March 31, 2016- Journal entry          
                          
I’ve always felt guided to things, drawn to every destination mapped out for me thus far. But for some reason, at a time where I need guidance the most, I am stuck. At a time where I’m told to move the most, my feet remain frozen to this place. I keep telling myself “you need to move, you need to move, you have to move!”. Maybe I feel safer on pause. Maybe I am scared of paving the wrong path for myself. I’m about to graduate and college doesn't feel like much of a destination… it feels more like four walls that weigh any sort of chance I have at making it in this world; it feels like a calculation. And if all my numbers don't add up right, just perfectly, I’ll fall and end up stranded in fractions of lost potential.

But right now, in this exact moment in time, my pen feels like enough; my pen feels like a perfect destination, and with every period I mark, I feel closer to it. Maybe I’m completely naive and clueless.  Who am I to solely rely on my pen to take me places, important places? How stupid can I be? To believe in my work… to believe in myself enough to pave streets of ink and scribbled out words?
My work, this ink, it is all I have to offer, it is all that consumes me and I don’t think classrooms and crumpled up graph paper will change that. So maybe I'm paused because I’ve already crossed the line of my destination. I can’t help but think this is where I'm supposed to be. This ink, as long as it runs,

                                                               ­                    I don’t have to.

please place me on the bookshelf.
you can pick me up,
read the fine print,
crease my corners,
cross out the transgression,
and annotate the virtue.
but Please put me back on the
bookshelf.

If I’m left on trains or
on benches by the bus stop-
If I’m put in places I don’t belong-
I’ll fade.
my print will pale,
my creased corners won’t recover,
my transgressions and virtues
will interrogate themselves.

I’ll become the environment
my fickle pages are left in.

so please put me back and
never touch me again.


-*if we allow ourselves to be placed in bad environments,
eventually, we will become them.

I thought I could grasp you
and end up feeling nothing.
I thought I could touch all the
moments that felt like sand and
mold them into something easy; easy to
bury and never dig up again.  

I rushed to your shores, eager to get it
over with; feel what I needed to
feel and walk back to my life
without a sting.
but my god, the waves came
and they wouldn't stop.
they pushed me so far into you,
I didn't know whether to cry for help
or let them soak me up
until they’d had enough of my saltwater
heart.

I was 300 ft. deep.
and I’m sure you could
find scraps of me littered far  
inside in your oceans.

I thought I could grasp you and feel nothing.
Instead, you sunk me and made
sure I felt everything.

thank you.