i found a bunch of old poems that i had written. some of them aren't half bad. i had a lot of potential, i did. too bad i always hated the word "potential." it's like saying your date "has a nice personality." the whole package isn't there.

rereading old poems, stories, journals makes me wide-eyed with a wondrous disgust. who was that girl? was she really me? they are pathetically desperate; i was lonely and depressed and constantly dissatisfied. i did not have a particularly easy time during the late teens; i was definitely a late bloomer. and when i say "late bloomer," i'm not talking about boobs. i *still* don't have any.

what i mean is, i couldn't attract a guy until i was about 2o, 21. then, there were weeks when i had to beat them away. it was incredible- but these weeks rarely included anyone i wanted. when it did rain, it poured, but what fell out of that sky was more like sand instead of rain. oh, there was rain, too, but those drops turned out to be acid, burning through my skin.... like acid. i've had only a tiny handful of boyfriends, but, in the few years before chris, i did manage to cram in the dates. you'd have thought i was a gigantic socialite to observe me. maybe it was all the martinis.

i digress, as usual. i hated high school. i hated the first, oh, three years of college. the stuff that i wrote was dark and filled with your typical bad teen angst- only not quite as poorly written. not quite. i like to think i've always been a little bit ahead when it comes to the writing- maybe i'm just a fool.

i found this. it's probably circa the year i was nineteen. it's what you would call a sample, a snatch of days of yore.

lessons

there are dance steps diagrammed
around the blocks of the city.
he keeps his distance, i'm forced
to keep mine. this is a game
we play, and i can't remember
who invented it or how
you win. i can

only follow patterns. he's got
it choreographed into a science.
if i am here, he's sure
to stay there- around and
around and
around we go- like
estranged lovers in a private ballroom,
all wooden floors, dimness,
and the echoing of

silence. he's on the
other side, leading, and
i've a feeling of what he thinks.
once upon a time, i
was a klutz; perhaps that's why
we never touch

anymore- that and
he still knows of how i think,
the stumbling steps
of my simple brain. i told him
i couldn't help it- around
and around
and around
he went inside, twirling until
it made him

sick. once upon a time
he said he could only take
so much. the dance is a game
he's got in spades,
but i'll keep waltzing
to see it
out.