We should gather everyone we know and play Marco Polo in the fields. We should drive to the city, pick a wall and a color, and give the men in suits something to wonder about.

The Friday Night Truth

"I could die tomorrow. I think you should stop overthinking us and just feel." You stared at me with alien eyes and explained how that didn't help you decide between the black and the gray suits. Well, maybe you shouldn't have asked for my honest opinion.

Even the Gods Were Blind

And while you were out there, prowling the streets in search of love, we were all right here. Arms open, waiting for you to come home. Come home.

The Twelve-Step Jig

I couldn't speak from years of smokey rooms. Thank you for helping me to find my voice.

Even the Gold Rusts Here

And when I asked you how you've been holding up since we last talked, I meant I missed your smile, the way you look when you laugh (even if it's at me), your cynicism, your wit, your shitty jokes. I missed you. I know its been months, but you still feel like home.

The Snow Muffles Us All

In the depths of December, I know you'll keep me warm.

The Words We Didn't Mean

I'm sick of us trading places: the one who leaves and the one who is left. It didn't have to be like this.

The 6:30 Feeling

No, this isn't Hollywood glamor or West Coast living. This is honesty so brutal you can't breathe when you're finished. This is the resurrection of everything that you lost between midnight and six AM. This is healing. This is hope.

The Sky Is A Mirror

When you look at the stars in awe, I hope they're looking back. I'm sure they'd find you just as beautiful.

When the Grieving Feels Like Surrender

Without you, filet mignon turns to ash in my mouth. Merlot tastes like battery acid and I cannot speak. Every time I inhale, my lungs are set ablaze. I miss you. I need you. Please, please god, come home.

An Effigy of My Addictions

But now I know you’re nothing but a thief, and while you may keep the memories that I’ve forgotten, the decks of cards I’ve lost (they all stuck together anyways), the bonds forged from vices and hazy rooms, and the laughter that held no substance,

I’d like my dignity back.

I Never Believed In Silence

These words are ripped from my breast, cleaved from my soul, without thought or remorse. Every ounce of this house echoes of you.

The Things You Confuse

They say love will do strange things. But that isn't love. Obsession, maybe. Lust, maybe. The need to be needed, maybe. But not love. You have no excuse.

The Not So Distant Memory

While you may have a t-shirt, a letter, and my favorite pair of old converse, I have your dignity and your pride. I think I win.

It Never Needed a Name

I think I'm starting to fall in love with you. Your voice trips me every time.

It All Sounds The Same

Just because it was voiced doesn't mean it was true. I thought you, of all people, would understand.

Sometimes, Tripping Feels Like Falling

You don't have to write a thousand words, just look me in the eyes and smile, and I promise I'll understand.

The Surf Drowns Everything.

And as I walked away, I thought I heard you whisper, "I'm sorry...'

It must have been the waves.

The Oxygen is My Messenger, Now

There are times when I can't think, can't breathe, can't write, can't sleep because all that I am is consumed by you. You fill my head, circle my throat, cripple my hand, and blink negative behind my eyelids.

But you're not here anymore and I can't just walk up to you, look in your eyes (I've heard they look just like mine), and tell you to go haunt someone else.

But I can't help but hope that maybe somewhere, somehow, my voice is carrying through the air to the sea to the stars, and you'll hear me screaming, "STOP. I GET IT. I'M SORRY!"

Man Was Made From Dirt and Soot and Ash.

It's the way you drop the masks for me, only me...if only for seconds at a time, but I see it and those moments stretch for eternity. I recall them with perfectly clarity: the times you shine through, all battered, broken glory, like a phoenix. It's blinding. It's fucking blinding.

It's the day we learned that what we believed to be irreparable can become whole again. It's when we watched our jagged edges coalesce; we watched our mangled souls entwine and at the moment, we formed one perfect, fully-functional human being.

It's the way I drop my masks for you, only you. It's all that matters. We're all that matters, now.

The Lack of a Muse

I find once again that my muse has escaped me. Writing words merely to write them and feel that I, yes I am profound! Can’t you see that, possible friends? Can’t you grasp that, potential lovers? Grasping chocolate hair at the roots, I tear and tear in my perpetual frustration. Oh where has my insanity gone? My lovely noose that drove me to pen such eloquence? My straight jacket whispered words that echoed of depth and comprehension well beyond my years. Am I so inept that I cannot write without the presence of tragedy, which I have never lacked before? Smiling, truly, for once in a decade, but at what price? Come back to me, my soul, my passion. Come back to me, my wounded psyche. Come back to me, insanity.

The Illogical, Expected Need

You are demented and pathetic and I want everything to do with you.

The Clarity of Sobriety

It's not the drugs. It's not the stimulus. It's not the effect. This was never and will never be about the drugs. This is about the faux-cure to loneliness, to a broken home. Not just for me and you and them... for everyone. That is all we are. We are fractured kids made of broken glass and duct tape with film reels of prehistoric tragedies still perpetually playing on the backs of our eyelids. We are called drug users for a reason. We take what we want and give nothing back, and I guess by that logic we are modern day pirates. We pillage and rape your mental fortress. We tear down your walls with empty smiles, distant eyes, and promises of "family." Like I said, it's not the drugs. It's the feeling of home. That one thing we never had. The one thing we never got right. We built it ourselves with bandaged hands and rusted nails, and yet...we're suprised when it collapses around us. Once the sweet-smelling walls of smoke fall, we have nothing to block our perception of reality. We see what we've done and it eats away at our sanity...so much so that we crave the one thing we know destroyed us. So we perpetuate this cycle. Again and again we fail and we refuse to acknowledge this lack of logic on our part. And no, we are not ignorant of this, nor do we pretend to be. We are well aware of all that we have done and all that we will destroy, and yet we continue. We are unstoppable, infallible, unbreakable in our flaws. It's the one constant in this life: we will always disappoint.

The Summer I Can't Remember

I wear these lungs like battle scars.

The Unanswerable

So this is all that I am now. I am empty. I am hollow. My insides echo and I can hear your voice resounding, "Is anyone there?"

The Indifference That Never Was

I may feign apathy, but the truth will always remain: I am a creature of passion. I thrive and grow in fire, not in ice and that is where we will always differ and yes, we may smile and laugh and whisper sweet nothings for naught but the tangible heat to condemn, but when your frigid air and my volatility meet with no barriers between, where will we stand?

The Highschool Paradox

My thoughts swirl like smoke, ebbing and flowing in this perpetual state of fluctuation. And as much as I hate to include myself in anything that isn't unique, different, I'm just the same as every other broken, mislead, confused adolescent that arrived at high school and realized that who they were was not who they wished to be. But yet here we remain, stuck on this endlessly forking path we are forced to run through. "Stop. Look around you. Analyze. Pick wisely." But I have never had the cold, distant, and often uncaring mind set that I quite adore blanketing myself with and my emotions continue to rule my every action. If you mimicked Lucifer and fell from your heavenly pedestal, then what is to stop me? My pride? My dignity? My lost, scoffing, cynical self, enter stage right.

The Words

And the words mean so much to me… Merely symbols strung together in a simplistic, archaic, but utterly advanced form. Merely an informal dance between the tongue, teeth, and mouth. But your words bring me to tears, euphoria, divine epiphanies. Your words are every flower blooming, every star exploding, every life ending with a cascade of sparks. Your words are the crash and lull of the waves I watched upon that cliff and the reason I decided to not move, to not jump. Your words are my life, my thoughts. Your words are the spring and the winter and the seasons between, every life and every death, every rebirth, every decision, every heartbreak.
Your words are meaningless. Your words are everything. Your words…

The Restlessness That Kills

You will die. Maybe not within this hour, day, month, year, decade, but you will die. Don't just laugh and think "duh" in the condescending I'm-not-sure-what-condescending-means manner of yours, but truly ponder it, grasp it. This life, whether you believe in an afterlife, reincarnation, or that technicolored apes from space will steal your soul and replant you in another being from another planet, will end. Don't feed me your bullshit about how this life isn't about living forever, but about creating something that will. Yeah, maybe, I fell for that once, too. But how long until future civilizations forget your name? Until the books we read and the paper we write upon are nonexistent? You will never be immortal. At some point, even if your pathetic little achievements (which will mean nothing in one thousand years, by the way) manage to be remembered and hated by kids like you and I in classrooms or floating-fucking-spaceships, it will be proved that this world is not invincible... Fuck, nothing and no one is invincible, don't delude yourself. Millions of other creatures became extinct and thousands upon thousands of planets have ceased to exist in the time before us and in this time, right here, right now. Somewhere, on the brink of infinity, a star is exploding and swallowing the possible life around it. You are nothing, not even one blink of the universe's eye, hell, not even a blink of the earth's eye. I'm not saying this to crush you, tell you nothing is important... The exact opposite of that, in fact... Everything is sacred. Every grain of sand that glints in the sun, every wave shining silver that reflects the moon, every animals, every human, every life. Why? Didn't I just tell you none of it mattered? No. Never. We may be insignificant over all, but now...right here, right now, in the years you have left...

Believe me, there's not that many.


So why the fuck were you afraid to raise your hand and voice an opinion?
So why the fuck did you never pick up the phone to call that special boy or girl that you just couldn't stand to have reject you?
Why the fuck did you let some prick bring you down?
Why did you refuse to jump off that cliff into the water?
Why did you refuse to go to that concert?
Why didn't you ask her/him to dance?
What's holding you back?
Embarrassment?
...Really?

Do you honestly believe that in the future, outlined in some textbook on a musty shelf, will be the words "and then she turned him down."



What the hell is holding you back...?

The Confusion That Burns

The questions that plague me are never “why” or “what if,” it’s always “what the fuck is the god damn point?!” And no, I don’t use my expletives to show my contempt for the vulgarity of my generation, nor to express my rage against the corporate machine and it’s senseless restrictions against the people’s freedom of speech (though that is still present in bulk), I use it only because no eloquent words can convey the frustration and agony burning through my veins, liquefying me from the inside out. I can’t recall the exact moment I transposed from innocent child, full of faith in a government and god, to this cynical, sneering, and barely sentient young woman. My frustration sublimes to apathy, as I wonder if any of this will ever matter in the long run. Yes, everyone had prodigious plans for me since childhood. Eager to learn and naturally inquisitive, I seemed a promising pupil, but fate always seems to prefer the villainous role. The realization that no one lives forever and that someday, I truly will cease to exist turned me into a world-weary, bitter soul before I reached puberty. So now, I am here, teetering on the brink of madness and genius (though I’m beginning to believe they’re indistinguishable) and I never want to move and I never want to grow up. “Another delay, too many hassles. Where do we go, how do we follow?”

The Condemnation That Follows

I am disgusted by the careless way you condemn a race, by your spiteful death wishes to those you have never met, nor ever will. But I find myself unable to blame you for your mannerisms. You laugh and tell me about your father’s casual use of a racial slur at the dinner table, surrounded by your prototypical family. Your mother, acting scandalized, your brother and sister confused, but you, always you, agreeing with your father because He, the one who taught you how to catch, to build model airplanes, to ride a bike; He, who indirectly showed you how to hate; He who closed your mind and fenced off the possibilities you had, the greatness you could have achieved. .. He will always be right. Swallowing my logic and hostility, I am left only with sympathy and pain over the loss of a friend: the you I would have known if you had been raised without the constant presence of a father whose only prerogative is to form you into a clone of who he is, who he believes everyone should be. The lurking malevolence of racism and religious segregation that has formed you into the bull-headed, malicious being you are today. I clench my teeth and choke down words of grief for the innocence that has been slain by patriarchal ignorance, as I know nothing I say will matter. How could I ask you to choose the godless, hell-bound cretin you believe me to be over your father? How could I…