Diary of a Human

DIARY OF A HUMAN

Diary of a Human

ELIZA LENTZSKI

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DIARY OF A HUMAN

Copyright © 201
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Eliza Lentzski

All rights reserved.

ISBN:
1478216034

ISBN-13:
978-1478216032

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DIARY OF A HUMAN

DEDICATION

To C

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DIARY OF A HUMAN

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DIARY OF A HUMAN

CONTENTS

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DIARY OF A HUMAN

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DIARY OF A HUMAN

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are all the product of the people who cross our paths.  Without the women in my life, my path would surely have been different
.

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DIARY OF A HUMAN

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DIARY OF A HUMAN

0.1
             
ode to winterson

I have known women and they have known me.  I look for them in all the wrong places and end up with more than I should. 

The first, was the unsuspecting, the woman with School Girl skirts and her hair in a blonde ponytail.  Blue Eyes, rosy cheeks, and a bumble gum tongue that twisted tales beyond her 21 years.  She was a woman who knew exactly what she wanted out of life and how to manipulate those around her to obtain it.  With a boyfriend by day and a lover at night, she stumbled to my door because I was eager to give her that which he could not.  She only visited by night and was gone before the first rays of light shed evidence of her unfaithful crime. 

I think I was attracted to her initially because she had something that I cra
ved. Presence. Power. Respect.
All of these qualities she drained from me, but not before she unknowingly taught me how to weave my own web. 

I didn’t quite care that the phone only rang on the weekends, or that she never stayed the night; I knew it was not to be a love about which poets write.  Instead, she played Teacher and I her eager Pupil, not only instructing me on how to touch and please her, but also how to become her. 

And I did.

Number Two was my first experiment – to take all that Blue Eyes had taught me and put it to practical use.  Young, naïve, fresh, and searching for something stable – I called her Fragility.  She placed me on a pedestal and showered me with admiration and tenderness, but I was too hardened by my past to melt over her words and tears of love.  Before I left her, I ruined her life just enough.  Just enough so she would never forget me, but just enough so she would get over me. 

And that’s the whole idea, isn’t it?  To make your individualized mark on those with whom you have contact.   Men have the selfish gene.  They shoot their seed into the next empty hole, hoping it will take root and multiply into the next generation.  But women have sharpened claws, dipped in drama. Emotions are fleeting, but scars are forever.

I suppose after Fragility, I felt invincible.  I believed I had the tools and skills to entangle even an untouchable.  And so I pursued
La Femme
2.5. We had been acquaintances for nearly four years and friends of friends had said she was interested in diving into my side of the pool.  However, when faced with the opportunity, she balked.  My ego still hurts from
La Femme
.

Number Three, the girl I nearly fell for, came as a result of
La Femme
2.5.  Number Three was a little trickier; her background was more extensive than my own.  She had been labeled a “player” and a “gamer” and had been known on and off campus as having had quite a number of partners in her pockets.  She invited me out, not as a date, but rather the opportunity for me to meet others in her circle.  My friends teased that I was “back on the prowl,” not knowing how much La Femme had stung me.  I kissed Number Three that night
.
I’m not sure why, but perhaps
I needed
to prove my own proficiency at her well-rehearsed game.

We dated, but it was never what I wanted it to be.  And although I never told her I loved her, I still selfishly clung to a relationship that I knew wouldn’t last.

When I finally broke it off to pursue other conquests, it broke her, and I became something different altogether.

This is that story.  This is the diary of a human.

0.
2
CAST OF CHARACTERS

There’s
a girl who lives on my street.

She blankets her neck with knitted wool scarves and heats her fingertips with hot chocolate on brisk evenings.  Her eyes pierce my flesh far too easily.  She stares hard at the forms that pass her by, unnoticed, as she sits easily in the corner café,
Madame Bovary
her spicy date.

But my moon is in Gemini.

There’s
a girl who lives on my street. 

Her barely-there ponytail is testament to her restlessness.  Her feet are always moving.  She, who knows me better than I know myself, with pretend languages and a past so recent on my memory.

But she broke my heart and I broke hers.

There’s a girl who l
ives on my street. 

She appears behind clouds of nicotine mist and her mouth, ripe like kiwi fruit waiting to fall from its stem.  She guards her secrets and her heart from even those who would surrender their teeth to merely hold her and nuzzle themselves beneath layers of finger paint.  She offers me shelter in her world of sunshine and puppies, an optimist to the end.

But I’ve been hiding for too long.

There’s
a girl who lives on my street. 

She seeks appraisal from the gentlemen callers who have trouble seeing past her plastic form.  There is more to her than flesh and teeth; she who is more vulnerable and fragile than all the other girls on my street.

But you’d never know it.

There’s
a girl who lives on my street.

She walks in circles on evenings dampened with rolling fog and lurking vampires.  She lives between words and paper cuts and tea stained papers and the humming keyboard on her desk.  A purple accent wall highlights an apartment where barren walls reveal so much of a life not yet lived.

But I’m not ready to live.

There’s a girl who lives on my street – or rather
across
the street from me. 
She places women upon pedestals, only to witness them tumble after months, years.  She hides from the mirrored glass and misses out on the only woman she really needs.  Herself.  She with a heart that has outgrown her mortal body and a gentle smile that knows no frown.

But she is the Marrying Type, and I cannot bring myself to rumple her freshly laundered bed sheets.

There’s a girl who lives on my street. 

She fears the disapproval of a family who loves her unconditionally, already knowing her secrets.  She kisses biting turtles and one-eyed mice and taught me to become more than a Miller girl.  She fears obesity and failure even though for her, both are impossible feats.  She leaves secret love letters and secret marks on my flesh.

She has written on my body, inside and out.

Prologue

0.3//it only hurts when i breath

The hallway light spills into and pales the bedroom with a cheapened yellow glow and hums an unsung chorus. Outside I can hear the frigid howl of a winter banshee; she blows no colder than I have of late to those undeserving of my icy touch.

The shifting of mattress and shuffle of fabric relay that you are still here. A sigh, a turn, and my eyes meet the gentle dip of your waist and hips rise up to greet my gaze. My throat burns raw from sleep and toxins that remind me of how commercial this town of mine is. Traded sweet, thick, wet air for a multi-screen theatre and a handful of stoplights.

My senses should be overcome by the cherry cough drop I have surrendered to, but I am covered instead with you. A scent that has replayed itself over and over again in your absence. Once a memory, the scent now engulfs me. I am drunk with the moment and only can think how I could bottle this essence to remind me of this early morning, this hour, this minute, this flutter of eyelids and pursed lips.

You inhale deeply in your sleep and I long to be the dampness that has collected on your lips if only to be briefly intimate, if only to briefly exist so close to you, if only to be carelessly licked away by a small pink tongue that pushes past perfect teeth and parted lips.

But I remain in my place regardless of how my body hums in your presence. How I long to curl up and let the softness of your body smolder and smother my wildness. To find myself nestled in the delicate space where graceful neck finds defined collarbone.

It is in these moments I realize I cannot continue with this pretense...I need to shed the coat and be naked for a while. Because I have grown too accustom to my overcoat that shelters and confines me with complacency. I look at you and feel a breadth of emotions unrealized for fourteen months. There is a sadness and pain that comes in your package, but without the rain, the sun would never shine so brilliantly. It blinds me and my eyes well with tears, but I am too encased and enchanted by your light to blink and ease the searing white hot pain.

I rest my weary head in rough, chapped hands and my brain pounds between my spread finger
s. This disease of mine creates
painful sleepless night
s. But you are always asleep.

Peaceful, unblemished features that exist much smoother than my tortured contortions. Always sle
eping. And I am always awake.

My love is not unsympathetic to my sleepless rages, only asleep. What comes so easily to her strangles mortals with frustration. I can only sit in my chair beside our bed. My head too heavy for this neck, but not yet worthy of sleep.

0.4//distractions

She touched my arm.  She held my hand.  And I held her close to my body as we walked briskly through the biting wind, silent.  The weather put more and more miles between Us.  But in that moment it brought she and I together. 

             
She looked at me, her head resting against the pillow, a small dreamy smile playing upon her lips.  We sit on her couch and she sits too close fo
r me to complete my sentence, h
er thigh pressing into mine.  Her scent makes me dizzy with dilutions that this is right.  She’s at the end of my fingertips, but then I remember Portland.  And then she talks like she’s a fucking Hallmark card, and my address escapes her memory.

0.5//delicate things

When I broke her heart because of you, she was at my feet. I felt her body shake against my leg and the hot tears dampened the unsympathetic floor. I heard her cold, dull voice rasp, "The flowers are dead. There's no water."
             

             
"They were already dying," I replied. "I warned you I'm no good at caring for delicate things."

             
I picked up a book, a piece of you, and she hurled it across the room. "My book..." I started to protest. "You hurt my book."

             
"Don't make me remind you of what
you
have hurt."
             

             
But she smiles and tells me we’re still friends, being used to this position.

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