dear freshman class,

1. It doesn't always have to be the love song or the funeral march
you are not obligated nest yourself in extremes
believe me, they will tell you how classrooms feel like caskets but you are by no means decomposing

2. You are but children in a linoleum jungle, young wild things at play, you are fresh fruit, ripe but not yet forbidden. Do not rush to grow into your bones just yet, we all want that kind of wiggle room back.  

3. the seniors will leave, your boyfriend will dump you, your friends will change, but the sky will still be the sky,  the sun will still be the sun, and the world will not end. With any good day comes skinned knees, bruises and dirt, remember that.

4. Maybe you'll try out loving with an open wound, come out bitter with your teeth knocked out, come out damaged or guilty. Fifteen is an awfully inconvenient time to love someone, I'm not telling you to be afraid, you already are, all I'm saying is learn to let go as fast as you learned to hold on, accept defeat, know that people can only ruin you if you let them.

5. It will feel like getting beat down sometimes, but you too will find good use for your knuckles, for your hands, your lips, your tongue. It will feel like getting beat down sometimes but you too will find people to patch you up. People to find comfort in, people to text at 2 am, people that stay.

I don't know a lot about how to love someone, but I do know this:

1. I know that every single cloud in the sky will begin to take the shape of his hands. I can't explain it, but it will seem like the universe is made up of little pieces of who he is and the stars will stop granting wishes because they know that yours have already come true.

2. I know that there are an infinite number of ways to fall apart, and only one way to put yourself back together. He's not it. There are ship wrecks at the bottom of the ocean that haven't moved in decades, so when your voice shakes, know that you are still in one piece.  

3. I know that there are books missing from the Bible, yet it's still the most touched piece of literature in the world. Even when he is gone, there will be someone else who wants to touch you, I promise.

4. It's okay to be afraid of oblivion. There is no better way to say I love you than to admit that one day, nothing will exist and you're afraid he won't be around for you to love. It's okay to be afraid of oblivion because when all we are is dust there will still be hope that it's not the end. There was an oblivion before us, and if there is an oblivion after, whose to say that it's not just another beginning.

5. I know that I don't know much about the world yet, but I do know that when trees fall apart, something else grows in their place. I know that even though it may seem like pain is inevitable, there is a way to make something beautiful out of it.

6. I know that he will start fires in all the places you never wanted to get rid of. Second-hand smoke will become your only language. It will hurt, but after a while, you'll miss him even when he's around and at that point all you will be is a house fire.

7. I don't know how to love you, but I do know that when I figure it out, I may lose my ability to walk. When I figure out how to love you, 4 am will never seem as far away as your arms. I might never hear anything else but the sound of your voice when you're tired, and I will be so happy. I hope that when I learn how to love you, you'll learn how to love me too. I hope that you lose your ability to walk. I hope that we stay still together because I don't mind being a ship wreck, as long as I'm a ship wreck with you. I don't know a lot about how to love someone but I do know this: *i'll find out.

The other day I woke up to the smell of your absence clinging to my skin. I took 8 showers that day and I am still not quite sure if it's possible to feel a phantom limb where there wasn't one in the first place.

2. The way that squirrels cross the street makes a lot of sense all of a sudden. I'm sure no one told you that you have a way of making their skin crawl in the most desperate way. I still can't eat on your side of the bed without choking on the residue your dreams left.

3. I read the obituaries like I used to read the creases your smile left, they're not meant for me.

4. Stars manage to keep their deaths a secret for years I wish I were as committed to forgiveness as they were. I stuck my hands in scalding water today and left them there until they begged for redemption, it sounded a lot like your name.

5. It took me two years to find out your middle name, that is not a metaphor. I used to think that the slower I said it the sweeter it would taste. I stick my fingers down my throat hoping to find the words you left there I'm so sorry for being too weak to say them back then I'm so sorry they couldn't make you stay. I drew highway maps on the palms of my hands that led me right back into my own arms, how is that for irony.

6. Television.

7. Lips that don't bruise when they touch my own, I want a love like a car crash. I want painful, and desperate, and no good for me, I want to not want this.

8. I've blown out so many candles I'm suprised I haven't put all the stars out yet. If the universe were capitalist shooting stars would be marketing to my demographic. I would be the poster child for wishes that will never come true.  

9. Novels that end exactly as you hoped they would

10. Nearly 160,000 people died in the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. 69% of the city was left in ruin. The radiation caused by the explosion was said to effect those living in Hiroshima for the next 30 years. From what I know, hospital walls are lined with cynicism and pain and I can't think of anything worse than oblivion than near oblivion.

3 am
I lay awake
I ponder
Of the world and of the life I live
3 am is when
The most shadowed of thoughts arise
Crumbling my insides
Tearing me apart
3 am is for
The lonely
The ones who long for someone to care
Feel the ever apparent loneliness
The distance
Between you and the world
But we yearn for what we cannot have
3 am
Is not for the lovers sleeping peacefully beside
It is not for little boys and girls deep in their dreams
3 am is for the troubled
3 am is for me

I remember a time when I looked at you and the chocolate brown black holes
of your eyes drew me in,
When I wished to dance among the stars in your brain, tracing constellations
from your neural pathways.
A time when the attraction of your beautifully imperfect face was more powerful than
the most powerful intermolecular forces,
and there was nothing I wanted more than to prove that it isn't ionic bonds that are the strongest, but love.
With you.

Now, there are no stars performing their fiery routine in the depths of your eyes,
no gravity to **** me in past the point of no return, as I used to be.
Nothing.
Empty space is all that remains of the intergalactic event that occurred in my mind.
What happened?


I remember the darkest corners of my universe being filled with temperatures and light in immeasurable quantities,
When I loved you.
When the wires in my brain were shot from the sheer energy of this force.


Now, having been reconstructed, no such forces pass.
My universe is once dark again. Speckled with lights of reason and logic.

As it should be.


I don't know what happened.


But, it's...



*.....finally......