The wind moves, and things move in it.

Day One: Ten things you want to say to ten different people right now.
Day Two: Nine things about yourself
Day Three: Eight ways to win your heart.
Day Four: Seven things that cross your mind a lot.
Day Five: Six things you wish you’d never done.
Day Six: Five people who mean a lot.
Day Seven: Four turn offs.
Day Eight: Three turn ons.
Day Nine: Two smileys that describe your life right now.
Day Ten: One confession


1. It is a whole lot easier to destroy me and my confidence than I'd like to admit. I will always stand back up, I will always be alright in the end--but when I love people, they can wreck me in a way that is horrifying. And it scares the hell out of me. I panic very easily when I think I'm about to be left, to be pulled down, and I hate it. Sometimes I cut people out, before they can cut me out.

Day One: Ten things you want to say to ten different people right now.
Day Two: Nine things about yourself
Day Three: Eight ways to win your heart.
Day Four: Seven things that cross your mind a lot.
Day Five: Six things you wish you’d never done.
Day Six: Five people who mean a lot.
Day Seven: Four turn offs.
Day Eight: Three turn ons.
Day Nine: Two smileys that describe your life right now.
Day Ten: One confession


Noting before I start that not all of these are actually REQUIRED to date me or have me want you or anything. They're just things that make me wriggly. 

1. Be an extraordinary dancer. Dance with intensity and skill and ferocity. Know how to use your body to flirt and beckon and entice. I've been caught over and over with this, mostly at contra. Just. My god. So sexy. 

2. Smell excellent. I recognize there's nothing most people can really, uh, do about this, but scent is a major turn on for me. Mitch smells wonderful and it makes me wish to put my nose in the curve of his neck and stay there forever.

3. Take control, and tease. 

Day One: Ten things you want to say to ten different people right now.
Day Two: Nine things about yourself
Day Three: Eight ways to win your heart.
Day Four: Seven things that cross your mind a lot.
Day Five: Six things you wish you’d never done.
Day Six: Five people who mean a lot.
Day Seven: Four turn offs.
Day Eight: Three turn ons.
Day Nine: Two smileys that describe your life right now.
Day Ten: One confession



The people (outside my family) who mean the world to me are Mitch, Melissa, Meg, Toby, and Victoria. The first three are as instinctive as breathing (it's always going to be my SO and my two best friends); the last two have the potential to vary by year and time of life. 

Day One: Ten things you want to say to ten different people right now.
Day Two: Nine things about yourself
Day Three: Eight ways to win your heart.
Day Four: Seven things that cross your mind a lot.
Day Five: Six things you wish you’d never done.
Day Six: Five people who mean a lot.
Day Seven: Four turn offs.
Day Eight: Three turn ons.
Day Nine: Two smileys that describe your life right now.
Day Ten: One confession


1. "What the hell did I do with __________? It was just in my hand, I was holding it and then I put it down, now where the fuck is it?"

2. "How did this guy ever pass his medical exams, he types like a five year old. If you can't capitalize your name correctly I think your submission should be rejected on principle---my god, he spelled his own university wrong, I am so glad this man is not my doctor."

3. "Is that bump on the back of my head cancer? Ow, my stomach hurts.  I'm going to die of appendicitis."

4. "Why isn't it 3:30 yet, I want to text Mitchell but he's at work and can't answer. Sadface."

5. "What do I want to eat? Maybe Sarah will tell me. ...from DC."

6. "Where's the bus? What is wrong with the subway system?"

7. "What should I read next?" 

 

Day One: Ten things you want to say to ten different people right now.
Day Two: Nine things about yourself
Day Three: Eight ways to win your heart.
Day Four: Seven things that cross your mind a lot.
Day Five: Six things you wish you’d never done.
Day Six: Five people who mean a lot.
Day Seven: Four turn offs.
Day Eight: Three turn ons.
Day Nine: Two smileys that describe your life right now.
Day Ten: One confession



1. I tend to be a bit of a contradiction in terms. I can't stand inflexiblity, but I can be brutally, piggishly stubborn. I expect people to change but I tend to be stuck in my ways. I love very fiercely, but I hate very fiercely too. I will use arguing tactics against people and then turn on them when they're used against me. I already know these things about myself. Telling me about them and expecting me to feel guilt or apologize just won't work.

2. Perhaps eight times out of ten I won't apologize about things unless I feel like I was actually wrong. This makes me very, very good at my job, which involves being extremely firm with doctors who believe they are never wrong about anything, ever. They want me to take responsibility for their mistakes, and that's something I Do Not Do. I think it's part of why I was hired, actually. However, this occasionally makes people think I am a twat. Oh well.

3. I know very quickly when I'm going to trust someone. Usually I am not incorrect, although I've had exceptions to this. My closest friends--for example Meg, Melissa, Toby, Sarah, Jim, Caroline, and Victoria--are all people I instantaneously put my trust and faith in. I make this decision fast and it's hard to explain.

4. I am the most awesome and the best. My self confidence is appalling. I haven't always been quite so horrifyingly sure of my own self-worth, but I'm pretty sure that's what was at the bottom of being able to pull out of the unhappiness after Cris, and my general good mental health. I know I deserve good things. I deserve to be happy. If people think I'm worthless, I know they're wrong. Not think--I know. (As some of you may have noticed, my only blind spot to this tends to be with occasional significant others or exes, and my mother. When someone really, really knows me, they know what buttons to push. But even then, I am always back up on my feet pretty fast. Because I'm fucking awesome.)

5. I have a borderline phobia of washing dishes. I arch my body away from the sink and every muscle gets tense and it stresses me out enormously. But I have to do it.

6. I prefer my pizza plain, my hamburgers and hotdogs ketchup-less, and my pasta without sauce (but with plenty of butter and cheese). However, I love horseradish sauce and relish and onions on everything. I don't get it either. There are certain tastes I'm just fussy about having the same all the time.

7. I really don't like showers. They feel like a waste of time, I hate getting wet and then taking for-fucking-ever to dry off and get my hair dry, you have to take them like, every other day and how boring is that, and washing my hair is a pain, and I could be USING THOSE FIFTEEN MINUTES BETTER, DAMMIT. Jim (my boy) thinks I am insane. Toby thinks I am insane. In fact I suspect most people are a little baffled by this one. 

8. I'm awful at lists. All lists.

9. I talk to an incorporeal hyena named Sagolin, a genderqueer lady named Ruth who lives in my head, and an invisible Utahraptor named Red. I do this in a sane, calm, regular manner, like you'd talk to your friend on the street. Occasionally I talk to them out loud, but mostly it's inside the confines of my own mind. I speak primarily in color and feelings and emotion with Sagolin, in plain English with Ruth, and in the common velociraptor dialect, mixed with some larger (mega- and utah-) raptor vocabulary to Red. This is a thing I have always done and will probably always do, albeit with different entities each time.
 

 Gray Goose Winter

Snow falls like eiderdown and so do I. 
White ices fenceposts and my feathers.
I snap my wings out wide and drop
into space. My flock is already gone. 

White ices fenceposts and my feathers. 
It's hard, keeping aloft -- the cold presses me
into space; my flock is already gone. 
Some far south, some below the snow. 

It's hard. Keeping aloft, the cold presses me.
Either way I will not see them again --
some far south. Some beneath the snow.
I tilt my wings and plummet down.

Either way I won't see them again. 
There will be no last migration. 
I tilt my wings and plummet down. 
The ground is hard, the river ice. 

There will be no last migration.
I snap my wings out wide and drop.
The ground is hard. The river, ice. 
Snow falls, like eiderdown. And so do I.

 "Remember, remember,
the Fifth of November,
gunpowder, treason and plot...
Ben, can you complete the doggerel?"

"Um. Let me see. Hmm. No, I have it.
I see no reason
why gunpowder treason
should ever be forgot.
There."

"It'll serve. There: now, we'll teach it to that urchin, and he'll teach it to his friends, and it'll last a hundred years..."

"I doubt it."

 If anyone crossposts ANY COMMENT they make to their facebook, I'll kill them.


You should disable it.

The water thrusts me towards it, until
I am ankle-knee-hip deep,
mouth already tasting salt, hands
cupping up the liquid as if
there is no other choice, small ripples
cresting on my skin, muscles
tight and shivering against the cold, sand
pulling at bare feet, reluctant toes. It takes
everything not to fall down into buoyancy, let
the ocean overtake me, 
waves breaking down a body
(no more than bones and meat
and sun-scarred skin) that is
no longer fully mine, letting something
out to swim and twist and sink
as wind and tides will let it, within
the boundaries of the blood-deep sea.

Etiology

With my hand laid against your cheek I feel
much bigger than I am and, for a moment,

it’s almost like I own you, like I hold a certain
power over you who are so delicate and just

for that reason I see you not as my friend
but as a conquest and I as conqueror, and

for a heartbeat I think that I might strike you
until you lean your face into my palm

and smile, perhaps seeing some early fire
flashing in my half-shut eyes, or the teeth

I have not quite bared, and then underneath
I feel all my fierceness crumble and I

become tame, like the first of wild dogs.