling on her toes in the center; I use to lie in bed and imagine myself being that ballerina, waiting to have a boy come and take me out of my little box. Nothing’s that simple though. When I was a toddler, I met a boy at Nursery. He was sort of cute, for a four year old, with dark brown hair and blue eyes. He even had a sweet little smile that I thought was magical. I didn’t learn how dangerous and deceiving a boy’s smile was until years later. He was in the sand pit and looked kind of lonely, so I crawled over to him and colored on his face. I was a strange child, even then. He laughed and drew on me. Soon we were in time out together and best friends. Simon became the most important thing in my life. We were together so often that soon our parents became friends, and they encouraged our relationship. We went through Elementary school together, not needing anyone else. Why would we? Simon was everything to me. Everything else in my life was insignificant. As long as I had him, I was happy. He felt the same, until we reached high school. Everything was going great. I had chorus and musical theatre, and all honors courses. I was going to be in the school play. Things were perfect. It started slowly; Simon started doing stuff without me. He joined the football team and made new friends there. I had no interest in football, so he became hard to talk to. Then he started to avoid me entirely. He started missing our weekly movie night and got too popular to pay attention to the glee geek that was me. A month later Simon and I wouldn’t even acknowledge each other in the halls. He’d moved on, so I had to too. He didn’t have much trouble doing it either. I mean, he was a guy, right? They could do anything without feeling guilt or caring what it did to other people. And I’ll be damned if I were to let him know his abandonment me affected me. I didn’t have any other friends though. And a lot of girls thought I was stuck up because of my dedication to my future acting career. I proved a few wrong though, and soon formed a group of true friends, who I would do anything for. Friends who would never leave me. I thought I had loved Simon. But it was probably just that I was too comfortable with the way we were that it had felt that way. What would I had known about love, anyway. If I’ve learned one thing in my life so far, it’s that you can never trust a guy. Being friends with one of them is just like riding a bike; they are unreliable and you always get hurt somewhere along the line, no matter how careful you are. There’s really no reason to risk the heartbreak. Having a guy best friend is complicated, because if they leave it means they are basically rejecting you in two ways; They don’t want to date you, and they don’t even like you enough to be friends. It is very difficult, despite what girls say, to not fall in love with a guy best friend. Who wouldn’t fall in love with a guy who knows everything about you, who you do everything with, and who seemingly cares about you? If you said you wouldn’t you’re lying to yourself. You may call me bitter, but that’s okay. Because I am. There was nothing sweet about leaving me for no reason. Am I suppose to forgive the guy who took everything and left me with nothing? I could forgive him. But the fact is I now love hating him too much to forgive him. Hating Simon Holt is almost as good as loving him.

Moments passed in November, Few of them worth keeping; Above all I remember, Kindred spirits meeting— Things yet to be admitted, Were shared those darkened days, To one another, we were addicted; We had so much to say— Our paths were rearranging: Crossing, weaving, exchanging. They delicately intertwined, Until your course was mine, Now forever our souls are tethered, And oh, how the rope is cruel; For whenever aren’t together, Ever tighter the pull— And you shall have my heart, Always in your keeping. And Though the sands of time will run, —A love like this is never done.