blood cuts

i'm currently wearing the bridesmaid dress that arrived in the mail yesterday from california. i'd call it aubergine, and a little big in the chest area, but no matter, i'll stuff flowers there or something. i figure if i'm folding laundry i might as well wear a fancy dress. that's funny b/c i don't do laundry. tater's wedding will be a glorious thing that has until this point been played down b/c tater never stresses you with her own shit nor does she ever inflate situations, stories, other peoples' issues, or get impatient, nor would she ever say how wonderful her wedding was actually going to be because that's not how tater likes to communicate. it's like you know she's going to get an A on the test but she says she's worried anyway and that she hasn't studied much. (both are probably true - and i'm not equating marriage to a test, i'm not). tater says marriage is a leap of faith. i agree with that insofar as i can grasp it from afar. the last dream i had about her wedding was on may 23rd (the previous one to that had her wearing super-mario-type-princess-sleeves ??? ). there were hotel rooms, the sea, it was dark/dank/green/yellow lighted like how a nikon d70 renders color. there were strangers, there was drama, there were cars pulling up, there was the ridiculous ghost who showed up with his face clean shaven like a 15-year-old version of himself, ready to go on all fronts. i was late because of him. my mind is a testy, malicious dickhead...in reality i will get to santa cruz and we will sit on the beach and walk up and down the boardwalk we used to and we will forget everything else around us because we want to and because sometimes sahara, just shut the fuck up. we will downplay these days leading into the 'big' one because that's what we do in the moment knowing that it's all already been written. so we play the back, like we played the back of the bus when we were kids. and when i got a bloody nose on the way to school tater would get out whatever she had on her and we'd stick it to my face. and we'd arrive to school together, and hide our deep affection for one another because girls like to pit girls against girls, to test loyalties for the fuck of it, to see how you fight, to see how smart you are, to see if you're resourceful, to see if you care, to see what you're hiding, to see who's a pushover...we were tested every day by those we tested, too. there was only one way to survive those formative years and it wasn't by being weak; if you didn't know who you were or what your worth was in a group, you were stomped. we played along until we were set free, and then we ran...