Fiddling with my pencil
Burnt out from my morning wake and bake
Hoping the professor won’t notice, or care if they did
I try not to make eye contact, or get too close
So they don’t realize that I have no idea what they’ve been saying
For at least the past 20 minutes
Looking at the clock every thirty seconds, I’m shaking my leg
A minute can feel like an hour when you’re just waiting to get out of that seat
But the clock keeps ticking as the lecture starts to sound like music
Music in an elevator, or a waiting room
Music softly coming from your roommate’s bedroom upstairs
I start to doze off again, thinking about what I’ll do when I’m home
Smoke a spliff and watch SVU, or maybe a comedy if I’m in the mood
That goes on until I do my homework, which I then get into autopiolet mode
Reading useless articles, writing long assignments or 20 page research papers
Wait, I wonder what I got on my test last week…
And why the hell is it taking so long for her to grade it? So irritating.
Working so hard to make an assignment golden
When it’s just considered “work” to someone else in the end.
I don’t want to write this paper when I get home
But it’s due tomorrow, so what’s a stressed student supposed to do?
You can’t forget about it, or simply not hand it in. This is my job.
Okay, I’ll see you guys on Wednesday. Make sure you’re ready to talk about chapters 60, 78, 79, and 81. Be ready to talk about them during our discussion, thanks.
Oh ****, class is over. I shake my head to drag the thoughts out of my mind
Grab my jacket and bag to scurry out of class
I guess time goes faster when you’re not counting the seconds
Or staring at the clock
Or checking the phone every five minutes
You’re either invested in time, or not paying attention at all
Until it’s over
When class is over,
Or the weekend is over
Or when college is over.

I used to hear her in the night, screaming from her nightmares, wandering around downstairs, watching TV with her mixed drink(s) on one side and her orange salt rock lamp on the other. That salt rock lamp was supposed to give off “good energy”, but I wasn’t really sure how much of that was true considering the circumstances. A salt rock lamp can’t free you. Neither could medication. She used to tell me; survival, is just getting through the day. I listened. I tried to save her myself, but alcohol is more powerful than I am. It’s more powerful than anything I could have said to her. It was a year from last semester, when my best friend started spiraling out of control. I had lived with her for the past three years, this is my fourth. We became instant friends when we both saw each other at UVM. She always seemed so happy on the outside, but I soon started to see the hollowness inside of her. She had gone through so much in her life, and I thought of her as strong. I still do. But for her it wasn’t that easy to call herself strong and just let it all go, she didn’t know how to handle it, until alcohol became her way. I never understood why she did the things she did that year. Did you know she drank a whole handle of Rasberry Smirnoff in two days? It was sickening. I didn’t know what to do, because at a certain point I couldn’t even look at her. I know that sounds harsh, and maybe I shouldn’t have left her alone in the apartment to be swigging even more of yet another flavored handle of *****. I just couldn’t talk to her without hurting her feelings. She is really sensitive, like an open wound and everything hurts her. I wasn’t trying to, but she was so uncovered and vulnerable. Everything I said either went one ear and out the other, or stung her like salt in a deep cut. It got hard to live with sometimes. I love her so much yet I was uselessly sitting there watching her drown in her invasive misery, destroying herself and leaving me to watch her ashes build up more and more in front of me. She isolated herself on purpose, lost a lot of friends for a while. I tried but I couldn’t stop her, no one could. She was so far gone, like I lost my best friend whom I couldn’t recognize anymore, and I missed her. It became a routine, coming home to her drunk and sometimes crying hysterically on the floor or on the couch, or in her room, whether there was even a reason or not. She fell apart. I told her my thoughts, gave her my advice, but if words helped everyone all the time, no one would feel the pain that you sometimes have to feel. I wanted to tell her it was okay, but then I didn’t know how to anymore. All I could do was shove my phone in her face already calling a school therapist for her. At first, she looked at me with a blank stare. With tears dripping down her cheek, I knew she didn’t want the help, but she knew she needed it. She didn’t deny it. To my surprise, she didn’t fight it. She took the phone, made an appointment, and started her journey to recovering.

This is how you get thin; this is how you get even thinner; this is how you tell yourself to be skinny is to be beautiful; this is what you eat; this is what you don’t eat; this is the proportion of food you are allowed to eat; this is the proportion of food you are not allowed to eat; you can have one serving per meal a day; unless you have the bracelet, of course, that allows you to eat as many meals as you want for being underweight; this is how you cook a healthy meal; this is how you cook an unhealthy meal; this is how you work out; this is how you don’t work out; this is how you use the weights; this is how you do not use the weights; remember not to use more weight than you can handle, work your way up to the top girls; this is how you go to boot camp every day to work off those extra pounds; this is the voice of your mother telling you that this is what you need; you’re getting heavy and need to control your weight; this is how you try even harder on that soccer field even though you absolutely hate soccer; this is how you tread water in a deep-end pool for as long as you can without drowning; this is how you work hard as hell just to make weight that coming Sunday; an empty room; the director, co-director, yourself, and a scale; how many pounds did you lose this week?; Two? Disappointing. Some of the other girls lost 10, 12, 13 pounds, as if I haven’t ******* noticed; this is what it feels like to not “make weight”; this is what it feels like to work, and keep working but never feel thin enough; this is what it feels like run drills as hard as you can just for the adrenaline; just to run for the hell of it even though you’ve always been a terrible runner; this is the constant sound of your mother on repeat; you’re getting fat; this is what it’s like to be there in spite of her; this is how you put walls up; this is how you break them down; this  is  how  you  gain  more  insecurities;  this  is  how  you  shut  them  out; to be skinny is to be beautiful; and this is  how you eventually  realize it never should have mattered at all.

Standing tall with this hands behind his back,
Entangled together, quivering for a thrill
Tyranny carved into his mind
Eyes locked, craving and yearning,
For vicious power and complete corruption.
It's only what a cold person would want,
Cold eyes, cold hands, a cold presence...
A dark evil
That speaks for itself
Its own brand of cruel,
Where there's no such thing as a weakness.
It’s the kind of brutality that should have no control
But did for so long...
Without notice
His existence killed,
Make the veins rush through your body by just the thought
Of people trying to find the oxygen that he wouldn't dare to give,
But filling their lungs with gas instead
With those unforgiving eyes,
That could shutter
And those corrupt hands,
That could destroy
17 million innocent lives,
Gone forever
All because
Of a forbidden evil,
That lies in the ground,
Buried but existing.

Provided you with love and affection, someone to need, to hold
but leading,
always leading
to a shuttering, cracking cold.


Speaking with hollowing eyes
I had a feeling you were danger
You were always in crisis
Left me with so many sacrifices, but I didn’t care


Carved into my bones is the jagged edge of you
your smile, your face
racing in my blood, mutating me
like cancer, but I need to know, what made you change?


Gave up my pride, to keep our strings tied
you pulled them apart
now so far gone but I swear I tried
defeated, and blinded from the start


When oxygen, it doesn’t exist, as this is what I call hell
You repeated your last words to me
while I was silently, quietly,
praying to God
as you abandoned me for her…


But look at what I did for you.

In this bed
eyes wide open
lifeless

Tape wrapped around me
as I play with fire
waistless

In the morning mirror try to remember
the stranger in front of me
nothingness

My feet lead me
to somewhere but nowhere
senseless

Embrace the music
when out at night
hearing silence, at best

Strong, bright rays
warming my brittle body and face
but finding peace in darkness

A past so feeble
a future so fragile
I am powerless

Loving with every ounce of my being
always lost in the abyss
Wishing I was fearless

Words blocked by my hollow mind
my heart silently whispering
empty threats

All I’ve ever made
with these hands
become lifeless

I ask my heart
what are you?
sweet, sour, or tasteless:

From the brutal mask
I’ve put on from loving
but loveless.

So I'll dream of us together
Or just how I wish it could be
And all that you are
Will remain the silent part of me

Driving down the highway,
There are a few more exits
Until I’m home
But without realizing it
I end up
At the door to my real one.
I memorize his face
Watching the happiness in his eyes
I start to swim freely and unafraid
In an ocean blue,
I’ve always had a phobia of swimming
In waters like the ocean
But not in his.
My frail body wrapped in him
Like we’re a present
That’s just for me.
It’s like Christmas morning
That feeling you only get once a year
But I get to feel it
Every day.
I never thought
That two twisted minds
Could entangle
So well together
That two complete strangers
Could suddenly submerge into one
And I never thought
I could finally admit
That I deserve this.