backbeat.

I should be writing an essay for Teacher Cadets, or reading for AP European History. Instead I'm listening to music and toying with a Rubiks Cube and wondering what makes a person like a certain genre of music. I'd like a head to take apart and mark the way it works; maybe fix the kinks that seperate me from them. I'd like to figure out why no two people ever like the same thing; and why I can't write an essay about one person I've always been able to depend on, when she's managed so many words about me.


Stephen King stated, in an essay, that people enjoy horror movies because we're all a little crazy. My English teacher aimlessly rebuttled that crazy doesn't exist in the South, it's labeled eccentric. Stephen King went on to state that people enjoy horror movies because it gives them a tingle and a surge of life that they haven't experienced since youth. That every human alive is a potential-lyncher, simply out of the zest in living life. An acquaintance, Rex, has stated previously that if he could have any super power, he would choose the power to control weather; because power alone is power worth having and power well spent.

So that's what I've gathered in the past few hours; no two humans enjoy the same thing, and yet all enjoy the experience of fear for the experience of thrill. The power of controlling what they're going through, and expecting what's coming; no matter the fact that it's going to be awful.

So what of us who don't like horror files?
What of us with zero sense of potential-lyncher?
What of us who don't enjoy the writhe of someone else in pain, or someone else in disappointment while we bask in something beautiful? Are we the few who have it together or those who, even by Southern standards, fit in to the line of crazy?

I hate horror films.
But I can't say that I'd never be the potential-lyncher, who finds comfort in the pain of another living being. I feel a bug beneath my feet and almost instantly, I feel content. The death of something that makes me uncomfortable, causes me a bit of uneasiness, is enough to make me calm and allow me to recollect my composure. It's not the bug's fault that I lost it in the first place; it's my own, personal nature that I never bothered to alter when I was a baby because no one ever made me simply deal with it. It's not the bug's fault, and yet it's playing sacrifice for the sake of my comfortability.

In my mind, I am the first, the foremost, and the most important. The only thing to take priority above myself are those I love, and they will continue to do so. Beneath me are those I dislike, and beneath them are non-Sapiens.

Nothing gives me this right.
I hate horror films.
I love myself.
Nothing gives me this right.

redundant.

i'm sick of talking to your voicemail. the sound of your name isn't nearly the same as your laugh, and it's an awful shame that we can't curl in to blankets and get lost in conversation. i'm always on my toes to hold myself up from the edge of my seat; how long will he be mine before technology rips him away?

for someone so close, you feel awfully far away.
i'm hooked.
just wish you'd reel me in
and keep me near.

tell me i'm different.

the week that you spent here was the best week of my life. away from florida and orange bottles with labels about whatcouldhappen and whenitsokay and whyyoushouldnever. we watched nickolodean and talked about how it would feel to grow up and have a family. i said "kids aren't my thing," and you said i didn't know what the words meant. you promised i'd fall in love with the smile of a toddler, and you promised that you'd be there to see it.



oneoutoftwoain'tbad.

the skeleton's of my past are clawing a hole through the closet that i've kept them in. cobwebs won't tangle them long enough for me to escape their grasp; they're holding me hostage by way of the ghosts that are swimming through my mind and screaming to know where'd you go and why'd you leave.





i went somewhere better.
because you left
just like you promised you wouldn't.

i've made a lot of mistakes in my mind.

When I'm eighty, I want to live in the last home in the United States that's bathroom has wallpaper. I want to play CandyLand by board, not disk, and dance in a kitchen grounded by wood instead of stone. I want to give everything I've ever worked for to someone who's never owned something worth giving away. My children can have their childhood posessions and their favorite home trinkets, but I'm not leaving behind money to let them grow lazy; they can work like my parents worked and I'll have worked, and they can save up for themselves. I'd rather a stranger who's three states away and has never crossed my path be the one who reaps what they did not earn, for the simple fact that everyone deserves to be loved by a stranger, at some point, for simply being alive.


When I'm eighty,

I'll put a vase on the table and fill it with my favorite colored roses,
and I refuse to throw them away after they wilt.

I'll make a snow angel, take a picture, and send it to my granddaughter, so that she knows I find her prettier than Christmasmorningsnow.

I'll look through old yearbooks and shrug at past regrets, there's never going to be enough time to own up to every sour word that my quick tongue has ever lashed out. So instead, when I'm eighty, I'll hug someone in the middle of the lip balm aisle in Walgreens and tell them that I'm sorry they've been hurt. I'll tell the stranger, but I'll be hoping that every past regret hears the words.

And if they don't
I'll be okay.
Because I'm eighty
and there's not enough time.

yours was the first face that i saw.

When I was younger, I used to think that being able to reach the jar on the back of the counter was the greatest accomplishment in the world. I was taller than everyone my age, and my brother told me that it meant I was tough and I was going to do something with my life.


When I was younger, I thought that freckledface and chucktaylors was going to be the rest of my life. I thought that falling was the scariest thing in the world. I was terrified of rollar coasters, unlike anyone else my age. I took to swimming because there was no way to trip, and thought that safety was the way to go somewhere in life.


Now that I'm older, I only feel accomplished when I'm directly instrumental in someone else's happiness, and my largest fear is drowning(in self-pity). My glass stands half full unless you ask me mid-morning. I hate when clouds get in the way of stars and I'm only content when my music's so loud that I can't hear the voices surrounding me. Clocks makes me angry but I'd love to take one apart and see how it works.

Now that I'm older, I'd like to take apart the world and see how it works.
But now that I'm older, I've realized that it doesn't matter how the world works. It matters how I work, and how he works, and how we work together. It matters if I'm still glasshalffull when the clock finally shuts up.




It feels like the first day of my life.
The sun is shining bright, my heart is swollen with love and appreciation, and the flowers around me smell so beautiful that I don't have to stop to understand; the whole world is spinning to the tick of a clock that's in my favor. Move up and move on; I love living.

when two hearts race, both win.

grass-stained knees and high hopes dance across the freeway.

this is growing up

this is moving on

this is foundsomethingbetter

and made it mine.

ironknee.

i was told that babysitting four toddlers on a regular basis would be the surest form of birth control.

it's actually what's making me want kids in the first place.