; is for

Semicolon-Shaped * Connect;ons

i;
linked;
every;
idea;
together;
so;
our;
conversation;
could;
never;
end;
;
;

Σ is for

Σόδα *Σummation

It was the summation of all the details that left us on the train tracks Saturday night.

Nothing really big had ever contributed to this situation. We hadn't made any huge decisions, hadn't betrayed any countries or broken any laws or ended any lives. And giving that guy a ride had been admittedly stupid. But he'd been willing to pay us, you know? And we really needed the money.

And then everything got exciting, and on Saturday night the minutiae combined had us standing across the train tracks, pointing guns.

Z is for

Zero Hour * Zigzag

You didn't pass the sobriety test.

That big brain of yours could memorize the alphabet backwards, and you could touch your nose with no problem at all. Your reflexes, as far as I could tell, weren't off.

You couldn't walk the straight line correctly. Idiot.

That's probably why we got caught, you know? If you had mastered going in a straight line instead of that absurd zigzag while drunk, the cop never would've known that you had one or two or seven too many in the first place.

They didn't even see me, stretched out in the back of the car, trying to sleep. No seat belt. That was probably the most illegal thing of all. Drunk passenger in a car with no seat belt with a drunk driver on a provisional license at two in the morning.

Y is for

Yellow * Youth

In the audience of the show, there was a little girl, sitting on her mother's lap. She hadn't made a sound for the past hour, had only played silently with her doll, which now lay tossed against the chair beside her, pants down around its legs. She looked around her curiously, with little brown bangs in her little brown eyes which peered curiously out from her little white face. Her mother let her squirm. In years, months, weeks, days, the girl wouldn't remember she had been witness to history. I would remember.

More than anything, I wanted to be that girl.

X is for

X-Ray * Xanax

the last day before palindromes
i went to see dr. maya angelou
and before the performance started
i tried to tell my mother a story
when i finshed
she asked who the story had been about

so i repeated the whole thing

when i finished
she asked when this story had happened

so i repeated the whole thing

when i finished
she asked why i cared

i didn't bother to repeat
she wasn't listening
but that blank realization
that she didn't really give a damn
was what sent off the final panic

W is for

Washing * When

When I get to make my own rules
I will always have strawberries in the fridge
and I'll share with everyone who likes strawberries
unless they're allergic

Every day I'll wear bright red lipstick
instead of for only the special occasions
and I'd always get that special kind that didn't smear
so I wasn't branding my friends when I kissed them hello

Only beautiful things will be allowed in the house
beautiful and poignant and melancholy things
and people will have to think of something beautiful
something beautiful about themselves before they can come in

Everyone inside will learn to save the world
by sharing all the bits of truth and beauty
and after we laugh and smile and sigh and cry
I'll tuck them all into bed and kiss them goodnight

V is for

Via Lactea * Veritas

If I could make you always see the truth
I wouldn't do it
Because you're happier believing.

U is for

Umbrellas * Understanding

At the end of the day, we don't know anything
But that's why we understand each other perfectly

We are the secret coven of liars and thieves

T is for

Therapy * Tickets

This was my favorite hobby.

The official would come up to me on the train, and before he could say anything, I'd ask, "Are you the one?" in that very mysterious voice I've got.

"Tickets?" he would ask, confused.

I would screw up my face all suspicious. "How do I know you're the right one? Do you know the phrase?" I played the role of the world's worst spy. I felt hilarious.

"Ma'am," he'd say, not yet frustrated, "I don't know what you're talking about."

Nodding sagely, I would reach into my purse, and take out the tickets for the show I was going to see. "Here, sir. Do you read the message?" My voice robotic--as if I were reciting lines. It was all I could do not to laugh, by this point.

Now he was mad. He'd look at the tickets, look at me, hand them back and sternly say, "Ma'am, I need to see your ticket to be on this train."

"Oh!" I would say, eyes wide. If we were approaching a station, I would get up, glance around me worriedly, and jump off the train, while the official stared at me, astounded.

I'd leave my ticket on the seat.

S is for

Snow * Stuff

It was astonishing, the sheer number of things that accumulated in two years of life together. It depressed Susan to think of her relationship in terms of things, but at the end of the day, she had Paul had broken up, and there was still this pile of his junk in the middle of her living room.

She bounced on her toes. She didn't want any of this.

At least all these things were trivial. And old t-shirt, a VHS bought for a dollar from the local library. The mouthpiece to a trumpet. Nothing he would want back, so she didn't have to orchestrate a return.

Two years of Susan's life were stacked carelessly, depressing and unwanted. Trinkets, nonsense, garbage. Little physical manifestations of memory that didn't mean anything good to anyone, anymore.

That was the real sadness of it all, Susan supposed: being obsolete. Being useless, unwanted, unloved.

Going from useful, precious things to mere stuff.

R is for

Roof * Realism

I'm not being pessimistic. I'm just saying that as soon as we both leave here, we won't be seeing each other anymore. My mother rants and screams whenever I bring this up. But she's the stupid sucker who never got over high school, anyway.

And so it doesn't mean I care about you any less because I'm saying it. It's just true, and I think you see it, too. And this isn't some kitschy Disney movie where we'll stay together always, because not even distance can keep us apart. And one of us won't mysteriously get offered a scholarship to the school of our dreams, only fifteen minutes from the other!

It's just not going to happen.

But you're probably on my side, anyway, because while my mother smiled and sighed at the sappy storyline, you and I both made fun of High School Musical.

Q is for

Quiescence * Quiet

I pretended to be surprised in the morning, because you wanted me to be surprised, but I knew you were there, from the creaks your footsteps made in the night.

P is for

Pink * Pomegranate

Everything in my room had smelled like pomegranates ever since my roommate had spilled that bottle of bath oil. At first it burned my sensitive nose and Julie looked ashamed every time I sneezed. But then I just sort of stopped noticing unless I left the room and Julie stopped caring that I sneezed every time I came back.

And even though the smell bothered me something awful, I didn't think it bothered anyone else until two days after the great spill, when I left my door open as I watched a movie. The engineering boy from down the hall came to stare with a red nose. "What in god's name is that smell?" he asked.

"Pomegranate."

I was hardly apologetic, and I was hardly welcoming. But he still sat down in Julie's desk chair and said, "Oh, that's okay."

O is for

Offhand * Octopus

If I had the arms of an octopus, everything would always be close at hand.

I would never have to make more than one trip from the car to the house with the groceries and I could walk the dog and the Girl Scout Cookies on the same trip. I would knit and I would type my English essays eight times as fast. And I would do pull-ups and juggle and be able to lift more weight than anybody.

If I had the arms of an octopus, I would hold your face between my hands and push your hair out of your face when you cried. I would hug you tight and always hold your hand. We would stick together and I would never let you go.

N is for

Nasty * Narcolepsy

Before I say anything else, you need to know that I hate Montgomery more than I hate anyone else on this planet.

She got her name from L.M. Montgomery, author of Anne of Green Gables. I got mine from Emily Dickinson, who was depressed as fuck. She got the smiles and, "Oh, your name is just so interesting! Where did that come from?" and so she smiled back. Stupid Montgomery was always smiling.

I hated it whenever anyone called me Montgomery. I faked narcolepsy just so that the attention would be switched to me. But when I was sent down to the nurse, she called my mother and said that Montgomery was sleeping in class.

Montgomery took the blame, too.

For seventeen years I never got in trouble. And yet I wasn't the good kid. I always got beaten to the punch if I ever tried to admit to anything. For seventeen years I never got grounded.

Somehow our mother always thought that I was the liar.

M is for

Minimalism * Mnemonics

Would you believe that I lost the academic bowl because I used
"My Very Excellent Mother Just Sent Us Nine Pizzas"
and didn't think about the fate of Pluto?

L is for

Light * Logic

Would you like to know one of my sillier reasons?

I didn't want you to be the first one to see my new haircut.

Sure it was silly, but those are the things that matter to me. Which you never really understood, because I never really gave you a chance to understand, because I'm sort of secretive like that, which is another thing I never let you understand. I'm just tricky that way.

I wanted my best friend to be the first one to see it, aside from my mother, who took me to the hairdresser, and the hairdresser herself, and all the people who saw me walking from the hairdresser's to the car, who didn't know me anyway.

Although I would have accepted Walt Whitman. If you had been Walt Whitman, I would have let you see my haircut first.

But if you were Walt Whitman, in addition to being completely awesome, you would be dead.

That would be weird.

(See what I meant about my being a little tricky?)

Sorry I dumped you, anyway.

K is for

Ketchup * Kryptonite

For something fictional, the term Kryptonite was surprisingly versatile. And if I heard one more goddamned love song about how that pretty girl over in the corner was the singer's Kryptonite, I was going to hurl.

Yes, hurl.

Every romantic in the world could just choke. My boyfriend was one of those. He had big ideas of love and affection. I just liked him. My best friend was one of those; luckily, her boyfriend was sane. The whole thing was positively sickening.

"What are you doing on Saturday?" Marilee asked me, smiling on Wednesday. There's something about Wednesdays that turns smiles into veritable anathema. I was doing Chemistry homework. I did not like Chemistry.

J is for

Jessamine * Jelly

The goo grew.

Quite literally, it grew, stinking up the whole basement, feeding off the jelly, forming white spots that grew and grew and grew.

And my last thought before it ate us completely:

I love science.

I is for

Immutability * Id

Quite literally, I got whatever I wanted in my dreams. You were there quite frequently, sometimes serving me tea, sometimes nailed to a wall. It was a pretty slice of instant gratification, and it worked out best that way, because even if I nailed you to the wall Sunday night, I could make you serve me tea Monday night, and if I tried any of those shenanigans in real life, the tea probably wouldn't taste very good Mondays.

But sometimes, when you were sitting in my kitchen in the daytime, bitching and moaning about something or other, I honestly thought that I could give up tea so easily.

H is for

Hamster * H

G is for

Grass * Games

It was your idea to play hide and seek.
And it isn't my fault that you aren't very good.
You seemed so angry when I came home
three days later.

F is for

Flute * Fear

The same old things still haunted me, now, but there was more to it. Just because I had come to fear the end of everything didn't mean I wasn't still afraid of the little things, bees, slasher movies, falling out of bed.

What I mean to say, I suppose, is that the big fear didn't make the little ones go away. I was just scared all the time, now.

I had been afraid ever since I'd found out I was a super hero.

E is for

Exploration * Elephants

We went looking for butterflies in springtime, just to feel their kisses. We were so world-wise at seven so as we didn't believe our mothers. We wore shirts that bade us to go find elephants and kiss them. We would've kissed the elephants, if we had found any.

But even the butterflies proved elusive.


We kissed flowers instead, in practice for the butterflies, but the yellow insides ticked our noses and we laughed and sneezed and laughed and sneezed. We had adventures as pirates, as princes, as genies. We fought with swords and knighted our best men and granted wishes.

Night came, and the butterflies and the birds and the children went home, and so we followed, dragging our dragon-slaying swords in the mud. And Mother and Father scolded us for staying out so late.

But we still felt like winners.

D is for

Daylight * Dollhouses

If the rooms hadn't been quite so small, the whole thing might have been a little more structurally sound. Mostly we just sat on opposite sides of the living room and glared at each other, because we weren't absolutely certain that the stairs would hold our weight, and climbing rickety stairs was the only way to get to any of the other rooms.

Neither of us was willing to be the first one to try the stairs.

And God damn dollhouses, because they aren't made for real people. Because real people aren't made to be dolls. And my couch was made out of plastic and your chair was made out of plastic, so I suppose you could say we were stuck between a hard place and a hard place, and the only way to go was towards each other.

There are only two things that can happen when two people are stuck together so stubbornly: they can learn to love each other, or they can come to despise each other. We chose the latter. It was easier, in the short run.

But the children grew up, and didn't need dolls anymore, so we just sat and stared and loathed.

C is for

Cold * Children

Someday, I'll have a party, and I will invite everyone I knew when I was a child.

They'll bring their kids, if they want to, and we won't reminisce, because that will bore the children. It will be the most fun party anyone has ever been to, and when they leave, I will clean up the mess and sigh and sigh and sigh.

The sighs will be mostly happy, but also a little bit sad, because we won't be children anymore, even though being together will make it seem that way, just a little, for just a moment.

We will believe in the magical power of the blue M&M's and we'll giggle nervously at the boys we know and we'll play dress-up and pretend we're growing up to be princesses.

And when it snows, we will go out and make angels.

B is for

Beach * Boats

We gave that summer to the fish and we gave it willingly. In fact, we asked them to take it, just for an excuse to go. And so we sold our house and bought a boat and just floated in the lake, because we didn't have a car to drive all the way to the ocean.

We spent three months just floating there, and our days took on a particular habit. In the morning, I'd take the rowboat over to shore, and I'd unchain my bicycle from the tree and I'd go buy some eggs. I was the morning person, so I would cook breakfast. By the time I got back, you were awake and smiling and you'd grab me around the waist and kiss me good morning.

Everything was cut even. I made breakfast, you made lunch. I made dinner, you did the dishes. I did laundry, you fed the cat and took care of his litter. And I made the bed and you swept the floor.

A is for

Autonomy * Accidents

I stood at the top of the stairs and pondered the nature of accidents.

They were curious things, accidents were. Nearly flawless as they played the role of an excuse, more skillful than most when gathering pity, and the universal reason why.

Ah, yes. I'm certain your house burned down by accident. I believe that you got lost in the mountains for three weeks by accident. Yes, that pregnancy was accidental. In the same way that it will be pure and simple accident when I fall down these stairs and spatter the walls of my school with bits of the brain it has worked so hard.