she is running to stand still

"you got to cry without weeping,

talk without speaking,

scream without raising your voice.

you know i took the poison,

from the poison stream,

then i floated out of here.

singing ha la la la de day,

singing ha la la la de day,

ha la la la de day."

feeling overwhelmed tonight, so i'm reaching out for some musical comfort. this is one of my most favorite songs.

i remember when this album came out. i was living in my first apartment, julia's dad and i (though it was before there was a julia). we did not have a television, but we had a stereo and a rather large combined music collection.

we had very different tastes, but every so often it overlapped. this song, and album, was one of the overlaps.

he learned to play this on the guitar for me. i'd actually forgotten that. sometimes so many bad feelings become your memory of someone that you neglect the recollection of anything good.

one night he played it while i sang along.

running to stand still ~ u2

& the video

as an angel hits the ground

stay (faraway, so close) ~ u2

"red lights, gray morning,
you stumble out of a hole in the ground;
a vampire or a victim
it depends on who’s around.

you used to stay in to watch the adverts,
you could lip sync with the talk show hosts.
and if you look, you look through me.
and if you talk, it’s not to me,
and when i touch you, you don’t feel a thing.

if i could stay, then the night would give you up.
stay, and the day would keep it’s trust."

i've been told that this song reminds someone of me so many times that it is actually starting to leave scars. honestly, this is not a flattering song. and yes, i am not stupid, i see the parallels and the reasons. i just...i'm tired of the way i am seen sometimes. as many truths that this song could claim of me, there are volumes more that are unseen.

leaves me to ask: am i that impossible to know? and if this is all you see...

and yet, i do love the song. ironic, and quite fucked, innit?

dancing barefoot

"what do you want to hear?" he whispers, close enough to me now that each word feels like a tap on my skin, the sound causing ripples of electricity to whip and purr up my spine, settling close to the marks he re-opened on the side of my neck. without meaning or self-control my head tilts towards him, a physical offering up that has more to do with need, than desire.

he turns away, though. an audible sigh pushing out of him, coming from the center of his chest, or somewhere deeper still. if nothing else, the days between have taught me to read gestures and tones quickly, self-preservation at its finest. body language is the one truth that most people emit from them, even in the midst of the most fantastical of lies. the quiet girl in the corner was ever watching, turned it into an act on stage later in life, figured it a game that my mind devoured with no real practical use as i matured. i was wrong. it has saved my so-called life more than any quick wit, hip tilt, or act of seduction ever could.

that said, he confuses me. his every move in direct contradiction to my inner expectation. his eyes cleverly diverting what his body decides to do, his hands spinning webs of distraction as he turns and flees out the back door, leaving me breathless. he is better at this game than i am. and for the fourteenth time in just that many nights i wonder to myself if he sees right through me, if he has figured me right out, if these momentary meetings are just a move on some kind of chess board; as he makes a play at taking my queen right the hell down.

i turn then, stepping away from the antiquated music machine, with thoughts racing as i try to tie words together into a string of something to say. somewhere in the recesses of before i fish out a line to a song, sliced and cut clean out of context and melody, random and most likely nonsensical; but it is there running circles in me, over and over again, all the same.

"why must not death be redefined?"

it is falling from my lips before i stop to pull it back, careful words the only thing i utter any longer, but not these words that are repeating so ceaselessly that i am unsure if i have sung it, or am only just hearing it again in my head.

"you remind me of her. strong and feral, beautiful despite yourself" his voice is still a whisper, his body still turned away and set far across the room.

he pauses just long enough to shuffle through something, his hands moving quickly, until he is there, back behind me again. his arms reach around me as if in an embrace, and i fold into him, waiting for his next words, a next move. instead of pulling me closer, or touching me at all, he just reaches his long arms over my head to drop an album onto the turntable. i watch it begin to spin as he grabs my hand, holding it in his for just a second, then letting it go, resting it right over the arm of the player, guiding me to lift it, to start the music. it is then that he speaks again, right at the same moment as the needle drops, popping and crackling on the vinyl.

dancing barefoot ~ u2