"That's so gay!"
A use of
Slang and slander
In
The
Wrong
Direction.

If they use
Gay as in
Happy
The
Way
Most
Have
Forgotten
It would be a good expression.

But if they use it
As a reference to
Homosexuality
Then
I
Don't
Get
It
I
Won't
Get
It.

You can't be more gay
Than someone else.
There's no scale
Or
Chart
To measure
Gayness

And it's a bad expression
So gay is
Bad?

No.

Gay is not bad.

People who say "That's so gay."

They are bad

She may be ******.
And she may check my fingers-
Slam her hard metal pole down on them-
Each time we practice lacrosse.
And she may roll her eyes
At
Me.

But I don't hate her.
I feel sorry for her.
Because I think I'm the only one
Who pays attention
Through the laughter and fun
That
He touches her.

And she makes a joke out of it
So her minions snap out of their dazed state and
Chuckle a little bit.
But his crawling fingers are greedy
And her words are scarce.

All of the brain-dead minions
Laugh when she jokingly screams,
"****!"

Except me.

You tell us to
Spread
The
Word
To
End
The
Word

But you mean the word
"*******"

And you think it's mean
Because of
Mental retardation
And how it hurts
Their feelings.


Stop that word.
I won't mind.

Just don't turn around
And call
Him
A
******

I have a boyfriend
I shout to myself,
Pinching my upper thigh
And blinking away from
The sight of them.

She giggles and I notice
Her laugh is lopsided
And she's too short
To be that loud.
Her shoulders are too far forward
And even I notice the
Gross stain on her
Upper left canine
Between her braces
That are bright, neon green.

She's my best friend.

I don't mean to think of her in that way,
I love her like a sister.
But it pops into the front of my brain
When I see them together.

I don't even like him
In that way
Anymore.
I have a boyfriend,*
And all he was
Was a whispered fifth grade crush.
That's what I tell myself.

He looks at her like
She's a million bucks.

Her crooked teeth
Earn her six cents,
In my opinion.

I take it back within a second,
But the thought was still there.

Jealousy makes me into a monster.

She loved art
And she breathed
And ate
And slept art
And she radiated art
And art was her life

And we
All loved her
One hundred percent
And every
Girl
Was her
Best friend

And the priest
Doing the funeral
Hadn't met her.
But her parents
Paid him like he had.

And they told the priest
"She loved art
And she breathed
And ate
And slept art.
And she radiated art.
And art was her life."

And so that was what he
Told the
Congregation.


But when
A quiet person like her
Dies
No one ever finds out
That she
Hated art
But
In fact
She loved Forensic Science.

And I
Was so stuck
On my own
Little
Problems
That I totally
Missed
That you were
Suicidal
Too.

I guess I just expected
Something else

It happens every year,
I get excited
Hopeful
Giddy
That maybe
This year will be
Different.

Maybe I'll find an awesome friend
Who does my nails
And answers calls at two am
Like Nicole did
Before she moved to California

Or she could be like Kayla
Who would be silly with me in
Drama class
And use chocolate sauce for blood
In our Black and White movie
Before her dad died in combat
And she went to bury him in
Some foreign country
Where cell phones
Don't count

Or a boyfriend like Louis
That I could see a future with
Sitting listening to Relient K
In a college dorm
With a million years to spare
Before he left for London

But the girl in front of me
In English
Pops her gum for the boy
In the next desk
And could poke my eye out
With her fake straightened hair.

The girl in my drama class
Cakes on her mask and
Participates in pageant after pageant
And calls her anorexia
A diet

And I heard the rumor
That the boy I thought was cute
In chemistry
Was caught ******* his
Girlfriend
Under her desk in
Español Dos.

I didn't think my standards were too high to meet.

It made me
Sick.

The kind of sick
That books describe
As green,
Ghostly skinned
With red rust noses.

Sick to my stomach
Like when you wake up
At 2:00 AM
And realize that
Something
Is
Not
Right
Before you sprint
Down the hall
To the bathroom
And ***** pizza bagels into the
Pristine marble sink.

It made me sick like
When it gets so bad that
Blowing your nose hurts
Because the extra soft Kleenex
Have scratched your skin raw
Over
And
Over
Again.

It made me sick
When I realized
That it wasn't you that I loved
But the feeling of being loved.

I hate airplanes.
I hate them
More than
Anything
I've ever hated.

Except the flight
From Dulles
To Ft. Lauderdale.
I like that.

Especially at night
When it feels like
Stars
Can be caught with
A thin fishing line
Twenty feet away

And eventually you
Go off the mainland
And can't tell where
The water starts
Or
The stars stop.

Then you see a
Sudden line of lights below
And beyond that
An infinity of bright bursts
Of lights
And lamps.

All darkness,
Then suddenly
Light.

I really hate planes.

But not the flight
From Dulles
To Ft. Lauderdale
At night.
I love that.

"Oh, hey Emily, will you be on our team?"

It was the very bad ending to a very bad day.

Three tests, forgotten homework, stuttered lines,
And this is what got me in the end.

Those girls,
The ones with the
Perfect long blonde beautiful hair
And the pencil skirts
And uggs,
The girls who even manage to make gym clothes look good.

We had lined up for
Captain ball
Which is really just
A mix of
Soccer and basketball.

And we had to line up,
Every inch of back touching the wall,
And the first seven people from each side would play, and then the next seven.

But of course
Those girls
The ones who can't bear to be
Seperated
For two minutes and forty-seven seconds
Had to have the perfect team.

No.
Just no.

I won't "be on your team."

There are no teams.

My heart goes numb
And my stomach turns sour
When it becomes apparent
That best male actor
Has been won by a man
With an alliterative name
And I still have
The same number of
Oscars
As Leonardo DiCaprio

I'm sorry
That I text you
At four a.m.
When
I
Can't
Breathe
Because of
Anxiety attacks.

I'm sorry that
I can't make serious phone calls
Or order at Subway
Around the corner,
Even though I know
I like thinly sliced turkey
And chipotle dressing.

I'm sorry that
I forget things like
Birthdays and middle names
And I'm sorry
That I don't know how to
Kiss.

I'm sorry
That you think
When I don't take a compliment
I'm fishing for you
To keep going,
Because in my rotting skull
That option
Isn't even possible.

I'm sorry.
So sorry.
That if you're
Nice to me
I will never
Ever
Believe you
Actually like me.

I think
I'm finally
In a place
Where being so sore
That walking up
A flight of
Thirteen stairs
Makes my legs burn
Feels good to me.

They say I'm getting stronger.
I think they're right.

I
Am
So
Bored

Civic
Studies
Oh
My
Lord

Droning
Teachers
Boring
­Class

Chances
Are
I
Will
Not
Pass

Half
The
Student
Fell
Asleep
­
Zero
Knowledge
They
Will
Keep

Civic
Studies
What
A
Bore

Good
T­hing
I
Like
English
More

You were one of those boys
Who I'd known since I was 4,
And who got confirmed in the
Christian faith
Six weeks ago.

One of those boys
Who joked around in class
In a way that made the tescher smile.

One of those boys
Who I was happy to have in my squad
For gym
Because I knew we would win
Team Handball.

He was a guy
Who was completely comfortable
If I referanced second grade,
Even if my memory
Embarrassed him.

Someone who was so happy
To go to highschool
And be on the football team,
And who had already made friends
With all the players.

And he was one of those boys
Who we all knew
Would be the one to score the winning goal.

I thought that he would always be there.
Because boys like Bennett Rill are rare.

To me it feels like a worm
Wiggling its way
Through my bloodstream,
Making it icy and cold
And my heart turn
To frigid emotion.

It makes its way into my
Mind,
Slowing the thoughts
In some parts,
But giving the other parts,
The nervous parts,
The parts that hyperventilate
And have panic attacks,
Caffiene.

Breathing gets hard
Because
I'm underwater,
Or underground.
Buried alive,
Or sinking slowly.

I.
Can't.
Breathe.

The worm,
The worst part about the worm?
It feeds on my life.

He got expelled this time.

He wasn't sent to
In-school suspension
Or lunch detention
Or the counselor's office.

He was expelled from
Fairfax County Public Schools.

And his friends all freaked.

They sat outside the school
Every morning
And wouldn't go in
To protest.

They signed a petition
That called him a
"Well rounded student"
And
"Well loved by the student body."

I didn't love Brian.
I hated Brian.

Brian was the kid
Who always
Made the class
Stay late.

He was the kid who
Went through the halls
Grabbing peoples butts.

He was the kid that
All the guys wanted to be
And all the girls wanted to have.

And instead of sending him off
To West Point
Where he would have to
Shave his Bieber hair and
Follow the rules for once,
The county revoked the expulsion.

And to me
It seems like
A celebrity murdered someone
And because a thousand fan letters were sent in
They got to go free.

We're locked in a race
And the only way to get out
Is by
Winning.

It's silent.
Stealthy.
Unspoken.
Secret.

There aren't rules
Or guidelines
Or officials.

The way it works
Is
Whoever kills themselves first
Wins.

We know it by the
Huge blinking lights
From rides that
Tend to make people
Throw
Up
Dairy Queen.

We know it by
Those big, intricate
Winding tatoos
That snake up the arms
Of half of the attendees
That have a message
That I can't read.

We know it by
Little children
Clinging,
Terrified,
To the hands of their
Irresponsible mothers.

And we know it
By inhaling so much
Secondhand smoke
That we're almost positive
That a little lung cancer
Has invaded our privacy.

We know it by
The Herndon Festival.

And we love it.

That instinct
You have
When you're this depressed
And
Every time
You're in the
Stainless Steel kitchen
And your mom
Is stirring soup at the stove,
And a dribble of
Tomato basil
Slobbers down the side
Of the black pan.

And there's still
A knife out
From when
Tomato intestines
Sprawled across a cutting board,
Which is now in the
Soap-water sink.

You feel it,
In that second.
Instinct.
Need, really.
To take it
And slice open your wrists,
Or maybe just one,
If you're having a good day.

You seriously consider it.
It isn't just a thought.
It can
Scare you, really.

You want-
And one day, might need-
To pick up that knife
And do bad things.
Things that good girls
Wouldn't dream of.

But you don't do it,
And you won't do it,
Because your mom is right there
Stirring soup
And ignoring tomato drool.

And it's such short notice,
You haven't written your note yet.

I'm that friend
Who you ask to the mall
On those weekends
Where it's so nice
And sunny
That everyone's at the beach.

I'm that friend
That you walk home
With
On days
Where everyone else
Has mountains of
Homework.

I'm the friend
That you ignore
When they text you
Because they're so
THICK
That they're
Too stupid
And
Desperate
To take the hint.

I will never be your first choice.
But I can settle for last.

If it means
Going to the mall
With you
On those weekends
Where it's so nice
And sunny
That everyone's at the beach.

If it means
Walking home
With you
On days
Where everyone else
Has mountains of
Homework.

And if it means
Getting that one text
Saying that
You
"Have to go"
And you'll
"Ttyl."

I'll settle for that.

It was supposed to be fun.

New school, new supplies,
Thin, neon highlighters glowing inside
Vera Bradley backpacks.

Skinny folders assigned to
Pointless subjects,
Which would be fattened
With pointless homework
By the end of the day.

It was supposed to be fun,
And for a little while, I forgot.

I forgot until History.

The new teacher hadn't lived here
Longer than a week,
Which was why he was
Excited
About teaching.

He had on a brand new tie
From Banana Republic
Which was obviously tied
By his wide eyed fiance.

His classroom was bare, as he explained,
"Don't worry,
I ordered posters yesterday."

The teacher wasn't the problem.

The problem was,
Between Richardson
And Roberts,
He still existed.

At least in the school system he did.

"Ashley Paulette?"
"-Here."
"Abby Richardson?"
"-Here."
"Bennett Rill?"

And my life shattered all over again.

The silence felt
Deafening.

Remembering how he wouldn't be there.
Not ever.

"Bennett Rill?"

The teacher was confused, looking around the room
For someone
Who was buried six feet under.
Someone who the teacher might've thought
Was sick, or vacationing.

It was supposed to be fun.
But then I remembered

Don't be
A mole.

I hate moles.

They burrow
And
Scavenge
And
Live in the
Dark.

Thats just
What you did
To my heart.

You burrowed
Deep,
Down to the center.

You set up camp.
And I didn't know
You were a mole.
I thought maybe you were
A
Straw,
To ****
Bad things
Out.
So I kept you warm
And waited calmly for the
Bad stuff to
Dissapear.

But I realized
That
You were a
Magnifying glass,
To emphasise
My flaws

And you were
A
Seam-ripper
To
Pull the patches
From where
I had already healed,
To make the scabs
Bleed
Again.

And I thought you were
A
Jigsaw
And you were broken
So I could fix you
And put you
Together.

Like a
Vase,
Easily
B
r
o
k
e
n.

And
Then
You left me.

Like a
Tooth
Full of
Cav it ies.

That
Space
Next
To
My heart

No longer full.
And you
Didn't depend on me,
No longer a tapeworm.

I miss you.
Like
You
Were
Mine.

But you were
Never
Mine.

They sit in their
Wide neon cocoons,
Cozy and warm
With hot air
Dribbling out of vents
And swirling around their bodies.

A thin sheet of metal protects them from
Nine degree weather
And bone-freezing winds
And sheets of shivering ice.

And yet,
Every day at
Exactly
Six twenty-four in the morning
They come around
Like wide neon caterpillers
And slink toward where I stand,
Legs frozen to concrete.

Doors open,
Burning cold air rushes in
And rubs against them,
But they wait and smile
As I climb three tall stairs
And greet them,
Welcoming the nice hug of
Warmth
And
Coziness
And
Comfort
And love.

They love me,
A stranger.
They love me enough to
Rescue me from
Becoming an ice sculpture.

So I fumble with
The Thank You in my pocket
And ****** it toward them
In my haste.

It is enough for them.

I want to write
And I want to write far
Farther than distance and
Farther than a mile feels when you're
Expected
To run in gym class.

I want to
Inspire.

And the word seems
Thick
Like elephant skin
Or those
Cracked leather jackets that bikers wear.

It seems 'out there'
Like a planet
Somewhere that we
Haven't sent probes to.
In the middle of swallowed up
Space.

But I want to
Inspire

Like
J.K. Rowling
Or
E.B. White
Or
J.R.R. Tolkein

And all of those other
Blocked up
Official sounding
Initials.

I could have initials.
Be E.M. Tyler or just
E. Tyler.
And people would
Wonder what the E. stood for

And one day I would
Sign an autograph
"Emily"
And they would call
The New York Times
And the search would be over
And ambitious fans
Would exclaim in exhuberance.

And they wouldn't have even read my book yet.

That I'm cute
Beautiful
Pretty

And I tell them that
It's okay that I'm not
Because I know I'm not
But I don't like being lied to

I know I'm not
Because I can't let tears
Drip down my cheeks
As they shimmer in the dim light
Of the movie credits

I sob until
My face is red and damp and puffy
And I'm clinging to your sleeve
And just crying so uncontrollably
That people sitting next to us
In the dark theater
Might glimpse over to see if maybe
I have a reason to cry so hard.

Does shehave cancer?
Is she missing a leg?
Did her crack-addict mother die when she was an infant?
Why is this bratty straight white blonde girl crying while watching Selma/Dallas Buyer's Club/The Help?

I have to brush my hair
Instantly
When I get out of the pool
In the summer
(Hopping from foot to foot of course
Because the sun has baked the concrete)
Because if I don't
It becomes a half-curly knotted mess.

And if I don't braid it directly after that
Then it dries
In resemblance to a Yield Sign
In a somewhat triangular form

And I'm chubby.
Not fat. It would be better if I were fat.
If I were fat then things would be
Proportionalish
But instead I'm just
A 5'2 and 3/4" girl
With DDs that no one wants
Because "***** don't count when you're chubby"
And baby fat that lounges on my stomach
No matter how many kilometers I row.

My fingers are too small for my hands.
My glasses make my eyes look huge.
My lips are forever chapped.
My cheeks are overly red.
My eyes are too dark to be pretty
And I know it.
I know all of it.

I've lived in my body for longer than you have.
So don't lie to me.
Don't tell me that I'm cute
Beautiful
Or god forbid pretty
Because I really
Really
Hate being lied to.

I glare at it
During last period,
Jumping too high
But not high enough
To reach the swinging rope.

I'm in history,
And some glazed-over teacher
Is pointing at the
Chalkboard which has
Tiny scratches that look like words
Scribbled all over.

But I don't look at my notes,
Because my neck is craning
Too far back
To look at the rope
That is
My two and a half hours of freedom.

A single note is released into the halls
And the students chace it
And I leap into the air
Because the rope
Is reachable
And I grab it.

I begin to climb.

I sit by you on the
Dirt-dusted tile floor
Outside the gym
And we work on algebra
Or english if it's a good day.

And don't get me wrong,
I hate the familiar stench of homework
As much as
The next
Hunchbacked highschooler.
The rope stings my hands
While I climb.
You numb the burn.

But I have practice
And the rope is easy to climb
And I reach the top
In two and a half hours
And you get into
The yellow sardine can
That goes to your neighborhood.

And all of my muscles ache when you go.

I thought you liked me
As a friend
And nothing more
Which killed me.

But I liked you
As so much more.
As more than a friend.
As that guy
Who would tie my shoes
And open my doors
And kiss my forehead.

As that guy who
Texts first in the morning
And last at night.

I loved you.

And now I know,
You will open my doors
And tie my shoes
And kiss my forehead.

And text me all day,
Not just in the morning
Or night.

Because you don't like me as a friend.
You like me as so much more.

And that gives me life.

When we were little
They used to call them
Spotted
Orange
Lizards.

I think they were trying not to scare us with
The words
Standards
Of
Learning.

Standardized testing.

Those things that you need Number Two pencils for.

Those things that they prepare you for
Every year
For months.

Those things that if a cell phone goes off
The entire class comes back
During the summer
And retakes it.

Those things that they give you hours and hours
To take,
Out of our normal schedule,
Even though they only take
Forty-five minutes

Those things that don't even count
Towards our grades
Because
"They're really assessing the teachers--
But it's important to do your best."

SOLs.
Those things that people stress over.

Even though your answers
Are only
Tiny gray dots
On a
Scantron sheet.

And on her patterned wrist
She scratched
*Please Don't Go

It got so high
Yesterday
That at first
My mom told me that
I just didn't have to do my homework.

99.4

I lay in bed
And cocooned in covers
Because
My skin was warm
But my blood felt like
Liquid polar bear.

99.9

I got bored.

100.3

My mom took my temperature.

101.4

She ran a bath
And the thought
It would be smart
To make it
Feel
Like
Liquid
Polar bear
Again.

102.2

Mom says I hummed.
So she thought I was
Better.
I got out of my
Liquid
Polar
Bear
Tub.

101.7

I climbed back into bed.

102.5

Mom got on a work call.

102.8

I fell asleep.

103.1

My heart rate went down.

103.4

I woke up.

103.6

I

103.7

Couldn't

103.8

Breathe

104.1

104.1

104­.1

But mom was on her work call.

I shattered today.

Shards of love
And splashes of blood
Scattered to the tips of
My fingers
And
Toes.

We were in Starbucks
And I drank coffee
And you didn't
And seven months of
Surprise kisses
And
24/7 text messages
Ended abruptly
Like a cliff.

The funny thing is,
I broke up with you.
It was still me
Who spent the last hour
Listening to our song
And bleeding emotion
Riding on tears
Into the sock monkey
That I named after you
Because I loved the middle name
Ryan.

You were over it,
And I was not.
You showed up
With the bite of coffee
Crawling up your nose
Expecting to
Break
Up
With
Me.

I'm not exactly happy that we think alike anymore.

I sent it
At three AM
On one of those nights
Where silence gets violent
And I'm alone in my head.

I told you about the
Tiny pink pills
And how
If I took eight
I would sleep forever.
I gushed that
They were hidden
Under the toothpaste slathered
Countertop
In my bathroom.

I told you I loved you
But that
You weren't enough to stop me anymore.

I did actually consider it.
It was one of those nights.
But at some point,
As I laid on top of my comforter
And shivered under the fan,
I realized that
You weren't going to wake up
And convince me out of it.

I also thought
About how my mom was
A light sleeper.
How the floorboards would sound like
Orchestras
And the cabinet
Would be the symbals
To her.

I fell asleep
Numb,
But naturally numb,
And woke up wondering
What you would say.

You didn't say anything.

It was my cousin's wedding reception,
And I wore some creamy lacey dress
That had to be approved of by my mother
Before I shoved it in a bulging duffel bag to endure the
Six hours of Dunkin Donuts bathroom stops
And that weird stop-and-go traffic that makes me
Feel like the color green.

As I stood at the brim of the dance floor,
Trying to ignore the half-drunk staggering relatives of mine,
I thought about whether it's
Polite to pry your eight inch
Torture-o-thon heels
From your swollen toes
Before anyone else bothers.

There was a boy on the other end of the disco lights,
A silhouette that I knew to be slightly more muscular than the last time I'd seen it.
Just about my age, or maybe eight months older if you had to ask him,
Which I had about thirteen years earlier
With some sand in the crotch of
My Gymboree bathing suit.

I tried my best not to look over.
The lights mostly blinded me,
But I still wished to glance at him to see how straight his teeth were and how his acne had cleared up
Because of
Neutrogena SkinID Plus
Or something.

I could tell that he was looking at me,
At the too short lacey dress
And my straight teeth
And my peachy skin
And I wanted so badly to peek over.

I wanted him to ask me to dance,
Please oh God ask me to dance.

(Of course he didn't.)
He was a shy kid, even at seventeen.
He didn't say a word to me all night,
Even though we'd gone to the beach together
Since I was in Huggies.

Red is too fire,
Orange too bright,
Yellow too dire,
Green is too light.

Blue is too tame,
Indigo's silly,
Violet's a name,
Pink is too frilly.

Those are the reasons
(I've been keeping track)
It changes like seasons,
Now black's the new black.

Today she finally
Painted over her toenails
In that icky
Sticky
Thick
Bubblegum pink color
That her
drunk father
bought her for christmas

And it had a number
On the cap
And she didn't know what it stood for
But she thought that since the number was
783
Then it didn't stand for the kind.
Because who knew L'Oreal sold
That many bottles of nail polish?
How many different kinds of pink
Could there be?

She actually didn't care.
Because the only reason that she was doing it
Was to cover up
That bluish
Tint
That you get
In your finger and toenails
When you don't eat.

And before she could paint the last toe
Her drunk father came in
And shot her dead.
But she felt nothing
Because the squashed up metal
Bullet
Went straight through her stomach
Which was
Empty
Because she didn't eat.

And her toes were
All the way dry
By the time the police
Showed up.

He touches
My hair
All the time,
Plays with the
Edges and
Fragments,
And sometimes reminds me that
"I can braid,
You know."
Sometimes he does.

Sometimes he mimics me
In History class
From across the room,
And he laughs at all my jokes,
Even when they aren't funny,
Just
Stupid.

And occasionally,
When I'm sitting in my little niche
Between his desk
And Ellie's,
Right on the cold tile,
He'll attach his forehead to mine
And just look at me.
Sometimes he'll whisper,
"Nose,"
And point to it,
And I just giggle
And break the stare.

I don't even think he feels it,
The wishing to always be near him,
To have his fingers in my hair
All the time,
And for his laugh to be
My soundtrack.

I don't think
That when he stares into my eyes
He wants to kiss me
As bad
As I want
To kiss
Him.

He told you
He wants you to be sluttier.

If he loved you
Like you want him to
Like you love him
He would
Never
Even
Think
About asking you to change.

Why can't you see?

He's ruining you.

He eats at your soul like an earthworm
hollowing things out in there

He's done it to girls before.

Why can't you see?

He's using you.

Why can't you see?

Find an outlet.

It should be
Behind a
Desk
Or
A
Bookcase.

I need
Warmth

I need
Energy

I need
Life

Plug me into the
Wall.

Charge me.

Let me sit there
Long after
My eyes glow
Full
And
Powerful

Let me
Sit there
When I
Might
Explode.

Plug me into
The
Wall

Save me

I don't want to die.

He used it this morning.

Kevin Robinson,
Who has thick curly hair
And
Thinks
He
Knows
Everything.

And I told him,
"What kind of a word
Is
Irradiate?
It isn't a word."

And he told me
In his
Know
It
All
Way
"YES, it IS."

And he spelled it for me.
Because he's into spelling.

I
R
R
A
D
I
A
T
E

So I huffed
And left
Kevin Robinson.

But Randy Weidman
Whose last name
Has a whole different meaning
Had his fancy
New
iPhone 5
And during
First period
Which happens to be
Geometry Honors
He took out
Sira
Or
Whatever
Her
Name
Is

And he asked her.

Sira did not understand.
Sira is not so smart.

But autocorrect is.

And it turns out that
Irradiate
Is
A
Word.

He's dead.
Gone.
Found killed,
All four of them.
In their house
This morning.

I won't see him in Geometry tomorrow.
He won't pull out Lauren's chair for her.
That was the kind of guy he was.

He won't volenteer for every answer,
Not ever getting discouraged
When he wasn't picked.

He won't chace the football jocks
Down the C-Pod staircase
On the way to lunch.

He'll  never eat a ham sandwich again.

I feel like throwing up.

He threw invitations
Through the halls.

They rained down
In an endless stream
And it seemed like everyone
Ended up with two.

There are over a thousand
People at are school.
But nobody wanted to go.

Not one person came out and said,
"Brian,
Everyone
Knows
You're
A
Pothead."

They all were "too busy"
Or their parents would
"Never let them go."

But everyone knew.

And so everyone went.

I sat outside
Lauren's LS classroom
While everyone else was at lunch
Chewing up and equal mixture of
Soggy bread and lunch meat.

I sat outside
While my back went numb
Against the cinderblock
From leaning a little too hard.

I sat outside
While other kids
with different schedules
Wrote elongated essays for English
Just to make 500 words.

I sat outside
Of Lauren's LS
While she tried her hardest
To explain to me
Why I got 17b wrong
And
Of course
How to fix it.

And I sat outside
Doing test corrections
For a poisoned class called
Geometry

I sat outside
Because of my 57% score.

I sat outside,
And I decided to study.

1 "Where was I when the rockets came to life?"
2 "So sentimental! Not sentimental, no..."
3 "When she was just a girl, she expected the world."
4 "I can see you're not yourself."
5 "You can probably get the crash and burn, just wait your turn."
6 "I remember tears streaming down your face when I said I'll never let you go."
7 "She told them she'd rather fix her makeup than fix whats going on..."
8 "Just talk yourself up and tear yourself down."
9 "Looking up, there's only sky."
10 "Roll down the window, I see nothing but the sun."
11 "Seeking you will finally say."
12 "It was a long and dark December, from the rooftops, I remember there was snow."
13 "Where did you call? Waiting for a ride in the dark."
14 "It starts with one, I can't feel. Its all in your mind anyway."
15 "How can you see into my eyes like open doors?"
16 "If I should die before I wake, its cuz you took my breath away."
17 "He is jealous for me."
18 "I'm standing in the rain. I'm cold and I'm afraid."
19 "Tonight let's rid ourselves of love."
20 "Show me how to lie."

Know any of these songs? Leave them in the comments. If you get the most, I'll put you on my profile and follow you :)

I'm having one of those days
Where my thoughts go South
And breathing gets tough
And icicles stick to my
Vocal chords
And the snow is so thick
That my blood striped hand
In front of my face
Disappears.
And eventually
After a while
I need a map
To find my way back
North.
But I'm so far South
That my fingers are too frigid
To make a snowman.
And my mind's too numb
To think South anymore.

My
ANCIENT
English teacher told me
In
English class
Today
That we had
To do
A
Poetry
Project.
And
WHAT
did she assign me?
Free verse.

Not just a free verse.
A free verse about
MYSELF.

And I sat at my
Computer
This morning
With my pinkies
On the semi-colon
And
The
A

And I thought
A
Lot
About what to say.

And I thought
"I'm blonde
Should I write
About
That?
I'm
Short,
Is
That
What
My poem
Will
Be
About?

But my
Stupid,
Stubborn
Free-verse
Just
Would not
Come out.

So after coaxing
And
Calling
And pulling
Its hair.
I've just gone
And
Left
It
There.

So, my
ANCIENT
English
Teacher,
Ma'am.
Feel free
To bump
My grade
Down
To
A
D minus.
I won't whine or pout

Cuz my
Stupid
Stubborn
Free-verse
Just would
Not
Come
Out.

Why
Do you
Have to like
Him?

I like him.

I've liked him for a while.

But you
Just met
Him.

And
Now
He
Likes
You
Too.

I
Can't
Let
Him
Go,

But you don't
Have
To.

And
You
Don't
Know.

Though my other
Friends
Call it
Painfully obvious.

And
I
Don't
Think
You
Care
Enough

Sometimes
I wish
My father
Would trim
The shrubs
Into something
More interesting than
A ball.

It'd be cool to have
A
Unicorn
Shrub
Or maybe
A
Dolphin
Shrub
Or
A
Monkey
Shrub.

But
The only
Shrub
My dad can do
Seems
To Be
A
Ball.