Gone Baby Gone

It starts almost immediately, but is gradual enough that you fail to notice the damage until you're in too deep to care. By bits and pieces you give more of yourself than you should, explain away behavior that should have been called out. You change small truths until they become big amorphous lies you tell yourself to hold on to that rare flutter of excitement and hope you felt within those first moments of electric, illicit kissing.

The pliable acquiescence you tell yourself is compromise eats away at your foundation,until the house of cards you have so meticulously built crumbles in a heap of self recrimination and regret. What ifs litter the floor like a slick new deck of playing cards, hopelessly boxed, with the queen of hearts face down on the carpet.

Is this the universal plight of all women who are still "out there", or simply my particular brand of self sabotage? Can it really be this difficult to navigate the murky waters of a modern day romance?

Probably not.

What this is, this anticlimactic quasi-humiliating silence, is nothing more than a case of unrealistic, uncommunicated expectations on my part, and a total lack of expectation on his. While far more likely, this truth leaves the more dramatic, Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet- part of my psyche in the dry dust of pragmatism. It's not even worth the bottle of wine and tear-jerker movie I have set aside for such contingencies.

It would be so easy to vilify this poor unsuspecting guy who did nothing more than take what was freely and enthusiastically offered. To place my anger and frustration at his feet would be vindictively satisfying; all my sisters, single and married alike, here in real life, and out there in blog land would rally around me with a resounding "Asshole!". But it would be unfair, and would ultimately leave me hollow and cold.

No, I find myself turning my angry gaze and clenched fists skyward, railing at the Universe, yelling and stomping my feet like a petulant child.I've been a good person, dammit! You couldn't throw me this one stinking bone?

All I got in reply was the night sky, and more silence.

Off with her head!

Where is my head these days?
Certainly not where it should be; not at work, dealing with the epic piles of crap that are accumulating on my desk. It's only a matter of time before they notice, or before the fire marshal comes to condemn my corner of cube land.

Not in the day to day upkeep of a life in motion. Phone calls I need to make are forgotten. Yes, I look like I'm having a conversation, paying attention, nodding in agreement to I know not what, but really I'm miles away. My thoughts jumping like psychotic fish in an overcrowded, electrified pond.

My head isn't here either. I have tried to sit down and focus long enough to write something, anything worth reading, and obviously this isn't it. I have failed miserably, my queue is littered with half completed thoughts, paragraphs that run together, but fail to make a point. My google reader glares accusingly from it's corner of my computer screen, but even that simple, usually enjoyable break in my day, sits undone.

Here's the goocher. The things that have me so utterly distracted would make great posts, but I can't write about them. I'd like to, but one mini drama centers around family, and if Family reads of mini drama, Chanda will be in the poo. Nothing makes me want to drink like a Kennedy than family drama and the impending holidays.

The big pink elephant in the room, the source of all recent lobotomized behavior, centers around absolutely nothing but a remote possibility; a shadow of hope warring with a tsunami of self doubt and ambivalence (hard to say who's). I feel like the more I talk about it, the more I jinx it, and the more humiliated I'll be when it all comes to nothing. See, I told you there was pessimism. Suffice it to say; "Yes, Virginia, there is a guy".

I'll stop this incoherent ramble now, while I'm ahead, sort of. I promise I'll be catching up with everyone soon. In the mean time, that girl in the corner muttering to herself and drooling? Yeah, that's me.

Storm Front

Clouds gather, skies open,
thighs part in praise
as heavy, humid rains of sweat, lust, and rum
quench the unseasonal drought
of unbearable duration.
Winds of hot, dry unrest calm in the damp,comforting pressure
of a body pressed against mine
in saited sleep.

Now, left alone with nothing but the
satisfying soreness of body, and bruise of lips,
a hollow chill settles deep in the darkening sky,
and a wicked wind whips in the fury of a silent phone.