Leaving them behind

I am deep in the middle of my novel-in-progress, What He Left Behind, which means I have finally found a way to let the characters of TIWIWTTY go and spend time with some new characters in my head. On the page. It is exhilarating to be in a new book but, there is something devastating about leaving characters behind, not knowing where they ended up. I recently read a really wonderful book of poems called The Pajamaist by Matthew Zapruder. There is a series in here called 'Twenty Poems for Noelle' and I find such solace in reading them. I imagine this is *my* Noelle, a little bit grown up, and now I know where she is. I find relief in knowing that she is okay, that someone else loved her with the same sort of desperate sadness that she loved Parker. Is that silly? It does make me feel better. Here is one poem for Noelle, according to Matthew Zapruder.

Night, one hears sounds
under the pavement,
something is always
being repaired, under
the red painted table
that Aztec Camera
tape lies where it fell,
its label with drawings
in pencil of little flowers,
Noelle were you ever cool,
that is aware that somehow
not to be aware is the only
lasting form of awareness,
you live in Brooklyn,
a green hexagon
floats above your head, now
everyone sees it, my problem
is I would like to be there
some kind of preferably
gentle sorting without me.

Accidentally Noelle

"The party was at Jessica Marino’s older brother’s loft. It was loud and dim and dirty, the way lofts are in your imagination. Jessica and I both wore black eyeliner smudged in thick clouds around our lashes and tore our tank tops into jagged pointy Vs. Jessica’s brother mostly ignored us and we hung in the corners of the room, trying, without admitting it, to make our faces pout and suggest like all of the faces we saw around us like all of these faces who seemed older and better and barely noticed us."

Noelle is an accidental designer. Terrified to be noticed in a crowd, uncertain of everything in her closet, uncertain of each step she takes and where to look she follows Jessica Marino, tucking into her shadow. She cuts her t-shirts to make them look like someone else's clothes. Somehow, this way, they become hers. Check out the sometimes easy, oft-inspiring, always edgy fashion tips here. Noelle could bring out your inner fashionista.