But,

It is five o'clock in Cape Town. So let's cough down another couple shots of slippery whiskey. Refills on me. I am a soda machine full of reason why its okay to drink ten o'clock on a Saturday.

Notebooks

A Friend is the notebook you keep your secrets in.

Undateable

I realize I reminisce more than I make memories. I spend too much time reading inscriptions from my high school yearbook, mourning lost friendships, giving a eulogy to a senior photo and a smile from another time. I spend nights at home with: Rachel, Ross, Chandler, and Joey. Will and Grace visit on holidays. I am as stable as jello, as dependable as a slippery bar of soap. Bubble bath clutters my bathroom cabinets. I don't even have a bath tub, but I think I will someday. And along with my porcelain, bear-claw bathtub, I will live a two-story, red brick house stifled with ivy. This is what I think about. This is why I don't date. I would wait until the very last minute to search through a pile of wrinkled clothes. Preform the sniff test until a pair of pants passes with above a B-. I would arrive with unwashed hair and have no idea what to order. He would make small talk about weather and work, but all I would want to talk about is the gossip girl finale -- which he hasn't seen. I don't know enough about the missile crisis in Cuba, or government relations in Syria, or what the exchange rate is from dollars to rubles, but I do know who the president is, and that is something. Actually I almost voted for him a year ago, but I got distracted by a villainous bowl of cheese balls and a very comfortable water bed. This is what I do. This is why I don't date. I would order one too many Gin and Tonics and start talking about Dylan, and how many men I've slept with. In the log flume ride of my mouth, that seems to be the topic that plummets into the cold water first,and unfortunately my dear friend in front of me has not been equip with the proper, waterproof apparel. He has probably been gone for hours, I would lag behind biting lime wedges, sucking ice cubes. Replaying bad days in dream sequences on repeat. Men flinging themselves out of my life like marbles climbing down a spiral staircase. I never had a father. The closest I came was seventh grade social studies, when Mr. miller put his hand on my ass and kissed the curve of my neck. He imprinted purple bruises with the velocity of a unripe apple falling from the tallest branch. It had the most access to sunlight, but became shoved into the rotten masses of urinated on fruit carcasses torn up with the dirt -- it's only view is shade. My water bill is two months over due, I haven't paid a student loan payment since last December. I live in a cardboard box, made of half-erased moments and unframed photos. I can put off reality with a channel change and a new bag of potato chips. dinner is a hot pocket. dessert is a cigarette. This is who I am. This is why I don't date.

The Storyteller

Love the girl who writes stories

Because, her mind is a Spanish bull.

You may not be the matador,

but the red cloth of provocation. 

Sharp black words will live in 

wrinkled creases of bed sheets, and

bite you before you trail off to sleep.

They will wake you with ice water 

when screened sentences she wrote for another 

plays catch with your fragmented fears.

Remember -- writing is a reflex.

She can no more control her word sketches 

then she could control a shiver 

          inspired by a fresh wind

          a pant after an uphill hike

Feel sorry that her brain is being torn to pieces

By carnivorous thoughts trying to take up the most space in her head.

          Kiss her rubbed-dry conscience

          Rub her over-exorcised fingers.  

Ink stains are just blue, blood stains.

You're right, she will never call you perfect

And she doesn't know what it means to let go

She has encyclopedias of people who: pushed her at supermarkets,

          Cut in roller coaster lines

          Overcharged for event parking      

but she can empathize with anything, 

and you could be loved, repeatedly, by sheets of yellow paper --

Her pen heart ejaculating nouns, something so important

          She had to write it down.

You don't need to understand

Her fascination with sound,

Her erotic comprehension for plosives,

Or what it feels like perched in her head,

while seven story-bombs condense on top of each other.

Or worse 

When it's silent,

And the wasteland of her mind makes her dehydrated. 

Love the girl who writes stories

Because her memory is made of bricks

That she never stops stacking.

Yes, her words can be sharp stones,

You're problems could become sheets of paper,

          Arguments immortalized like monuments behind a glass shield,

          You'll never be sorry enough,

She can twist words,

Wiggle through a one-sided situation

You will learn to fear words from her thorny mouth -- beg to be forgiven.

Or you might emerge -- page ruble -- as her heroine's pitiless villain.

but her words could be soft wood,

Warming lover's hands

Feathering flames to feed off your oxygen.

Love the girl who writes stories

Because, she loves you.

and she doesn't do that easily or often.

Don't spend time reading her revisions

Thinking she vacations on shores of past pieces,

Spends the winters revisiting love affairs.

She holds the only key to an expired kingdom.

Crowded with people molded from spoiled milk.

But if you can't love her,

            Scribbling on restaurant menus,

            Glazed over eyes in the middle of a fight,

At least give her some stories and something important to write.

It's Mutual

"I work Friday, but maybe--"

"I'm busy all weekend." He picked away pieces of wet wood on the park bench. "I have 

to watch my brother's cats while he goes skiing in France." 

"It's March." 

It was hitting six am, and they found themselves in a park, after she asked him to take a walk with her. She was wearing her dress from last night and her black hair was in a stiff, matted bun on the back of her head. She was feeling the headache in her eyes when she looked at the just risen sun. The park was empty except for jogger buzzing by them like flies, with ear buds and blaring music. Weather was cold and wet, it rained all night.

He put his hand on her bare thigh. It was cold on his warm palm.

"It's one of this them indoor ski slopes. Where the snow is like, made out of--nitrogen--and you know--they ski on plastic--"

"I've heard of them." She said rubbing fingers over thin creases in her forehead where her make-up rubbed off her skin and onto his headboard, his pillows, his chest hair. "Thank you for walking with me; I wanted to clear my head."

"I hope you thought that this was fun, but" he tilted his head up, bristles from oncoming black beard draped across his tanned skin, "that is all it was, to me."

She held back the heartburn, hurled in her throat, from the Whiskey Sour's last night, and smiled. He smelled herself on her, bar bathrooms and cigarette sweat. He tossed a cigarette into his mouth and asked her for a drag. "I don't smoke." She said.

"You smoked last night."

"I do a lot of things when--" She stopped herself. She had her purse, her wallet, her keys--nothing was left at his place. He was watching her, waiting for her to tell him she had somewhere to go, so he wouldn't have to.

"I just don't want you to think this was something serious, I'm not looking for anything."

"I don't do this. I don't know how to act after something like this. Do I go?" She threw her head towards him. 

"I dont know. Usually." His hard green eyes and sculpted cleft chin followed her wherever she looked. He was fidgeting though, his leg was tapping, his eyes going to his watch then back at her. His head was at work, then back at his place, then her again.

"You do this a lot?" She asked like she was baiting a crocodile, afraid of his response.

"When I can."

"How can you do it? 

He smiled like he was showing off chemically whitened teeth. His hands glazed over a string of raindrops between two panels of wood, "Don't think about it too much. I don't."

"I just got out of a long--" She shook her head. It didn't matter. She looked don't at her pointed red bar shes, sticky from spilled drinks. She looked younger with virgin streaks of sunshine on his face.

He put his hand, equipped with half-burned cigarette, on her thigh. Her legs were trembling and her arms had cold bumps on the flesh.

"I just don't want you to get the wrong idea."

"I know what this was." She smacked his hand away and the cigarette launched itself into the small puddle of a pond in front of them. 

"Look, I got work in an hour," He reached into his pocket and handed her a ten dollar bill, it was folded and fit perfectly between two barely parted fingers: "cab fare." He stood up and threw hands in worn denim. "It was good meeting you."

She stayed there and when he handed her the money, her eyes erected up to his standing gaze, "I can't take this."

"Take what?"

"Money from strangers."

"I'm not a stranger." He let out a laugh with smoke following the breath.

She stood; he put a hand on her shoulder--she slapped it away. 

"I don't tell them my name."

"What?" She started walking backwards, tucking trembling hands across upper arms to rub off the cold.

"That's how I do it. If I don't tell them my name, its like it didn't happen."

"I couldn't do that. Don't you want people to know who you are?"

The sun was at its peek in the sky and the traffic grew louder as the city woke. It was the alarm clock telling the apartment people to get out of bed.

"You live far?" He asked rubbing the sides of her arms to help warm them. She pulled away and shifted her purse on her shoulder.

"Up a few blocks and--yeah, it's a ways."

"I'd walk you but I--"

"You have to take a monkey to the moon at noon today?"

"No." He smiled.

"Oh, you have a sold out concert tonight then?"

"I uh, I have work. I work in--retail."

"Didn't you tell me you were a rockstar last night?" She shook her head a bit. They walked together to the road. The grass under their feet was worn and wet.

"I say a lot of things when," he stopped himself.

They were walking with strangers rushing to work. Traffic honked and the taxi's screeched at red lights. She looked at him quickly and saw him wave a taxi down the street to her. He opened the door for her and she called the address to her driver. He stayed and waited for her to be off. She opened the tinted window down to its frame.

"What's your name?"

He laughed a little and scratched the back of his head. He watched a group of girls disappear into a subway tunnel and then a jogger pass wearing a blue track suit. He broke out of the laughter and sucked in his peach lips, "Chris."

She reached her hand out of her taxi to meet his, "Nice to meet you, Chris." 

The red light turned to green and the taxi went from twenty to screeching tires as she opened her mouth to speak. His neck was erect and listening, tilted toward the taxi, but her name became silenced syllables on a barely moving mouth that he wish he had heard.