11.23

[catherine tomorrow? If I can read what I've written, then yes.]
I didn't see her, really. What I saw was a tangled mix of messages to my brain. I saw the way her forearms tensed when she moved, the way her fingers slipped through the air, the way her hair curled down over her forehead, the way her shirt stretched over her breasts, the way her ear slipped out behind her hair, the way her body settled as she walked, the way she didn't look around but looked straight ahead, and the way her waist trimmed in like the feel of the first icicle I break off and hold in my hands and it's cold and real and yet I can see right through it to the center and beyond and it's my icicle mine from the eaves and it's fragile and precious and if I drop it it will break. But I can't see her, she's not mine, and though she feels like my icicle, I can't see through her and she's not mine. I can't see the trouble with her passive aggressive manager or the recent death of her grandfather or the man who keeps calling her in the middle of the night just to remind her that she isn't safe anymore and he's the reason why she carries the knife with her like the knife is going to do her any good at all but at least it's something it's something to let her keep living and not hide forever in her house it's a way to step outside and face the day knowing that at any time that knife is right there on her belt in easy reach just there next to her icicle fragile waist and below the shirt that ripples just there and the icy cold smile that doesn't look around and just looks ahead.

So what do I really value? The way her ear (coy) sneaks out from behind the single scattered curl, or the woman struggling to finish what she started (life) and make it to the other side?

I guess what I'm really asking is for forgiveness.