it's been days, weeks but i still come back to this, i have raspberry tea next to me on the table, bright red liquid sharp contrast with cold white glass and it's the way i imagine the porcelain in the bathtub would look after hours of still blood dripping out of my veins and into the warm water. and i guess i'm supposed to tell you you're wrong about all of this, that it's inappropriate and probably life consuming - older men shouldn't leave their wives for a weekend of fucking one nineteen year old girl, i would rather it be illicit, stolen hours in a rented room or slipping away for half an hour in the back corner of the woman's bathroom, me spread on the top part of a toilet seat and cold wall up against my back. i want to be every cliche with satin sheets and strawberries in the morning, i'll settle for dirty motel rooms and smoke dripping off the walls.

you say you're in love and that makes me want to scream. you haven't been able to stop thinking about me and you're ready to drop everything just for one night one week one year forever. i don't love you, i don't i don't. but it's been so long and i can't stomach casual encounters and it's selfish but five years of only making love makes me itchy and restless. i'm taking steps in being bold and careless and strong but i'm still being held back. i made a rule 8 months ago that i would only sleep with boys who say 'i love you' because it's easier for me to be the one that doesn't care.

and i lost a friend today and it makes me ...

because i think about you and all of those memories - friday nights and creeping into the house, bare feet careful not to touch the lone creaking floorboard and sweet surrender into the tiny bedroom and somehow somewhere finally into your arms. a single bed with four lamps and clitter clatter ceiling fan, sixteen cigarettes, one for every month that went by. the record would spin and i would stare and cry and write and scream - the things you would say at four am and the way every word filled me up when i thought i was drowning and sinking and gone.

because it hasn't been long enough that i can really say that i understand, because in the distance there are flashing lights and red and white, little drips of reality flow into my veins like hospital equiptment tacked into my arm, cold steel and poison that's sweet and falling apart into misery. i miss you, i love you. please come back and tell me this isn't real, that tomorrow will be business as usual and even right now i can picture you in my head, dirty face and bad habits, are you or aren't you? falling in love but only in mono, fingers trailing along soundboards and shiny wood on a guitar.

i hope you're ok now.

i keep coming back and forth, falling in love with you even though it hasn't been long enough and even though this is all just a game. last night, you put my hand on your chest, casually, no, scratch that, you are so serious sometimes that it makes me weak. you look at me with your pupils naturally dialated and eyes huge and green, your mouth soft and your lips softer, this city is a mess with it's eye candy and plastic people and you and i sit behind the dj booth during those long club nights and we hold hands and talk and ignore the world that's falling apart around us. prisoners trapped between promotion and flashing lights, i'd rather stay alone with you in a warm bed with trip hop and candles.

i want it to be tomorrow, next week, i want to quit this day job, i want to get back on the road. i want you to sign that record deal, i want to hurry up and turn on the radio to hear something familiar and not any more of this garbage. i want us to fly and move and travel and it's so close to happening, i can taste it in the rain when we're kissing late at night.

and actually, i was really hurt when you said no.

i was never the kid everyone teased in high school and i feel like a fraud in this new generation of 'scene', all the outcasts that suddenly became beautiful and i want to tear apart their magazines and crush their cigarettes with anger and resentment. what am i doing here? i never lay in my bedroom with hardcore music blaring and seething hatred at the rest of the world, why do you feel like you need to prove something? yesterday i opened up my bag of winter clothes and picked apart three scarves, blue, orange, pink and green. my best friend asks me questions about the past & present, i tell him our friendship means more than silly histories and falling in love. the truth.