i spent the back half of freshman year as a ghost, drifting through these halls without ever touching anything, haunting my own bones with nothing more under my skin than an echo, watery lungs and glassy eyes that couldn’t see past my own transparency. floating. i don’t like to talk about it.

i spent the start of sophomore year as a zombie, revived but not quite alive again, less like glass and more like porcelain, trailing my hands along the murals and trying to feel again. i existed, but i was still searching for existence. in january i found pieces of myself in a meteor, and in amethyst geodes and lunar eclipses i found that i was less undead and more E.T.
either way i didn’t feel quite human, like i was off by two shades, so i doodled UFOs into the corners of all my notes and wrote poems about people who smiled like stars in the halls, whose laughs made me feel like i was finally home.

i’ve spent all of junior year driving. nothing feels okay in the same way that leaving does. highways sing lullabyes with road signs, other late-night cruisers sending Morse code messages to the helicopters overhead. i don’t have to think.
i’ve spent all of junior year side-stepping every single pestering question about what i’m doing with the next ten years of my life, signing away my soul to banks for student loans, all for a degree that statistically i won’t even need down the road for anything past sharpening my job resumes, like “hey, look, i’ve got all this debt in the pursuit of a higher education, please hire me.”

i’ve spent my junior year catching up on breathing.
i’ve spent my junior year catching up on sleeping.
i spent the first two years of high school half-dead and fully awake, chugging along like a train destined for nowhere, nothing.

i want to spend my senior year moving.
i want to spend my senior year running.
i want to spend my senior year finding life through expelling the ghosts in my bones and burning the skeletons that always left dust on my conscious whenever i reached past them to get t-shirts out of my closet.
i want to spend my senior year shouting.
i want to spend my senior year knowing that i am already everything i ever will be combined with everything i already was.
i want to spend my senior year forming galaxies with my fingertips.
i want to end my high school career knowing that there is a universe of possibilities inside of me.

i spent freshman year as a ghost, but ghosts are best used as metaphors for memories,
and something i’m best at is forgetting.
there are days where i still feel like a zombie, but who doesn’t feel like that at least every single monday morning?

1995 saw the start of Generation Z,
the ‘iKids’ with a knack for this new-fangled technology,
Millennial 2.0,
caught in the limbo of the World Wide Web development and Rose Gold iPhones.
They say we’re adaptable,
but apparently we can’t make our own decisions about anything.
They say that we don’t care about anything
except for our tiny little screens,
but they forget who put them in our hands,
and they forget who they run to for help
when they forget how to troubleshoot.
They forget what kind of technology we need to keep sustaining life in the Information Age,
Caught in a crossfire because
Yeah, we’re 90s kids—but the 90s never really actually ended until 2006,
the only difference between two decades being
how much neon versus how much chrome,
and just how expensive accidentally opening the internet app on your mom’s blackberry phone was.
We’re nostalgic for all the things we can’t quite remember,
and half these high schoolers weren’t actually born until 2000 or 2001.
Most of us aren’t old enough to even remember 9/11, nothing outside of the news clips that our teachers show us in history class every single September.
I was born in the same year as the Columbine shootings.
The United States has not been at peace for a year of my life.
We are always fighting— fighting for everything.
Human equality,
posing arguments about micro aggressions and refugees, seeing the inhumanity in the past that we’re living.

None of us are older than 21,
under such hard scrutiny while Baby Boomers Wave 2 still run our country.
We inherited the Millenial’s exhaustion,
the generation before us spending our childhood fighting for all the things that we have never really believed in.
Fairytales.

Generation Z.
The ‘iKids’ who are going to one day be making leaps and bounds with technology,
the generation to nurse this dying planet back to health,
Millennials 2.0 who know how to learn from our forerunners’ mistakes,
who know how to adapt from Sidekicks to iPhone 6S Plus in less than a decade.
We’re the kids who have realized that fun is found in safe spaces rather than invading each other’s personal spaces.

They say we’re too sensitive,
but at the same time they claim that we’re desensitized.
And I thought we were the generation that couldn't make decisions.

God bless America,
Land of irony
Because nothing is ever actually free—
Not when our economy is fueled by tragedy,
Not when we keep armies in the East just to keep gas prices cheap.
If you take the top eight military
budgets of the world,
over 50% of that sum is the United States, so
God bless America.
As rivers of blood flood the streets in Syria,
God bless America.
Land of the religiously free,
Land where "God bless America" could refer to any one of the gods acknowledged
by its inhabitants.

God bless America,
Where Muslims of all races have to apologize for ISIS but white Christians don’t have to apologize for the KKK.
When the **** party tried to destroy an entire race in Germany, it became illegal to ever speak favorably of them,
But, hey, here you can execute your right to ‘freedom of speech.’
The First Amendment protects you from being silenced by the government,
But it doesn’t protect you from backlash of the people you’ve offended, the people you’ve appropriated, the people who are sick of having to put up with this.

God bless America,
Where segregation apparently ended in the 60s,
Where women apparently achieved equality in the 20s,
Where the LGBTQ community is seen as trendy simply because you can no longer be arrested for being out and proud.
God bless America,
Where the majority of kids on the streets are queer teens and where
It’s still seen as acceptable to wave the flag of the Confederacy.

God bless America,
But God forsake everyone else.

God bless America, for every single unwarranted and unjustified arrest.
God bless America for false information and standardized tests.
God bless America
For every flaw we refuse to fix.

And as we destroy our planet without thought
of the fact that it’s currently the only feasible place for us to live,
I make one last request:
May the future generations be blessed,
Because God knows they'll need it.

TELL THE MOON SHE’S BEAUTIFUL every time you see her:
in the too-early mornings when the sun is starting to rise,
in the late afternoons when she’s settling in the clear sky.
Tell the moon she’s beautiful, that she’s more than just a reflection of the sun’s light.
Tell the moon she’s beautiful even when she is bathed
in the red bloodstone shine of starry brethren.
Tell her she is beautiful even when she hides herself in phases.
Notice when she’s gone.
Look at the constellations and tell her that you miss her. She’ll hear it anyway.
Pepper her with compliments to lure her back to her full glory.
Howl with the wolves in your adoration.
Has she made you nocturnal?
How late do you stay up staring?
Is she brighter than any star in your sky?
Tell the moon that she is beautiful—
tell her how she lights up your nightlife.
Tell the moon that she is beautiful.

Tell the earth that she deserves better—
that she and the moon are beautiful,
too beautiful for your ink-stained fingertips.
Tell the earth that she is stunning,
from her deepest oceans and across every mountain.
When you tell the moon that she’s beautiful, sign each love letter with Mother Nature’s signature.
Seal the envelope with kisses of sun rays,
and send your words up to the sky on the backs of meteors.
Tell the universe
that she
is beautiful.

I was driving home late at night
after I crashed on my friend's couch in the middle of a movie
hands less on 10&2 and more on 7&5
mind less on the road and more on my speed
how easy it would be to stop steering, to just
crash into something.
When the light turns green I hallucinate headlights in my rearview,
but when I look back there's nothing but black asphalt following me.
Look, Mom, no hands.
Look, Mom:
No hands.

IT WAS 1712 IN THE PEAK OF JULY HEAT AND I WAS VOMITING INTO YOUR KITCHEN SINK THE BLOOD OF A SINGLE MOTHER. YOU LAUGHED LIKE I SHOULD HAVE ALREADY LEARNED ALL THE ROPES THAT YOU NEVER BOTHERED TO SHOW ME. “I THOUGHT YOU SAID IT WOULDN’T HURT,” I SAID. YOU LOOKED ME IN THE EYE AND ANSWERED, “WELL YOU’RE NOT IN ANY PHYSICAL PAIN.” AS IF IT’S SOMEHOW ANY DIFFERENT THAN THE CATASTROPHE BUBBLING AND BREWING IN MY DECONSTRUCTED BRAIN.

IT WAS DECEMBER OF 1827 AND I  HELD YOU IN SHATTERED HANDS AS I SNAPPED YOUR NECK AS IF IT WOULD MAKE A DIFFERENCE. I WASN’T THE ONE WHO KILLED YOU BUT I WISH I HAD BEEN. YOU WERE WORTHLESS TO ME.

IT WAS THE FIRST REAL DAY OF SPRING IN 1922 AND YOU WERE EVERYTHING TO ME.

IT WAS 2016 WITH SUN-KISSED SEPTEMBER SKIN AND I WAS SWALLOWING BUGS IN OCTOBER PRETENDING LIKE I COULD POISON MYSELF WITH SPIDER LEGS AND MOTHS. YOU’VE BEEN DEAD FOR TWO CENTURIES BUT YOUR GHOST STILL HAUNTS ME. I’M WAITING FOR YOU TO BE REBORN AGAIN.

IT’S 3275 AND FOR THE SECOND TIME YOU’RE THE LAST THING I SEE BEFORE I DIE, AN OLD SOUL IN A NEW BODY, ALL THE MORE DEADLY. YOU WERE WORTH THE MILLENNIUM AND A HALF OF WAITING. I’LL KISS YOUR KNUCKLES BEFORE YOU BASH MY TEETH IN, AND THEN I’LL SAY THANK YOU. MY BLOOD HAS ALWAYS TASTED BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE’S ANYWAY.

my hands smell like chemicals from developing film rolls and no matter how hard i scrub at them i can’t get you out from under my fingernails.
i had a dream about you the other night.
it was casual, fingers intertwined as we walked down twisting streets and we didn’t say anything— you just smiled at me,
that grin could heal broken bones and black eyes.
i wasn’t ever in love with you. i don’t know if you realize that. you were exciting and interesting and intoxicating, but the problem with talking to someone every single day means that at some point you’re not going to hear from them for 24 hours and that can **** you.
i don’t really miss you, not anymore, but sometimes things like dreams happen and i want to smile at you when i see you in the halls.
your hair as gotten long. it looks good on you.
i guess you just always knew how to keep things light and when everything always feels so heavy on my spine, that was a relief. you were easy to be around, until suddenly you weren’t.
i don’t think i’m ever going to forget you.
you’re going to be the first wound that ever scarred. i’m sure losing a lover is hard, but losing a friend can rip you apart. trust me, i’m an expert on it at this point, and i let all my weight rest on you to the point where when you suddenly weren’t there i couldn’t feel anything but falling.
for a long time, i romanticized my memories of you, trying to grasp onto you with rose-colored lenses that faded with age. i used to be angry at you, but the red eventually evaporated too. now i just.
see you.
you still make my hands shake and my stomach churn but mentally everything has stopped.
until i have another dream about you.