There was this girl...

I am full of so many nothings.

So many almosts, so many maybes, so many what-ifs, so many could-bes.

I put you on hold, but the store had an ‘until closing’ policy, when I thought I had another day. I guess it wasn’t fair to you, someone else might want that pair of shoes. And I’ve tried to put pins in everything, but it was only half-hearted, they were only half in, so now the pins are all falling out.

I think I was in love with you, I think. And maybe now I’m falling out of love with you.

Maybe not.

"and she loved him.

And what did he do? He broke her heart."

                                  ~                              ~                                       ~

He used to save a seat for her, but now he’s getting a divorce. 
He likes himself better without her, he says. 
He’s already found a new place, and there isn’t enough room for his daughters.

There’s enough room for his dog though.

He went on and on about that.

He used to save a seat for her. 
They were together for twenty years, and he still saved her a seat.

                                ~                                       ~                                ~

I wish I was you.

I wish you were me.

I hope I can hold on to you. But you’re a little like play-doh, and my grasp is starting to feel desperate.

Whatever will be will be.

Deep breathes.

Sometimes, they’re just shoes. And sometimes, they’re more than shoes. Sometimes they’re stories, and souls, and confirmation of the things people have seen, the lives people have lived.

The holes in the side, and the scars on your face laugh at the same inside joke.

Even shoes aren’t just shoes.

I'm here.

Love Letter

You know those people who you meet, who change your life?

People who probably won’t remember you in a year, or a month, but you’ll remember them forever, because they inspire you.

“What do you dislike?” she asked.

“when people are mean to other people.” he said. 

That was all he said. He didn’t dislike anything else. She listed off a plethora of habits and personality traits that she disliked in other people, and he didn’t have a single one.

He could see multitudes of value in every single person. When he talked to you, you felt special. When he asked you was how you were doing, he wasn’t filling air, he really wanted to know. And you knew he talked to everyone like that, but it didn’t mean that he was fake, and it didn’t mean that everyone was of the same penny-value.

It meant that every person really was special to him.

If there were more people like that in the world, imagine how great the world would be. 

Imagine if everyone’s only pet peeve, was people being mean to other people.

He’s brave too. He’s vulnerable, he’s passionate. He’s earnest.

Living in the moment doesn’t mean doing crazy things, it doesn’t mean being careless about the future, or making rash choices.

It just means listening when people talk, and talking for people to listen.

“It’s just life,” he said, “just have fun with it, don’t worry.”

He had great blue eyes, and he looked at me with the sort of honesty that makes the your guard sigh and fall away.

Genuine.

He doesn’t like things. He doesn’t like stuff. He doesn’t like nostalgia. Why look back on things you can’t change, he says. I know I lived those memories to the fullest, as best as I could, and they were great times, but they’re past now. I’ll remember them fondly, but I don’t want to miss out on right now. I’ve got to live this to the fullest too.

(He thinks we could legalize all drugs.)

(He went rock climbing-real rock climbing- in the middle of the week.)

(He went to europe without a euro in his pocket, just lived under a bridge.)

(He saw something special in a girl who wouldn’t let the world see how great she was.)

(He made cupcakes in a bread pan, because he didn’t have a cupcake pan.)

He speaks calmly and wisely, and a little carefree, and I am perfectly captivated.

They aren’t stories for him, they’re just reality.

You know those people who you meet, who change your life?

Maybe I don’t know them very well, maybe I won’t know them for very long, but I promise you, I love them.

she was listening to the song as though it had taken over her whole body

You said that I was an enigma. But you didn’t mean it in a good way.

“You’re really childish”

I fucking know, I like myself that way.

“That’s not how we function in society”

I’m doing pretty fucking well asshole.

“No you’re not, you got baptized”

Fuck you asshole. You want to know the truth? I knew what I was doing was stupid and dangerous. I could have said no. But I didn’t want to because I was curious. I just wanted to understand this other world. This other people who believe in a God, who really and truly believe that the bible holds all the answers. 

Why do they believe that? How could they possibly have such strong faith in something they can’t prove?

I didn’t want to be like you - close minded to things you don’t understand, just because you never tried to understand them.

I just wanted to know.

I just wanted to be part of a story.

And you know what, you should be insecure, because you’re not very good.

You think you’re functioning well? Double check how many of those ‘friends’ of yours, actually like you.

I have a secret inner Bitch. 
She likes tearing people down, she likes poking at their insecurities and then ripping them apart. She loves the burn in her stomach she gets from watching someone crumble from her words. 

She loves the heat, the fire, the mutated desire that fills her when she rips someone apart. It’s the rawness, the power of the act. She pictures herself tearing apart a wild animal with her teeth. Eating the meat raw. 

And secretly, I love those feelings too.

You said I was a tease.

I didn’t mean to be, maybe you’re just too presumptuous.

I’m searching for something raw. 
Something jarringly honest. Something base, and cruel, and filled with emotion.

Let me take a sheet of sandpaper to Life, and then lets see what things are really like when they are raw.

 - A little bit bloody, a little bit exposed. Everything is vulnerable, and the stakes are high. And suddenly anyone could do anything  unexpected at any time.

I'm an enigma, but not in a good way.

Like emptiness in harmony I need someone to comfort me

Balance your house of cards. Stack more on top, even though you know the base is shaky. 

please don’t let there be a breeze

please don’t let there be a breeze

please don’t let there be a breeze

Because I have balanced everything, everything about me. And as long as it stands, I still have face. Once there’s that breeze, I’ll be undone, found out. I’ll have lost face. And what’s a girl without her face?

It feels like Simon and Garfunkel, and it rings like white noise.

It tastes salty-sweet.

Hugs at arms length?

It weighs like all the guilt from all the things I haven’t done yet.

I make choices for all the wrong reasons. All the wrong reasons. Is what I want what I want, or is it what I think I want? 

The Id is getting out of hand. Ego, where the fuck are you?

Mostly it’s just because you miss not being missed.

I have a good idea now, of how it will be after I die. I will be remembered and beloved for a time, by some people. But eventually you won’t be missed anymore. 

(Should I worry about the depth or the breadth?)

Fewer and fewer people will visit your grave, fewer and fewer people will be able to recall the sound of your laugh, fewer and fewer people will wonder about the your unfulfilled possibility.

At least you’ll be able to breath easy. You won’t have to worry about your house of cards anymore. They’ll be immortalized as an Ideal. And then they’ll melt away, slip away, like the girl at the party in the light blue dress. Pretty but forgettable.

In the end, all they will remember is a feeling. Your face will blur, and become generic, but still pretty. Did she have blue eyes? Was her chin notable? Your face will be forgotten, but it will embodied a feeling, and you will be mostly good things. 

Don’t judge me. I know it’s simple, I know it’s nothing special, but don’t look down on me for being the sorry me I am. It’s okay if you interact. It’s okay if you laugh. Please, please laugh.

Light me a cigarette and let me run away.

You’re a philosophy major?

.... Maybe I can give philosophy another chance.

I make choices for all the wrong reasons. Maybe will they lead me down the right path.

You believed in the death penalty?

I believe in revenge, but that doesn’t work.

I miss you. I miss that minute.

I miss Huckleberry Finn.

"...all my words come back to me..."

I validate your existence. 

I write your story to validate your existence, just the way you always wanted.

It’s more beautiful that way.

My words are less than parallel with my feet

So it turns out, she was a passing thought. A loud, obnoxious, foghorn of a passing thought. 

Maybe her memory is just so full of other people’s fragments of seashells, bits of colored glass, and dusty marbles lost and found under the bed, that she can’t understand what other people fill their minds with. 

Chariots of Fire.

There’s something about train rides on dreary Sunday mornings.

Maybe it’s the way the air is stale with sighs and the feeling of ‘well, who the fuck cares anyhow’.

Maybe it’s the subtle vomit splattered up the train door, in fermented milk chunks.

Maybe it’s the whirr of the train on the tracks muttering about monotony, reminding you of that sinking feeling in your stomach where you think ‘despite the perceived dynamic of the train shuffling through this industrial countryside, the whirr is really only static’.

It’s not so bad. It’s like the calm after a storm.

Of your own stupidity.

Don’t lie; you loved it.

                                         "She thought it would be fun to try photography

                                          She thought it would be fun to try pornography

                                          She thought it would be fun to try most anything

                                          She was tired of sleeping"

please please please don’t let anyone knock on the door. My heart jumps out of my chest at the prospect of a footstep. 

There’s just a quality in that voice. I always feel bad for the poor boy who carries that quality in his voice when he talks to me. 

She's the last one on the island, give or take. Dreary as fuck.

There she was, waiting for Godot.

My life in an inappropriate compilation of other people’s stories

“I forgot to write the dates in my diary”

It's a senseless collaboration of thoughts and stories and misunderstood feelings. No order, no logic, just a perfect truth that is too confused to be understood, but if only you could make sense of it you might come to understand some sort of centre, some sort of theme, or truth about life. About something.
I'm a senseless collaboration of thoughts and stories and misunderstood feelings.

I have a large pine chest in my mind. It smells good when I open the lid, like emotions and dreams and christmas. I have all your secrets stashed in the left side. 

There’s a soft graveled voice here.

There’s a hole in my stomach, and speeding down the highway with your eyes filled to the brim.

There’s that look you have of the secret thoughts you won’t even share, but that I can see them in your eyes.

“Dear mummy, dear daddy, something’s terribly awry”

The careless voice you used to disguise the earnest weight of the situation, there’s the back room, and that question with a smile, and a hidden dose of fear.

There’s the smothered laugh, and the story that comes with a song. There are letters upon letters. There are days in the playground, there are long talks, and long walks, a little bit of jumping up and down, and a little bit of amazement.

It’s your history, your fearless emotions, and whether or not you like tomatoes that makes up who you are. Whether of not you like cats. 

How loud you laugh,

how fast you run,

do you read the word ‘extraordinary’, as meaning ‘special’, or ‘twice as ordinary’,

who is on your laminated list.

That’s what I do. I collect other people’s stories, and feelings and loves, and I hold onto them, and cherish them, long after the 'other people' have forgotten them.

If you call me

I won't answer

I am sitting under the moon

Inside of a wheel barrow

My desk drawer is filled with sealed, unsent letters. they are a collection of my own thoughts and feelings, and loves and cares. I keep them to myself, safe in a drawer. One day, when you are too old to remember what I meant, I will give you your letters.

Hindsight is 20/20.

“...I really do hope that you’re happy.”

“She’s special,” He said. “She’s someone to hang onto.”

“I connect with her,” He said, “I don’t connect with anyone else that way. I can talk to her about anything, and everything, and it’s easy.”

“Well it makes sense,” I said, “You guys were pretty much best friends.”

I listen to them, and I wonder what ingredient of human I am missing. 

“they make it look so easy, connecting with another 

human being. It’s like no one told them it’s the

hardest thing in the world”

He told me she was special, and he meant it, fully and completely. I didn’t know that sort of honest romance existed outside of love songs.

“I miss those blue eyes, how you kiss me at night...”
I only miss the idea of someone else’s fictional memories.

3 and 13 to go.

We shook hands and it was cordial, and he smiled with a hint of imp, and I wondered I factored into his life story. You just never know who you’ve had an impact on, or who will have an impact on you. I know I’ll remember him, I wonder if he gave me a passing thought. 

We hugged, and I felt small, and he seemed great, and far away, and I wondered if I factored into his life story. I know I’ll always remember him. Sometimes late at night I cross my fingers that maybe I wasn’t just a passing thought.

Charlotte wasn’t peachy keen. She was good she said, but not peachy keen.

A world where a girl can worry about whether that boy like her, instead of worrying about where to get her next meal. Where a boy can save up for those shoes, instead of worrying about fighting cancer.

Where every kid is free worry about the mundane, and the superficial, and the quaint,  because that’s what children should be worrying about, not about their survival. Where the biggest problems are what to wear for school tomorrow, and why a mug of tea costs six dollars, and what is the forgotten combination to their locker.

I hope I grow up to be more like you.

1 and 56 to go.

“I was sitting in a deli reading Dorian Gray...”

I wonder how to factor in.

1 and 31 to go.

We know that you’re soft, ‘cause we’ve all seen you dancing

Sometimes I go down to the park to visit Paula. Her plaque reads 'free spirit', and I wonder what that meant to her. 

Lips chapped and cheeks rosy from the chilled air that plays, pulls at my ruffled hair. Tight gloves, my fingers are constricted.

I imagine she had warm fingers, and a good laugh. Her lips were full and well-kissed without regret. She liked to skinny dip. Her eyes were filled with mischief, and when you locked with them, you became intoxicated.

I imagine she liked to take deep breathes. I imagine that she liked to close her eyes and call into the canyon. I imagine she hitch-hiked to her intentions.

Uninhibited and running with the high, I imagine she might have died topless, living in the field of geese. Somehow serene.

Jesus was quite the rebel in his day.

It’s all about clarity. 

It’s like an essay, it’s like a physics equation. WWMD? It’s always like an essay.

“...His love hate affair with his racist clientele...”

There’s always a love hate affair. I wonder if I was different than the ones before me, or if I’m a standard, mass produced.

It’s not test anxiety, it’s life anxiety. 

In her simple little way

Most of the time, I pretend not to care. 

Sometimes I actually don’t care. 

But on those evenings when you’re home alone, lying in bed with a stomach exploding from the half-pound of butter you ruthlessly administered for poignant self-sabotaged, it proves desperately difficult to keep up the pretense.

The loneliness starts to seep in like a fog. 

It creeps in through the cracks in the window, and from behind the baseboards. It comes up from the mattress, like a puff of dust, a last exhale from my dying grandmother. Its tentacles ringlet silkily around the room from the music notes of “Blackbird”. 

And even though it’s only half-hearted, I wish I was at least desired. It would bring hot-water bottle comfort to know a thing like that.

But it’s only half hearted, and I’m perfectly happy. Just a little lonely. 

I'd like a long, strong hug.

But I shake hands at arm’s length, so there’s not much to say.

"Because right now it feels like I'm in free fall"

Sometimes I wonder what that's like.

we're down to our last jar of jam, and the only spoon

It’s nearly time to jump ship.
Restless. Just like the ship, tossing to and fro in the purple black storm.
Reckless. It’s time for something like that.
I can feel the itch in my fingers, and calves, and balls of my feet. It’s telling me it’s time to go free.
I can feel my body splay wildly in all directions, jumping with all kinds of dreams, pushing forward like a mob of reporters.
And no one is left to steer the ship.

I guess that means, its time to jump.
Jumping is easy. You just jump.

It’s the landing that’s hard.

“It’s not goodbye, it’s just goodnight.” But if I don’t wake up, does it matter in the slightest that I said goodnight when it was really goodbye?

“Hey Fred, you alright?”
“Yeah.”
“Me too.”

Sometimes, you aren’t alright. And so you hope that on those days, you’re majestic.

18 and life to go

And we all come out just the same.

He plays poetry. It gurgles from his mouth in little bounces, and swirls and bubbles. It prances in a circle around my head, before leaping off, screeching laughter. Sometimes I can picture it steering a pirate ship through a tossing storm so strong I can feel the spray. Sometimes they fall like a drip in a puddle. Sometimes, they collect in a delicate stack of milk bubbles, blown through a straw by an entranced little girl.

She said that it’s our freedom of choice that hinders us. It cuts us at the knees, and leaves us at the mercy of Anxiety. That cheap bitch, addicted to cheap weed, sells us out to Conformity. And he’ll name us Rupunzel, and swallow the key. Keep us in boxes. “Safe? Perfectly.”

At least university has taught me to question why I gave those gender roles specifically.

I read that a girl died in Surrey. A student, a model, an actor, with aspirations of being a doctor.

(Maybe Billy Joel is right, if so I’m to die around 45. That no-man’s-land, referred to as Dull, mocked by the stronger stances.)

A well to-do girl from Surrey?  I wonder what things she forgot to do, because she said, “I’ll do that later. Maybe after college.” 

I wonder if she ever saw the Eiffel tower. 

I wonder if she wanted to. 

Did she enjoy school? Or if someone had told her “time’s up at 19” would she have done something better with her duration? Do you think she ever cried herself to sleep at night? A beautiful model, with the brains of a doctor. 

I wonder how many other girls cried themselves to sleep, wishing they were her.

I wonder if she was a virgin. If she’d ever been in love. If she’d planned out her wedding and cake, and how many children she wanted to have, and her yard, and the blue and white hammock, and the rickety picket fence, and name of their cat.

I wonder if there was ever a boy to whom she said ‘lets wait’, and she planned on re-meeting him when she was 25, when she would charm him, and they would have the most beautiful marriage to date. But she never got to tell him “I love you”, and now he’ll never know as he walks with that leggy blonde. They’ll probably own a dog.

I wonder what was written in her day planner for the day after. How many assignments she didn’t get finished, and what will happen to her lab partner on Monday when only half the work is done?

And I? I am left, blowing a tower of milk bubbles, listening to him play his poetry from a distance, praying that I can create something to say. 
Because I am nearly 18, with life to go.

Though I dare say, you never really know.

still dazzled by his smile when I shoplift there

Mostly, I can't seem to write anymore.

I'm ashamed to say this, because I don't believe in writer's block. But I wouldn't call this writer's block. If it's a block, it assumes there's something past the block. 

But all I see an empty expanse of desert, as fuzzy as my television screen. As fuzzy as my foot that's fallen fast asleep. I stand in the desert, confused and dazed, and all that's left is a box of jumbled up words at my feet. I pick up the box and look around the desert, and wish to fucking god that there was a block somewhere, and that I could consequently climb on top, and maybe spot a direction worth heading for.

But I pick up a stick, and start to write in the sand. Nobody will ever see it, it'll just be our little secret. A secret all for me, but you're welcome to look if you want to.

I don't think I'll ever fall in love. It's just not written on my heart. After all, I only want to fall in love out of sheer curiosity. I plan to be the cold hearted bitch who uses the poor boy, and then publishes a paper on his misfortune. 

Secretly, I sort of dream of being the cold hearted bitch.

And there I was angst-ing about the gay boy using me. If I read what's written on my heart, I maybe did deserve to be the subject of his highly praised, poorly written paper. 

I don’t think I’ll ever fall in love. In order to love, I have to connect, and in order to connect, I have to be vulnerable. And I won’t, I won’t be that vulnerable.

(secretly, I wish I was brave enough to be that vulnerable. I’ll try, I’ll try to be brave enough.)

But a cold hearted queen is just so appealing.

My head is in the oven, my feet are in the freezer. And they’re telling me my body temperature is average. 

Somehow I am always too good for the boy, and not good enough for a relationship. That’s a recipe for restless loneliness. I suppose that’s my average.

He mustn’t look forty. He looks too old. His chin is not strong enough. His arms lack definition. His arms are grossly over-defined. He is too boring. Too smart. He doesn’t talk enough. He doesn’t laugh enough. He is never quite what I want. I am never quite what I want, either, so I shouldn’t be so unforgiving.

He’s only ever perfect when he doesn’t want me anymore.

I don’t think I’ll ever fall in love. They say that people change, so here’s to hoping that I change. But. Essence is static, so can people really change?