Walking into first period I am a 12-year-old girl again,
Confidence turned into racing heartbeats and jumbled words.
Imaginary conversations fill my head with possibilities but nothing ever seems to escape my lips but a timid smile.
I trash my spearmint gum and begin walking back to my seat, the teacher has only just begun talking.
I take three steps before daring to look up,
by the fourth I see blue out of my peripheral...
You are looking at me.
The fifth step, I am looking at you.
And for the entirety of that second all the other faces of the room blurred and I swear the history lesson took a pause for the present and there was solely that simple look to be shared.
A look I have found to be all too familiar but yet it never comes enough to be able to fully decipher it.
It is a look of timid desire.
It is a look of fire and ice, of two elements of opposite worlds colliding.
It is a look of earth and water.
A sly romance which everyone sees but no one knows.
Water hits the shore and I am chocolate melting, I am soil eroding.
I am the tree's branches bending under the misty wind.
I am the earthquake that causes the hurricane, the tsunami.
Yet you are calm like the tranquil sea.
Your eyes the color of the shallow water on a southern beach just before the break of a gentle wave at shore in the first hour of sunrise.
I think of you, and there are butterflies.
I look at you, and they rest.
We both simultaneously break our glance as I turn to my seat.
Oh, how I wish you were sitting next to me.

Let me tell you about how I run
There are a couple of ways but none of them are fun.

There's a "move the **** out of my way" kind of run
Shot at by some man with a gun
Running over old ladies and children
To get the hell out and save my own skin
Kind of run...

And there's the "cliche blonde running through my head all day"
Where I don't get exercise, but she seems to sweat away
The pounds of brains until I'm dumbfoundedly dumb
And I find myself passed out on the couch with a bottle of ***
And a headache that makes me want to blow my brains out
Cause I can't get some Aspirin and a good woman to ******* out
Kind of run...

And there's the angsty little man that runs from home
Fighting his abusive dad and his best friend "hormone"
When he gets a kick in the nuts named reality
and a left hook to the face named puberty
by Mike Tyson riding a bison
Who leans over and whispers "you lost the fight son"
Kind of run...

Then there are the times when I run my fingers over the typewriter
Making more mistakes than a single stared wasted waiter
Running my imagination that nobody wants to hear on a page
A ******* that nobody will ever notice on stage
Lost in cut out hearts and origami cranes
and on washed out newspapers on old broken trains
kind of run...

However, there is a time when I actually get off my *** to run
But It hurts cause I'm a beached walrus with my *** in the sun
Flopping on land and trying to swim through concrete
Unable to see that I have 2 feet
cause there are 2 feet of fat that is constricting my view
Of who I am and what I'm really able to do
Kind of run...


And this is the part of the poem when I run away to Spain
Clearly, I can’t run that far so I guess I’ll take a plane
And I’ll bring the beautiful blonde with me in a first class spa
And I’ll walk into Spain saying “Su casa es mi Casa
But it will never be the other way around
Cause if I see you on my property you’ll be six feet underground
Kind of run...

Head down
Hair up
Don’t say a word.
Walk past
Quickly now
They might see you.
Duck into class
Sink in your seat
Don’t risk it
They might see you.
Long sleeves
Mostly black
Blend into the crowd
So they won’t see you.
If they do
They’ll judge you
Every move
Every breathe
They’re judging you.
Your name is called
Just walk past
Quicker
Hurry
Before they notice
That you’re
not the same.
Leave behind
Any thoughts of fitting in
Because
this is you
And if you aren’t
Completely silent
They might notice you.