Realizing I am slipping away from her when she didn't text me happy birthday this year. Even though we haven't talked in four years, the very least we could do is say, "I thought of you today, and I hope it's going great." The absence of that sank its fangs into my throat.

Sipping a hot cinnamon dolce latte while sitting on the second floor deck of the student center. Watching students stream in waves to classes, and wondering what their story is.

Hearing the three chimes in 'Cassy O' and the guitar's chaos at minute 6:47 to 7:45 of 'Freedom' live at the Hammersmith Apollo, 2007.

Gazing at the sky when the sun is on the other side of the world, but a shade of crimson tinges in a terrifying drench.

Conversely, when the sky is so white, all one smooth blanket, I wonder what color will I see when I finally go to sleep- or will I be stuck in a black film?

Knowing a boy is near me so I stretch my neck, straighten my back, and hope he notices everything I want a person to notice and grow to love.

The disappointment people have in me swallows my whole body. Sometimes it's an act of cannibalism, and I can't push away regret faster than it starts to lick its lips at the sight of my glistening blood.

Seeing a picture of my younger self from sixteen, and it seems I have changed far too much to connect with the person in the image. She didn't know anything. I still don't know anything.

I stare at myself in the mirror, sometimes fully clothed and sometimes naked, and I wonder, "Who the hell is this? Who is she?" I detach my soul from my frame, and my face does not match my mind.

My eyes can just take a picture. I know the quality and the subject, my camera does not. I see angles and perspectives differently, and it frustrates me that I cannot get my vision out.

Some days my hearing does not affect me whatsoever. I don't even think about it. But others, particularly when I make mistakes, I blame my disability. And I hate to make excuses.

I want someone to film my passing moments, catch my laughter, study my ****** expressions. Expect me to glow and beam when I hear my favorite sounds, know where my dialect comes from, smile when I mention my friends.

One day someone will hold me and reach intimate places, and I'm afraid I will not be sufficient enough.

The scariest thing, however, and I absolutely have no way of explaining it, is life after death. We live for a fraction of time. We will forever live in white space, and not come alive again. Doesn't that terrify you?

I was walking next to an elderly woman.

Suddenly she stopped, bent over, and picked up a dime

that was lying there on the sidewalk.

"Wow!!" I said to her. "Now you will have ten days of good luck."

"Yes," she replied, smiling. "My late grandfather is  always dropping money for me from Heaven."

I smiled at this thought.

Then she said, "I,wish he would start dropping hundred-dollar bills !"

I called out to you in the dead of night.
My eager heart plummeting
at the occasional creaking sound that came
from within our old battered down house.
Every sigh and moan,
an echo of the anguish the old house had once endured.
I understood the house’s pain and it accepted mine
The way a mother accepts her young.
The house was dying,
and so was I.
We both knew it
but still We cried out for you,
together,
one last time.
Frightened and forlorn as we were.
Like the last rose of winter,
holding on to its withering petals,
too afraid to let go,
But far too weak to hold on.
I sprawled out across the kitchen floor.
My punctured heart spilling out,
through the cracks between each slab
of generically stained linoleum
The house held me
"Close your eyes, "
it whispered.
I held them open
for as long as I could
I grit my teeth
and whispered back
"I’m sorry"