I watched a plane fly through the little dipper.

The trees rustled

My back ached

My mind was jumbled

Your words spun in my head

We danced

Intertwined

Our bodies calling, "love!" to one another's collar bones

We embraced

I watched a plane fly through the little dipper.

And when we were flying
It looked like we weren't going anywhere
As if the earth was spinning just as fast as our plane was flying
As if the wind was blowing just as a fast as our plane was flying
As if the same pencil thin stretch of clouds sat hovering just below rows 11 and 12 the whole time
Until the overhead bell chimed
The light came on
And the captain told me it was time to tighten my seat belt again
I was going to get to pee soon
And the flight attendant said, "Welcome to Boise"
My heart fluttered
And when I sat in the front seat of the taxi I closed my eyes
Looked out of the windows of the plane again
And I saw it then
The earth moving so fast beneath us they ought to have called us super heroes
And we could not have made it here faster.

I need one more
I need to forget a little more
I need to remember a little less
I need to remember a lot more
I just need to remember it differently
Better
The way I wrote it
The way it ends when I'm sleeping

Dear bartender
Make it a White Russian
As white as her dress would've been
One Pina Colada
Tan as the sand would've been
One more Gin and Tonic
Sparkling as her eyes
Vodka Cranberry
Red as her lips
A triple shot of silver tequila
As clear as my intentions

Marry me

Bartender I want to drink until I forget she said no
Bartender I want to drink until I forget I ever asked

Dear Bartender I want to drink until I remember she said yes
I want to drink until my head rings wedding bells
I want to drink until my body ticks raw rice
Drink until I sweat honeymoon
Tequila til my ring finger itches
Whiskey until she come back
Whiskey until she loves me too
Whiskey

Don't bury children in suits
Let them wear their favorite clothes
Let them wear their favorite basketball jersey
The sweats from the college you can't stand
That damn sweatshirt that you can never get clean
The tire-tracked underwear
Let them wear it all
Let them wear the clothes you could never get them out of
The ones they slept in
Played in
Dreamed in
Just don't bury kids in suits
They're not going to a job interview
They aren't atoning for a lifetime of sins
They're going to the great playground in the sky
They need to be able to run around
Bury them in overalls
In the baseball hat with sweat stains
The pants with holes and grass on the their knees
The shoes with the souls that flap when they walk
Let them wear the straps that the Velcro keeps falling off of and you keep having to put it back on
Put it back on
Put them in the casket
And make them smile with your thumbs
They didn't do anything wrong
We did
We let them down
Don't punish them
Don't bury them in a suit
This is our last chance to do something right for them
Bury them with those candy necklaces they used to shoot across class at the girl they liked
Give them all their Halloween candy back
Fill the grave with hundreds of melting dilly bars
Slip them a ring pop
Please don't bury them in suits
Don't comb their hair
Leave the dirt under their finger nails
Don't fix their collar
Or shine their shoes
Let them wear their Victor Cruz jersey

And for those of us lucky enough to live in one of those small towns the whole world doesn't know how to pronounce yet
Lucky enough to not live in a dangerous city
Lucky enough to trust the locks on our front doors
To trust the bus driver
To trust our neighbors
One more cookie before bed.

In every moon there is a man
And in every man there is a heart inside of which lives a woman
Who doesn't clean
Who doesn't cook
Who doesn't serve him
Only lives within the walls of his heart
And within every woman living in a man's heart
There is a desire to be free
It is not odd to imagine her leaving
Merely odd to see her go
Riding on the back of an elephant
In high heels
With a bottle of Chateau de Michelle
And weilding the sword of a swallowing minstrel
Drunkenly yelling songs of a time in which she never lived
And that will never leave a man
Whether the next woman comes in riding a golden chariot pulled by blazing reindeer
Or mounted on a shark wearing a cocktail dress
And while he laments her going
She regrets her ever having left
So she turns around
Looks into the vast nothing behind her
Trampled under the weight of the elephant
Cut down by her drunken fit of rage
Burned and eaten by the coming and going of others
And she sees
That beyond the husk of the home she once knew
Lay merely arteries and valves
And no soft place to lay her head
So she dismounts her companion
Lays down her sword
Crashes the bottle upon the rocks
Tears the heels from her shoes
And limps into the desert
Looking for that which she had already found
While he lie
Filling the emptiness of his ravaged heart
With the tender touch of fleeting acrobats

It's a weird feeling, being in love and lonely all at the same time
To put your whole heart into something you can't see
You know long distance relationships are tough
But what's hard is looking across the room at the eyes you love
And feeling every inch like they were miles
Seeing your cheeks turn to stone when I try to make you laugh
Feeling every could-be-kiss like a character from a book
Reading their stories
Making my heart race
Leaving my lips as dry, chapped, cracked as they always are
I sweat in my sleep from your body heat
While my veins freeze over from the warmth of your affection
I keep looking at the thermostat because I don't want to be cold anymore
But we're already sitting in our own ass sweat at eighty two degrees
And I can't make you care enough to smile anymore
But apparently I'm trying hard enough to get you to stay
Or more accurately hard enough for you not to leave
Leaving is hard work anyway
And feeling loved is nice
I imagine
At least that's what I've heard.

This morning I woke up intent on living morally
I had pizza for breakfast
I then took ten minutes to decide if my diet was part of my morality
I am clearly not ready for this conversation

In the family I come from God has only ever been the fastest way to count to twelve
In the family you come from God has been a source of peace, joy, love, purpose
My sense of purpose comes from Regina Spector’s voice
And my peace is in Amos Lee
My way is not better than your way

Let go and let God
Or as we call it Step Two
Is scrawled on so many scraps of paper
Half started journals
And carved so deeply under my fingernails
I’ve made letting go an art
I just haven’t got to letting God
When I was in pre-school my teachers told me how impressed they were with how quickly I learned to count to twelve
I told them I went to church a lot
They were confused

My dad likes to skip steps when he counts to twelve
My mom is really good at two through twelve but can’t really remember how it starts
My sister has counted to twelve so many times she forgets how important it is to go slow
The only reason I’d ever have to count to twelve is to feel apart of this family

It has been seventeen years since I have last said the name Jesus with ants in my pants sitting on uncomfortable church pews with my mom’s hand on my shoulder
And since then I have only ever thought to go to church three times
Twice in Memphis when I was trying to find Al Green
And the third was the first real conversation you and I ever had outside of Mrs. Kidwell’s class when I briefly thought if I found a way to go to church you might go out with me
However, I quickly came to the conclusion that if that worked I’d have to continue attending church to keep going on dates with you

When I was twenty two I tried to read the bible
I never made it past the begetting
That’s not a joke
So I tried to have someone explain it to me
That plan failed

Most days I can get by
I can be happy
I can turn the radio up and dance myself into peace
But on the days when I lock myself in my bedroom
Grey sweatshirt and basketball shorts
Tubs of Ben and Jerry’s all over the place
And The Spill Canvas at eleven over my stereo
I sometimes consider turning down the music
Getting on my knees
Putting my hands together and giving it a try
But I always get tongue tied just thinking about it
So I make a playlist full of songs that have the word God in them and hope that counts
Because some days you just need help and no one is answering their phones
But I don't think that's how God works
So I text you about your day
And you say something about a movie,
Book
Song
Something some little kid did to you
And I swear I might as well be in the front row of the First Baptist Church of Macon Georgia
Because I am filled with the Spirit.

Not every text message to you is a trip to church
And you’ll never know which ones are
So please don’t worry about it
I’m grateful to know that when I can’t figure out how to talk to God
I can find a way to talk to you
Because in the seventeen years I’ve been forgetting hymnals
I’ve come to one conclusion
Salvation, Heaven, Faith
They are where you look for them
They are what you want them to be
They are yours when you call

Sometimes I make myself imagine a world in which I was the kind of man, who could imagine, being a man, who could dream, of having the guts, to possibly, one day, be the kind of fella who would make the kinds of choices that would eventually catch your fancy
It is hard to do
I am not that kind of man
And that is okay
I will never be that kind of man
That is also okay
This is more than okay
I'm not here for that
I'm here for me

Tomorrow I will attempt to live morally
I bought Honey Bunches of Oats so hopefully I’ll make it out the front door
It seems I may never be ready for this conversation

I will kiss new days with the same wonder I always have
I'll just be doing it before I brush my teeth
There is no one left to impress with minty fresh breath

Sometimes when I forget hand lotion
I run my fingers through blades of grass
I rube the dew into my pores
Long blades of grass smell better than short blades of grass
That's why I never like mowing the lawn when I was little

When a baby cries an angel gets their wings
When little kids laugh our cat runs and hides
When I blow bubbles little kids laugh
My cat is very good at hiding

My mom thinks I listen to my headphones too loud
I think if I blow my ear drums listening to rock music
Then I'll never have to hear anyone say good bye again
That doesn't sound bad at all

I will stare in the mirror with the same discomfort as always
Only this time it will be after my shower
I still have someone out there to impress with my unassuming good looks

I don't always get dressed
But when I do
I prefer to wear clothes
I don't always wear clothes
But when I do
I prefer clean clothes
My iron broke

It takes a village to raise a child
It takes a city to raise a Gaga
It takes time to heal
It takes a clock to see that time
It takes a man to build a clock
Therefore it takes a village to tell the time

I wash my sheets every time I cry
I am very sad about you leaving
But I'm out of Tide
And I can't afford another bottle
I'll cry on pay day
It's just not in my budget to cry today

I am six inches taller than the average American male
In the summer I tan quite well
And with a few extra minutes in front of an ironing board and a mirror
I clean up nicely

So marry me now while I'm still desirable

I am good at cooking in fact I can make a safe assumption I'm better than you
I enjoy cleaning especially vacuuming
oh and I'm great with kids

Please marry me now while you're young enough for those things still impress you

I will impress your parents
Your friends will ask how serious we are regularly
I will make you blush from the volume of compliments that you receive from me

So please marry me now while those are still things you want

I want to live on a beautiful island
Where it's warm all the time
And on this island I want it to snow
Three months a year
And I want those three months to be
November, December, and March
And when it snows I need it to be seventy seven degrees
And I want the snow to stick
Here I imagine Jack Johnson, Jason Mraz, and Zach Gil will sit around playing music
They'll play from noon to around ten
That's when Kwali the local pool boy ends his shift keeping the oil out of the ocean
Kwali he plays the Ukulele and sings about beaches no one's ever been to until around midnight
When the perpetually burning bon fire dies down and the island falls asleep
As for the rest of the music here on the island
Every morning there's this old steel guitarist
He's from just south of New Orleans
A place called Under Pressure
Really it's just the hull of the broken fishing boat he was born on
But he calls it home all the same
And a kid who used to play trombone for the high school jazz band
But he picked up the harmonica after he found out chicks don't dig trombones
And the two of them sort of play old dixie
With a steel drummer who never seems to find his shirt in the morning
But you never really mind that
And on Sunday mornings this really old woman
Ssays her mom was Harriet Tubman
Which we all know is a lie
But she's got scars from head to toe so you might as well believe something
Man she wails
For two straight hours
She wails
Wails to God, to the heavens, to Jesus, Georgia and the first row of church
And when she wails her tears are a lost language from the tower of babble and we all understand it
And on Wednesday
Wednesdays
We waltz
We waltz to really old records
That we play on the only turntable on the island
That Mr. Lee drags all the way from his house to the community center with no walls
And the whole island shows up in summer dresses and Matthew Mcconaughey shirts
Even the one we call grandma
And her husband who everyone calls Uncle for some reason
Come dressed to dance
And we all leave our slippers at the door this place doesn't have
And the sand warms our feet while we waltz
Sometimes it's the Tennessee Waltz
And sometimes it's the Viennese Waltz
But most of the time it's just the waltz we all learned in eighth grade
Either way
Every Wednesday there is a beautiful girl
She's five five, maybe, five eight I don't know
I've been lying on my drivers' license since I was sixteen so I don't know how tall people really are
She's got south pacific features
But with my track record by the time I actually make it to my island she'll probably be a red head
We waltz
We waltz until the records skip
And our legs turn to Jello and all we can do is collapse in each other's arms
While the ocean tickles our toes
Our finger tips tickle each other's palms
And we let that guy in the moon do the rest
So when you see me set sail
If you can catch me you can climb on board
And if you can't
Then
Wave goodbye

These are my knees
Lord
Cracked in a daily attempt to win your affection
These are my hands
Dear Jesus
Callused by one another in an oft futile longing for an answer
This is my throat
All Mighty God
Made rasp and torn from a constant calling of your praises
This is my neck
Oh Holiest of Holies
Strained in a forever upward gaze searching nightly for a sign
And these are my eyes
Son of God
Charged with searching for you in the stars
With directing my feet towards the purpose you have given me
Oh Lord
These are my eyes thought blinded after years of failing to find my path in the constellations
But blind these eyes are not
Oh Sacred Lamb
For these eyes
Creator of all that is good
See the bunions on these feet from a lifetime of walking atop your great magnificent earth
In an effort to survive
And these knuckles Carpenter of Nazareth
Are bloodied by the labors of man, for men, for the service of man's world
And this tongue, not of Satan, but of your creation
Oh Lord
Is twisted in a defense of my undying devotion to your love and to your empathy
And this back
Oh Heavenly Father
Has been made cripple
Not from the weight of your cross in an attempt to share the burden of your sacrifice
No Lord
This back is broken from the weight of being a father to man
From the burden of society
And from the weight of the home I keep
Though I would never
Lord
Son of God
Question your ways
As mysterious as they seem
As they are your ways
Creator
Guiding Light of Man
Nor would I have the gal to belittle the accomplishments of our Savior the Lord Jesus Christ
I must ask with my knees planted firmly in the earth
My hands clasped
And my gaze towards you
Oh Lord
Son of God
Holy Shepherd
What good are the golden streets of heaven if my feet can not walk them
And what of the beauty in the pearly gates if my back can not afford the strength to open them
And lord how could I ever face you if my knees
The knees from which I pray
Oh Holiest of Holies
Creator of the moon and the stars the heavens and the earth
How could I ever face you if my knees can no longer kneel before the feet of my King
I could never
I would rather stand in the face of Lucifer himself
Than fail to kneel before the will of my God
For that I could never do
And what then
Lord
What would you have of me then

I am often under the impression that old fashioned street lamps
The ones with eight sided glass and black ornate poles
Are strategically placed by the city planning commissioners office
To let me know the wardrobe is just a few dozen feet away
And it will take me to Narnia
If I just open the door

My phobia of opening doors gets worse every time I think I've finally found it
Only to walk right into the girls bathroom after lunch
On five alarm chili day at the cosmetology school in Little Korea Town

I don't like watering the plants
It makes me wonder why mother nature fell asleep on the job
But the plants are always telling me the rain can't get them inside my living room
So I started the fire that the insurance won't pay for
And the chemicals in the emergency sprinkler system killed the plants anyways
It also killed the fish
But the insurance adjuster wore gloves
So he's still alive

I would make a pretty shitty politician
I get upset at people who don't make sense
Though sometimes I don't make sense
I also have a bad habit of doing the wrong things for the right reasons

I have found Waldo three times
He says hi
Carmen Sandiego is in San Diego
Which makes that trip to Cairo a really bad piece of detective work
On a related note Al Gore is Captain Planet
And every time I hear a bug zapper
I think it is the bat from Fern Gully
But it is not
It's a bunch of dead moths in a box
Monkeys in a barrel
That's how my mind does things
Every time someone say "it is"
When "it's" would be acceptable
I remember The Land Before Time
"This is fun, it is, it is"

You are welcome

At my high school reunion
Years from now
In the old gym
They'll ask, whatever happened to us anyway
I won't have an answer for them
It'll be a shoulder shrug
Upward palms
And a colon backslash face
They'll move on to my son
Or work
Or school
Or some distant memory which will undoubtadly begin with, "remember that time"
And most likely end with, "those were the days"
And while they move on with their conversations
I will still have a colon backslash face
And my mind will be in a completely different time machine than the prom queen and the class clown
I will
By the end of it all
Have devoted what I can only imagine to be significantly more time than alotted
Thinking about what did ever happen to us anyway
And when I go home to what I anticipate being a beautiful, intellegent, loving wife, girlfriend, fiancee thing
She will
For a moment
Or possibly two moments
Not measure up to you
And I hope she won't notice my colon backslash face
That she'll end up smiling until she falls asleep

The morning after my high school reunion
I will stand in front of my mirror
And for much longer than two moments
I will not measure up
To the man you could have made me
And I will notice
I will start by sucking in my gut
Running my hands through my hair to try and imagine myself with a different style
I will analyze my wardrobe
And half way through auditing my music collection I will fall to the floor
I will cry
And with you in the forefront of my mind
I will
In true movie scene fashion
Whisper to no one
Whatever happened to us anyway
And worse than not having an answer at the reunion
I won't have an answer for myself
In an empty living room
Because I really don't know whatever happened to us anyway
One day we were
The next day we weren't
It was so adult
I was so civil
Even our break-up will be the best I ever had

The day before my high school reunion
I will cut my hair
Trim my arm pits
And clip my beard
I will iron a suit
Pick a good tie
And I imagine
In front of a mirrror
I will
Be proud of the man I have become

In the years going forward
And leading up to that high school reunion
I will
As a matter of life's course
Have no other occasion
To ask myself
Whatever happened to us anyways
But never the less
One night
Years from now
That question
Will leave me paralyzed
Scared
Heartbroken
Lonely
And even if
I am not alone
My pillow will remember
For one night
Or maybe even two nights
How to smell like you
And my arms
If only for a half a moment
Or possibly one whole moment
Will
With no luck
Reach for you

Dad this suitcase hurts
I don't like it
It makes me feel unwanted
All of my favorite things fit in this suitcase
All of my things stay zipped in this suitcase
I can fit in this suitcase
If I can fit in this suitcase
Why do I go anywhere
Why do I sleep here
I have no home
Everywhere is home
My suitcase goes everywhere with me
And I know this may hurt for you to hear
Because you never liked the suitcase either
But, "you have to pick and choose your battles" right?
You have to let some things go
Isn't that how you say it?
How does it feel to let this one go
How'd it feel to let me go
Don't be so surprised
Nothing wins in a battle with avoidance
No one holds court with the jester
And no one laughs at the comic who didn't get on stage
T-ball starts in the spring pops
Sign me up
I want to learn how to play
I want to wear baseball hats
And run the wrong way around the bases
Ooh I would thoroughly enjoy to miss the ball entirely off the tea
Maybe even fall down trying to field a grounder
Will you get me a blizzard when the games is over?
Will you wake up to play catch with me before work?
Please sign me up
I want to play
I want to swing
Swing pops
Pick this one
Pick and choose this one
I hate this suitcase
It has wheels
I can go anywhere with it
I don't want to go anywhere
I want to be home.

I'm sorry that my spectacular patience sometimes goes wandering through the grape vines
Leaving me here frustrated at the fact that you can't tie your shoes without getting your pants dirty
And sand in your underwear 150 miles away from the nearest beach
And I know on a few occasions the only way to get my patience back from the grapes
Is to drink a bottle of wine and take someone else's
But I'm working hard for you

On the days I forget clean socks
I know it's hard to believe that I'm the best choice
But I promise the judge had a good reason
I know you've been doing this alive thing for like three and a half years now
So you've had time to adjust
But I've been doing this father thing for like six months now
But you have to know I'm working hard for you

When you look at an S and call it an R
Can't figure to unbuckle your car seat and wont eat a green bean to get a cookie
I wish the guy who wrote
"What to expect when you're expecting"
Had written
"What to do when you weren't expecting"
Or at the very least
"How not to fuck it up"
Your aunt says if you do the footwork the results will come
I am walking the path I will get there

You were born at 7am
I wasn't told until 11pm
I was late
But I held you
You squeezed my finger
I smiled
You're turning four soon
I'm late
But I love you
Hold my hand son
I will smile
We will walk this path
We will get there

She throws her head around and around and around and around and around
Like a five year old trying to slow down a ceiling fan to see it one blade at a time
She's got little pieces of tore up toilet paper on the inside of her right thigh
There's no room left on her face for new scars
She's got her stash locked tight
In lighter sealed plastic wrap
Inside a film container
Lying in a sandwich bag wit ha glass pipe, tin foil, and a purple lighter
All in a Crown Royal bag
Taped to the back of her TV
Every time she gets it out she wonders why she ever went through the hassle of putting it away in the first place

Inhale
Exhale

She has to remind herself now that her body has forgotten how
Her lungs are working so hard
Her heart beating so fast
That's moving like an addict
She moves like a user

Her cave is a fortress
The enemy is the light
Her house is a really really really big blanket fort surrounded by drywall
Her days are twenty four hours of twenty four hours of twenty four hours of darkness
Until they're twenty four hours of twenty four hours of twenty four hours of sleep
If she's not paranoid of what she's losing
She's regretting what she's already lost
And during the days she can't remember what she had to lose in the first place
She's afraid of what might find her
So her cave gets darker
The locks get thicker
And the mailbox gets too far away to pay the bills
By the time they come to make her another homeless drug addict
The kind they show as stock footage on local news at five pm
The only way she'll be able to tell the difference between the dark damp cave she was living in
And the pitch black back alley she's sleeping in
Will be the stars
And the stars are just too pretty for this to be rock bottom

She told me
"I'd disappear for a while if I could trust my self to come back to all of this"
She won't come back to this
She's too big for this
She's too big for this
Or I'm too small for her
Or the horse she rode in on died
And now she's riding off on an elephant
I don't know

Not all surprises are surprises
Sometimes we just act surprised
So that the other person doesn't feel bad about us knowing ahead of time
I've never really been in a fight
So I don't know what hurts worse a sucker punch
Or a punch you see coming
Either way this hurts
A lot less like a punch
And a lot more like getting branded at a bonfire in a cornfield by your best friend with a paper clip
It burns
Then bleeds
Then welts
Then itches
For along ass time it itches
Then when it's done itching
It's there
Forever
And every time someone sees it for the first time you have to tell that story
Of how you you got your ass burnt with a paper clip by your best friend in a cornfield at a bonfire
Or about getting sucker punched
Or surprised
Or about being too small for her

Sometimes you grieve before their gone
You write your love letters and goodbye notes at the same time
And you've seen her go so many times in your mind
That by the times she actually does ride off on an elephant
It's like you're watching reruns
And just crying out of habit

But sometimes you want to feel like size doesn't matter
That whether she's too big for this
Or I'm too small for that
That somehow it just fits

That's when you grieve
Before they're gone
When they're going
And after they've left
And you spend your nights wondering who the good guy was
But no one wears black cowboy hats or white cowboy hats in relationships
So you never get to know who the good guy was
I want to think it was her
I'm starting to believe it was me
And that hurts
To think I was so wrong for so long

You see size tends to matter
When you're reaching for the stars
One of you is going to reach them
Swing of Orion's Belt and grab the moon
And while they're staring back at earth
You'll still be here
Pumping your Reebok's
Trying to get just enough air in your shoes
To be just big enough
To jump just high enough
That they're just won't forget you
While they're off doing things
That you are just too small to do

I wake up from dreams
With goose bumps where your hands used to go
My dreams remind me what you looked like
My body reminds me what you felt like
My empty bed reminds me what you feel like
Your phone number reminds me you're not just a phone call away anymore
And my friends try their damnedest to remind me 'This too shall pass'
This too shall pass
But my heart is just starting to break
The dog days are not done
The pain is just beginning
And my heart will have to break up all the way
Before I can start to fix it again
I don't have much super glue
This will be quite the patchwork job
I get goose bumps on my finger tips
I get goose bumps on my chest
I get goose bumps on my thighs
I get goose bumps on my arms
And all I can hope is that every now and then you wake up with goose bumps too
This too shall pass
I don't want this to pass
I just want to be in the past I'm living in, in my dreams
Where you still sing to me the lullabies I sing to my son to help me sleep
And you wake me with gentle kisses to the forhead
And rubbing my hands with your fingers
My bed used to be such a perfect fit for me and you lying in this huddled cold mess of sheets
I can hardly find it in myself to take up more space then my pillows
You always took up more space then I did
And since you replaced yourself with the pillows
Nostalgia won't let me stretch my legs
I want to stretch my legs
I want to run away from this
But I can't run from pain
Can't run from goose bumps
I can't run from dreams
I will eventually have to close my eyes
And when I do
I will see yours open
Looking into mine
Saying I love you
Like you mean it
Like you always did
But didn't always mean it
Or at least you don't still mean it
I'm too young to be burdened forever by something I didn't choose
Like not having you in my life
You owe me too much still
Like a song on the piano
Like salsa lessons
Like a night out
Lilke teaching me how to fish and ride 4 wheelers
Like midnight phone calls
Like more good mornings
And less goodbyes
Like tomorrow
Like forever

It's a bad day when you can't get Celene Dion out of your head
Titanic was good
It was not that good

I found a dried flower
Buried in Leviticus of my sort of grandma's bible
She must have liked that part
The only quote about Leviticus I've read on the internet is about stoning gay people
I hope she didn't like it that much

I saw a bagel get made
No one has the job of eating the middles out
I'm 23, this was a let down
I still like bagels a lot

I tacked the dry flower on my wall
Above the reminder that it's $3 a day to swim at the public pool in the mornings
I hope it's not a homophobic flower
I hid the bible behind Lauren Conrad's book
Lauren Conrad's book embarrasses me less

My sort of grandma
Is only sort of alive
I often feel that way

I feel most alive while dreaming of the impossible
Realistic dreams lead to disappointment
Outlandish dreams leave little 'remember when’s’'
No one hates themselves for not becoming an astronaut
A lot of people hate themselves for not losing 20lbs

Friendships are often measured in favors
That is all
That was not all
Favors are measured in sacrifices
Favors are not measured in reward

Today is a reflection of not dying yesterday
There is a one in seven chance that today is Friday
And it is imperative that we get down on Friday
Because the anticipation for this weekend is very high
If today is Monday all of that is no longer relevant to our conversation

I am losing weight
As I lose weight more and more fat girls hit on me
I do not like this as much as what I was imagining would happen

I have learned that being funny sexy cool
Like I am becoming
Does not mean hot girls will hit on me
It means they will actually think about it before saying no

To supplement my soon to be chiseled physic
I am learning a Jack Johnson song on guitar
This worked for an acquaintance in 2006
Maybe I should learn Colbie Callait instead

The world would be better if schools had better teachers
The world would also be better if high school seniors paid attention to the teachers they already have
I don't know which one is easier to fix

My past seems rosier than my future
Except in the case of February 16th 2007
And now February 16th 2012

Corner buildings and modern light fixtures are my favorite aesthetics
My favorite building has neither of those features
Those features are not that awesome

Dead flowers smell like dead things
To combat this I spray cologne on my grandma's flower
I have never been to a funeral
I wonder if they febreeze the dead people
Or maybe they use Chanel No. 5
This is something I would like to learn more about

Two years ago for lent
I gave up lying
It lasted
Two weeks
So in the spirit of honesty
I wanted to set the record straight
This might just be for my benefit and you might not get anything out of it but
I’m a liar
Always have been
And I’d like to shed some weight
She here goes

The first girl I ever kissed was Ashlynn (I forget her last name)
There was tongue
I was 13
It was truth or dare
I know
It doesn’t count
I kissed ten more girls playing truth or dare between Ashlynn Iforget and my first real kiss
My first real honest to goodness no truth or dare kiss
Was the day after junior prom
We woke up in each other’s arms on the couch
Stared at each other for hours until she finally kissed me
We kissed for six hours
My lips chapped
That lasted a year and a half
She had my baby

When I was in fifth grade my neighbor and I broke my parents antique glass table
I told everyone I just sat on it
I really body slammed my friend on it

To everyone I’ve told I don’t like dogs
I kind of like them
I don’t want one
But I kind of like them

When I spent the first year of my son’s life 350 miles away at a better job
Building a better future
I was really running away
Though to be fair
I didn’t know I was lying ‘til I came home

To Emily (I forgot her last name) from Corvallis
I am not a bio-chem major with a minor in French
Though I do dream of owning a vineyard in the south of Spain

Also to Emily I forget
I was not just staying in my friend’s storage closet…that was my room

To sergeant Roscoe
My wife was not pregnant

I don’t put dates on anything I write
Because I secretly hope when I die
Someone will take the time to read it all and try to organize it
So they’ll have to think about me longer

To all of my female friends
I am a very good listener
I am a great shopping buddy
But I have had a crush on each of you at some point
Some of you knew that already

My sex number is higher than I tell people
I really want to try out for American Idol
I kissed a boy
And I liked it

To every homeless man ever
I do have spare change

To you-should-know-who-you-are-if-you-hear-this
Yes those were my underwear
And yes I did have sex with your sister

Mom I took a twenty from your purse when I was 16
Dad I stole $100 bucks once

I only cried four times during The Notebook not six

And I wouldn’t break up with you if you cheated on me
Because without my lies I have the self esteem of an Olsen Twin alone at a stranger’s house party

The only kegger I ever went to was my mom’s 50th birthday party.

I have lied a lot
Often without realizing it
Sometimes it’s on purpose

Some of them don’t make sense
Like lying about wanting to go bungee jumping…I don’t…I once said I did

Some are for your benefit
I did not want seconds of the first dinner you ever made me that shit was gross

Some are for my benefit
I really didn’t love you

Some I will never get
I am too afraid to call my best friend because I know he’ll forgive me
And I don’t think I deserve it

But that last thing I’d like to be honest about
I hope one day I love myself enough
To stop saying
I’m 6’2”