We met on a street out in the middle of Brunberry.  Often times, we'd sit on the curb, watching the middle aged man in the corner house fix up his boat-of-a-car.  Or, on Sundays, the chubby, bakery-esque woman would walk her grandchildren down the road to church.  We were young, then.  I still visit that street in Brunberry, and, in fact, it is called Feldspar Road.  The man on the corner, with the old car?  His name is Charles North, and he's a retired mechanic.  The grandmother is dead now, but her daughter and grandkids moved in a couple years ago.  I still come back and check up on those people, and I still watch the leaves fall in autumn and watch water pool around our favorite bench in spring.  The air is just as crisp as when we were children.  Feldspar Road is just as it was when we were young.

--

Just off of Feldspar Road, there is a park.  Really, it's just a wide, open field, with unkempt grass that the neighborhood has picnics and late afternoon barbecues on.  Do you remember when we stopped by the Feldspar block party on your twentieth birthday weekend?  It was warm and the sun was blinding; a perfect July day for grilling out in the park.  You pulled me down onto the dried grass and we watched all of the familiar people gabbing and gossiping with neighbors.  Charles, grandma and the children, that young couple that had recently moved in.  These people were like our family, even though we didn't live here.  They made us feel at home.

--

It's October, and Feldspar Road is coated in bright yellow leaves.  I haven't heard from you in a few months, but I'm sure you're doing okay.  You've been busy with your new friends at your university a few states away.  Feldspar misses you, as do I.  Charles is getting old; his car sits, rusted, in the driveway.  The young couple got divorced, and I'm pretty sure the girl kicked the boy out of the house.  Things are getting dark, despite the turning leaves.  I do sure hope you're doing okay.  The park has a playground, now, and the few children in the neighborhood play there after school.  I've memorized jump rope rhymes, patterns in cat's cradle, and the hardest hopscotch courses.  I know you always loved kids, and watching them play makes me wish you could be here to laugh along with me.

--

I moved out to Kentucky this April.  I needed to get away from home, and away from Feldspar Road.  I visited much too often, and after Charles died, and all new people lived on the block, I felt out of place.  Whatever made Feldspar feel like home was gone.  It's been years since I saw you, and I can only assume you've found someone to love, someone to lay in the grass with, someone to marry.  Me?  I'm starting to meet new people in the area.  I like to spend my time out in the fields by the border.  It's quiet, unless you count the crows and crickets.  It's peaceful, and standing there in the breeze, with the wheat up to my chest, watching the sky turn bright orange in the evening, makes me feel a bit happier.  A little less lonely and a little more at home.

I don't wanna remember those three terrible nights
              It was a time when I never even knew the time
There were a lot of people, but two stood out the most
               They didn't realize it, but the traumatized me
               They wouldn't leave me alone
                They wanted "hugs"
                They said they loved me, but it was clear
                No sign of affection was ever there
I don't wanna remember my messed up mind
                13 months in treatment made my mind right
I will never forget those 3 terrible nights
                Sitting there unknowing when they were coming
                All that mattered to them was the "hugs" and the drugs

the only home i've ever known
resides somewhere in this cold heart of stone
and for months you've been climbin to the top of my throne
too blind to see that i sit here alone.

Uncaring minutes are but passersby
disregarding my wails.
They hear me; they offer no help.
The bastards.
Though, with only sixty seconds to exist,
why would they stop for me?

The hours pound against my skull with intent to smash their way in.
Such constant clangor resonates through my consciousness
disturbs my ego,
dislodges regrets,
the agitation seems to sieve out
tiny jealousies from among other thoughts.

The Days...
Oh those god-damned Days.
They see me confused and seize their chance;
they pull out my feet
right from under my frame,
and helpless, hurt,
I collapse to the earth.
And here time really sets in.

The Months form gangs called 'Years'
and The Years take their turn
breaking my joints, my fingers, my knees,
all my snappable, crackable points.
Curved, crippled,  and creaking,  
I languish in fantasies of what's supposed to be,
oh, and the 'might-have-beens'.

Time makes things worse.

A dark shadow moves over me.
I look up  as far as a heavy, beaten head will allow
only to see the massive, soul-crushing weight of the decades
seating their backside;
oppressively,
down to rest upon my twig-like spine.

And throughout the abuse,
I crawl, cringe, cower
as safe as can be in a low lying state on the ground,
(which is still six feet too high for all that time cares!)
I hear from somewhere afar
an unfaltering decree
from my maker to me
"Stand up straight! For Heaven's sake!"

Don't think I don't see the looks that I get
As I walk down the halls of our school
Ever since that report came out
"Missing Ottawa teen"
People have been staring and they think they're discreet
But I notice every single glance
And every single point
And my doctor says its the paranoia
But I know what I'm fucking seeing
I see you whisper as I walk by
I see you ask your friends what happened
I saw your posts on Facebook
"Please help she's my best friend"
Bitch you don't even know me
You didn't notice that I hadn't been to school in months
You didn't notice my sudden disappearance from your life
I got zero texts zero messages zero calls asking if I was okay
That is until the day I ran away
I logged onto Facebook 55 notifications
"Help she goes to my school"
Bitch no I don't anymore thanks for noticing
Its really true what everyone always said
Nobody cares unless they all think you're dead

72 years. Thats how long true love lasts. Well I like to think it lasts longer. I don’t know that for sure yet but I’d like to some day. Together since age fourteen and sixteen, I think thats pretty impressive. A different time. Which sucks because so much of ‘love’ nowadays revolves around lust. Which is more physical than emotional. So then I wonder how can they throw the word love around, whilst throwing themselves around. Oh the irony
Well I thought I loved someone once. Eight months, with probably triple that amount in fights. Though we fought it came easy to us. I guess thats more than I can say then the couples that were around us. But it was too hard. Hearing what he really thought about me. Not good enough. Too far away. Like I was so object only to be attained, to be shown off. Like a prize. Well I stopped being that object the same day he decided he didn’t love me
That’s what also sucks about this generation. There isn’t just a relationship or single there is: Talking, talking talking, flirt texting, couple dates talking, occasionally hook up talking, got drunk that one time at a party and now things are awkward talking. Then there’s: Having a thing, kind of together, pretty much together but not official, pretty much together but not Facebook official, together, and too many more.  
We can’t go two seconds with out Facebook stalking, texting, IMing, calling, or being together without fights, or assumptions about unfaithfulness. People are treated as objects and love it because someone, somewhere is paying attention to them and making them feel special. Generation X. Who can’t stop worrying about all their ex’s. More like generation disappointment.

(I think I've lost the ability to start things, so please forgive this poem for not having an attention grabbing genesis)
I've been twiddling my thumbs for almost eight months now
Putting off all that I care about
(And especially everything that I don't. Here's lookin' at you, AP World History)
Sitting around amassing a booklet of words to use in the future for novels and whatnot
But only using them in essays so I seem smarter than I am
(For example, susurrus means 'a whispering or rustling sound; a murmur')
Hoarding anything affiliated with Ben Folds because he makes me feel things on occasion
(I currently have 189 songs of his on my iTunes library; No one understands me.)
Making dick jokes at lunch while masking the thoughts of substance ricocheting around in my head
(Also your mom jokes because no one would think that you're crying internally about the uncertainty of the afterlife whilst making lewd stabs at their mother's integrity(and vagina. Ba dum tss.))
Apparently craving the lingering feel of another's touch
(I had a dream a few weeks back that Ben Folds licked my hand; My stomach folded (hahahah, folded) in on itself.)
Thinking that my feelings of misanthropy and apathy and everything else I can't find the words for yet are mine alone because everyone else is too stupid to have thought them themselves
(Even though I know that I'm not particularly special and I should stop being so elitist and stupid)

But I've finally found a light at the end of the table in the last place I'd expect--
(I meant to say tunnel, but hey, the source of said light does sit at my lunch table.)
A cherubic Presbyterian boy with an aversion to all things perverse,
(Which includes my sailor's tongue and occasional tendencies to want to put it on a member of my own sex, thought he doesn't know about that)
A spec of cleanliness on the grimy waistcoat of humanity who makes me want to be the best I can be
(Today when I saw him, I only swore once; I was very proud of myself)
But maybe I'm just jumping the gun
Because what would a good Christian boy want with a heathen like me who isn't even sure she believes in God?
Maybe his prolonged contingencies were merely contingent and I'm just overreacting because of my few and far between incidences of human contact.
(Seriously. Don't touch me.)
Maybe I just want someone to talk to for hours about everything and nothing at all.
(What with me being relatively antisocial, it's hard to find people with similar mindsets.)
Maybe I just want someone to funnel my adolescent attention into
(Because teen movies have taught me that one obviously can't be happy without having a crush on someone at any given time.)
Or maybe it's just because the way the Bible quote on the back of his t-shirt conflicted so humorously with the way he shook his hips to a J-Lo song on "Just Dance."
(Seriously, though, it was hilarious. I was dying.)
Or the way our fingers brushed when we were catching frogs
Or the way he blushed when I stepped out in my bikini
(I went to a pool party today.)
Or the way he held me momentarily in the delirious confusion of the flashing strobe lights
Or the way he got one point higher on his research paper than me a month ago
(He was excited; I was upset.)
Or the way that he does everything nearly to perfection.
I could go on..
But I don't know.
Maybe I'll get over him in a week and slip back into myself.
Because, like I said, what would a good Christian boy want with a heathen like me?

How sad it is

when I care enough

to erase all that I know in my head

so I can follow along your story

and truth will become lie

how sad it is

when I tore down my pictures

to no longer think back to those months

so I can follow along your story

and I can forget about there ever being an us

how sad it is

when I write this

to recollect my thoughts

so I could pour every minute back

and your story would crop them out

how sad it is

when I scribble out the tic tac toes on the wall

so I can walk by the brick by brick without

remembering at all

how sad it is

but if youre happy

it's not so sad

When I get in a car
and I look out the windows
I see faces of full storied people

and I create scenes in my head
about what their lives are like
so I pretend that the man in the corvette
is going to pick up his daughter that he
hasnt seen in months

and the girl driving the truck
is going to the mall
so she can buy a dress for
her highschools annual mini ball

and the family in the mini van
is going on vacation
to a beach in florida
but first they have to stop at the
gas station

but this is all in my head
and none of it is probably true

the man is probably buying some ciggerettes
while the girl most likely goes to see a boy
to give him lots of sex
and the family is going out to eat
at an arbys but the dad just lost
his job so he cant buy his two daughters
anymore barbies

but thats also in my head so im not really sure
and so I stare at the window until I think some more

and there's a wreck on the side of I-35
so I take a moment inside my soul
to wish whoever goodbye
and I picture their lover at
their funeral
clenching chin about ready to cry
but maybe I'm just overthinking
maybe they made it out alive

at the nearest stop light
in my favorite city
sits a homeless man at the corner
clenching a sign scribbled with
"Will take any"

We keep on driving
it starts to rain on the way
I wonder what the homeless man
is thinking as he's drenched in
gods dismay

and the sky is crying hard now
for the lives of the full-storied people
but maybe thats all in my head

because in 20 minutes its sunny
I get out of the car
and forget what I thought