Favored

Every little washed up ragdoll's got something to say, but maybe this isn't the time or place. Sometimes it feels like no one respects privacy anymore, like no one understands the need for some emotional distance. I'm sorry I don't do things the way you do, or the way your mother does, or the way your mother's mother did. Not everyone's heritage can be so favored by your eagle eyes. If you've had enough, then just walk away. I can take care of myself just fine.

Interest

Waiting for you to show the signs, waiting for your end of the deal. Trying not to make too much fuss, trying not to let out a sigh. Maybe she's right. Maybe they're all wrong. Maybe I should stop listening to the voices on the radio as well as the voice in my head. No one seems to know what they're talking about, but everybody takes an interest. Everybody but one.

Neoimpressionism

I always want the best. I remember being so upset when Monet went to someone else and I got stuck with Seurat. Who had ever heard of this guy? But I did my project and I got an A and now, over a decade later, I know how to make the most of almost any situation. I'm a sunny-side-up, silver-lining kind of person. Because I always want the best, I always see the best of what I have. There are worse ways to live.

Spur gear

Two rivers flow their separate courses for miles and miles, then one day they meet. one hides in the forest, while the other keeps on coursing right out in the open field. Eventually the shy one gets brave, trickles timidly out to join the other. For many more miles, they run together, gaining strength and speed in their union. Then one day they reach the ocean. They look at each other, unsure of what to do: continue on together, or jump in and get lost in the masses. Give up on a smooth, harmonious partnership, or fight the current. The gears are turning in the world around them, but they are still deciding. This is something that cannot be rushed.

Antechoir

She calls it preaching to the choir. Says she's sitting front row center and she knows exactly how I feel. But she's not only in the front, she's in the antechoir, the front of the front, first in line like always, best view, brightest smile. It's not a spite, merely a fact: she doesn't know how I feel. She has no idea, and how could she? Because while the back of my thighs stick to the cheap plastic chairs, she's sitting on plush velvet cushions, fat with the softest stuffing.

Debenture

I always feel better after talking with you. My head clears out and the corners of my mouth lift up. My heart does cartwheels in my chest. It'd be too simple to say that I owe you a lot, and too unfair not to say anything at all. So take this IOU in the form of a kiss and we'll work out the change later.

Muliebrity

Part of what I am is broken. Not my favorite part, but a fairly essential one nonetheless. My definition bleeds, and I'm not sure what I mean. It's all an artful way of saying I might be sick, of admitting I'm a little bit afraid. What can be done? I don't yet know. I'm told I should--must--find out. I do have a tendency to ask questions I don't really want the answers to, but so far with this I've kept my mouth shut. I'm not sure what it will take to get me to open up.

Boudin

Here in the French city, people sizzle. The sun hangs high overhead and preys on weary travelers. The language floats like living art from tongue to ear, but I cannot catch the meaning. It's like a Jackson Pollack painting. From street to park to museum we wander. We stop and gawk inside the sacred heart. The magic I expected isn't here, where trash rolls down the street and drunk boys vomit in Metro cars, but then again, I expected that too.

Entremets

When he brought out the third dish, she wondered whether it was the last. She felt like she'd been eating forever, and she couldn't tell if she was full. But everything tasted so good, and if she kept going, there might even be dessert. Are a few more bites really going to hurt? Is the chance worth the risk? Food is just food, unless it's food.

Fortissimo

Do you know what people do when they're afraid of not being heard? They get louder. They raise their voices up so loud that the gods in their heavens frown in annoyance. They scream and shout and make a scene, just to be sure they haven't been lost or forgotten or ignored. They are terrified of melting into the snowy abyss of everyday static in which we live. But if they have nothing to say, why should I listen?

Involute

I think I must be an old soul. There is almost nothing that doesn't interest me, almost no culture that doesn't strike me as familiar in soem way. My eyes are plain, but perhaps that is because they are lit with a thousand views, a million fates. My voice can be both strong and meek, both hard and gentle, both calm and violent. Perhaps the tongues of all my past selves speak through me still. Perhaps when you meet me, really you are meeting a pirate and a princess and an artist and a magician, a thief and a nurse and a blacksmith and a cop. All rolled into one, but none quite melded together. There is no natural state, only a constant curling, a continuous addition of spices into the mix. I am spiritual soup. I am still simmering.

Sanity

I didn't want to say what they were feeling inside because it tumbled right out onto the street that day, and the car you were driving, well, its wheels never stopped, and it was like slow-motion, only really sickeningly fast, and I just want to keep my sanity because it took so long to get it back. Is that really so wrong?

Curandero

I need someone to send me the cure for this disease that makes me not like myself. I admit I have a problem; now where's the help? I want to lose this outer shell self, this person who has tied herself to my ankles and drags me around like her shadow. I am the light, the bright, the one who ought to thrive. She is the darkness that I cram into a nook and try to conceal like that old memory, that shame you try to forget. But they bring it out in me, and I let them. I'm struggling to forgive myself, and struggling to fix myself.

Opaque

Publicity eats at me like a worm to the core of my apple-sweet stickiness and I hate when people can see straight through to my innermost secrets. There's a difference between being opaque and being invisible. I'm only comfortable when I can see without being seen. So when you whisper in my ear that you know everything, I feel a crawling fear and I don't know how to hide. Only when you make me feel safe do I forget the way I am.

Opacifier

One half ni hao, one half muy bien, somehow all-American. I embrace myself, all one-hundred-fifteen-ish pound, all flaws, all blemishes, all scars. The breeze cools what this violent sun burns, as I turn various shades of okay. My eyes gaze upward as my heart leaps ahead and my body stumbles in the wake. I've asked, in the past, for things to be made clear, but the truth is that there's always enough time for a good story to unfold on its own.

Sanative

Milk tea in a Spanish room, fusion is the boy's buzzword. We tell stories and laugh, the four smiling faces, loosely tied like a child's shoelaces. I regret the jokes at others' expenses because I was taught better than that. It's too easy to lose my center, my principles, even here in this beauty, here on this journey to find myself. The sun presses the liquid out of my body like juice from some homegrown fruit. It feels natural to me to be in this country, this land that heals, this place I've never, and always, known.

Lamasery, epigeal and de novo

It's a simple principle: do what you know you should, ideal world or not. No excuses, just the best you can manage. If everyone followed suit, what a beautiful place this could be. No need for fear or censorship, no means for hate. A clean slate, the start of paradise. It begins with a seed in the mind, a growth near the surface, until you believe it, breathe it, live it, breed it. Love and innocence. Ideals for a dreamer.

Haimish and series circuit

When she dreams, the world breathes in technicolor, a vivid breeze beneath the wings of a butterfly. She's drawn to him like she's drawn to paintings of the sea; they call to her as past lives waiting to be remembered. Daily events spark and cool, welding present to past, revealing new lights and facets unknown. Nothing settles easily, and nothing smells like home. Rather, the burning incense carries her to a faraway land that dances back and forth to a beat all its own. She hums the tune without even knowing, and everyone stares as she walks down the street.

Davit

The shoreline marred by these long-necked creatures, these progressively more aggressive angels of Progress. The way we fly, on their backs, their wings. Like the scent of hot tea in my nose, tinting my mind with its particular flavor of awareness. You take every opportunity to remind me of the gulf between us. I'm afraid to ask you for the company car. Maybe the voice on the other line is right: I'm silly and too young and too eager to try. But it's my life, my path to lose, and I'll be damned if a map's as fun as an adventure.

Lagniappe and jovial

The two little boys know all the right answers. They know what they're here for. Make her smile, get a prize. Some sort of sweet, something to rot your teeth, your brain, your heart. At this young an age, the damage is harmless, but fragile youth sings the stories of many a careless practice. I watch them without saying a word; like animals at the zoo, they watch me back. So precious still, so innocent. I pat each one on the head. Have another, I say. At this age, how can you deny?

Abscond

There's a smile I hide in my heart right next to where you lie sleeping in the sunlight, a lazy day I cannot bear to take away. Your breathing sounds like the ocean, and your heartbeat is the breeze in my hair. I whisper four words into your ear, but you remain silent and still, like the secrets of the past that I carry in the pit of my stomach. Your sticky lips do not answer my question. For now, though, I can wait. There's no rush yet, as my spirit hovers above this whole world and carries me from home to home. Someday I will know, someday I'll be real.

Chortle

I cannot smile I cannot laugh I cannot breathe I cannot think. I cannot rest and I cannot weep. I cannot stay yet I cannot leave. I cannot explain, I cannot erase. I cannot wait, but I cannot stop. I cannot heal, and I wish I did not feel. Maybe I already know the solution. Or maybe the easy way out is too appealing. I can't keep dragging this in my direction. Not all by myself.

Countersink

A voice in the darkness telling me to beware. I pretend I don't hear it, pretend I don't understand, but the truth is, I know all too well. The past has taught me, but like everyone else I carry my scars far beneath the surface. Those holes have been covered, nailed shut, like coffins. I'm past the mourning. Now I live for the day.

Reverberatory

Maybe I'm the moth and you're the flame. Maybe I'm the butterfly's less acclaimed cousin who longs to experience her same glory and spirit. Your light beckons me, entices me with its glow. The heat is a rush, like the one I imagine she feels as she's chased through a field, gliding effortlessly on the wave of a breeze. Maybe I'm just a little jealous, in theory, and maybe for that I'm willing, and deserving, to perish in your fire.

Cineaste and consensus

She speaks and I read the subtitles, but you are a silent film and I cannot comprehend what's happening. I want to lose myself in your story, but I don't know how. The general opinion is that the casting is top-notch, but the final prodcut has received mixed reviews. So I'm sitting in the dark, trying to keep an open mind while images flicker on the screen in front of me, trying everything I can. I guess I won't know how I feel until the movie ends.