Home is that feeling that you get when your driving and you kind of sink into yourself, into the seat of the car and become part of the cushion and feel safe and it feels like yesterday and tomorrow all at once.

It’s that feeling that feels like you suddenly own a small piece of the universe, that feels like your front door in that its locked and its yours and that feels like your ****** car in that its yours and its falling apart.

It’s that feeling you get when you think so hard that you can feel every part of your body and it kind of aches of longing for you to remember how you are a vast vessel of emptiness, that you get when you cross your own fingers and remember how you are small and you are fragile.

It’s that feeling you get when you think so hard that your skin disappears and you flow into the air that touches the streets and fills the void in your lungs.

It’s that feeling you get when you forget to breath and forget that you exist until existing can stop because you cant remember the words to your favorite song or remember the way his smile can hug your soul and your brain says everything but inhale.

And it’s that feeling of when you realize you never knew what the streets you drove down actually look like because you are so focused on the roads and so focused on how to fill them but they’re yours and you’ll take care of them and you’ll come back to them and home is never being able to forget the feelings you bounced off of them and filled yourself with.

Sometimes I ignore everything going on in my life because its easier
and then when I'm alone and I try and use cigarettes and TV to distract me
It doesn't work
the world gets so small I can't breath
and I curl up and cry and cry
or sometimes I get up and pace and pace and pace
and every breath I take hurts
and the knots in my stomach and throat are killing me
I have no idea what to do
I have no one to turn to
and I realize how much I have isolated myself
I can't get off my desert island
I thought I wanted solidarity
but I really wanted was safety and security
and being alone is the opposite
it just created a fearful lonely existence

I don't usually wear my seatbelt
because if I die driving,
I want to go enthusiastically, smiling.

I only want to die
if in a gore-ific scene of carelessness,
I want to exit with a bang, part of a mess.

And I don’t find this morbid
Because if I die cruising down 33,
I will die my mind at peace with the rest of me.

when I walked in my stomach was screaming nerves,
my heart felt fluttery from my first of many iced black coffees.
I fixed my eyes fixed on the black hightops I stared at everyday during first period,
the peeling rubber toes pointing straight at me.

I looked up, meeting eyes with the spitting image of Kurt Cobain
who smirked at me curiously, then lifted a finger, and turned into the kitchen.
I busied myself untying my boots, even though they had zippers,
promising myself I wouldn’t loose my balance.

The high tops returned, followed by weathered leather moccasins,
who murmured through his teeth “hmmm, designing with materials girl” .
I grinned through my eyes, attempting not to make myself intimate with the floor so soon,
expertly faking breathy laugh to cover up how utterly freaked the unfamiliar title made me.

High tops grabbed my waist and twirled me into the kitchen,
offering a cigarette before disappearing through the screen door and leaving me
in a room filled with music that ran through my head like a brush
combing out the tangles from driving with my sunroof down.

I was surrounded by people with purple hair and overflowing hearts
who floated around the room singing and talking and dancing
while I wondered how I should fill the shoes of my new title
and what kind of shoes I should even be filling.

out of the corner of my eye, I saw high tops march back ;
he didn’t seem to float but parade, his ponytail not quite matching his muscle shirt arms.
He waltzed right up to moccasins and kissed him proper on the mouth
hands holding his jaw, eyes closed, and balanced on his toes.

Satisfied, he stormed back out through the screen
pulling a pack of blacks and a white lighter from his back pocket
(he would soon tell me he didn’t believe in luck,
even though it was in his pocket when he was arrested over a houseplant).

Moccasins just smiled, eyes rolling up into his brown hair
and with his hands out palms ceilingward in a silent offer, he locked his eyes on mine
Before I had a chance to overanalyze,
he decided for me.

Maintaing eye contact, we danced to the 22 year old boys screaming through the boom box
while I tried to integrate myself into the scene,
tried to float so effortlessly too,
like the cigarette smoke oozing in from the patio

he pulled me into a hug that resented gravity
effortlessly lifting all six feet of me off the ground,
pressing my cheek against the cutoff edge of his tie dye tank top,
my blonde hair tugging between his chest and mine

So with fuzzy lemonade on my lips
and bass players hands on my hips
I figured out I didn't need shoes
if i never touched the ground.

When you left, you took the keys to your car.
The white minivan with the peeling paint still sits in the driveway
that I sat and drank root beer on at your wedding,
pretending it was alcoholic.

I hope someday you can commit to more than a call to your husband,
asking him not for forgivness for leaving and for never signing a divorce but asking him for $100 so you can continue running away from the life you still wear on a finger.

And I selfishly hope that someday you come find me
I deserve an apology for you leaving that car
and making me avert my eyes every time I drive by the house you up and left
so your ghost can’t stare me straight in the ******* face.

One,
there’s an ambulence outside my front door
And two,
my parents are watching the evening news.