[Insert your aspirations here.]


My name is [blank]. I’ve had these patterns of adage bounded by manila, plastered walls, kept eclipsed and tucked away amid the strands of my messy hair. Yet, it never transpired to me to hint at the words that screamed ME, only because I was afraid; afraid of showing the other side of me. Because I was not the same person I was when I first stared at this blank page; how my mind was empty years ago, only because I stared at the creams of white paper trees and refused to acknowledge my pencil, chewed up and all. Because once I start writing, I will not stop. My impulse has been scattered lately, and I just want to start over again.
--------
My name is [blank] and there’s so much more to me than a name.
Because who are you...
really?
You are not a name,
a height, or a weight
or a gender
you are not an age
and you are not where you
are from.

You are your favorite books
and the songs stuck in your head
you are your thoughts
and what you eat for breakfast
on Saturday mornings

you are a thousand things
but everyone chooses
to see the million things
you are not

you are not
where you are from
you are
where you're going
and I’d like
to go there
too

Here's to restarting.

Advil for breakfast. Sweating off sickness. Sleeping off sadness. Cigarettes for dinner. Back pain from sitting in the same undersized chair all night. Inspiration flew out my sky light 19 days ago and I am not willing to soar after it. Eating at the same old place everyday when you live by a street of endless restaurants. Ordering vanilla when the menu is 6 pages long. My heart is like this empty room. I scream silence. It's the silence I scream. Only containing my hollow body, and scattered potential products of brilliance. But for now they just sit. And I am scared that, sitting is all they will ever do. A [blank] year-old nobody, somebody, anybody. I am someone. Maybe I am no one. Perhaps I am nothing. I could tell you my height and hair color, all my favorite songs, and all the art and people who have accidentally changed my life. I could tell you what my priorities are, name you my faults and try to even them out with my perks and quirks. I could. I could tell you all of that, but that isn't an accurate profile of my silently strength-less life. I dug myself into places I never thought I would be. Some scary, some real, and some that I want to recklessly abandon. You are such a joke. But that’s alright; we've all been jokes before.
I am a joke.
I am learning to be myself again.
In need of someone to grab me by the scruff of my mind and pull me out of the dead sea which consumes my motivation to make anything happen anymore; In need of someone to drown water onto my skin and tell me to stop burying my tired face under my old sweater.
Indulging in the future is the only way to cooperate with the present.

I want to go where the seasons unfold and you never ask why, you only watch. I want to go where it’s not too shallow to bury your our shadows, where the moon swallows the sun and hangs it’s light like a puppet show of your life story in the sky. Where an evening could whisper its stories in my ear, and all of my mistakes are some sad poems you keep hidden in your back pocket with the ink stains still wet: able to smudge so we never have to re-live them ever again. Just let me crawl into your bed, we don’t have to talk about it in the morning. You’ll never touch me. We can just lay there. Just let me have you without the broken glass, and I’ll let you see me without folded hands. But once you see the sun it’s hard to notice the stars. You talk in fields and I whisper in orchards. It’s not what we say, it’s the way we’re never able to say it. The night yawned and we couldn’t bury it in the cracks to hold us together.

Please don’t let anyone else in, I hoped, please let this be mine, let me be completely yours. And it was and it is and we’ll never have it again but... we pull it from the dirt like we buried it in a time capsule so we could find it when we were old and with perfect historic hands that deserve it. But we don’t have to talk about it in the morning.

I want to meet the ones with the secrets of the universe, or I’d rather be alone.
Some mouths are like faucets that spout out magic with an aftertaste like dirt. Inflated egos that will leave us first full of wonder, then a palm full of soil without seed.

And our hands are always cupped, ready to drink any truth turned to dust ... as long as it will sparkle in our throats like a heartbeat that almost escaped. And anyone can paint over their faults all they want, but camouflaging flaw can’t build fact.

If you wipe the covers from your eyes, you start to see these murals everyone’s painted over themselves, a coat for crooked parts. And what happens when rain melts that makeup to the ground? When perfumed theories lose all their fragrance? What happens when your hair is all cut and vocabulary can no longer hide who you are? Will we forget how to feel compassion for a greater cause than popular demand? Whose war are we even fighting anymore? Keep your head up. Keep your hair long.

I want to be so much more than this.

Sepia can paint this city black on black and I’ll be happier than ever. The rings of smoke that come out of your mouth will match my burning insides; my lack of luster and hope. Humans are such strange creatures. I am such a strange creature. I see things in the darkest tint of black and white and my eyes do not cooperate with color. I am blind sighted and I see people portioned black and white. Humanity just doesn't deserve the polish and the inflated zeal and the washable watercolors that God offered us from the dawn. We belong in the dark; beneath the blisters under our fingers and the cold that chokes our smoked lungs. Black on black. I am a different person in the dark. A monster is who I am. And I am who I am. I was swallowed up by darkness whole and by the morning I am empty and lost. I have headaches in the morning and my eyes still red from last night's talks. But I don't speak in the light; that just isn’t my fluent language. I turn back into my mirror image and the monster crawls forth into deep slumber as I douse myself in daylight. I’ve only ever felt comfortable talking in the dark, there’s no evidence if you can’t see my lips move. Hello I’m alive; I want to build my world out of half secret words mumbled in the blue-light. I want to pour wax over everything and mold out the pretend pages. I’ll mold a city out for you. Maybe even a city that's black on black. I’ll give you tunnels made from coke bottles so you can always see the sky while your footsteps echo in the crystal glass chambers. I’ll build you mountains so high you can hear the clouds pouring their hearts out each to each to each. They will give you every story I couldn't tell you when my mouth was doused in daylight.

When the song you've loved for so long begins to remix itself in your head without your permission- you stop listening to it for a while because it sounds so foreign inside your hopeless ears. When the sound of a car passing is amplified - so much so that you feel like it's steering head on into your heavier-than-normal chest bones. When the task of simply going outside seems like an unattainable, overwhelming, and out-of-body experience. You finally get there and every sensation you feel, every sensation is just throwing their duties into your judgment at their maximum strength. You look around at the people sitting with you, at the stars, the full moon, the palm trees and it's as if everything is a 3D movie about to start - right before you put the glasses on that take away all of the blurriness and uncertainty. Every touch, every question, every little thing rushes through your whole body like knives being thrown in slow motion. You sweat your tears, but begin to shiver from the cold heat. Why are we here, why are we here, why are we here. You touch the warmth of a lamp and it becomes an addicting sensation you've just felt for the first time and then you frantically ask yourself 10 questions a second, the carpet starts to blur, your hands change color, the music you know so well slows down, the lyrics "let me out" ring louder and louder and next thing you know you're scrambling out of the room pushing open the door like it's the last day of school. The world slaps you in the face and nothing is ever the same again. 5 minutes of excruciating exhaling and its all done. It won't ever make sense to me how the majority of the world will never feel this; are we the lucky ones? Are we the crazy ones? Or are we the stupid ones? My eyes see the Earth through the corresponding spectrum, through the opposite sides of binocular lens. I lie on the couch to silently panic and write this because as you hugged me and said to me a sentence that meant more than many things may ever mean to me... I didn't know how to answer it other than by saying “I loved you.” So I want you to know as I shut my eyes on your shoulder for a moment listening to you as you softly said "the morning will come,” I fell apart because how do we know that the morning will be there when I open my eyes, how are we to know that this isn't all a big nightmare? How are we to know that everything we ever thought we wanted is just a big joke? But there's a joke somewhere. And it's on me.

And to remember that a year ago I sat against the back window in class fighting the idea of climbing out and thinking to myself "When will my life begin?" Who said life couldn't stop and start when it felt like it?

And my life stopped that day.
And my life also began again, I think.

I don't want to run just because you run, I won't listen just because you can talk, and I won't sit just to watch you walk the same old walk. How could I believe your perimeters, when you've always taught me how to build my own? Caring isn't respecting and respecting isn't caring - do both.

You are the red paper cups that you’ll never completely fill, webs of mascara that run in the bath, I’m here to pour another glass and to fill yours, to lay down tonight and feel my chemicals change. I’m here to divide truth and rearrange consequence. I’m here because I have no reason not to be, and I would know. I’m here to touch every single thing parents and teachers told me never to explore so I can crash so low, there is only up from where I’ll be. I’m here to grab hold of that which I do not know and memorize its shape. I’m here to flick one more flame and play another song. I’m here because I want to stay up until three a.m. tingling with fingertips that try to say the thoughts alive inside my head, and the way it felt in the front seat with you, I am here with vulnerable thin skin and courageous muscles that ride the crest when my joints try to melt like crying ice beneath the waves of Venice beach. I am here because I’ve got a reason to find and just because it’s not yet within my reach does not mean I predict it doesn’t exist. It exists.

In hopes to inspire what I fear most,
to be exposed in experiences inexorably and infinitely.

I don't care what you say about my race, life style, personality, or dancing, but don't ever try and tell me I'm not sensitive to beauty. I am blunt, careless, last-minute, and rude. I hurt feelings; I’m sarcastic, bright-eyed, young, and hopeless. But the smallest things in life are what make me so happy that I continue on with my life because I know I'll be alright; That we will all be alright. The most primal, humdrum, everyday perks are so radiant. That is my Christmas Eve and I hope you won't forget. Show me dandelions, fresh newspapers, some old lyrics to songs or hand-me-downs, and I will marvel them for days. Or show me a dog that has blue marbles for eyes and I’ll watch it eat it’s food wondering if it sees the sea all day, a New York skyline, an honest dance, a song that makes you question everything.
I'm in a cold puddle of tears.

The more I observe this bitter Earth, the more I find the beauty behind the first line. I have learned that sometimes when you dig you only find dirt. But sometimes, if you dig deep enough, you’ll find specks of gold. And the older I get, the more these gold secrets mean. So find your own gold pieces. Dig for them. Hold them in the palm of your fragile heart. Untie it. Let its contents come sprawling and spilling out. Experience what people say you shouldn't. Book that plane. Drop that phone. Sleep on the floor. Take that makeup off. Delete your Facebook for a while. Good luck; to my own healing life as well.

Whatever you are, be a good one.

I talk about the sky a lot in general because every so often, I feel like there’s one inside my empty chest: tongue-tied, star-wide, always in motion, stretching from my thoughts. I remember a lot of things you probably forgot, the things you tossed away like Monday mornings, loose change from different countries, and past versions of the same cell phone. I keep a lot of things for myself. When I was little and I carved my name into my bedroom floor trim because I wanted the house to remember me when I got old and left. And the ways that smoke curled out of your lips like you were making art without effort. Sometimes people do that. They fascinate you without trying. And you have to try to cling onto those marvels without them noticing; you have to try to take that piece of them so that you’ll never forget how even in the most naked of moments, even in the most ordinary circumstances, some things are really that remarkable; and I just need you to know that it’s not that I’m cold, it’s not that I’m stone, because I feel things too. I marvel at the tiniest things you don't even know about yourself, yet I pretend to be that carefree and lighthearted individual you see walking the same path around the roads we've carved around us. I feel the emptiness of being here and never knowing why, yet I feel the fullness of all the nights that ever made me feel like I belonged, those moments when you know that it’s okay if everything is somewhere. But even if you're somewhere you're missing. Out. Here.

When I am not talking I am feeling. Too many reasons not to touch and too wrong because the right song’s on and all the stars have come to show their shoulders to you and we stare in awe at how everything can be so perfect and broken at the same time. You’re here but you're missing out many reasons not to say all of the raw and unashamed things I could have said. There are these lights that hit the sky and hide behind the jaw that binds them with delicate wire. And sometimes they come out when they’re not supposed to but sometimes they bleed dust and fall into the dirt where their graves gave hearts to us when we were born. Because from dust we came and to dust we shall return one day.

How beautiful everything is when you feel it for the first time.
And the last.

I have met a lot of people in my life that ended up being frauds. But that’s not the worst part. What’s worse is that I fell in love with them all for a few moments. Whenever I caught that spark that lit whatever light they were drunk off of, well I just grabbed it with my bare hands and held it until it burned through my palms. And I don’t know what it is about cynics, about inconspicuous generics, about those pretentious individuals that think they’ve got the world stacked between their notebooks with their film photographs of collar bones and Oscar Wilde quotes, that makes you feel like they really believe in something powerful; Only to find out that they don’t believe in anything at all. Only to find out they’re still searching for something real, something they can hold, and something they can fit between all their missing pieces just like the rest of us. But it’s always these people. It is always them. We’ll take any secret they think we’re interesting enough to keep, and we’ll sell it the same way they sold it to us. And I’m so tired of this cheap communication. I’m tired of people feeling inferior based on a wardrobe, a collection of records, what kind of recycled phrases they use. And I get it. Believe me, I understand. It’s just so easy sometimes to let these useless characteristics blind us from truth. And I think that there are a lot of mishaps, a lot of miscalls, a lot of mistakes that are going to be made in this life; but I also think there are a lot of sunsets falling back down, a lot of words worth listening to, a lot of people worth watching, a lot of invincible moments, a lot of invisible friction worth feeling. But I’m afraid that if we don’t start indulging in the latter, the former is only bound to consume us before we even get the chance to realize how stupid we are for paying attention to nothing that means anything at all.

I answer the phone too earnestly sometimes. This could have something to do with the two weeks in elementary school I spent obsessed with dialing numbers I didn’t know, wondering if there would be an answer, another body breathing quietly into the other end of the line. Waiting for a “hi,” a “hello,” an anything. Some confirmation that you can conjure foreign lives through telephone wires, some confirmation that, with eyes closed and arms outstretched, you can still make contact.

I don't know what my future holds but I hope it holds it well. I wrote that phrase on the side of my hand a year ago, but when I read it over I thought to myself, why the future always has to hold everything. Shouldn't the phrase be "I don't know what I will hold in my future" ... your future doesn't hold anything, you hold who you want, what you want, where you want and most of the time things don't hold back. It's not an issue because it's stretching me to my limits but how long can you hold onto things, people, places, dreams that. Never. Ever. Just. Seem. To. Hold. Back. Even with eyes closed and arms outstretched.

I think we should make an effort to try and make people feel special sometimes.
A lot of words worth listening for,
a lot of people worth watching,
a lot of invincible moments,
a lot of invisible friction worth feeling.


Life has been one long bus ride lately.
Always going to a general area but never exactly where I need to be.

It’s so easy to love the world when you realize it’s broken. It’s a compassionate love, like it’s something you have to take care of and you don’t worry about what’s wrong or who’s right; you don’t pull the teeth from someone who’s saying you’re not better than them; Or scrape your knees against them because secretly you know they are better than you - the broken-hearted battles of a broken-hearted species. But, I think some things are perfect; like the way space never ends. Of all things to wrap around us forever, of all things for us to live inside of, I’m glad it’s space. I’m glad we’re preserved in the wax of a galaxy, I’m glad we’re encased in a jar with swollen bulbs of light that sweat in the night wrung around us. Out of all things that could be infinite, of all the things to cradle us and wrap us in its coat, I’m glad it’s the universe. At least that isn’t broken.

I found a place. A place for really bold and beautiful things, some sad and some delicate. A place for a courageous fever swelling in a vulnerable soul. I was lying there looking at the sky with 8tracks on full blast realizing and noticing for the first time that the world is a sphere. I felt as though the whole sky, wide and far, was a whaling, transparent umbrella arcing down on both sides starting from the furthest peripheral range of my squinting eyes; Almost as if I was gazing through a giant fisheye lens floating 5 inches from my skull. I think one of my favorite things to do is explore roof tops late at night. It is such a magnificent feeling and so very reassuring to know that we don't even need a ceiling or shelter to get through summer nights: Just solid ground and space. We're all just preserved in the wax of this galaxy; Wax that keeps everyone’s' broken mindsets and compassionate physical connections from falling distantly apart at any second.

If my own hands could make a vase that originated from the inside surfaces of my skin, that could be filled with the flowers that bloomed from evening ache. I would... so I could be reminded that evening thoughts... will die by the morning in a waterless vase.

I have been trying to keep my life void of waterless people and waterless experiences. I use water here as a metaphor for substance, for authenticity, for whole heartedness and many other things. In hopes of doing so that flowers bloomed from inspiration, exploration, and happiness will never. Ever. Ever. Ever. Ever. Die.

Lately I like dust, and watching right turns on red, laying on rooftops, ink stains from my dragging hand on paper, ripped tights, hearing top 40 music while walking to the 5 brothers, fiddling in my pockets, flies, bare-footed, courageous and weak kneed. When the stars look like loose teeth in the sky. Today I don’t care what kind of haircut you have, how extensive your vocabulary may or may not be, which artists you’ve seen live, or how superior your taste in music is. Today I will open the door for you. Today I will offer you a seat if another is unavailable. Lately, I will have a cup of your favorite coffee with you. I am your friend. Because after all "love is just friendship set on fire" so I’ll start by lighting your Belmont over a couple drinks and we will see how far this infinite universe will take us.

Ready when you are.

"I just want to do something important. But not for you or the rest of the world. Just for me. I just want to do something that's important for me."

... Something I started to think about 3 months ago, but never wrote. I never wrote it for the reason of wanting to attempt to fulfill it instead of complaining about it. I promised myself I could only write here publicly after I had felt as though I accomplished that. So here I am, 3 months later and I can say I did it. I have done things that were important for me to do. I needed something to find all my spaces and fill them up with universe and purpose, with Bon Ivor music during the winter and cold showers and white rice and conflict. Because I don't want perfect and I don't want a promise. I just need something that fits in all my gaps that takes my void pieces and throws them all askew.

I have got so much to say, it’s all swirling around my kin sphere like dust and summer sprinklers. I'm shaking with it; it's hanging between my fingers like keys to some lock I’ve been itching to pick open to unleash another side of things. I know that sometimes I get so sad. And I know I am often so frustrated with the precarious places I always find myself. But sometimes I feel very lucky to be here.

Sometimes I love so many moments and so many things that my fragile human body cannot handle it. Thank you to the people that showed me those moments. Even for a tiny glimpse. Even if there were a thousand broken things I wished so badly I could fix, I knew that things were right, I knew where I was...was where I was meant to be. I’ve never felt the world cry on my shoulders before... but I will admit that these past seasons, I did. I was a little crooked; A little out of place. I had a hard time in more places than others. I always felt so small. Sometimes things got a little scary. Sometimes things got real. Sometimes things got a little unpredictable and I felt like no one was ever listening because people were so far away. But these... lead me to one of my most significant realizations this year.

Sometimes strangers can see us in ways no one else ever could. I hope you all know this feeling. If not now, I hope you find a moment where the experience strikes you. I hope you are startled by this life sometimes. I hope sometimes you look up at night and realize, even if just for a single second that there is an entire universe out there. And you are a part of it. You are a part of this. We are a part of this together. I hope you find the courage to keep going when you want to stop. I hope you find the strength to lose it all and start over again. Sometimes I start to think that we’re just lights everyone can feel and when we hit a certain shadow, when we find a certain color, we bend into them and make this world a part of us in a way it was never supposed to be. What a happy accident it is to live, you know? What a happy accident this life is here and there; like some handful of colors you never thought would go together. It’s strange how you spend so many years thinking you’re finally getting it all together just to find yourself in a situation where you’re completely falling apart. I touched the ocean for the second time last month, laid outside during the warm nights, my bed still unmade and dusty. I got physically and mentally stronger. Maybe I owe a couple of apologies. I’m sorry for being ambiguous and complicated and plain and unapproachable. But maybe I want to be unapproachable. It means no one has to find out how dark and ugly parts of me can be; how sometimes I don’t sleep; how I bite the skin around my finger nails until it bleeds. I would have been a lot of things for you ... but I don’t think they would have ever been what you wanted. Because I think a lot more than I speak, because I don’t dance and I don’t hug when I want to and I don’t let my hair down often, because I don’t cry in front of people and I’m afraid to drive in cities, and nervous is my middle name... because I get scared and I like to be alone and all I’ve ever wanted was to write these sort of words and keep them close when none of you would give me a chance; Because I have this problem where I fall half in love with everyone. And as a side effect I have this overwhelming need for everyone to, at least for just a moment, fall half in love with me.
I don't think anyone will ever figure everything out about themselves. Leaving things unknown is a part of it all.

It’s hard to be happy when you just have so much to say, but it's just too hard to begin an introduction using a little sentence. .... and it's hard to be happy when you live in an area where all the faces look the same and it’s never cold enough lately to wear your favorite sweater and you just can’t ever think of the right words and all your fingers hurt from wasting your time trying to find out because you bite your nails so rigorously. It’s hard to be happy when you've already stooped so low that it becomes so hard to climb out of the black hole you've created. When you love earl grey lattes but you drink vanilla lattes instead. When you feel like everyone around you is slowly forgetting or moving on. When people constantly remind you that "the place that we called home, will someday watch you leaving"... and I am leaving. And the people I'm leaving from my mental state will move on. So stop reminding me because I can't deal with it. Sometimes it feels better to just lie down and force myself to permanent sleep.

I never know how to begin anything anymore. There is no introduction to my life. I am swept in between it all and here I am, talking to you about what the dirt was doing between my toes.

Some things I just like to put out there because I have trouble beginning and ending things:
-Everyone's house has a smell to it, but I can't seem to smell mine.
-How you blew smoke out like you were creating art
-the same was boring. I want to see something different. Something that will slam me against a wall and I will enjoy the way it slapped me across the face towards the unreal reality.
-Sometimes I just want to cut the legs off of a person and see if a true artist is beneath the perfumed theories and thick eyelashes. I want to see a dance with just hands and helplessness.
- I love clouds. And the cold. It makes this tainted Earth so clear and broken and I love the broken.
Because I am the broken.
-how I loved Bon Ivor and Sleeping at Last, years ago when they were unknown. How I fell in love with the unknown because they sunk their toes into their own passion and not for the fame.
-weeds were some of the most beautiful flowers out there. Dandelions too. I love the unwanted and hopeless that was me.
-I love flawless canvas black walls and its black floors that creaked if you stepped on a particular spot. I loved black walls because I could camouflage between the tired cracks and no one would see me in my rare desperation.
-I love tree stumps and wood that was cracked in all the wrong places
-unmade beds were my virtue
-how I sometimes wrote in all lowercase letters to emphasize no beginning. And if there's no beginning then there would be no end.
-How I kept my hair up more than I left it down
-I am lost and I am still trying to find myself despite the uneven odds.

To connect the puzzles pieces that would never fit together:
I want to be strong, but I rarely am. And I am not sorry. I am not sorry and neither is the darkest hour of my heart.
I have not felt this weak and unsure about my current life, and the life waiting for me.
I want to show you things from the back of my broken head but it’s getting hard to form those things into words.
As extravagant as my life has been lately...I like things to be plain sometimes. Maybe I like mud being in between my toes and maybe I like what “naked” really means. Maybe I was never trying to impress anyone. Maybe the world needs less “impressive” people and more dreamers. More people who haven’t let the phrase “it means something to me” burn to the ground. More people who would rather dance with only their hands than sit in the middle splits or in a y-stand. Sometimes I pretend I have no heart just so it won't get broke, but if there is something I am sure of, it is that... when I say I love you, I mean it.

I'm having a hard time knowing what I want right now.

Please forgive me.

But sometimes we need to un-write the maps we’ve allowed ourselves to make, sometimes we have to take a wrong turn and miss the right exit on purpose. We do this because we are naturally broken. We spend our whole lives being trained to fix ourselves, to right our instinctive wrongs. And sometimes we have to explore what is broken before we can figure out how to put it back together.

We change and we disappoint and we feel things and sometimes, if we’re lucky, other people make us feel things. And even when it’s hard to be who you are, you have to remember it’s worth it. Even when you make really bad art and the stores never have the right gauges and the bus is late again and you don’t have a friend to talk to while you’re waiting. Some sweet things shine before they shrivel, and you’re left with these dead leaves that scratch at your heart. And you keep letting them crumble inside your chest because there’s nowhere else for them to feel safe inside of. Sometimes I remember what it’s like to fly. I hope everyone remembers sometimes.

I need support.

Not a catch. Not a constant. Not a guide. But a flotation device.
Because I feel it. I feel the cold water. I feel myself breathing the water again. I feel that place, seeping out into my forehead and draining out my eyes...from the most unfathomable spot in my mind. My eyes have been damp all day. I think I can smell the studio floor in my hair and taste it under my nails.

It rarely rains but when it rained in April it made me think...you aren't a beautiful and unique drop. I can think of a lot of things that aren't actually, things that aren't infinite or created for the purpose of painting the whole town/ everyone’s lives a new type of damp.

Maybe we’ve all got eyes that watch the ways of which we want to possess with ease rather than effort. we take and we steal and we want what we say to be beautiful, but sometimes even the ugly looks good with long eye lashes and a small waist. Even the ugly catch our attention when it’s got a good beat or some nice editing soft ware. I’m not alone down there. You’re not alone down here.

Just as rain and snow...we aren't INFINITE,
but I refuse to believe that makes us worthless. We try, and we create, and we fail to do so, and we succeed in doing so, and we make people happy and we hurt feelings and we produce what we can with our carbon copy hands.

You know what snowflakes do? They melt.

Yeah.


I know I’m not the only one
but sometimes I really need to know that I’m different than all of them; Especially if I’m considered a similar species of situation. I need to know I am something of my own, of my own tangle. I need to know that I spin my own web and you’re caught up in it.

Sometimes I am so sick of being indifferent & right handed that I try to teach myself to handle everything on the left. But some things like this don't flourish. I attempt to do the unexpected that would somehow slam a loitering individual onto its weak knees. That’s how those artists and humans have accidentally changed my perspective in life and made me crash down. It’s been my wake-up call and I have finally woken after years and years of careless slumber.

Real happiness has power, it has faults. It flourishes in places and withers in other. It is not permanent. That’s what makes it real. Most things are not. Peel my sandals off, wipe loose hair away from crumbling eyes. I shake my head to music I can only remember, gazing down hallways that hold such a thin line between me and what has happened inside them. The first thing you forget a person is their voice, and I never want to forget yours. I need a soft spoon to stir around what’s already there in my life. Sometimes you need the right input in order to give the right output.

Real happiness is powerful.
It just makes the fall back down a lot less bearable.

If this wasn’t who I was, would i be happier doing something else? Doing anything else? I’m just so vulnerable all the time. I’m always so nostalgic and unhinged, always looking for a hook to prop the sum of my parts upon until it just can’t take the weight. If I could have chosen, would I have chosen this? To be so almost-fallible, so weak. Always having to be tough enough to hold the pieces together in case someone comes along and pushes me onto my knees again. And I would go back into those years and years of careless slumber.


Sometimes I listen. Sometimes I forget to. Sometimes I think about things. Sometimes I write it all down. And sometimes I’m too busy feeling it all until it escapes and I have to run after it all over again.
Today is one of those days where I don't write it all down.
Because I have that feeling. Where you know one single sentence could just completely rip someone in half.
I’ll run after it some other day.

I want to be proud for the things that I have done, strong for the things that I am doing, and hopeful for the things that I will do. But I don’t know how to be. I just don’t know how. I am very happy for those endless nights, I am very happy with the idea of being alone, exhausted, and young; Young, but old enough. I’ve always been young- but never have I been old enough. That is the most exciting of all. Although I am getting older, it doesn't seem to be making the insecurity I posses fade away.

I am a type of soft you can’t feel, I am thin like smoke, I am an everywhere you don’t notice, I am a gray that only gets grayer, an insecure that can never be secured and I am endless pages.
And I go on and on and on, and I am scared... as much as I constantly deny it.
Because my barriers aren’t like walls, they’re more so like windows that you can see right through, so even if I’m blocking things out, that doesn’t mean I can keep you from noticing: Thin like a smoke that you can see right through. I can keep it all contained, but anyone can catch a glimpse into my secretive, introspective and un-communicated ... mercurial nature at any time.

I like when things feel like a good song you’re hearing for the first time, and it’s like you’ve never heard music before so it’s the beginning revolutionary feeling of a beat that can pump itself into your ears and drain through you a noise that floods into your muscles. It’s amazing what music does to us. It controls my life and pulls me out of the desperation I have dug myself into. I haven't felt that kind of good in a long time; Where I'm hearing something for the first time. I wish I could cut out all these pages of my existence and skip to the part where I get by...where I made it, where I can say:

“I always found my way out.”
Sometimes I want to cry because our chances eat themselves alive at their birth and once in a blue moon, I want to smile because you are the sweetest secret I’ve ever had, and from time to time, I want to bow my head in shame because they have no idea, and every so often I want to pull back my eye lids to keep looking for you because I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you, and I've got you...but I haven’t FOUND you yet. You’re like eating orange peels:it isn’t common but that doesn’t make it wrong. My knuckles tingle and I hope that once in a while, your joints can feel it too. I’ll whisper things in quick intervals because I know you’ll catch it if I keep it slow. I need something; I need a bridge for this gap. I can’t find it and my parts are spreading from each other. But if there’s something i do know its that...

you’re beautiful.

And beautiful is a language you’ve taught me how to speak.

I have a lot of feelings, about a lot of different things/people. But not enough words to fit them inside of this public platform.
And sometimes words are not enough. Sometimes you’re not enough. Sometimes this is not enough. Sometimes I am too far from everyone; Even my own self.
To possibly be enough.

Dandelions, Weeds, & Broken Leaves


If you want to then you have to.

I like breakfast at night, I like when someone else cracks my bones, I like folding myself into warm sheets that shield against frigid air, mini-braids hiding and swinging in a mess of tangled hair, my tired and cold hair tied up and hidden from view. I like daydreaming of all the guests I would invite to my imaginary dinner party, the way I have always loved what particular artists have created for years, and now they has recently swallowed everyone whole with their abstract imagery and brilliance. I like perfectly un-hair sprayed hair and rainy places, pictures of girls in dresses under water. I like falling asleep in between the crease of everyone’s' necks; in the space before it meets their shoulder., I like organic lavender at night and chamomile in the morning, I like thinking that ugly is not a physical trait but a mindset; I like when you say "worth the risk"... or when you call me the silliest of silly names. How Richard Walters sang he was in love with a place in his mind. I like that there are so many things in this world that I find beautiful and important. I only hope that in time I can create and produce things equally as beautiful and important to someone else.

But I don’t feel like tugging on sleeves right now, I don’t feel like peeling eyelids open. This time when the rug’s pulled, I refuse to land. I’m going to float, to hover above all of the things that hurt my heavy head. I was in the darkness. So darkness I became.

Sometimes I refuse to even admit to my wrong being and pretend as though nothing happened. I am not who I am. I want to sleep but I stay up chasing after my thoughts and writing them down; Except my hand cannot compete against my mind in this race. Some days I don't bother chasing after my mind. These are one of those days.
I question myself sometimes. How I say "sometimes" too many times to indicate no beginning to an end; because I was so unsure with how to begin. And without a beginning there would be no end. how i wrote in all lower case letters because these sentences do not indicate any beginning to an end. this is the work of my mind. my mind does not cooperate with the ordinary; how i fell in love with the different and the ordinary hated me. maybe these are one of those days where i just tell you how much this world is so strange and i marvel weirdness. how i want to sink my toes into cold sand and get my hair dirty, the dirt still under my unsure fingernails. how i wondered if Sleeping at Last really did, feel relief in his sleep. his voice was so sure but the words were unsure and broken. i fall in love with the broken. i continue to have this problem where i fall half in love with everything. im trying to fix my stupid, restless, honest mind, and i stare at the clock wondering why i keep chasing after the time when really the minute after the next was a continuing future. how i sometimes cried after taking off my old falsies lingering on the bathroom counter where i washed my sinful face. i am so torn in different pieces because i want to be so much more than this i loved infinity because there was no ending. i like no endings. and beginnings frustrated me. I fall in love with dandelions, grey clouds, and spilled milk. Some days i need a hand, a hand to rescue me from the mushpot I’m volunteeringly drowning myself into- i yearn to run away sometimes, to stumble into a field of dandelions and weeds and broken leaves that scratch at my heart; to run into land no one bothered to care for. because i am willing to care for you. I want a place that isn't tainted with the thumbprints and sins of us- a place that isn't like it is today. but i guess i was born in the wrong century for that. i am spoiled with hatred and fear and everything humanity has offered to let me drink in its complimentary cup of sins. i strive for the things teachers and guidance counselors tell us not to do and i want to scrape my knees against dirt and scratch my chewed-up fingernails against the tree stump that carved my strange life into little sketched letters.

I write a lot in this, then I realized- it scared me to be so candid on a platform that anyone has access to. It scared me that I was giving free admission to my raw and purest mind sets. But here are the things I’ve been itching to say; Retiring from chasing the blurriest of words in my mind would do me no good anyways.

I want to walk slowly and without virtue in the rain. I want to fall asleep in the wet grass. I want to linger in warm water and feel my muscles melt on the shower floor; my hair still cold and wet and all. I want to wrap myself up in sheets while cold and wet and just lay there. I want to listen to Ani Difranco until I fall asleep. I want to ignore anything that is real. I want my dreams to fall like molasses, but stick like caramel. I want them to forget to end. I want my hair to drip at my collar bones, for everyone to leave me alone, for the glitter on all our bodies to fade. It’s that kind of day.

I am sick of formulas. I am sick of systems and concepts that are only sized to fit inside our head, but never thick enough to fill my heart. I need something more than the explanation theories. I need it because even when all these answers run away, the feelings never will. And I don’t want some shelf to leave the weight of my faith on, pretending this universe is a magic eight ball I can shake for a prediction. I need something more than the text, the hope, the safety blanket that reassures contradiction. I need a relationship with something...

and I need to know it’s not at the tips of my fingers or hovering on the surface of my rational head. I need something that breaks the laws of rationality, because my heart does not speak the language. My soul does not intertwine with reality, cannot make sense of reason, nor can it acknowledges a thousand things that exist outside the range of my words. And it needs to know that something unconditional exists. It needs to know that compassion is not some bible we use to survive. It needs wonder, to nourish it. It needs music to speak to it; Stars that sit pure and wet with purpose to assure it. These mechanics of our actions can speak loudly to my head, but are silent to my heart. And that seems, to me, the most important thing to get through to. I don’t need a formula. I don’t need a reason to believe I’m not alone. I don’t need anything to validate my existence. I need something that speaks to my heart.

You know when you’re losing it you start to shake, and you can feel the disappointment crawling out of the very marrow of your bones, and you’re completely ready to take the situation with both of your hands and tear everything they touch apart, even when you can feel regret swinging in from around the corner.

And I'm never as close as I need to really be.
to people
to places
to being done
to a stable state of mind
to come up to meet you, tell you I'm sorry, you don't know how lovely you are.

Oh and I love you. Because you’re broken too. And I know how to love broken things. They’re the only things I’ve ever loved.

I have some really lovely people in my life.

But I’m sorry I messed up. Please hold on tighter.

I’ve been really confused lately, with so many things, and I have so much to say but no clue how to say them because I’ve been quiet lately. But I’ve always been patient when it came to waiting for the words. I don’t push them or rush them or try to find them when they’re not there. They’ll come when they’re ready. Besides, I wouldn’t want to have them yet anyway. There are things I consider talking about sometimes but I don’t think I’m ready yet. I keep them in my pockets or hide them underneath my pillow or put them in notebooks because they don’t belong anywhere right now. I try to avoid them when I can, like they’re looking for me.

I guess I just feel like saying some stuff. Stuff about how there are a lot of things I’ve done which I wouldn’t advocate, but it doesn’t mean they never worked out well for me.
About how you have to know what is right for you and you alone, and along with that, realize it doesn’t make you the exception or the rule. It means that you understand different things work for different people. About how important it is to know that there’s nothing wrong with going about things backwards sometimes, how happiness doesn’t always look the same for everyone, and that you can’t let others convince you that you're making a mistake every time your life takes a different route than theirs.

I guess I just wanted to say some things like that. And like this...

This year I've been doing this thing where I stay up late, but then I stay up even later, and then I stay up as late as my body will possibly let me...so the moment my head hits my pillow...I can fall into immediate sleep. There's something about having the very sought out luxury of "doing nothing" that drives me a little insane. I can't stand lying in a dark room for hours with every inch of my mind bouncing off my four floral wallpapered walls.

I get so scared of being left by people that I care about. So much so that I find myself leaving first, and then I get mad when I’m not chased after, but how can I even blame someone for not wanting to chase someone who started running without giving them the invitation to play tag first. But a day is going to come where I don’t have to settle. Don’t have to compromise. Don’t have to filter myself or think before I speak what I’m truly thinking. You see, I have to believe it will come, or else what’s the point in even trying to love someone? I love completely; I care with every ounce of my blood for every person who has ever had some sort of impact on my life. The problem is that they don’t always give back as much as I put out. its foolish and its naive and its certainly stupid, but I won’t change that, no matter how many times it sets me up for disaster. But as hard as it is for everyone to understand...
we have to taste an apple to know that an orange is our favorite.

I thought I was content with my boring little life in my boring little town watching my aspirations slowly slip away as I came closer to what everyone else wants me to be rather than what I want to be. Now I’ve started to see I’m not happy or content, as much as I’ve been telling myself that I am and making others believe it too. I feel so naked, it’s easy to take off your clothes, and people do it all the time. But opening up your soul to someone, letting them into your spirit, thoughts, fears, future, hopes, and dreams… that is being naked…as of right now, where I stand in my life right this very second, I'm fully dressed.

I keep wishing for steady hands and nights of deep sleep but caffeine feeds my racing mind, my racing mind feeds my faulty heart, my faulty heart feeds the look on my face that everyone can read but I chose to pretend they can’t. I curse everything I don’t have then have the nerve wish for it all back. None of this matters really, it’s just that when you wake up with a face you don’t recognize anymore, attached to a hollow shell of naivety turned to deep cynicism...it makes you feel pretty inadequate.

Maybe I am meant for so much more. So here I am, realizing I’m one step away from insanity. but instead of dipping my toe back into that puddle, I am going to re-evaluate my life and figure out a game plan to fix my little life, because a dear friend of mine once told me “you are your own hype” ..so the change starts with me, and how I see myself and my future, once I believe i can have it all.

When I was 7 years old I promised a teacher I would never say "I can't" in her class... and so help me God, I will keep that promise to the person who means more to me than many things in this world.

And even above her,

I’m doing it for the 7 year old, invincible, me.

I fear myself sometimes. Because I hate so many things. And the fact that I’m writing this all on a stack of old papers no one would ever actually see, is just stupid. The fact that I enjoy writing in lower case letters because I was afraid of indicating an end to a beginning is just stupid. So stupid of me. But the things I fall half in love with, will make up for what I hate. The plain truth is that everyone knows that pictures of sunsets are never as good as they actually seem when you're looking at them with your eyes, but we keep taking them anyways. And that the invention of ships was also the invention of the shipwreck. I fall so in love with the little flowers on the ground and when someone spills a drink across the room from me. How I stare at the liquid falling onto the old carpets and they stare at me with a don't-just-stand-there-help-me-for-God's-sake stare. But my hands don't move because falling drinks were so lovely. And I would like to spill a glass of liquid only to stare into where it seeped between the invisible cracks. How colors were so strange to me. Only because I couldn't seem to perceive them. How I saw black and white and black on black layered above a crying skyline. My eyes made me angry at how I saw everything. Sometimes my insanity was inevitable. Sometimes it's too much. But sometimes, it's so much that it's not enough. I fall in love with old things, little things I find at the corner of a closet I didn't bother to clean that night. Dandelions are such beautiful species; like tiny parachutes waiting to be blown away by the hopes and broken dreams of a restless soul.

Children stomp on flowers like that.
Well, most that is.
And I don't seem to do anything about it. Because I watch the tiny parachutes spill onto the floor and seep into the dead soil. And I love spills. But no one stares at me with a don't-just-stand-there-help-me-for-God's-sake-stare this time. Because no one cares for the broken things. And I am stupid for just standing there as I watch the children stomp on dandelions before I get a chance to say goodbye to the little people that lift off and take away. Because those little parachutes were brave and free and ready for anything...but the wind was going to hurt them. And they knew that. I love the dandelions because they make up for my weak self. And I watch the brave to maybe, just maybe, be a little parachute myself.



Somedays I want to just lose myself. But then again, I always lose myself. You should try it sometimes. It’s fun.

You unravel from time to time... like my old knitted sweater. Someone cuts one string and the whole thing can fall apart. You expect it... but it never happens when you expect it to. You’ve got a massive list of things you want to change about yourself and it can either completely inspire, or completely cripple you. You’re always so envious of the people around you who look into the future and see everything. You just want to know what it feels like to look into the future and see anything at all. You’re self centered but in the strangest of ways. The world revolves around you, but not because it adores you, rather because it’s out to get you. Yet there you sit with the weight of your head and the pains in your tiny shoulders just hoping that "IT GETS BETTER" like everyone says it will. You want to yell at the people who love you most that they’re killing you. But let’s be honest, it takes way more emotion to kill someone than the amount of emotion anyone’s spending on you. You care so much it leaves you empty, and no one is willing to fill you back up. You thought wrong. You thought you’d be treated the way you treat others, but in reality they treat you the exact opposite. But it’s your own fault and you can’t blame them. And you wish you didn’t wring people dry all the time. You wish you didn’t need so much reassurance that anyone loves the heck out of you. You feel like you’re in the third grade again, asking the teacher if your drawing of the sun is any good, knowing pretty well that she’s going to tell you it’s wonderful, knowing that she is definitely lying, but all the same being so desperate for affirmation. You want to hear you’re loved even if you don’t believe it. You wish you could tell them how it feels to breathe water when they're around. You’re selfish and you’re ugly and your desperation is not charming. You’re bleeding dry the little bit of love coming your way. You can feel yourself destroying the good but you don’t know how to stop it. You’re self aware but it’s not helpful in the least. You’re not a seven year-old anymore, but you fall asleep in the same room you did when you were in the third grade, in the same position, with the same notion that you’re never getting out of here, with the same fear that no one you love, loves you as much as you love them, with the same idea that you’re destined for the line just below good enough. You’re your own worst enemy. Completely inspired or completely crippled.

And by you, I mean I. you is I. And I am you. I am the old sweater that still unravels from time to time.
So I say, make it better. It won't just get better.

But climb is all we know. So I climbed. And climbed. And climbed.
Don’t mind me.
I’ll just keep climbing.

I have had a lot of questions lately.

Like whom do you become when no one’s watching? When you go home after a long day, sit in your room, and shut yourself out. Who are you? Everyone has their own secret little world living inside of them, like a garden in winter. Not in full bloom.

Like what am I going to do with my life and how do I get there?

We can answer every question we have. People make us question our answers all the time, its not so much that we do not know the answers to our questions. I mean everything has more meaning than what you originally give it at first glance.

You talk to people but you don’t apprehend.
You hear me, but you don’t listen.
You read, but at the same time all you're doing is gazing over some exotic words.
You get emails, texts and whatever form of electronic communication.....but who is taking the time to write to you? No letters in the mailbox; Just people wanting your money. Who's coming over to see you?

Think about it. You'll always be able to realize it but never recognize it.
It's a big, big world. It's easy to get lost in; lost and never to be found.

People really are like gardens: closed in the form and space imposed on them, hospitable towards strangers visiting their world and all; Brutally affected by the changes of time. Four seasons.

Force summer upon your world. People only see a fraction of what is true.

I need something life changing to happen in my life very soon.

Have you ever been so upset that you just feel completely broken down every time you're alone? To the point where you feel like crying, but nothing comes out. Almost like a sad sickness. Sick sad, when you cant imagine feeling any worse? I think you know the feeling. I think everyone knows it every now and then. But I think I have known it pretty often. It is the type of sad that is equivalent to a broken rib...only you can feel it. Only you know the pain. Your parents can’t tell and neither can your friends because you hide it. You know you’re not okay. Yet you know no one could ever know how you feel, so you don’t bother telling them. Like its just not worth it. So you store it all up. You’ll take it out some other time or way.

Sad sickness is the hopeful kind of sad. The kind of sad that just takes time. The kind of sad that always finds a light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully.

Anyways, you know how people sometimes change for the worse? And it doesn't matter how well you avoid it...they've still changed for the worse. Well it’s really unavoidable. You can’t change people back. Just like the seasons. Just like gray hair. Just like the past. You can't go back.

i feel like I’ve been swallowed in darkness whole and there is no flotation device to pick me up from this deep crevice. Some days I feel so sad that I smile because it becomes so fun to be sad. I feel so sick of this sad happiness...because my socks don't match anymore and I stop picking the dust off of the floor; a sweater here, some never-sent letters there. Because I was tired of being the second best and being forced to clean up the water I purposefully spilled so you could stare at me with weird eyes. Because being weird was so fun. And it made me smile because I was really sad on the inside. And I get sick of the sad happiness again and I feel like sobbing now but this time only my hope is lost and nothing comes out. Because being happy gave me a sad sickness, sort of like the one you were not.

It’s funny how we say we are much older than we were before...how we are much more mature and understanding and caring...but I have not changed. we have not changed. I love this earth and all it has to offer me on a silver plate. But I hate us. I hate hate hate hate hate the older-us. How we have grown to think we have become better people when all we have really done was plaster a coating of permanent, clear paint onto ourselves. And how the marionette strings tied to the bruises of your back force you to hide your true self in the public. When really, I watch you sleep the same exact way you had slept when you were a third grader. How your hands still shake and how you try to clear your already-cleared-up voice while speaking in front of everyone. How you still cry over the tiniest things because that is all that you have left to care for. How you bury your face into that old sweater you used to sleep with and gnaw on that old yellow pencil of yours. How you never wanted to give up; you were forced to. Because the smiles you gave away reminded you of how sick you were of this. Almost like a sad sickness. And you felt happy because being sad was so fun.

& by 'you'
I really mean 'me'
because this is just a never ending cycle
slowly
&slowly
&slowly
seeping into the tired
unwanted weeds
where my hopeless self
slumbered beneath.

I know no one cares for my sad philosophies. But I'm sad. & it's okay because I sometimes think it's fun. Sometimes that happens...

When I was eight I wanted to be thirteen, when I was thirteen I wanted to be fifteen; now I’m fifteen and I want to be eighteen.

I mean, from the moment were born were being forced to crawl, eat solid food, talk, walk, read, and obey. It’s never just good enough to play anymore. Then when we get to school, teachers are always reminding us about how the next grade is going to be so much harder saying things like "teachers wont just give you a pencil in grade six kids, you have to come prepared" You're always being forced to grow up. Then you get to high school, and all teachers talk about it how they are getting you ready for college and/or university. Were constantly getting prepared.

More than ever lately, I’ve wanted to get out of Walnut and just skip these two years ahead of me. Leave every bad thing behind, and work towards good things. Just grow up. I really like the idea of starting over right now. Going somewhere totally new, where not many people know you on a personal level. Where I can move on to bigger and better things. More opportunities. Experience new things. Things I’ve wanted for so long and worked towards. I've always been too much of a baby apparently for some people so maybe I should grow up. Right. Leave everything behind. And move on.

I've kind of always wanted to grow up faster. I've always been friends with people older than me. I've always been independent, I feel like I've always had to be independent. I WANT to have the struggle of paying for things, food, relationships etc. Because maybe it will help me realize that what I have now isn't all that bad.

When you're 6 you can ALMOST have homework. When you're 9, you can ALMOST feel sad for things. When you're 15 you can ALMOST drive. When you're 17 you can ALMOST vote. It just seems like we always have to wait a little bit longer.

I find some people my age are so immature in a negative way. And being around some of them all the time just makes me feel half my age. I prefer to hang out with people who are older than me. And I don't see that as a bad thing. And you shouldn't either.

Anyways I could go on about that forever, and I'm getting tired. But you get the point. I want these two years to go by super fast. I don't think anything exciting or brilliant is going to happen. But sometimes I just write here to tell you something I struggled to put together.

Sometimes you can’t leave everything behind. And sometimes it’s nice to be reminded.

I am frustrated. Because you came here to see what I was up to, to see what crazy things I would say next. But I am frustrated. Frustrated of myself and my stupid head that can't even think of how to begin and end writing about my little life. My little life is nothing much really. Little and meaningless. We spend most of our time preparing for things rather than breathing the dead air and reminding each other that our future is actually the second after the next. We spend most of our time sleeping and thinking and laying on our backs feeling lost but not found. And I am frustrated when people tell me to capitalize my letters and add an indent to each paragraph. what if i don't want to? what if i was just writing meaningless letters binded together like your favorite book with the ink still wet and smudged from last night's dark thoughts? what if i was afraid of putting an end to a beginning? what if this little poetic story was really just nothing? i frustrate myself knowing i am wasting my time writing these stupid binded letters for no one to read. because it was so hard for me to write what was on my mind. how i ran after my speeding mind and wrote them down on my stained and wet notebook but nothing came out. because this was not the same language my mind spoke. and i would cry sometimes because maybe i only wanted you to read something about my worthless life that just might be a little meaningful to you. it's not that i ever needed someone to be inspired or sink into the same shoes as me. in fact, im not even here to inspire you ...or me. im only writing this because i struggle with myself and i force my mind to somehow translate itself onto this page.

and the smallest, insignificant things frustrated me so much. give me a rubik's cube and i will try to solve it for days and nights. and i will get to the point where i want to peel all of the stickers off and arrange them back into the same colored sidings. only cause i wanted to feel a little good about myself by cheating my way out of something.

yesterday morning, a little bird, still with its little ingrown feathers and wings, sat on our driveway. and i decided to bring it back home in a little box and i tried to feed it water and bread, but the little bird refused. i got mad. and sad. and i wanted to sit in sadness because i wanted to help but i couldn't. so i left it outside and watched it sit there and stare at all the other birds. and all the birds didn't seem to care for him. and it must've felt horrible to watch others do things you couldn't. i hate hate hate hate hate that feeling. and i only wanted to cry for a creature that was smaller than the palm of my hand. because that feeling was the worst and i hated when someone felt horrible like me. because watching someone in desperation made me feel more vulnerable than anything else. because when someone breaks down and cries in front me, i break into pieces myself because it frustrates me to know that there are people out there that are shattered and it frustrates me because i want to fix you. and sometimes i just want to hide away from everything because i am inevitable to insanity. because i don't want people to be reminded of an image of me. because i don't want people to be entrapped in desperation. because being frustrated was just frustrating. and your old sweater that i still cling onto is losing its shape and color. and that kills me on the inside. frustrated am i.

Lately, I’ve been so anxious. it deprives me of my sleep and i can barely eat. I’m the kind of person unable to remain constant and stay at one place the whole day. so i try to read and run at the same time because i get so nervous when i hear the ticking of that old clock on top of my head. i could never put a timer or an alarm next to me because i would be so anxious to shut it first off before it tried to catch me. and being so frustrated lately, anxiety has caught on to pin me against the wall and leave a gun close enough to my reach so i could torment the idea of just letting myself go. because i want to somehow take the load off my shoulders. because i swallow tylenol pm and advils like they're no big deal. because i try to find a way to fix all my problems. and i am frustrated because i can't. because there is so much more to life than swallowing pills.

but i need someone to teach me.

so very very very

...frustrated am i .
but it wouldn't hurt to fix you
at least.

I have spikes through my ears
just like the ones you were not
so afraid to prod at my significance, you see
I have spikes through my ears but my mother’s reaction was better
than the one you had when my uncomforted desire crashed your ball
double x chromosomes are all I see
when it comes to falling

you see, we sleep on the bed side closest to the door
and I am the space between that door, that indented bedside





between your wheel & the opposite end of the barren intersection





between your hands apathetic grasp on your third glass of white
& your dastardly mouth
double pats on my redden shoulder are all I feel
and I,
my dear
do not need your double pats because they for sure as hell won’t stop this 32 dollar train
and look, I am not trying to be an artist
that dream was somebody’s once and it’s embedded in a thousand other bodies right now
but it’s not my dream and neither are your promises you’ve embedded in thousands before I stumbled into your recurrent arms
I can’t be married to the depth of your sadness, or the width of your sewn in seams

I have spikes placed on the brim of my wisdom
and I am losing within all the cleverly decorated filler in the world telling me to do this and be that and succumb
to these rules and ignore those
I am not trying to be a successful artist
I am trying to be a fulfilled human
and in order, I want to destroy you before you can destroy yourself on this
32 dollar train
don’t let white be the last color I ever see
the stars tonight told me my bones are too big for this
I ask for the definition of “this” and they dim under the pressure
instead they say ‘watch’ as they grow while the rest murk
like this is something worth pointing out
they are knocking at my whitened shoulders and I am reminded of the door

“you could do this too”

because you have not died for me
I will not make myself into skeletons for you
you have not died
and the world
still loves you

dearest a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, and z.

I’ve only ever felt comfortable talking in the dark, there’s no evidence if you can’t see my lips move. Hello I’m alive; I want to build my world out of half secret words mumbled in the blue-light. I want to pour wax over everything and mold out the pretend pages. I’ll mold a city out for you. I’ll give you tunnels made from coke bottles so you can always see the sky while your footsteps echo in the crystal glass chambers. I’ll build you mountains so high you can hear the clouds pouring their hearts out each to each to each. They will give you every story I couldn’t tell you when my mouth was doused in daylight.

There is more space than there isn’t space. I touch you and my skin does not become your skin. I keep thinking about your skin and my skin together but not touching. My heart fell out of my chest & painted portraits for you. My heart was never the bird in the cage. Did you know that because of atoms we can never really touch anything how we mean when we use the word ‘touch’? I write in lowercase because capital letters indicate starting something which indicates finishing something which indicates room for error. i want to fold my bones into an unoriginal paper swan. i am someone that could be someone if i stopped thinking about being someone. your skin is like the horizon line postcard you sent to me when we were involved. if i were a postcard i would know where to finish because I would just run out of room.

It’s not that I’ve never needed anyone to understand, never to relate or sink beneath their nails. I’ve not asked one person to doubtlessly agree or ponder in the same perspective. I am my own pool. I build my own bulbs out of someone else's glass, and I’ve done it with ease. No one else keeps them aglow after the preceding spark.I am my own battery. Often needing a preliminary click, the on switch activated by collecting someone else's light. But I run my own show. I jump-kick my own cables. I intertwine my own lines. i weave my own thread. And I’ve never asked another needle to help me play that part. But sometimes, I want someone to listen.

We never rode horses. We never climbed mountains. We never went to the lake. I never needed help to make up that dance; I just wanted to see you that night. I get angry every time you message me - 5 affirmations to 4 different people. I know I’m not the only one and I know to never succumb to the overwhelming desire to be so — but sometimes I really need to know that I’m different than the rest; Especially if I’m not considered a similar species of situation. I need to know I am something of my own, of our own tangle. I need to know that I spin my own web and you’re caught up in it. I need you to tell me I’ve got you caught. And that you'll keep your promises and hold your head high beside me and not deny it.

First I stop washing my favorite mug right after I drink from it. I leave the bills in my mailbox but take the letter. Stop picking the clothes off the floor, a sweater here, underwear there. I stop talking as much and start keeping my hair up more than I let it down. I forget about writing and about saying "goodnight" and "thank you" and all the little, but most important things that make my world orbit around. But still ... the grass outside keeps growing taller and the world keeps spinning madly on but this is how it gets bad. How I give up in small anecdotes until I give up for real.

I gave up on so many things and I need to figure out how to pour the measuring cup of my life back out without flooding the floor. Live music played in cramped spaces. Public transportation. Vaguely romantic and awkward experiences. To watch the way people's hands move when they are nervous. To remember the idea of home as a state of mind. Wooden front doors. Midnight camels on my front steps. To feel what it is like to miss so bad it hurts. And the darkest side of that last point is that it never gets easier. And the quality of the ache isn't always relative to the amount of space, either. the distance between the past and the present, the present and the future, my mom's house and every city where it isn't, the open space of fields or the intrusion of the water that covers my entire surface area, the stories i like to tell and the places where they manifested, my head underneath your hand that one night. Nothing has ever made me more desperate than these distances. Even worse, I am always aware of them and I sense when one pulls closer and when another reaches farther and farther and farther and farther and farther.

4 different time zones
the night still broke me whenever it rolled in
my body resembling the ship
and you,
the bottle

4 different people
but, everyone knows about this bottle
about this ship
about this wind
about this night

the bottle will break
the ship will be released
there will be songs to flood the night
you will learn them

you will learn the songs of the pushing
you will learn the songs of the breaking
you will learn the songs of the re-building

there will be no words for the songs

you will become the words
you will become the songs
you will become the songs
you will become the singing

it will all seem so real that you will believe you'll always remain this way. And you're not sure if you're dancing to a voice any more or if the voice is dancing you. Or if you're even dancing at all. You’re not acting you're sharing how things really are.

Do you ever feel good knowing there’s not a lot to feel good about anymore, but just enough to sink and swell inside of anything that hints at tempting possibilities? Nobody’s solid anymore. Nothing is personal. We live in a broadcasted world. But of course ... Facebook has an “about me” section.

There’s nothing like knowing, upon the meeting of tomorrow, you’ve no idea where you’ll end up going.

I don’t want to waste away tonight by rotting in front of these old papers, only acknowledging the plastic tables beneath my fingers. I want to go out in the snow sticking post it notes in Chobosky novels and listening to the world at large, making flower crowns out of weeds with berries sprouting off them. I want to throw my body around until my skin stings and has to defrost until morning. I know that there are a lot of things I could be saying right now, a lot of things I should be saying right now. But none of them feel fizzling or revolutionary enough to push and find an exit. So I’m going to keep them inside for as long as I can, until they eventually pour out and leave me heavy-breathing and dizzy. I’m going to get someone to braid my hair and maybe I’ll put on a dress from the Salvation Army on 46th. I’m going to branch outside of my head for awhile, because although I love living inside of it, I still know that there are plenty of reasons not to. And I need to remind myself of them.

I can’t tell the difference between impulse and purpose. I twist and turn the blades of a creaking memory, a familiar feeling I refuse to identify and finally figure out. I want to run to that soccer field near my apartment and scream "love me" because maybe by the time it gets to you - or anyone, I'll already be inexorably collapsed on the ground, eyes closed, finger tips curling in to touch my own palms - as if I took three Tylenol pm's and nothing but the weight of my eyelids matters anymore. This time you'll know that the stars were staring at me - I wasn't begging for their attention but I'm begging for yours. august september october november december january feburary march april may, all I see is you - even with the lights off, like a familiar house you know your way around in the dark. I am the carbonation; you are the tinkling it makes in the can. I’ll be the bubbles, you take the wave, and when you spill to the floor I’ll float until I dry up. Your rusting dust can’t knead magic into my head anymore. I’ve seen your game and I can play it better.
I like to think you did that on purpose. I like to think you always want a reason to come back.
I like to think you’ll always have one.

What if you forget the way that feels what if you forget this? To be young and mad and out of control and inside out.

I have things to say - and in time they will be said. I’ve spent an entire year trying to dissect and rip apart what I had loved more than anything for the past four years. And I am now coming to terms with the fact that I can not deter it, I cannot change it, I cannot ignore it and I for sure as sundown, can't run from it. There are some things that belong to you, things you have spun up from the ground you’ve been placed on. These things you are proud of, these things you encase in gold and present them with confidence - so believe me when I say that I have many things to say, and in time they will be said.

I do not fully know this moment yet, but I know that it melts into everyone - the indescribable and remarkable moment when what was “home” becomes what is no longer ours. When you finally leave for the first time, and what you once knew doesn’t belong to you anymore. you can’t touch it or reach its core that had bore it’s self into you. it molds into this intangible idea that you learn to recreate on your own. And I think that what I considered home is a place I couldn’t pick out, a shelter I never chose... but was thrown into. Adapting and evolving inside of this structure that you produce a burdening love for. And it’s a love that exists because it’s the only place we knew that held our development, held what we did not yet know how to carry anywhere else. We learn to love it because it’s a souvenir; A symbol of a preliminary adventure.
And then you leave. And it’s not your home anymore. it’s a place that you recognize with a certain thorny softness, a place that blows the dusts off a familiar book with it’s already- cracked spine, a place that shines it’s light on memories you hoped to forget and others that you really NEEDED to remember. A place where you learned to love something because you saw the way another loved it. And the most mystical thing about coming back is when you start to miss what you’ve made your home. And that’s when you realize what’s going on here.

You’re visiting a place you once knew, not coming back to a place that you belong to.

i like breakfast at night, new York snow storms, I like when someone else is about to crack my fingers but they don't because they just know my fingers are delicate, the way Ryan McGinley takes pictures of the naked soul without making us uncomfortable; I like folding myself into warm sheets against the frigid air coming from a skylight that hovers right above us, and showers at 3 am, mini-braids hiding and swinging in a mess of tangly hair; I like to day dream of all the guests I would invite to my imaginary parties, what it feels like knowing all the lyrics to a song as you blow them out the window as confidently as you can, the way you used to come up to me in the halls and say "how is everything, truly?" How William Fitzsimons is the only man to ever make me shed tears, when you wanted to make me feel important you would show up with a cold red bull - sharpied with my name on it.

I like that there are so many things in this world I find beautiful and important. I only hope that in time I can create and produce things equally as beautiful and important to someone else.

It's eleven-twenty-eight and I'm only half alive.

There’s a lot I feel like saying. Do you ever feel that way? Like there’s so much you want to say but you don’t know how to say it? so you just sit with it between your teeth, smiling at your friends like you know exactly what they mean when really you just want to get inside their heads, take a walk around and feel the way they feel. I am often wordless, and sometimes I just want to press feelings into all my pressure points so that maybe I can scream mercy to all the thoughts you wanted to hear me think. But I cannot just give you the colors, and drain myself white. I cannot pull the spaces between my vertebrae and give them to you like greeting cards we don't write ourselves. I need something that feels like champagne and heat waves the way they did when I was sixteen and waiting to be born. I need cold galaxies inside these fists, need the shock, the shadows, the grass staining my favorite oversized, men’s t-shirt that is actually yours. I want to feel your fireworks; I want touch your light, hold it in between my fingers and know that it’ll never blow out.
... Don’t you ever miss being on the edge of the atmosphere?

I stopped writing for a long time... because I just thought well; it can’t show you the bruises on my knees or the dirt under my nails. it won’t let you hear how quiet I talk, how nervous I get at four way stops, how fast my heart beats when I even so much as raise my hand to answer or ask a question. It won’t let you see me acting out music in my spare time, or let me show you the few skateboarding moves I remember. It doesn’t show you how unhealthy my hair is when it’s not in a bun, how chapped my lips get. Couldn’t possibly show you how funny I walk when I wear doc martens, how funny I talk, how I always cry from laughing at the easiest of things, where I’m ticklish at, how socially awkward I get when in crowds of people, the laugh I do when I’m uncomfortable and in desperate need to flee the scene. And it won’t tell me what you do or say in your sleep, what songs you sing to yourself in your car when no one else is there, what you’re like when you’re not trying to sound obscure and likable, how you sound when you wake up in the morning, where you go when you’re upset, the look that falls upon my face when I just experienced something for the first time, where my freckles are at, it won’t show me where your eyes flicker when you’re hurt, the noises you make when you’re alone, the weird quirks and habits and idiosyncrasies we’re all full of. And to hear about this, to read about this, to be told about it, is not the same as experiencing it. There are some things that you can’t just learn. You need to feel them. You need to see them. You need to know them. And you shouldn’t find out about them through chatting on the internet, this shouldn’t be a Q & A experience. This is something meant to be figured out without a screen in front of it. And it’s worth it.

and Listen, we are attracted to different things, we are pulled in by different forces in this universe that call us by our name and hook us from our hearts and I by no means think that what I do will, nor should reach it’s fingers out to every one of you and grab you by your cheeks to tell you who i am or remind you who you are. Someone online anon asked me if I ever got tired of people telling me how inspiring I am. And I just want you all to know that it’s not like every person who comes across my work loves it - and it’s not like I assume they all should. This is a completely farfetched idea, and I think that as a writer/dancer/whatever... people constantly project this misinterpretation upon you. I’m not here to inspire you, I’m definitely not here trying to fish for your compliments, and I would never hope to receive your insults. I’m here to reveal the thoughts that burn inside my head straight from where their fingers fumble, I’m here to be who I am and stand as an innocent bystander watching all of you surface some of the greater pieces of who you are. I am here to expose the parts of me that I feel are the most honest and hope that if you don’t like it you’ll at least accept it. and I don’t for a second think that I have made some ever-lasting mark on everyone’s life I have come across, but I for sure am more than grateful for every person who has approached me saying something I have made, meant something for you. And I am for sure not tired of doing something that means anything to somebody.
I have my days, my weeks, my months where what I do on a daily basis should not be considered inspiring to anyone. There’s a lot of things I wish I had done differently, a lot of things I wish I would have done at all. I look back and wonder why I didn’t do all the things everyone warned me not to do. I think I’m old too old for some things, but I’m still wide eyed running around trying to get born. I know exactly what I’m seeing; Even when i can’t give it a name or prescribe with it a reason.

Because I don’t care how you dress, and I don’t care what kind of music you listen to, and I don’t care about what you believe- unless it means something. I need to know that things still mean something to someone. I need to know that someone still thinks real thoughts and feels real feelings and instead of trying to inflate their image they just want to experience real things. I need to know that you exist; That you’re not just trying to fill in the shadows and make it look like you are. I need to know that we are just as alive as we were built to be.

- like the end of summer was still settling in your bones; warm in all the places that count.
- all the things I tried to pour from out my head but only left puddles in my palms.

- I need you to know that the awkward, the indescribable, the intangible, the weird dripping off your fingertips, the infinite, the beautifully temporary, the secluded, the everywhere - all -the -time -alive- in the refreshing-fatalism that you just are, even if one day you will not be - I will not let you go. I will never let you go.

I am getting too nervous for a lot of things. But I’m not too nervous for nice words; For a baggy pair of sweatpants and my ex boyfriend’s t- shirts. For wine in a paper cup and a Marlboro every once in a while. I’m not too nervous for Peter Pan and to lay in my bed all day trying to get this story out of my skin, trying to burn it through the paper and leave my thumb prints hanging from each corner. I’m not too nervous riding around with the windows down and Ani Difranco turned up, because that’s the way Ani Difranco should be played. I’m not too nervous to walk on my ceiling and refuse to wash my hair; To run around bare foot with a smile stuck on my face even when times are hard. And I’m not too nervous to get out of here. To hear summer turn into fall. To listen as the leaves in a park somewhere whisper new stories in my ear. To fall asleep in the rose gardens, wake up when winter laughs under my sheets. To write letters on paper napkins, make light waves feel like experiences. to make mistakes, to exchange a thousand awkward words with people I’ve never met, to do things I have never done on my own before, to fail miserably time over time, to mess up and mess up and mess up and never ever ever ever give up.

I think I have forgotten how to be touched by people. I didn't think that this was a skill one acquired over time, but after weeks of quiet nights with the TV on, searching for some drowning distraction, your skin forgets how it feels to be touched by anything other than the clothes hanging off it, objects or a neighboring appendage. Left hand meets right hand. Fingertips brushing the hair off of your own face.


There is no time late enough, dark enough for me to get the words right, or even out. Maybe it's a good thing. I want to say things that I feel, the way I feel them, with the gravity I feel them, but maybe I should stop chasing words, running after moments too fleeting for anyone to catch. But sometimes things are different and a moment slows down, just enough so it can turn around and catch you. The way I can’t figure out if I ruin moments by twisting them into fake poetry, the way a shiver sometimes feels like an avalanche, the way it says, this will have to keep you alive for months, let’s see you make it count. So there were cheap under aged coolers and things we didn’t mean and things that we did, and I don’t remember climbing into bed in the morning, but I remember climbing out and I wonder, every time I’m alone again. We are just apples full and sweet, being picked off of these trees, but we all have cores that get tossed eventually.

I want to know the rules only so that I can break them, find the standards just to shake them. I won’t nod my head and do it your way, I won’t let my dreams burn to the ground, I won’t waste my time learning answers and never asking the right questions. I’ll write in journals and watch like a shadow. I’ll embed each season beneath my skin, catch each star wink in the heat of their glow and pull them into the drawers of my chest where they never yawn but just keep blinking. I’ll live inside my head, pull everything together and pick everything apart. I’ll collect every source of light like stones that knead into my thoughts, take each experience like twigs to my temples. I will be poor and I will be miserable. I will be scared and skeptical. I will be shell-shocked and fascinated. And I won’t always be happy. And sometimes I’m going to cry. But sometimes I’m going to laugh. And sometimes I’m going to feel so grateful for my stupid little life. And I’ll never stop or give up. Because standardized questionnaires, creative expressionless dance techniques and prerequisites won’t tell me how to shake the world, they’ll teach me how to succumb to it. And that is the last thing I feel like learning how to do.

Life is a battlefield, and a park bench is the closest to heaven I’ve gotten lately, but the past couple months have taught me that the business of loving someone, and missing someone, and crying when you have to let them go and smiling when they return is not ugly, or merciless, or vain. That the goodbyes we said sounded less like war and more like quiet surrender, like I will learn to live without you and I will learn to love you again when I return. This year, summer was more than just a handy metaphor. Everything (internal / external) is changing, and it feels good to be in motion. I’ve been quietly working on some things that I’m excited to show you everyone. I’ve got some ideas tucked away, you know, some secrets up my sleeves. I hope things are well where you are and that you’re creating, living, finding solace in the way that the seasons have a sweeping way of making every new fallen leaf feel like the Earth’s going out of its way to applaud loudly. Some sort of strange standing ovation just for you.

This simple, complicated, beautiful and twisted world can still shake you, break you, and move you, even after almost 18 years.

I'm sort of letting myself get lost in all the noise I’ve been trying to shove out for the past few years. Oh God, if only you guys could see the inside of my notebook lately. Life is so noisy all the time and I'm trying to work with it. I’m willing/want to be something without a name to validate it. Without a group behind it supporting, rewarding, or punishing me if I don’t quite play by the rules. because I feel things, believe things, doubt things, and question things, and I don’t need to shove it all under a title for it to feel real. I have opinions because I’m a person and I can have them without someone else spoon feeding them to me. I was put here and I don’t know why, but if I want to find out I don’t want it to be because I’m afraid of hell or because I think I’m so superior to the ideology that I have to tear it apart. So I’m not so sure if my intentions were for this to be meaningful, I think my intentions were for it to be honest.

Honesty is so rare lately and I have so many questions because the wood floors of my room creek like all the thoughts you've made me think and I want to learn how to love everything again. I wish the rushing and thrashing waters throughout my mind would slowly be blocked off by a buildup of sticks, that regret would stop dripping into my heart through a pinhole. I wish Bon Iver was Bon Ivor two years ago... before they became the big deals they were destined and deserved to be. But that goes for a lot of people I guess. Do we start to lose our magic once people know us? Once we get talked up so much that we can't reach the predetermined outside level of the bar. I hope not.

Left hand meets right hand. Fingertips brushing the hair off of your own face.

synapse /syn•apse/ (sin´aps) the site of functional apposition between neurons, where an impulse is transmitted from one to another.

I am really intense sometimes which makes it easy for me to, oftentimes, sort of binge on things for a long time and then dump them completely. I always. always. always. always. always. do it. And I wish I could just stop.


I’m writing this to remind myself not to shut everyone out, or lock people into these systems and schemas I let my bitterness and fear create. I’m writing this to urge you to start believing in people again. Because people really can make you feel beautiful sometimes. I’m writing this to tell you that I’m ready to explore the world....its beating hearts, its blinking eyes, and its warm hands. I do not want to be just a tourist in this world of images. I don't want to tour...I want to experience everything in their greatest depths.
This is for everything I’ve ever wanted and every vulnerable part of me I could never let you see. For when I was too afraid to speak the words so I wrote them subliminally here instead, for all the feelings that I’ve ever felt in my stupid little life. This is for me. For unapologetic passion. For hanging from the jaw of each night like a loose tooth that the universe won’t give up yet. For every left over reminder of what i used to be, for all the times I couldn’t pour these pieces out of me and understand what they all meant. This is for my first day of tenth grade when I sat in a bathroom stall and scribbled. For bad friends and good friends and a little-more-than-friends-and you know it friends.


For how far I’ve had to come and how much farther I still have to go. For how much you can love something, whether or not it loves you back. For all the things we should have never done but we did them anyway because we're young and it was worth it. for all the people I never forgave, for everything that ever accidentally changed my life forever, this is for every spring that comes after a winter, for all the things I wish we had said to each other but we were so afraid and now we have to carry around each word like leftovers of what could have been and now can never be. For the way I let you and the way you didn’t stop me. For every naked moment, every ordinary second that still sort of feels like fireworks. For all the people I thought were infallible, only to have to watch them crumble.


For every weakness, every soft-spot, every could-have-been and every will-never-be. For the way you looked at me, for the way we touched and the way we’ll never love again. For every mistake and miscall, every time someone threw what I thought I knew to pieces. This is for every single second I ever felt like I belonged, for every moment when everything felt like it was enough, like all of this was enough, like there was nothing else I’d ever want. This is for me. For everything I am and everything I won’t ever be. And everything I might be.
So now I’m going to crack the binding of a new book, greet oceans of off white pages with wonder of what’s next and see where my pen takes me across this new landscape. Here, the closing of one proverbial chapter gives way to the next. I never want to keep to one path. I will never say no.
In grade 5 science... my teacher told us that if you flattened out all of the organs in the human body they would take up the surface area of an entire tennis court. Mystified, I wondered how one body could contain that much, but as the days go on and I grow older I find the myth tends to fit. I can feel my insides growing bigger and stretching out beneath my skin...upward and onward, and it’s running out of room. So I give pieces of myself sincerely and truly to people I hardly know, reserving the best for no one because I love everyone who nods in my direction, meets my eyes with mine, makes me believe they are too, whoever brushes their fingertips with the backs of my hands accidentally or intentionally or somewhere in between. And I’m tired. I’m tired of spreading myself so thin because of hope or faith in possibility or whatever synaptic connection tells me it’s worth it.

A lot of this has been about confusion. About not being able to have both sides of the coin, but stringing them both along regardless. At some point I’m going to get slapped in the face with a decision, but until then I’ve got each hand curled around either end of the spectrum.
It’s going run out, I know.
It’s going to run out.


The thing about bravery, I think, is that it has little to do with the outcome and everything to do with the action. I believe that being in the business of buying the ticket or dialing the number or knocking on the front door or leaning in, eyes closed, or truly and honestly admitting...and just trying is more commendable than exhausting the options with careful planning. And you’re going to get totally shaken up sometimes, and you’re... occasionally, going to stumble back home feeling bruised and ruined, but so what? i guess. Add it to the chapters of your story...to the things that have reminded you that you’re still alive, add it to all of the things you can say you’ve done that you were absolutely terrified of.


Lately I’ve been trying to document things using anything other than words because sometimes moments are worth more than that. Sometimes I just want to pay attention to the minuteness of things...details, movements, sounds. And I’m working on things; Figuring out how to be happy again. Figuring out how to balance my time and energies...trying to be good and be better.
and stronger
and healthier
and less confusing
and less bitter
and more open
and more fun
and more loving
and more forgiving
and...just better.

I wish you could watch me go; I wish I could tell you the exact date I'm leaving so you could count down the seconds and realize its actually happening sooner than you think. but there are some things you will always shut your eyes on. And so my hand is waving at yours that rests beneath your cheek while you sleep a hollow sleep and I hit the ground running to the farthest place that’s nothing like you. Because I need something else to breathe into. Because I need something else to pull light out of me and hide my small and delicate fingerprints inside of. Because I want to go where it’s lonely, where the street lights have no friends unless you’re the dark that surrounds them. I want to sit in this world like some shaking vulnerable light in the sky that doesn’t know where it’s supposed to shine. But even the sad stars never stop burning. So ill keep burning until I can't anymore and I am forced to come back home. Because we all need home sometimes, as much as new and exciting love is fun and completely exhilarating for a little while. my fingerprints are uniquely my own, and i need something/someone else to pull light out of me so i can burn so bright you can't even look at me anymore. so i won't even be an option.

I’m hurting. I’m hurting so much.

And I know you know, because you still showed up. You came even though I told you not to.
You always know. And I can't stand it.
I can’t stand where you’re going, but I know where you came from. I came from there too.
And our bones were either made for the same purpose or come from the same mistake.

Sometimes I can’t do this. Sometimes life comes storming in at 100 miles per hour and it’s too much for me to handle. Today is one of those days. Sometimes I burn holes through pavement with cigarettes I don’t even want. Sometimes I burn holes through the people I love. And sometimes they stitch the holes inside of me that I wanted to keep. I don't always want you to come to my rescue to stitch up the holes I purposely made. Your hands are too soft to hold the heavy things I have buried inside of me for years, and my fingers are too thin for you to hold on to when you can’t find your way home. It is so hard to love something when it leaves you empty handed. But how can you not love someone who knows.

I have long ago given up on the media’s idea of success. I don’t need a dental plan, three meals a day, and a beige colored brick house in the suburbs to be happy. I’ll take a few notebooks and some pens with a little loose change in my pocket and I’ll make it through the seasons happy. I am going to hurt throughout my entire life because of something that I love so much, and I might not even be good at it. But I will never give it up. And that’s why I’m scared. Because I won't always have the confidence, or all the necessities to do so properly. But I have so much courage. I’m scared because I know, that from here on out, it’s going to be a very long road. And I will never give up.
I will hit the ground running to the farthest place that’s nothing like you.
I am sorry for burning holes through people I love.
I am sorry for being the most confusing little creature.
I am sorry.
I am sorry I am not ok.
I am sorry I push every good thing away.
I thought that writing all this would be enough for me to feel ok. I'm still so confused and completely shocked. I am so sorry.

I am just a shaking vulnerable light in the sky that doesn’t know where it’s supposed to shine.

Help me now… the things that I still have to say.

I thought I knew about nostalgia in its greatest form. I thought I knew about the art of missing things. I know nothing yet. Like how desperately I’m going miss things like the smell of my best friends’ laundry. The sounds of doors opening in my house and how I have memorized which speed/strength is who by now. Sitting on my couch with my chin in my hands. Being a short walk to all familiarity. The way you touch my hair. The love and ache and the crookedness of being what we are. The studio I so happily dance in. Driving...and when I see the light change from yellow to red right above me as I pass through.


Lights I didn't think I would make.


What if you forget the way that feels what if you forget all this? To be young and mad and out of control and inside out.

What happens when I can’t remember the way your face looks anymore, or the sounds that mix and mingle on the way out your throat as you form words? What happens when we can’t sit in the park across from your house watching the sky stop and start again, feeling the waves of wind reminding us we are alive all of the time? What happens when moon lit, starry nights are not enough to provoke my deepest thoughts and strongest hopes like they are lately? What happens when you don’t text with a quivering tone because you’re afraid of evaporating, losing, leaving? Where do I go? Where do you want me to go?

What happens when you begin to replace the spaces I've left in the uttermost deep parts of you? When my hair’s not long anymore and my laugh isn’t following me around like a bouncing shadow? Or when my sadness isn't stitched to the contours of my skin anymore? How will you know me? What happens then?

What happens when I can’t sit quietly in the car listening to transatlantacism, what happens when we can’t sink into the familiar hum of who we are? What happens when they’re telling us we’ve got to go, when they’re pulling our arms and the imaginary skin we’ve formed can’t stretch anymore? Will we tell them we have to stay? Will we tell them no? Will we tell them we’ve got to go? Will we nod and part?

What happens when we can’t connect and collide? What happens when a part of me is not yours and a part of you not mine. What happens when I see you but I can’t really see you anymore? What happens when I listen to your voice but can’t hear it anymore? What happens when you see me but you have no idea what you’re looking at anymore? Is this my own quivering toned message? Will I evaporate? Will you let me evaporate?


What happens when I evaporate?

I refuse to believe this life is just a lot of chance and luck; I refuse to believe it could be so easy and effortless. These things mean something so loud and unyielding to me, something I’m not sure how to push out of the way so I can move past. I didn’t know that one day they would be so hard to let go. My pockets are full and I can’t burn through all of the lives I have collected. I don’t know how to leave them to grow wildly like weeds in the cave of my chest. This weekend was my last recital ever and it just initiated all of these thoughts. I don’t know how to accept that I will never be these things again.


I think I mistake curiosity for admiration, but either way I marvel at you from a far and I feel you watching me too. I hope one day you’ll wrap me up in your sheets and let me coax your contents out. I hope you’ll listen to my voice grow hoarse and slither into a whisper, thoughts sneaking out cracked lips. I write about a thousand different people a thousand times a day- I have opinions about them all, about everything. I just feel so hollow and scared. I don’t know what you are to me, but I never want to stop figuring it out.

It squeezes you, puts you into the smallest places, filled with endless amounts of people. So many people to forget the image of within 1.5 seconds of scanning, until your eyes wander to another face. It’s a never ending, loud, and congested pace. So loud you can barely hear your own thoughts.


But I guess that is why it is so brilliant. If you can still hear your own thoughts, still be able to know what you want and who you are while constantly being squeezed; squeezed to the edge of frustration and anxiety. That is impressive.


The whole time I was there my mind would not stop running. The lights, the beautiful people, the rain, the listening, the worrying, the over analyzing...the questioning.


I had all the right words to write here then...but they just turned into feelings and now I don't know how to write them, to give them to you without showing you my weakest parts. And maybe I'm not ready to do that right now. Maybe I don't want the light to hit all my shadows, maybe I don't want to let go of what I've always had to hold. So we sit, all glassy eyed and waiting, never speaking because our sentences don't know how to say what we really want to say.
We are always lost in translation.
Sometimes we are all the words we never said when we really wanted to say them. Sometimes we’re reflections and sometimes we’re black holes that pull everything inside of us and never let it go. Sometimes we can only see ourselves in pieces and accept other people in parts. And sometimes we leave these moments in our bones where no one can find them unless they reach their fists inside our skin, spread their fingers out to feel us for what we really are. But we’re too afraid to let them because they might find all of our gaps, every missing piece in between all the light that hugs our ribcage and all the dark energy that shivers in our chest. we’re afraid they’ll find these secrets sewn on the inside of our skin where we tried to fill up all of our spaces in between with stars and red bull and words and rain, afraid they’ll feel the static, feel all the shadows and melting plasticity. So we shrug our quiet shoulders and drown in all the noise.


I heard myself think in a world of the new.
I know I will be ok.


Remember... your time is priceless, but it’s free. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can spend it, but you can’t keep it. Once you’ve lost it you can never get it back. You really do only have a short period to live. So let your dreams be bigger than your fears and your actions louder than your words. But we are always lost in translation...and at least I know now that you have to hold something first before you can try to let it go.


My mind doesn't run in Walnut anymore.
A new life is waiting for me at the ends of my finger tips.
But please. please. please. please.
Don’t forget about me in about 2 month’s time when I make the one way drive down to a new world.


I’ll hold as long as you'd like.

You said that you never want to leave. I was nervous and you were honest. I kept telling myself “you’ve got to remember this, please remember this” — moments that are uniquely yours, that you think no other being could ever feel, good or bad. The way you breathe on my neck. The way you always make sure to make eye contact even from ten miles down the halls at school, even if I don't make it back.


I keep telling myself you have to remember how he made you feel like flowers; flowers tucked behind your ears even for a moment. You’ve got to remember the way he made you feel like you were something small, something true. Something that could fit in the spaces between his fingers. But I can't. And these things are hard to say sometimes. They’re really personal and it’s not all glitter and golden hour. Sometimes it’s bruised knees and scraped palms and the way the people I felt the strongest feelings for are only strangers now. Sometimes these memories are the softest things I have... but often they are what make me feel the loneliest. That this is how I connect with people. I write them letters that I’ll never give them after we’ve already parted, after our moments are already pleated and abandoned. Letting go. Remembering. Leaving.


People don't wait around forever. You put my hands together and left.
But... I am ok. I am ok right now. I don't write this because you left necessarily, I write this because, people leave. And that is a sad realization. "You’ll always be, special to me, to me" ... I want to let go.


I feel like I'm taking a mouth full of rain writing this right now.

I have bad hair days more than good hair days. My family confused me, guidance counselors were really embarrassing, most jokes were really hurtful, and everything felt really chalked up to something better than it really was. all the smoking or the drinks or the popularity, all of this glittered bullshit still never felt like it was giving me what I wanted. I was still so bored. so you do things like lie about where you are, or go to a show your parents told you not to go to, or skip class to meet a boy, or kiss someone because you can, or read books because real life isn’t always enough sometimes. We did these things because we needed something to feel like fireworks in our pulse, to remind us that we were here and we didn’t want to keep wasting all our time trying to feel things that gave us nothing in return. But there are too many things that I have forgotten how to forget.


I think that’s why I run to dance so much. It gives me something more than real life, and sometimes I can't even draw the line between dance and real life...and that’s an issue. But for now, dance, and the little fascinations I have are enough. I need to stop feeling for the things that give me nothing in return.

I want to feel you, and hear you, and I want to follow the hum of your thoughts and the hints of your habits and unfold every corner in hopes of catching a glimpse of your center. I want to tell stories in the dark. I want you to feel like life never made sense until you did this one thing and felt this one way and were finally able to think this one thought and now the planets of your heart have aligned, like infinite doesn’t mean infallible and all of a sudden perfect means that bad things have made good things even better, like fireflies are still magic lights that flicker out beyond the trees at night for you to make wishes on, like you can finally surrender wet in the rain of your fears, like this is the first time finding your favorite feeling and you never want to forget it. Forget social media and whatnots. The world has lost all mystiques and I refuse to comply. FEEL THINGS. I FEEL TOO MUCH BUT I AM PERFECTLY FINE WITH IT.

And eye contact is a beautiful thing. Always remember it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.
its always about how you do it. not what you do.
with dance.
with people.
with relationships.
I've been all over both the spectrums of pain and love.
Everyday... I'm at a different spot. And everyday gets harder and more confusing.
Don’t waste all your time trying to feel things that give you nothing in return.

I don’t want to be here right now, or any now. I don’t feel like twisting in blankets of used wonders. I don’t feel like swimming in the undertow. I want to disintegrate, fall apart into powder and sweep under the cracks of these familiar doors. I don't want to pretend that things need to be opaque for people to figure them out, but with some secret side hopes that they might when things are/when I am...completely opaque. And if you never figure it out, I never need you to and that’s that... it tricks us sometimes. Places us on a blend of pretty pictures and blonde roasted coffees then pulls the rug out from under us.

I don’t feel like tugging on sleeves right now, I don’t feel like peeling eyelids open. This time when the rug’s pulled, I refuse to land. I’m going to float, to hover above all of the things that hurt my heavy head.

There are so many things I’ve been very careful not to say for awhile because I wasn’t ready to talk about them until I was sure they were actually happening. I’ve always been a somewhat reclusive person, thoughtful but collective and very particular about what I shared with people. I’ve been especially careful lately because the past year has been charged with change. And anyone who knows me well also knows that I don’t cope well with change. That it crashes into me and I carefully navigate around it to avoid the unknown. Not necessarily because I’m afraid of being vulnerable, but because I don’t know how to be graceful when uprooted with it. Not scared, just delicate.

This is the first year of my life that I’ve ever attempted to accepted change in whatever chaos it came in. The first time that I ever had the guts to start building something that could have just caved in on me, something that’s going to take a lot of patience and no apologies. And I am proud for it. I fought for it. I’ve thrown my best punches, if you will. And I think it’s time to talk about that.
There’s something about change that makes it known before you can even give it a name. How it hangs in the air so static. The way it brews up a storm down the road in the distance and you can feel it in your fingers. I remember a few months ago how I could feel it, lingering around, waiting for me out there somewhere like it knew that soon I would be chasing after it.

I know what is about to happen, I know that my life was about to take a road in which I will have to fight in ways I’ve never fought before. Maybe in ways that aren't so quiet, or so careful.

All that being said, my mind is chaotic right now. Filled with so many different genres of uncertainty, insecurity, happiness, sadness, magic, anger, and so many other lovely verbs I could use in this situation. It’s really unfortunate when you have a plan for your life, and you're completely set on that for such a long period of time and then someone comes along and things happen that totally change your whole idea of what you may have thought you wanted.

Those mind altering/changing things must be pretty good too, to have the capability to change someone’s desire/opportunity of moving to a new world and going on with your life.
I have felt something, not necessarily something beautiful, not something proud, not something confident or brash, but SOMETHING.

I felt strong.
I felt brave.
I felt true.
I endured things I never thought I could.

Right now, I need things to terrify me and enlighten me at the same time. I need to be shell-shocked, to be placed in the middle of everything. And with both the fear and the freedom, let all the feelings I’ve never let myself feel... finally consume me.

It’s getting hard, being pulled so roughly in two directions. Getting so anxious and nervous for such long periods of time for it only to be suddenly dropped in a mere second. To keep coming and going from the people I get so strangely attached to. Especially that last one.

Chained to the wall of our room
you chained me like a dog in our room
I thought that's how it was
I thought that we were fine
Then the day was night
You were high when I was doomed
And dying for with no light, with no light.

Tied to my bed
I was younger then
I had nothing to spend but time on you
But it made me love
Me more.

Do what you said the words she said left out
Over unto the sky where I'll soon fly
And she took her time
To believe in what she said.

Death is promised to the bee
whose sting protects the colony.
Was its life worth nothing more
than honey for the queen?

Life is a branch and it is a dove,
Handcrafted by confusing love.
Sign language is our reply,
When church bells make no sound.

In hollow towers and empty hives,
We craved sweetness with a fear of heights.
Was it all just a grain of sand
In an hourglass?

The smartest thing I've ever learned
Is that I don't have all the answers,
Just a little light to call my own.

Though it pales in comparison
To the overarching shadows,
A speck of light can reignite the sun
And swallow darkness whole.

Death is a cold, blindfolded kiss.
It is the finger pressed upon our lips.
It puts an unwanted emphasis
On how we should have lived.

Life is a gorgeous, broken gift.
Six billion pieces waiting to be fixed.
Love letters that were never signed,
Sent to where we live.

But the sweetest thing I've ever heard
Is that I don't have to have the answers,
Just a little light to call my own.

Though it pales in comparison
To the overarching shadows,
A speck of light can reignite the sun
And swallow darkness whole.

I once knew your father well
He fought tears as he spoke.
I guess a part of him just couldn’t return
Forgiveness is a lesson
He cursed you to learn
As your guardian
I was instructed well
To make sense of God’s love
In these fires of hell
No I don’t expect you to understand
Just to live what little life
Your broken heart can
Maybe your light is a sea
And the darkness the dirt
In spite of the uneven odds
Beauty lives from the earth

As the years move on
These questions they will shape
Are you getting stronger
Or is time shifting weight
No one expects you to understand
Just to live what little life
Your mended heart can

You’ll always remember the moment
God took her away
The weight of the world
Was placed on your shoulders that day
Maybe your light is the sea
And the darkness the dirt
In spite of the uneven odds
Beauty lives from the earth
From the earth

You’re much too young now
So I write these words down
“Darkness exists to make light truly count”

In spite of it all, you have discovered all of my hidden fascinations and deep, short stories in this small book. But I think you and I will be okay.
We still have a long way to go.
And I know now that there is so much more to life than this.
Although we may not have the answers to everything, there is just a little light to call your own. A speck of light could reignite the sun,
And swallow darkness whole.

There has always been a pull to the flow, and I have shown you the push and pulls of my bittersweet river. Although we may all have our ups and downs, the struggle is not to struggle. Even if the weight of the world is placed on your small shoulders, I will be carrying the load with you. Because I have grown over the days and nights of putting these words together for you, to let you know that my heart, is your home. And we all mess up sometimes, but that doesn’t make us blind, it just makes us stronger.

This is my story. And you have reached the end. This is a story scraped out of my restless mind. A story which begs to emphasize that distance is worthless if you simply have no depth beneath your healing bones.