You are the biggest mistake I've ever wanted to make

I felt like I was drowning
When I woke up at 4:15 this morning
But then I remembered
I love the feeling of water, and
I can swim
In that instant
I was weightless
Everything was so
Calm
And serene
And quiet.
There's a type of silence you can only hear
At 4:15 AM
It's not like no one is speaking
It is the complete absence of presence
And then I woke up for real
At 4:16 AM

It's so spontaneous and profound and esoteric. He, as an idea, takes on a form I cannot even begin to imagine, and it's stunning. He's like a god that can call the stars around his hand and disperse them at his will. He is more than a little girl's imaginary friend. He's there, and then he isn't, and that's okay, because a fragment of a memory is too wonderful for any human being. He is impossible to hold onto because the sparks of his mind would burn your hands.

You are a wonderful, beautiful thing
I don't know why I was just sitting here thinking about how flawless you are
You are radiant and incredible
And I think about you all the time
It's kind of crazy but right now,
I don't care if you hate me
Because I love you
Because you are so perfect
**Absolutely perfect

I often forget to watch the clock
The hours tick by
Without my knowledge
I very much love to
THINK
About time
Being apart of it
Is another story
Moving along
This linear wonder
Is it really so linear?
You see
I often dream of time travel
As I feel so out of place
Here
And now
Will be so important
Someday
But here
In now
Is not where I belong.

You see
I've been thinking about running away
Leaving now
For a different day.

Today the kids told me
That I would die lonely
When I told them I liked being alone,
They laughed at me
"Die alone, die alone."

I more than love you
So please don't shut me out
Whatever it is,
It'll be ok
We can figure it out together
So talk to me
Because I am here for you
I don't always feel your pain
Or understand it,
But I see it
And maybe I can help
Let down your walls
And allow me to show you
The light in the dark.
Everything will work out fine
So talk to me
Because I am here for you,
*Always.

Dear Grandfather,
This is my response to your second response to my Thanksgiving card
I put your letter in my drawer
Didn't realize it was the last time I would be able to read all of your handwriting
I'm glad you're enjoying the baseball games
Sorry my college doesn't have a football team
If we did, I'd be in the front row so you could see me on the cameras

Dear Grandfather,
Merry Christmas
I got your letter right before my father picked me up to take me home for break
Crying, it found a home in my backpack
I would ask my mom to make out the words I couldn't understand
I didn't
Realized you were just talking about bingo
Congratulations, sorry about the snowstorms

Dear Grandfather,
Happy Easter,
Please forgive the smeared ink on all of my cards
My eyes are trying not to see what's happening, so they tear up
I could only make out a few words of your letter
I'm glad you remembered my science classes
They gave me a position researching diabetes
The one diagnoses you don't have
I think that if I studied Alzheimer's, I'd forget you are more than a patient
A failed trial
I can't do that to myself

Dear Grandfather
This is my response to your radio silence
If I were there, I would hold your hand
Knowing that touch and smell can jog memories
I envy your ability to read my letters every time as if it were the first
Hope that you can feel me through them
Hope that some days, you remember the first time, the first letter
The sweatshirt you gave me when I was little
I can't find any other way to hold on to you
So I'll make cards for the fourth of July weeks early
I'll write in the cursive that reminds me of you
I'll read your old letters like it's the first time

I needed something to hold onto
And maybe you weren't as sturdy as I had hoped for,
But you were in front of me
Some sort of rope to hold the universe together
You were the wrong kind of thread
One shouldn't use twine to sew skin

I remember the night I rushed home
That road looked like an oil slick
Halfway there, I hoped I could melt into the pavement,
As if mermaids could swim in asphalt
The emergency was that you had run out of cigarettes
I was a graduate student, out of money and out of place
And you were exactly like a hurricane

At some point I was so tired it didn't matter
I would have kissed anyone

There are so many broken windows
And we're
Fine
We're
dancing around the word because neither of us will say it
We promised to be honest in this relationship
But you have PTSD and I have to move on with my life

I have long brown hair and green blue eyes
I didn't realize I had blacked out until I noticed my reflection was in a hospital instrument and I was in a hospital gown
They call them gowns for a reason
I imagined you pulling me out of that cot and holding me up as we danced in the crowded emergency room hallway
But you weren't there when I came around
Or when they performed my exam
Or when I signed my discharge papers
You showed up only when you felt too guilty to send a taxi
I remembered the days I drove that car
And slipped into a dream where I was behind the wheel

We crashed

All of the little things I can fall in love with

We just didn't spend enough time in jeans and flannels
She had no idea what she was doing and she wasn't fooling anyone
She wasn't even trying
"This looks good," she said, halfway up the hiking trail
She laid her flannel out over a grassy clearing and promptly fell asleep

And he fell exactly where he stood
One drop of blood was exactly enough to relieve his soul from its duty of living
He was exactly at his breaking point and they knew it behind the trigger
Pointing exactly at the palm of his left hand

******* and surrender piggybacked off of each other

If she was the sun, then I was definitely getting my dose of vitamin D
(And a halfway decent tan for once)
Her hair looked like a Pantene commercial and her teeth seemed to be painted white

When I was a child, I thought that flowers died in the winter because they couldn't get water from the frozen earth
I must have ripped up half my mother's garden on the first cool day
I brought them inside, and drowned them in buckets of warm water
23 years later, my mother hasn't stopped laughing

School was out for the week, but I imagined that most of the kids from her class wouldn't go back at all
She asked for help, but we couldn't save her from nightmares or flashbacks
Couldn't even hold her hand through every single one
So her parents and her teachers are in therapy being told it wasn't there faults
But I know it wasn't mine

We made dinner on the stove from a box
She was laughing the whole time-
I told her to wait and watch the pasta while I stepped out for a minute
I set up candles in the living room in front of the TV
We sat on the floor in front of the couch, watching NCIS with candles and cheap ready meals

"This never has to end," I told her
We don't have to have to leave this bedroom
Her Christmas lights reflected off the whites of her eyes as she showed me point ballet in her pajamas
I was not a very effective partner, but this is what she was built for
And I was built to love her, one scene at a time,
One LED bulb
One shaky lift
I spun her like a little girl instead of a dancer

I would have created an entire planet for you
Out of bleeding hands and coarse stone
Out of melted diamonds and theoretical physics
And entire planet, no more ash and suffering
Just mountains to move and forests to nurse and grow
Love became deeper than anything I could possibly imagine
Love was expansive and automatic
I didn't try to love you
Not to say that it wasn't worth the time or effort
I walked long miles for loving you
Long loops around parks and fields and cities
Loving you was another thread woven through my life like so many others
It was broken, though
Tattered and frayed and mismatched
You probably don't get what I'm saying at this point
I'm saying that I loved you,
And I'm not even sure if the past participle is appropriate in this case
You see, in all of the running away from the fire and the falling buildings
I was still looking for you, dragging all of my broken bones behind me
I was looking for all of the times you were beautiful before the fire started
It was the slowest burn, watching sparks jump to one tree at a time
I had no hold on you when we ran in different directions
Our footsteps held sparks that burnt down so many forests
But I would have built an entire planet for you
I would have built you a house out of concrete that couldn't catch
But you never asked, and you left me in the forest

I was lying when I forgot about her dad's pickup truck

It's been over a year since I last got her lost behind the wheel. I can't believe she kept letting me navigate.
Loss of a memory isn't a lie unless it was everything.
My whole world was empty slushie cups on the floor of the passenger seat, a broken speedometer,
A river that is still carving its way up onto the trail with the new floods
A transformation is supposed to be a complete overhaul
A girl walks in, but a woman walks out
I'm lying to myself because I can't remember the sounds or the way her couch cushions felt
Her home smells different now
Her body is something I don't recognize
I can't tell if she has changed or I recorded over the tapes

When I am no longer a teenager, and she was just young love, and my old poems were just country songs on the radio that I sometimes recognize and sometimes don't,
When I am afraid to go outside here in fall because it's not the same
It's been over a year since I asked for familiar. My parents' house does not smell the same. My dog sings to different songs on the radio. I do not own a radio. I do not own a car, or hold a girl, or sing country music anymore. I don't get lost driving to rivers. I don't ride roller coasters or lay on rooftops to interrogate stars. I barely walk myself home at night.
It doesn't smell the same.

When I die,
When the skin sinks into the ground
Someone could tell you that I used to bite my nails
There are tiny marks on the tips of the bones

More easily seen,
There are deep bruises on my shin bones,
Where I pressed up onto the wall any way that I could my first year of training
All that means is that I got stronger

Perhaps even more obvious are the healed breaks on the toes
Dance class, failed lifts
Bad turns, ill prepared
Proud of those ones

A little more hidden is the damage to my ankles from sickle feet
Or my knees from running
Maybe they would overlook the slight curve in my spine left over from physical therapy

Someone can tell my story
In all the little bits and pieces

At some point I was so tired it didn't matter
I would have kissed anyone

I was stupid
To hope that you
Would come around
This morning
But I did
Anyways.

I am showing you my outstretched hand,
Even if you will not take it.
I am pulling you up
Even if you want to be down
I will not do this anymore
You are not my problem anymore
If you fall or fly,
You're on your own
Your words
Hurt me
And you have to understand that
I am a person!
And I deserve a chance
At independent thought
Without your knowledge
And a life without
Your death
On my conscience.
So,
As of now,
You are not my problem anymore.

We don't have time to slow down,
Only to speed up
We're already dragging our tails and falling behind
We don't have time to stop
Only to charge
To rush the enemy
There's no time left to kiss goodbye

So just drag me away
Hold my hand and let go slowly
Draw out the singular second we have left and then run in opposite directions

We don't have time for a lengthy good-bye
We don't have time to unlock doors so just break them down
My biggest fear is that they say we haven't tried
Hearing someone say we backed down
We don't have time to give this anything less than everything
There's no time left to give up

So just drag me away
Hold my hand and let go slowly
Draw out the singular second we have left and then run in opposite directions

This is your chance to stop the clock:
We'll meet in the middle,
Flank to the left
Can you imagine breaking down their walls?
Charge center
Synchronize our footsteps and make sure they never saw us coming
We don't have time to slow down

So just drag me away
Hold my hand and let go slowly
Draw out the singular second when time slowed down
Forget the explosions and crumbling stone-

Hold my hand and let go slowly.
Remember forgetting-
We don't have time to forget
Remember all of the times we backed down
Think that that's all over
We have a fighting chance just,

Remember the fireworks
Remember the sparks we can't see with the lights on
Remember that there are other colors being absorbed by the air
Remember that that's everything standing between me and you
-and the enemy
Remember who the real enemy is

Just drag me away
Hold my hand and let go slowly
Draw out the singular second we have left and then run in opposite directions

We don't have time to hold our hearts or fight ourselves anymore
Take aim, Soldier.
Don't wait for the sparkle in her eyes
Run away with her!

Just drag me away
Hold my hand and let go slowly
Draw out the singular second we have left and then run in opposite directions

Grab my wrist so I can grab your's
I've heard it's stronger like that
We don't have time to let go
Who the hell turned the hour glass over? * I wasn't ready*
All of the time we lost turning around in slow motion, still,
We missed each other.

So drag me away
Hold my had and let go slowly
Draw out the singular second we have left and then run in opposite directions
I don't need to watch you go again

We don't have time to fix the broken,
They don't want bandaids on their hearts, they want stitches
And we're out of thread
I couldn't hold her hand when she died, I didn't know she was dying
But you can hold mine now or you can try,
But we don't have time to fall out of step
And we sure as hell don't have time to grip at nothing so find the **** ledge!
Everything right now counts, but you are the only thing that matters

So drag me away
Hold my hand and let go slowly
Draw out the singular second we have left and then run in opposite directions

We don't have time to watch the world burn when it isn't on fire
We don't have to fail so close to winning.

Time in on our side and so are all the fireworks,
The crumbling stone,
The colors bouncing around in the air and missing our eyes
I don't know what the answer is but I know that it looks pretty when we clasp our hands together in front of the falling empire
We have time now,
Because they fell first
My biggest fear is that they say we haven't tried
Our tired hands numb in the loosened grip of each others'

So drag me away.
Grab my hand and let go slowly,
Hesitate on the ends of my fingertips,
Draw out the singular second we have left and then never let go.

It's almost eleven
And I can't sleep
I hear your voice
Bouncing in whispers of the raindrops
Please don't leave
I should have told you not to go
Before you left

When I told my therapist I was doing better, she asked what was working
"It helps to focus on the future," I said.
"And the Benadryl. The Benadryl helps a lot."
And turning the fan on too high, and leaving all the lights on until seconds before I fall asleep
In high school, I performed a poem about a girl telling her therapist about a vision
This doesn't feel like that
When I said somebody else's words, I always felt the anticipation, and the relief,
And the words being held back because you don't want the person who knows you're crazy to think you're crazy
This doctor mirrors me
Echoes the disappointment I feel in myself
I went home and called my mom:
She said it will take awhile to find someone I feel I can trust, and I said
"Yeah, I know,"
As I sat alone in my bedroom in my silent apartment with no friends to call
It's getting late, and I remember what my therapist said about the Benadryl
You can't drown things out by sleeping through them
The side effects shoot through my skull like walking into the same doorframe every morning
I don't usually stay up this late
They sell two brands at my small town drug store
The pharmacist knows me by the way I know exactly what I'm looking for
She said she was worried about me when I came less often
But I had just stopped taking antidepressants
I "didn't need to anymore."
I "had my life planned out."
Now, it's been three days since I did any dishes and three weeks since I've washed my clothes
I've been wearing the same workout shorts and Doctor Who tshirt on all of my little outings for days
I'm drinking lukewarm water from a mug and I'm fascinated by the little rings made by the oil in my chapstick
Some people call it agoraphobic but I call it safe
My therapist asked me if running was helping and I said
"Yes. While I'm sill running."
I learned as a kid that you can't run forever, but God I tried
I once ran until I fell over at the end of a road and had to call my parents for help
(I showed her the bruises)
I only just learned to sleep with my window open
I used to send my friend terrified messages at two in the morning
I don't think he was thoroughly convinced of the utter horror I felt when all he saw was the word "crickets"
But I am an expert Jeopardy player.
My therapist asked if trivia games make me feel better and I said
"No. Because sometimes I get a question wrong and I realize I haven't been working hard enough."
"The only thing I'm really confident of is that I'm not working hard enough"
I wrote that in my diary, after eight hours of classes and six hours of studying
I got dressed up for a dance I didn't go to
I ran out of Benadryl yesterday
So I'm still up a three thirty in the morning but that's alright
My therapist promised I'd be better off without it.

I see a little girl in a garden crying over her dead roses
She asks me how the garden can live after watching a beautiful thing die
I don’t know, I tell her
I tell her they are still beautiful somewhere in her past
That she’ll look at photographs one day and not remember when they died
But I know that she will
She tells me she doesn’t want to live when beautiful things have to die
I tell her that she is a beautiful thing
In her soft victorian dressing gown,
She is so young
I saw her framed in a museum once.
I wake up to two am in a college dorm room and start the day because I know that girl is dying somewhere
Sometime too long ago for me to be mourning
I look at her painting and don’t remember the day she died
If she’s lucky, she grew up and bloomed.

Booting up,
Blue screen
Press enter to accept default settings
Body; female, almost adult
The background is a picture of you holding my puppy
And the table is cluttered in the way it always was before we cleaned it so mom would have somewhere to put her feet up
I put the camera down because photos are just pixels and I can never have this moment back
My dad is singing about Caroline and the miners and the puppy sings along
He tries to chase the cat and gets a scratch on his nose
I walk through the glass door onto the porch and the shocking reality of the wood on my bare feet reminds me that I’m staring at a computer screen

Restart
Enter password, incorrect
Reset, password too weak, can’t hold onto memories for you
Every once in awhile, the white noise of the public pools plays in my head
And the smell of sunscreen sunburns and I’m not listening to my parents
It sounds like the successful login jingle
I think I know that girl over there, but I’m not sure
I mostly play alone
How has nobody noticed how cold this water is?

Error, Corrupt file
My dad sits with his computer out at the campground looking at google earth
I can’t remember anything he ever said about it but I feel the mosquito bites
I think my body is a dot to dot that someone did when they were bored at the diner
And I’m sorry if they skipped a few and I ended up piecemeal
Maybe my dad has something for it in the medical kit

Error, out of storage space
The essay needs to be saved so the pictures get deleted
I’m almost through when I see you holding my puppy
See your eyes meet mine
See my own feet on the hard ground
I’m more aware of my chipped nail polish and the space in between my toes
It think these floor stains are ours
I think this will never be my room again
I think my bed is imaginary
I think my mind is a photograph

Error, event already occurred
Cannot reconstruct file
Cannot help you fill in all the gaps
Cannot tell you what is missing
Cannot let you hold your puppy

Brain today was discouraged and tired and bouncing back and forth from things like a ping pong ball and really stuck a little bit in ancient Egypt but mostly trying to draw spirally flowers but the dots wouldn't work right and all focused on how lungs didn't burn like that when I ran a week ago and really didn't want to talk to anyone that was going to respond because brain did not want to hear other peoples' opinions. Brain wants to get better and remember things but that didn't happen.

But that description is lengthy and deep and metaphorical and easily summarized with "pft."

Sometimes my brain is the most incredible thing
I breeze through classes at school
Excel in math and language
(An everything else, really)
But then it gives me flashbacks
And nightmares
And that one dream
That one girl
That one time
My parents don't know because I don't tell them
But these things happen
And I'm fighting myself
How does that even happen?

I watched her
It was like the she was breathing for the first time
Brand new lungs, air that wasn't holographic
No more illusions or tricks, just
In and out

And that's when she walked away
Saying goodbye was the first time she had ever experienced oxygen
She suddenly understood the rhythmic movements of my chest
And why I had never liked diving

And I started to choke

Tell me when you're upset with me
I hate it when you say nevermind.
God,
I hate you
But that's unimportant
I am a living, feeling person
Not a brick
I'd really like some bricks,
Actually,
To build a wall
And keep you out.

Oh how I love our broken little talks
I almost want to mention the great proverbial elephant in the room that we aren't even in together
It's interesting how everything sort of fell apart like a house of cards with one single breath
You were supposed to be the light at the end of my tunnel, but you blew out the candle
And I'm walking down a street that just falls off of the earth
We've all wondered if heaven was real, but you were my heaven when I was with you, and every god was on our side so in the end,
It didn't have to be
And I would tell you again that it's going to be okay, but we both know I'm lying, so
If we're going to be sad, miserable people, can we at least go back to doing it together?
Stating the obvious back and forth isn't what we do because * we are best friends
We were *lovers
But all we have left are these broken little talks

"Why don't you just put that down and work on your essays?"
"You know what Mom? Why don't I just drop everything I love?
Why don't I just become a stick straight, porcelain calculating and writing machine
With perfectly brushed blonde hair and blue eyes
Why don't I just become perfect-
Perfect-
(Broken record)
Perfect-"

I fell asleep outside my first class room this morning
When my teacher arrived shortly thereafter, he quietly unlocked the door and let himself in, as he always does when I wash up like this
Which is frequently
Twenty four hours wasn't enough for one day
So I stretched it out for as long as I could

I’m falling in love with the campfire ashes floating up and kissing his cheek
My dad warns us that some are still hot, so we watch carefully just in case
We make up songs about hot tea to his guitar because he dare not sing about cold beer in front of my father
I’ve never felt warmth like cool nights and skin I never thought I would orbit
I’m caught in the grace of his feet swinging back and forth under the lawn chair
He’s a speaker for rhythms I don’t recognize but need to know
He calls me a manic pixie dream girl with her own plot line
Imagines me ruining a ball gown in a river
He is not the violinist my mom always said I would marry
On a good day, he’s a catastrophe rolling on the railroad tracks I’m tied to
Mother, we are late nights and bad decisions
No, I never got that tattoo but yes we’re going out again
Because he makes me want to hit the ground running
Convinced me that the sun orbits us, because
“it’s all about perspective.”
Ashes and smoked clothing like glitter and perfume
Like he promised mom we’d be home by midnight, and dad that we were running away already
I’m dancing on my tiptoes in the moment he makes a little girl’s dreams come true, not a woman
I can’t imagine a world in which I am grown up
Because he has chosen to grow up with me
I’m gonna kiss him, mom.

Are you there?
Can you be there?
Can you hear me calling your name?
Can you see the way I did my hair?
Have you read the things I've written for you?
Can you feel the love I send to you?
Can you see me smile?
Do you know that I love you?

I don't understand how yesterday
I was thinking in whisper that didn't reach out
But today
I'm thinking in capital letters in the bold type face I recognize so easily
Nothing has changed since yesterday
Except maybe me,
I guess.

Would it change things if you were still here?
I think about that a lot,
If you hadn't left,
Would you have loved me?
Would it change things
If I weren't so tall?
If I kept my hair neater?
Wore shoes that weren't sneakers?
Would it have change things if I weren't so scared all the time?
If things didn't fall out of line?
Would you have changed?

I wanted my body back
It seemed impossible
It seemed like I left my body at the hospital when I was seven
Back when I was friends with the ER nurses
I gave it to them as a gift
The only offering I had at the time-
Probably the only offering I have now-
I was just a little kid
But I'm not anymore
I somehow grew up without my body
As if my body were a metaphor not important to the story
But that's not how this story ends

I woke up a few weeks ago and ran before classes
It took me twelve minutes to run a mile, I was dripping sweat and I couldn't breathe
But for the first time, I trusted my feet to hit the ground
I trusted myself to make it home with my own legs
I wanted my body back, so I took it,
Just a few feet at a time