So I heard once that there’s always
some gnarly looking carrot
in every bag of carrots
and you’re supposed make a wish on it
if you get it.
But I didn’t have a bag of veggies
I had a jar of Gumby and Poki
shaped gummies.

Finally the day came when there
were only two Gumbys left.
One was bent in half and
smashed together
and the other looked as all the rest had.
I pulled out the sad little gummy and
made a wish
like it was some ugly carrot.
I wished my crush would kiss me,
And giddily I walked to a coffee house
because I was hoping he would be there
even though I sternly told myself that
he had no reason to be there.
I found the coffee house closed and knew
my wish wasn’t happening that night.

I talked with a friend about my woes
and she confessed her heartache.
We smiled and laughed and died
just a little on the inside.
We had hoped that in college we wouldn’t
feel like middle school girls
with unrequited crushes.

The next day he dropped off a fish
(and this is no euphemism
or pretty poetry slang,
I opted to fish-sit while
he went home for break).
After he left, and
feeling more than silly
I took out the last Gumby
and pretended.
I pretended that it was every wish
on a boy I had made
since I realized boys weren’t
completely disgusting.
On my way to class
I held the little gummy in my
frozen, clenched fist
and wished
that’d he’d kiss me before he left.
I made it really specific
because every movie I’d ever seen
with genies in it had taught me that
specifics were key to avoiding
mishap and mayhem.

Obviously, it didn’t come true.
And I feel like I’m back in middle school,
wishing on ugly carrots and stars
that look suspiciously like airplanes.
Everyone has crushes,
and still more wishes.
Why I thought
at the age of nineteen
when the glamour of Disney-endings
and romantic-comedy plots
had tarnished to realism,
that a Gumby gummy prayer
would come true,
well I’m not entirely sure.

Maybe it’s no matter how old you are
there are always ugly carrots
and shooting stars
and fast airplanes
and romantic comedies
and gummies in the shape of
kids’ show characters.
Maybe no matter how disappointed I am
there will always be unrequited crushes
and genies for wishes
and God for prayers
and heaven forbid
hope.

-
Yesterday at school,
as I was walking through the halls,
a girl, (who I do not know the name of for sure, but that's not important right now) before walking past me looked up and into my eyes as they were already intent on her.
She was beautiful,
you must understand.
And her eyes pierced through the fog that the melancholy environment of the school had left upon the halls.
And when she smiled, I swear all else around me stopped,
all things inside me rapidly expanded,
filling my body with an awkwardly warm feeling.
When I smiled back to her without meaning to I remembered looking into the mirror that morning and seeing my face, with it's too large nose and it's skin invaded with acne and a few scars and even fewer whiskers.

All these vain trifles of mine own face quickly evaporated from my mind as her eyes made their way back in.
I looked down at the ground around her feet and noticed nothing but her feet.
Covered with black China flats which were covering black tights that wove their way up her calves and thighs where they disappeared under a brown backed floral dress which again, stood under a denim jacket.
******* my short casket of knowledge when it comes to women's clothing
but God ****** if I don't know a stunning girl when I see one. If I see one, and I saw one.

My eyesight slowly wandered up again to her eyes
and thinking back on it now I am wondering how I had enough time to take such a clear mental picture and save it in my smoke filled brain.
And as I looked up I found her eyes again, looking back at me.

She continued smiling and said hi.
I continued smiling and more or less grumbled hi.

We each continued walking in our own, opposite directions.
I don't know her name.

And I have a friend named Fiona who played a tree in our school's production of Wizard and Oz.

Reasons why I am going to Europe:

I am going to Europe because I am nineteen— almost twenty— years old and, for some reason, I am expected to have my entire life planned and ready to go. I am expected to go to college, get a degree which will give me above-minimum wage pay, possibly meet a boy. Date this boy on and off (as well as a few others) during my early twenties, get drunk a few times, maybe do some drugs, marry someone when I turn twenty six. Have two kids. Pay my mortgage, plan to travel when I am older. Pay my student loans. Do yoga on the weekends.

No thank-you.

I am nineteen— almost twenty— years old, and for some reason, I have no idea what I want to do with myself. I went to college for a major in English with a teaching license— I hated it. I tried to **** myself three times. So here, I am, working at Food Lion, running around the woods, drinking Gin and blood orange juice on a Monday night, with no plan. And I am happy. I am going to Europe because what else would I be doing with myself? I am going to Europe because I want to wake up in a hostel with someone else’s shirt on, the smell of salt on my skin, and the taste of wine in my mouth

. I am going to Europe because I don’t want my greatest thrill in life to be going to Whole Foods one Saturday of the month to buy nice wine and a quality meat only to watch the travel channel and hope for places I will go to ‘someday’. I am going to Europe because why can’t ‘someday’ be today?


I am going to Europe because I may get lost in a market place, in a bottle of Absinthe, in the arms of an Italian man, in the bottom of a bottle of sweet Moscato, in a pub in Ireland, in the mouth of a french girl, in a German forest, and that will be alright. I am going to Europe because my feet itch, and my soul is thirsty. I am going to Europe because sometimes it feels like the world is only as big as your home-town, and that is only an illusion that needs to be cured.

If I'm not sad, I can't write.
If I can't write I become sad.
If I do write I become more sad.
I'm sad,
why can't I write.
I'm writing,
why aren't I sad.

-
they say if a tree falls in the woods
and no one's around to hear it,
it creates a silence
in vibration,
without even
deaf ears upon which to crash.
-
and they say if a tree dies in the woods,
the only formalities it receives
are a coffin of moss and lichen,
a bouquet of fungi,
and a burial in overgrowth.
-
and i say, if a man dies in the woods
at the trunk of a silently falling tree,
then i am that man,
and the funeral would be attended by none,
and i would garner little more sympathy
than the corpse of the last man before me.
-
and finally, i say too that
this poem is inaptly named,
for i have no victim
to suffer
from
my
loss.
-

Fourteen hours total, I spent in that car,
but  twas the motive that drove me, so it didn't seem far.
I hope the impression I left, was above all her dreams,
cause my heart seemed to melt, like a spring de-thawed stream.

Though I still know, that I have so much to do,
in regards of my life, and general attitude.
But I loved what I saw, there is no denying,
so my hearts for the taking, its all I'm supplying.

And I'm scared more than ever, that I'll be left hurt
as  all of my feelings become one with the dirt.
While I wait in my sorrow, I try hard to relate,
but I can't for some reason, so maybe its fate.
Though I do know, that I cannot blame her,
her life is her own, I am nobody's savior.

And this bad feeling I have, is about to come real,
her heart is something that I wont be able to steal.
How did we go from, "I want you a lot",
to, "its not gonna work", (that is all that I got).

So I'll ponder once more at what will never be,
the southern girl left before she even knew me.
But I'll give her one thing, and that it could have been worse,
cause maybe a relationship would have left my heart in a hearse.

She did what she did, and just soon enough.
But I still wish that we could have tried to been tough.
Her worry and fear went along with her silence,
the lack of her words left me with an altered conscience.