i thought you were the first; not the only. i thought being in love with you was how dating was supposed to work. i thought you felt this way about everyone you went on a date with. saying i love you a month into knowing each other, for me, was "normal". i thought love came and went with everyone with whom time was spent.

this wasn't the case.

i'm walking down the street with this new boy next to me and internally i'm groaning. he's rich as heck and sure he's not the best looking but he seems ok. he isn't boring but i'm so bored. he isn't annoying but i'm so annoyed. i don't want to be here, in a tesla in sunny california. i feel nothing for him and i don't want his lips on mine. his perfume smells good but i don't want him on my skin. i don't want him.

i don't want him.

he calls me in the middle of the night and asks if i want to go on an adventure. i love adventures. i love late nights under the stars when nothing is holding you back. i love being alive and feeling like life isn't over just yet. i tell him i'm tired. i go to bed. i sleep. i don't want to have an adventure with him because it feels forced and unnatural. i don't want to dance in the rain or smoke under the falling leaves. i don't want to hold his hand or talk to him about philosophy.

i don't love him.

i thought i'd fall in love with him or the other him or the one after him but heck, i'm not falling in love at all. these are just bodies with beautiful souls that do not connect to mine. perhaps i haven't given them the space to touch my heart, spirit, and mind. or perhaps me and you were a one-off. maybe you were the one for me. the one that got away. i could see myself marrying you. i always knew i could raise daughters, but with you, i could see myself raising a son.

where do i go from here?

when i think of home i think of you standing by the bed with your pajama pants on. i think of my curly hair and bare legs. i think of your oversized shirts and my pink tanktop. i think of the mundane things that felt like heaven. home is your new haircut. home is your old shoes. home is laying in your lap. home is you.

She had galaxies
In her eyes
And her tears
Were falling stars.

Her eyes were like the ocean,
So blue, yet far from the emotion.
Her hair was a straw like gold,
A beautiful girl but her feet were always cold.

She brings herself down,
Like every guy that comes around.
So scared of being of being broken,
She leave all her thoughts unspoken.

If only they can see how beautiful she is,
If only they knew how clever she really is.
If only someone would show her how beautiful she is,
If only someone would tell her how clever she really is.

"There's a flower. . . I think she's tamed me"

Oh, be like the little prince, won't you?
You took me to see the stars
I didn't know then that he was up there

Its my favorite story, you told me
About a fox and rose and sheep and a little prince
So when we left each other again, I went and read your story

He was the only boy in the world for the fox
And she was the only flower in the world to him
Oh, how this is too often neglected

I am waiting for you, my little prince
Oh, won't you tame me?
We can laugh with the stars and hear the bells

Has the sheep eaten the flower or not?

flatten your tongue
slip it between your teeth

n.

your little lips
forming an elipsis

o.

put them together
and may you declare
a word you’d so carefully deny—
no.

you spell it out
on table tops
shout it
from the rooftops

and when cursed hands
seek to defile your shrine
may you exclaim
"i am mine"

You hold me in your arms and caress
My hair, I feel so soft as a feather, I grasp
At your short dark hair...so light and smooth.
Until you are kissing my neck, you move
Along so graceful, playful-wild-all that you do.
You hold me so close, I feel as if I am lost
In the world of natural love, like there is
A never-ending supply, gold from the skies above.

In time I am rocked back and forth between
The ebbing tide like a flow of water from the sea
Is holding me. It keeps me in a form of motion
Not unlike I am a boat and your arms are the sea.
Visuals aren't needed, this is all I feel and all I see.
We are sitting there in the green green grass,
It's a beautiful warm day, all sunshine and soft rain,
As if it was brought about from a world so divine.
We will forever be in this place...we'll always stay.
It's always 1989...always 1989...

When I was nine
My mother asked, “What do you want to do when you’re older”
And I told her
Honestly
With my nine-year-old smile
As wide as an ocean
My nine-year-old heart
As deep as infinity
I told her, “mama, I wanna touch the stars, I wanna find pirate treasure, I wanna climb mountains and live in the treetops”
My mother,
She looked at my nine-year-old smile
She held my nine-year-old heart in her hands
and she whispered,
“Baby, how are you gonna do all that?”
I didn’t have an answer
You see,
At age nine,
I didn’t think about practicality
Or actuality
Or logicality
Or any big word with an -ality stuck to it
At age nine I had aspirations that I rode like angel wings
Dreams that would carry me to the stars I longed to hold
I was nine years old with a mind full of colors
And a mouth made to love
My heartbeat was the drum I marched to
The melody to my song
I told my mother once again “mama I wanna touch the stars”
Flashforward
I am a freshman in high school now
I stand before you,
Age 15
A year and a half away from driving
3 years from applying
4 years from finding what I’m gonna do with my life
Since then
My nine-year-old smile has dwindled
My nine-year-old heart has shriveled
These dreamers shoulders have hunched
Under the weight of textbooks and GPA's
The fingers that spewed color like a 64 pack of Crayola crayons
Aimlessly type out the final paragraph of an essay
The cavern in my chest, that was filled with infinite possibilities and wonders and questions that I longed to answer
Now sits
Empty
Instead of looking for mountains to climb
My aged nine-year-old mind
Searches for the college that will accept me
Not even the real me
Not the seeker of possibility
Not the tree climber
Not the wannabe fingerprint artist
They will take prim and proper not-nine-year-old me
the one who tells her mom she’s gonna major in finance but she hates math
The one who’ll have a steady 9-5 that’ll numb her skull and make her contemplate if death can come from boredom
A coffee tainted room of pencil skirts and high heels
Instead of her favorite blue jeans and Chuck Taylors
A nice job that’ll pay well but only for the price of her nine-year-old originality
But she only tells her mom that because it sounds like a real job
A not nine-year-old treehouse living
Cave exploring fantasy
I mean, I have to move on from that dream.
It's time to be practical
Actual
Logical
Now instead of making up new words
I learn definitions of the ones that already exist
Instead of painting with my own colors
I use the ones handed to me
Because its practical
Actual
Logical
Its how it should be.
I am no longer nine years old
Far from it at that
And yet,
I still long to touch the stars,
just a little less
I still want to search for treasure
But just as an afterthought
My eyes are still glowing with wonder
Just a little bit duller
Nine-year-old me isn’t dead
She just
grew up

Five is the witching hour.
Filled with thick fog, or
Perhaps vivid hallucinations.
Desperate with the need to dream,
Or desperate to wake and stand in the light,
Just creeping up into the inky blue of the sky.