I know a girl who tries to read people the way she reads books.
But people aren't two dimensional, and they can't be pressed into
page after page of dialogue and action. Black and white stand as a
testimony to truth, but reality comes in a variety of shades and
when her blood comes out red and sings a tune sweeter than any book
or bible written by man, she is left somewhere between fiction and non-fiction.
The badlands of indecision, where her beliefs search for a home built on rock
instead on the sand.

As a fourteen year old disaster, I cut into my skin to drain the nihilism from my veins but it only burrowed deeper in & now I'm marked forever with these scars that stand for nothing at all.

As a grieving sixteen year old, I was offered two sentiments of attempted comfort: "Everything happens for a reason" & "Stand up for what you believe in". Those phrases mean as little as this entire world does to me & that used to make me feel like there was something missing.

But... ****... I can fall in love with nothing to lose & that kind of love is the only love that is one hundred percent true.

So, yeah, just maybe there's some danger in the belief that nothing happens for a reason just as there's danger in the belief that everything does but if a nihilist can find an other racing mind to turn 18 years of nothing into a lot of something why the hell are we so concerned with questions like "Why?" anyway...?

Tonight at a party there was a boy who looked exactly like you,
same perfect rounded almond eyes,
same scruffy slightly curly hair,
his eyes were even green, as I recall.
While I barely even know him, I found myself trying to be in his presence more than anyone else,
If he went outside I would take note, and eventually follow,
when he came inside, the same thing.
When we would talk I would feel my heart speed up.
I do not know this boy,
I most certainly do not love this boy,
but in the moment this boy became hot summer nights in the back of a Toyota pickup,
he became initials carved into half the trails in town,
he became drunken nights of confessing everything to each other,
he became the best friend I ever had,
he became what once was my world,
and the painful wall of nostalgia hit me in the heart like a shotgun,
even though I know I'm better without you,
and even though I know things would never have worked,
I loved you more than you will ever know,
and I still do, I suppose.
And the boy tonight was a painful reminder that I will be looking for you,
in every person I'm with for a long time,
because you were great,
and together we were great,
and I wish love alone had been enough to keep us both happy,
but it wasn't,
and things fall apart,
but I wish they didn't.

our fruiterer is a riddling prankster
who jumps up from every corner
and tray and stacks, with any old silly riddle

(1)
“Looking at apples, eh?”
he approaches Sandy
“What did the apple say to the bug?
Oh – stop bugging me!”

And he laughs at his own humor
(or lack of it)
while severe Sandy rotates
an apple in her left palm
and he ventures to the next vulnerable customer,
who is me

“How, my dear man,” he proceeds to ask
“do you fix a broken tomato?”
I shake my head, bewildered
and he unpacks his own riddle:
“Tomato paste!”
And he roars with laughter
his chilli-sharp eyes pointed
at his next customer


(2)

And off he goes with his riddles –
with his booming voice, no pause
and wrapping his answers in cracking laughs

He jumps to an old man
and he says:
“Why, do tell me, do bananas
never feel lonely?”
“Cos they always come in bunches”

And the young couple he regales with:
“Why did the tomato go out with the prune?
Oh, come on…simply cos he couldn’t find a date!”

And to an old woman he says
in  near-Oedipus style:
“What did the Dad Tomato tell his Kid Tomato?
Ketchup!”

And as in a light musical
he turns about and whoever he finds
he unleashes his final:
“How do you fix a cracked pumpkin?
Easy peasy – you use a pumpkin patch!”

Ah, our fruiterer is a riddling prankster
who jumps up from every corner
and tray and stacks, with any old silly riddle