I want to keep your attention even after you go
I'm trying to be the girl you wanna know
I wanna be smart and mysterious
serious and hilarious
genuinely beautiful
sincerely intentional
but I'm burning out-trying so hard to shine for you

I think if you do it right you're comprised of places you grew up and people that love you. Things that didn't change when everything else did and those little unexpected moments of gratitude for your inifinite blessings.  To be made small, not in an insignificant way, but to be given perspective. To be consumed in love for friends, family-extended and immediate-by blood and by acquaintance-by circumstance and experience. I think if you're doing it right you wake to great the day, just as she has you, and this silly life fills to the brim

ending things before the begin
shutting people out before they get a shot at getting in
there's this piece of me
that's scared of everything
and she's ruinin it for all of me
I'm scared to look but I wanna see
all that I'm running from
how bad can it be?
I'm a let it all catch up with me
baby keep runnin
one of these days I'll tell you everything
one of these days I'll give you all of me

Herds of sea monsters licking at my toes and they tell me it's just seaweed dad handing me the fishing pole "3,2,1 jump!" Grandma sitting on the dock with me, her toes in the lake and she'd laugh and squeal so loudly it held a weight all its own it echoed, carries, drifted like pollen dust and covered my childhood coated the surface of the lake, settled among the crevasses of the fire pit and buried deep into the particles of my still damp towel unsure of how to care what day or time it is or whether my clothes are on right side out only the certainty that I will jump in the water and dry under the sun a gazillion times before the day's end deep green dew covered grass, sweet light green stems, the seeds and bruises of all the backyard fruit bruises on me too and splinters bee stings cuts and slippery band-aids that don't stand a chance against today's adventures when any and everything we wonder about is on our block walking running skipping distance in dirt and sap soaked flip flops til we abandon shoes altogether (unable to keep up with us) we go onward barefoot and raw like writing this all flowing into each other because it's the only honest way to do it

If you love me
find a way to let me know
but should you find that you can't,  
Please find it in yourself to let me go

the law of conservation of energy states that energy is neither created nor destroyed
it cycles
like hurting
sometimes you get hit
sometimes you get hurt
and other times you're the one doing the hurting
and for as much as it hurts when you're on the receiving end
I'm starting to be convinced that when you're doing the hurting it's twice as bad
because you wish you didn't have to and you wish things were different
all I have to offer anyone else that comes my way is the same pain I got from him so long ago
I wish had something else to give
but I guess that's the way of pain, of hurt, of heartbreak-there's this finite amount out there amongst us and we gotta cycle through it-giving and receiving until hopefully you can escape it, find love, and be good to each other

I'll love you because you taught me how to run
You used to run by my side
But now I run from you, with half the strength, twice the speed
I don't know if I was always broken and it just surfaced
or if I was, in fact, whole before you
I'd love to blame everything on you but something runs deep inside me that didn't want to trust even before  you
granted, you confirmed my fears
I wonder if you still think about me and if you do I wonder why you don't reach out.  I wonder if it's hard anymore
It's already been so long and we're both only getting older
And while time can be healing, I think for us, it's sealing the grave that was our relationship
I wonder what happens to the love we had
I wonder if you still ever worry about me
I wonder if you care
Because I still miss you and I'll never let you know
I miss summer baseball games, playing short stop, you yelling from the sidelines
I miss road tripping back with you and talking about nothing
I miss how smart you made me feel
but mostly I miss how proud I made you
They don't warn you how when someone believes in you, encourages you, enables you, loves you
That they can take it all away when they leave
I don't know how or when or what I did to let you down
to make you let me go
I know I started running from you long before you let go
But I ran because I never expected you to quit
I never expected you to stop running after me