"you're kind of a a *****", he says, kicking a rock with his shoe.

"big talk coming from you," i respond, my shoe scuffling in the dirt, "at least i don't wear stupid t-shirts."

it's all i got. i don't have much in my arsenal toward this kid, no matter how much i want to hate him. he walks a little bit ahead of me on the path. he talks a little bit too loud. the messy brown curls falling down his back need to be brushed.
"you should brush your hair more," i tell him, and he laughs, but it quickly falls into an overly-exaggerated annoyed groan.

"you're gonna hate hearing this," he laughs again, quieter this time, "but you sound exactly like my mom. our mom."

"you should be nicer to her, too," i say.

"you should be nicer to her, actually," he says, rolling his eyes, "because i can already tell you're not much better."

i laugh at that. i wasn't expecting him to be so sassy.

he turns to look at me. my face, a young, chubby face, awkward with buck teeth and pale skin.

"why do i laugh less?" he asks, "in the future, i mean." he's stopped walking, to look fully at me, awaiting an answer, expectant.

"i don't know," i genuinely don't, "you just get sadder. not like, sadder in a bad way, because you know you're not as sad as you used to be, and you know that you're doing great and it's all there and you should just be happy but you can see all the way you have left to go, but you already walked the whole way here, and you're... tired. you're just a lot more tired."

"oh," he says, before frowning and turning back around, "alright."

we emerge from the forest and walk toward the gas station.

the young girl buys a can of arizona tea and walks back to church, where his youth group is.

the young girl pays for his gas and goes back to his car.

i never bought the whole dark academia thing.
sure, ****** and drugs and *** are torrid and dark when you're from a rich family,
when you've never woken up to the news of your childhood best friend being shot to death,
when you haven't seen your family and friends fall into the seductive cesspool of opioid addiction,
when half of your class was pregnant by the time senior year rolled around.
the academic upper class thinks what working class kids go through is sexier when the backdrop of the overdose is chandeliers and silk,
instead of a small town parking lot at 3am.
my aesthetic reality of academia is scholarships, it's leather jackets and nicotine addictions
it's having the only fifteen-year-old car in the campus parking lot and hoping to find a plug before the first week of classes.
it's not sleeping between work and class and partying. it's being the only one whose dad isn't buddies with the guy giving me an internship.
it's lonely. it's the crippling loneliness of not understanding upper class social cues,
it's reading crime and punishment in the slivers of time between work and work and class and more work
and emphasizing with raskalnikov so much it makes your teeth ache.
it's coughing up blood.
it's having health insurance for the first time in college and still not using it.
it's drowning, it's fighting, it's violent and heroic and painful and
never knowing
if you'll actually
make it.

i've kept every
sticky note,
letter,
mindless, simple gift
ever given to me by a friend.
every memory,
from valentine's day cards to ticket stubs.
i'm a hoarder, but of a very specific breed:
a scrapbook's worth of paper with no home and no purpose.
more akin to an archivist for no one.
i started crying yesterday
because i couldn't find my
memory box,
the shoebox i've stuffed all of my
sentimental nothing into.
i still can't find it.
i'm afraid someone threw it away.
(the box is full of letters and notes from my friends, starting from 8th grade. i go off to college in a week.)
but if that someone saw it as trash, they were probably right.
i have old letters from people i haven't talked to in years, that hate me now,
all crammed in this little shoebox
because i could never bring myself to throw them away.
my own personal museum of all the relationships i've let die of starvation,
hung taxidermic and pointless
within the walls of my heart and
cluttering the floors of my room.
exhibit a:
when i broke up with my first girlfriend,
i opened my memory box and burned the letters she'd given me.
but,
i went through them first
so i could keep the ones i couldn't bear to get rid of.
i'm a hoarder. i latch onto every crumb of affection i've ever been given and never throw it away.
wouldn't you?
exhibit b:
i was an angry child
i am an angry adult
i have spent my life roaming the desert of a lonely god,
and finding people willing to love me is a long and empty walk from one
oasis to another,
with nothing to show for it
but a shrine made up of
immortal-dead remnants of
every person i've ever known.
i have been alone before
and i never know if i'll be alone again.
experience hath granted me the wisdom
to hold onto, dig my claws into what is not guaranteed.
so yes, i am a hoarder,
and, exhibit c:
one day i will die alone
surrounded by garbage and words that some person out in the world doesn't even remember writing,
and i won't be able to bring it with me
into the black abyss of wherever else
and they will clean out my house
after i am dead
and throw it all away.
but for now
i'll keep looking for my memory box,
because it's gotta be around here somewhere.
i really do hope
it's around here somewhere.

you have a tattoo on your left arm
that i have never seen before.
and now i know that i will never
get to ask about it.
two teenagers found dead
shot to death in a car.
you followed me on instagram
a few years ago.
and i, knowing we haven’t
talked in years, thought i should reach out.
nothing would be different if i had,
but
i’m still thinking about it.
we probably would’ve talked for
a day, maybe two,
small talk, i would've learned how you’ve
changed.
but i never said hello
because you were so different,
and i didn't know what to say
and i thought i would always
be able to ask.
when we were kids
we used to sit outside in your garage and play dolls.
we prank-called my brother’s friends on his old phone.
your birthday party is still the only time i’ve ever been to six flags.
you told me that when the sun is out and it starts raining
they say it's the devil beating his wife.
and now i’m grieving in a way that’s more
nostalgic than sad,
because 18 is far too young to die
and i just wish i would’ve asked you how you’ve been.

It’s not an art museum,
it’s a Waffle House,
and you’re looking sleepy
as you sip your tea.
It’s three a.m. and
I know we still have a few more miles until my house,
but I’m home and you know it.
I’m ripping up a napkin with my
hands as we talk about the concert.
I know I enjoyed it more than you,
and I know I cried on the way home
because I thought you didn’t love me,
but you still came to the concert
even though you didn’t really like the artist,
and now we’re at a Waffle House at three a.m.,
and the garish yellow decor reflects on your skin,
and we’re sweaty and tired,
and I love you in the rare, inexpressible way
that feels most potent
after concerts at Waffle Houses at three a.m.

I am afraid of everyone I know.
I did not evolve with any of you.
It’s a party but I’m
a deer in the headlights,
and I'm trying to have fun,
but I am scared of everyone there.
I got very drunk,
and told a friend that
I didn't trust anybody.
Why did I tell him?
Everyone’s out to get me.
Hm, no, that’s not how it feels;
everyone could be out to get me one day,
and every word out of my mouth
is another knife in their arsenal, or my stomach,
because I am a revolting mass of skin and sinew
and everything is something to hold against me.
I think one day I will be
the ****** that will not leave the house.
It’s like the original “Little Mermaid”,
every step on dry land-
every step out of my home-
is another step of agony,
and one day, when I have had enough
of this miserable existence,
I will turn on the stove
and dissolve into the sea.

i ate a four-leaf clover and
consumed its luck, which died in me.
i lied in the quick, quiet field,
killing the grass,
looking to set myself free.
i drank and i drank
from every river, every creek,
my thirst unsatisfied until it had every sea.
my touch burned down forests,
my glance slaughtered meadows,
when climbing and looking for everything, anything,
i killed every tree.

in my quest for satisfaction,
i murdered the sky,
and yet nowhere have i found the fulfillment
i believe key.
thus, starved for complacency,
i continue my fruitless killing spree.