What is the crisis
a quarter of the way
through life?

Existentially existing in the moment,
I'm constantly inside of myself
while also out.
Conundrum of being up while
I'm also down,
freedom within a blockade.
Oxymoronic hodgepodge of
tantalizing confusion,
tastes sweet on my brain
and thoughts ponder bitter on
my tongue.

Half and whole,
part and full,
questions answered with questions,
seeing things through in simultaneous
interrogatories.
Top here, bottom there,
rights are right,
and lefts aren't wrong.
Phone, texts and emails,
vibrating inside my skull
as I laugh and I cry,
as I seek to find.

Orange to yellow to green to brown,
seasons coming and going
inside my soul,
and I constantly blossom
and refreeze.
Everywhere feels like nowhere,
nowhere my somewhere as
I await a somewhere that's
everywhere.

Losing myself as I find it too,
letting some parts sail away
at sea,
and too there comes new
horizons,
as I surf, skating on the
foam, on the water's edges.
Wading into one crisis,
I'm swallowed by a
wave,
until I burst through the sea and the
salt;

and then the next wave
comes...
for life, it seems,
is salty and sweet,
one tide coming in to sweep itself away
in place of another.

The rain exploded from the sky,
water soaking the trees,
reds, oranges, and yellows
bleeding from beneath the leaves,
branches bending and swaying,
puppet-like under the great strength
of the storm.

I sat in silence for half an hour,
maybe longer,
mesmerized by the catastrophic dance,
the matinée performance unfolding outside
my living room window.
A brutal ballet,
trunks of trees moving ever so slightly
as the wind did its best to
pirouette and sweep the landscape
up in its rhythmic mastery.
Claps of thunder, whistle of wind,
a chorus climbing to its crescendo,
as I remained planted to my seat
when, at last, the raindrop feet
dulled to a stop,
only an occasional pitter patter
as the dancers made
their way off stage.

And into the wee hours of the
morning,
struggling to slip into slumber
before the onset of dawn,
I wonder if you meant it
when you said you still
think of me
all the time.
Are you thinking of me now?
Is your body frozen,
back flat against your mattress,
eyes glued to the ceiling;
are you laying motionless
with a brain wide awake?
Oh, how I imagine
our bodies trapped in parallel framing,
equally restless with
parallel thoughts
interwoven in the space between us.

I was panting
as my feet continuously
pounded against
the asphalt,
the steepness of the hills
sending shockwaves through
my calves.

The crisp air and dusk lighting
enveloped me,
the steady beats from my headphones
isolated me.

I moved 'round the multitude
of pedestrians
with relative ease,
feeling as if they were all
paying me as little mind
as I them.

My sweatshirt shielded me from
the cooling temperature
and simultaneously trapped
beads of sweat to my forearms,
the rest dripping steadily down
my shoulder blades,
off my forehead, my breathing
evening as I hit my rhythm.

The lights from the honking cars
and various restaurants and bars
illuminated my pathway-for-one
as I snaked my way north.

My mouth dried out as
my body had near hit its limit,
as I am not exactly in marathon shape
(to put it nicely).

Yet still I pushed,
a mind-over-matter-moment
as I tried to decide on a
definitive destination.

I wasn't sure whether
I was running from something
or toward something;
all I knew was that my blood
was pumping,
my mouth was inhaling fresh air
into my lungs,
my skin was sweating and shivering
as it kissed the wind;
all I knew was that I was
running,
all I knew was that I was
alive.

As my
heart pounded against
my ribcage,
the start and the finish line
suddenly mattered so much less
than the seemingly endless
stretch of sidewalk
underneath
my
feet.

I knew that I was running;
I knew that I was alive;
and that was all I needed
to know.

Miles
on
miles
separate
me            from       you,
and yet
you remain with me.
I hear your laugh
and feel your skin.
I ache for your mind,
for the way you
unravel me.
I burn with hatred
I cannot find for you.
I shake off love
I cannot dispel for you.
I left,
and you managed to
follow me,
leaving me wondering
if I'll ever be without you,
if there's some way to flush you,
rid your toxicity from my system.

I have been infected
with your infectious soul,
and distance isn't the cure
I thought it would be.
And now,
years later,
it is much too late to
vaccinate.

If only I had known.

Sitting
very much alone
on a makeshift bench
out of an old log,
my coffee balanced in
a knot in the wood I've
made into a cup holder,
my feet planted into the
soggy leaf-covered dirt.
I gaze outward onto
the wooden bridge
that aids the passerbyers
of persons and canines to
overstep the pebble-laden
creek.
The air is brisk,
the sun sneaking only
occasional glances at my
solitude
behind a screen of
scattered trees,
tall and thin,
buried in leaves slowly
transitioning from green to
yellow.
I ponder on how
brave everyone has
said I am,
that they could never do
what I'm doing,
like I'm some sort
of war hero.
I laugh slightly to myself,
for, I wonder, how much
moxy does it really take
to sit on an
abandoned stump in the
woods, fighting off
tears of loneliness and
anxiety?
Aren't those who are
brave not so
chock full of doubt,
not clinging to a pen
and a notebook in
hopes of dispelling
waves of woes?
The wind blows by me
once more as if to
reassure me that
my newfound spot of
singularity is exactly
where I am supposed to
be, so I go back to
watching the passerbyers, or,
momentarily,
the lack thereof,
sipping my coffee
and soaking in my new
surroundings.

We have the kinda love
where I can only love you from afar,
feel you in the lyrics of songs that
I fight the urge to send your way,
see you in the stanzas of poems
I desire to imitate.
I am forced to love you like the
vegetation loves the sun;
distant but omnipresent,
refusing to forget you even in
the depths of winter.

When the poetry flows through you,
it waits for no perfect moment,
there is no convenience mustered
to await your finding
paper and a pen.

When the words come,
you just know,
you feel the syllables rising from
the tips of your toes,
exploding out of your fingers,
propelling you into an
unsuspected state of
delirium as your mouth
silently forms the shapes
you spit onto your notebook,
brave hands twisting and
turning purple letters
round themselves,
brain melting and oozing
out into similes and metaphors,
pictures popping from
stories told and
secrets disclosed until
in one final swoop
the moment passes,
your work is done and
the pride and fear and
vulnerability and anxiety
you just birthed
stares back at you,
its ambiguous smirk
leaving you breathless.

And two days later,
the taste and smell of your skin;
senses still aroused.

The breath in my chest
Scraped against my esophagus
As the preacher read his
Introductory scripture and a
Mourning loved one doubled over
In grief and despair as she
Struggled to bid adieu;

The hairs on the back of my neck
Stood horizontally and
Perpendicular to my concrete floor
As I heard the sweetest soul I know
Choke on her sobs on the
Other end of the receiver,
As she struggled to understand
The onset of pain and finality
She was forced to swallow;

My stomach hollowed and
Acidic anger bubbled and carved out my insides
When I read my best friend's texts,
A series of words
That seemed too cruel to be true,
A riffraff of  interrogatories and
Unsettled punctuation,
Summarizing the momentary suspension
Of her resiliency
As she processed the
Breaking of her heart;

And now I lay motionless
On my mattress,
Hot tears masquerading behind my
Tightened eyelids as I writhe in
Empathy,
Alone in my incapability
To end the pains and the woes of
Those around me,
As my body thus must then grieve
For me.

Oh, how there is never enough
time for a person to
be alone.

Life's greatest treasure
is loneliness;
finding peace in the silence,
sanctity in the solitude.

I'm on a strict diet of
red wine and smoke
as I train for a marathon
of loneliness, self-discovery, and
moving on.

Letting you go was crushing,
and I still fight the
urge at least once a day
to unblock your number
just so I can say hello.

Nearly everything takes me back to you,
whether it's a sunset I know you'd cherish
or a poem I know you'd
want to analyze with me.
You live in the tree's green leaves
and in the smiles of strangers.
I feel you next to me as I
toss and turn in my bed,
and I smell you in the candles
that are supposed to soothe me.

It seems cruel that you can't be around,
and my heart often
threatens my head for *******
a good thing up.
But the good I had with you
was bad for me,
and I know I need to let myself
be broken so that I can
one day be full again.

I'm on a strict diet of
red wine and smoke
as I replace the love I have for you
with love I'm finding of and
for myself.

Tap tap tap*
goes her hand as she
rattles her box of cigs,
packing 'em in before
she hungrily rips off the
cellophane.
Her eyes lustfully stare
at the untouched pack
as she contemplates how it will
taste to put one in her mouth.
Although the Surgeon General
has adequately warned her otherwise,
she slides her fingers around
her chosen poison,
eagerly putting it to her lips.
The lighter clicks, and flames
quickly lap up the tobacco and its
chemical casing.
She inhales, and the raggedy breath
reverberates in her chest,
a sick pleasentness seeping into her veins.
Nothing has ever
felt better, as blood rushes
to her head and her muscles relax.
She lights up one after another
until the pack is gone,
and the cycle begins again;
an inner debate where her head
tells her to leave the addiction behind,
but her heart and body, starting to feel
lonely and withdrawn, insist on another
pack to dull the creeping emptiness.
So back to the corner store she goes,
as he waits behind the counter,
ready to give her another taste of feigned and
unhealthy comfort,
for it's better than being alone,
sober,
and without him.

Saturday night sets in
as a $1 Roy Hamilton's Greatest Hits record
emits soft vocals and
mellow horns
from my speakers.
The intermittent
crackling and popping
scratches against my insides
as I strain to think of
anything and everything
but you.
The warm melodies are reminiscent
of the warm summer nights when
we first began to share time
and hidden parts of ourselves,
drifting into a rhythm that
swung me one-two-three,
waltzing into a haze of unexpected
love.
Little did I know the romantic waltz
would drastically switch tempo,
up and pounding,
beating behind my eyes and against my skull
as I heard the sounds of you
scurrying toward the
nearest exit, tangoing away from me,
and snatching my heart along
with you.
And in came the sound of blues,
slow, sultry, and so full of a longing
for he who lead me
in a dance I had thought
would never end.

Like the white of lightening,
Pulsating its veins against the
Angry purple sky;
Like the wild claps of thunder,
Beating tirelessly against
Windows and doors;
Like the furious scattering of rain,
Throwing punches at the
Asphalt of the streets and sidewalks;
Like a violent summer storm,
You rip my insides apart with
The force of your winds and
****** me up in your
Unpleasant storminess,
And I hate you as much as
The sun hates the rain clouds
Stealing away its glow
While madly loving you as
The flowers love the rain storms
For calming to a drizzle,
Leaving their floral thirsts quenched.

Yet,
I remain dry,
Thirsty,
Desperate for more rain
That never seems to come
In the desert where you left me
Alone.
Or rather,
Where I lead myself
To escape your monsoon.

Shall I ever have a bad day
I remind myself of the way
the green of the trees compliments
the violet of the nighttime southern summer sky;

Shall I ever feel lesser
I remind myself of the way
my mother appears
as her eyes well with tears
of pride and joy;

Shall I ever experience a sense of emptiness
I remind myself of the sound
of my dad's laugh,
of the way my brother always gets
my references;

Shall I ever have a moment of doubt
I remind myself of the reverberations
that hollow your insides
when the guy you like kisses you for
the first time;

Shall I ever forget my purpose
I remind myself of the way it felt
when I saw my nanny's husband on my
graduation day;

Shall I ever doubt the future
I remind myself of
the way I moved on from
my deepest love;

Shall I ever feel weak
I remind myself of
my first days in D.C. as I
stumbled aimlessly through streets
with which I was unfamiliar;

Shall I ever be devoured by ambiguity
I remind myself of
the peace I have felt as I
watch the steady ripples of
the Ohio;

Shall I ever get lost
I remind myself of the
paths I have forged,
of the arms that
extend open;
I may seek resurrection mother nature
offers me
in the sand
I have felt in my toes,
of the grass that has tickled
my back,
of the sunsets that have moved
my soul,
in the water bodies that have sung
me to sleep;
I may be reborn in
the rifts of my
favorite songs,
in the quotes of
my favorite movies,
in the words of
timeless poems;
in the love the world extends
I shall never go without
comfort,
inspiration,
rejuvenation;
I shall never truly become lost
for the world always
finds me.

We met in the summertime,
which I recall because the AC in his apartment
was mediocre at best,
and fans were splayed throughout the
white-walled space as we attempted to
keep cool.

His roommate introduced me,
as he sat with no shirt on,
perched on a wooden chair,
staring intently at a deck of cards.

I think the first thing I noticed was the dazzle of
his smile,
but I can't pretend my eyes didn't veer
to the perfect V that was on display
just above his basketball shorts.

His skin glowed a perfect shade of honey and
cinnamon
in the dim lighting
that emitted from the sole lamp in the corner
of the living room.

I became submerged in a blur of
card games and laughter
and an eerily similar taste in music,
so much so that I forgot it was not he
who I had come to see.

We said goodbye after what
felt like just moments after
we had said hello,
for even though months
had passed,
we had both always done
our best not to
share too much.

Although I have gone to great lengths
mastering how to be aloof,
in that moment I
regretted so much my inability
to emote.

"You make it seem so easy,"
he breathed,
his face welling with discontent,
and I kissed him on the cheek
as I whispered,
"I'm good at making things
look easy."

He had the sweetest demeanor,
and my body trembled
in the gentle strength and
aggressive tenderness with which
he kissed me,
a passionate, bittersweet
exchange, as we became aware
that it might be for the
last time.

I've become so good at
being alone that I had not
even pondered how I might
actually miss him
once he was gone.

I think my lack of visible reaction
hurt him, but I
couldn't bring myself to be
vulnerable, to let down
my guard and tell him
that knowing we were
parting ways made my
insides ache in the most
unexpected and terrifying way.

Maybe we weren't ever
meant to be anything;
that was my thought from
the jump.
But when he looked me in my eyes,
his heart was so pure,
and I yearned to touch
my soul to his.
I settled for combing my nails
through his curly hair
and murmuring sage words,
masking the things I refused
to feel.

He sent me on my way with
his favorite record, and I said
the most unscripted thing I ever had
to him,
that I'd always think of him
when it crackled and popped.

The kindness of what he extended to me,
the vulnerability I saw in his
beautiful, youthful eyes,
the way he softened his tough exterior,
it ate at me the whole drive home
as I cursed myself for being
so cold
and wishing I could kiss him
one last time.

I still haven't been able to
shed a tear, my heart too
frozen to thaw,
but as the Ray Charles
erupts from my speakers,
I stick to my word;
I think of him,
and I ponder on the possibilities
should we cross paths again.

Should that moment never come,
I can still find him
in the words of my poems
and hear him in the
rifts of his record, so I guess, for me,
it wasn't really
"goodbye."

My raybans still covered
my swollen  eyes as I stepped
inside the Rite Aid,
in my pathetic attempt to
hide from the neighborhood how much
I had been crying.
Tears of anger and
some of despair and
others of sheer exhaustion
had coated my cheeks
and worn the edges of my eyelids
raw and reddened my
corneas.
I had stumbled out of my apartment
in an effort to rid my body of
feelings, assuming the brisk spring breeze
could somehow sweep up everything
I felt and whisk it away as
quick as it had come.
I squeaked past a couple
******* clad women with
sunken eyes that bore holes
into the glass of the cooler
as they stared longingly at the
rather large variety of
malt liquors, the selection of soft drinks
lesser than the collection of
40s I passed on my way to the
back of the store.
I distracted myself imagining
the taste of the various soda pops,
a wild cherry Pepsi dissolving into my
daydream tongue right before it
turned to Big Red Cream Soda.
Diet Sunkist in hand,
I stared at the ingredients on the orange soda bottle and reread the same words
over and over as he interjected himself again and again.
I made my way to the counter,
feeling ever grateful for my sunglasses
as more tears welled,
and I cleared my throat before mumbling a way-too-weak-for-an-outgoing-girl hello.
Before I knew it my distraction faded
from view, and I turned left down Oak
as his face peeked out in my
rear view mirror in the majesty of
the sunset.
I shook off a feeling of admiration and
reminded myself that even after all this time
he still manages to disappoint me as
he always has.
I murmured something about how,
"He ain't ****" like I'm some bad
***** that doesn't give a **** about a dude.
But then I remembered how deeply I had loved
a man who never loved me back and
never failed to prove it.
My stomach began to drop,
leaving me feeling as empty as the
messages he had sent me in his pathetic
attempts to convince me of ******* masked as
the rhetoric he knew I wanted to hear,
just enough to keep me around for his
(admittedly) selfish reasons.
I loved him and hated him all at once
as I realized 4 months ago when
I told myself (and him) that I was moving on,
it was only my head that had,
my heart still staggering, like a
drunk stumbling off a belly full
of cheap whiskey,
And as I later drowned my sorrows in
TV dramas and artificial sweeteners,
I vowed to get that last piece back and really let go...
I'll start tomorrow
when I sober up.

Months have gone by and still
you echo in my black hole,
your lips still brushing mine
in the wind that caresses my face,
your voice whispering through
the riffs and chords of songs,
your body visible in the contours of trees,
your face in the curves of the clouds,
and looking up desperately at
the night sky,
I envision you glancing at the same stars,
your soul having been imprinted permanently
on the Earth's ceiling,
so even when I close my eyes
you linger in the corners of my mind,
a universe of
constellations and planets,
galactic clusters of
immortal memories and undying
desires.
Months have gone by as I
continue to orbit around
the memory of you,
tilting onto your axis,
spinning round and round as
I try desperately to get back
to you, but you're
galaxies away.

It was a Sunday afternoon when I
went for an impromptu drive,
keeping my foot on the gas and snaking
among the one-ways and the
downtown traffic as I
made my way to the river.
I put the heat on
ever so slightly just so
I'd be warm enough to roll
the windows down and feel that
fresh spring air on my face.
I wore my retro hat backwards,
and my Raybans covered my eyes,
my cool demeanor and slouchy posture
in sync with the steady rhythm of the
90s hip hop booming through my
speakers.
I watched the sun as it made love to
the river's chop, and
I snuck a glance at the stolen kisses
the green grass shared with the
tall trees on the shoreline.
Beautiful yellow and purple buds
splattered the bushes like
Impressionism,
thick dabs of color that all blended
into a beautifully disorganized
vision of the season of
rebirth.
I sprouted wings and flew outside
my body as I inhaled
pollens and flower nectar,
as my skin reddened under the
bright sunlight,
my self got lost in the time and space
continuum that swallowed me
like ground swallowed up the last
traces of snow, replacing my ground
with the warmth and
rebirth that spring always brings
after a long winter.

I held the last piece of
Dark chocolate in my hand,
Preparing myself mentally for my
Last chance at delectable,
And as I popped the
Morsel in my mouth,
Its melty coating dissolving into
My tongue,
I heard the bag crinkle,
And I looked down to find
A sugar-coated surprise,
One bite remaining when I
Had thought that that hope had
Melted away,
And boy did it taste
Sweet.

I love the feeling
when a song
comes on
and suddenly
you find yourself
lost deep in a
memory you
forgot to
actively remember
until now.

The soundtrack to
the summer of '09
when I would
drive 6 hours with the
windows down,
the wind and
the bass from the speakers
in my Honda Civic
creating harmony
in G major,
the hot
sun beating against my
sweat-speckled skin.

And a couple notes
strung along my
eardrum as I
reappear in tears after
you told me you'd
leave me if I
refused to give you what
you wanted,
a melody mixed with
my pathetic, incurable
obsession with pleasing you
and some serious self-loathing.

And then I hear a tune
that sounds reminiscent
of the soft ripple from the
waves the river made
as I smoked a J and
wrote about my days
away from home,
desperately seeking to figure
out who I really am
when I'm completely alone.

Songs that remind me
of sunsets and
old jokes and
the sand between my toes;
rhythms of
bare feet pittering and splashing
in sprinkler water on squishy,
damp grass,
of  French phrases and crunchy baguettes
that I chewed on
in Dijon,
of day parties with plastic
cups and ping pong *****
where we used college courses
and boy drama and
undefeated seasons as
reasons to binge on
cheap ***** and beer.

I hear a bridge,
and I cross the river
where I tread water
for 4 years as I waited
for you to meet me
halfway,
and I drowned
in your lies and mind control.

Chorus of Christmas mornings
with homemade cookies,
joyful jamboree
of after-school
dance sessions in my parents' kitchen,
prom night poses
and people we still
laugh at.

First kisses reverberating
in headphones
and mouths belting
names of forgotten friends.

The soundtrack to my life,
a collection of good time
genres and painful
classics,
number one hits and
one hit wonders I
cherish equally,
my taste as vast as
the memories
contained in the
music.

White.
Female.
Middle Class.
Heterosexual.
Agnostic.
Libertarian.

Yeah.
That's me.
That's that first layer,
thin as the paper you could
read it on.
Just a
Jane Doe,
a nameless, faceless
demographic.

But peeling back the layers,
ripping through page on page of a complicated novel,
digging
down
into
a
bottomless
hole
to
China,
unravelling
­the intricate
web of
stereotypestruthsliesassumptionsprejudice
and
there you will find
me,
a colorless genderless asexual
spirit whose frame
is crafted and molded
not with how the world
chooses to see me and
who "they" deem me to be;

no.

A guy that didn't know me well
once told me that I
spoke more urban than he
expected,
and I couldn't help but wonder why
someone from an urban area
couldn't speak like they were
from a city,
like somehow what he saw in my
whitefemaleheterosexualmiddleclassagnosticlibertarian
prolog­ue forbade me
from speaking in colloquials and
abbreviations.
Oh, I apologize,
I laughed later to my friend,
law students are supposed to speak
with an ostentatious vocabulary and
an heir of
(superfluous) arrogance.

I am rarely a prototype
of what it means to be
White,
of what it means to be
female;
middle-class* or not,
my parents insisted at age 8
that I begin to understand
the value of a dollar;
my sexuality indicates little
about my level of attraction
to the world around me;
agnostic is really just a term
I put because I'm still trying to
figure out whether I really
believe everything I was forced to
learn at Catholic school;
and isn't Libertarian just a fancy
word for I don't want to
choose liberal or conservative?

It's insulting to
ingest how much is
insinuated about
my depth in
the shallowest of pools.
My cheeks burn hot
with frustration as I
try to balance on a beam
cracking underneath the weight of
a world that is constantly begging me
to go back in the neatly
wrapped package from which
the world would prefer I
came.

I'm not someone
you can put in a *******
box and
label;
you can't contain my
shine behind
blackout blinds;
I will burst out of your bubble
and break your glass ceilings;
I will scream at the top of
my lungs in a soundproof room
until you HEAR me.

I'm not meant to be judged
by my cover,
and neither are you.

We are meant to be read.

I used to always
threaten to leave
just to see if he would
chase after me.

He did and he did until
he was done and
we were done and
no one has
chased after me
since.

Taste of freshly picked
honeysuckle melting on my tongue,
diving head first into the
smells and sounds of spring,
croaking of insects as they
happily hum on blossomed branches,
I bite into ripe fruits and
frolick under a sun who fights
slumber till late,
my arms tickling against the fresh
green grass as I lay
in the park with my notebook,
dogs barking cheerily as they
run in the open space,
dusting me with pollen and
peacefulness,
the earth
soaking in a warmth about which
I've been dreaming for
months.

Loving you was the emergence of spring,
and thus without you I remain
frozen in a winter that
seems it will never thaw.

Sometimes I fear
I have become too good at
being alone.

I basque in the hours
spent locked by my
lonesome in the confines
of my apartment,
surrounded by nothing but
brick and cement and the sounds
of the television or my iPod speaker.
Tranquility seeping in through my
isolation,
I yearn for the moments I am
privileged to spend without
the duty to perpetuate conversations
or offer advice to someone I consider
merely an acquaintance.

Sometimes I worry I am
too comfortable with solitude.

I get a thrill off of
being needed without needing,
being sought out without seeking.
I let others let me in
without having to give a shred of
myself in return,
for people love to go on
about themselves
without inquiring about
the person to whom they
narrate their autobiographies.

Sometimes I am scared of
the ease with which I can
let someone go.

So often have people come and gone
that now I comprehend, perhaps
too deeply,
that nothing in life is guaranteed
and most people are meant to be
lessons rather than
permanent.
There was a time where I wept
with sordid frequency for the people
I was forced relinquish,
clinging tightly to the empty void,
wallowing in a glass half full of
skewed memories.

Sometimes I am terrified that
I only really know how to
be alone.

It is almost impossible for me
to recall a love not
unrequited.
I stare up at screens and strangers
all screaming that love exists,
and there I am fighting
insane laughter because I just
can't see it,
as if my eyes have become colorblind,
for it is black and white that
all I've ever had is
gray.

Sometimes
I am afraid
that this is
Always
how it will be.

You know that feeling
you get when
you drive at night, and you
just want to feel the car fly, so you
push your foot as far as
it'll go down on the gas,
down to the baseboard,
your engine howling like a wolf in the
moonlight,
yet somehow it doesn't feel
fast enough?

That's what it feels like
getting over
you.

Getting over you is like
sneaking home, trying not to awaken
the parents that you
left dozing,
but every
single
solitary
stair
creaks underneath your weight.

It is the
new routine with the
broken ankle;
the unanswered
correspondance;
the sailing ship on
the windless ocean;
getting over you is the
road taken and laden with potholes;
the refusal of the snow
to melt,
my feet slipping out from underneath me
on the remaining ice.

Getting over you is the
flameless fire,
the un-Happy New Year,
the series of unhappy poems.

Getting over you
is the bottle of champagne I drank
to quench my thirst for you,
the texts I sent you and didn't remember,
the tears I shed as I begged the
universe (and anyone else in ear shot)
to explain why it had to
turn out this way.

You know that feeling where
up is down,
left is right,
inside is flipped outside?

You're gone.

Every so often he
swings through town and makes
his way into my bed,
broad trunk filling the void this empty mattress
reaffirms on the nights I sleep alone,
which is most.

I appreciate the infrequency with which
he comes to visit,
my door kept ajar,
my heart kept  comfortably closed,
as he strolls in in his designer
sneakers or boots,
the noncommittal conversation flowing freely
between us.

Once I recall he rolled over,
his hand sliding up my forearm,
wrapping himself around my
frame as I pulled out my phone
to show him a photo,
and he noticed his number wasn't saved,
guffawing at my nonexistent concern for his
permanence,
or lack thereof.

I like the way he laughs
and the rare moments when we exchange
something deeply
personal about ourselves,
complicated words and phrases transplanting
simplistic nonverbal communication.

He is handsome
without being too ****;
he is smart
without being argumentative;
he is wealthy
without being ostentatious;
he is shy
without being withdrawn;
he is a lot of things,
my finely filed fingernails not even
beginning to scratch the
surface of his otherwise
intriguing layers,
having tied my own
hands
behind my back.

I need the way he doesn't
need me,
and him I.
Sometimes I need his body heat,
the gentle weight of a
man's arm hanging on
my curvy hip.
There are moments when I need
one of our witty but empty
texting conversations,
simple enough to read after
too much Bordeaux.

I need the something that
exists in the nothing
that he brings
me.

There is a fork in the road
where I veered left to merge onto
I-65,
and I spotted the same
bilboard I look up at
every day on my commute to work,
but now it was at eye level,
and I thought to myself,
*well, I guess that's what we call
perspective.

I remember the exact way
his hands looked as
they covered up my attempts
at sparking a flame,
blocking the fan's
breeze.
They were cupped softly around
the faint streaks of
orange yellow and red,
and his honeyed skin glowed
so deliciously against the
flickering light as it enveloped the
cigar.
I felt his fingers brush mine,
and I choked on my own breath as
the charge washed over
me.
The flame was fully lit,
and his brown eyes reflected with
fire,
burning through me, igniting
me from the inside
out.
The warmth of his laugh
scorching my eardrums,
I listened to his
stories and ideas as
my body began boiling in
his rhetoric.
His presence struck me like
a match,
his aura drew me in like
a moth to a flame,
and when he helped me light
that cigar,
I think he set me on fire,
too.

I was in a
dreamy state
as we drove through the
mountains,
the bright
Colorado sun reflecting
almost too bright
off of the frozen creek.

The ridges of the
giant turf were
a little too brown for what
I had expected this time
of year,
but the snow had not been
as bountiful as
winters past.

My cell phone lost
service as we glided
along a windy
highway,
so I was left to nothing but
my earbuds and
the thoughts I had avoided.

I felt a strange sensation
of relief as
I realized I didn't have to
speak to anyone,
how I could be left alone
in the midst of a wide expanse of nature,
perhaps the humble surroundings
I needed to
recollect myself.

In the company of
my loving family and
in the presence of
my grandfather's wisdom,
I was bound to find some
sort of peace,
gain some sort of clarity,
for if you couldn't find
serenity in the
Rocky Mountains,
surely something was wrong with you.

I spotted elk in the far
distance beyond the car windows,
and, despite the frigid
single-degree-weather that enveloped them,
I was weirdly envious of
their tranquil presence in the snow,
their freedom to be lost in the wilderness,
their security in the pack that accompanied them.
In that moment,
I wanted to be one of the elk,
running free
into a realm of wild openness,
running free
in the mountains and valleys.
In that moment,
I wanted to be
free.

Sometimes it's okay
to swallow, choke on the numb;
another drink, please.

Sometimes I worry
that I will always be
alone.

Oh, hey,
aren't I
cliche?
24-years-young
and talking
like an old maid.

But you know what,
**** whoever
decided that just
because you're young,
loneliness isn't a concern,
and just because you
have time ahead of you
doesn't mean
living without love isn't
painful.

Every man,
if you can even call them that,
that peaks my interest
finds a reason to say,
it's not you, it's me,
but at this point,
as I watch everyone around me
settle down and
find someone,
I can't help but wonder if
it's not them, it's me.

I try to think about
what I look like on paper.
I am the first to
admit my flaws.
I'm not the skinniest,
I'm not the funniest,
I'm not the coolest,
I talk too much,
I involve myself too often
and too deeply
in others,
I am overly sensitive,
I have never been popular,
and I'm sure
I could name at least
50 other things someone would
find less-than-favorable.
But then I try to remember that
I am ambitious,
I am bright,
I am kind,
I am empathetic,
I am family-oriented;
I have a lot of hobbies,
I can always hold a conversation,
and I've been told
I'm pretty
at least on an
occasion or two.

I'm not all good,
but I'm not all bad.
And I think, as
cheesy as it sounds,
that everyone is entitled to
love.
So I can't help but wonder
what I'm putting into the
universe,
what I'm lacking,
what more I need to do
before someone can love me;
****, even just staying
interested for more than
a couple weeks,
even that would suffice.

This isn't some self-deprecating,
some depressing
ode of a sad single girl.
It's just a series of words
to question
why
and where
and how
and when
I will find love,
why I'm
still lacking,
who I'm waiting for.

What
explanation
is there for
this loneliness,
for these years I've spent
love-less,
for even the years prior
where the "love" I felt
was so wrong
and destructive?

Is it me?

Or

*Is it them?

I just wish I could get my
head and my heart
to play on the same team,
but they are constantly
at
odds.

My heart still yearns for
a man that
never loved me to begin with,
convinces me that
it's worth responding when
he texts me some
empty ******* that
momentarily assuages his guilt
for his selfishness.
On a Saturday night when
all my friends are off with
someone who loves them,
my heart pumps heavy
against my hollowed chest,
trying to manipulate my
fingers like weak little
puppets,
persuading them to send a text
I will regret in the morning.
My heart replays the words he spoke,
the times he made me feel like I mattered,
the way our bodies made art,
how he understood me like
no one else ever has.
What if I made a mistake,
my heart demands of me,
a mistake in cutting him out,
in choosing to ignore his texts,
in attempting to move forward?
What if no one else will
ever open
their ears to all of my secrets,
their eyes to all of my skeletons,
their hearts to all of my mistakes?
What if I missed my
chance for love?
Remember, my heart whispers,
how he stayed up all night
unfolding himself
and
how you shared your poetry
and
how he sent you a text a day with
a new matter to ponder
and
how he knew what you thought
before you said a word
and
how he understood every
face you made and what it meant
and
how the lyrics you heard
always mattered to him
and
how he cared about what you were learning
and
how the minuscule moments
of your life meant the world to him...
or so he claimed.

And then my brain swoops in
to remind me how
he was all words, no action.
Days and weeks went by
without a peep
even though the week before
he had insisted on showing up at your
apartment five days in a row.
All he cared to do with you,
my brain recalls,
is share a smoke on the roof
and discuss life,
but never did he once care to
share in the outside world
with someone who he so claimed to love.
My brain reminds me of
the secrets he kept,
of the woman he lived with
behind my back,
of the gross refusal to make a commitment
even when he claimed
he would think of me in his last moments
and that he had never
felt for another like he did for me.
My brain knows of his emptiness,
of his excuse-making,
of how he blamed everything on his
pathetic circumstances
when he really was just a
selfish ******* who deserves
not a moment more of my time,
ever.
When I get those texts
that claim he's thinking of me
after church or
send me song lyrics in some
pathetic attempt to reawaken our
"connection,"
my brain reminds me to
ignore,
to remember that words are empty,
to wait until he becomes man enough
to give me what I deserve.

My heart makes me weak.
My brain keeps me strong.
My heart wants you.
My brain doesn't need you.
And even though I want
to listen to my heart,
my brain knows better.

I once saw a man sitting at
the bar of one of my favorite dives,
and he looked so handsome in his
profile,
his lips gingerly kissing a bottle
of craft beer,
his suit fitted just right
against his sculpted
frame.

He stared intently through his
trendy glasses
at the glow of his
laptop screen,
and I imagined he was
reading something involving
important business,
or maybe a book about a
new age philosophy as he
pondered the meaning of life.

He seemed so comfortable
and familiar in his
solitude,
like he traveled often and
had grown to love himself
immensely;
he valued his alone
time.

I imagined he went to some
ivy league school,
like Brown or Cornell,
where he studied business and
made his parents proud.
He still likes to learn and finds
the world to be a
blissfully curious place.

I was enthralled with
the picture I had drawn in
my head as I
gazed at his strong jaw
and white smile,
and I couldn't help but whisper
to my friend how
infatuated I was with the
view from
my seat in our wooden booth,
when my friend chuckled
nervously,
his brows downturned as he
erased all I had
drawn and replaced the
picture with
he's homeless.

My life constitutes of
a dichotic shift as I
drift
between
a state of self-assuredness
and self loathing.

When I am assured
I am sure
that my eyes are a
golden brown,
my smile whitened and straightened
with perfectly painted lips.
My eyelashes curl upward
as I give you my most intriguing smirk,
inducing you into giving me
those copies for free
and saying "Ay girl"
as I cross the street.
My jeans hug my hourglass figure
like a girl from a video,
and the compliments find themselves
going my way.
My brain swells with
knowledge and an almost-eery insight
as I predict your admiration
and find myself compensating as to
not appear
ostentatious.
I hold myself with the highest regard and
refuse to let a man
make me feel inferior,
to judge me by my exterior because
I am superior to that
treatment.
My wit is quick and
you can bet I'll put a
Slick Rick in his
place if he is even fit to
keep up with my pace.

But then again
I look at him and see
him frowning at my
symmetrical, but overly round
face,
thinking that there might
be other ladies in this place
with a smaller frame,
with a flat stomach and
a tame sense of style,
not a fedora or Timberland boots or a beanie,
not someone who cackles when
she laughs
and talks even more loudly and
obnoxiously than she chuckles.
I'm not smooth enough to
keep your attention as
my obsession with Harry Potter accidentally
gets disclosed,
as I feel my skin-diseased cheeks
bleeding through their concealer and bronzer mask.
A law school degree sounds boring and
braggy as I grasp
at straws, at my only backup source of comfort,
as I attempt to woo you with my brain because
you clearly aren't into a size ten.
You glance out of the sides
of your eyes as you buy me a drink,
or you tell me you aren't
ready for a relationship
even though we've been
sleeping together for a year;
"it's just not you, it's me"
is what I finagle
as a girl named Hailey
posts a picture of you with
your arm around her size two
waist and top-heavey Double D's.
I let down all of my walls and
you forget my birthday,
and I stay devastated over you long
enough for you to
forget my name.

I'm two-in-one;
I'm confidently lacking in confidence and
disapprovingly disapprove of
anyone's opinion of me
but my
own.

I once heard that there are
two kinds of love.
The first kind is the kind from
the movies,
the songs,
the Shakespearian sonnets,
the red-wine-induced conversations;
it is the
magnanimous
amorous
empowering love
that makes you lose your breath
and stumble across your words
until you fall so hard you
float back to the sky,
so emboldened you could
conquer the world in one fell swoop
and inspire hope in the most
hopeless.
The second kind
is the opposite of
empowering for it is
devouring,
cowering,
manipulative,
cold, and
a road paved with
adoring anguish as you
pour all of your bloated heart into
a desperate wish.

I've become exhausted by
door number two
and sit on the lip of
a hope and a prayer that
door number one opens for me
before I quit the
games(how).

It's the first of the year,
and the only resolution
I can think of
is that I wanna
fall in love.

Not the kind
that's unrequited,
the sort of love that's uninvited.

Not the kind
that hurts
that leaves you
so mangled and broken
you never wanna
love again.

Not the kind
that makes you mean,
the kind without trust
that makes you green
with envy.

Not the kind
that is forbidden,
that you gotta hide.

The kinda love
I wanna find
is the kind
that consumes me,
that fuels me,
that moves me.

The up-all-night
bearing our souls,
the non-stop laughter,
beautiful disaster,
I show you all my flaws,
you love me with no makeup on,
that's our song,
you leave me words on post-its,
we hold hands just because,
and all my poetry is
happy.

In 2015 I wanna
find someone who touches my soul,
who lets me touch his back,
who unfolds into my arms
and lets me share my fears.
I want love
that's real,
that's deep,
that's too good to be true.

In 2015
I wanna fall in love,
I wanna find my
y-o-u.

I remember this one time that
You and I went to the beach and
We fell in love as we
Got up early to watch the sun rise and
Kissed and held hands and cared not
At all
Who was watching.

I had never felt love like that
So thrilling and still
Reciprocal and
Just so head over heels
I couldn't tell where was up and
How it differed from down
As my head twisted around your
Stone cold exterior and
Cracked the surface as I
Crumbled.

There's something I really like
about driving at night.

There is a certain peacefulness
in the sound the tires on my Honda make
as they rub against the highway
at a steady 9 over the limit,
no traffic to hold me back.

I keep my windows partly cracked
even though my heat is on
because it's the only way I can be
warm but not too hot and
cool but not too cold.

I turn my music up as
loud as it can possibly go,
my mind swimming in the
lyrical metaphors
comparing love to water bodies
and getting lost in the waves.

I ripple down the road
as I drive past the river,
the stars twinkling across the
vast expanse of black.

Sometimes I have a destination in mind,
and other times I don't.
Sometimes I drive because I'm sad
and other times because I'm angry,
regardless I am sometimes crying, screaming,
and or heavily breathing.
I am always pondering,
I am always processing,
I am always gaining perspective,
and, by the end,
I am always at peace,
at least until that time I need to
take another twilight drive down by the Ohio.

You were always
an early bird, and I wasn't,
but my favorite thing was
to stumble out of my slumber
and hungrily look at my phone for a text saying
wake up
to which I would hurriedly respond,
though three hours later,
and you knew I would,
so as soon as I did as you predicted
you would command me to
drive the less-than-ten-minutes to your apartment
so you could cook me some
breakfast,
and we could get lost in each other.

You made me eggs and bacon
and always a biscuit with my choice of topping,
and you'd put on whatever CD we
currently found relevant,
that one time I know it was Ne-Yo,
and I chomped on my plate full of yummies
so cheerily
as you made me listen so closely to
lyrics you knew I would
just
get.

10 AM and I was somehow
thrilled to be out of bed,
enjoying the way the sun peeked behind the clouds
and stroked my cheek
as we shared a smoke on your porch.

You were the kinda guy that
made me like mornings,
that made me
feel the weight of the words in songs,
that made me appreciate art
and notice how pink
the sunset was,
that made me want to read the newspaper
so I could pick your brain and
pay attention in class so I could
tell you what I learned,
that made my world brighter
and my burdens lighter.

You were you and
you made me a certain kinda me and
**** do I sometimes still wanna
wake up
and eat some eggs while you
tell me your dreams and
your stereo plays.

I am everything
And I am nothing.
I am big
And I am small.
I am frightened
And I am brave.
I am empty
And I am whole.
I am happy
And I am sad.
I am strong
And I am weak.
I am lonely
And I am fulfilled.
I am optimistic
And I am cynical.
I am hopeless
And I am hopeful.
I am right
And I am wrong.
I am selfless
And I am selfish.
I am lost
And I am found.

I am ironic.
I am not quite psychotic.
I am oxymoronic.

I am me.

Self-inflicted distractions,
ingesting every possible stimulation the
world can afford me,
lost in peopleplacesandthings
abusing myself with every tangible
substance,
redirecting my mind away
from addiction,
but try my damnedest and still
there you are in the lyrics of a new song,
so I start to read and there
you are
in the character in my book,
turning on the TV and there you are
in the storyline,
stumbling into another man's bed and
he becomes you
when my eyes are
closed;
everywhere I run
my addiction finds me,
and sometimes I fear
I will never escape
you;
you are there
in all the places I go
in all the people I meet
in all the things I see;
I see you
I feel you
I taste you
I smell you
I hear you;
you are my five senses,
you have infiltrated my bodyheartandmind;
even without you,
you still control me,
you still catch me slipping,
my mind wandering to you
in my dreams, subconscious still stained
with your imperfect, incomplete, undeserving imprint;
in my attempts to forget you
your memory refuses to
let
    me
         g   o.

I guess
once an addict,
always.

We had that
drive you crazy
butterflies flyin' in my stomach
make you wanna pull your hair out
**** I threw and broke my phone
your arms gettin' goosebumps
why can't I stop thinking about him
******* I hate you
I can't get enough
you're number one on my speed dial
texting me all day long
your family is my family and vice versa
stop looking through my phone
I could ****** you
why didn't you call me back
writing you love poems
writing you hate poems
gut wrenching, heart wrenching
I can't stop smiling
you're the only one who understands me
I would take a bullet for you
confusing
terrible
beautiful
commanding
consuming
kinda love.

I sat hard-pressed against
the plastic seat on the Metro,
green line to Branch Ave,
feeling the heat
of all the dozens of bodies that surrounded me,
5:30 PM and everyone
making headway for home after a
long, hot work day.
The swampy humidity
clung to my arms like sticky tack.
I wiped my brow with the sleeve of my
blazer
and listened to some 90s
R & B on my iPod as I
c
o
u
n
t
e
d
d
o
w
n
the exits till I could
free               myself      from
the suffocating crowd.
It was no day that was even remotely extraordinary,
no life-changing series of events,
no incredible people I had met;
nope, just commuting back to the SE quadrant of
town as I had
every day that summer.
I looked up and took
a snapshot with my mind;
I remember exactly
how that sliver of time
felt to me,
how it looked,
smelledsoundedtasted
as I realized my days in D.C. had begun to feel
like the norm,
that I had grown accustomed to the
claustrophobic train cabins,
the repetitive street names,
and
10% sales tax.
So suddenly there was this
catastrophic
timeturning
momentous magnanimous monumental magic
of the most mundanely minuscule moment,
as ordinary crawled up my veins
and absorbed me in it.
Somehow
squeezed.in.between
the rush-hour,
the annoyance, impatience, and near-suffocation
felt like
home.

I don't always like
(the taste of)
bourbon
but **** do I like
the way it can make me
feel;
that sting of warmth
as it slithers down your
esophagus,
and suddenly you know
all the best dance moves,
your voice hits smooth on
all the tunes,
your jeans hug ya just right,
and somehow the night
has become yours.
Too many bourbons and
**** I might get a little mean,
but just one or two
and I'm the most
proud-to-be-from-Louisville-
Kentucky girl you've ever
seen.

Sometimes I think
I could really like
Someone,
but then 2 to 3 weeks
go by,
and as I get to know who
Someone is,
I remember Someone
isn't You,
and my heart is
so chock-full of
like for You
there ain't no room
for Someone,
for someone else.

I can't say for sure at what age you
suddenly start to really
take the world in,
but I have these
specific memories of being
an angsty fourteen-year-old
running laps around the reservoir
at swim practice.

I was so young,
but old enough that I really thought
I knew what love was,
and maybe I did,
maybe I knew love in a certain kinda way,
a certain kinda love I'm too old
to understand now.

I ran laps.
I remember noticing my breathing,
the one-two-three huff-huff-huff
rhythmically circulating oxygen as I
went numb from the waist down.
I remember thinking about this
boy that I loved in
some way or another.
I remember noticing the water's
gentle splashing,
the way the high, hot sun reflected off its splishing.
I remember the sound of runners
passing me by,
the sight of those I passed doubled over
from a "cramp" or maybe just
laziness.
I remember the way my coach yelled and yelled,
pushed and pushed.
I remember feeling and thinking so
many
different
thoughts,
noticing so
many
different
things.

I remember the first time that
I just took in so much
I had to go home and write some
love poems,
spilling my guts onto college-ruled paper
in some various-colored
gel pen.

I can't say for sure at what age you
suddenly start to really
take the world in;
I can't say for sure at what age a poet
suddenly becomes a
poet;
but I have these
specific memories of the first time
I took the world in,
and I decided to write
about it.

Grandma Clarice,
or Chub as I prefer to call her,
is tough as nails.

All 90 pounds of her on her
not-even-five-feet-tall-frame,
she always told the funniest jokes,
and her laugh was one of
those laughs
that just
              reverberated so warm against your
                       eardrums,
contagious like the
common cold,
you couldn't help but catch it.

Chub always made the best pies,
any kind your gluttonous mind could
imagine:
cherry, blueberry, apple, peach, lemon chiffon, anything creamed;
don't get me wrong,
my mama inherited the gene,
her peach pie my absolute favorite
in the summertime,
but still,
mama learned from the master, and Chub was
the master indeed.

Chub was witty,
she was poised,
she was so many things that I
don't even feel like I ever really have figured out
what all she was, she is.
But I can't deny the
memories I have of Chub
smiling
as I played Christmas tunes on the piano,
looking collected and cool as she
whipped up another perfect meal,
her voice inquisitive as she
asked me about school,
the teacher in her proud yet astute.

Chub can't remember anymore,
but I remember for her,
the laughter, the
impeccable odors wafting from her all-white kitchen,
the late night games of Rummikub,
that tough-as-nails Chub who will always
exist in my
memories.