Some People? They Love Love.

It is possible I am not one of them. I prefer to call this "The Day After February's Friday the 13th." Now it doesn't roll off the tongue like "Valentine's Day" or anything, but really that is just long for V.D, which is so old fashioned, and so Mr. V.D. Valentino can just take back his day if it is all the same to him. While I am a sharer, some things just don't need to be shared. Like people whose feelings give you emotional whiplash. Like those chalky heart candies. I pulled one at D's that says: In a Fog.

WTF.

The Day After February's Friday the 13th turned out ridiculously fun despite. Got profoundly ass kicked in soccer, got the "gift" of silence from some of those who love me, got to clean some of my own dirty laundry, got to swoon over all manner of crush-worthy musicians busy unrequiting love after pulling a distinctly boy-stereotype-dismissive invite, got Rite Spotted and belted and bruised and also ear pierced by a Bette Boopesque voice... it just kept going.

But, as there is always good even in the not so much, I really want to thank CoCo for turning me on to my current favorite seasonal poem, which somehow reminds me of so much all at once:

LIFE STORY, by Tennessee Williams

After you've been to bed together for the first time,
without the advantage or disadvantage of any prior acquaintance,
the other party very often says to you,
Tell me about yourself, I want to know all about you,
what's your story? And you think maybe they really and truly do

sincerely want to know your life story, and so you light up
a cigarette and begin to tell it to them, the two of you
lying together in completely relaxed positions
like a pair of rag dolls a bored child dropped on a bed.

You tell them your story, or as much of your story
as time or a fair degree of prudence allows, and they say,

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,

each time a little more faintly, until the oh
is just an audible breath, and then of course

there's some interruption. Slow room service comes up
with a bowl of melting ice cubes, or one of you rises to pee
and gaze at himself with the mild astonishment in the bathroom mirror.
And then, the first thing you know, before you've had time
to pick up where you left off with your enthralling life story,
they're telling you their life story, exactly as they'd intended to all along,

and you're saying, Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
each time a little more faintly, the vowel at last becoming
no more than an audible sigh,
as the elevator, halfway down the corridor and a turn to the left,
draws one last, long, deep breath of exhaustion
and stops breathing forever. Then?

Well, one of you falls asleep
and the other one does likewise with a lighted cigarette in his mouth,
and that's how people burn to death in hotel rooms.