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 Dec 2019 JAC
Lydia
Campfire Songs
 Dec 2019 JAC
Lydia
I’m falling in love with the campfire ashes floating up and kissing his cheek
My dad warns us that some are still hot, so we watch carefully just in case
We make up songs about hot tea to his guitar because he dare not sing about cold beer in front of my father
I’ve never felt warmth like cool nights and skin I never thought I would orbit
I’m caught in the grace of his feet swinging back and forth under the lawn chair
He’s a speaker for rhythms I don’t recognize but need to know
He calls me a manic pixie dream girl with her own plot line
Imagines me ruining a ball gown in a river
He is not the violinist my mom always said I would marry
On a good day, he’s a catastrophe rolling on the railroad tracks I’m tied to
Mother, we are late nights and bad decisions
No, I never got that tattoo but yes we’re going out again
Because he makes me want to hit the ground running
Convinced me that the sun orbits us, because
“it’s all about perspective.”
Ashes and smoked clothing like glitter and perfume
Like he promised mom we’d be home by midnight, and dad that we were running away already
I’m dancing on my tiptoes in the moment he makes a little girl’s dreams come true, not a woman
I can’t imagine a world in which I am grown up
Because he has chosen to grow up with me
I’m gonna kiss him, mom.
 Oct 2019 JAC
everly
chalkboard
 Oct 2019 JAC
everly
with every stride
of chalk i make to the board
your hand is following me
you smile and i do in return
right behind me
undoing all i’ve done
i build and
you demolish
i strengthen  and
you weaken
i’m the yarn sweater i made
trying to tuck the
loose strand
while you tug and pull at it without
haste
leaving it to ribbons
of disparity
 Oct 2019 JAC
Lydia
Plants.
 Oct 2019 JAC
Lydia
Glucogenesis makes the process sound holy
If we look closely enough, I'm sure that we would find plants are praying
Sunflowers are facing Him sitting on some golden throne of fire that's burning my skin
They do all of this work, and then we eat them. The sweet ones are the worst. Their prayers were answered over and over until they were saturated with sugars I am stealing
I cannot regret being alive. I cannot feel remorse as my fluid gives way to a vibrancy unheld by the entire person
The body is made up of millions of parts that decided they were better off constructed. Some parts have decided they were better off as parts and they invade our castles so we **** them.
Some of them make glucose. Most of them don't.
It's sad to only understand life through the pages of a textbook. To read about the life I took to read about. Cellulose is just glucose the body doesn't recognize. My papers were a body but my skin cannot be read.
I cannot feel remorse for being alive. I call my dog to me and wonder how his mind was put together. His fluid is all stitched up with body in between. He does not think about the little grass prayers. I do. I sit and join them but I do not pray because I cannot complete glucogenesis. I am not created. I will someday be soil and maybe parts of me will be used to make glucose and then I will pray because this is all I know of afterlife.
I am grateful that plants are religious.
 Sep 2019 JAC
Lydia
Laptop
 Sep 2019 JAC
Lydia
My laptop has longer days than I do
When I was a nursing assistant, I let my heart break for the woman crying over her late husband
Her husband died three years ago, but she only found out while I got her dressed
She’ll find out again tomorrow when someone else gets her up and she asks where he is
I did my clinical practice on the Alzheimer’s unit
At 3:17, Ingrid will stop asking me who I am, and where she is
She will thank me by name for getting her dressed
She’ll apologize for refusing to eat her breakfast
She doesn’t know what got into her

My computer is watching me cry in my college bedroom
It is telling me to stop asking for permission
It is giving me advice I will continue to ignore
I have to make a decision
I can pull up my homework or an Ed Sheeran song
My computer recommends a playlist based on my location
It’s music from home. My computer’s heart broke for the woman crying in an office chair over something she can’t remember.
For the sake of privacy, this was not a real person or scenario but a generalized situation that I saw and learned about.
 Sep 2019 JAC
Lydia
Doctor Who
 Sep 2019 JAC
Lydia
Dad,
Remember the episode of Doctor Who where Clara is running around between him and her boyfriend? She sits in front of her mirror

I can’t do this anymore

He takes her on one last trip. He can’t save everyone. There’s a mummy on a space train.

You fell asleep. I fell in love with the bandages but I left that part out.

I wondered if the mummy would take me. It didn’t. The characters surrendered and the mummy dissolved. The oxygen was stolen.

Clara woke up on a beach. You were still pretending to be asleep. I fell in love with her body but I left that part out.

To get to the point, he saved everyone. She didn’t leave.

Father, I am sitting in front of my computer because I can’t say it in front of the mirror
I wonder if I will dissolve when you surrender
Maybe you don’t see the bandages so you don’t say the words
You can’t picture me as a mummy
But Dad,
I am dust.
 Jul 2019 JAC
Lydia
Sometimes I think of how hard the floor must be to stand so many footsteps
I met tourists who forgot that we made homes here
They kept stomping, to claim space for themselves on our floor

We slid on your blood to a place where your body isn’t remembered
Bright red, like you held your breath
In dance, we are taught to avoid anticipation
Make each motion independent
A surprise to the audience
Nobody stared at your chest till your shirt was cut open

I never get reception in the tunnel
How long till someone picked you up?
I can picture the damage to your eardrums
The deafening screech of metal pulled along by electricity
The burns with fade but parts of you are still laid out on the tracks

The tourists tried to tell me that it was “probably just drugs”
I tried to tell them that we are a community
That we cannot reduce your life to a probably, or even a maybe,
Cannot pretend to know your body on a stretcher
It sounded a lot like crying to me

I told a counselor I wanted to send you flowers
Know which hospital they took you to
She said something silly about a kind heart, but they weren’t for you
Just wanted to know that you lived,
Didn’t think they’d let me send flowers to a morgue

I’ve been to a morgue: they let me see a body
Can’t remember his face
Can’t remember your’s, either
But I see your blood and ripped shirt and the head restraint
I see your hand reaching up and hear my own prayers that you’ll fall asleep soon

My friend will not remember the story, did not observe your body as a phantom
Cannot see your body on the tracks and forgot I told him it was there

I understand
Sometimes I forget the order of operations, too
I step over the line and somebody reminds me that the train arrives first
The doors open and a voice I don’t recognize gives me permission
I apologize for taking up space
And then suddenly, I’m someone else

I’m hoping that you woke up in the hospital bed and were someone else
Unlike most of my writing about love stories, this was a true event, with real people. My heart goes out to that man. I’ve had so many nightmares about him. I hope that he fell asleep and woke up in less pain. When they let me up the escalator, I ran back to campus, pretended I hadn’t been crying, and picked up my friend. I don’t think I can forget what happened there. If I cannot send flowers to the man, I will be sending them to ER doctors and nurses at the emergency department of my local hospital. Much respect To all of them.
 Jul 2019 JAC
Lydia
Thank you for getting angry when I didn’t have enough pans to make your eggs
The one thing I didn’t offer for breakfast
I told you over and over again I wouldn’t eat
Still you scowled at my lack of ingredients or kitchen tools
Refused to cook dinner with me
It gave me a reason to leave
Girls stay on bad dates because we’re convinced you’re the good guy
Just misguided
Love will change you, you’ll be better
But you stood in my kitchen and tried to take my roommate’s things and I thought
“I have the right to leave you.”

If independence is my cardinal sin,
I’ll walk right up to Satan and tell him to please leave his shoes by the door
I go to bed early and I shower at night
With time, we can pull him from the bargaining stage of grief
The only hell I could ever be left in is a weekend with man who expects my body as a welcome gift
Into my apartment
Wants me to buy new plates because a table setting for one isn’t good enough for two
As if you live at my kitchen table
Both nights I didn’t eat, was sick to my stomach
Afraid that you might see me settle down and construct an opportunity
I’m not sorry for my lack of dinnerware
You ate off the plate that holds my toast each morning near my diet coke
You participated in the ritualism that constructs me an independent woman
The body you will not lay hands on today, owner of the bed you will not sleep in
I did not let you remove that from me
If I had bought plates for you, you may have come back.
 Jul 2019 JAC
Lydia
Breathe
 Jul 2019 JAC
Lydia
It was exhausting to constantly apologize for taking up space
There's so many people on this big 'ol rock that I wondered how we don't run out of oxygen
Sometimes I held my breath, just in case
Then I got caught in thunderstorms
Stole air from the water through osmosis
The sidewalks cleared and I could expand
I think they were drowning, even before the rain came
When the lightening appeared, I imagined the selfish caught on fire
Oxygen is fuel and I think that's why everyone else is shutting down
Our blood was blue and maybe that's why we could swim through concrete

Please don't be worried when I vaporize
I'll be swimming in thunderstorms
Too tired to say, "I'm sorry,"
Learning to make room for myself
Maybe parts of me will escape this big 'ol space rock
Maybe we'll reach starts and breakdown into helium, and
Breathe.
Please comment :)
Written about my experience being overwhelmed in a big city.
 Feb 2019 JAC
everly
magnolia
 Feb 2019 JAC
everly
i’m feeling more lonely
every time i see you
it’s like the butterflies start flying around
too fast and start crashing into each other
and then they morph
back into ugly fuzzy caterpillars
all weighing down in my
stomach

this isn’t right
 Jan 2019 JAC
Lydia
Haunted
 Jan 2019 JAC
Lydia
I have nightmares about girls in busted-up porcelain ball gowns
Their teacups overturned but the party isn’t over
Their clockwork fingertips uncurl
Clicking like gears into the hands of the flesh-and-bone boys who will lead them onto the dance floor
The question is met with the sound of high heels hitting the ground all at once
The violin belts out of some boy's phone left on speaker
He steps on their toes.
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