Life Is For the Alive,

"They thought I was scratched by a wild animal but it was only you, wasn't it? You, the big and the bad, you, who had to go and ruin it all. I hope you're proud of yourself. I hope you stop seeing things in the dark. I hope you learned your lesson. Next time I won't forget the ax."

This time I brought the ax.
I sat looking at you, paler and thinner in the glow of the car's headlights, and it all fell into place.
You told me to dance like a woman. And I wanted to. No for you, I suppose; I don' know why I do it now drive myself twenty miles every Wednesday night just to trip over my own feet for half an hour in a well-lighted room. But I do it and I can't bring myself to stop going.
I realized then quickly what I had failed to notice all along, You were the warmth and the fur in my eyes, but when the fluorescents caught your hair, your wasted self- I knew then that to other men, you're just something a human really doesn't want to hit with a car.
I said that the girl in the red cloak was all alone and lost in the woods. That hasn't changed. She is still lost. But she has grown tired of feeling like your prey; now she has the huntsman's ax, she has the power to put this animal out of its misery, this sick creature whose pelt shone so sleekly in that golden field. She won't, of course. She can't lift the ax against you any more than she could jerk the steering wheel a couple inches to the right.
The thing about her is she only wanted to get to Grandma's house, before you came along. Had you never existed this would never have happened. Nothing of it.
Not the cold, the dark, or the silence, neither of those, or that winter morning she woke up crying at six and couldn't stop till eight, or the fever dream of those beautiful red people fighting in the dust. And she- I- wouldn't have sat watching that ridiculous movie with any recollection whatever of something that could bring pain.
I wanted to say to those who laughed, "Don't you dare, don't you dare or I will hurt you. There is nothing funny about a girl shivering on the forest floor. There is nothing funny about something that big and with that many teeth lunging at your face."
I had dreamed it like this at least twice, the blood in the cabin and the ranger with a shotgun, and my stoic acceptance of the absolute aloneness. It was a place where you could feel the trees closing in after dark, a place where the ranger yelled at you because by setting foot in its territory he thought you were endangering that wolf- even if in your heart you thought of sunshine on hardwood floors and knew that he was endangering you.
For a moment, Little Red may have had the upper hand. Perhaps you can pretend that the wolf knew she couldn't really swing that ax. Perhaps you can pretend that she would have. But none of that seems relevant any longer. The grief of it is stale, old, and only dreams or certain situations can bring that frost bite back.
This December, I will by wares from someone- a dreamcatcher, a necklace made of feathers, a woolen blanket to keep me warm. I will hand him my money, and those eyes will level with mine, and just for a second I will wonder what he would think if he knew- if that clearing flashed before his eyes as it did mine, if he heard that howling and the sweetest sadness of la tua cantante. Or if I'm just crazy after all.



I know some things for sure. I know it was dark outside, and the snow covered everything like a thick blanket, muffling sound. And that I lay on the bed in the dark for quite some time, staring blankly out the window, with that poem trembling on my lips:

"Whose woods are these I think I know
his house is in the village, though
he will not mind me stopping here
to watch his woods fill up with snow.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep
but I've got promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep
And miles to go before I sleep.

And I know that I said nothing as I tripped and fell, collapsing on that summer ground. I lay there too for some time with naught a word on my lips, cheek pressed to the dirt and leaves, just breathing. There would be no rescue for me, I would have to pick myself up and walk the three miles home. But this. . .
I wished the earth would swallow me in one painless disappearance. All the world was at peace in that forest, no wolf to prowl or tempt.

"Death is easy.
Life is harder."

I got up. I went home. I stripped down and relished in the mud caked on my body, I remembered him and thought and reached no conclusion whatever.
I know these things: the seasons change, we walked in that place together, and I bought the porcelain figure of a child I could never have.
What I on't know is how to answer this question: How did you like the movie?
I can't. I was a movie. It had nothing and everything to do with some deep dark part of me that should stay untainted by one-star criticism. I don't want to think about it too hard. But you keep asking me, and you may as well ask this question: How cold was that winter?
It was warm when he was there. It was freezing when he wasn't. I'm still looking for an answer.

I think I wrote this in May.

I feel I am not quite the same person I used to be, either.
Now and then, I get me back for a second or two.
The harder I try, the more I lose myself.
It happened during archery the other day. She showed me again how to stand, and I automatically pulled the bow to my cheek as I had so many times in the past.
Everything was perfectly aligned. I felt like Lady Guinivere, running screaming into battle. Full of heart and soul and strength.
And I felt again like that girl who didn't need Jesus as an excuse. Who thought living in this world, full of wonder as it is was quite enough, thank you.
She popped in, said hello, and left again.
I hit a bullseye.

It didn't change anything, though.
I got really, really high then, but the problem always is. . .when you come back down, you're always dropped from the altitude you'd reached.
The higher you get, the harder the fall.
And then again, I wanted everyone to go away. I spend days smiling and laughing politely and sometimes even adding my own input. Pretending I care, to no avail. I never do. And on the days I want to be left alone most, there's always that many more people who want me. Want to talk to me and be with me and laugh with me, and it's amazing how they can't tell I'm faking it.
I guess you can't always tell something's hollow just by looking at it. Sometimes you have to knock a little to find out the horror of the emptiness inside.

I'm just like you. All broke inside, with no way to fix it.
Except I sit in the dark. I don't move around and bump into things, as you do.
I just sit.

Guess Grandma threatened to kill herself when she was my mom's age, and that's why my grandpa left her.
Always thought Grandma and I had a lot in common.
The angels.
Didn't know we both had the same demons, though.

"You don't know anything about me," I told my mother.
She said she felt bad sometimes, too.
I told her she was lucky that she had feelings at all. Because I don't.
Nothing besides shit, and fleeting moments of happiness.
When his face turns to the side and he looks so beautiful I could just swallow him whole.
When I am knee-deep in an obsession, the best time for me. Things to do. Things to feel. Things far away from here.
When what's left of what all of you used to be shows in your faces, and I can see the you I love for just a moment. Sweetness in a salt mine. Or I recall a memory of someone, and I can feel it there with me. A taste of contentment.
Yes, Mom. I feel. But the problem is, you think you know how I feel.
I know you have had hard times. But at least through the hell, you felt every burn.
Good for you. I do not.
I would take all the pain of living over this shithole of a mindset.
And you think I believe I'm special? I'm special?
Me? Standing there in tears mourning everyone I've lost? Not able to identify with anyone, anymore?
That pedestal you speak of doesn't exist. It never did.

She asked me what she could do or say to make it better.
What I wanted.
I don't WANT anything, Mom. Except to be left alone.
Leave me alone.
I hate dragging you down with me. You can't help me. Dr. Harleen Quinzel and her ability to prescribe meds can't help me.

I understand you now, Ang, except your situation was different. Dying inside we could sit with you through. We all know it. We are friends with our hollowness, so we can learn to be friends with each other's. But physically. . .
I love you, I love hugging you, and smelling how you smell, and hearing your voice. And now, just feeling those tiny, tiny bones underneath my hands makes me want to cry. I know you don't like hearing this, but you have to face the fact that people love you, and the difference between you and me is I think you still love people.
I miss having all of you to squeeze and giggle with and talk to, and I miss having all of me to give you as well. And the difference between you and me there is that I want myself back, and you are happy with the way that you are now.
You say you don't want people acting like parents to you, but you have to notice that when friends stop acting like friends and start acting like parents, it's only because there is something horribly wrong and they want to fix it. Friends never want to act like parents. They hate parents. But when they become them, there's something to be learned from it. It's hard to learn when you don't feel or care for anything. So I don't know what to do. And I don't know how you are. If anything has even changed since the last time we talked about this. So here's how I feel. I hope you'll tell me how you feel, too.

I have called Hunter hundreds of times. And a few of those times were spent wanting to be rid of it all. And knowing, more importantly, how to be rid of it all. He's my safeguard against suicide. He will do anything in his power to stop me if I ever get that way again. Of course, all I have to do is not tell him how I'm feeling. But I find that very hard to do.
He's the one person left I can say goodbye to. The rest I'm hoping, on the off-chance, I'll find on the other side.
To stand with Jake again. Anywhere. For anything. In the blackest of rooms, love of mine. To feel that warmth again. To not feel lacking every time I disappear into the woods for an hour or two. The fever dream I had of the red Indians fighting in the red dust. It's all I jumble. I can't remember any of it anymore. Bare feet on a hardwood floor. The smell of pine. I can't remember.
To have an angel. To know what it was like to want to fight for life. To stay silly and naive over a normal man. He's an uncertain shadow now, even the him I saw the day before Easter this year. Like he wasn't even there at all.
To not know Grandma had her demons, too. And to spend all those summers eating root beer floats and talking about our angels and drawing with sidewalk chalk and Grandma smiling smiling smiling. And that old house on 38th Street that everyone else hated but me. And all of that gone in one day that I saw coming.
To have the only people that ever really understood me turn cold. My forum buddies. They asked me who I was now, and I couldn't tell them. I don't feel quite like one of them anymore. Dazza knowing fantasies. Urging me to remember what it was like to love him, amber eyes and rum and salt waves, my belly round with child. He doesn't know me anymore, either. He hasn't even been there, to those dark places.
All the other places and all the other faces I have lost since that night in 2005 the phone rang and it was Grandma Rosa, and she scared me a lot because I couldn't understand her at all, but I knew it was very bad. I had never seen that grief in a person before and now here I am four years later, living in it every day. Huzzah for life.

If this were the last snowfall
no more halos on evergreen
if this were the last glimpse of winter
what would these eyes see?
If this were the last slow curling
of your fingers in my palm
if this were the last I felt you breathing
how would I carry on?

It has been. . .so long since I've felt that familiar stab of pain associated with you. And your memory.
But today I felt it.
I wanted to hit her. I wanted to say, Don't you realize?
He will never be who he was again.
I wanted to say, You have no idea what it was like. To hurt like I did because of him.
Because he was my sun. For years he was my sun.
He was your friend.
He was my sun.

People do not come back from the dead.
I have much experience with this.
Once they are gone- they live only in our memories. In the secret places we once smiled at each other.
In dreams with warm arms, on cold nights when there is nothing but the wood and the dark and the snow and the howling outside. And those fresh, start-of-term autumn days when every cell of you feels alive, warm cider and ghost stories and piles of fallen leaves.

I try to tell myself that it doesn't matter he decided to apologize to her. She is easily fooled by the ones she loves.
I know that I will never see that face again.
Never the way that I remember it.
Jake. Jake the way I longed for him three years ago. The night she allowed me to sit on the top of her tallest wardrobe, legs crossed Indian style and crying into the bowl of soup she had made me.
It wasn't something completely unshared- pathetic as I may sound still, three autumns later. Unrequited is a strange word to use.

He lit up a room. He pulled everyone into his smile.
He saw when I was cold on winter days and pulled me into hugs, also.
I loved him. . .so much I loved him, that I'm still confused in what way that I did. Because I can't recall a single romantic urge throughout my entire ceaseless aching for him. He must have seemed to me the very dearest friend- and the seasons that surrounded this affection became made of him. My grandpa taking me hiking in winter the year before he died. Me falling to my knees in the snow. His long finger pointing into a tangle of branches. We used to hunt rabbits in the thickets, he would say.
And he was made of winter, too.

I feel it drawing ever nearer. The season changing, the leaves falling, and a steady throbbing pain that won't fade until the first thaw.
It gets so cold. It gets so cold that all the layers in the world won't stop the chill.
& I'll wish I had my sun to keep me warm.

You are my sweetest downfall
I loved you first, I loved you first
Beneath the sheets of paper lies my truth
I have to go, I have to go
Your hair was long when we first met

Samson went back to bed
Not much hair left on his head
He ate a slice of wonder bread and went right back to bed
And history books forgot about us and the bible didn't mention us
And the bible didn't mention us, not even once

You are my sweetest downfall
I loved you first, I loved you first
Beneath the stars came fallin' on our heads
But they're just old light, they're just old light
Your hair was long when we first met

Samson came to my bed
Told me that my hair was red
Told me I was beautiful and came into my bed
Oh I cut his hair myself one night
A pair of dull scissors in the yellow light
And he told me that I'd done alright
And kissed me 'til the mornin' light, the mornin' light
And he kissed me 'til the mornin' light

Samson went back to bed
Not much hair left on his head
Ate a slice of wonderbread and went right back to bed
Oh, we couldn't bring the columns down
Yeah we couldn't destroy a single one
And history books forgot about us
And the bible didn't mention us, not even once

You are my sweetest downfall
I loved you first.

And after all, she had been in love with him: in her head. This seemed now so funny to her: that she had been, in her head, so much in love with him. After all, life was too absurd.
Because now she saw herself and him as such a funny pair. He so funnily taking life terribly seriously, especially his own life. And she so ridiculously determined to save him from himself, and wildly in love with him in the effort. The determination to save him from himself.
Absurd! Absurd! Absurd! Since she had seen the man laughing among the holly bushes- such extraordinary, wonderful laughter- she had seen her own ridiculousness. Really, what fantastic silliness, saving a man from himself! Saving anybody. What fantastic silliness! How much more amusing and lively to let a man go to perfition in his own way. Perdition was more amusing than salvation, anyhow, and a much better place for most men to go to.
- The Last Laugh

This is the right thing,  I say to myself. The real right thing.
But it still hurt, in a guilty, twisted way. And I knew that he still meant much more to me than he should.
It's good that he has her. It's better for all of us involved. But it's quite funny that half of us who are don't know it. All because of my stupid feelings.
"He was so intriguing to me," I told her, "because he was just like Jake. Only he wanted to be saved. He was my perfect version of Jake- one who knew he should get out. But he never did anything to fix it, so I guess he's just like him."
We'd been catching fireflies; she held her jar tightly in her lap, watching the soft glow from the porch. My jar was empty.
She wanted a star for every person she had lost. Thirteen in all. And by the time she was thirty her body would be covered in those stars.

Fireflies.
Why does everyone we ever love come and go, but stay forever in the worst way possible?
Trey is just another star. But he was a painful one, because he made me get attached to him and then said, "Hey, look at me! I'm dying fast.
Here are my secrets.
Here are my truths.
I trust you with them."
I couldn't tell him half the things I was feeling. I shared nothing with him but a dream. And then I fudged that a little to hide what I felt anyway.
We locked eyes that day when he said he would be there for whatever we needed. That was the instant it happened, but I kept it from myself for a long time, until everything had blown over. So now I have to carry everything he's said inside me.
I let him do that. I let him talk to me about Livvy and his bad nights, and wanting to die and dreams about being saved. Could he see me dying inside while he went on and on? It was emotional pain so bad that I felt it physically, like a hole in my stomach. Stab stab STAB. I fought hard not to double over with it when I saw his scars. Traced the crude heart he had carved into his forearm every chance I got, the word L-O-V-E a primal marking. Watched them fade into smooth, pink lines. Shed a tear or two while he wasn't looking.
Why do I do this to myself? Why didn't he notice and ask?
Hunter can see right through me. I guess I'm not used to someone being unable to read my thoughts.
I keep thinking it would have been/ would be better if we talked about it. Because I know that all the pain I have ever had due to loving a person in any way could be resolved by telling them how I felt and what they put me through and how they feel, too. But none of them is ever around when it's all over.
So I just carry it around.
Like all the secrets you don't even want to tell your best friend, Trey, but you want to tell me for some stupid reason. You don't even know anything. You're just another star to add to the list. You're just another one gone. If you knew you wouldn't have unloaded all of that on me. I'm the worst person to tell your shit to. I have so much of everyone's shit doing whatever it pleases inside my head that I'm about to go insane with the thought of it.

I am made of all the people I have loved and lost, and all the people I love now. Does that make me my own person, or does it make me scraps of other people?

I never knew till then how much I could miss someone. I read at that time, I don't remember where, the sentence, 'Why is loss the measure of love?' and knew that it was true.
- This Is All

"When we're married," I said, "we should travel."
I wasn't sure he had heard, but after a pause he said, "By train."
"And ship," I said, "To England."
"And China."
"And Africa."
James brushes the hair away from ear. "We can read to each other every night."
I rested my hand on his throat and could feel him heart beaitng. I tried to bring my pulse in stride with him, but mine had a faster gait. "What will we do for money?" I asked.
"I'd do anything," he said. "I'd dig ditches for you."
"I'd scrub floors for you," I told him.
- A Certain Slant of Light

"How long have you been dating that guy?"
"About a year and a few months."
"Wow. That's a long time for your age."
I always smile after they say this. It's like it's scripted, with every one who asks. "Yeah. I know."
I know this is a very unlikely subject to switch to after the last one, but it would be nice to be heard out.
I don't think about Trey when I'm not around him. Generally he never even crosses my mind. But he's one of those people I tend to grow fond of. . .guess you could say the doomed, without being too dramatic.

There is a permanent sense to this boy above.
He reads me like an open book. I tell him everything, whether I want to or not. When I'm guilty about something, like Trey, I come to him like an ashamed child, because although it's bad all around, I have to tell him or he will find out anyway. It's better for him to know by my being honest than a feeling.
I'm faced with a challenge here. They say in that song that the history books forgot about us, and the Bible didn't mention us. Not even once.  
And it feels like that with everyone I've ever loved in any way. That it was something much more than just. . .love. That the story of the love was worth telling and hearing. Does it feel like that to everyone else, I wonder? Or am I just hallucinating?

Hunter sees everything. He sees into me and accepts who I am. We argue and bicker and frown just like anyone else, but I don't think we've ever had a fight that merited anything more drastic than a few minutes of silence over the phone or in person.
I don't know what I'm really getting at here, I guess. I just think there's something weird about him. Like some people are born with a little more insight than should be religiously allowed.
Ehh. . .
i need a nap.
xxxx
 

"I just know there's something dark in me,
and I hide it.
I certainly don't talk about it,
but it's there always. . .
this Dark Passenger.
And when he's driving, I feel alive.
Half sick with the thrill of complete wrongness.
I don't fight him-
I don't want to. He's all I've got.
Nothing else could love me, not even...
especially not me.
Or is that just a lie the Dark Passenger tells me?
Because lately there are these moments when I feel connected to something else...
someone.
It's like the mask is slipping and things... people... who never mattered before are suddenly starting to matter.
It scares the hell out of me."
 

"I couldn't possibly feel that need. . .
like a thousand hiding voices whispering,
"This is who you are."
And you fight the pressure-
the growing need rising like a wave,
prickling and teasing and prodding
to be fed.
But the whispering gets louder,
until it's screaming,
"NOW."
And it's the only voice you hear.
And you belong to it-
to this shadow, self.
To this. . ."
"Dark passenger."
"Yes. The dark passenger."
xxxx

 
You're living like a disaster
She said, kill me faster
With strawberry gashes all over - all over.
I lay quiet
Waiting for her voice to say
"Some things you lose, and some things you just give away."
Scold me, failed her
If only I'd held on tighter to her
Watch me lose her-
It's almost like losing myself.
Give her my soul
And let them take somebody else.
Get away from me.

 "'I'm so glad you told me about the strawberries," I said. "I had some weird dreams last night."
"Are you serious?" He got real close after that. He always gets real close when there's something he wants to know. And that bright look in his eyes, the half smile.
Always.
Makes me want to run.
Makes me want to get closer.
"It wasn't. . .pleasant." I kept talking, feeling embarrassed. Should've kept it to myself.
"I was standing in the kitchen. Eating a strawberry. And. . .you were there."
I didn't tell you anything about it, though. Nothing. You could have inferred a whole lot from that, but that's not even a tenth of it.
I knew you were there, but I could only see you out of the corner of my eye.
It was the best strawberry I had ever eaten. It was melting in my mouth.
So I turned around to face you.




It wasn't until we were well past the middle of it
that we realized
the old dull pain, whose stitched wrists and clammy fingers,
far from being subverted,
had only slipped underneath us, freshly scrubbed.
Mirrors and shop windows returned our faces to us,
replete with the tight lips and the
eyes that remained eyes
and not the doorways we had hoped for.
His wounds healed, the skin a bit thicker thean before,
scars like train tracks on his arms
and on his body underneath his shirt.
- Little Beast

 And I met eyes with your wounds.
It was normal to me. Deep, black, smiling gashes,
stitched from ear to ear.

"You had this. . .huge Chelsea smile."
"Was my face painted?"
Even more embarrassing. I hadn't even thought of that.
"No. Not like the Joker. That didn't even cross my mind."
The grin belonged to that kitchen. All those menacing thoughts in my mind had waned recently. But they were still there. And they needed some place to go.

You do this, you do. You take the things you love
and tear them apart
or you pin them down with your body
and pretend they're yours.
So, you kiss him, and he doesn't move, he doesn't
pull away, and you keep on kissing him. And he hasn't moved,
he's frozen, and you've kissed him, and he'll never
forgive you, and maybe now he'll never leave you alone.
- A Primer For the Small Weird Loves

That's all I told you. I didn't say anything more, after that.
On some level, I must have realized that you did this to yourself. My reaction to your cutting. My deep upset that you were ruining yourself.
I kissed you.
I tasted so severely that sticky sweet red strawberry.
And felt those black gashes so perfectly beneath my lips
(I traced a line I think I was crying I don't know how I got there or why you kissed me back but you did, you did and I can't hate myself for it but I can hate this whole fucking situation)
that I thought it was real.
It was so real.

The blond boy in the red trunks is holding your head underwater because he is trying to kill you, and you deserve it, you do, and you know this,
and you are ready to die in this swimming pool because you wanted to touch his hands and lips and this means
your life is over anyway.
- A Primer For the Small Weird Loves

I stand there each day like a stone willing, for once, not to feel anything.
And I do anyway.
Because when I make wishes, they're a waste of breath.
How do you shut something off inside you that makes you love only the people you're supposed to?
(you did it to yourself, those HUGE HUGE wounds and you looked so sad, you looked so lost, you looked like a well of tears inside.
but you were smiling the whole time.)
("You can trust me," you said, with those big, honest eyes, and I did. I loved you like a brother, then, even if that was after that time you came in from a long run, sweating and half-naked, shorts riding low low low on your hips, dragging the heavy weight of guilt behind you. I trusted you so completely, scared and maybe pregnant and sick with worry. And you said if we needed anything you were here, and I told you I loved you. It was in a good way, then, the *right* way. Now it's not. Now it's bad. Now it's wrong.)

I started to cry. You were crying too,
smiling and crying in a way that made me even more hysterical.
You said I could have anything I wanted, but I
just couldn't say it out loud.
Actually, you said, "Love, for you,
is larger than the usual romantic love.
It's like religion.
It's terrifying.
No one will ever want to sleep with you."
- Litany In Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out

I get so attached to people that I don't know what to do with myself.
If there were no suffering underneath
(but there's always suffering isn't there no one is ever completely happy)
I wouldn't have had this dream. I wouldn't think of him quite the same way.
It would be easier.
But we can't have that, now, can we?
Someone has to be unhappy.
Might as well be me, and me making everyone miserable.

He hits you and he hits you and he hits you.
Desire driving his hands right into your body.
You wanted to think of yourself as someone who did these kinds of things.
You wanted to be in love
and he happened to get in the way.
-- A Primer For the Small Weird Loves

I love so deeply that it is like taking a beating from the loved one over and over and over
(Trey hits you and he hits you and he hits you and he doesn't even know he's doing it
but you can take it, you are strong, you have dealt with this
again and again and again.)
I love too many people so much and I don't know how to fix it.
I don't know how to make it right.
And this love. . .this crush, whatever, is so very. . .
(you know what it is it's WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG. and you standing in that crowd of writhing people being tempted and tempted, and finally screaming in his face then hit me, hit me! and he just tells you to dance but you can't you're still carrying the weight of that guilt like a stone, and you need him to knock it out of you competely BAM.
But he can't make you say it, so you don't.)

xxxx

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting by the world forgot
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resigned.

We were just standing there, waiting for class to start.
Nice day. The sun was shining. It brought out the blonde highlights you'd just put in. Which brought out your eyes.
Which made me feel guilty for thinking so.
I grabbed your arm on an impulse- those scars, you know?
I loved them. I hated them.
Pink and puckered, shapes of your pain.
A heart.
The word L - O - V - E, carved crudely into your forearm.
The X's on your chest.
I wasn't asking for an explanation.
Wanted one badly.
Didn't ask.
Was on the verge of it.
Didn't.
Just wanted to feel those scars.
I'm a creep. I know.
I hate to see you suffer. Guess that makes me a bad person.
"I can explain," you said,
yanking your arm away from me.
"I want to know."
My voice never came out this quiet. I didn't care if I gave anything away by it.
"When I'm upset,"
you spoke again,
"about family, and friends, and girls. . .
well, it doesn't seem like a legitimate reason to cry.
When I do this-
that's real pain.
So it's alright, then."
Oh,
Trey.
I felt so dizzy.
I swallowed.
"I don't know how I feel about that just yet," I said. "Give me a minute."
But I knew exactly how it made me feel.
Sad.
In an, "I don't want you to go," way.
Because he will. He'll fall deeper and deeper in to the drugs,
and the sex,
and the rock and roll,
and he won't be Trey anymore.
He already isn't. But there's some of him there,
when the light's just right,
left over from that fall.
And I want to hold onto it,
and never, ever let it go.
Friend.
Cute, sweet, honest, funny boy.
Boy I can trust.
Hurt soul.
It is all I can say to anyone anymore. All I can beg of them.
Please
don't
go.


And it came to me then that ev'ry plan
is a tiny prayer to Father Time
as I stared at my shoes in the I.C.U.
that reeked of piss and 409.
And I rationed my breaths,
as I said to myself
that I'd already taken too much today
as each descending peak on the LCD
took you a little farther away from me.
Amongst the vending machines
and year-old magazines
in a place where we only say goodbye
it stung like a violent wind
that our memories depend
on a faulty camera in our minds.
And I knew that you were a truth
I would rather lose
Than to never have lain beside at all.
Then I looked around at all the eyes on the ground
as the T.V. entertained itself.
Cuz there's no comfort in the waiting room
Just nervous faces waiting for bad news.
Then the nurse comes around
and everyone lifts their heads.
But I'm thinking of what Sarah said-
Love is watching someone die.

I guess she needs me still.
Maybe there's some way to salvage what's left.
Of all of us.

Summer's coming.

xxxx

I am the living dead girl because I am too weak to die. I hate those crying women on TV because they are just like me, weak and broken and clinging to the hands that hold us under.
- Living Dead Girl

Birthday candles lit, she asks herself if she has really grown up after all this time,
or just lost a lot of things.
Quick, the wax is melting onto the cake.
Quick, make a wish.
Quick, hope for something.
She'd been through a lot of hoping and loving, and most things she'd hoped for, she'd gotten in some way that was right for her,
but the problem with that was the more she loved it,
the worse it was when the Almighty took it away again.
So there was no more believing in heaven or hell. All those people, hoping and expecting those streets made of gold,
and then after, nothing.
Blackness.
She didn't want to be one of those people, laden with false hope for a nonexistent future.
The candles are blown out, and no wish is made.
No wishes, no chance for love to be taken.
Again and again and again.
No weaknesses, he couldn't hurt her anymore- not that there wasn't anything left to hurt, she'd tried that, but disappearing turned out to be too bland for her tastes-
but of what was left of her, there was no unbroken skin left to break.
Metaphorically, of course.
She had no weaknesses left, for they had all been discovered and ticked off on the many fingers of some unrighteous god.
There was nothing left to ruin.
Happy birthday, dear girl. Your life is over, and it's only just begun.


"I sleep. I dream. I make up things that I would never say.
I say them quietly."
- Richard Siken, Meanwhile

Fingers pressed against the glass she hums an inane tune to herself.
Something, she thinks,
about falling
down
the
rabbit
hole.
At the bottom, there is no light, but she stumbles quietly, feeling at walls,
still humming that same tune.
She's been more and more insane lately.
And what is there to do about it?
n-o-t-h-i-n-g
And who is there to help her?
n-o  o-n-e
And does she want to be helped?

She's not certain.
More dreams. More tunes hummed.
More falling,
falling down the rabbit hole.
Can't get out. Clawing madly.
No one hears her scream.
Just alone.
Alone in her head.
Alone with what she has become.

Run, little bunny rabbit.
Hippity hop.
The men in white coats have brought you a special message.
Not even they want you.
Die, little rabbit.
You're all alone.


( I couldn't see through the blood & tears. )</span></span></div>( I couldn't see through the blood & tears. )</span></div>( I couldn't see through the blood & tears. )</span></span></div></span>( I couldn't see through the blood & tears. )</div>
</span>
( I couldn't see through the blood and tears. )

I used to have so much fervor for life. Whatever pain came, I relished it. I cried, and I felt it, because it was a new thing.
Whatever joy came, it came tenfold. It was a blue sky day. It was an open highway with the radio blasting. It was freedom.

Now, too much pain has happened. So much pain has happened that when more comes along, I don't feel it. And pretty soon, I don't feel anything at all. Not for a story, not for a word. Not for myself.
It's nice to know you have the worst type of depression, and you can't get help for it. You can't let your parents know, and you can't explain why, because there are too many whys. The whys have been building up for three years now, and last spring, they collapsed on me. The whys are novels upon novels of reasons why, and now they are too many for a lifetime. I should have written them down as I happened upon them
Instead I let them sit, and now I can't write them down at all. I can't write things that I have no feeling for.
On and off, I have no feeling: if I have a feeling, it's the worst misery ever. It's misery of having to live and not knowing why, even though I should be perfectly happy. I'm chemically imbalanced. I need medication.
But I can't ask for help.
My friends know about this. My friends have all experienced it. Some have it still inside them. One is being medicated, and I envy her, although she sees a psychologist and he makes her talk about the things that are bothering her. I don't know if I could. The people closest to me don't listen; why should I have reason to believe a complete stranger would? And if he or she did listen, my behaviour, my thoughts, my feelings, would be diagnosable. They would have logical explanations.

You are not seeing angels or running with wolves.

Even though these feelings have existed, even though others have seen them exist and have no explanation for any of my questions, this is what that adult would tell me. You realize this, don't you? they would say, speaking slowly as if to a madwoman.
And I wouldn't be able to confirm that. Not literally, I'd reply. Not people with wings, but people who leave an impression in my soul. People who leave feelings in me that shake my bones and make me question how I got here. Not sneaking out of my window in the middle of a winter's night to hunt with a pack of large canines, but that feeling he's left inside that reminds me of a wiser time. A time when we knew ourselves, and our skin was a beautiful red-brown. A feather moon.
I don't know what someone professional would say about these thoughts. Perhaps obsession. Perhaps schitzophrenia. That's not all hearing voices, you know. It's losing touch with reality.
But after meeting the people I'm writing this too, I don't think that's a credible diagnosis.

I don't cut open my skin, because the sight of blood makes me queasy, and I know the pain would not relieve me of this mess I'm in.
I don't think seriously about taking my own life. It's more like a passive wish for it to stop. I hate that feeling. But when it suffocates me like this, it's dumbed me down enough not to hate it.
My worst enemy numbs me. It makes life a bore. A chore. It's like writing from the bottom of an icy well. Can't feel, can't reach. Don't care. Braindead.
The good thing is, it goes away. It stays for two weeks or so, and then it lets go of me. And I feel again. And every feeling is glorious. But the worst thing ever is knowing it will come back again. And it will, too. Sometimes it gives me a couple weeks of true feeling, sometimes only a couple days. It sets in at odd, random times and for no reason. Usually when I'm tired, or when I have nothing to do. I can hardly write anymore. At night it's the worst. I have panic attacks.

I would ignore it if it wasn't going to effect decisions I make later in my life- particularily in the relationship department. Seriously, I care about him so much. And then when this sets in, I don't. And that's not me thinking. That's not me not feeling. I don't even know what it is.
I don't know what to do.

Secrets:
- I keep hoping that the reason my Xanga page won't load is because I have so many comments that my server doesn't know what to do.
- When I'm sick it seems impossible to ever be better.
- When things are orderly, life seems orderly. When things are a mess, life seems a mess.
- During Chemistry on Tuesday, I wrote in a diary all hour instead of listening to Mr. Florez.
- I wonder why everone picks on Mr. Florez all the time. I think it's because everyone has a teacher-crush on him; even the guys. I catch myself doing this every once in a while but find that I'm having too much fun to stop it. Afterwards I feel as if I should make up for it.
- I think I always think that everyone else cares way more about what I do and say than they actually do.
- I stopped playing Rae for a while because my maturity level dropped so considerably that I couldn't comprehend her any longer.
- Secretly, it was his fault.
- I am still regaining my maturity but do not have to sit their for five minutes *thinking* before I post any longer.
- Today I almost wrote your last name in place of mine on accident. Then I realized Nikki Suchy sounds like a Japanese porn star. And it rhymes, the horror.
- I actually consider some of these things secrets.

I mouth the words to this song and trace your fingers with mine, remembering how you had fallen asleep on my chest. How I could breathe in the scent of your hair just as you had breathed steadily against me. Your sleepy voice. Your squinting eyes.
I had laughed at this as I sat you up, cooing at you as if you were a young child, moving you, cradling you, and you had seemed hardly aware.
But now you are mostly awake, watching me curiously with your back against the bus window, letting me play with your hand.
And I realize, after the song had ended, that we have to leave. I cannot simply fall asleep on your chest as is my wish, cannot use the beating of your heart as my lullaby. And I realize that this perfect moment will soon slip away, just as all moments, good or bad, slip away.
I don't care how ridiculous I seem, or how intolerant men are towards a woman's tears (do we cry of things beyond your reach and is it the fear of the unknown that scares you, or do we just present ourselves to you as one big point of weakness?). I only care that soon I will be leaving you, and selfishly I cling.
I cling to your body, my religion, my safety, my home, and how can I tell you just all that you are?

Now it is two days later and you have told me that you wish you were here.
"I'm sick," I've said.
"I need to take care of you when you are sick." Your respone.
"Aww," I've wheezed, the words [In Sickness And In Health] beating against my conscience, unstoppable.
Then the words [You Silly Girl].

"It's a house," I say, our thumbs and forefingers bent together to make a pentagon.
We round our hands to form and oblong shape with a point. "Now it's a teardrop.
How quickly dreams die.
[For Better For Worse].

Autumn trees bow to shade wide streets in a charming neighborhood. I pick a white house that is ours, large with many windows and a spacious back yard where grow apple and pear trees.
Ours, I can imagine. Our confessions and our loves and our separate lives making one life that belongs to us. [Till Death Do Us Part].

 

I was going to save this for part of HT, but I just couldn't wait =[]

You are smoothly always in me making me round and stretched and filled with you.
I dreamt the other night that I gave birth to the ocean herself and there you were small as the head of a pin, chasing yourself round and round in it after your freedom, but I had not the heart by then to tell you you were caging yourself in doing so.
I simply picked you up delicately in the palm of my hand and held you at eye level; there was the cabin in which we had spent many nights together, the stained glass covering the stern in miniscule, intricate yellow squares, tiny wooden deck and your eyes gleaming maliciously at me from the penny-sized helm- "Put me down, Rae, let me go, let bygones be bygones," you scream, just like you have always said to me.
I cannot, will not bring myself to let go of you, but like water you slip through my fingers and fall back into our ocean child as she grows and grows and I fall with you landing short of your now full-sized ship in my wide wide sea that I have created, that we have created, and every tide rises as every shore is swallowed in her enormity, and towns and cities and whole civilizations disappear beneath her. She covers a thousand universes, expanding lifetimes, and she and I call our your name together, drowning in ourselves, drowning in you.
You with your hands that used to hold me, like fingers tracing maps of foreign lands, swaying, rocking in the comfort of all your stories and all your lies. All the times you whispered to me with the soft murmur of the sea, as if I were as precious as the horizon hanging over your shoulder, the soft morning cry of seagulls on the mast.
When we lay together being tossed about by a storm, the static shock of electricity like a quick breath in the night, and you as you leave me to tend to matters more important, and oh how I wish you would steer me through the storm, I need your hands at my helm and your eyes on my horizon and your patience through my sobbing downpour and my angry lightning strikes and my fickle, unpredictable gale.
But I am left alone with my swollen self rocking on a lonely ocean, hoping a strange current will pick me up and carry me home. Clocks chime the hour, an endless to and fro, books sit in silent vigil still and observant.
Where are you on my wide wide sea?
Have you sunken or are you still afloat?

You can walk on water,
but still you let me drown.

xxxx

PS-



I don't really know who I am this fall. I seem to be a combination of unlikely things.
I'm discovering  new things about life each day, but i seem to be growing down instead of growing up. I don't think I could have grown up any more than I had been before, so is that why I'm losing instead of gaining?
My cup was full and ready to overflow, so I had to drink from it?
I can't make any sense of this.
I've grown out of the Twilight series because of all the newbie fans that are taking away from the pleasure of loving something unique. But I am rereading the books.
Things about me have changed but still I feel as if I'm the same person. Still going boldly nowhere.
I bought a keychain with that phrase on it the other day. I knew that in some way it described me, but since lately I've been trying to put all the pieces of me back together and get myself straight, I didn't know how. Just knew that it was.
I wonder if we can ever know ourselves consciously, or if by trying too hard we simply confuse ourselves more? Is it better to wait until you realize- I believe this, this gives me a bad feeling, or like the other day, this phrase is a part of me?
Being busy is most of the reason I have no idea who I am anymore. The other two reasons have to do with being on the phone every night with my boyfriend- I have no wind-down time to think. Instead it is our wind-down time, and the being him and I make as Us is different than the being I make as Me. Me includes Us and Us includes Me, but the two have their differences and I think I've been concentrating too entirely on the Us portion of Me lately.
It's nice to be able to make this observation.

You called my name,
I turned to face you.

You smiled at me
(and it was your smile,
the sun breaking thru the clouds)

"Jake,"
I said,
in a voice
not like mine
at all.

You passed,
still smiling.
"Don't ever
say my name,"
I mumbled.
So you couldn't hear.

Hi, Mom.
Let me sit and recover.
Not a chance.
"Are you going to
throw up
or something?"

I almost laughed.
I cried instead.

"Mom?"
"Yeah?" she whispered back.
"I think Miz June was right when she said I was in love with Travis Becker's motorcycle."
"That's okay, Ruby," my mother said. "I think I was in love with your father's guitar."
- Honey, Baby, Sweetheart

As if I couldn't love you more.

I collapsed full out onto the couch that I was so used to sleeping on, dead tired but tense because you were near.
Closed my eyes, and I could feel you there, standing over me like a shadow.
Shut them tight.
And what did you do?
And what. Did. You. Do?
You watched me sleep.
I tried not to relax. If I did, I'd think of cool rain on glass windowpanes, and then I'd think of other things. And I'd curl in on myself to stop the clenching in my stomach. And you'd know. You'd know what I was thinking of, right there in the same room as me.
It's different to think about those things when no one is around. But when the object of those thoughts is within five feet of you, that's a problem.
Especially when you're me. And you sometimes can't differentiate between fact and fiction.
And you know and you know and you know he's watching you.
Thinking the same thing, probably.
It's also sad to have the same fantasies as someone else. They're basically reading your mind, then. They know about skin on skin. They know everything.
Everything.
About someone who's said they'd love to wake up with you. Regardless of whether they actually knew what they wanted or not.
Regardless of. . .anything, really.
Take a seat, I'm thinking, or I'm pulling you down with me.
I get up, reach over, turn the light off, stretch back out. That way we won't have to look at each other and suffer.
Although I did forget how awful it is when it gets dark.


PS-

If I were you I'd probably be staring at my hands a lot, too.

"To desperately hope," I whispered.
James let out a breath. "To gratefully believe."

xxxx

"Bella?" Edward whispered, his arms tight around me, shaking me gently. "Are you alright, Sweetheart?"
"Oh," I gasped again. Just a dream. Not real. To my utter astonishment, tears overflowed from my eyes without warning, gushing down my face.
"Bella!" he said- louder, alarmed now. "What's wrong?" He wiped the tears from my hot cheeks with cold, frantic fingers, but others followed.
"It was only a dream." I couldn't contain the low sob that broke in my voice. The senseless tears were disturbing, but I couldn't get control of the staggering grief that gripped me. I wanted so badly for the dream to be real.
"It's okay, love, you're fine. I'm here." He rocked me back and forth, a little too fast to soothe. "Did you have another nightmare? It wasn't real, it wasn't real."
"Not a nightmare." I shook my head, scrubbing the back of my hand against my eyes. "It was a good dream." My voice broke again.
"Then why are you crying?" he asked, bewildered.
"Because I woke up," I wailed, wrapping my arms around his neck in a chokehold and sobbing into his throat.

I used to think this was silly.
& now. . .
And now.
Ohhhh.
How I quiver when he's near. How I shake in my bones.
How I ache inside.
Okay, I'm exagerrating a little.
But only that. Only a little. Only just so that it's an inch of extremity.

You've made your home in my soul, and once someone does that, they are there for life. No matter what happens, no matter who happens, no matter how many miles, you'll be there now. An entry in my life's story, a tattoo of a glass house on a rainy day etched deep, blue, watery, into my skin.
I love how when I come home I can smell you on me. I duck down into myself because I'm not used to someone watching me with such attentiveness.
'Cuz I'm scared that the longer you stare the more things you'll find that you don't like. All of the really ugly things about me. You've already studied my thoughts. You know what you don't like there, and it's not enough to scare you away. What about the more obvious things? The things on the outside? Is that enough to eventually tire you?
& then there's them.
Alexis, Amanda, the ones I don't know, the ones I do.
You're so quiet about everything.
I don't know how long it will take for you to decide that I'm the mistake, not them.
I remember the look in her eyes when you ditched her for me. I can imagine the look in Amanda's.
I know when I deserve something, and it's not often. It's not this time, either, especially. I'm a pain in the ass. We all know it. I know it better than anyone, being me to begin with.
They weren't, and they loved you, too.
Arguably, maybe not as much as me right now. Probably not. Of course, I like to believe that whatever I feel is a little bit beyond teenage thinking. But then, I'm lying to myself there. I have to be.

You're like someone I've met in a past life, like I've known you before because we fit so perfectly.
Because we're right, or close to it, but my faith is a little shabby by now.
I think they call that hella nervous.
My body can't handle these above-and-beyond feelings.
Just like I can't feel my legs when we have to do the box drill in front of everyone. I lose control of something I really want to kill, really want to know.
All I know is pretty soon the world's all swimmy and I can't move one inch in the direction I want to.
I wish you could see into my mind sometimes. Sometimes I think it would be a bit too much for you to handle but others I really want you to know what i'm thinking. So you know that the way I act is the opposite of the way I feel. We sit there and all I want to do is cling to you and kiss you and breathe you and feel you. But I don't do that because I can't work myself the way I want to. I can't make myself move so you'll feel. Exactly how I feel. Because it would cover most of what I feel but there are levels of that that i think not even I can reach. That I couldn't tell you or show you or anything.
So I sit there because it's better not to try to express myself that way at all than trying showing you and being a total failure.

Sometimes I hate being so complicated.

What am I doing to myself?
I'm exhausted. I have that lump in my throat that happens when I'm upset.
I just remembered something today.

The Jake I hate, shortly before school ended. Placing his hand against my stomach and making a crude joke about the spots that drive women insane.
His hand on my stomach,
& I picture dark-haired children running into the forest.
A grimace of pain.
I can't even tell him not to touch me. I can only stare in horror, with all my hatred and pain.

This morning, texting him because he sounded upset on Myspace. Because I'm always hoping that he'll return to himself even if it will only hurt me more.
Why do I never learn?
Why am I always so concerned for him?
Right, don't answer that.
Because I will always love him. I know. I will always never be able to have him.

July 8 - From one outcast, sitting at a table meant for three.
I feel so close to you here at this mall because it is the only place I am ever sure I saw you at all. I must be in the mood for poetry today.
Anyway, I am not on a road trip as you would know by now. I'm just sitting here feeling pretty vulnerable and shaky and. . .I miss you, which is nothing new.
The girl you know, the very pretty one who looks a little like Eliza is sitting on the bench I like to sit on, talking to another girl I've never seen before. The one you know had a stack of papers in her hands, in her lap. I wondered how often she thought of you and decided definitely not as much as me, because she looked perfectly sane and happy in a sort of sad way.
I've decided that this isn't meant for being only on the road. It's become a sort of pocket prayer, with blank pages, and I'll know when it's right, when I need to write in it. It's hard to write in the car, any way.
I despise diaries- they are juvenile and teenage. Everything should be looked at from a different perspective, something creative and irregular, something true and honest that would also sell, that anyone would read and believe.
Yet I can't help but think deep down this is simply the diary of someone who knows how to write. Who has faith in something crazy, who won't get help because she is afraid she will lose everything worth fighting for if she cannot believe in you. And some of her already can't.
I dunno, Mitch. I think a lot about how much it would scare you if you knew what I thought of you. How much I thought of you, not in length of time or how often but in value. Up to a point where I can't love you in a human way. Not like that, leastways. I can't say you're cute or hawt or adorable or fine. Not any more. Whenever someone says this I can only return to them that you are beautiful.
I think now that the strange things that happen are not that strange anymore. THe only miracle I can imagine right now is seeing you again. I jump at shadows when I do that, though, and I think it's not so good for me.
For instance, right now I am looking at a sign that says Sports Zone: aka: Start Your Engines. Now, this is ironic for obvious reasons, but not that much, because it refers to something I made up.
But as this building becomes busier and busier, I feel as though I must look at every person to make sure. Luckily, you do not blend in with a crowd and I have pretty much given up looking altogether, which is a total lie (the latter, not the former part of that sentence), but I thought it was convincing for a moment, didn't you?
Gee, I love people, but there are way too many in this world and especially in this mall. It's better here before they open, and all the lights are off, and there is not so much noise.
Oh, I think I've stumbled upon another quirk of mine:
The Mall Is A Sacred Place.
Not only this mall, although it would rank up there for a number of reasons, one of them being you. Every mall in this country and in the world. It is where all sorts of people come together: big and small, multiracial, young and old, poor and rich, My Chem fans and Ashlee Simpson fans, everyone, you name it. Every one of us has a secret, a problem, a weakness, a. . .cell phone, it seems, although this doesn't fit in with the rest. They all come here, and they laugh and some cry and the little ones stare through the skylights until they are no less than blind. We are all here for different reasons, some to shop, some to sit, to socialize, to eat, to get away. That being said, the mall is a world within itself, and we all have a purpose here.
That's one way I know you're still here with me. I am writing like I haven't in weeks. I am writing like I shouldn't be able to in such an open space, with so much distraction and I am not writing only to fill space. I need to say these things. What I believe. What I've realized. What I hope. What I know for certain.
I picture a middle-aged man coming up to me and asking what it is that I have so much to scribble about and I picture myself saying in return, 'an angel', which I suppose is to say 'life'.
Right now I don't hate Dustin because how is he suppose to know what *delusions I am having?
I wonder what Dustin would say if he knew, if I explained to him about you and the past year. If he's the type to believe in these things.
I am getting lead fingerprints all over this table. Not significant but kind of comforting. I wonder how many smudges are on my face.
An old man just sat down at the table in front of me. He has heavily tattooed arms. He makes me smile because when I study the ink on his skin I know that it is not only us young people that have lost our senses. He sits so confident and so alone and I envy that. I want to become that, someone of my own. I want to recopy this and set the small page down on his table so he knows how proud of him I am, but I know I haven't the courage to do it. That is one other thing I want a lot. Courage, coupled with passion & confidence. If I had that all the time, every day, I could be happy. But I can't judge what his reaction would be, if he's be thankful or offended by my judgment, if he'd take it the wrong way. I am so afraid of rejection nowadays.
But I don't like people calling me Sweetheart, either.
xxxx

* delusions: I hate this word, like the word obsession, because how can things like this be proven? Are we to say that people who believe in God are delusional? This is the only thing that keeps me believing in you besides the fact that I have tried and tried not to believe and still I do.

MISSHAPEN CHAOS OF WELL-SEEMING FORMS
He is well-seeming to me, but misshapen chaos to others. Sometimes he enters my night-thoughts and circles, protectecting, although somehow he is everywhere at once. We learn from things we lose. We fight for the people we want to keep, but that doesn't always mean we get to keep them. In fact- most of the time we lose.

OUT OF HER FAVOR WHERE I AM IN LOVE
So you love me but the person I want to love me is not you and is not a person. He is James and I am ashamed. I lied. I am not. He is so much better, and of course he is because he isn't real but he lives within me. & I hurt you hurt you hurt you and we should just be friends. Right now I could live with that.

MY CHILD IS YET A STRANGER IN THE WORLD
We think we know so much but we are only an inconsequential blip in this universe. 365 x 15= 5,475 days we have lived. A long life = 80 years. 365 x 80= 25,800 days we could live. 25,800 - 5,475= 20,325 more days we could have left to live. Most of us have time. So why can't we use it? Instead of trying to fit a five course meal into two. Can we stop to enjoy or must we always rush?

GO, GIRL. SEEK HAPPY NIGHTS THRU HAPPY DAYS!
We could be satisfied. We always look at the dark surrounding the light and assume there is much more of the bad than the good. We understand almost nothing truly. We do not think hard and long and smile over the lessons that misfortune teaches us. We frown and cry and shut out and hate and that hate makes us blind to the world and to each other.

TRUE, I TALK OF DREAMS
& I sleep and my dreams in sleep are not as good as my waking dreams. They are ghosts left over from the night before, vague empty nothings and no more than wishes made real by subconscious imagining. During the daytime what I dream is before me and I make the most out of it because daydreams are a lot more important as therapy than people think. Fantasy completes us. We could not live without it.

SOME CONSEQUENCE YET HANGING IN THE STARS
We never think before we do things
There is a difference between being spontaneous and acting stupid
We make our own fates in the end no matter what mystical forces are watching over us
Mostly we decide.
We are what we make of ourselves.

A THOUSAND TIMES GOODNIGHT
We can't let go even when things and people hurt us
It is like holding on to a hot iron & will get you nowhere
& it only stings more the longer you hold it in your hands
We must embrace the past and unfortunately slowly forget it if we are to move on.
Sometimes we stay and do not forget and become mirror images of ourselves because we are not living in the present and somehow that makes us lesser.

& FOLLOW THEE MY LORD THRUOUT THE WORLD
We were going to go places, you and I, if even just in theory. Now running away doesn't seem so glamorous becuase I know it won't solve anything and how are we to find ourselves if we only run from us? We should be happy staying put for now and trying to make sense of some things before we expose ourselves to all that hurt we're missing out on.

PARTING IS SUCH SWEET SORROW
I can't let go of any of you because you have all told me something about myself I needed to know to be me. Jack you taught me freedom and what's right by me. Mitch you taught me faith isn't easy but saves us all if we can hang on hard enough. James you taught me what forever love is like. Jake you taught me. . .that people live on in memory if not in body & you don't notice that you're breakfast is cold if you're in enough pain. There are more of you and you are all a promise of impedning schitzophrenia but you are all a part of me so that makes it okay somehow.

THE SWEETEST HONEY IS LOATHESOME IN ITS OWN DELICIOUSNESS
I think we all rely on sexual fantasies sometimes or at least I do. It can get old from time to time but as human nature  goes the disinterest never lasts long. I believe that innocence can be found in some of the most supposedly dirty situations but more people find a good game of Monopoly much less guilt-inducing and that's fine, I suppose.

THOU ART WEDDED TO CALAMITY
It's pretty safe to say that bad things will always happen no matter how hard we try to ignore them. Unless optimists are the way they are because they are lucky people and they don't know what it means to lsoe someone they love or drop their ice cream cone or get the flu or be abandoned or scared or sad or angry or jealous. although this is highly doubtful and I would in fact bet my life on it if I thought it was worth much.

WE WERE BORN TO DIE
We wonder what happens after death so often because we all secretly fear tha there is nothing and therefore our lives are pointless. I think it would be nice if life was good enough that we didn't have to wonder what came after it & we could look at the things and people around us and not care if we were going to hell because life is fucking great!

DO AS THOU WILT FOR I HAVE DONE WITH THEE
How often we feel invisible and alone and shunned and left out. Therefore we must make our own values and live by our own book ( as long as it does not get in the way of other's plans or harm them in any way). No one will ever care about the things in your life like you.

THOU ART NOT CONQUERED
You are an army all to yourself with more fight in you than you will ever believe. You bring your angels to fight your demons and they will always win, your angels.
You are taller, thinner, prettier than you think. You are more loved than you will ever know.
-Mitchell


(!?) ^

That is my angels and he laughs at his name. I am more fond of him than most things. ;)

Thirty-three years go by
And not once do you come home
To find a man sitting in your bedroom
That is
A man you don't know
Who came a long way to deliver one very specific message:
Lock your back door, you idiot
However invincible you imagine yourself to be
You are wrong

Thirty-three years go by
And you loosen the momentum of teenage nightmares
Your breasts hang like a woman's
And you don't jump at shadows anymore
Instead you may simply pause to admire
Those that move with the grace of trees
Dancing past streetlights
And you walk through your house without turning on lamps
Sure of the angle from door to table
From table to staircase
Sure of the number of steps
Seven to the landing
Two to turn right
Then seven more
Sure you will stroll serenely on the moving walkway of memory
Across your bedroom
And collapse with a sigh onto your bed
Shoes falling
Thunk thunk
Onto the floor
And there will be no strange man
Suddenly all that time sitting there
Sitting there on what must be the prize chair
In your collection of uncomfortable chairs
With a wild look in his eyes
And hands that you cannot see
Holding what?
You do not know

So sure are you of the endless drumming rhythm of your isolation
That you are painfully slow to adjust
If only because
Yours is not that genre of story
Still and again, life cannot muster the stuff of movies
No bullets shattering glass
Instead fear sits patiently
Fear almost smiles when you finally see him
Though you have kept him waiting for thirty-three years
And now he has let himself in
And he has brought you fistfuls of teenage nightmares
Though you think you see, in your naivete
That he is empty handed
And this brings you great relief
At the time

New as you are, really, to the idea that
Even after you've long since gotten used to the parameters
They can all change
While you're out one night having a drink with a friend
Some big hand may be turning a big dial
Switching channels on your dreams
Until you find yourself lost in them
And watching your daily life with the sound off
And of course having cautiously turned down the flame under your eyes
There are more shadows around everything
Your vision a dim flashlight that you have to shake all the way to the outhouse
Your solitude elevating itself like the spirit of the dead
Presiding over your supposed repose
Not really sleep at all
Just a sleeping position and a series of suspicious sounds
A clanking pipe
A creaking branch
The footfalls of a cat
All of this and maybe
The swish of the soft leather of your intruder's coat
As you walk him step by step back to the door
Having talked him down off the ledge of a very bad idea
Soft leather, big feet, almond eyes
The kinds of details the police officer would ask for later
With his clipboard
And his pistol
In your hallway

I don't know if you know the agony I am in. Or care.
Every day
I choke
Under the weight
Of tears
Caused by you.
I haunt hiking trails
Like a malnourished ghost
I eat cold waffles
& repeat a task that
we were supposed to do
Before you died.
You died.
You died.
I have to repeat that to myself
because although there is someone who resembles you near,
who has your memories
& sometimes your voice
is not you at all.
& that you are gone forever.
You said you would always be here.
If you are like nature, then that 'always'
is a very long time.
You must have been shoved out so quickly into the cold that you couldn't even stop to tell me you were going.
I can't say goodbye. I just keep trying to hold you when I sleep.
& I keep waking up knowing so much of what it is to miss the ones you love the most.

All the lives we ever lived,
And all the lives to be,
Are full of Trees
And changing leaves.

You call it hope–that fire of fire!
It is but agony of desire. . .
You see that she can't stop shaking. You are a constant headache in her soul. A dry-mouthed summer hike. Lose her mind agonising with wanting you back. Is she really that pathetically weak to need you?
Right now, she doesn't think so.
She just feels ready to expire.

Know thou the secret of a spirit
Bow'd from its wild pride into shame.
You stood so tall. She is talking at you instead of to you. Would you listen? What happened to pride and honour? The sun does not sleep in a dark room. You cowered. You gave up. She is still here trying, but why?

O craving heart, for the lost flowers
And sunshine of my summer hours!
The undying voice of that dead time,
With its interminable chime,
Rings, in the spirit of a spell,
Upon thy emptiness–a knell.
She wishes there was some way to go back and rewind that beautiful song and face the embarrassment for whatever reason. She would dance like a woman. She would know how. She would hold you with a happily beating blood pulsing warm heart. She'd cry a little, maybe, and wonder if you knew. She'd also wonder if this was what dancing like a woman really meant.

Why did I leave it, and, adrift,
Trust to the fire within, for light?
She leaned on you for warmth not guidance. She missed you when you were gone. She didn't know what gone meant with you. She only knew the smile you gave her was enough to thaw her out and it was enough for forever.

We grew in age–and love–together,
Roaming the forest, and the wild;
My breast her shield in wintry weather-
And when the friendly sunshine smil'd. . .
Sometimes she runs like a silly thing through the forest preserve by her house. She thinks she's faster than the deer that leap in front of cars at night but if you were there you'd show her a thing or two about fast.

And pour my spirit out in tears-
There was no need to speak the rest-
No need to quiet any fears. . .
She looks at the phone like it will answers something but she knows when she calls your cell the other half of you will pick up, your evil twin, and he won't be half as amiable and sober as you were. So she thinks that it's best left alone but she also keeps thinking that if she talks to you long enough she'll find you again somehow. She hopes too much.

'Twas sunset: when the sun will part
There comes a sullenness of heart
To him who still would look upon
The glory of the summer sun.
She wants your comfort and is put off by the idea that she will have to find her own now. She'd rather look at you all perfect and sunny and bubble with joy at the sight of really you.

And boyhood is a summer sun
Whose waning is the dreariest one-
For all we live to know is known,
And all we seek to keep hath flown-
Let life, then, as the day-flower, fall
With the noon-day beauty–which is all.
You're still most of what she sees and if she could tell you how ironic it was that you were drinking apple cider today she probably wouldn't. But she'd like to think she might. She thinks she should have cared less about you and then you would have stayed like bad infomercials on a small TV.

I reach'd my home–my home no more
For all had flown who made it so.
I pass'd from out its mossy door,
And, tho' my tread was soft and low,
A voice came from the threshold stone
Of one whom I had earlier known-
O, I defy thee, Hell, to show
On beds of fire that burn below,
A humbler heart–a deeper woe.
She doesn't hear you when she's in the woods but she might as well because you are a constant force that stays in spirit if not in body and she gets mad at you sometimes but that's only because she's afraid to admit it's mostly herself she hates.

She ceas'd–and buried then her burning cheek
Abash'd, amid the lilies there, to seek
A shelter from the fervor of His eye. . .
If the two were in that room again and he was staring her down like he really felt something she would have choked down her redness and become something graceful that could maybe ballroom dance. And she would not have looked down to hide from your eyes. She still says this although she figures that day was the warmest she'd been all winter.

"What tho 'in worlds which sightless cycles run,
Linked to a little system, and one sun-
Where all my love is folly and the crowd
Still think my terrors but the thunder cloud,
The storm, the earthquake, and the ocean-wrath-
(Ah! will they cross me in my angrier path?)
What tho' in worlds which own a single sun
The sands of Time grow dimmer as they run. . .
We're all going to die anyway, she thinks. But running herself through with a butcher knife is not a pretty thing, she thinks. She's looking for the niceness in all of this mess.

As the spell which no slumber
Of witchery may test,
The rhythmical number
Which lull'd him to rest?"
Why are you gone?
She asks herself this question a lot and she thinks that somewhere deep inside her she knows the answer but she's afraid to look for it for some reason that she's afraid to look for.

PS-
She thinks you were the best because even though she didn't see you all summer, you liked to watch stars and you were proud of your heritage and that was enough for her.