early_crushes_take_two raze i guess the first one would have been melanie, the babysitter, with the dark hair and the rounded face, and those dangerous eyes she had, sultry before i knew what sultry was, a teenager when i was a universe away from being a teenager. she let me watch "the exorcist" with her. that was a mistake. i made it as far as linda blair's head doing a three-sixty. then i ran away screaming as loud as i've ever screamed. the next one would have been the ghost, the one who moved away, the one i lost and never found again. a broken metal coat hook held behind the back like an ugly secret and dropped to the ground after a kiss, a love without words to make it known, sadness like a cancer in the gut, something about fire, and you must realize, chlorine gets in your eyes. then it would have been the one who taught me to say "turtle" in polish. i taught her "nice legs" in czech. it was something about the way her bangs fell on her forehead, and a voice that made her sound older than she was, made her sound wise, mysterious. she could be cruel. she was never cruel to me. a little bemused, maybe. she moved away too. i gave her a card with a sad bear on the front. i found her again much later, in the grownup days. she had no memory of me. nothing. not a single fuzzy image. me, i looked at that face and listened to that voice, and i was ten years old again. jasmine was in there somewhere. and winnie from "the wonder years". after that it was jessica, who set free her butterflies twice. first when we were very young. her face in winter, stung pink, was so ethereal, looking at her made it hard to breathe. again in the sixth grade when she had braces, and she gave a speech that mixed up the beatles with simon & garfunkel (the only mark against it), and an eddie money song made me think of her. the song was "think i'm in love". a friend let it slip that i liked her after i let it slip who he liked. i denied it. she pinned me against the wall next to the drinking fountain and growled, "TELL ME WHO YOU LIKE." she was strong. i told her it was her, i liked her, and for the rest of the day she smiled at me and sat close to me and i thought days couldn't get any better than that, they just couldn't. the next day it was like none of it ever happened, because that's the way kids are. there was another thing that happened with her. in grade eight i was a mess. things at home were bad. worse than bad. one day at the end of recess i lost it. started kicking at the nearest chain link fence and screaming. she said my name and looked at me. her eyes were enormous. she took my hand, and she held it hard. we had a long way to walk to line up. she kept holding on. she didn't say anything else. she didn't let go until we were back inside and she had to. i've always loved her for that. i can still feel it. then came the one with the silver hairpins and the unexplained scar on her arm. and jennifer, who was a year younger, who must have made a deal with the devil to look so good in a windbreaker. her brother was a little shit, but she was plucky, friendly, a fine heroine. and mixed in there, a girl who must have been a student at a nearby french school, who ended up on my bus a few times. she had long blonde hair and pockmarks on her cheeks, and i never heard her speak, never even tried to imagine her voice, but the way she smiled was a gift from god, if i believed in god then. the pockmarks only made her more beautiful. there was the neighbour who was my age, whose name i can't remember anymore. her face had freckles in all the best places. she told twisted jokes. "i see, said the blind man to his deaf wife, walking his crippled child down the stairs," she said, and i'd never heard that one before. she had a shit brother too. he clubbed me in the kneecap with a baseball bat when i was shooting hoops with her. just for something to do. then he ran off and hid somewhere. there was talk about their parents selling drugs. i don't know if it was true. i don't know what kind of drugs. i just remember the father's moustache. it was epic. then the french exchange student, with the short hair dyed orange, who i heard was a kleptomaniac. she curled up on a couch in front of the television at a party when everyone else was fried on acid (i abstained), and paula sat cross-legged on the floor, laughing, begging me not to look at her, laughing and begging some more when i looked at her anyway. maybe paula was in there too for a minute. she was caught off guard when i made eye contact with her when we were talking one time. it derailed the whole conversation. "he never does that," she said, to everyone and no one. and amanda. i had dreams about amanda. in one of them she crawled in through my bedroom window and snuggled up next to me in bed, all wet hair and smiling mischief. having a monster crush on your best friend's girlfriend is all kinds of awkward. i let her borrow some eels cds. she was one of the only people i've known who took care of what she borrowed. i lent other people box sets and books and they came back looking like they'd survived chemical explosions. the cds i gave her came back still looking like themselves. there was odette, with her thick dark curls and a voice her throat didn't want to let go of, so it hugged it, made it warmer than it might have been. when we were reading "the apprenticeship of duddy kravitz" i imagined yvette looked like her. made it easier to hate duddy. and renata, statuesque, with a last name near impossible to pronounce. she started talking to me one day and i felt like i won the lottery. there were other bit players too, a dozen, maybe more, before and after and in_between, until it wasn't so early anymore and crushes became less frequent things. they don't mean anything now, any of them. but they meant something once, and somewhere i think a few of those old butterflies are still fluttering around, senile and weathered, content to wander and do their tired flippity-flap. 150313 ... raze breanne. that was the name of the neighbour who told twisted jokes. i remember now. i remember playing the theme from "beverly hills cop" with her on a keyboard set to a cheesy synth brass sound. i remember the way the crushed stones beneath our feet making the basketball skip away from us after every shot. and if i could have been that ball, i would have rolled away where no one would have caught me. not ever. 210808 ... raze made, not making. so_it_goes. 210808 ... tender square in grade school, i secretly drew his name with mine in neat block letters. i used ruled paper to guide my hand, shadowing the edges of each penciled curve with marker streaks. inside, i brushed the consonants and vowels with glitter polish to match night’s sky (some old nail color my sisters had grown tired of). i hid the sheet behind some books to dry, away from prying eyes (they were always so damn eager to embarrass me). later on, i made the corners kiss with every fold—-my wish too big to speak aloud—-and i tucked it away in the bottom of a dresser drawer, my fingers grazing it every morning like a talisman before i got dressed. 210808 ... unhinged as robert stood on the other side of the room playing the masuda i was explaining to him why me and robert lived together here he said ooohhh you are a strong woman i inclined my head tersely to acknowledge the compliment and quickly changed the subject (i want to tell people that say that about me that i have given up so many times on so many different things that if they knew that they might change their mind) when we left the power of his hug startled me i let go astonished but he did not so i rehugged him fused melted and also a little discombobulated that night i couldn't sleep he texted me a photo of the work he had already completed on my violin sparkling but naked no bridge no strings no tailpiece so that the beautiful curves were even more apparent flirtatious or friendly (i still can't ascertain half the time but then he pays for dinner and places his fingertips lightly in the small of my back and even that sets my skin and brain on fire all i can think hold me all day all night all week all year hold me) he brings up our big age difference we both agree it doesn't matter he makes my heart flop over 210809 ... tender square (just found this one in my old writing) thirsty “i’m not boy-crazy, i’m just boy-focused.”—tina belcher gangly girl, armed with back issues of seventeen, you pore over the codes of coyness. you study the diplomatic relations between dylan & brenda, zach & kelly on tv. “you were meant for me” is your national anthem. little girl, invisible on the front lines though you’re a blazing blue torch; writing notes in class, you tuck your heart along the origami folds, your allegiances shifting to whichever goofy boy your odds lean most favorably to. but the competition is fluent in beauty—wrapping their crushes around curling iron fingers—while you chew your nails to nubs and wipe clammy palms on hand-me-down pants. girl, pushing on from that outpost. despite the swathe of silence, you toss out messages in bottles with the hope that they reach someone thirsty. 210809 ... unhinged tina is my favorite belcher 210809 ... unhinged (and dylan and brenda kept me up at night in middle school) 210809 ... tender square i love tina's obsession with butts. can definitely relate. 210809 ... unhinged honestly i couldn't tell you what his butt looks like because i get lost in his eyes (now that i think of it, for me it's always the eyes) 210903 ... kerry when john would come over to the house i'd hide under the bed. i liked him too much. 210904 ... kerry and there was also pat, who sat under the table with me in first grade and said, "your hair is made of gold!" 210904 what's it to you? who go blather from