sometimes i look back at old photographs
at the friends i no longer speak to
at the clothes that have been lost to time
at the places that felt so alive and vibrant
how i can still smell the air and hear the sounds around me of music playing and friends laughing
i look back sometimes at old photographs
and i feel as if i’m looking at a stranger
that was so creative and had so many beautiful words to say
i look back and i feel the shame of not realizing i could’ve done better, treated others better
treated myself better
i look back and i wish i had not taken for granted
the energy i had and the simple moments
that i now find myself struggling with
i want to go back and tell her
“enjoy this night because it will be the last time you body will be able to endure this”

i hear stories about people perpetually colliding on chance meetings and the universe persistently weaving two people together no matter the resistance. he has always been an arbitrary constant in these past years but i never thought he would become a foundation, someone who actively wanted to be a part of my mundane daily existence. it hasn't properly hit me yet what is going on and i think part of me refuses to accept it as reality in case it all falls to pieces, like these things tend to do. i'm accustomed to the bright flashes of emotion and wired nerves before reality settles in and disperses everything. he treats every moment spent with me with this sense of reverence and awe and it off-sets me to see it so clearly despite how much he tries to hide it. i can see it when i catch him looking at me when i've turned my attention away for a minute from our facetime calls or how he will kiss my shoulder every time i become restless in my sleep. it's all too much and i'm so worried that if i let my guard down for the briefest of seconds that i'll explode into a horrific mess on the inside.

i've crossed this country five times in the last three days and i feel it in every joint and juncture in my body. i'm supposed to be going on a date on friday night and i don't know what else i'm going to be able to tell him other than the fact i think i've seen too much of the world for my own good.

i’ve been waking up in a cold sweat lately from dreams that are heavy, complex and physically pin me down by my aching lungs. i will lie in the tangles of my sheets trying to catch my breath and re-trace the dreams, desperately trying to hold onto that feeling of being so alive and apart of something bigger than you and i combined. it’s much like trying to chase a shadow in an evening sunset and without fail all i can remember are you and me, on the brink of sacrificing our lives for the good of others. i don’t know who you are and i can never make out the features of your face but i can still feel the warm calluses of your palms against my own, the scratch of your fingernails on my scalp as you would run your fingers through my hair, the roughness of your trench coat whipping across my ankles as you would walk beside me, and the tight grip of your arms across my chest as you would pull me out of harm’s way. i feel as if you’ve been haunting me for years now and i’m tired of mistaking you for the men who show up in my life with similar features but only end up taking me apart piece by piece.

16 march, 2014

it’s been snowing all day and any semblance of spring that was evident yesterday is now covered up and gone. i feel i may never escape this season and all that it has brought me. i can’t seem to keep warm, to unfurl my body from the rigidness it has been stuck in since october. i look back on old photos from when the leaves were changing and the air had a cool, crisp smell to it and i barely recognize myself in them. no amount of makeup can cover up the veins of jagged cracks that were left behind after the wake of it all. it keeps me up at night that the fact a boy i knew for maybe five minutes occupies my mind more than the boy i spent over a year with. it bothers me that i allow myself to think about either of them, two boys who gave me nothing in return. it bothers me that my memory is so hazy and that remembering the good times are becoming harder and harder to reach. it bothers me that i don’t have the strength some days to make an effort to think about what i want. i’m so used to molding myself to the whims of others in an effort to keep the peace that i’m beginning to wither and fade, suffocating under the frigid vastness of this unrelenting season.

2 march, 2014

i want to write down everything i feel i haven’t been completely honest about with you. i feel as if you don’t see me clearly and that it’s been made foggy and indistinct from all the wrong conversations, lack of moments, and too much alcohol. i worry that in an effort to grapple with my own insecurities i’ve made myself out to be a woman that is not quite real, that’s not quite me. i haven’t said the words that i couldn’t quite force out and i want to say them to you now. i want a do-over, a restart. i want to introduce myself to you all over again without the hesitation and avoided eye contact. i want to explain how unbearbly awkward i am when it comes to texting. i want to take back that sorry excuse of a joke and how i didn’t end up returning your call immediately. i should’ve called you right back and gone on that walk with you through the humid louisiana night. i should’ve not been so fearful. i want to tell you about my beliefs in god all over again because it didn’t come from a deeper part of my soul like it should have. i want to explain that i am not usually that cranky as i was that last day we worked together and that you unfortunately saw a bad moment within myself that was the inevitable meltdown of weeks of not sleeping, a poor diet, and the shadows of a past love clinging to my every move. i want to tell you more about how i grew up without glossing over the entire decade i’ve tried to mentally wall off. i want to re-do last night not just because it was wrong but because it was so perfect, so perfect on your part. i can still feel the burn of your five o’clock shadow scraping across my bare back and i want to go back and tell you what that did to me. i want to have said your name more. i want to have told you how nervous i was without trying to act like i wasn’t a little over my head with how much i wanted you. i want to go back and tell you how much i enjoy talking to you, however mundane it is. i want to be able to say all of these things but i am worried it may be a little too late and that the world is spinning faster than i can handle.

13 february, 2014

i miss the dog-days of summer, the air static and full of noise. i miss the lightening that makes my heart skip a beat and the sweat that forms on my brow and down the rivets of my spine as i laid with you in your bed. i miss cooling the hot pads of my feet in the tap water of your kitchen sink and when you’d lean in for a kiss i could smell the salt on your skin before tasting it on my tongue. i miss tank tops, cotton dresses, and the hum of ceiling fans with the cicadas buzzing into their crescendos as the breeze slowly shifts the heaviness of the air from one corner of the room to another. we’d find sanctuary in lake michigan and solace in burying our bare feet between the bristles of ryegrass in the park. i miss the sizzle and pop of rain pounding the blistering asphalt and fingers and lips sticky from melted ice cream cones.

1 march, 2013

the first time you told me you loved me was in a tiny hotel room by the river in limerick and i remember your ankles hooked around mine, our bones clanking together under the starch of the sheets. the second time your voice was warm from several pints of guinness and you were playing me fairytale of new york on your old piano that will be forever just a step out of tune. i could only laugh in response because i suddenly forgot how to use the words that i’ve spent years trying to comprehend. the third time you were out on your back patio, smoking a cigarette before heading to bed and the fourth on a freezing night out on a busy street in galway. i know you can hear the hesitation in my voice, the mild fear that shakes at the end of every exhale. you never mention it but you still keep using the words i love you as if you’re attempting to teach me a phrase in a foreign language in the hopes that one day i’ll pick up on what you’ve been trying to say to me all this time.

28 nov, 2012

i have decided that my favorite sound in the world right now is the boyfriend calling me on his way home slightly drunk from a night out at the pubs and i can barely understand him through his slurring accent and his feet dragging on the cobble-****** street and i can hear him smoking a cigarette and he just keeps going on and on about how beautiful he thinks i am and how much he misses me. his compliments are usually sporadic and i am never prepared for them. they always carry a tone with them that is unbridled and heavy, as if he just lost a hard-fought battle of containing them all in. all i can do is laugh sometimes and appreciate everything we have that much more before whispering, "i miss you too."

12 oct, 2012

you mentioned in passing today how there are times when i will give you a look and it sets you off balance and you don’t know why. i rambled on about my innate awkwardness and lack of control over certain ****** expressions because i was too afraid to tell you how those looks are me trying to keep it all in. you bring out a side of me i have never seen before, someone who is happy and steady and settled close to the warmth of the ground. it’s exciting and nerve-wracking. at night i have these dreams of us in your sitting room with you banging away on your piano and we’re both sweating from the heat from the fire in the fireplace we put together ourselves. i have these dreams where we’re back on grafton street, our palms pressed tightly together in the pocket of your coat and it’s so real that i wake up with my hands still tingling from the cold dublin air. you are thousands of miles away and you are everywhere at the same time and i am ready for whatever comes as long as i get to keep you with me at the end of it all.

23 sept, 2012

i’ve been losing sleep lately plagued by dreams of strong arms tightly wound around my ribcage like kudzu and an overwhelming scent of musk and dried paint that lingers like a heavy shadow in the breaking of morning light. i stumble through the routines ripping my nylons and bruising my hands along the way. all i can think about are the mistakes and lies i’ve scattered across all that i once held dear to me and how i’ve burned every ******* bridge i ever built in the gold light of vulnerable youth. i don’t know what i want anymore and every man i’ve ever loved ultimately never adds up to the man i imagine them to be. i fill in the empty nooks and black holes within yourself you don’t even know you have and i build you into the man you never have any chance of becoming and it’s just downhill from there, babe. i’ve got my back up against a wall with my spine so firmly pressed into the surface i wonder how hard it would be to just simply fall through and disappear entirely. i look into the eyes of hundreds of strangers everyday knowing i will never see them again and all i can think is how in god’s name are people ever able to find each other?

15 june, 2012

there are times when the words pour out of me from the darkest, deepest parts of my body and they just keep flowing and my lungs ache with the need to breathe but i just have to get these words out of me before they **** me. and then they’re there. a ****** jumble on the ground at your feet and you don’t understand, can’t sift through the mess i just gave you. sometimes you don’t say anything at all and you stare into my eyes waiting for the punch line that never comes. sometimes you say the completely wrong thing and it’s like a punch in the chest instead. i desperately want you to understand what goes on in here, why i do the things i do and why i am so awkward even at the best of times. i want you to understand that i come from a place of debilitating integrity with a dash of self-loathing that clings to the outlines of my shadow everywhere i go. i can see you trying to read my lips and listen to my words but somewhere along the way they get lost and wander off and it’s like we’re beyond speaking a foreign language to each other — we’ve become two separate species entirely.

5 mar, 2012

i find myself slowly waking up these days in the early morning light reflected off the fresh snow fall on my window sill and a warmth on my skin that echoes the touches of your rough palms. if i lie there still enough i can almost feel the staccato beat of your kisses across my neck and the vibrations of your laugh deep in my own chest. i’ve only read about moments like this and have always considered them a myth, a legend, an unattainable bliss only reserved for those who are worthy enough. the words that persistently tumble from your tongue are unreal, boy, and i fear i may gladly drown in their depths one day soon.

20 jan, 2012

i’ve recently started spending all of my money on boots that have a heaviness in them that keep my feet firmly on the ground and allow me to feel every step with my entire body. i spend all of my money on hats to hide under so no one will see all the millions and millions of white lies that come tumbling off my tongue that have now started intertwining into an intricate web of my own insecurities.

i wake up in the morning with a purpose to fit firmly inside my skin and by mid-morning it’s all gone to **** and i don’t know who i am anymore. strands of my hair can be found everywhere these days, as if my body is purposely leaving pieces of me behind across the vastness of this continent in the hopes you will find me and put me back together.

i need your steady hands and the rough skin of your jawline across mine that leaves a burn even when you’re gone. i need your words of piercing scrutiny and for you to make me look you in eye because you know my fear of this fallacious species of ours is irrational and just *******, ******* ridiculous. i need you to tell me about your dreams where the sun was setting and no one was there but us and everything was going to be alright, everything made sense.

i need you to come on already.

i’m going blind with all of these halfway points and men who touch me like i’m nothing after tonight, men who speak to me with that hideous glint in their dark eyes as if they speak the word of Jesus Christ himself.

i need you to come on already so we can be the two happiest people on this godforsaken earth.

2 dec, 2011

there are some nights i find myself caught by my own reflection in a stranger’s mirror and i stand there scrutinizing every dip and curve trying to understand how this all came to be. the years of pain and disappointment have found a stable home in the lines of my face and it has altered the shape of it into a person i fail to see. i don’t recognize myself and these endless thoughts tumbling around are so foreign i fear they belong to someone else entirely. i don’t want them and need to give them back right now, take them back. i stare into the dark blue of my father’s hooded eyes and tighten my grip around my mother’s hipbones and understand that, with my grandmother’s hands, i will bury all that was left unsaid so deep until it becomes the very foundations for which i will build on.

28 oct, 2011

on late nights like these when i’m in this place all alone i can hear the trains periodically roll by like rhythmic thunder and it’s sometimes the only sound i’ll hear for several minutes, not even my own heartbeat loud enough to break the heavy silence. i am thankful for these moments and bury myself deep under the covers embracing the solitude like a casual lover. sometimes though it can be so paralyzing and everything from the past creeps up into my chest resurfacing old pains i hide in the deepest, darkest corners within myself that when the train comes thundering by it’s as if my past is charging through the night into my lungs all the way down to my curled toes.

30 may, 2011