gypsy_spit misstree my hand was around her throat, oddly not clenching, just making sure i had her attention. she was on the ground, this little rag doll flailing so ineffectively. "three months! you fucking bitch, i'll put you in a cornfield! three months!" i screamed. i swatter away her waving hands, slammed into her neck harder, still just keeping her there, too small and birdlike to bother trying to hurt. birdlike. that's how i describe knowing these things when i do, like a little birdie tells me. it's like puttering around in your kitchen and turning around to see this big Thing on the table, trying to pretend it's been there the whole time. you can't unsee it, you can pick it up and shake it if you want, it's solid as the chair you sit down in to contemplate it. i don't even know when the three months began, if it was that night or a month earlier when she had taken my place as his Best. but suddenly i knew, horrified, that she would break his heart into a million pieces, that she would walk away with her nose in the air, that my hyena brother would be shattered and there would be nothing that i could do to help. that he might even try to reach out to me, and not only would i not be there with him, i can't even give him my shoulder. i left him his hand and he gets no more until i regrow the parts of myself that were ripped out. three months. not even enough time for him to heal, to make the fling worth all the salt and iron and ten thousand in hospital bills and, for the first time, watching a water brother betray me utterly. we trusted eachother with our lives. three months. i had kept it all in all night, had drank too much because this time i only asked that i not be ignored, that it not be flaunted, and when he sent Her out with the key, i became a dragon, a phoenix, a raging godling clothed in flame. i put golden reigns on that temper years ago, but i left scorch marks as i went out to the car, and when i saw that i didn't have the key, and when i went back in to look for it and saw them cuddled there, saw him so tender with this *thing* that had shit on him and made him shit on the person that had had his back for two years... raven or phoenix matters not, the bird that had dropped off that package a day earlier flew at her face, pounced on her and held her to the ground. spit flew from my lips as i yelled. "three months!" i wonder if it haunts either of them. i hope it does. the only curse i could throw was sharing with them my Knowing. i hope she never forgets my hands around her throat, i hope he made her know that i could have hurt her very very badly right then if i had chosen to, i hope that when she *does* break his heart, that the fire in my eyes churns inside of her, that she knows, just a little, how great a sin she has committed. to sell all that for three months. i curse them both. 050723 ... log burning fire thoroughly enjoyed this writing. 050724 ... misstree i can still feel the bar beneath my fingers, the velvet of the notebook i stroked for reassurance. we loved eachother with incendiary passion, an explosive purity that left room for little else. he and i were often casually and elegantly cruel to eachother, making an art of intentional_infliction_of_emotional_distress, but tonight we were stripped bare, not a knife or helm between us. he was talking about the family he wanted to raise, the farm he wanted to own, the future i had no desire to join myself to. i hated the thought of disentangling from this particular princeling, losing yet another to a white picket fence, but it was a difference that had to be faced. no rapier wit or searing smirk could have hurt the way that this single slashing chasm did. maybe that was the reason for our undiluted kindness; there was no wound left to deal. in silence we sat, one hand covered by his, warm and soft, engulfing it. i focused on my other hand, on feeling the poetry book under my fingers, knowing that i had Felt before and Hurt before and would make it through this. he took his hand away, and i drew a breath, as if the very air could strengthen me. i looked into ice-blue eyes that i knew too well, and he said that dread phrase, the one that haunts me especially on cold late nights like these, that had the horrible ring of truth that sent gooseflesh crawling, the one that sealed my fate, that Named me: "you're going to lead a very lonely life." he meant it as kindness, not condemnation, this piece of unwanted Truth. he knew that i would never find peace inside a fence, he saw somehow the strings of casual associations and the longer loves, all ended without even aiming for a happily ever after. he saw the wonderful for now, and the times between, and how even in the deepest of love's throes, there is the knowledge that it will end, and there is a peice of the self held back in anticipation. i'm sure we spoke more. i probably fought his assertion, and he likely calmly and kindly explained. i don't remember. i don't know why i was sitting against the wall a little ways down from the cafe a bit later, but i was. and someone i knew and vaguely disliked (which was mutual) came over to me with a small red confetti heart offered on his finger tip. "what's up, tin girl?" he asked. that was when the dam burst. a lonely life is a burden, but bearable. but having the armor of a tank and the heart of a poet on top of it, well. but i make do as best i can. when i have loved, i have loved very deeply, and when i have only had passion, it was enough. when i am alone, i have learned to be friend of the cats and the trees and the moments and the self, and that is enough. better than fences, better than falsehoods. i only wish there were another way. 070329 ... ff ".... my singing ringing tree." life is too hard. 070329 ... fix my ambition in life is to be a hippy/gypsy, i don't think its over ambitious really. it could be a disadvantage that people would get a kick out of calling me a Looser, like i care, i am happy to want freedom and not be stick in a 9-5 that means nothing to me. 070809 ... fix stick a stick in your *stuck* and be a rebel, go on strikE if you have any balls, do you seriously want to wear that tie for the rest of your life? i am such a Looser don't listen to me. 070809 ... . give your boss a cut out E and a horse shoe and tell him to work it out. his control freak illusion is worth peanuts. 070809 what's it to you? who go blather from