Wow. I know I am a nerd for updating twice in like 2 hours...but I just came across this thing that I wrote about Wendy over the summer when I was looking for stuff to submit to try to get into this writing class, and it almost made me cry and I really wanted to share it.
I really hope she comes back some day. I actually ran into a girl here at school a few weeks ago who asked me if I knew her!! I said yes, and she said that she talked to Wendy a few days before and she was safe and sound and living on an Indian reservation in New Mexico and she asked this girl to say hi to me for her.
My Wendy-bird, at 15 still so much like a child, giggling at the nonsense poems we would throw your way, I still dont know how you hid that much past behind your eyes, so dark and deep I never even noticed. I still thought of you as a child, that night we walked along downtown picking up cigarette butts and lighting them with cold fingers while you pointed out all the places youd been raped, serene as a painting thats never felt the fingers of a cold night probing the space between its clothes or seen dark clouds rolling thick as cigarette smoke across the horizon and wondered where its going to sleep tonight. All those rough-hewn roofless men who had laid down beside you, a soft little space heater.
Snakes still make me think of your hair, those telephone cord curls knotted into thick fingers. We had so much skin in those days, you and me and Kristen curled up in that big bed we made, building our small dorm room into a home with our warm bodies. I never wanted to go to sleep when your head was curled against my shoulder, stroking it like a soft puppy, hair the color of the sticky Vermont maple syrup we would trickle on our pancakes in the morning, arguing about who would buy the pot this time.
You were the only one could make Pat feel a little more comfortable in his own skin. So jumbled and restless, always on the move, too tangled up to affix the moss he pulled from your hair to his own body. You were Gaia to us, Mother Earth, voluptuous and kind, the paint stains on your pants blossoming into vines and flowers that climbed up to tangle with the fruit held tightly in the mouths of your snake hair. So many times we almost lost you, drowning in the deep blue nowhere of opium, unsupported by your parents and struggling by on minimum wage and financial aid.
Two years later theres me, trying to catch up with my breath as I dash across campus when a friend tells me theres a stone cold fox with dreadlocks waiting in my room. We trip on mushrooms and talk about our lives, smoking an entire pack of cigarettes like candy and tracing all the sidewalks with our bare feet. That night you fall asleep in my arms and I wonder how I could have forgotten to miss you, my Wendy-bird, the next day I fill up your pockets with pills like thimble kisses and you tell me youre hitchhiking to Oregon this summer.
I picture you floating across the country with your thumb as a paddle, you tell me stories about the two balding brothers who picked you up on your way to me and gave you methadone they kept hidden in their canes. Im so worried that youll drown out there, I want to keep you close to me, to bury my roots in your rich brown earth, to wrap my arms around your body and squeeze you like a plum. Youre my movie screen to a life that scares and seduces me, swept across states in a swirling river of drugs and strangers faces. Pat and I would be your little brothers if youd let us, fly away to Never Never Land where maybe we could keep you young and safe for just a little while longer. I hope you know we talk about you when youre gone like youre some beautiful dream that makes us want to keep sleeping, and I ache that morning when I wake up and watch you leave.
I really hope she comes back some day. I actually ran into a girl here at school a few weeks ago who asked me if I knew her!! I said yes, and she said that she talked to Wendy a few days before and she was safe and sound and living on an Indian reservation in New Mexico and she asked this girl to say hi to me for her.
My Wendy-bird, at 15 still so much like a child, giggling at the nonsense poems we would throw your way, I still dont know how you hid that much past behind your eyes, so dark and deep I never even noticed. I still thought of you as a child, that night we walked along downtown picking up cigarette butts and lighting them with cold fingers while you pointed out all the places youd been raped, serene as a painting thats never felt the fingers of a cold night probing the space between its clothes or seen dark clouds rolling thick as cigarette smoke across the horizon and wondered where its going to sleep tonight. All those rough-hewn roofless men who had laid down beside you, a soft little space heater.
Snakes still make me think of your hair, those telephone cord curls knotted into thick fingers. We had so much skin in those days, you and me and Kristen curled up in that big bed we made, building our small dorm room into a home with our warm bodies. I never wanted to go to sleep when your head was curled against my shoulder, stroking it like a soft puppy, hair the color of the sticky Vermont maple syrup we would trickle on our pancakes in the morning, arguing about who would buy the pot this time.
You were the only one could make Pat feel a little more comfortable in his own skin. So jumbled and restless, always on the move, too tangled up to affix the moss he pulled from your hair to his own body. You were Gaia to us, Mother Earth, voluptuous and kind, the paint stains on your pants blossoming into vines and flowers that climbed up to tangle with the fruit held tightly in the mouths of your snake hair. So many times we almost lost you, drowning in the deep blue nowhere of opium, unsupported by your parents and struggling by on minimum wage and financial aid.
Two years later theres me, trying to catch up with my breath as I dash across campus when a friend tells me theres a stone cold fox with dreadlocks waiting in my room. We trip on mushrooms and talk about our lives, smoking an entire pack of cigarettes like candy and tracing all the sidewalks with our bare feet. That night you fall asleep in my arms and I wonder how I could have forgotten to miss you, my Wendy-bird, the next day I fill up your pockets with pills like thimble kisses and you tell me youre hitchhiking to Oregon this summer.
I picture you floating across the country with your thumb as a paddle, you tell me stories about the two balding brothers who picked you up on your way to me and gave you methadone they kept hidden in their canes. Im so worried that youll drown out there, I want to keep you close to me, to bury my roots in your rich brown earth, to wrap my arms around your body and squeeze you like a plum. Youre my movie screen to a life that scares and seduces me, swept across states in a swirling river of drugs and strangers faces. Pat and I would be your little brothers if youd let us, fly away to Never Never Land where maybe we could keep you young and safe for just a little while longer. I hope you know we talk about you when youre gone like youre some beautiful dream that makes us want to keep sleeping, and I ache that morning when I wake up and watch you leave.
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you sexy thang.