gps

my mom used to say my freckles were angel kisses.
but now I know, they are just a road map connecting my heart to yours.

six words

the wednesday before thursday

I keep playing hide and seek with reality.
Real life is approaching too fast. 
I have an ear ache from all my goals and I have an eye twitch because my past keeps moving in the shadows. 

I'm overall, just disappointed--
because,
*I was hoping to be happy by seventeen.

But it has been 515 days since seventeen, and each day I feel closer and closer to the border. The line where happiness starts and loneliness and heartbreak and every other ugly feeling end.

My heart it starting to mold and it smells like 
Aspergillus penicillium. 
I've got to act fast.

I wrote down "MY DREAMS" on a piece of black card stock and I took out a magnifying glass. 
It was Wednesday. And I sat on my curb with my feet on the pavement and my ambition in the clouds.
And then where ever the wind touched the paper I burnt a hole. I did that until I could see more positive than negative.
I did it 
so that
when I hold up my dreams to my mom's perspective and logic on Thursday,
I can maybe, somehow, possibly remember how I got to that curb in the first place.
MY DREAMS. 
My mom says "Reality hurts."
But I say "So do sunburns. And mold."

dragonfly

We are six years old again and you tell me why you don't yell.
Then we play spies in the apple trees and I catch a moth big enough to be a bird.
We make some kettle corn and listen to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe book-on-tape on my jean blanket.
We used to pretend that every gust of wind was a tsunami and that every car was a kidnapper.
And when it was time for you to go home- your mom would whistle- kind of like for a dog. But it had more charm.
Before you left, we would run to my house and get a butter scotch candy from my mom's china cabinet and make promises about when school was out tomorrow.
And we always kept our promises,
and we promised to never grow up.

hand it to me

Give me some time to panic. I ran out, just a minute ago, and my shoes stuck to the pavement like my thoughts often stick to yours. I was trying to get away from the world. I was casually walking on a dead end when you came and talked to me. You told me how you know me and you tried to make me yours. You reached into your blush colored pant pocket and pulled out a piece of business card stock with all your advice on it. I stared at you because at most I would just use that as a bookmark in an ugly book that I never read. It was that bad. Your murmuring lips watch me read it and the last thing you questioned was my creativity.

I think it's my turn for some helpful criticism, let me just say this: you walk with your butt sticking out and I think I'm allergic to you.

And then you walked away and I stayed there for hours, sitting on a mailbox with a last name on it that sounded german. I made a list of all the things I liked about myself then I taped it to my hand so I won't forget it.

youIuoy

let me just take a second and say
you.

you
are from a different country
and your accent makes me laugh like a gaga adolescent.

and somehow
you.

your puberty-stricken facial hair is wildly attractive
and you only use the necessary amount of words...no fluff or filler.

and yes
you.

so I hope you never know I'm writing this about you...but if you do...
meet me under the mummy moon and we can talk about all the humans we never want to meet.
and we can practice our 'surprise' faces for all of the watchers in our lives.

and yes, I'm talking to
you.

and the galaxy

There were sixty and nine who survived the battle.

----> over-dramatic and over-calculated.

That's what humans like,

we like to count and figure and limit.

That's why we like definitions and answers 

but the problem with that is:

Definitions are too definite 

and answers could go on and on.

So let's give the people what they want.

Because every human wants to know.

And every human wants time.

And every human wants love.

So let's give them all of God's knowledge. 

Let's help them drink from the fountain of youth. 

And let's hand them that love potion. 

But they won't be wise enough to comprehend that genius. 

And that fountain of youth is just poison.

 And that love potion is just alcohol.

Here, take my hand. 

I will sprinkle a little fairy dust on that battle wound. 

And then we can look into space together and

let our mouths hang open in awe 

as we watch the galaxy shift. 

they clapped

she walks forward on a livid slab of lies
and she dances around the ashes of her wicked past
and she smiles at the crowd because she likes the attention.

but she started out shy and she was always a worrier
but then she changed from being known to not.

she is somewhere between Thoreau and Oprah in people skills
and people are drawn to her long braided hair.

where ever she walks there is a flurry of rattling leaves that follow her
and she goes around destroying and taking and hurting.

she used to never care about the whispers of the whirlwind
but now she only trusts those who can't be trusted.

and then the crowd embraced her
and then her aftermath faded from sunshine to evening.

wardbacks

I'm sitting here writing this.

But now I'm awake and 

I don't listen to anyone when they try to wake me up.

so no one could wake me up or even find me.

Sometimes I wish I slept under my bed 

I'm going to listen to what my parents say more.

And I estimate those five seconds of courage paid off. 

...that raises my self esteem like 4 points.

much sugar and lots of people tell me it's good

So I make a smoothie with too 

through a couple more hours of videos and competitions. 

and I haven't eaten and I'm tired so I sit

And then the middle is filled with tears and lots of shakes

I hope they stop judging me before I die.

and I'm in awe.

and I stare into eyes of fraudulent compliments

Five seconds of courage is all they say

Then I sit there on a mantle of fear.

of feels all acidy and stuck in my throat.

as the capsule I swallowed with no food so it kind 

The grumbling in my stomach hurst almost as bad

I walked upstairs and prayed.

Start. I brushed my teeth and my hair and my eyebrows. 

step inside, my mausoleum

I will stop my nightmares.
Or my nightmares will stop me.

And I was sitting there wearing a skirt too short to wear to church and it was black and tweed and menacing. I was sitting there folding programs with an end and a beginning and there was a face that looked all too familiar. He was buried in a mausoleum. Right then, I was bombarded with messages of death and I decided, right then that:

I have been to too many funerals and
I don't want to hear or say or read about death anymore--

Because death gives me nightmares.
The kind of nightmares that after, I wake up coiled in my Ikea bedsheets.

Maybe sometime between this nightmare of death and this daydream of life there will be a little less hurt and a little more sleep.