I bought mascara and cantered through it-
stopping every so often to straighten up,
to relevé,
to turn exactly 1.8 pirouettes then stumble out
of amateur balance and click my tongue like a yiayia.

I dragged my fermenting body;
all wild eyes and heavy hair,
across four seasons while trying not to sigh too loud.

I dubbed 2014 the year of grit;
the year every day was a new texture of
gritty and I swelled my punches to match.

It was the year I cast my scars
out to sea on lines of poetry
I kept sequestered in my pockets
and reeled them back in published and
legitimate.

2014 gurgled into the year of stage lights,
highlighted scripts and talent lanyards
that stuck with sweat and raw, giddy nerves
from my neck across tripping tries.

It was the year I learned to dread the
third person. The year of one hundred word
bios I wrote over and over,
always baffled and unable to compose a few lines
describing myself.

It was a year of small stabs and big failures,
of getting recognized while buying yogurt.
It was thousands of miles in the Hundai Santa Fe
without ever really leaving.
It was the year of chasing without ever really catching.

2014 was a big collection of small moments that left
me with less certainties than months in the year.
They are simple. They are so very difficult to commit:
1.      Your emotions are valid. Please don’t defend them.
2.      The less you speak the more you say.
3.      Lipstain is never a good idea.
4.      Remember to check your email, dude. But actually.
5.      Your bones aren’t baby teeth. You don’t want them loose.
6.      The conversations you don’t have will haunt you.
7.      The places where you shed your skin then return to will haunt you more.
8.      A kiss is rarely just a kiss. Impossible with the threads of thought
you keep in your brain.
9.      Sweating means you’re trying.
10.  Feeling wanted is intoxicating, but be prepared for a hangover once the wanting stops.


It’s only a little. But it’s so much.
Walk tall with these bullets into 2015.
Be okay knowing you’ll laugh and squeal and feel beautiful and feel dead.
Know there will be moments you feel ethereal and there will be moments you will sit doubled over, pressing your arms into your stomach because it feels like that’s the only way to keep your guts from spilling out onto the floor for all to see.
There is not point but to make a point.
It’s just a year and the goal is the same: stay whole and grow.

A
Alex;
the boyfriend you had while I loved you.
Acid;
can I lend you 20 for some acid?
no. not even as you glint your eyes at me, no.
Anger;
with your family,
mentally ill sister and young parents
who don’t know how to deal with your
flickered drug habit
Attention;
what you don’t get enough of
and what you get too much of
B
*******;
yours are defining
cutting shirts into movements
your least favorite feature,
you always wished for my small peaks
but you have to learn the beauty of your own.
Blunt wraps;
you used an elementary school photo
of a black girl,
her cornrows burnt away that morning
C
Czajka;
chai-kah,
your name has always been a knife to me,
for the first month I knew you
I stumbled on the Polish of your mother’s maiden name.
Sha-jaka?
Calls;
I got a call every morning and every night from you,
so when I found out you didn’t love  me
those hours we spent
backing out the night sky
fell seamlessly away into phone bills.
Comfort;
your shaggy carpet
and ***** underwear
and peanut butter sandwiches
we were crescents together
I told you stories about the time I **** my pants
and you told me stories about how you peed behind the couch
and we were safe
under the lemon light of your room
Coy;
you are that to me,
not a tease but the sound of a wine glass in a sharp nailed hand
coy and subtle and pursed lips
E
Ex;
we are ex-never lovers
and ex-sweaty hand holders

F
Fragment;
you left me with your shards of light,
heavy sweaters and lip stains,
poetry books and fliers,
condoms and socks,
a bike lock and nail polish
H
Hair;
you ripped the hair out of my brushes
to keep in jars in your room,
Hair;
sharp and golden
tinted green at the bottoms,
flat on your head.
L
Lombard;
you live across town
and I spent days with you
listening to your iPod
stripped and full of Chinese food,
legs curled and stuck together
Love;
the only thing between us
was a blue light from a cell phone
N
Naked;
we have seen each other
husk and chicken skin,
only socks and earrings
or when I showered in front of you
***** hair rustling
you asked me why I fell in love with you.
P
Poem;
you read my first love poem to you and you cried at your desk
and I blushed and knew that you never loved me
I performed it that same day
and waited for you to hear me
but you didn’t come
and I don’t think you wanted to anyway.
S
Still;
sometimes i think
i still love you,
that dripping seed i felt for you
is hidden behind calling you crazy.
calling you ***** haired,
calling you nicotine-addicted
Smell;
it smells like Abby,
my cheeks rush and you must’ve been there
because it is just you in this room
Shoplifting;
you do it every time I am with you,
and I am guilty for the both of us
when I tried it for the first time
my fingers shook
and you bit your fingernail and laughed
and now I have a lipstain I think looks awful on me
and I am still guilty for the both of us
T
Tattoo;
you have an eye on your hip bone,
a quick decision that you will probably regret in a year
but I love it for now
V
*****;
the first time i got drunk was with you,
***** lemonade,
basement slurs
and it was disgusting
and I loved you
*****;
you threw up in the Salernos parking lot
on the corner of Fillmore and Home,
and in the back of Cal’s car
Virginity;
you lost your virginity to David
and you said it was just *** to both of you
and I didn’t believe you
and you fell in love with him
and cried when it really was just ***

You keep looking for yourself,
because you want so badly to see the 'real' you
so you look at quotes,
you experiment with lifestyles,
you question what you could be,
you look in a mirror but feel lied to,
then you hit a certain age and feel struck,
it's all between laughable and sad,
you notice the person behind every line of lipstain,
every cloak of cashmere,
and every bud on a cig,
you had this little speck of originality that no one understands.
Through all the time you spent trying to find yourself,
you were you,
it was just so hard to comprehend.

I interrogate art,
It's just my nature
And you are art,
So inhale deeply on those cigarettes that you love so much because I always quietly imagine what it must be like to be nestled so tenderly between your full lips.
Inhale my love,
because I love how calm you become when you strike a match against the Lions match box as if this is the 80's and you're
Kurt Cobain because I know his songs don't quite capture the angst that rests just below the surface of your grin.
And God when you grin it's like watching a ******* make love to a client,
It's like breaking all my own rules
I feel like I'm watching something I shouldn't but I can't walk away because I am the client and when you look at me like that it's like I'm set ablaze.
And I haven't even described your touch
and in all honesty I can't
because who would be bold enough to claim that they have wrapped their hands firmly around the wind.
How could I begin to describe the way it feels when you touch me because something about your presence alone
is intimate even if we're standing next to each other in a packed room.
Your touch is like a scalpel against treated flesh, precise, intense, purposeful but most importantly healing.
You hurt
almost with the intent of healing
because how else do I describe the fact that I am a woven tapestry and with one tug of my thread you have me unravelled.
I still haven't figured it out,
when it was that you figured out how I worked.
Perhaps it was in the moments where I was so engrossed in studying your every action you realized that you had created your own personal anthropologist but that implies that I had the upper hand
and we both know that isn't the case.

You are my muse and even your lipstain left on an empty glass of lager is enough to keep me occupied.

You are my muse and every emotional outbreak fuels my desire to document all your actions even faster, like a deranged professor I detail your actions trying to calculate when exactly it is that I became engrossed within the art work that is you.

You are my muse and every utter of your lips is like you wrapping your hand around mine and running the pen along the page.

You are my muse and I enjoy watching you smoke because I always wonder if I'll savour the taste of your lips the way you do those cigarettes. Somehow I'm sure I will.
It's an addiction really, to the way you occupy space,
like a curator in a gallery with one artwork alone -
I am completely absorbed.
I feel like an artist charged with restoration of something magnificent except I donno where the restoration is taking place, within You or I.

You are my muse and God I wonder why no one warned me that art speaks back.