The Stars and the Cookie Jar

I found a viddui I'm willing to use.

But I can't make myself ready to speak it to God. I -- I'm sorry, I just -- there are so many words left, to be pulled from the aether and spun into stories. There are so many days for the sea. There are so many stupid things left for me to do, and so many chances to fuck up and to fix it. I want those. I want many years to live as a Jew, not the proper words of a moment to die as one. Gods, I think I even want children, and when you consider all the trappings of that statement? ...Yeah.

Dani-jou will be updating here in my absence, with very basic info, because Gawd love 'er, she can draw but she cain't type. Please, no one attack her spelling.

Sirius will god for Kassandra in the bar.

Please don't blow my store up, y'all, and that thing with the chai pump? I fixed it. Do not unfix it. I'll know. I'll be ripshit. I hope if you break it, it gets in your eyes.

If I do anything else in the journal before I leave, I can guarantee it will be a locked post, so to anybody reading publicly, namaste and thanks.

Call me Selkie.

I am not yet twenty-five.

I am a writer.

I am a misanthrope, a whiner, a cynic and a bitch.

If I love you, I will be fiercely loyal and perhaps too selfless. I do not often love.

I come from monsters; I thought I was a monster. I have finally found my place in the sun.

I want my own fame, and I love to show off, to garner praise, and to tell a good story.

None of what's in these lines is a story.

I can teach French to a child. I can sing in Yiddish. I can say my sh'ma and pray for my peace and the world's. I can rent a car in Warsaw. I can get a hostel bunk in Novosibirsk. And there are times when I have no idea what to say.

I know how to cook. I know how to bake bread. I know what to do when the bread won't rise. I know what to do when the cake falls and your younger sister wants cake. I know how to take challah. I have taken challah by throwing a pinch of dough out a dorm-kitchen window into the dark.

I have been kissed. I have felt it be more than fucking. I have had snowballs thrown up to my window in the lamplight. I have jumped out a window into a holly bush, and landed sort of on my feet, for a kiss.

I know how to be courtly. I know how to be kind. I am learning how to be wise.

I can balance a checkbook. I can make the groceries last a week. I can make the safe-fund count up right. I can lead by example. I scrub toilets. I take out the trash. I feed the cat.

I can ride, I can row, I can swim. I can stay up all night on my knees with a girl who has tried to do herself terrible harm. I can run, if it means my life. I have run for my life.

People say I have a talent, a pleasant voice, strong hands, fine eyes. Women put their hands into my hair. I have scars, and I can't be naked in the daylight. I cry in bed, after, most times; the crying is not because such things hurt me. It's about not being hurt.

My friends say I am strong, I am brave, I'm a fighter. They tell me he will never hurt me again, he can't, he's dead. He cannot touch me. I am my own. I am standing.

I know I am no coward, but mostly courage is in belief.

I don't know, if I have to face my death, that I can do it properly, with dignity, and quiet. I am afraid I'm scream, and claw, and kick, and run away. I am afraid to show my face without the mask; it would be red and white and stricken, with blood at the corners of the mouth. I bite my mouth, really hard, when I'm afraid.

I am so afraid.