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

07/04/2018

nothing compared to the unabashed, intoxicated fun we had at three in the morning on independence day when we sat on the front porch at the patterson's house and played the music our parents raised us on. we sang to every word without fail, a constant cloud of smoke lingering above our heads and the fire in the middle of the circle reflected in everyone's eyes, everyone was glowing, everyone looked ******* beautiful. i told jj to play "pour some sugar on me" and he asked me if i really wanted everyone to sing, but he didn't need an answer. he knew he had to do it. cal took a swig from a bottle of camarena and grabbed my hand - we whipped our sunbleached curls in rapid synchronicity and for four minutes and twenty seven seconds, the only thing that mattered was our music and the neon explosions in the sky.

if we would've met at 16 our lives as teenagers would've been worlds different. we'd meet in the parking lot after school and we'd drive for a little, then hotbox in front of the pacific ocean. i'd play you all the stuff that i played on my weekly radio show and i'd ***** to you about how i was done with the world and every single lululemon wearing, frozen mocha drinking girl who thought i was inferior to her because i wasn't conventionally pretty, listened to anti-establishment punk rock of the 1970s and refused to straighten my hair even if my curls wouldn't quit that day.
i didn't know you four years ago. you were the exact opposite of me, and honestly you probably would have avoided me  - you put gel in your hair and you played sports, but you seemed like you might've been angry and sad for no apparent reason too. you were the same as you are now in some ways, you had the 24/7 off-duty model thing, you were smart, you bumped old school tunes, you knew old school sitcoms. i would've 100% been in love with you but i never would have done anything about it. all i wanted was someone that i could tell everything to, but nobody cared. knowing you could have eased the pain of the period of time in my life where i spent all my money on dime bags and twelve dollar packs of cigarettes and stability was the last thing on my mind and all i really wanted to do was dig a grave for myself. you probably would have never talked to me, but we would have been the coolest kids in the parking lot.
and can i tell you like, the cheesiest sounding thing in the world? yeah? okay. i can't wait to run into you on a beach on the north shore of kauai in 50 years. "shawshank redemption" style. i hope we're friends forever.

it smelled like love and a dive bar.
polishing liquid, flowers, stale smoke, patchouli oil.
the floor was covered in a blanket of antique carpets that
were the color of levi’s after being
mixed with bleach
and red lipstick that hadn't been removed
after 2 days that needed to be touched up.
that character practically lived
in the silver giant
and he decided that tapestries with the edges duct taped to the windowsills with designs
that were so deeply eloquent to the point
where the human brain could effortlessly get lost in them
were 300 times better than curtains.
there was a transistor radio in there,
oh, the good ol’ transistor that
was adored despite the raging amounts of
static that would pour out of
the speakers...
whenever the dead or zeppelin came
on the volume switch would turn as far
to the right as it would go.
he would smile
and within an hour
his fingers, bound in
layers of opal and turquoise rings would turn an ordinary
sheet of silver into
a glistening piece of magic.
every second spent in the airstream
was an abstract painting as tangled and mystifying
as those tapestries on the cracked
fingerprint stained windows,
where life took place in the subterranean depths
of the paper grains that no one
had dared to venture to.

-*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

i'll be home soon. i need to be surrounded by emptiness and bitter cold so i can think about something other than you and your angelic soul and how i'm so in love with you that i can't think straight anymore because you don't love me back

i could go all the way up north
to the oil fields where alaska
meets the arctic ocean and
i would still be reminded
of you with every wave,
every breath that freezes in
the air,
every drop of oil that pollutes
the water.

i could go all the way up north
to the oil fields where alaska
meets the arctic ocean and
i still wouldn't be far enough
away from you.

-z. vega

all 9 of us put our money together and bought a '78 silverado that had a ****** up transmission, loose timing belt, blown headgasket, all the works. i can't remember much from that night. i fell asleep in the tailgate in the lap of some guy who had a budweiser in one hand and a backwoods blunt in the other. he kept calling me "babygirl" and he'd chug another beer and yell "LET'S WRECK THIS *******!" i got it from my mama. the ability to fall asleep to the classic rock station and the sound of teenage boys livin' their dream.

2. i broke all of their hearts on day three because i was so hung up on the one who played baseball and never stopped asking questions. maybe too much. he was the only one i wanted to love with every centimeter of my soul. the funny thing is this: i never had him to begin with.

3. august was a weird month. i never wanted to do anything except lay face down on the grass while drinking whiskey straight from the bottle. we liked to tell pointless stories and talk **** about congress while watching the sun fall deep into the crevices of the olympic mountains. his girlfriend and i had something like a thursday night ritual of going fishing then coming to the house and grilling silvers while i chainsmoked and sang songs reminiscent of her hippie days. big kahuna and i spoke to each other in dialects, okie accents, chi-town street slang when i was burning on thursdays. the crash always happened on saturdays. they tried to keep me from drinking but i didn't know how to tell them that it wasn't the borderline alcoholism that was killing me - being around so much love ignited a fire in me that wasn't there when i had nobody. i was in love with the world, so in love that it became a kind of insanity.

*-z. vega

how did anyone expect me to be okay when
my baby brother was on xanax
and my mom told me that i turned
out to be the exact opposite
of what she wanted me to be?

because what kind of ******* human
leaves the one who loved them
the most and lets them rot alone?

*-z. vega

do you love me or
we just playin?
write it out on
my skin.
tell me bout your
nightmares,
tell me how the cold winter
makes you feel
tell me if you love me
and baby please tell
me now before
you find someone
who adores you
so much that
you get sick
when she's gone.
tell me now before
everything changes
and i start bangin
my head against steel beams
and screaming in my sleep
all because you ain't
around no more.

-*z. vega

just the other day i was driving to coeur d'alene and this old red jeep with the top down (even though it was raining) passed me on the freeway going way over the speed limit and i swear to god if i didn't know any better i woulda thought it was you.

they tell me that you ain't nothing special, that you're just like the rest of them. i can't help that i see you differently than everyone else, i can't help that they don't see that you have a field of sunflowers growing within you and dying to break free. you're more than just the dude whose always down to drink ***** and **** around. i was always skeptical of any seemingly good thing - they all ****** me over and last august i didn't do anything but drink while lying face down on the grass and if i'd had anymore whiskey i would've drank myself to death and you're the only good thing in my life that's stayed. i can't help that being around you reminds me of sitting on the rooftop at dusk in tehran and watching the city lights turn on, one by one. i regret 70% of the time spent wishing that we never met so that i wouldn't have to deal with this. you don't notice how much i care and it breaks my heart cause i just want you to know. i really want you to know.

*-z. vega

they were all in love with the cartoon eyes and crooked teeth and ginger hair and backwards ball caps
because every time she smiled
they became warmer and warmer until they'd melt, as if the sun was being reborn inside of them.

-*z. vega

late september. bare feet. fifth of jack.
as the sun broke from the wrath
of the unpiercable storm clouds that were blocking
its rays and sunk towards the horizon
the sky turned into a pink so striking
that it was like the world locked
lips and decided that it was
time for the downpour to end forever.

is that what freedom feels like?
when all the barriers that tear us apart
break, does it feel
like late september?
does it feel like walking along the coastline,
the stinging aroma of salt water,
the sound of the waves crashing into
the sand and the
wind whipping stray locks of hair
across your face?
does everything look sublime
and crystal clear?

freedom.
late september.
the most beautiful dream emerging from
a daunting nightmare.

-*z. vega

05/16/2018

i ******* hate structure in every sense of the word. always have.
any expecting mother, upon finding out that she's going to have a baby girl, suddenly begins spending all of her life's work on gingham overalls, and gigantic, faux-velvet bows to adorn her newborn daughter's bald head. my beautiful persian mama had nothing to worry about at first, she had it her way, and for a while, i was the baddest baby on the block, except i didn't have a block. i grew up on a dirt road on an island called whidbey in the north puget sound. much to fatima's dismay, all that little me wanted to wear once i turned six months old and developed a personality was big t-shirts with logos of bands whose music would keep me sane and my heart only half-broken seventeen years later. i wouldn't let her put pants on me. i would crawl around in my backyard in little more than an alice in chains shirt and a diaper, sometimes riding on my beloved golden retriever's back. i was young when my parents realized that they could try all they wanted, but their child, born on the cusp of gemini and taurus, was too much for them to handle.
i started skipping class when i was in kindergarten; i would run out into the acres of heavy forest behind the playground during recess, and i'd be ****** if i decided i wanted to come back. in middle school, i would skip because growing up middle eastern in a post 9/11 society was enough for me to be bullied to a ****** pulp. in high school, i would skip because i wanted to smoke cigarettes behind the football field with my friends who couldn't go to class because they were tweaking too hard. we would make daisy chains and listen to everything that mark lanegan ever made. i was throwing my life away; well, at least that's what they told me, but i was happy. and it was cause i had been successfully fighting the man since before i could walk.

mama don't cry. mama gets high
in pool halls and bathroom stalls
and nighttime bar-brawls
all while holdin' the boys down
with her bare hands
and cutting through
their bones
with her blue eyes and words of
desperation.

mama don't fight. mama don't hide
not even when there's 10 squad
cars chasin' her on the
405 cause she did it again.
and again.
and again.

*-z. vega

it never bothered me to see

someone so crossfaded until i saw you and even

though i was still sipping your licorice *****

and my thoughts were a galaxy

sized mess after 1:30 i was so worried

about you and you’re the only thing

i remember clearly

from the night i turned 18.

-*z. vega

my best friend and i go grocery shopping together almost everyday. he has his hair up most of the time but i love it when he leaves it down and it's all curly and wild and the wind blows it across his face when we're sitting on a tailgate finishing the pack of cigarettes that we got the day before. we haven't left each other's side since the last full moon.

my best friend loves the beatles more than anything in the world and i love it when we get high late in the afternoon and we can see the sunset from my living room window while looking at memes and listening to track six off of abbey road. i never thought someone who loved dead musicians as much as i did existed until i met him.

my best friend and i sit next to each other in music theory on mondays and wednesdays. our weekdays feel like weekends because we have so much fun doing nothing even if we have class the next morning. i love it when he smiles because it's the most genuine thing i think i've ever seen.

my best friend holds doors open for me and he lights my cigarettes for me. normally i would take a feminist stand by saying thank you, but i could open my own doors and light my own cigarettes but with him i forget all of that and i actually think there's a 15.6% chance that he might be the love of my life. it's really hard to be myself with all these post-teenage emotions that have made me batshit crazy.

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

i had frizzy hair and braces and glasses but i still wanted to be liked.

i was eleven. i think i had just started middle school. my friends who just months ago were playing hopscotch during the last recess of the day had started experimenting with orange foundation and bleached strands of hair and clumpy mascara and even though i would get down on my knees every morning and beg my mama to let me wear makeup the answer was always the same,
"what are you, 35?"

i didn't tell her that just the day before the boy that was sitting in the seat in front of me on the bus put 2 pieces of scotch tape on my eyebrows because it would make me less ugly and everybody laughed so to avoid showing weakness i did too. the next morning another boy pulled my waist length hair in the hall when i was getting my books from my locker and when i turned around to see what he wanted he shoved me against it and told me that i would never be taken seriously if i didn't stop being a ***** hippie and cut my hair so that night i took a pair of scissors and chopped off a foot of the hair that had taken almost 2 years to grow. the next day i was tripped over a rock and called "osama's daughter" because i was middle eastern and the boy who did it had his friend record it on his sidekick. for the next 2 or 3 weeks i had a gnarly **** on my right knee that i tried my hardest to hide because i didn't want mood to know that his oldest kid couldn't ******* stand up for herself. the next day one of his friends broke my glasses that i couldn't see without because "they aren't making you any smarter. you're still failing all your classes, might as well be less hideous."
2 years later i received 1. then 2. then 3. then 4. then 5 anonymous messages sent to me on tumblr that listed everything that was wrong with me and why i should **** myself. i wonder if that person knows that i actually tried and i almost, almost, succeeded. i wonder if that person knows that my first boyfriend spent the entire time we were together trying to fix me.

then i grew up. and the same boys who tortured me as a child didn't hurt me anymore but instead complimented every single breath i took. and i wonder if they know that the reason why my need for male validation grew with every orbit around the sun was because of what they tattooed into that 11 year old girl's brain - "NO ONE'S GONNA LOVE YOU. NO ONE'S GONNA LOVE YOU," written in perfect cursive, in the brightest neon green ink that they could find.

*-z. vega

it was 99 degrees so
tamar and i took
5 shots of tequila each
and lied down on
asphalt that was 99 degrees hotter
199 degrees
watching clouds
melt into each other
like they were
scenes from an old black and white
movie and singing songs
about jesus
until god's tears began to
fall down on us.

*-z. vega

i don't want to feel anything ever again

-d.k.

i still make an effort to take a
picture sitting on the back of the bronze
pig outside the pike place fish
market every time i'm in the big
city. not many people know this
but that pig has a name; rachel,
and she's seen more things than
most people in this ol' world.

break-up blows, make-up kisses,
the man walking alone at 1:30 AM without
a coat and gore-tex in the midst of a wet
winter ****** binge.
the new kid, the east coast kid
starting his jewelry biz in '86,
and kurt after he put washington state
on the map - knowing better
than anyone that fame made him
sick. the east coast kid's curly haired
3 month old daughter in august '98,
the 15 year old boy's face after his
chinese fake id scanned,
the invasion of the bloods,
the invasion of the crips,
the tear gas burning the corneas
of our eyes when we tried to
protest.

everyone else disappeared into
the atmosphere,
but she stayed.
and i have no doubt that
rachel, the bronze pig
that's stood in the same spot
at pike place market for
31 years
has got a soul
in there somewhere.

*-z. vega

I. '88 dakota

mondays still ****. granted i don't get up at the crack of dawn no more but around noon i always feel the need to leave the rest of the day behind me and take the big red monster out and go to the beach and contemplate my life for hours, so i'll reach into my tattered 35 year old prada bag for a lanyard that says "nirvana" on it (like the band, not the stage of buddhism), but then i remember that gas guzzler and i got 337 miles between us, no more, no less.

II. whidbey

on wednesdays i feel like i've shifted into an alternate universe where there are things other than evergreen trees and dirt roads, where the view when i look out the window is an interstate and dagger-like icicles that are as tall as me. maybe it started when they took down the texaco star in freeland and maybe it started the day i left, but i'm not sure if i can remember what home feels like anymore.

III. you*

i still miss you on thursdays, sometimes saturdays. i know, i thought i woulda found someone better by now too till i realized that i'd been giving myself false hope this entire time. no one will ever be you. no one's teeth will curve the same way. no one will ever love the home teams as much as you. no one will ever smile as hard when i give them my last kit-kat in a strip mall parking lot at sunset. they drink to dak prescott and spit wintergreen griz more than you ever did. i thought i would find someone better until i walked into the coldest part of heaven with some crinkled twenty dollar bills and a carharrt jacket.

*-z. vega

the only reason i met him was because i was leanin' up against the blood pumping, deafening, wall shaking heartbeat of one of the speakers amongst ceiling lights that looked like gleaming crystals hanging from the top of a cavern with drops of water trickling from them. we might as well have been in a cavern instead of a show in some guy's basement. he snapped me out of my late night daydream with one look and one shot of whiskey and we went upstairs and out to the front porch to the 4 foot tall grass in the front yard.

we sat there for a real long time.

and he had this voice that reminded me of the way it felt to sit on the golf course all night just to watch the sun rise, his eyes were like the jungle and the ocean and a tornado sky all in one and they widened and he grinned and kinda tugged at the edges of his sweatshirt as we talked about random things it turned out we both loved... lefty pitchers, astrology, horror movies, conspiracy theories, how rain feels on bare skin. he was kinda twisted and he was a sagittarius and he smoked turquoise american spirits like me. as far as i knew nobody in the world could replace the one who never left my head for 394 days and 394 nights. *******. here we go again.

i drove off at 1. i was the only girl there and since the day i came out of the womb i have been overly cautious of the fact that i can't spend the night even if i might fall asleep at the wheel and **** myself because i am a medium rare steak in the eyes of those boys and it's better for me to hurt myself than for one of them to hurt me.

"goodnight, spacey" he whispered as he softly pressed his lips against my cheek and i watched through the ***** windshield as he disappeared into an impenetrable fog. i never got the name of the most perfect human i'd ever came across. i wouldn't let it bother me. i wouldn't let it bother me. ****. i hate infatuation and what it does. so help me god.

-*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

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

on sunday mornings we eat frozen waffles and
wash our faces with stale coors light and the tears
of our mamas that we kept in plastic water bottles from
the time when they cried cause their babies were leaving
for the first time and we wait and we wait for the day to be
over so that we can feel like we’re alive again.
pray for us. pray for sunshine. pray for freedom.

-d.k.

04/25/2015

i skip classes until 12 PM to lay in my bed, watch gossip girl, and eat chocolate chip cookies. i like to go to punk rock shows in basements and headbang until my neck starts to ache. i like taking occasional breaks from contemplating my life to dip out to my neighbor's backyard to smoke cigs and talk politics. i really wish that people gave a **** about the seattle mariners. i wanna be a play-by-play radio announcer for the seattle mariners. my counselor tells me that i'm unbelievably driven for someone who's failing 3 out of 4 classes. black is my favorite color.

i like conspiracy theories and pretending that i'm in an alternate universe where the most remote islands on earth are easily accessible for whenever i wanna get the **** out of this place. i wish i was a visual artist because words emotionally drain me. i'm not what anybody wants. i wear hawaiian shirts that are 4 sizes too big for me with cutoff levi's and red lipstick. i still want to drop out of high school. i have a crush on someone new every week. i cry a lot but i'm the happiest ******* the west coast. i need to get my **** together.

he's strong
i'm wild
he's beautiful
and he sees everything in technicolor.
he's all i will never be
and i love him more than anything.

-*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

05/25/2018

i think that the crippling, 12 month long period of dissociation that plagued my ability to do everything that i once loved is starting to go away. i drove the thirty miles to the point of the island where there are no more bodies of land for as far as the eye can see - i rekindled my friendship with the ocean today. i built a fort out of all of the driftwood that had gotten caught in the swell and swept to shore, i smoked my spirit blind, and when the sun went away and it started to rain i cried and i cried.

“one day i will find the right words, and they will be simple.” - jack kerouac

pancakes on a sunday morning, jack daniel’s, getting really drunk then running naked through the forest,  mosh pits, double rainbows, old trucks, freebandz, panic attacks, overflowing bubble baths, woodstock 1969, lemonade, slamming my head into wet pavement, the cranberries, jumping into someone’s arms after having gone years without seeing them, american spirits, crying, heavy metal music, innocence, laughing until a hospital visit is necessary, ragers, smiles on the faces of five year old children after stripping the shelves of a candy store bare, severe depression, the 90s, basketball hoops in driveways, putting on makeup at 1 AM, the mojave desert, life.

-z. vega

you hold my face in between your hands and kiss me like you’ll never leave again. we’re walking through a crowded park and it feels like spring even though it’s seattle and it will be another few months before the sun comes back. i’m tired and you’re as awake as a four-year-old riding his bike all around the neighborhood. we’re watching kids play football from behind chain-link fences and it’s getting darker and we’re smoking cigarettes and talking about god and our friends and passing out in garages. you’re still the love of my life. i thought that being 500 miles away would erase you from my memory but even alaska wouldn’t be far enough and i woke up this morning with you and a shot of tequila on my mind. somewhere along the way i learned to live with the aching piece of you that follows me wherever i go.

-d.k.

as you can tell, i write under my real name now. my pseudonym, z. vega will always be a part of me, but i'm at the point in my life where i am so emotionally vulnerable that hiding behind kind of a secret identity isn't something my heart's telling me to do.
2. i wrote a third book. it's called "swingers" (spelled "swngrs) and it would mean the world if y'all would check it out! https://www.amazon.com/Swngrs-Donia-Kashkooli/dp/1545581932
3. i realized that all i want to do for the rest of my life is write.

i never expected myself to be at the point
where i would chew on dead flowers
to numb the pain even though
i have no ******* idea where the pain
comes from.
i don't know if it's because you're
a nine and a half hour drive away
and you're not
around to tell me that i look
**** in a shirt that's 3 sizes too big for me
and a pen in my mouth
when i'm trying to write something
romantic but then end up writing
about packing a bowl with 2
older guys in the back of a '79
ram.
my life revolves
around coffee and twisted dreams
that i don't want to wake up from
and double plays that end innings
and cigarettes and boys with tattoos
and waist-length hair and
it could be because those are the only
things in my life
that have ever been permanent.

*-z. vega