What to do with the Time

         
               Go to work.  Keep going to work.  Except for that one time you only made it half the day, and just

had to go home cause your head was too small for your brain, and your arms felt like evergreen branches weighed down by the snow.  You missed snow a lot.  How back home it would send a spear through the noise, outside and in.  Conform around you, and sometimes bury you.  The rain is more opinionated, chatters on endlessly and doesn't care about what you were planning on doing. It wears you down and insists on its own way.   Go home that one day, bitch about the rain, but be sure to go back.

Drink.  A little most times, a lot some times.   When you drink too much you become like the rain.

Take up running.  Run against your will.  Run up Burnside then back.  Not as fast as you can.  Not yet.  Run to not-running-songs and wonder why that had never occurred to you before.  This is your first time running in years and it only takes a half an hour to feel pushed to a limit.  Stop for now and imagine your limit being set further for next time.  Return home and stretch your muscles.  Feel conflicted about how good you feel now, a little looser, a little guilty.  Still thinking about Him, but not in a scatter-shot frantic way any longer. A controlled burn.

Shower.  Clean the kitchen.  Actually put away the dishes. Move objects and clean underneath them instead of the usual around.  Then clean the bathroom a little.  Put your jackets on hangers.

Find that book you actually want to read after reading six samples on your kindle.  Remember the last time you read that author. Remember the hard bed that came with the room you rented when you first came to chatty drunk rain town.  The darkness that came so early back then, and feeling like you should have felt in high school. Safe in a house of people who wanted you around, near a phone that friends would call you on. A boyfriend who liked you more than you liked him, who did things how you wanted him to. Bought you presents, too many presents, brought you flowers, drugs, gave you strep throat and stupidly brought you pizza.  Was nice, but you didn't want him.  Didn't have that thing, that thing that the ones you extend your love to have.  They withhold and withhold, and you give your reckless abandon to them. Not to boys who do it right on paper.  Not to boys who love like you love.  Recall  cramming in chapters before someone picked you up to go dancing.  You bought two copies of the book, one to send to Him, did he get it?  Wait, did you send it?  Did he have a girlfriend then?  She probably didn't appreciate some fangirl sending him gifts of pulitzer literature.  Vaguely recall asking him years later if he got the book, and him not recalling getting it.  Read now.  Read until you feel like writing.

Eat dinner. Ha-ha. Just kidding.

Write.  Write non-required writing for the first time in over a year.  Make sure to get the good one liners in before you forget them.   Face your writer self.  That girl who is punched in the eyes with black eyeliner, who wears a beanie cap and hates you for cramming her in writer shaped closet inside of you for a year and also for selling her doc martins.   Look at her. She pretends she doesn't want to talk to you for a minute, but you buy her a drink and she sluttily gives up everything to you, like she always does.

      Decide you're maybe not going to give up on the things you told Him you were gonna do before he left.  Some of those things were actually good ideas, and not just desperate empty promises to make yourself look interesting to Him again.  Decide to take a step toward doing one of those things next week.

Think about painting something.  Maybe a landscape for the first time.  Put a Bob Ross dvd on the top of your Netflix queue.  Decide to paint resentful trees, suspicious squirrels, jealous shrubs and deceitful pine cones
 Go to bed.  Do not think about when he came home after being away for three weeks for work last summer. Do not think about the things he said while you were on top.  Do not think about  his left hand on your right hip, the hip that had softened with the extra weight you put on that spring, don't remember looking down at his hand on your hip when he said, "You are the one I am going to marry."  DON'T REMEMBER THAT OKAY?!?!

Do all the stuff that would have made Him stay with you if you had been doing them all along.

drove my chevy to the levy but the levy was Bri

i decided the next day that i was going to say something really rude and cutting to Brian if he ended up leaving portland without seeing me. "no excuses, you were right across the street," was the general line of thought. i was actually kind of amped to tell him that he was out. part of me wanted him to leave without saying anything, so i could finally have a rightful excuse to make him feel bad without looking like a weepy, emotional chick (which i am). but the other part of me did not want to feel that rejection, in fact i couldnt conceive of it. that would be a blow to the very lower gutty wuts quadrant.

i thought i was going to get a chance to say the dialog that was running through my head late that nite. i imagined him txting me or calling and saying, "sorry, it was so crazy while i was out there, sorry i didnt get a chance to see you."
and i would say, "you know what brian? no. you were across the street from me. across. the. street. you don't have an excuse. this just so clearly illustrates what you really think about me. and apparently that isnt much. no. no. no, brian, youre out."

how sweet that would have been.

*beep*
1:28 am
new message brian: i'm at doug fir drinkin.
me: i did that last night.
brian: last night is not tonite.
me: you are right about that.
brian: i'm gonna be at the jupiter in 15 min.
me: good for you
brian: yeah.
me: what do you want?
brian: same thing you want.
me: oh, really? to be treated like a lady or at least a friend you respect? to get asked out for drinks at a reasonable hour, not at the last minute like some cheap ass trick?
(take that!)
brian: i always want to be treated like a true lady. and no one said anything about last minute.

Damn his oily, always quick and clever hide!
me: uh huh.

i rolled onto my back and stared up at the ceiling. i had taken part of a klonopin but wasnt terribly sleepy. just blank. thinking clearly, but feeling little.

"...i said hey, babe, take on walk on the wild side...said haaaay babe..."
thats my ringtone.
brian.

"hello?"
"Laney," i recognized his tone, it was his 'what the hell is going on with you?' tone.
"What. is going on?"
i sat in silence, the hum of no one talking on a phone in my left ear. i wanted to say so much. whats going on? i remember when you would walk ten salt lake city blocks at high noon in the summer just for a chance to see me for ten minutes while my husband was at work. now twenty yards is too much of an effort.

i just sighed.
"youre just mad about friday, well if you had any idea how fucked up i was you wouldnt be so pissed."

"noooo brian, thats not,"
"yes it is, youre just mad that i couldnt tell you what bar i was at."