i am going to kill my firstborn

there she goes. she looks up with me with those bright, pleading green 
eyes screaming "meow? meow? meow!!! meow!!! MEOW!!!" asking me, begging me 
for something, though i have no idea what it is she wants. i give her a 
little more food--she doesn't want it. i pick her up, and she quiets down 
for a minute. i pet her, and that seems to satisfy her until she begins 
biting huge hunks out of my hands and carving her name with her little 
kitten claws on my arm. then i push her away, go do something somewhat 
constructive, and she tears across the living room like she's trying out 
for the olympics, climbs on every piece of furniture in her reach, and 
then begins to reach for the oil lamps and almost knocks them over. i am 
going to kill her. well not really. i love her too much. she's so damn 
cute when she's destructive, she's the first kitten i've had in the house 
since necromancer left, and besides, i gave her to the ring master in the 
place of my firstborn. (the ring master, in exchange for not killing tam 
when she found out he had, erm, taken my maidenhead, decided that we must 
give her our firstborn. so i gave her a kitten instead. i think it worked 
out fair enough.) her name is glamoury, though everyone calls her little 
monster, and if my children turn out like this i'll...i'll...oh, i'll love 
them just the same and spoil them rotten anyway, who am i trying to fool? 
i'm just in a bit of a pissy mood today, not really anything bad, not 
depression or sorrow swarming over me, but memories, and grouchiness which 
is not directed at anyone (except, of course, little miss sunshine 
here--arg! get your friggin claws out of my back, you cat!)...as my mood 
tends to shift with the company i am around, i am wondering if my current 
reverting back to adulthood was caused from spending so much time with 
rainaneve and the catwoman these past few days, looking through their old 
high school notes and reading their stories of murder and vampires and 
blood and what-not. i have this sudden desire to blast the sisters of 
mercy in my make-shift stereo, throw on my pothole stockings and my 
skeleton dress, dye my eyes charcoal and paint my nails black, dig out my 
anne rice and my poppy z. brite and "prey upon the sheep," as stuart 
always said we should...maybe it is because we went to o'charley's 
yesterday, rain all decked out in her new army pants and combat boots, her 
recovering christain tshirt and her new military camoflauge berret, me in 
my ugly flowered whatever skirt (the one that tam despises), tie-dyed 
tights and my sandman tshirt, doused head to toe in glitter, catwoman in 
her vinyl cap and balck embordered jeans. and it's been a long times since 
i have been in public, much less with the lost girls, much less dressed to 
the hilt of my lost girls-dom. and every single friggin head had to turn 
with their mouths wide open like a whole bunch of codfish, their hair 
falling out and getting older by the second, and i fumbled and twisted and 
had no idea why they should think us so odd, why they had to glare so 
much, why even the small children...the little ones, the ones i love so 
much...couldn't even give me a small smile. i leave the world for a month, 
and its already forgotten about me. so i shake my head and imagine other 
times when i could simply glare back, with my look was sometimes harsher 
than death, when i was just a shadow and could care less. but maybe it 
wasn't that at all. maybe it was flipping through rain's book of true 
first lesbian encounters. reading through them, i always remember the page 
of swords with severe clarity, she cuts through my memories with her 
namesake blades, and it is always so sharp, and sometimes when i trip over 
her thoughts and dreams and once upon a time when i was lestat and she was 
louis and even long before that, before i ever kissed her, when we had our 
entire cast of characters, when we created universes within ourselves and 
no one else was allowed admittance. perhaps solitude does that to a 
person, when all that is left is the stories, is the make-believe, the 
dream before the dream. we had notebooks, notebooks upon notebooks of 
stories that our characters had embarked on, where we had traveled in our 
minds and touched with our hearts...the page of swords, she was the first 
person i had met since i was very young who still believed in let's 
pretend. when the other children grew beyond the rocketship monkeybars or 
the castle treehouse, and left to play kickball or football or basketball 
or giggle about boys behind the swingset, i was still wearing strange 
paper hats and pretending to be leprechauns, i was still wearing my blue 
dress and tumbling around in memosa blossoms, i was still the peasant 
faerie, i was still the lost member of robin hood's merry men, i still 
carried a quiver of arrows on my back and shot them through the picture of 
charlie's father, the only person i ever hated. i was still a waitress on 
the front porch with my brother, pushing the brick-buttons of the 
chimney-machine to create some strange confection to give him. i was still 
sprinkling my cousins with pixie dust and trying to fly. i was still a 
lost shaman of the navajo tribe wandering the desert. and then i happened 
to run into the page of swords as billy the kid. and our adventures, they 
were neverending. we were cowboys, and musicians, and movie stars. we were 
vampires, and empresses, and estranged teenagers. we were mutants, and 
witches, and nearly anything you could imagine. and our world, the one we 
illustrated, and lived in, it was all that existed, all that mattered, all 
that we cared for or wished for or needed. it was our sustenance and our 
escape from the cold cruel kkk eyes of hate and bigotry, the handful of 
children with penknives stuck in the back, who could never, in a million 
years, understand. so we crept further into ourselves, and into eachother, 
until we made the final step which sealed our fate and forever stole the 
possibility of friendship. the page of swords had even further to hide 
than myself, from her demonic mother, from her insane ramblings and her 
sharp tongue and her burning belt and the sick, incestious reminders of 
her older brother, and how many other horrors i cannot even imagine, 
behind the plastic taped around the windows of that house, that house 
without doors, that house full of curtains, and i suppose i should have 
known then...about the curtains...i never knew darkness such as that, pain 
such as that, and they bled into our dreamscape as nightmares and gave me 
that darker side, that shadow, the one peter chases around until the wendy 
lady finally sews it back. i was attached to her so much that her horrors 
became my horrors, and the other realm i had nestled myself so comfortable 
in began to have posion in its tongue, and was no longer comfortable. and 
madness...alice's jabberwock. time has healed much of it, soothed much of 
it, i have known happiness i never imagined possible, i have tasted so 
much of life, so much wonderous adventuring, so much laughter...but 
sometimes, something reminds me that nothing ever changes, not completely, 
and the jabberwock is still there, and whenever i need it, a bit of posion 
in the spice, a bit of blood colour in that perfect sunset, i only need to 
call, the gnashing of teeth and the snicker snack. but not today. not now. 
my kitten monster is snuggling quietly in my lap now, and i see no reason 
to be angry with her, she might be the red queen after all, though i think 
she's too disheveled to...i think i'll go count the paws on the moon and 
smile at myself...for my tail is long, and has many bends in it, but i 
know exactly how far i've traveled, and i know i have a long way to go.