i’m twenty and my favorite color is lavender and
i'm espresso mixed with honey, talking very fast,
absorbing it so slowly
piling books in the corner and boys by my feet
without meaning to
sunburnt and wads of tissues in backpacks and utterly confused at the concept of god/ raised by a catholic and an atheist,
i’ll always say,
with a laugh, dainty head tilt on a date another hand on a thigh and another prayer that i won’t feel that crushing guilt in the morning like
i usually do
because i have yet to learn otherwise and i’m sure there’s something somewhere inside me? outside maybe inside probably can’t sit still so
i chopped my hair again and i think i’m cured!
until i get stuck in traffic on i-87 and i call my dad to tell him i got my nose pierced and he says,
what? and it closes up anyway on that trip to salem where i put my headphones in and walked very quickly away from you
and the guilt the things i won't feel pile up
i’m a block of lead you can’t get me off of the floor wasn’t i healed?
didn’t i do this? this isn’t a curved line this is a pit and i’m in it and
please leave me here please don’t leave me i’m getting better i swear
but i don’t know when but at least there’s a will to live now and
i’m googling colorado again do you think i’ll be more of a light there?
could you turn the light on?

i’m a liar because i’ll tell you how much i hate this, this living ordeal,
i’ll complain my way through an hour or two at a
coffee shop/bar/angry phone call from an apartment balcony
i’ll say this but if i hated it like i said i do. wouldn’t be writing.
wouldn’t be finding flowers to put in empty jars. wouldn’t say thank you, thank you, wouldn’t stand in warm water for an hour or more just to see what it’s like, today.
if i hated it i wouldn’t care about it so passionately, wouldn’t
white knuckle my way through wanting it to work so badly.
a true hate would be numbing out and accepting,
a true distaste for life would be an indifference to it.
i’ve always written that my first real love was with life
my first roller coaster romance, first earth shattering heartbreak, first all encompassing obsession
and i stand by that. always have.