Puberty (abandoning all the rules of writing and making sense)

These feel less like growing pains the older we get and more just like pain. 
Why haven't these things been dealt with?  
Why do I still feel these debilitating pangs I felt so frequently when we were younger?
Screaming at the top of my breath because I can't let anyone hear the sound I'd make if I could articulate whatever this is going on inside me. 
The, ridiculous, self loathing; so intricately built and sturdy, indestructible, I fear. 
The worst case scenario scenes playing on a loop while I try to keep whatever life I stitched together with my shaky hands from tearing apart. I don't even know for sure if anyone is threatening it with scissors. 
I let myself feel too safe. 
Too comfortable.
It's terrifying. 
So, we prepare. 
We used to call each other for help with these things. Don't you feel like it's gotten old? Like we're just talking to ourselves, and we've already tried to hard to pull each other out of the mess, the quicksand that's never as bad as we think? Our lives keep happening in different time zones. And maybe this is just life. Maybe this is it. Maybe we'll always need the pep talks. And maybe everything will always be generally more down than up. Is this what it's like to be an adult? To feel like we did in high school, but with bills to pay, and live in boyfriends, and jobs, and no Christmas break, no breaks ever from anything?
I know, just stop. We're better than this.  
We'll get our shit together. 
Let's just blame it on the moon, my sunshine...

Magic 8

     I think we're constantly searching for answers that don't exist yet. That has to be why there's a Magic 8 Ball online. So at the push of a button we can see some predetermined answer, and if we don't like it, we push again.
     We push too hard sometimes. We push so we don't fall apart. We push the pieces we want to fit into puzzles they weren't meant for. We push through. We push for. We push ourselves around. We are so consumed with the end, the goal, that we lose sight of all the beautiful things quietly residing in the deepest places of our hearts. Wrapped safely in memories of cigarettes, swimming pools, dry heat.
     Some things that are old are dissolving. Some things that are old are going through a metamorphosis we could have predicted had we been paying more attention. And they will grow, they will turn into things more real than we have known. They will be tangible.
     We will be patient.
     We will submerge ourselves, or perhaps test the water with our fingertips. We'll feel the heat on our faces slowly warm the chill in our hearts.
     And it will all be ok.

To Whom It May Concern:

The girl is disappearing and you have to let her go. 
You should have let her quietly slip into the shadowy corners of your memory years ago when you started on this path it seems you will follow for as long as you both shall live. Perhaps it is not sadness you feel, or guilt, or loss. Perhaps you can't wrap the words around the tip if your tongue. Perhaps it's just that old habits die hard, but you don't want to watch her drowning anymore. No one does. Not even her, and she can't breathe properly while you hold on with the firmest fleeting grasp. 


The calendar has replenished itself, as it does,  with blank pages, filled with days and days of endless trial and error, and trial. And you will succeed, and she will exist beyond your comprehension as she has always been meant to do. And while you may try to search through the pages to find a note that will predict the next sideways glance or crooked smile you cannot find it now, though you must know it will come. And while the pit of your stomach burns with a longing you don't understand, for a glimpse of a memory that was unfairly dragged into the present, you will have created a present more overwhelmingly beautiful than you could have done trying to hang on to this girl. 


So let her disappear. Let her breathe. And lastly, don't criticize how she treads water. Because if you truly let her go you must trust that she will make it to shore on her own, and that if you ever become concerned that she didn't, all you have to do is ask. 

I will miss this backyard...

     One winter the power went out. There were candles and attempts at ghost stories. Katie was over like always. She backed me into the corner of my bedroom and spoke in that scary voice she uses while I talked on my parent's cell phone to the boy I would later fall in love with. Maybe fell in love with, I don't really know now if you can fall in love with someone when you're 15. I don't really know if you can fall in love with someone when you're 24. 
     The power is out tonight so I'm thinking of that night back in 2000-whatever. I remember thinking then that Katie is the only person who could make that night memorable. And how she's done that for so many nights since then. I don't remember what I talked to so and so on that phone about. I don't remember what I talked to any of the so and so's I thought I loved about. I remember that I thought it was really important at the time, and that I cried about it later, and that I sometimes try to hold on to all the so and so's and words, and nights and that it just doesn't matter sometimes. 
     It doesn't matter now. Oliver and I have a home in Nashville. We will be far away from all the people I keep saying I need to forget and remembering in my dreams. I will be far from my family and the few friends I'll remember on nights like these. I will miss my sister, and my Katie, and these chairs in the backyard, and the dry California air, but I won't miss the so and so's. I already don't. I'm just prone to weeping about the past. And it hasn't made me weep in a while, which confuses me.  
     It's the future my eyes tear for. The possibility. The way this is so natural. The way it's working.
     The battery is draining on this thing. The house it still dark. I'm still alone. So I'll sit, one last time, and remember the one's worth remembering, who coincidentally have stuck around long enough to still be relevant. 
     

Little Moments That Are Bigger In Retrospect

Sometimes
you fee like
you've lost yourself
or, everyone else has lost you
and then you run into
your ex-boyfriend
and he notices your pony tail
and doesn't have to be told 
how excited you are to have it,
he congratulates you. 
You remember
that at least you were loved once
and some people remember
who
and what
you are. 

"Stay What You Are"

Sometimes I get this feeling right before I fall asleep that I need to silently weep until I drift into whatever semi-unconscious state my body accepts as sleep. I get a lump in my throat, I choke on each breath.


But there's nothing to weep for anymore. No tears come to soak my pillow. It's just habit. A bad one. And I've spent the last few months breaking some bad habits I recognized a little bit too late. The trees are showing their leaves again. There are plans. There are roughly 3,000 miles between where I am and where I'll be. I am in love again, but in a new way. A better way. The most honest way.


There's much to smile about these days and smiling has always been foreign to me. I've saved them, but I've started to give them more freely. Not because anyone asked, but because they are deserving.


I don't know what to do with happiness, but I'm learning.
My hands are full and my grasp is just right. 

Poker Face

I was going to write something down about how much I miss you, but then I realized I didn't mean any of it. I'm just sad because I had to go to the dentist today. I haven't meant most of what I've thought or said this month, so I haven't been talking to anyone for fear of being a hypocrite. 
I'm not sorry. 
Today looks like summer, but it feels like November. I don't like the weather to be so deceptive. There's a root canal, a Full Collapse, a long night at work, a plane, a layover, and some people I've never met on the squares of my calendar. I'll feel better when they're all tomorrows. 
Maybe.
Maybe, I don't really mean that. 

February in Advance

     I've had these diamonds in my back pocket for what feels like a decade. I've moved them from my jeans, to my breast pocket, and now I clutch them in my left hand. They are tarnished and worn. I can't remember them ever looking as dazzling as everyone tells me they were, they are, or they should. My knuckles are white from the force I use to hold them steady in my palm. If you know me at all, you know I've been dying to give them away, but am dying too frequently to give them up. 

     I know of more diamonds in southern states. One in particular, that with any luck (you know I don't believe in luck) will soon be my home. I plan to wash these diamonds in a pond, near a new tree, with leaves that change color because it's their nature not their burden. I will lay them with the other diamonds that have been dragged across the country to regain their shine, their luster.

     I am happier than I have ever been in this last decade knowing that my gems are welcome in a new state. I am sure that within new borders and new company I can show the world their worth that has been overlooked in my hiding places. If you know me at all you may have seen a few of my diamonds, or at least a glimmer when I wasn't holding on so tightly, but the timing wasn't right, the words were always on the tip of my tongue, and you never asked to see.

     I have to get them far away from here. Closer to a home. Closer to the things that make them sparkle. I promise to send pictures, write letters, and stories. I promise I'll show you, if the timing is right.

Things I'm Not Good At...

Letting fires burn out.

     There has been a fire in my life. I think it started the moment I finished the last story I wrote for a grade. This fire has burned deep and loud. I think it might have come close to dying a few times. Either way it scorched my skin.
     It seems to be dying down. I long for the warmth it gave off in a hazy fit of recollection the few minutes before I finally fall asleep. I wake up and burn the same way.
     I've had a consistent record of dowsing fires and running, as fast I could, away from the embers and what they all felt like once. I've tried to fan flames, wasting my breath, frantically breaking my lungs. I can't find enough water anywhere this time. I'm scared.

     So I will change.

     I will let this fire linger. Watch as the flames turn into a faint orange glow. The smoke it gives off is suffocating me. I will shift. I will get some air, let this fire breathe and change. I would pray to God if I believed that time, free time, and a strong gust of wind will spark the flames into the blaze I imagine it can be. I will stoke this fire will all the strength I can muster, but I will not inhale this smoke anymore. I will guard my lungs. I will not inhale you.

The Difference Between Medicine and Poison

     Do you remember the night we sat on your roof? It was summer I think, or getting close at least. It might have been the day we walked around a city you lived in when your life fell apart, where I now spend all of my week days. I sometimes I drive past your old street thinking about the night it all started. One of my destinationless drives that led me to your front porch, and eventually that shitty couch where we crashed into each other.

     The air was cool. my skin was burning. We sat too far apart. We didn't touch. I didn't know if I was allowed to touch you anymore. Or if I ever touched you at all. Your eyes were clear, tired. The lids a translucent pink. I think I loved that about you. That you always looked like you'd been crying. In retrospect you always were. In retrospect I always thought I loved you.
     It felt like the place we should have sat years ago. On top of that blue house. Sharing a pack of Camels, letting the nicotine swirl through us. We were the slowest burning fire. You looked out across the rooftops of neighbors we never got to know. You talked about the ocean. About the problem with all of our friends. Or maybe you talked about the future that you're still working toward. The ideas that rolled off your tongue like dice. You'd be fine no matter what, just never alone. I watched you from where I sat. My fingers dying to lock within yours. My lips dying to taste the smoke on your tongue. You still blow so much smoke.


     We headed back in through the window. You first, I followed, so common those days. The lights were on. We were alone. You kissed me. I panicked. You asked if I wanted it and I said "yes", breathless. A lie I didn't know I was telling.
     We laid close in your bed. Our skin in familiar company. Your arms loosely wrapped around my waist. It felt crowded. The bed was always too small. We just didn't fit anymore. Or didn't want to. Your breath on my neck felt like history. I closed my eyes and prayed to the empty sky I'd forget your smell, your crooked smile, and all the things I ever knew too well. I turned over and kissed you hard on the mouth.

     It felt like the worst night of my life, and in comparison to the rest of the nights that compete, it still wins.