I know a girl who tries to read people the way she reads books.
But people aren't two dimensional, and they can't be pressed into
page after page of dialogue and action. Black and white stand as a
testimony to truth, but reality comes in a variety of shades and
when her blood comes out red and sings a tune sweeter than any book
or bible written by man, she is left somewhere between fiction and non-fiction.
The badlands of indecision, where her beliefs search for a home built on rock
instead on the sand.

My creative writing teacher from last semester just emailed me.

I am the 2013 recipient of the James Haba Award for Excellence in Poetry.
And 6 of my poems are going to be published in the Mid Rivers Review!

I am so excited!! Thank you all so much for your support and your constructive criticism.

The light fell through the window shades,
one sliver right between those amber eyes,
and it struck me how little I know of you.

How little I know of anyone.

Every day it feels like there is a new way to hide
from the world.  What are we all so scared of?
Intimate touches are minimized by the fear of
being left alone, and with no one taking leaps of faith
we've ended up with our feet weighted to the ground.
Cemented by our inability to push past indecision,
solidified by our lack of communication.

Your eyes may be bottomless, but that shouldn't
stop me from diving in. If I should drown in your
subconscious, I would revel in my lungs collapsing.

Mint green nails, trailing across your faded black tattoos.

The ability of bandanas to cover up out grown roots that I'm
too broke to touch up.

Long showers when no one is home to yell at me for wasting water.

The way your lips feel against mine, so safe and familiar,
and how your mouth tastes like a bad habit.

The white of battle scars against my summer tan.

You came to me tonight with questions of loyalty
in your eyes, but all you found was my breathless
and naked body on the soft carpet of my bedroom.
My vanity mirror was cracked in all the places
you had called me beautiful, and you saw my lipstick
drawings of skeleton girls scattered across my bed.
Curse words clogged up your throat. Your teeth chattered
out a Morse Code version of " how could you?",
and when your hands stopped punching the walls,
all ****** and broken, you used them to crack open my rib cage.
Searching, I think, for some swallowed suicide note.

You knew the only thing I could stand to eat,
were the words I wish I'd never spoken.

If I could, I'd buy us enough acid to last everyday
for the rest of our natural born lives. Just hoping
that the trip would take us back to the night when
you painted rainbows on the insides of my eyelids.

If it was possible, I'd brand your fear of needles
onto the surface of all my organs.  So that I would
always remember the time you let me see the
scared sick little boy still hiding inside your skin.
So that maybe, he could hide inside my skin too.

If magic were real, I'd use a spell to make a
quilt with our story on it, the way it should have
ended. And every time I felt alone, every time
the panic threatened to close my throat, I would
pull the quilt over my head, and be able to live
in what could have been.

If I could,  I would crawl inside one of the
pink and yellow capsules the doctors gave you
and after you swallowed me down I would
climb up through your blood vessels to the brain.
Stopping only to see the heart I love so dearly.
I would build bridges over your broken synaptic cleft
and bribe your brain chemicals to walk the
straight and narrow. I'd tell them how their careless
vagrancy has left your eyes empty and your aura dark.