"ready, set, go." teacher sets the timer as pen hits the paper, making up people she wishes were real so lessons could mean anything at all.

I knew a boy named Optimism, but reality broke his wings and taunted, "fly away boy, find your way home." Some days, I watch the clouds float by and I'll see a shape that makes me hopeful; I think about Optimism and giving up.


I knew a girl named Cold, and one day she fell in love and found herself basking in the gold of summer. She learned how to dance that year, and she started to cry on roof tops. I go hiking some summers now and I see flower petals floating in the wind. They'll hit my cheek sometimes, and I'll think of Cold and how it feels to find light.


I knew a boy named Dreamer, and one day he believed in an alleyway that promised a ticket out. He threw himself in, only to be chewed up and spit back out; broken. Whenever it rains, I'll sit on my counter and chew beaten mirrors, thinking of Dreamer and beautiful bits.

my plane crashed south of mexico, i woke up in a hospital and covered in bee stings. when i got out, i took that trip i'd always been planning.

I moved across the world to find out who I was, but instead I found that people are still hungry and crying themselves to sleep at night. When I sober up, I go to train stations and watch the people board with their passes. I wonder if they're going or coming or simply running away. I wonder if they're excited or scared out of their minds. Just as I figure out that I'm coming and going and running away all at once, I realize that I'm scared out of my mind; then I wake up. These nightmares are crawling beneath my skin, but I guess there's just no other way to learn.

at the bottom of everything.

So, there was this man who was sitting on a park bench and watching people walk by. He saw a mother scold her child and contemplated anarchy. An old woman followed behind the saddest dog he'd ever seen and it made the man want to talk to God. He peeked over his right shoulder, at the stone fountain a few yards behind him; he wanted to set it on fire. He sat back in a few moments of silence and thought of carving "love everyone" in to his arms, but shook his head immediately after.
"No one really exists," he told the pigeons at his feet. "Which means there's nothing to love."

everybody sing with me, we're young and carefree now.

i'm tripping on leaps of faith and fighting fits of laughter. it seems kind of wrong to be so happy but i'm high as a kite on met expectations. you know, i'd bet you look good in the moonlight. i bet you look good right this second.

home is where the hide and seek is.

parasitic.

it's been so long since i've heard (made) you laugh that i've forgotten what it sounds like.

everytime i see a soldier, i stop and turn around. everyone else is saying thank you for serving and thank you for protecting and thank you for giving and i really just want to scream thank you for giving a name to walking away that makes it impossible to be angry.

i'd like to think you went away to save everyone here; home. but this never really was your home, now that i think of it. when you ran, you ran backwards. you jumped over fences and kicked soccer balls clear across the field, no matter what you should've been aiming for. you were dying to get out while they were dying to keep you and you hated the way they loved you so entirely. you wanted out and you took an out. they said you couldn't do it and this is your fuck you.

i hope your fuck you doesn't get you killed.
but sometimes i hope it does.
i'd like to remember you in terms of hopping over fences and running backwards, not killing based on proving something to yourself.

i don't need to believe in fancy uniforms and dressed up titles to know that this was nothing more than you walking away.

forgive me if i stutter, but you're so flawless that my imperfections are swallowing me whole.

teach me what it's like to sleep through the night. what's the use in sleeping if you can't even dream? i've got so many questions that i never thought up in the first place and not a single answer worth stating. what's the use in sleeping if you can't even dream? the only dreaming i do is the daytime kind. i dream about you all the time; daytime kind.


i still fight shutting my eyes like i'm five years old and my mother's tucking me in. i'm burnt out and ready to slip in to sheets and lose myself, but i can't. i can't. what if i miss something? what if i miss out on something better? all that i'd do is read anyway. all that i'd do is write. write the words i could think up in the morning, too.


i'm burnt out and ready to lose myself. i'm far gone and ready to sleep through the night. i'm ready to dream, the nighttime kind. i'm ready to find you at midnight just as i do at noon. i'd like to call in sick from hoping and simply live in the moment, sleep through the moment.

i'm fairly well rested for someone who's so busy over nothing.
i'd rather be wasting hours with you than the tick tocking of a classroom that provides nothing more than a location for daytime kind of dreaming.

i dream about you all the time.

365.

earth day '07 we were driving home from virginia. you were hanging your head out the window and i was screaming that rancid had gotten old. you responded with mest and i groaned at repitition, how many times before you ruin the music i've loved since 6th grade? bitch, bitch, bitch. we'd gone shopping and we'd gone dancing and we'd been to the best concert either of us had seen the night before. we were on top of the world, and we were together.


we were together.


earth day '08
i don't know shit about you.
except that your seat in fourth was empty today,
and your hair looks weird when it's long,
and your hips are as wide as you predicted them to be
but i was right. it is not awkward.
you're beautiful.
and i don't know shit about you.

journal 256: "you're the worst possible version of yourself that you can imagine, and you're disappointed."

it was the middle of summer and i sat on my girlfriend's porch. norman rockwell should have thought ahead when he gave society a perception of what neighborhoods should be like; perfect is really fucking annoying first thing in the morning. i'm chain smoking my thoughts away while she's snoring from the bedroom, twenty feet behind me. it's not working, and i'm thinking about how i should be the happiest that i've ever been. instead here i am, and the best conversation i've had this whole weekend was with myself. i tried it out on a coffee cup but i'll be damned if 90's pop didn't teach me right.

i thought about what you said, when you babbled on about loving fully. instantly, my entire body went cold. forget the smoke and forget filled lungs and forget caffeeine and forget twentyfeetbehind me. the only thing i loved about this place was the fact that i'll never own a mattress so comfortable or a kitchen so accessible. the only thing i loved about this place was that i'd waited six fucking months to get here. i thought about what you said, when you babbled on about loving fully. i've never loved a single thing fully, and i've never seen a problem with it until now.


i'm still chain smoking and talking to coffee cups and damning 90s songs that taught me they wouldn't ever want to talk. i'm still damning myself, but i'm doing it alone. the only thing i love fully is being alone. fuck norman rockwell in the mid summer, and fuck disappointment. fuck me. fuck me. fuck me.

I spent my whole life being the girl that I'd like to be friends with, and never the girl that I'd love.

I figured out what my teachers meant when they told me that I talked too much. I figured out what it meant when my father told me that I made up my mind too quickly. I figured out what it meant when someone who had everything stood on the side of a highway and claimed to have nothing for the sake of a handout they didn't really need. It's about giving up and choosing a different path, an easier path. I ignored the work that I didn't think I needed and chose to laugh instead. I ignored the scenes that I didn't want to see and observed what caught my eye. It's easier to take what others have worked for than it is to get your hands dirty, playing on sympathy and gestures of kindness. I have spent far too much time glancing in the wrong directions because it was more convenient or it was easier. I have focused on the maturity of moving on and acceptance and forgotten how to be mature when handling others who need to go through the same process. I have bypassed the technique of being sympathetic towards those who have poor coping skills and focused repressing empathy, I hate feeling.



everything is fucking sour when you're upset. i'm a mess of emotion and don't know what to do with myself. i remember the days where i didn't depend on anyone else to make me happy. i thought i already was.

thought.

if november had been deader and we'd hidden a bit better, we'd be strangers.

i want to see grass that's notsogreen and know that my side's the better side. i'd share my side of the bed any time you asked. i want to fly across the world and find something to be appreciative for when i get back home. they say it's unhealthy to put all your eggs in the basket of someone else. in another person with their own shortcomings and their own mistakes, who could drop it and crack them and crack you. but their non existence does not serve their case all that well, now does it? i kind of dig being all wrapped up in someone who could (won't) tear me apart.

selfish is as selfish does, and i want you all the time.

when i was little, i used to pretend that my life was a movie and someone in a different universe was watching it. i was hoping that i was interesting enough for them, and that i played my part well enough for them. i would think, by the end of a day, that those hours probably passed quickly for them since they didn't have to watch. i wondered when the commercials took place. i wondered when there'd be a "to be continued," dancing across the screen. but then i realized that movies didn't have commercials and they aren't merely continued to save time.

i came to terms with the fact that i probably wasn't interesting enough to watch on a movie screen. but right now, looking back, i'm kind of proud of the things that others would've seen. and if you're watching, i hope you're smiling. i'm happy and i'm in love and this is the kind of story that ends with a happy ending, those mushy ones we dream of when we're five. i wasn't allowed to dream of those, but you'd know that if you were watching.

it's like he knew i needed him before i knew anything like that existed.
he's the happy ending i wasn't allowed to dream up.
warm and perfect and mine.

i'm holding up my hands in defeat. you're the best battle ever lost.

i've never been completely committed to anything.
who else gets it right on their very first shot? i'm lucky, and i don't know why. but i do know better than to fight it.


what's it like depending on one person to pick up your inner slack? what's it like being the missing piece in some puzzle that someone didn't know existed until they completed it? what's it like to stand back and look in the mirror and see a second pair of eyes because you're carrying another person with you always? why isn't it scarier? i never understood why anyone was able to actually let that kind of thing happen. now i do.

i get it.
i get why you've fought so hard. i hope you know i'm fighting too.


(ps, your checklist is uncompleted. and i love you.)

i think i'm getting cold feet about life.

i want to run away, but only far enough to make you miss me.



i wish i was the perfect girl that went running through your mind when we first met.
these vacations from grace are making me sea sickofmyself.

i've been wanting to know what it's like to fall in love.

She
said
if I
tried
to kiss
her
she'd
cry.
i
dried
her tears
all
through
the
night.

she's fallen in love with northern lights, but dreams of southern skies.

tell me how it feels to have everything in front of you, wrapped in strings of gold and promise. now close your eyes and make a wish, your eyelashes are falling as you weep with appreciation. yeah, you've got everything, princess. the second you dream it, daddy's on the case. by the time the sun sets, it'll have your name on it; wrapped in strings of gold and promise.

but easy now, princess. this world has no capacity for something resting on top for too long. didn't anyone tell you? nothing lasts forever.

so tell me how it feels to watch it all set to flame and not feel a thing. it's melting in heaps of black and yesterday. close your eyes and make a wish, 11:11 is met with the sound of sirens. you'll wish you ran away, won't you? you'll wish you were running away from yourself and that no one could ever find you. you've got nothing now, princess. the second you dream it, daddy's patting your head and whispering condolences. by the time the sun sets, your name will be nothing but a rumor of how things get shot to hell; melted in heaps of black and yesterday.


easy now, princess. don't look too sad. silver linings come in the ugliest of packages.
no offense, but you're looking pretty ugly right now.

i want it anyway you know it.

love and hate are the same thing. there are no lines and there are no differences.

and you're right, there are entire families torn apart on the behalf of one couple's love.
and there are famines happening all around us while all we care about are happy endings.
and you're right, i'd rather hold someone's hand than save someone's life because then i know for a fact that i'm ringing through their mind in a thousand different ways, not just appreciation.
i can't argue the fact that it's selfish. love is selfish. and i can't argue the fact that love is cruel and i am cruel for believing in it above hate and war. but don't get me wrong.

i hate the fact that someone's life is going to fall apart the day that i get married.
i hate the fact that someone will lose their childhood sweetheart the day my child is born.
i hate the fact that my birthday is the date of divorce for someone on the other side of the world.
i hate the fact that someone's getting hit for no reason when i'm swaying by a lake.
i hate the fact that i'm giggling over a dinner table while someone else is being locked away.

but i love the way that he touches my lower back when we walk.
and i love the way his fingers curl perfectly around mine.
and i love the way that i know if something happened and we weren't together, our hands wouldn't fit with anyone elses and we wouldn't go to lakes with anyone else and we wouldn't be sitting at a dinner table and giggling with another set of shining eyes and curled lips.

we're in love.
someone else is falling apart, it's true. but we're in love.
and maybe i don't deserve it, but he certainly does. he deserves everything that sunsets and picnics entail. he deserves photo albums full of smiling faces and cheekkisses. he deserves waking up to the smell of his favorite kind of breakfast and going to bed with a hand on his chest.

breathe me in. inandout. let me out.

postsecret is my secret. i'm not comfortable looking at an image and caring about a person that i've never met. so, i pretend not to. i pretend to be fascinated by an art project. i'm fascinated by the people. i hate it, but i love them.

and you, you're skin and bones; turn in to something beautiful. did you know for you, i'd bleed myself dry?

My perception of your explosion.
When did you start going to bed before 3am? When did God mean enough to re-evaluate the way that you spoke and when did you believe in looking at the stars? When did you stop moving long enough to take a deep breath and when were you stressed based on responsibility and not just fucking up with me? I liked you better when you fucked up. I liked you better when nothing mattered. That's when you mattered. That's when I mattered. I liked you better when you fucked up.


The answer that I don't have the heart to say to your face.
Having nothing else to do doesn't mean you're fucking up. And nothing is wrong with wasting your day away in swimming pools or on the pavement of a nowheretogo road. God was in my life at the same time as you, you just blocked that part of me out. You wanted to think of ODU and bitches in third period and downtown restaurants and obnoxious phonecalls. You wanted to think of no sleep and zero nutrition and jumping on a trampoline to the beat of the raindrops falling on us. You wanted to think of twenty years down the road and how we'd still be in each other lives, but not how our lives would be different or how we'd see the world and the possibility that we'd see it differently. You wanted to think of my love for you and how I'd hold on to our bond, but not the possibility that I'd be the one to grow away and you'd have to put a little effort in to holding on to someone. You didn't want to think of losing anyone and it not being their fault. I hope when you're crying over how your best friends are treating you that you remember how it felt to dance in the rain after graduation, but I hope you never expect the same. Responsibility means fucking up. It means there's something to do and something to lose if it's done poorly. This is me fucking up, and you're no part of it. You have no emotional investment so it doesn't really matter. You liked me better when I spent my days attached to a brick wall, stuck in discontent and therefore the inability to be any lower. You liked me better when I was rock bottom.

I like me better when I'm fucking up. There's something to learn. You taught me nothing but what it's like to chew on tin foil with every new breath. You taught me nothing but walking away from friendships that don't bend to my mood. You taught me nothing but how to say I love you, but goodbye. You're not worth any of this.

You taught me nothing but walking away. walking away.

what a beautiful smile.

if every one is special, no one is.

this whole being optimistic thing is getting really frustrating. i'm trying to wrap myself up in what the hell were you thinking? but my head is filled by nothing more than i hope it ends up better.

why'd you have to come in and make everything beautiful?
why'd you have to come in and make me so much better?

I want to sit on your lap and eat cocoa puffs together. I don't even know if you like cooca puffs, but sunday morning looks like your laugh.

let's reinvent the wheel.

"So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more dangerous to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun."


If I were a little less practical, I'm positive that I'd be a radical. I look around me and choke on the words that I hadn't truly spoken, biting my tongue until blood soaks my intestines; don't you realize that your mistakes are obvious and that the solution is obvious and that every person you're looking down your nose at knows?

A friend once stated that being second to last is better than second to first. To be second to last means that someone is worse off than you, at least. To be second to best means that you barely missed out. There is someone who is better than you, and you simply did not have what it took.

I'd like to turn the whole world upside down. I'd like to see the parishes fall from grace. I'd like to see every person who's sound asleep in the security of apathy have nightmares, and scream out in discontent. I'd like to see the UN watch a commercial about a starving child in Africa and then try to say that trade barrier regulations are the first priority at hand. I'd like to see the President shake hands with all of China and say that second best makes a mighty fine ribbon.

The only way to see any nationalism is to ruin something. We join in times of sorrow and anger and the possibility of vindication, but not when it's 70 degrees and there's a "V" of birds who are flying home. Our home is what we own, forget what it feels like to listen to our hearts.

I'd like to see everything flipped upside down. I'd like to be a radical and say that we need to tear it all apart and start from square one, but the shortcomings don't belong to who runs our government. It belongs to being second best in our own homes. In our bedrooms. To our best friends. To our significant others. To our children and parents and pet. It's being second best to our childhood dreams; lashing out at the government won't help you play doctor one more time. Give it up, kid, it's not your place and this is not your game.

The kids that I babysit fight all the time. And when they do, they scream until they feel better. They scream and they're mean, they cry and then they apologize. They hug and they share what they were fighting over and their worlds go back to smooth sailing. No one is any better than a five year old. We just learn how to be selfish.

Fuck your heart. Open your ears.

caffeine and indecision.

dear exhaustion, can't say i've missed you. i feel heavy in more ways than one and it's making my tongue far sharper than necessary. my fuse feels short and all it takes is bad weather to light me up and send me on my way.



i want to hear the roar of phone against wood and the sound of "hello," filling my ears.
i want to have you to myself when the sun sets.

jay tee ess.

dear valentine,
cupid is bitter and the sun has finished radiating.
jesus says that he's done believing in happy endings and satan's building snowmen.
there's a bum on the streets who's never been so full and our president is starving to death.
classrooms are lined in dreamcatchers because teachers have lost faith and churches are handing out vodka for the sake of personal salvation.
st. patrick is going in to rehab tomorrow, and the rolling stones have finally retired.
john lennon did not die, he ran away when the dictionary omitted the word "peace."
kurt cobain is the only one who's gotten it right, and oil is free because there's nowhere to go.
the fourth of july celebrates the shackle business and the hottest birth site around is a graveyard in queens.
the world is shot to hell and every new song is a form of igiveup.
hearts break when the sun sets and treetops are where prayers go to die.

this world has absolutely nothing,
but you've got me.
every single bridge is up in flames,
but i will carry you.

and i'll give up speaking if it ever means nothing more than disappointment and i'll give up moving if it ever means nothing more than walking away.

dear valentine,
cupid is bitter and the sun has finished radiating.
but you shine so bright and we never needed them anyway.

i'll be your blanket when hell freezes over.