Friday, January 25, 2013

And When She's Dreaming Sometimes She Sings in French

She's always been so hard to get around...

The stories cascade down, shaken loose from part of my brain.

The girl with the scratches from her cat who wore bandaids all over her face.

The impossibly beautiful girl whose smile lit up the back room of the restaurant at the party.

The girl with hair so long it could wrap around her body three or four times.

The summer I was working in the library and noticed that there were four women who worked there who seemed normally sized in most ways except for their insanely large posteriors.

The pre-internet spread of misinformation.

The post-internet spread of misinformation.

The misunderstandings.

The misappropriations of affection.

The way the rain prods the part of my mind that leads to dreaming.

The memory of certainty that is so much stronger than the certainty of memory.

And it coalesces. With a sudden realization.

That maybe the complexity of the girl you loved so long ago was all in your mind.

Maybe she wasn't that hard to figure out. You were just looking at the wrong thing.

And maybe, just maybe, she was mumbling gibberish, not singing in French.


1 comment:

Who Am Us Anyway? said...

She's a complex kid! Love seeing the heartbreakers do this live.

"The misappropriations of affection.

The way the rain prods the part of my mind that leads to dreaming.

The memory of certainty that is so much stronger than the certainty of memory."


is fine! The rhythm reminds me of the good kerouac to be honest: "I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it ..."

(In case you don't like Kerouac, & i understand that many good writers don't, I should add that i do mean the comparison as a compliment)