He is a swan and he sits on a black lake trying desperately to save his feathers from soiling.
They all sit around him bobbing their heads in the filth and minding not one bit.
And as time goes by he knows his feathers have begun to dull
And he tries to fly away from it all
But they refuse to let him, he cannot fly, he is but a swan they tell him with pleasure
And he keeps getting filthier as they help paint each feather
And the lake begins to look more like a prison
And he watches his reflection become what he hates
He forgets about that before that has driven him
And he waits and he waits and he waits and he waits
For something he knows will never come
Help from elsewhere so he won’t have to try
Help from elsewhere to make it easy to fly
This help does not come as it was never out there
There’s no help for a swan that’s full of despair
Only he can turn his prison of hate, a lake full of muck, into a better landscape
The day will come when the swan flies away
And the others will watch and they’ll wonder and gasp
Because they thought swans were only swans, they know this from swans that lived in the past
And as this swan flies, sure his feathers are dull, he can barely flap, and his wings are quite small
But now he can see every lake all around
For there are many that wait for him to be found.

I feel like a mammoth sometimes
stomping and clomping and trying to find
Where all the other mammoths went.

I got tired

Of proving that my dreams are valid,
That the diameter of the me that you see in no way predicts what exists inside

I got tired

Of whispering my words so that those around me could feel tall
Taking up space was a sin and

I got tired

Of hearing my sins repeated back to me

I got tired

Of the burning in my heart as it became ash
Because they like their barbecues

I got tired

Of distracting myself from what I hated most
Because I was scared they might be right

I am tired

Of holding on
Because I forget how to let go

A constant stream of justifiable lies. Contorts what I want from my life.
What used to seem impossible is now my reality
but I'm not so sure I want it anymore
because it is different
so different than what I thought it would be

Is it worth the games I'm forced to play in order to dream?

Today is hard but tomorrow will be worse because I will wake up to hate
reflected back at myself

There are so many things I should do. There are so many things I should want.
Do we not define our own success? Each to their own version of happiness?

But all I keep thinking is
I shouldn't be eating

And you
You don’t listen
You just wait for me to stop talking
And I keep on giving
And you keep on taking
And it’s draining
I hate you for it
But I hate me more
Because I let you take
And I keep giving
And it never ends
This thing that we’re living

You know when you meet someone and they fit perfectly into your life and you just want to keep them forever.
There are few of these people like that. That will accept you, that have your sense of humor, that don’t care if you’re having a bad hair day, or year.
They make you smile, laugh, cheer you up when you feel like nothing can.
They accept you unconditionally and are the first to laugh at you when you do something stupid.
And you never appreciate them until they have drifted off into their own lives.

But I want to appreciate them now.
They keep me going when I feel like I can’t anymore.
They are my sanity in the insanity of the world.
People who don’t even know how valuable they are.

this is not intended to mean anything

I just want to clear a little space in my mind
I've been thinking a lot lately about how most of the time I'm living in yesterday, or tomorrow.

but never today.

why is it I have such a hard time living in today?

too much thought, not enough living.

It's time
Is what my jazz teacher yelled over Rupert Holmes singing yes I like pina coladas
and as I stretched my ligaments trying to mold my body into a new shape
in the back of my mind I asked "Am I ready?"

because

I don't feel ready.
I like it here, where I'm safe
no choices
no thoughts
no judgments
no fear
but no matter how numerous the mistakes
I must remember
there's only so many excuses a person can make

so no more excuses

It's time
to contribute to the chaos,
scream at the stars for every false promise,
sing for those who don't have a voice,
be wise when dealing with precarious choice,
grin at the world and give it my faith,
exist as I am,
begin in this breath anew,
free myself from my own expectations,
cherish the individual and the crowd; for they each have worth,
fail and enjoy every moment of it,
laugh because this is it and it is I.

get rid of the plans

I've been tired for too long,
reluctant,
unsure.

It's time
for an existence centered around love
It's time
to accept this life as it is: uniquely mine

I refuse to lose myself again
in the drifting fog that leaves me guessing at what shape I am

It's time
to live.

Sometimes
it all seems so real
     Like this reality weighs heavily on my chest and I can’t breathe.
my stomach jumps and sends this cold fire throughout my body and I feel it.

I feel the world boiling in my consciousness and there’s no release that could possibly be worthy of this feeling.
Then I tell myself I'm just being dramatic and I tamp that feeling down with my fear and sadness and a yearning for eventualities.
Sometimes I’m not sure what I mean.
Sometimes I make stuff up.
But really I’m just an awkward almost-twenty year old who wants her life to be something.
Extraordinary
But.so.is.everyone.else.
And isn’t that right?
Isn’t that rich?
That we are all one.
A vast ocean of “ones”.
I’m really just a wave.
And it is alright to be a wave.
Because waves, they move.
It’s alright to be dramatic though. Why not?
I have this mind that wants out and I keep suppressing it. At least I’m pretty sure I do. Maybe I don’t. Maybe it is only on occasion that I tell it to shut up because it all is just too much.
That’s probably it.
Who am I really?
I guess I could list all of my traits and that could be who I am. Or what I have accomplished in life, and presto, you have…me.
Then there’s this consciousness that sits inside this flesh and controls it. That could be who I am. But that consciousness is just the acts it has achieved and the traits it has portrayed, is it not?
So I guess what I’m saying is.
The I that is me has not achieved satisfactory on my scale of living by which I measure my worth.

Not yet anyway

I make lists
to organize my life into lines
on a page
some lists are for groceries
others for wishes
I make lists of "to do's"
for the satisfaction of crossing them off
I scribble thoughts onto paper in the late hours of the night
I make lots of lists
of things I'm grateful for
of goals still awaiting their accomplishment

to remind myself I exist

I guess it's also a form of obsessive compulsiveness
that comes with not knowing who you are
or being unsure of where you're going
I make lists
to slowly, deliberately, write myself into a person

I hate myself.

I never thought I would.
I wish you loved me.
Like you love them.
You threw me aside.
And made me think
What’s wrong with me?
I want.
What they have.
Because
If I had
What they have.
Maybe you would love me.  
Are they’re all throwing it away.
Life.
Everything is hard now.
So much harder than before.
It hurts to breathe sometimes.
It hurts less to cry.

I hate myself.
I never thought I would.

I just cant explain

the way everything is what it's supposed to be

even when I'm in pain

I am unadulterated. I am free

It gives me shivers

so deep in my bones

my soul decides there's no time to give up

not even when I am at my most alone

this life gives me goosebumps

A dog awoke in its own bed and padded into the kitchen. The dog sat on its haunches and waited expectantly. Its dark eyes fixed on the cabinet, tongue lolling over its back molars. In its waiting it does not contemplate the mysteries of the cabinet or the futility of each day. There are no false pretenses and if there were the dog would not know or care.

It simply waits.

And in its waiting it finds what most of us spend our entire existence searching for.

I overestimate how much I can handle.

All of the time.

I just now discovered this about myself.

It changes nothing, I will always take on the world.

Even if it kills me.

away we go
me and you
off into the night
just where to?
into the castle of old
into the dungeons so cold
over the sea and the sky
look my dear
at how high we can fly.

Watch the world move, a day at a time. And once you’ve ceased trying, remember this rhyme.

Time doesn’t stand still. Not for a minute. For that minute is yours, and you better be in it.

I spent the majority of yesterday sitting on trains, looking at people's hands. Never, had the golden bands, slipped around fleshy fingers, stood out to to me the way they did that day. It was like I had found Wally and my eyes couldn't look away. Never, had I noticed the way human hands react to sound, speaking their own language, ignored because no one understands or cares. I only just noticed my own pair. They had always been there, my hands, under-appreciated. I don't have to look at them to be sure they're attached, but I check anyway.

HAVE you ever been so tired you start believing you are the universe? And it all makes sense. Like that one time you were mowing the lawn without sunglasses in the thick of summer and the glare of sunlight stings your unprotected eyes. All that's needed to cure your festering mind is a slight droop, lashes finding their nests, and the song stops. Sometimes, I test my lashes but whether they rest or not, I still see the universe in you.

SOUGHT out and with more than a few doubts. Half that and what do you have? Well, partly you but also partly me. It's a strange feeling knowing something you thought you had under control just a few days ago has spiraled into something unrecognizable. There's still something there... I think.

YOU get so caught up that you forget your body exists in space and time and you lose any awareness or feeling and when you finally return to yourself you notice the aches of where you forgot.

AND admit it, the worst is yet to come and even when it does come what guarantees your safety then? "Oh no, not me! I've been through hell already."

YOU are what you eat. Lying doesn't do any good, as transparent as you are. Laughter is equally as useless. Forget about puzzles, pine trees, or power outages, they're just distractions until the inevitable something comes and smacks you upside the head. Are you used to me speaking gibberish? Tactical evasion is almost a superpower by now.

HAVE we spoken lately? You and me? I thought I saw you sitting across from me the other day. You weren't paying attention, of course, you never do. Which was great for me, it is rare that one finds the chance to see you in your uninhibited state. 60 seconds and ****, I lose you, like magic, my observation told me that's who you are.

TAUGHT but never educated in the ways of cartography, I have a hard time finding you. You aren't helping any, declaring hide-and-seek is your forte and I tend to give up in hopes you'll pop out from behind the coat rack and claim your title. Number one in all things, except understatements.

ME and not you but, someone else, because it's chilly outside and I needed an endlessly flowing supply of words. Theirs is a story of worth but I will not be paying attention because I am looking for you. Every night the moon reads me stories even though I beg for music. When day comes the sun tells me to run because concepts like love, fall in front of your gravity.

WHO believes them? It isn't cute. It isn't funny. Carry me home after it is all over and you will still find, within the sodden depths of solitude, nothing. It's wet socks, long fingernails, and notebook paper without a perforated edge. No time for a quick reading of the palm, fortune is just a made-up word sometimes substituted for hope.

I want to go somewhere with you, but we have to go slow, like a turtle with a purpose, and when we arrive we won't be able to tell the difference between outside and that other thing.

AM I justified in hating injustice? All I ask is that you tidy up and if I must, I choose the Dirt Devil. Vacuuming is my favorite kind of cleaning because it *****. Am I insane because I find comfort in the fact that, while I can't find you, I know you?

There are no ultimatums for me
Just sick gray’s and dull knives

I wish I was pretty in pictures
Those spontaneous ones
That others take
Because they want to capture your face
And keep it with them
Forever
I want to be pretty in pictures
Like those other girls
who smile and pose
and the picture comes out
pretty as ever
no matter their clothes
or their makeup
or hair
I wish I was pretty in pictures
But I guess you have to be pretty
Before you can be pretty in pictures.

I don’t know how to write about missing you.

Rain falls from the mists of heaven, slinking through the air, refusing to gaze upon the ground
       Though it remains its destination
All the while the earth rises towards the mist without hope of reaching the rays shining upon it.

We live in-between these places of ground and air.
Hoping to touch the rays and the earth at the same time.

They say some people wear their hearts on their sleeves,
But I try to keep mine stuffed away in the back of a sock drawer
      Where no one will ever find it.

I want to tell you about the sun
     As blind as it is blinding
Or that smiling is easier when you’re in the room
Or that sometimes I dream
Of allowing forbidden words to pass through my lips.

Because I found something new in you. Terrifyingly close to the kind of love that breaks hearts.

Gripping my soul in your clutches.
     You had me
     You have me
I always thought this kind of thing was fiction
And I will probably never tell you that I wrote this poem
But I miss you

I think I’m broken.
I used to be so ******* skinny
And I didn’t even know it
At my very core I hate what I am
Because all I can see is how much space I take up
I can’t exist this much
It is wrong
I have believed it is wrong for as long as I could develop belief
And that is all I have
I use it against myself
For fear, I toast the paunch

The mind creates a world in which it controls what is right and what is wrong.
It executes the punishments and doles them out freely.
It refuses to acknowledge the unraveling of itself.
Like yarn, threading throughout itself in a tangled mess.
Knotted up until no longer light can be seen.
It sits behind a nest of cotton.

Bear in mind there is nothing that can usurp it from its throne.
The mind heeds no rules or regulations and without hesitation it will turn the most heinous of realities into a commonplace find.
There is nothing like that which can make light out of fog and spread plagued whispers throughout its own successes.
Tirelessly it works to reach a state at which it must work no longer.
A state at which it can finally and utterly be recompensed with what it has decided it needs.

There is no such state.

What soothes the tattered remains and gives it peace?

I like it when you say "her"
because for some unbearable reason, it makes me all jumpy inside
because it's possible that someday you'll mean me.

there isn't anything left