I have been at war with my brain for as long as I can remember. A perpetual massacre, crimson annihilation, whatever sounds best bleeding from your tongue. No matter how many casualties you can find staining my fingers, there is no tragedy here. Words are what the carnage always leaves behind.
I have always had words, too many of them-- always left hiding behind my overbite in fear of crowding the world. It is a torturous thing, to be a writer in a world where people are not made of paper, where transparence is sacrificed for conversation.


I think in different shades of contradiction.
I want to talk to you but my brain keeps telling me to pretend my phone is ringing so I don’t have to talk to you anymore. There always seems to be an escape plan I cannot help but map out. I want to speak my mind, to watch my opinions soar into morning skies, but my brain gathers all of my words into paper boats drifting into shark-infested waters. I am full of synonyms and definitions, of pretty cursive words inked on skin. Perhaps it is hard to see this. I am, in fact, too busy picking my eyelashes out to realize that you are speaking to me. My heartbeats have cold feet when they try to serenade my thoughts.

Forgive me, for the paradox of my friendship. I am listening. It is just that sometimes, I am a telephone line with both ends in my hands.