Two decades in and already swamped with memories
And only the desire to make new ones.
Walking to class or coming home
People ask me what I want to do,
What do I want to do with the rest of my life?

I can feel my throat constrict and my heart skid,
Don’t they understand how much of a commitment that is?
The rest of my life.

And what if it’s not something I want to do, but something I want to be?

I’m 20 years old and don’t ever have my head in this atmosphere,
So how can I ever hope to decide the rest of my life?

I want to write with the raindrops that kiss the grass
Or sleep on the waves of the ocean
And hold the stars in my hands.
I want to climb the highest tree or the highest mountain
Just so I can jump and call it flying.
I want to read the faces of others
And put them into stories.
But mostly I want to run,
Not literally,
But running still.
I want to catch time as it passes by
And go to all the places in the pictures
Enjoying adventure upon adventure
Until the end of my days,
Surrounded by the select few that I love.

I want to be nothing short of me,
And who I am isn’t a constant that can be applied to a formula,
It’s constantly changing, growing, fighting, loving.
How dare you ask me to define what I want to be,
When it’s plain that I don’t even know who I am?

I’m 20 years old and what I want to do for the rest of my life
Is nothing sort of a mystery, an adventure,
Like a storyline leading to an epic plot twist,
But it’s wrapped in uncertainty
And the only way to find out where it’s going
Is to keep reading the book.

Changes happen quickly
That’s what happens when you have a fickle heart
Oh to be human
Oh to feel –
But wait, aren’t those the same?

A complete paradigm shift
Like an earthquake of the mind
Leaves wreckage in scattered memories,
Beautiful trinkets lost in the rubble of broken homes.

What a metaphor for the heart!

Can you dare to believe that someone will heal you?
How could you put that weight on someone’s shoulders?
Your pain is yours to bear
Despite sweetened words and rosy promises.

You can’t fix anyone from the inside out either.
Eyes only see the surface,
Only see the façade, unintentional or otherwise.
Truth does not exist for you to see.

Truth. What is truth in love?
Is there truth in love?
Or is love a woven contradiction of hopes and fears,
Bent on the naïve wishes of teenage girls longing to be adored by boys with bright blue eyes and midnight hair?

Does the heart have a shape?
Curves and straight edges?
I think it’s a gooey blob that drips across the barroom floor
And if you’re not careful to clean up the mess you leave behind
You leave yourself behind.

Funny how that works. Ironic perhaps, but definitely cynical.

And if you don’t clean up like your mother always told you to,
Then it’s really your fault if you ask me.
Shouldn’t you know better by now?
After years of hearing what’s good for you and what isn’t
Why do you still have to be so stupidly stubborn?

You’re wrong, just face it.
Your heart is a useless lump that pumps hot red blasts through your body
That splashes pink across your face and lips
And catch his eye.

But don’t say I never told you, no don’t you dare say I never told you
That this silly little love story would end,
That it wasn’t even a love story to begin with.
Hell, it wasn’t even a story -
Just a ****** poem written in a lost-in-the-rubble diary that’s falling apart.

Yeah, I told you so.

Mistah Kurtz—he dead.

      A penny for the Old Guy

      I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

      II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

      III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

      IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We ***** together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

      V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
                                Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

I opened my eyes
And looked up at the rain,
And it dripped in my head
And flowed into my brain,
And all that I hear as I lie in my bed
Is the slishity-slosh of the rain in my head.

I step very softly,
I walk very slow,
I can't do a handstand--
I might overflow,
So pardon the wild crazy thing I just said--
I'm just not the same since there's rain in my head.

She’s a mystery,
A mosaic of broken pieces and complications,
Experiences he’ll not soon understand,
All sewn together by strands thin as spider’s web.

She's something fragile
Yet has walls so high.
He’s determined to knock them down,
One by one.

She hardly ever speaks,
All her thoughts are secrets that she keeps.
Slowly, gradually she’ll give away pieces of the puzzle
For him to put together.
Gently she does this, quite possibly terrified
That he’ll run away, in the end.

She doesn’t know that he wants to put the pieces into place,
That he’ll trace the scars, smooth the seams,
Until she doesn’t want him anymore.

And that is what he fears,
That one day, he’ll be too much for her,
And she’ll retreat into herself again.

Just like the way she turns on her heels
When their paths split.
She says “See you later,”
Never goodbye,
And always turns to look back at him
When she thinks he's not looking.

But one day, she might just leave without a sound
Walking pointedly in another direction,
Away from him
And never look back.

Wisps of memories grace my mind
Like a cold mist in the morning
Upon my skin.

Phantom sensations of lips and hands,
Threads of touches that grazed my face
Make me smile.

A voice deep and comforting in tone,
Whispers of sweet words ringing like echoes
In my ears.

Images of you, fading and blurry,
Stand where you stood, smiled where you sat
In my mind’s eye.

Dreams of fantasies that never came true
Haunt me as I struggle between what was
And what wasn’t.

Wonderings of where you are now,
How you feel, and if you think of me
Often or never.

Realizations that goodbye was inevitable
And hurt because you disappeared so quickly
Like a ghost.