the day i left for good he wrapped me in an inescapable bear
hug that made me feel like i was
gonna stop breathing in
3
2
1...

we listened to a whole lotta
tom petty which is the reason why
whenever i'm scanning through
the radio on those drives i go on too often
that lead to nowhere and
i hear "refugee" or "free fallin"
i skip.

i read a lot to him and he
always listened to everything i had to say
and the 290th time of the day that i'd say
"****" and everytime i said something even remotely
twisted a small smirk would
gradually paint on his lips
and then he'd laugh
and say it was a good thing we loved each other
otherwise he would think i was severely
****** up in the head.

he loved my heart shaped sunglasses
and he said i made him feel
like he was living in a time warp
where it was 1989 every millisecond
of every waking hour of every day
and i loved his eternal youthfulness
that sent fireworks flying through my
central nervous system.

and when he released me from the
wrath of his arms he promised
that we were gonna sit on his
back porch and crack open
some brews at midnight
and tell stories when i came back home.

i miss him more than the sun misses
the moon in the morning light
my partner in crime,
my adrenaline ******,
my sagittarius.

-*z. vega

rock on, baby.
slow dance to nirvana
at the stoplight in the deep south of
town
and never let him damage ya
BUT if he does
chip his tooth
and write on his
skin
clenching a permanent marker
in between your teeth that's
blacker than your soul
could ever be -
"I'LL SEE YOU WHEN THE SUN
SETS EAST...
DON'T FORGET ME."

-*z. vega

no one knew how i felt except
for all the dusty back roads
in their dreary isolation and brokenness.
i spent countless hours standing outside
the entrance of the buckaroo tavern
with stephanie when i was 3 years old
because daddy was too *******
wasted to drive home. the heat waves
from that broken down neon sign
during the frosty seattle winter of 2001
felt like a security blanket at times
if i pretended hard enough,
i felt like there was something in
the big bad world that actually cared for me.

-*z. vega

he asked lots of questions.
he reminded me of the type of person who
would shotgun 4, 5, maybe an entire
6 pack of rainier at noon on a sunday then
go take a very long nap with a fluffy cat (or 10).
sweet fruit, hot april days, future hendrix
on the highway. his eyes sparkled like sun rays
reflecting through window panes when he
was on deck and you know there’s no way
i woulda told him that when i went home
that saturday night i could still feel
his tears burning through the fabric of my t-shirt.

i had never met anybody so passionate
about the life they lived. i had never met somebody who made life seem like a dusty pink haze
where everything was
beautiful and nothing hurt, a silver screen dream etched into a harsh reality.

the man behind us in the check-out line at the
texaco off of 525 could tell from my
messy hair and blank stares that number 4 would die for me but i wouldn’t do **** for him.
they all thought i was sick because
i didn’t cry when my friends went
to heaven. lola said all i needed was
someone who would listen.
i hated emotion.
we weren’t ever close and i don’t know
how he did it but something about him
made me want to live like i wasn’t gonna
be alive by friday night, and i’ll never know
how i felt compelled to do it
but i suddenly wanted to show him the words
that i swore i’d never let anyone see.

he fired ‘em white rats,
he loved ‘em OG hally rats,
he was a lil’ crazy kid who made the girl
who wrote 3 page poems about nothing and had a weakness for nicotine feel like she mattered.
and i wrote about him a lot that year – it wasn’t
because i was in love with him or
anything like that because i still,
to this day doubt that anything or anyone
will ever change the fact that i don’t
believe in the webster’s dictionary
definition of love.

i was intrigued by him.
so intrigued that i couldn’t tell anyone
how i felt without them thinking
i was insane in the head.
so i put him on paper.

-*z. vega

cigarettes and flat coke are the best hangover cures. being trapped in awe with metaphorical heart eyes while watching a double rainbow start to peek out from under the clouds after a midday storm is something to be excited about. rizz hits bombs. if you find someone who’s kinda bizarre and kinda dreamy and kinda confused who you get along with really well AND who makes you feel like you just went for a swim in a lake of pixie dust...well he's sketchy as **** because people like that don't exist. let him go. if you decide you wanna keep him, godspeed. you’ll spend a lot more time at the gas station than you ever thought. monsters are real. be as loud as you want. nothing’s ever what it seems. shooting down beer bottles with .22s is a good way to spend quality time with your pops. bailey's is where you wanna be on a tuesday night. waste your summers by sunset chasing in a '74 eldorado, write down your dreams as soon as you wake up, and never let ‘em say ya ain’t good enough.

-*z. vega

back when summertime
sadness was hip.
beating hearts felt like butterflies
trapped in a plastic water
bottle trying their hardest
to get out and bodies of water
that were frighteningly black but as clear as
broken glass and
worn down cowboy boots
and perfectly fragmented
scarlet and burnt orange
canyons
and crushed
beer cans by the firepit
and isolation and
inescapable infatuation.
the world was so beautiful and
almost ethereal but it wasn't
familiar. like it had been
taken apart and put back
together differently than before.

-*z. vega