And they hold you like I want to
And they give you what I want to
And they take it like I want to
And they make it and they break it
Why must you reject me
Why can't you protect me

And so I write love letters that I tear up and won't send, because you don't want to hear it and I'm not quite sure I want to say it, but. . .

I didn't know how much I would miss you until I realized that you were really gone.

As a sort of addendum to this post of Norah's, never, ever listen to '97 Bonnie and Clyde (Tori Amos cover) when the lights are out, because it will scare the hell out of you.

It's too hot, I can't think straight. Instead I think in curvy little lines that spring off the page like haute couture poetry. All of a sudden I'm all about antique pink parasols and bright silk scarves, and I'm forgetting what (little) modesty I had to lie around in ivory satin mules and an oversized tangerine shirt. Everything is about the heat now, and I honestly can say it's sweltering today, which seems to fit the way the air swells up and lies on you. Water, trickling on a Subway napkin and down on my toes, red nail polish chipped away into fragments of colour. I stopped and bought a root beer snow cone after I got off the 811 bus. I have overdue library books and I haven't finished reading Savage Beauty because I got too caught up with Lolita. Cherish makes me cry because it's the Fran/Max song. One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers, is the best book ever. I'm not in love but I might as well be.

I was outside in the hammock. Cool, pale grey evening around me. Everything faintly moist and fuzzy, like the sky was veiled. I lay outside on the faded blue and purple knit hammock, my toes curled around the thick nylon rope. I felt like a Lo-lee-ta grown out of her own skin, although I'd never had the unconcious perfection even when I was twelve. I've always been painfully conscious of myself. The wind swayed things back and forth in syncopation. I want things to stay in a sort of degenerate, half-broken-down way, like the peeling paint on the wrap around porch. My father says that we get attached to things because it's a material manifestation of our fear of death, but I am nineteen and can't really imagine the sullen darkness. Or at least I don't take my mind there.