what smiles make me think about

Living the life that made me again but I am different now even if I don't feel that way. It is undeniable. It is the way of the world. It is the way the earth moves. It is the way bodies sway. It is the way the world has unwound before me and as I walked in circles, new paths formed but I didn't take them, even the ones I did take never met my footprints, hopping on stones like a child, like the child, like me, like how I am never growing up, like how I see that in you, like how I hate that I don't even know you at all. In the way things go, this is how we ended up, and I am looking at the sky and seeing a reflection of the way I didn't go, the way maybe I ran away or maybe, for the sake of my sanity, I walked slowly in the direction of what I needed. I'm not sure yet how I ended up here or what it was exactly, just when you told me we belonged there, I knew I had to go. Constantly on a mission to prove I am air, I am movement, I do not belong anywhere, I am unchained, I am untrainable, I am in the wide sky with wings spread and when I look down, I will not see you holding me by kite strings: I will see the world looking up at me shouting "glorious birds, glorious birds!" and they will know what you never figured out. The world is waiting for your miracle and I am just sitting in the living room wearing sparkle tights and being happy to know that I know nothing. If the sky chooses to fall into my chicken soup, I will just be glad to have anything at all.

Blurbling.

There was fog then, in the darkness I could still muster a semblance of a face, a face like your face but I didn't know what it looked like yet, in the middle of the day, the way I know now, and now I see it all the time without a body, without anything but falling and it's just not that way. And we are with other people sometimes and we are alone so much more often without anybody knowing, without me knowing for sure. And I'm not sure yet that THAT is what is going on and I am not sure yet if I know who I am talking about, but when I woke up one morning, the fog lifted and God's golden stare came shooting out of my pores exactly like how you would hope it would.

So now I ask you this: LET ME IN.

Sometimes, when I am with myself in words like the way I am now, I am away from fog and from me but I am always in it except for months it was somebody else writing and hoping I would catch up. I remember when you wrote all the negative thoughts you had thought and threw them away, I could feel myself being ripped up and thrown away--- and it was weird because I don't even know what you wrote. And I am not mad about it. It was just something I could feel.

I am still sorting things out, but there will be a small apartment and a place where I can write. And there will be a stillness and a sound here. I will invite you over and even a casual conversation will feel exactly like cuddling.

“Why does one begin to write? Because she feels misunderstood, I guess. Because it never comes out clearly enough when she tries to speak. Because she wants to rephrase the world, to take it in and give it back again differently, so that everything is used and nothing is lost. Because it's something to do to pass the time until she is old enough to experience the things she writes about.” 
― Nicole Krauss

Feeling better.

For the second time in my life, I begin a cross country trek with Bryan Wilson Bramlett. Shy of one month, three years ago we did this trip the other way, taking the long way, taking our time, taking in one another. The dynamic has changed in many ways and the relationship I share with him now is different, too. It's not something I can easily explain to people, but the people around me / close to me seem to have it figured out on some level, the level of acceptance I guess, and that's good enough. He's kind enough to co pilot this journey for me, which feels like it will likely be more emotional than the reverse, and I am grateful for his friendship as I fumble my way back to the dirty south.

I don't know how to begin getting into how this happened, really, or what made me feel like returning. I could give a million reasons of why this is the right thing to do. Somehow, though, my natural self judgment is embarrassed--- though near everyone in my life has been ultra supportive and understanding. I'm not sure how much I support me yet, even though it's the right thing. Life is just so big, and it's scary to think you might be missing out on something by leaving, or like you missed out on something by being gone. 

I keep reminding myself that I'm not who I was back then, which is a blessing and also part of the problem. My joy levels right now are what feels like at an all time low but my optimism is high, surging through me like love, like heat. I'm counting on that to help me as I process another one of these adventures.

As I read back on what I wrote already, it's hard to see myself in it. I can't feel myself at all right now, out of touch with everything but on the right track. I don't know. I just felt like I needed to get a little of this out before beginning. The past two weeks have been the highlight of the last year for me, feeling loved and taken care of living with Sara and Julie, feeling valued with all the goodbyes and sweet words, feeling so sure about this one life choice even if I have no clue what I'm doing next. It's really important sometimes to just not know what the heck you're doing, just follow, just listen, just go. Sometimes, that's all. Just go. I still have stuff to cram into my itty bitty trunk, so I'm going to do that. And I'm going to be okay.

See ya on the other side 

It's hard to get to how I feel about things because this whole thing isn't about how I feel so much as how I am. You see, for once, not based in emotions, but based in a state of things, the way things are, the way we are, the way I am, the way I have been my whole life but so very out of context. Do I have the nerve to just say it?

I need help.

It's without a doubt one of the most confusing things to say out loud because things are fine. Everything seems fine. I go home and my house is here and it's good and things are fine and we have running water and I feel selfish for sleeping for 14 hours but it just is what is happening. And I'm not eating or I'm eating too much. Or I don't know. In the middle of all of this, I have just been hiding from it. It wouldn't have been easier two months ago and it won't be easier two months from now-- sometimes things just are. And sometimes things are at the risk of what you need. And I see potential for a downward slope and so I do what I can to be stronger than I have been in my life. I don't know. It helps to know it's not anyone else's business and in some ways it helps just not to talk about it, helps to know I know I am doing the right thing, helps to know I am headed to safety, helps to hear that it will all be over soon, helps to know I am not alone. Helps to not be alone.

I have to keep my mouth shut.

[I prefer you]

The question is not

did we make a mistake?

the question is not
at all, more like I have a
question
in general, but i don't know what that means.

I guess we are like that, soft
usually. I guess I forgot some things though,
like the way that feels or how it can be
to trust
a human.

But the way you are is like the way your throat feels better after you drink tea when you are sick, even when you are the person who does not like tea, like we don't. Something between what things usually are like. But I remember and I know differently. But this does not change

how it feels
when humans love.

Folk Tales

I once heard a story about a girl who felt sadness and she wasn't a sad girl but she felt sadness and she had blue all inside her so when she cried for the first time ever she cried blue and couldn't stop. She cried so much it made all the oceans and turned them blue. She cried so much the oceans got full so the water turned to vapor and fell into the sky and turned the sky blue. She cried so much that when she stopped, she had no more tears left ever again. But when she went to the ocean and she looked at the sky, she remembered sadness and remembered being blue and felt warm again, knowing if nothing else, her sadness filled the whole world with something it needed.

In the beginning, there was excitement.

There was also doubt.

There has been along the way so much more to fill the anxiety, to make it rest, to help it along, to cultivate goodness, to tell our story. But somehow, I know how it will end, and somehow it ended just this way, and somehow I look back into words you probably never read and see myself as a broken sketch, a worry mark, a little girl singing "this little light of mine" holding a single candle and crying, and as many time as I say things, I never say much at all. And I haven't thought of you much, more thought just of the absence of you and curious about the absence of me. There is very little sadness. But there is a lot that is more than this.

In the beginning, there was excitement.

There was also doubt.

And when the doubt grew bigger, my excitement grew smaller, and now here I am and I know what I have to do but I fear desperately what comes next and I fear pretty badly how to reshape my life again and I fear all these things but not enough to keep me from doing them. I am like this, you know. Fear is only ever half hearted. I always know I am being taken care of, looked after, that the song inside me is just God's voice helping me along, that I would not make a choice that wasn't exactly the right one. I know there is not much here for you, but I have to keep some things to myself, I have to keep myself, I have to keep, I just have to.

I hope that when you look back on your life and when you were where I am now once again, you will remember me. And we will be holding hands and smiling somewhere, and we will have been a memory for you that shines forever, never fades with hatred like most people do. I hope that when you look back, you see it for what it was in the good times, for the good.

I just truly have nothing else to say.

Arguably, we could argue about this for days, go in circles with circular language about what roundness feels like, what it is to walk in circles, what it is to blow smoke rings and cry out about sad songs rather than let ourselves understand them, even just for a minute. I have been avoiding you in the darkness, have just been bumping around into other thoughts, knowing you were back there with that song about doing your best and out of all the times I've heard it, I remember sitting with you in the parking garage near the end most of all. It's hard to know what to say anymore.

Shut off from being shut down, I am back somewhere good. Self-judgment being at the root of why I haven't done something about all of this yet---- or is it loyalty or is it something else. I just refuse to let it be fear, I refuse to cripple, refuse to hinge, refuse to refuse, just feelings as they come.

Dreams and things...

Let's face it.

I haven't been writing because I can't/don't want to deal with thinking about the things I need to really think about and maybe part of that is a lack of ability to do that on my own anymore. I can't deal with all of it on my own anymore. A word that comes up when I mention things I need to talk about is "strong," when really I feel like the strongest thing I've done the last few days is say "maybe this is not something I can handle on my own." I have been having crazy memorable dreams about deleting my livejournal, frying eggs in the living room, having some teenage boys stab silver polished knives through my front door, and most recently a dream about having a lucid dream about my teeth falling out. I am talking to myself all the time and it's exhausting me.

I feel as I write this that it lacks authenticity, like even now I am writing with a shield, hoping to keep myself safe from saying too much, from too much self judgment, too much of things I shouldn't worry about when I write but that I always do. I am not feeling 'poetic' lately... I just feel super human. Not like SUPER HUMAN. But like I am hyper aware of how human I am and I am working really hard to reconcile this.



Anywhere I Lay My Head...

Heartbreak Hangover Pt. 1

The walls are lighter now, less of you, less of me, less of the usness that is haunting me, less of the usness that is useless to think of now. The walls are covered now in nothing but what used to be but should never be again, covered in the reminder of how some things go on for so long after they should end, covered in your cowardice and inability to say how you actually feel. And that's okay. Because I already knew.

If I could erase anybody, it would have to be you. I would be Jim Carrey, and you would have destroyed me. But this is not a movie. This is just me and I'm just here with my cat realizing it had been there all along, and I was so stubborn to hold on, and I was dumb to think of hope around my wrist as having power. It is what it is, really.

This is all that I will write of you, at least on purpose. You are not like the others. You do not get a future. You are gone now, nothing but a dream, nothing but a very distant memory, nothing but the fuzz between the stations. You don't get to have me. You get nothing.

Wish You Were Here.

Listening to a song that used to make me cry, a song I still can't hear around other people, a song that reminds me of a man before my time, a song that sings to me differently when I am sad and much differently since I stopped missing you years and years ago. We are in another world now: we are dinosaurs. We are listening to rock n roll on cold cement driveways. We are in love somewhere in memory, but not here. We have never been in love here. We have maybe never been in love really, but somewhere in the memory if you look at things like I will, you will see my face and yours in the soft moment before a first kiss. We will remember the slowness of things. I wish you were anywhere but here, but I am still floating in this moment remembering how love can make you cry. I am in the same place with somebody new, a million miles away from where it all began, from where the cosmos first flowed from our finger tips and wrote the original language of love. We are alive in that place eating spaghetti for breakfast.

[p]

Your tattoo sings this song when you are lonely, and others when you are glad. Your tattoo cries when it remembers losing to drug addiction or denying it, or denying pretty girls with big eyes, of all colors, girls with Canadian blood, girls with good taste in music, girls with no taste in music, girls with no lips, girls like grandmas, girls like the Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun," girls like me, girls like me, some girls like me. In the middle of things, we are metal hearts and logical. But when things are in the middle of us, we are lost in space, we are dying, we are hoping somebody finds us and shakes it out of us and lets us go before we need you. There are books about this. There are classes for this. But there is no problem with this, no matter what people tell you. I guess I thought you were trying to be different.

This is the loneliest moment so far. This is the longest without you. This is maybe the least wonderful thing. This is what people mean. This is why girls eat ice cream, this is why they never come back, because of this moment, because of this hurt, because who could forgive a boy who lets them feel this way?

Because they love you.

Because that's the most important.

The thing about me is I knowingly don't listen to anybody else. It's not because I don't value other people or respect their successes or wisdom. I don't listen because only I know what I need, what's good for me. Only I know in my heart what I need to do, how I need to do it.

Call it stubborn, or stupid, or being a control freak, but this is who I always have been. It's not a lack of willingness to change. The truth is, I have never exactly steered myself wrong.

I believe the divine light inside me is the guide. That is what I follow. Not some self-help book by somebody who has never met me before. Thanks, but I'm going to finish my teen fiction novel and get soda drunk.

How to lose a guy in less than 600 days, results guaranteed

Fall in love first.

Things that are the Same

This song, like a strong handful, remind me of being lonely in Germany, remind me of holding on so desperately to something that wasn't even officially mine. I remember the bed being uncomfortable and needing to wear a sweatshirt even just sitting in my room in the middle of the day. I remember, where everyone else remembers joy and this amazing connectivity, really heavy sadness.

It's more than 3 years later...

Things are so different and my life is very different. I am much the same.

Blood Bank is playing on my favorite pandora station and I've never heard it on there before but I have heard this song at least one thousand full times. I am sad for other reasons. It's funny somehow too. It's the same thing with different people, the same pattern even when the outside looks so different. It's one in the morning and I'm crying to sad songs by my computer's light, listening to my kitten purr and hold her small paw to my arm. It's hard because it's so easy. It's hard because for me it's never hard. And it's hard because for me, I should have known better. How can it be so easy for a good thing to fall apart? How can it be so easy for things to melt this way? I am listening to all these familiar songs that I love because the hurt runs through them soft and delicate, like this is the way life is when you have a hard day, like this is how life is when you were born more sad, like this is how life is when you fall in love with boys who can't love you. I am building you things, I am thinking of you. I can't sleep. You are ignoring me. You are feeling annoyed. You are growing colder. I am remembering a you that does not exist. I am knowing better. The part that kills me the most is this: what kind of ironic tragedy is it that the toilet paper castle is going to outlast the relationship? Ouch.

Why didn't you just call....

WHERe.

In the middle of the night, I am alone with the sounds of ryan adams and cat rape. I am alone without you but I have these noises to comfort me, to remind me that if I do not want to become a Jahovah's witness, that's my choice---- that if there were a better way, I would take it, obviously. The sounds of my screen ripping from some feral creature trying to gain the juice of my kitten (no, like really, my kitten) just reminds me that sometimes we can have exactly what we want as long as we are willing to rip through window screens and conquer the kitten owners and know that you may die for what you want. the steve jobs Movie was just like that too. He ripped on so many kittens.

}}


 There's nothing secondary to being other than being in love or being caught up in somebody else's creation of a Big Fish. No-- growing up is something like the way your aunt always told you how much she liked your nose most of all and realizing that it wasn't just that you had a cute nose, but that you had a nose at all, that your nose was that of existence, that your very nose represented how glad she was to see you, just to know you, and just to know your nose was the nose of somebody she could love and be in the life of, etc, etc. Life is like that sometimes, but growing up is exactly that way, if you teach yourself to smile or laugh, or pray. Life, inherently, is more like when your best male friends are doing acid as teenagers and talking into the fuzzy tv station, understanding with one brain that the tv itself does not exist and that it is exclusively speaking to said best male friends, at the same exact time.

{{

If i die before they release the soundtrack to my life, make Sure you remember what song I have been dying to. Remind me in my casket. Make sure it is a song I like. It doesn't have to be a good one, but God, if you find out I am dying, put on a song I like, make the radio play. If it's just the How I met yOur Mother theme song, that will suffice. I will let these songs sing me to sleep for the moment between life and my death, the dying, the part I am looking forward to (but not in a negative way). I hope with all my heart that somebody else is there when I am dying, so that if they don't know how to stop it, they will at least know I liked a certain song and it will play, and it's okay if it's Justin Bieber's Die in your Arms because wouldn't that be appropriate and I could sing myself to sleep and I wouldn't mind if that's just how it is. It's not a problem to love or be loved. It's a problem not to know what to do when you feel unloved. It's a problem when you are scared or uncertain in love, a problem that can be fixed with hearing the right song, accepting you are one who accepts music instead of plays it. Do you know what I mean? It's not a problem. It's just a small girl, humming and wondering how long you can do this, wondering if your college professor who gave you a B in poetry is doing what he is doing because he, like you, didn't know what else to do, or if because he feels it is his right, his mastery, the thing he is, the thing he wants you to become. I'm not sure if I care, but it helps me to think about things, to think about the way it goes, to watch the words pop up along the fake pages without fake lines or real ones and at the same time to see my fingers getting bony as they reach to mark letters that will eventually pop up along the pages. This is the ultimate form of magic. Isn't this a gift?


I'm not talking about writing. I am talking about fingers. I am talking about bones. I am talking about the way it all sounds and how it all goes and how we sleep at night and how snoring is like death but also like falling in love and how when I turned on the news today, I could not find news but I realized I had seen this anchorwoman somewhere before, maybe in a dream, maybe somewhere else, maybe deep within myself I saw her reflecting in the pool that leans against the inside rims of my eyeballs, maybe she was throwing coins into the well. Maybe in that place we were both beautiful.

I'm going to Hobby Lobby now, even if it takes me 45 minutes!

Things that move and things that are harder to move

Growing up is like a sore thumb, or forgetting, or taking out the trash, or like---
well, I guess it is like all things, like most things, how when things start to change
you are changing, like growing, like how your chest starts hurting and your mom
can't explain why something inside of you is allowed to grow bigger than the thing
holding onto it. My outsides never caught up, like for most people, and my insides
are still big but growing up makes me feel like they are dying, like how the fat in my
cheeks is dying too, like how people move away and it makes you cry even though
it's not the regular kind of sad, like how you can still get sad about somebody you
used to love when you hear a song but how you love somebody else a lot and it doesn't
change it just because you cry from a feeling, like how when you planted the seeds it
took more dirt to fill the pot than you had originally thought it might, like how I cry
regularly in front of people I don't know but how I have a hard time communicating
my actual feelings, like how I remember being in the kitchen with small hands, like
how I remember being great at college and not great at most other things, like how
I forget that I wasn't always good at things, like how people think I'm a writer even
though nobody has ever seen proof in my entire life of that, like how writing almost
always makes me cry but only sometimes I will actually do it, like how I can think
about things and feel sad and hear a sad story and get annoyed, like how my horoscope
makes my heart sound both big and cold and that sounds right and hurts my feelings,
like how people can do things when they have the means, like how I just want to
do things my way. Like how I think I'm the exception to the rule. Like how I am.
Like how I think you are. Like how I think music is. Like how it is reading a book
when you're standing in line for birth control refills and everyone around you is
really, really grumpy even though we're all getting exactly what we want--- and how,
no matter how much things work out, there are so very many things that do not-
and how we hold them next to our big, cold hearts and talk to God and cry about it.
Like how it's okay, but that's just how we feel. Like how making changes doesn't
always make the changes you thought it would. Like how you always ask me how
I feel and lately it's never good like I wish it were. Like how I hate the thought of
giving you my blues. But like how I don't know where to put them anymore.


Like how when I was young and my dad was drunk and talking about music with me,
I understood slurred words and sad smiles and I knew what he meant, even when
he didn't know what he meant, and we both shake our heads now and say "okay."

Tired of fighting and working in this way, needing to work it out my own way, needing to know my reaching is enough, needing to know I'm validated by something, needing to know somebody's got my back, needing to know I'm loved. Needing like a baby, desperate and crying when I feel like nobody understands me, falling apart for moments every day because that's just how it goes, how it goes like I have no control, how the wind is soft in the moment on the grass when my legs are crossed like a first grader and my eyes are closed to the sun: this is the moment I am drinking in God's peace.

I am a closed book. But my heart is open.

early stages

Tuning the radio between the tears to find you,
to hear you crying back for me, asking me to
(in the blackness of night) turn around, don't be
stupid- just turn around. You are not hip-hop
like he was, you are not loud noises, or even
crooning old country like I hear in my own
quiet. You are not the contemporary Jesus
tunes I will listen to on repeat without noticing.

And you most certainly are not a quiet drive
half past two or a quarter to the world ending.
You are a soft song, the peace between acoustic
waves. You are the quiet at the beginning of a slow
love song. You are the way slow dancing feels,
the way I can't remember being born, the way
love happens slowly and heartbreak turns into
a distant hum, hours away.

When I finally hear the right song, I am with you
again in a parking garage, fogging windows with
laughter. I am singing the words to the song of
you.

Having a hard time trying to say what I need to say without going too far, without losing it, without saying too much, without finding a hook caught to the inside of my cheek, without being up the creek without even a boat: something about the way things feel is killing me.

I've never had trouble doing things my way. Right now, I'm figuring out which way my way is.

Wet Filters

Comparative, cruel. Something in between all of these things. Doesn't it get lost in translation? Even when you know exactly how you feel and you're with someone you know isn't there to judge you and you're telling your best girl friend about how it is and how it goes and she's giving her two cents and she's right--- but at the same time nobody knows. Nobody is in the quiet with you. Even the people who know you best don't know you but through filters of your willingness to share. Remember how she told you how you can never actually see your face? It's exactly like that. Only you and God who is in you already will ever know. You are sharing and being yourself and it means nothing. At the end of the day, we will always, always be alone. Unless we are dancing in the same light and our "selves" dissipate into something more "meant to be" and we will be together divinely and we will tell people about how there is no cruelty and nobody will know what they mean because they don't know what we're doing. And even when I see you, I know you will never see me.

There's no way to be clear. We are using soggy filters.

In the bottom of the barrel of gunpowder, I hid my softness. There was nothing more than that, nothing simpler. There's not much to anything at all, is how I feel, in general. About all things, I've always been sure. I know where they come from. I see how they are made. I see how things go, and I know my way. When I see the trails being covered in pebbles and leaves, I still see that trail. I'm not trying to blaze my own--- I'm trying to go down that trail, trying to find you, trying to sweep the trail so you're not afraid to turn back around once you've let it all out, whatever 'it' is, whatever you need to have happen, and after it happens, i will walk you back through the trail but I swear it'll be different this time, look different: "your love will be, safe with me."

I will never get tired of you...

Since we're not talking right now, let me talk it here. And since I know you won't read this, let me be as honest as possible. I'm not sure what will happen if anything does and tomorrow might not come. But I know I can't handle not speaking to you even if it was my decision. So, hey.

I could fall in love with a rock if I knew it loved something deeply enough. That is how I am, with people, with God, with all things. With you, it was the first time I didn't know immediately. But I knew the second time. I knew that it would be you, maybe for the rest of forever. I remember the first time I met you, I felt like I'd finally met my match. I didn't know yet what that meant or where that would take me and I wasn't ready yet to know exactly what you would be. I just knew that I wanted to spend a lot more time figuring it out. I wanted to figure you out. But I was still sad. And that's okay. And I think that it was best this way. It, after all , is the only possibility. You know what I mean? There have been times throughout that I would still be sad but not about losing one romance to indifference or anything like that, but the awareness of my willingness to let patterns repeat. And knowing if I'd screwed up enough before, I had to make this okay this time. I guess I feel like I've never tried so hard before you.

Something not of the eyes but in them, yours were the first of your color that I've ever really loved. Deep brown like the coffee running through your Colombian blood, hot when you look at anything, but soft when you look to me. I don't know if that matters. It's just one of the things that stands out the most. That, and the lack of conflict, the ability to work out anything, the ability to just figure things out together without much fuss. "You're really easy to love." This is the mantra of us, or maybe just mine for you. Between all of the activities and brunches and car rides and music notes, my favorite thing is waking up slowly and hearing you snore, knowing between blankets, it's just you and me, peaceful in the quiet. But the trouble is, I grow tired of wanting something I know I may never see, a side of you I wouldn't know how to access if somebody gave me a map. There's something in me begging you for it. I guess I just figured that by now, I would at least be certain that it's really there, or really certain that it could be something you'll give me someday. I don't know...

But all I know is that when I said forever, for now, that is what I meant. I know nothing lasts forever. But I'm trying to love like it will with that awareness that all things as they were created are able to disintegrate back into other kinds of energy. And if you want forever to be longer than for now, I'm willing to be with you there, too.

It's hard to miss you and not say anything. I hope you had a nice day. I hope you're feeling okay. I love you.

I can't even figure out how to write this wrong.

I just feel sad.

The way the cello happens

And there are black and white parts of music, but music is not a color. It's all the colors. Is that white kind of? I guess, but mostly it is just there like how sometimes things just are there and you don't know why or what they mean and you don't care because sometimes knowing is just enough-- you know? It's important to remember those kinds of things so you don't get too upset thinking about them. The way her hands move and her brain can pay attention while her fingers are doing so many things while she has to be able to listen to all of her own sounds, listen to the way her and the cello and God are dancing all together to make something that is not just noise but the divine presence of and all of those things makes me feel, for a moment, inferior--- but when that moment passes, I remember my soft light and how it was once glowing inside of me next to you, lighting in a dim way to the instrumental version of George Harrison's solo "Something" and we are holding hands and not talking about anything in particular and I am missing people but that doesn't mean I never loved you the most. I'm still deciding, but I know that if I take a deep breath of air, I can still type and listen to her fast cello and even maybe repeat the beat back to you once the song and my words are done. This is not a miracle to almost anyone, but I know that if I were crying by a body of water on my day off and it would just be me and the earth noises, God would lay his hand on my shoulder and tell me that He's impressed. Softer lights, softer. All of it is something we belong here for. There is nothing that makes any of us matter less. We're here for different things. Some of us to play the cello, and some of us, born to listen, to reflect, to play her song soft back to you in a reflective and collective way --- this is how WE FEEL. It's not the same,  but it's still important.

And it's sunny out now and we're in a courtyard. I say I'm not impressive and you mean it when you tell me not to think like this. I know you mean it because I've heard the music. And it's still playing in me. And I'm typing these words listening to all the songs and remembering her cello and remembering the heat between bodies sharing secrets in nonseductive ways, remembering that true love is looking into another person and being able to tell them how their song sounds, not just how they wrote it, not just what somebody else heard, not just what it made me feel---- but the exact sound of you humming into life the way we all want to be.

All good things come to an end

is a stupid saying. Even if it's true,

why do we need to be reminded?

And who is to say the good things

began somewhere specific? How

can we pinpoint the beginning of

a good thing? What about that which comes

before, springs forth like hope,

what about those good things---

good because they make good?

What about those things? And what if

long after the good thing ends, that

good before the good thing is still long-

standing, crying out to be recalled

so you don't bury yourself in tubs

of cookie dough ice cream?

"Choose her a name she will answer to..."

Fighting my impulses or giving into them, finally---
I'm not sure. We're lost somewhere between figuring things out and figuring out if things are important, which things exactly to cry over and which to let our sockets dry like gumballs over or which to get over fast like a teenage eyeroll, unspoken and pointed, hurtful and deadly. This is something like fingernails on the window pane, tapping in goodness and badness, in sickness and in health.

Have you found something that looks like forever yet? I just wonder what your brain looks like when you know I am crying myself to sleep.

Because my Windows finally roll down....

Keep playing that sweet song on repeat.

Aww, yeah. Just like that.

I am riding in your car, I am riding in my own. I am sitting in the back of a car sharing secrets with a boy with blue eyes. I am sitting in a black car singing songs written by women. I am singing one of the only 80's song I like. I am filling up my gas tank just to listen to music while driving a blue car that now belongs to somebody who soon will have to get close to the way death looks. It's nobody's fault. I am alone in my own car for two hours there, two hours back each weekend working to "make money" but really just because I liked to go. I was driving drunk people home. I was sixteen. I was eleven in a red car and Kristyn's sister is also blonde and she is telling us about correct stereotypes and learning to drive. I am in a car with somebody I barely know. I am in a cab for the first time ever in the middle of Italy. I am falling asleep to the beating of bus tires. I am believing my mother's most famous lie about seatbelts. I am crying, probably. I am nowhere to be found, because I don't talk on the phone while I drive. I don't break laws. I am in the backseat of a black car and my boyfriend almost gets stabbed. I'm not with him but I remember him. I am talking to God because I like my church on four wheels and no bucket seats. I'm driving a minivan. I'm best friends with Austin MacKain and we're going to Carrollton. I'm listening to Cara sing about the blood all over the floor while a dog sings in the backseat. I am smelling the ocean with my favorite Innocent. I am crying, probably. I am trying to drive a stick shift but I'm not meant for this. I'm watching the way Katie taps her thumbs. We're listening to Grateful Dead, every single morning. We're alive to something good. I'm parking funny because I loved that last song. I'm okay. Jim's taking me to waffle house because he has a license now. I'm scared because my cat knows my car is about to explode. I'm screaming because I realized somebody farted in my car. I'm throwing up outside of this rental one. I'm throwing up again, for different reasons. I'm waiting in line and every boy in this car is really attractive. I'm asking Tom if we can listen to that Jimmy Eat World song again. I'm kissing that blue eyed boy, but sometimes we're both crying, too. I'm going to Tennessee. I'm not going anywhere. I'm parked and missing you. I'm watching the state lines change with the landscape and thanking God for your grace, and His. I'm loud. I'm doing my own thing. I'm changing the station because I'm, okay, maybe just a little embarrassed. My mom is even singing on the way home from Six Flags--- it's Sunday so this song is exactly the right one. I'm holding hands all over America. Eric is my cousin: he reads all the signs. We are making up stories about the moon following us. We're listening to a book on tape. We hate this station. We grew up. I listen to talk radio alone. I listen to static on accident. I cry hardest in my car. I'm not afraid to be alone. I like having something to cry about. I'm not emotional, just awkwardly designed for a world that wants to define me by my tears. I let him kiss me in a car. I don't know why. We fell in love somewhere between blanket forts and an airport parking deck. There is fog sometimes. I'm not sorry about it. I love the way we were in cars, dancing or singing, or making a mess of who we could be, in favor of who we are. Britta cleaned my car. She made me a photo album. We are remembering that this is enough - we, the me in all of it, is realizing you can pick just one--- and it's a life. And it's all of the things. Like how Forrest had shoes. Like how other people have other things. Like I have all of them. Like how I am a lucky one. Like how I might be the luckiest. Like how good people are to me. Like how bad that makes me feel. Like how good it is to know that no matter what, you are doing a great job, and you're exactly where you should be. And you're so good. And this song is so good. And the car is so comfortable. And we can talk all night. And you can cry, even if you're a boy, and they tell you not to. Because this is my car. And we like it this way. And we're going places, forever, and ever, and ever.

Stuff and Nonsense

I can't remember how the words fit inside the quotation marks, but it's something to the rhythm of -- What they say, 'write what you know' is silly. Write what you don't know. Write about the yous you have not been yet, or almost were, or could have been, or could still be. Write yourself born into another body, write yourself into the nos of you and the way you might be still if you are late to work, or late to marriage, or late to your whole life. Write you happy. Write you a way you do not know yourself. It's all within you anyway. Writing what you know is silly because you know all of it--- if you are aware of your essence, you can be aware of you in the midst of anything. It doesn't mean you make those choices. It just means know your character enough to throw them into anything- and know how they would respond.

Thinking of this as I am writing you into a book I have not written yet but am writing every day. I am thinking of you and eyes so bright and the world so dark but only because it was night time and we were speaking in circles. We knew what was going on. We still do. We do forever. I am just saying there is something beautiful in the possibility of what could have been when you know you never really wanted it. I can have it, in a different way, exactly how I want or picture. It's no matter. It's fine, even.

I am working on working it out. Working on making it better than I knew it might have been. I am working on a better me, buried inside of a me I have been desperately trying to shove down into the belly of my own definitions.

Something about all of this makes me want to buy a Roladex. 

I am already the person I was born to be. But what am I doing with that?

And in the silence comes the collision of all of the voices I tend to not listen to any or at least most of the time: it is usually easy--- when I am tired, it is hard.

The phrase "you should," and in terms of things people want me to do, people who "care about" me, people who have __MY__ best interest, when my best interest has nothing to do with me or things I do in general and I'm in the middle of a forest with a light shining only on my feet screaming for all the stares to just stop yelling at me. I want them to stop, like staring at a pair of purple panties in the middle of the classroom, they didn't understand, nobody knows. I can't even explain it to myself, how would anyone else be able to distinguish it from where I am shouting? Make it stop... make it stop.

I can't tell you what I mean, only that I feel something like a mess, but I don't want any help. It's not that I won't accept it. It's just that people are different. And it does matter. And I'm glad it's okay for some people but that's all the more reason I don't feel like it makes sense, like Weezy, like inhuman. Trying to be more like Jesus and less like you, do you know what I mean?

It's Jackson Browne playing piano, it's hot summer rain in Georgia, it's something like a crooked melody, it's the joyful sound, it's depression, it's the way an older man will look at you like he doesn't want you but like he already knows your kind, it's like the way we roll along like little spring floaties off of weeds, it's like how awkward it gets when your cat is throwing up, it's something like a loss and this concept that has nothing to do with you. It's a complete lack of understanding. It's the silence. It's okay. It just is. It's also not my fault. And that's okay, too.

I still feel like I am on the boat.

The awareness that God has not merely created the beauty in the world, but that the divine energy IS the beauty in the world. The sand is not separate from how good it feels between your toes or how well it suits the ocean's edge, but it is those things at the same time. This is God, too. This is all of it, too. This is the way we are, too. This is the only thing I can think of to explain what it was to have the foam meet my feet as the ocean roared God's comfort into my ears. Thank you, thank you. We all sing a chorus, we all sing, we all.

what we call fiction, what you'll remember as truth.

Acts of normality to beats you didn't introduce to me, living a life I made for myself or maybe fully to the credit of God (let's be real here) --- but there's something sick about living life so smooth, like nothing's on the agenda, like I don't give a ( word ) about it. I still can't decide what I do give about ""life"" or something like it.

In the empty howling of the night, I am with you in complete boredom, which, unfortunately looks exactly like a good time if you are a very unlucky person. Years later, I am with a different you in complete misery, which unfortunately looks exactly like love if you are stupid enough to be a romantic. Decades still, I am with a new you wrapped in the divine laughter of what it is to actually want to care about somebody, even if you are immensely and unconditionally incapable of this.

I'm working on that part.

There's a stigma around girls of my kind. Okay, I lied. There really aren't. Maybe I just don't know them. Maybe I just don't know girls like me. Maybe I just don't know enough people who would dare say "girls like you" to a face like mine. What does that mean? LIKE you? Like, like similar, like the dictionary points, like the way all things are the same in the end anyway so why are we wasting our earthy times defining somebody else's opinion of what you don't care about anyway? Do you want me to just start back at the beginning?

Falling asleep to the purr of your snoring, I am reminded that no matter how exciting it is to remember being miserable, my closeness with God is not to be confused with an admiration of a smart man's mouth. We are children of the sky, of the way the stars look when they start to disappear, the way the waning gibbous gets to have such a very cool name: for me, you are these things. And the rest of them are the fading stars themselves, are the way you smell after a long day of not doing anything important, are the way judgment falls into a place in your brain that you store only in times of complete and exact boredom as you are falling apart, desperate to be a sadder person. If we are being completely honest, I'm not afraid to tell you that preaching proverbs you have created does not make your heart holy, but only full of holes, broken and cracking and being filled with cement and the tears of somebody you may never meet. I am impossible sometimes. And I am stubborn more than that. And sometimes I love watching tv. That's just the way my life has been built and that's the way I like it. I'm not looking for your words to build me up and take me away. I am looking for the softness in the night that I have heard about when my friends tell me stories about when they get in fights with their blonde boyfriends or the way I remember her saying my name when we were alone the first time or how water can be when it's not in a hurry. I'm just saying things the way they are coming out of me, but if you need to know the truth, I will never be an articulate woman. I came here to sing and miss people, came here to cry my way into something good. I am going to stand on the street watching the lights change and hoping someday you come to your senses.

The sounds I cannot stand...

If there were ever a thing, one of those things other people talk about, maybe like what they call "trigger," maybe it would be this--- this list, these songs, the soundtrack to solitude, the soundtrack to a life I was never sure how to live but that felt natural, raw, something like I always pictured nudity feeling like. I'm still not sure what to call it when I turn around, when I excavate my own languages from that time before, when I think about crying a lot, when I remember silence, when I remember the first night on a weird bed with open windows and no pictures and everything feeling distant and just like the time before it. I still don't know how to explain to anyone else what it was--- just that, oh, what a something it was...

It's years later now in the way we count time. It's something I'm not sure of. Not just that time with the weird bed but this whole chapter I have forgotten when I was quieter, when I was sadder maybe, when things were not what they are now--- full of lightness and ease, full of worldly frustrations and problems that do, in fact, have solutions (let's be honest: life is easy).

I am sorry for the way this soundtrack makes me remember. How I could not fall asleep without these beats. How this was the answer to my entire life. And now I don't know how to get back to the girl with a heart. I am frozen in the center of a lake on fire and I am not sure how I got here. (Author's note: happiness is hard to accept if you are born uncomfortable. But don't misunderstand my expression for anything other than that.) I just get sad remembering that I knew how to get to that before, somewhere deep inside of my own self (Author's note: sorry I write like a douche bag). I don't know why it takes this to make me cry anymore. It's not a bad thing. It's just confusing. And I wonder if the price we pay for happiness is some part of our soul/spirit/sadness. I am not sure how ready to give that up I will ever be. I am still trying to figure out if it is my way that I've lost or the desire to find my way back to never feeling like I would be home.

I can't write in silence because everything starts sounding too loud. If I have forgiven myself, what is this rattling? What is this? Do you remember what it was like to not be in that weird bed? Do you remember what it was like when you were not walking the woods with me? I remember the goblins. I remember not being able to make friends. I remember being the only one who would speak up and I remember hurting people who are older than I am. I remember that feeling hurt me. I don't know why I can't remember where I put those tears, though. Or where the girl is crying alone in the middle of the first room I got to have all to myself (that i still never slept in), burning candles to crappy music I still don't feel bad about listening to.

I hope that in some of this you can find yourself.

too truthy

Bringing it back to the way I like it, windows wide open and a kitten running around, making a mess of all material things because this is my room and this is the way I like it, Joni Mitchell calling me home and telling me none of it matters anyway, or maybe that's God filtering down because that's how He's wanting me to hear it, but that's the way I like it. I like it when I am alone. I like it when I am alone. I like it when I am alone. Something like a mantra or maybe it's me trying to convince myself that that's actually how I feel. Something like that is more about right.

I like it warmer with the roses in my way, I like crawling through the darkness to laugh with you in the mornings and I like the way it is when there is a quiet after it all and you are telling me I am pretty even when we both know there is a long way to go before that's true. I like it when I can feel you wanting me forever even though I'm not sure how either of us feel about that on a practical way. I don't want you to feel differently even if I talk that way to myself sometimes because I can't imagine long-term pain and even with all of you surrounding me and all the voices inside of me from love songs I use to navigate the way I feel, I could never know how to hurt you that way and the only thing about you that could make me cry maybe is that--- is fear, is us, is our fear, is our lack of being able to imagine something possible. I'm not asking you for a way in, all I am asking for is a way to settle my stomach when I am in the middle of thinking things big girls might think about (not that I would know even what that resembles). I am not sorry. It's just weird to be honest with yourself. I'm not sure how I feel about honesty because the only policy I have found that ever works is listening and then keeping everything to myself. It's not a good policy but it seems to be working better for me than saying what I mean.

//

Laying naked under a willow tree, I am crying.
Sad things make me cry. Sad people make me
feel at home. Something like forgetting is the way
I feel best. I am glad to be under that tree in 40
years with bare feet, whether I bring someone
along is not up to me--- up to up alone and alone.

"If you are born January 21st..." and other important details

Neglecting my knack even though I've got nothing better to do- thus informing my peers about my lack of damn to give, not really to sound critical or serious or even like I mean anything I say- basically, I'm just saying. Something that comes out when I press tips to keys is this rhythm of repetition that I use all the same words to say really different words and I like saying the words they kept telling me not to, words that are weak, not curse words but worse than that - things like beautiful and different, really and amazing, happening and being, and all these other important meaningless things. I don't know. I just start spitting and this is what comes out- this, and something like the way it's just nice to have the pillow between your knees when you sleep even though you're not old enough yet. Basically, I am just trying to not talk about a lot of things maybe I should be talking about just because I don't want to think about those moments and that coldness and how I am so cold. You know, in that big book of birthdays, one of my flaws is "lacking self-criticism" which behaves in different ways in my life like allowing me to live more according to me doing whatever the heck I want to do because I don't let myself/others judge me/I don't care. But there's this big part of me resistant to that phrase because I feel like where does all of this come from then? How am I so upset? I am cold and worried about freezing in the middle of a heat rash in a consistently sunny city in the most radiant life of my light. I don't know. Something about being this autobiographical makes me feel like a jerk and also uncomfortable, because if I am being honest, I just write in circles. I don't know what I'm doing here any more than anyone else. I truly don't believe I have much of a purpose other than to just speak my truth (#selfish?). But the worst is that I just do it anyway. I don't care. If I am being honest, I could sit alone between the roses for a hundred years and feed off the way it feels to not care, to not worry, to not be bothered with any of this stuff I worry about normally that I'm aware doesn't matter, and I would just gravitate toward the love and listen to God and feel the way things are and not think so much about the "right thing" or the "way" or any of it.

I hope for your sake you don't know what I mean, you know?

Because of You.

Floating in something less than spacious and singing Britney Spears songs at 9 in the morning, I am more in love with my happiness than I ever have been comfortable with before. Not all things are reconciled, but I am reconciled with that fact of my life. I am not seeking out a finite peace, but I am at peace and in love with the chaos within me. Though this is often the source of my lows, or something like that, it is not something that bothers me--- it is something of me that I have grown to love and not feel consumes or drowns me, but inspires and awakens me. I am tolerant of this mechanism, long limbs reaching out like sun through pines behind my house back in Georgia to wrap around and hold me until I am aware of my exact darkness. I am walking with God through the places  I have been and telling Him what I can remember of those places, and trying to express my side of the story without explaining myself too much. He laughs at the way I say certain words like "you" and "fear" but we are already ten steps ahead of anyone who wouldn't want to understand anyway. Don't worry. It's not a big deal.

(This is the part where we just have a conversation, and learn not to tell anyone else about it. People sometimes wait for you to say something they can judge. Some people...)

 I am just like you sometimes. I see this in blue and brown and green eyes all around me and I can't seem to explain to anyone else that there is something so dear to me as the way somebody looks at you when they see you for the first time, really.

Pretend we've never met our demons, just in case they come to dinner.

I am 6 feet tall hiding in a doll house, dressed like Barbie's hooker cousin and missing how much you never missed a beat, small and my head bent sideways wondering how you could let me go and now bent sideways wondering what is missing here. There's a stuffed dog and a picture colored in from the back of a cereal box and Let Down by Radiohead is pouring from my ears like I am the stereo. I still believe you can hear me when I talk to myself. I wish I knew where that went. But I'm tired now, tired of remembering how much I wish I could make you love me harder and I worry about mixing paints because too many blues and one brown will make ugly. I remember asking myself with lipstick on why we never fell in love, only because he asked me sitting in that chair and I didn't really have a reasonable explanation. That's worth thinking about, maybe.

//

there was red wine that i wouldn't drink and people doing illegal things on top of tupac's face and we were rhyming breaths without knowing each other's middle names but i knew we were meant to be best friends forever or at least something more than nothing particular or that feeling you get when salespeople ask you if you're looking for something in "particular" because you're looking but you know it's not in this store or in any store, but hopefully just in store, coming soon. but more to the point i remember the way i couldn't tell the difference between light rain and tears even though I don't remember crying. i remember nikki singing the judy garland song in a whisper with her arms holding amber and me and her crying but not knowing why. i remember the way your voice was collected pieces of things you have read by other older people and a handful of black artists like maybe tupac and maybe one or two of your really good friends. i'm not grateful for a loss but i'm grateful that if things don't work out, i can hold onto this untainted memory when possibility was the thing, was the only thing, is the only thing, is the, the, only is, is only, only one.

//

Don't tell me what to do about a broken heart because I know it will never be good again in the same way and that's why I don't care. It will never be the same again even when I am happy again, even when I am not covered in darkness. I am not the type to sit and pitch fits but it feels like now I am clawing my way out of my rib cage because I remember the way you talked to me and don't you remember how at first you were the cold one? I think sometimes we forget where we are. I think sometimes we forget how we are. We remember me being the cold one because it's easier than reminding you that you don't know what you're talking about. I am realizing how cold I am feeling and every inch of me hurts with desperation for something specifically vague, something more than just feeling small in a good way, but more like that way you are next to him, holding back tears because you can't figure out what to be upset about.

How to Love You

Never good at doing things anyone else's way particularly, always needing to come around in my own good time, never sure when to speak up and when to let people just read my mind, never certain if snapping at hurt feelings is okay or just kind of inappropriate. I'm not one to care much when people go, more set on the moment than the missing, but I do feel it when things are breaking, when the sunlight is falling behind tree's calling arms--- I can't feel it when they go, but I always feel it as they are going-- and the footsteps you leave behind, trampling poems I've written for you in the grainy sand, it's not something I need you to ask about but I wish you had noticed, had taken a moment to pray for me as I screamed out for desperate salvation. There I go again, I'm thinking, begging people to read my mind and love me and leave me alone all at the same time. 

Aquarian blood

Sun drops falling like how raindrops would if this were anywhere but this exact place in northern California and I am drowning myself in things I wrote but never said to people I should have just said things to. It's this thing attached to my wrist, says "courage," says try harder, says make an effort, says stop making promises, says stop making yourself so sad or so sorry or so and so's hardest memory. Stop starting things you never finish or finish the things you start thinking about starting but don't let anyone tell you to start or stop doing things you feel like starting or stopping like hand making clusterstuffed pillows with amanda poss as a career. If there's a place I can see myself, it is standing next to you in the pouring rain on a sort of sunny kind of day in the Marina, holding hands, dressed in rented skin and original content. There, and being 37 and running a successful pillow stitching company with Amanda, and knowing you like being around her for a lot of reasons like her sense of humor and knowing she liked your more recent blog posts. Sometimes I struggle finding myself in words I have written and boys I have loved. Hank told me we are cold by nature, Aquarians, piled in this triangle of shoes and stories on and on and how do we even know each other? He told me the only important thing in the world is to learn how to love, how to love is the only important thing in the entire world and I am standing in that shoe department with this person who is somehow a stranger and somehow a friend and I want to leave just because I feel a little bit like crying. The thing about heartbreak is that when you don't talk about it, you have to deal with it and even when you are over things, you still have these little cracks in your heart. I am having these conversations and thinking about how sweet you were in the pouring rain and how when you threw your head off all I wanted was to kiss you with the rain falling on our faces like how my mascara ran down mine the first time I heard/watched somewhere in the bottom of the rain. Water is different, but I wonder if I ever will be, if I ever will be always warm, and if I can learn to love, if i can ever be something more than a hollow chocolate bunny on my favorite day of the year...

angels in the outfield or in hell or anywhere but where you would expect to see them

The frustrations of normal people getting to me, wondering when things got to be so overwhelming without me noticing, me noticing things have generally always overwhelmed me and not knowing what to do about it, it being something or some things or most things that I happen to catch on to faster than most people but not having anything to do with things that I necessarily want to have anything to do with. It's just ideas, and things happening, and hoping that the things I think about are going okay but I feel like it's easy to forget how heavy boots are when you aren't the one who wears them and maybe you weren't even there when I picked them up and maybe it's me forgetting how easy I have it or maybe I still feel those weights no matter the problem. I don't know how better to express myself than clouded verse and tears of anxiety and a lack of clarity. When I look in the mirror, I am staring down the ugly cousin of self awareness and a sense of inability or inactivity or institutionalized misunderstanding. I am staring myself down until the glass starts cracking, until I break my knuckle bones from the thought alone, blood or something less gruesome spreading like silk against melted sand. I know you don't know what I mean and I know I shouldn't be complaining. I think it would be a lot easier if I either just let go or said something but it gets so hard to disappoint people when you don't know who would be willing to celebrate you for doing exactly nothing. I speak in tongues because it takes away some of the pain when you are misunderstood if you don't say what you mean in the first place. It's not anyone's fault but my own if there's anyone to blame at all. I just feel like it's anything now, anything pushing me and I know my job is so small here but why do I feel like that angel, the one who had to pour the fire over the people on the book of Revelations and he/she/it didn't even get a NAME in the book. He didn't ask for that job, just happened to be strong enough to carry a really huge ass bowl. I think they forgot to put the part in about how the angel was crying, crying so hard he believed he could put the fire out that he was pouring over the sinful people, because he didn't want to hurt anyone, and it wasn't his fault, and he didn't know how to just tell God he didn't know if this was maybe the very best plan to make things better. I don't know if that's exactly what I mean, only that sometimes the best way is being the best for something and other times this is the most difficult thing if those things you are brilliant at feel like fire against your own fingertips, burning your face by distance and default, leaving you to look in the mirror with a face you can no longer look at without remembering the screaming of all those people you didn't want to scorch, remembering yourself how you were when wrinkles were still for grandmothers and you, alone, were at least worthy of the quiet.

Millermania

 "Some will say they do not wish to dream their lives away.  As if life itself were not a dream, a very real dream from which there is no awakening! We pass from one state of dream to another: from the dream of sleep to the dream of waking, from the dream of life to the dream of death. Whoever has enjoyed a good dream never complains of having wasted his time. On the contrary, he is delighted to have partaken of a reality which serves to heighten and enhance the reality of everyday."

Henry Miller from Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymous Bosch

bigger things.

The thing killing me most and slowly is judgment, a painful intolerance for the imaginary, the complete misunderstanding of some definition or another, ready to pounce when somebody is sure something someone has done or somewhere they have been makes them something or another. What do you know anyway? Mentally incapable of dealing with the ordinaries or traditionals because they make you sick doesn't make you insane. Emotionally inequipped for dealing with people who don't ever know how to get to the bottom of it, who aren't willing to dig within themselves to discover, recover, reinvent, reimagine, reanything. I'm sick of it. Insanely. I should be put away. Put me away. I just want to eat this smoken salmon onion bagel and read about Jewish mysticism and not talk to anyone about how many choices they believe I or you or any of us should be making. We are the children of stardust and we have no time for definitions. Or if we do, we have time only for those sculpted from imaginings birthed between something authentic, something completely unable to be articulated, we are searching and growing and developing and waiting for God or someone close enough to just hold us in His ladylike hands and we are more than speech and we are alone because we are too many. We are alone because we are too strong. We are alone because we like to cry, to bury ourselves in silence and discomfort and the promise of honesty, somewhere over or under or beside the rainbow, laying naked in grassy fields, completely uncovered and sometimes sad. It's not a problem. It's a gift. It's just a gift we don't understand yet. But when you are crying in the night, completely stripped and alone, too overwhelmed for blankets or physical company, hold out your left hand and I will hold out my right, reach for you in darkness and tears, and I will promise to come back to some version of you, and I will forgive you, and I will let you know, like you let me know, that crazy is just a word like foot or empty. You are a gift. You are a child. You are bigger. You are significant.

Success in the form of rain drops--- no, a hail storm, like magic or the overwhelming desire to eat once you realized how long you have holed up in your room hoping that tomorrow you will not wake up in tears or maybe just to wake up and remember you can feel someone else's shoulder, and that's a really good feeling. A lot of feelings are good and even the ones that feel bad are still good feelings. I was pouring through spanish journals and crying over darknesses and missed opportunities in Germany with the sun crying on my face, insisting that I cheer the frick up, and I just kept reading, deep into the story I wrote about the time Adrian had to be taken to the hospital during the 311 concert and how I realized how I trap these men into missing me instead of letting them miss me and how many postcards I kept to not write on and notes on American literary masters and on and on and on into the depths of the colorful version of me. In the back were trapped notes about the time you went to the hospital in an ambulance you never should have taken and how they called you by a name that is only partially yours and the tears that poured were from surprise mostly, forgetting that I felt like that reading someone's open heart and especially yours at the time. Disconnections are funny in a particular way, like how somebody smells after they get to your house and you know that they thought too much about something small the whole drive over and you don't want to talk about it, or don't know how to bring it up. Something beautiful happened in the lines you didn't write, that I would come to fill in over time, and that is how darkness is a song between two broken hearts and that you taught me how to tell the truth. There is nothing sad or lonesome right now and nothing to complain about or cry over. Sometimes I just do those things because I can't handle too many highs, feeling like traps, or trapped into feeling guilty just because I'm not over the top happy to match all those times that I am. It's not something people are sure of or can do anything about, like how I can't describe the pain running along the back of my thighs because I finally ran as far as I possibly could while laying down. The thing about me is that I am afraid when I'm not moving that I will not end up anywhere else even though I know I am doing just fine. I can't continue to share everytime people are thought of because of something i see because I am like Julie's Stephen, and I am the boy in Santa Cruz, and I am holding onto hearts because I am cruel. And I am apologizing to God and I am running in circles, drawing infinity, sweat dripping from a dog's hot tongue, tied up in something inexplicable but not NOT comprehensible. I am softer somedays, when I am wrapped up quietly in you. I am soft in your shoulder, soft waking up to the sound of your ambition, forward and older and singing lullabies with you.

Waking up with nothing to do and feeling like that's all right. These are the gifts of my life.

Something less than impressive.

Shame on them if they can't understand ya, or if they bother trying too hard when everybody smart knows that's never been the real point. Real silence is sometimes most favorable in uncomfortable climates. Broken down about three blocks from here, I raised my hands to the sky and laughed at these ugly birds flying in a V shape because I remember being small on a wooden playground doing the same thing at the same ugly birds and that phrase "flying V" because that is simply what was going on. Now, going on, I am rolling along like I would on train tracks if I were a train or like after breadcrumbs if I were those kids in that story or maybe desperate enough as a regular person in their twenties like anyone else. It's not easy, you know. I have been trying to tell people this. Being in my twenties doesn't make me feel much different from being in my anythingelses. I just want to wake up and do things and not think about things that need to be done later- it's not in my nature to plan my life. It's in my nature to love life, to love it for what it is and as I see it, naked and glorious and primal and sensitive and moving... but I'm about as sure now as I was five or fifteen years ago what I want to be when I grow up because I still think I pretty much like my life as it is, I'll take it as it comes or pull away when I don't like it. I feel like I am doing all right. I feel like I am tired of questions, of certain brands of people who are against my truth's encouragement because I just want to do these things I like to do and not feel too much like there is much more I need to do. I would like to write and have nobody bother me about it. I would like to believe in God and not feel like anybody needs me to go to church to prove it. I want to sit on my butt and do my laundry and sing along to bad music and cry when I'm sad or just overwhelmed and feel like this is enough or at least kind of enough or at least kind of something more or less less than too much to handle. I am sitting here feeling better because at least you know this is how I feel, even if you can't understand it or respect it but at least I told you or tried to. I don't know what I was trying to say. Just that I feel better for saying something. I don't know. Give me a break, all right? I'm just letting you know.

Feel it in my bones

There was never a tomorrow to begin with, only ever the one moment at a time, one foot through one pant leg as the other one was already one foot out the door- but it was never a bad thing, really. It only feels bad these days, when thinking of how easy that would have been, to just sit down and say, hey what about this, just forever. And I don't think it would have made me happy the same way, but it would have made me. I think sometimes about my refusal to write, when I know I could take things seriously, but I am armed with hurtfulness. This is maybe my gift. I am still trying to figure out what it would mean to be gifted, just in general. Leslie is always saying that, "just in general" and its always applicable. I'm still searching for my catch phrase, feeling like it is more of a catch all of the things one doesn't want to bother saying, something for me like, I'm never going to be quite good enough so how about I just do as much as I can and worry about inadequacy and that way we never have to talk about how you aren't exactly ever giving me the credit i deserve. And this I mean just in general, not you or you or even YOU, but just for everybody kind of and I feel like I'm dissolving or disproving or disarming my mentors by making us all softer because quite honestly thats the world I would love to live in, always apologizing and hugging and maybe lots of crying and lots of warm soup all the time and happiness too of course, and trembling close to you and soft laughter, or no laughter just constant fake stories that crack us up after the joke has been over and I just don't know what the difference is really sometimes. You're far away now like the way I talk about my dad being drunk. It's funny how we remember things and funny how I have a hard time remembering anything at all. Sometimes I just miss coming home to the sound of Matt screaming old cowboy music and how soft it felt to have a sort of brother and how even in the lonely moments I was not very lonely in that house, ever. Me and the cats and the cockroaches and our Matthew and it was like a real family abandoned by our psychologically upset mother who is really just another girl our age who wears very nice dresses and I love that heart, the heart in that home and those memories and all our visitors and especially one or two very important visitors and the cold cold air that killed Steve's snake and nailing blankets across doorways without doors and the way it sounded when I remember living quietly. I'm happy now or something closer to it. I am thinking of this and thinking of making good food and thinking of being someone's mother without having to take care of anyone or much of anything at all. I want you to know that no matter how much it doesn't seem like it, i'm always up to something, always writing something, always carving poems into the sand that you won't pay attention to and I am always filling my pockets up with rocks and I am always going to love the way it sounds when I am close to the ocean, asking for waves and depth and the promise that tomorrow sure as hell won't be any easier if it comes at all. I just wanted to say that in the morning when the sunlight crept through flimsy haunted windows, there was you and me becoming something before I ever met you, long before you came to California, long before I creeped your livejournal or watched your fingers dance along guitar strings, long before your hair grew longer, long before leaning on tree stumps in the backwoods of a Lawrenceville I'd never been to before you, long before you figured out that this wasn't about anyone in particular, it was just me, a little girl version of the same girl now, crossing her fingers and walking across the street to see if her friend was playing dead or really was dead, wondering why I could never be so brave. A flair for the dramatics and a kiss on the cheek. Just tuck me in. I'm tired now...

It's not your fault if they can't love you.

"Blessings! Blessings on you, one and all! I blessed the trees, the birds, the dogs, the cats, I blessed the flowers, the pomegranates, the thorny cactus, I blessed men and women everywhere, no matter on which side of the fence they happen to be. This is how I like to begin each day."

-Henry Miller

Wild lilac and lovely lupin and driving to the point where the signs finally say we are there, yet and Big Sur is here and where Bibles are printed in neon jackets with members only scratched out on the horizon because my mom always told me growing up that God doesn't care what you wear to church because he sees you naked in the shower. The last time I dipped my toes into the crystal ocean, I gave forgiveness a big hug and told it how sorry I was and let my new polka dot bikini be my blessing shouting out to God that I love Him and I listen to gangster rap because it makes me feel anointed and I cry often when I am alone because it is when I feel most affectionate with words and it is overwhelming to know exactly how you will die without knowing any gypsies to fool you into thinking otherwise. I will tell you this: I may never know how to let you love me, but I will share my pizza with you, and I will always ask you what you want, and I will always keep trying to figure out how to spell my name in stars so you will always look up and know you don't need loneliness and I will always want to hug you so big that your last heartbreak forgives itself and I will love you so much that God may be proud of me and I will thank him for teaching me that it is blessings all of it blessings and i will thank them each for their contribution to my spectacular formation of loving and i will raise my hands to the sky to thank the boys who loved me because I am sure now that I want to love you if you will let me. They asked me between stories about the Holocaust and being 21 if I was going to marry you and I felt overwhelmed by sadness and swordfish. Irregularly aware of why people make harsh divorces I just don't know if I am your one, but I am one at least, at least one year of knowing you were important and you only sometimes telling me otherwise. With words, I am better if written. With words, I am clumsy. With you, I am sure, sometimes. I look out the window after fish and hear my favorite song buzzing through the wrong voice and I see you glowing at me from the tip of the airplane's wing and I am lost in eternity with you, I am dancing naked alone with you, I am reading Harry Potter for the first time with you, I am drinking an entire bottle of Simply Orange: No pulp with added calcium because of you, I am crying on my birthday with my ex boyfriend because of you, I am delicately arranged silverware at a grandmother's birthday table with you, I am everybody's least favorite Beatle because of you. I am happening in outer space to the rhythm of something dirty and patient somehow. I am loving you even if I am the only one because at the end of the earth, I will be unending like God's love, like hard days, like sky fall, like breathing, like miracle, like all the good things etched in a kitten card in poor handwriting. I will be there in the earth unending loving the way you say the name you've given me.

I feel good about the way it sounds to exhale.

don't look at me that way

Drawn curtains and hoping to hear of someone else's heartbreak and using the same letters to spell different words over and over again until the letters dance up and form something incredible and I think about all the things you say every time you say anything at all and I think about how I don't know how to do it again. I don't know how to escape you sometimes but I remember that I have been here before, similarly, just not as much. When Sam was tutoring me on triangles, he said the way I think about things in crooked, and thinking about triangles, I'm not sure I trust myself enough to let go of straight lines. I don't know how to draw and being this terrible at math, I know I will always be alone. I think about how long it took for my heart to break yours and how uncomfortable it can be when ventricles become triangular or something different from what I expected at all. There's this thing I do when I'm crying in front of somebody I love where I can't look them or myself in the eyes and I wonder who I get that from. I wonder who taught you how to love and how to unlove and if you only unlove and never quite fall out of it, how old does that make our devastation? Is this math? is this a problem? is this something adult or something more like holding hands on swing sets?

When the fog clears, I promise I will have the answer.