they are my famiglia
they are italian, polish and maltese,
probably a lot of other things too
we're basically mutts
there are five of us, if you include the dog
they are the best

there's my mom;
i call her "ma" or "woman" or "mom" or "mama" or "rochelle", if i want to irritate her
she's the best cook in the world
she always calls me her "bambina"
and sings me songs and writes me cute notes
she's my best friend and biggest fan (sorry dad)
i'm convinced she can read my mind,
even when i'm 2 1/2 hours away, she can tell when something's wrong
she's the best mom in the world

and then, there's my dad;
i call him "dad" or "daddy" or "bob" because he doesn't seem to care
he's hilarious and actually tells good dad jokes
he loves talking about
government conspiracies and
new health trends he's trying
he calls my mom just to say "i love you" and buys me flowers on valentine's day because "i want you to know what a man should do for you one day"
he's so great, i hope i marry a man like bob one day

and there's my brother;
i call him "bro" or "broski" or usually just, "bobby"
he loves me with all his heart
but cannot hug me
because his ocd clouds his mind
he's funny and loves the oldies
he also loves trips to chipotle with me
he won't tell me about girls
because "you'll tell mom," but will talk to me about everything else
gosh i love him with all my heart too

and there's my dog;
who we all call "boo" and sometimes i call him some random nickname
he's so cute, but super vicious
one minute he'll be curled up in-between your legs and the next?
he's attacking you and biting you in the lip
he's scared of thunderstorms and fireworks and people, really he's scared of everything
he's not perfect, but he loves me and i love him

and then, there's me;
they call me "dee-dee" or "aubs" or plain old, "aubrey"
i'm the first born pain in the ****,
who's dream is to marry a nice christian man, own a cafe, adopt children, have children, and just have a great family
currently, i'm in college, missing my great family
my current dream would be, sitting on the couch with my dog on my lap, my mom cooking in the kitchen, my dad hanging out in the garage building something cool, and my brother playing video games and complaining about me taking over the bathroom we share.

can you tell i miss them?
can you tell i love them?

I ponder what my parents told me,
“The light in your eyes is back.”
Not because I am happy,
(or sober…)

Its because I stare at the dimly lit skyline
In the City of Brotherly Love,
In a melancholy manner.

While I could make some cliché allegory
Of a cigarette being another source of faint luminescence.

But I am a college student,
A speck of a presence drowning in dimwits,
With such bright futures ahead!
(Along with a large sum of debt.)

So while I sit and stare
At the city lights,
Soaking in suicidal thoughts at the SEPTA station.

Remember the light in my eyes
Is a reflection of those city lights.
Dimly lit,
Not aflame.
I have no one but myself to blame.

"no wonder why
you have no friends"
who said
i ever cared

i would rather
have no friends at all
if all they are going
to do
is stab me in my back

i am not
here for friends
i don't need anyone
but me

you say i
complain too much
you say you
don't complain at all

i look at you
like you are crazy
what do you
think you are doing then?

pretending

you cry to
all your "friends"
you say that
I am being mean

so i confront you
and i tell you
that you are
a hypocrite ..

and of course
you didn't like
what i had to say

so you started
screaming
and said that you could
"take me"

then you
stormed out of the room
into an endless pit
of your lies

i don't have the time

She wore a windbreaker as red
as her parents voting habits,
and smoked American Spirits
as rough as the next-door
skateboarder's hands.

At 18, she was bored by
teen-aged touch,
and looked towards the
thirty-five year-old avant-garde
painter, who meandered in his
sun room, like a soul
pretending to be lost.

At 20, her parents told her
to go to college, to go to
'some place other than here'.
So, she went and had skinny,
Greek fingers with chipped nail-polish,
dip down and inside of her, without
judgement, without thought, and,
with this touch, she felt free.

At 24, she was an undergrad with
an apartment and a guy named 'Blake',
and Blake said Brown and she said State.
And when Blake left, she felt complete
despite losing something meaningful.

And when her story started to go on forever,
her body spread across the pavement like
seeded jam on burnt toast, scraped thin,
without image and without future, lost
inside crevices and cracks, a memory
or thought, wandering nothingness.

So,
I'm not a bad college student.
We'll start with that.
But,
When I do skip class,
I try to do it on review days.
WHY DO I ALWAYS END UP SHOWING UP ON REVIEW DAYS?

-E (c) 2017

The hazy voices
from the rooms
filled with raging not-so-young beings
staring on the boring white board
fantasizing the fortune they'd be making
you only live once they said
live life to the fullest they story-told
4 years came in a blink of an eye
paths they took
completed the story of life
coming back to when it was started
the place that used to be filled
with loud thud
of their sneakers and heels
teardrops are falling
from the eyes that
used to bore a hole on the white board
no, not because they regret making mistakes
not because they regret not doing best
not because they regret hating on college
but because realization dawns on them
it was all started there
in the void hallways
the friendship
the love
and the future

It wasn't a mistake that I took Philosophy 101 my freshman year in college.
Indeed,
It was
"Fate"
Philosophical questions ended my abuse
They became me
I know it's considered cliché to question everything, but now
I do
And if I hadn't taken PHIL 101, or had an extensive background knowledge in Christianity
Because in 2013,
A hot boy asked me to come to his youth group and I said yes
And because of that hot boy I became engulfed with The Spirit, and became a worship leader in a youth group band
Who became a worship leader in a church
Who became a bruised and abused girlfriend of a non-Christian who broke her faith, that wasn't even whole to begin with,
Who became a freshman in college who took a PHIL 101 class
Who became the girl who finally ******* figured out
That the destiny she so pined for from the moment she was a starry-eyed 7 year old coming home from Brazil
Sitting on her dead aunt's lap, in a frame in the college girl's bedroom
She would know
Her destiny was her own choice
She was the ruler of her own world
And whatever decision she made would be the right one because she made it

-E (c) 2017

As human beings
We have the potential
To do anything we set our minds to
Except for this moment in time
I feel as if the odds are stacked just slightly too high against me
As though sheer force of will just won't cut it this time
As much as I hate to think this way I fear it might be true