The bus driver sits alert
as he steers down the streets.
The clock tics,
the city shifts,
and he knows every storefront,
and he doesn't miss a stop--
although he's always slightly late
for the schedule that has bound
this college town.

The blue-speckled seat cradles me,
forehead against a grimy window.
I radiate heat against cold glass
and wipe away the fog.
Squinting I read the names of foreign signs
but my heavy eyelids flutter.

The bus driver sits stiff in his chair
but I am melting in my seat
which is now made of green leather-
and I am 11 years old.
The other kids are gone now,
for it's almost the end
of an hour and a half long route.
It's just me left, on the seat,
my legs extended across the aisle.
My eyes may be closed,
but I know every turn.

The crackle of the loudspeaker
challenges the traffic noise
that has become my silence.
"Anybody still on the bus?"
I sit upright and wave my hands
so that Bob can turn the bus on 16th street
to take me home.

She slides in her headphones.
The cart is filled of freshly read books,
the lucky ones with their pages recently turned,
gently pushed to the upstairs stacks.

Beyond the glass door lies
the world of words. Walls
encase countless characters,
stories that needed to be told.

And now the room belongs to the girl
with the music that lifts her from shelf to shelf
bringing each book back to where it belongs
from her tiptoes to her knees.
Her eyes erode the call numbers
while lyrics and numbers fill her head.

On the bright days a little hip hop has her
dancing down strings of shelves.
Other times she selects slow songs
and imagines the books are a part of her:
the early memories, destined dreams, the everyday thoughts.

Thoughts that thread through the stacks.
She tries to tuck them away before they’re lost
and wishes they could also be
placed so particularly in her mind.

my friend Jill cut off most her hair
and when I saw her
I thought:
this is it
we're all growing up

when my grandma cut my hair
she told me sometimes
she gets the urge to run
outside and
tape all the leaves back on the trees

Aluminum foil squeezes a treat whose heat
warms my back through the knapsack.
My friends and I, we climb, hoping we’ll find
a place to fill our stomachs and rest our minds

When we see it we know.
A patch of rock entirely exposed
overlooking the canyon where our voices echo.
Once our feet are suspended over the edge
high above the trees, I unzip my pack.
And the beauty deserves all my attention,
but my eyes are lost in another dimension,
distracted by a perfect breakfast burrito
one slip away, from unraveling in the chasm below.

It is purple sunrise mornings
the fog so thick it slithers
through the net mesh of our tent
and fills my cotton sweater
which still smells like the bonfire
that flickered between us last night
like the stars that wished me goodnight.

If only that fire could warm me every night
and I could always see the stars before
those purple sunrise mornings

could we eat oatmeal
in my dorm room again
waiting for it to cool
so the green apple doesn't
burn our tongues

we don’t always fill the silence
but i’m okay with
awkward chewing and sipping
of slow coffee mornings
as long as your words
fill the air not my screen

I think it's so cliche
that you assume we disagree

Tis morning,
my " " key stopped working.
I'm trying to write my paper,
and it's so distracting.

As if I wasn't distracted enoug already.
I ate tis.
But I ave to write my paper.
But at least now I ave someting to blame my distraction on
oter tan you.