SEX and the SUBURBS by Courtney Oates A conversation I had the other night left me thinking. We were discussing my single girl status and trying to make sense of my recent dating misconception when a friend of mine, an ex actually, tried to pin me as being a romance junkie. At first I was slightly insulted, searching my sarcasm for a witty comeback. How dare he accuse me of being “one of those.” One of those mushy, gushy types; those honey, baby, sugar types; those sweep me off my feet types....

I have my mother’s eyes. Minus the mascara and years. Minus a lot like the, like the tears that she fought when I used to leave for Christmas and come back with a skirt that wouldn’t fit me for at least another year cause -- maybe that’s when I’ll see him again. Those eyes, strong and a brilliant shade of espresso worth more than the coffee they make, half awake, every morning when it’s time to get up for work. An early start with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with a heart butter knifed ...

He serenaded me with his life-long song of strife. Played the violin strings as he sang what now I can only hear as a chain of whispers to his past hoping to make it clear, to make it right, or just to justify its place in the now when all I could hope was that one day he could make it just that; the past. But even through the laughs, the melody remained. It stained his writing, the words that he spoke when we shut the light and lay, tangled as one, we lay, breathing as one, we lay, and he sa...

It started to get dark as I made my way past the old pine tree that shaded the path I watched dwindle into the night before me, fade into the rusty leaves that fell from the oak who stood tall, my bare parasol, it was the most beautiful sky of all, distant flickers that brushed a scattered picture into miles of blue black canvas, and I walked, alone, with my eyes guided from above, it was just me and the sky that night, love, me and the star light that night, love, that kept me warm, kept me ...

Black Stage (spotlight on Jimmy on a cot writing): Jimmy Stands up... Jimmy: Dear Dad, I'm writing this letter on only a few hours sleep, so forgive me for the spelling errors, I remember when I was a kid you used to always get on me about my homework and the things I wrote...I am probably most thankful for this now that I'm older. You know I'm thankful for the way you always got on me. I can't thank you enough for being the father you were. Light up the background. Two kids (Jimmy age 13) an...

I was going to buy a star for Christmas and name it after the him, and give it to the him that I wasn’t sure what to buy for, because what do you buy for someone that you love, but are not in love with? So I thought, symbolically, a star was the perfect gift. Then, years from now, down the line, when that admiring love, when that I barely know you but am so proud of you love, when that representational love became I can’t live without you love, then we could stare at the little sparkle in the...

Someone knocked on my door this afternoon and I didn’t recognize her face,had no idea where we met, at what time and in what place. But she knew me, so well enough to call me by nickname and though I knew her just the same, I stared at her with almost the blankness you stare at a stranger with, because that’s what she had become, regardless of the cheeked kiss and invitation in. Maybe we had just lost touch, or maybe she changed a lot over the years, but my eyes did not deceive her ears when ...

One day you will see me walking down the street with a baby in my belly and you will scream out my name to get my attention as I cross at the green light but I will not hear you because by then the sound of your voice will be so anonymous to my ear that it will dart past me as quickly and unrecognizable as the taxi cabs honking and the morning birds singing. You might follow me a few blocks, watch my hand rest on the spot below my belly button that you used to kiss and my lips stretch across ...

There’s no grey area when the black and whites of an image are so distinctly distinguished that they never overlap or blend into a common puddle of shade. It’s the distance between one another that we have made that draws the imaginary line that doesn’t allow one to fade with the other as we travel through this life of color and create our own brights and lights as we go, but never by mixing the blacks and whites that are so far apart cause we know that our hearts are colored in red and not g...

Please feel free to grab my hips and ask my feet to dance, by chance if you and I do meet once more in a still glance, and my brown eyes will meet yours two on the white tile floor, and we will waltz this time my dear, sweet man, in love, once more.