You're Dancing Circles Around Me

Meiko

I know what I want, and I'll get what I need. I'll come over and I'll show you how. Don't you wish that you can have me now? You say that you want all of my love, but let's be honest we don't need all that. I like it better with no strings attached. Good girls do bad things sometimes, but we get by with it.

How much more can you take if I give you a taste? I've been waiting for you all night long, I come around and then I'm gone. You'll get yours, I'll get mine. Then we run out of time. You're the only one that I desire, 'cause I love to play with fire. Good girls do bad things sometimes, but we get by with it.

I Got A Taste

I saw her eyes swollen with smoke and weeping, felt her cold hands stroke my forehead. “I’ll cure you, I’ll cure you,” she was murmuring.

And this is how my last months have gone and passed. And I am aware, sure, catastrophically aware that this is no good. I am overwhelmed with things I ought to have written about and never found the proper words, and I am nothing in my soul of not obsessive. Possessive, even. And it is always October in my throat. The throat that drank vodka until it tasted like love. The throat who inhaled and exhaled, both the breath of a once lost lover, and the smoke of the lovers cigarette. And I read The Master and Margarita and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, smelling the ghost of my lover's perfume. Because I might have fallen into bed with them when I was under the influence. But I don't wanna know I'm wrong.

No, I don't wanna know I'm wrong. I'm waiting by your back door, let me come in. I got your favorite dress on, long hair pinned up. I like you lots, polka dots, hope desire's in your thoughts. Thinking of you, dreaming of us. 'Cause you know I got a taste for tonic and gin. You know I got an eye for fur and fine things. You know that I'm to die for, baby, give in! I told you when we met what you were in for... Put the radio on.

Self-contained

Lenna pictures herself from a distance, the way you’d watch a character in a film. There she is, walking up the front steps of a school she’s never set foot in before. A little too early, bag hanging off one shoulder, hair tucked behind her ears in a way that says don’t look at me but please notice anyway. It’s her eleventh year of school. By now, the rituals are muscle memory, but she wishes she could get new ones. The polished linoleum floors with a faint reflection of sneakers are all too recognizable. She wishes she could just start working and move out, because she has outgrown this. Still, there are three years left. 

Her mother’s voice threads through her mind, saying "Keep your eyes peeled and your head screwed on."

Her mother says it about everything from crossing busy streets to dealing with strangers to navigating supermarket sales. It means look sharp and don’t be a fool. It also means she can’t afford to get swept away by things like popularity or gossip.

From my imagined third-person view, Lenna looks… fine. Not lonely, not desperate, just self-contained. She doesn’t plan on making friends, not because she’s above it, but because she isn’t convinced she needs them to get by. Friends are like dessert: nice if they appear, but she can live without them. She takes a breath, rolls her shoulders back, and walks through the hallways. She doesn’t know what the year will bring, but she likes the way she looks doing it. After three years with a total of 570 school days, she will officially be graduated. It's the final countdown (that's really funny of me actually).

Love, Lenna ❤

Before The Bell Rings

It’s raining today. The kind of rain that doesn’t just fall, but lingers, tapping on the glass as if it wants to be let in. I’m sitting by my window, knees pulled up, trying to memorize the sound before summer slips away completely. There’s only a week left before school begins again, and I’m not sure if I’m ready.

I’m afraid of the girls. Not all of them, but enough of them. The ones with perfect hair and sharper smiles. The ones who seem to know exactly where they’re going in life, or at least pretend they do. But I’m also… curious. Maybe even hopeful. Because the boys are different. They’re older this year. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Even nineteen. And it’s not that I’m chasing the idea of someone older, but there’s a certain magic in thinking that maybe, just maybe, one of them will look at me in a way that makes my heart race.

Sometimes I imagine my first date. Driving somewhere in an old car, windows down, my hair tangled in the wind. Music playing, something I’ve chosen so carefully it feels like it belongs to this moment forever. The road stretching ahead like a promise. I see us laughing over something small. I see the nervous way our hands might almost touch, and how I’ll try to focus on the song instead of my own heartbeat. Maybe there will be dance lessons. Maybe we’ll be terrible at them, but in the best possible way.

And in between all that, there’s me. Sitting in therapy once a week, learning how to not just do these things, but be in them. How to breathe. How to believe that I can be the kind of girl who has these moments and doesn’t run from them.

The rain keeps falling. The summer keeps ending. And I keep wondering who I’ll be when it’s over.

I'll update u, love, Lenna ❤

Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus

Your hologram stumbled into my apartment. Hands in the hair of somebody in darkness named Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus, and I just watched it happen. As the decade would play us for fools, and you saw my bones out with somebody new, who seemed like he would've bullied you in school. And you just watched it happen. If you want to break my cold, cold heart, just say, 'I loved you the way that you were'. If you want to tear my world apart, just say you've always wondered.

You said some things that I can't unabsorb. You turned me into an idea of sorts. You needed me but you needed drugs more, and I couldn't watch it happen. I changed into goddesses, villains and fools. Changed plans and lovers and outfits and rules, all to outrun my desertion of you. And you just watched it. If you want to break my cold, cold heart, just say, 'I loved you the way that you were'. If you want to tear my world apart, just say you've always wondered.

If the glint in my eye traced the depths of your sigh down that passage in time, back to the moment I crashed into you, like so many wrecks do. Too impaired by my youth to know what to do. So if I sell my apartment and you have some kids with an internet starlet, will that make your memory fade from this scarlet maroon like it never happened? Could it be enough to just float in your orbit? Can we watch our phantoms like watching wild horses? Cooler in theory but not if you force it to be, it just didn't happen. So if you want to break my cold, cold heart, say you loved me. And if you want to tear my world apart, say you'll always wonder. Cause I wonder... Will I always, will I always wonder?

White Heels

Cairo Sweet: No excuses made for your choices, for they are yours alone.

🍼 ☁️ 🐇

Beatrice June Harker: Teenage girls are dangerous, Jonathan. They're full of emotional violence and vituperation.