I read something about
how boys never end up with manic pixie dream girls;
they just hang around and use her
until someone more docile comes along
when you say you can’t pick me up right now
even though my parents
are cutting each other with words,
I think to when you broke my heart
“we have nothing in common,
and you’re so young”
and I wonder if maybe
I’m your Manic Pixie Dream Girl:
here to teach you about the life you don’t know
about it’s mysteries and nuances,
about wild *** and drunken nights
only for you to leave me again.
when will that happen?
what will she be like?
will I always be someone’s Manic Pixie Dream Girl?

The manic pixie dream girl of my youth
Curving and tight, scampering along the beach
Her wild black hair flying about as she danced
Teasing all the boys with her sunlit joys

I read to her Rod McKuen by candlelight
While Joni Mitchell on the turntable mused
We played and smoked, and drank good screwcap wine
And played some more, and then she went away

And now - an old lady in a funeral home pew
And I’m not so sure of myself anymore


(“Manic pixie dream girl” is a neologism attributed to film critic Nathan Rubin)

You want me to be your manic pixie dream girl
So today I am a gardener
I’ll plant daisies and you can put them in my hair

Tomorrow you’ll fall in love with the freckles on my nose
I’ll make you sing along to bands you’ve never heard of
We’ll stop on the side of a highway to watch the sunset
I’ll remind you of what it feels like to be alive

You tell me to be a supporting character in your great adventure
So I’ll tag along behind you
Make you stop and look at bugs on the sidewalk
You’ll love the way I’m not like other girls

I’ll get a tattoo of a flower on my ribs
You’ll call me amaryllis
And I’ll change my name because you want me to
I’ll be the garden you grow with your green thumb
The one you show off to your friends
Make them bask in my beauty until you feel better about yourself

Eventually I’ll lose my shimmer
No more golden glitter, just dust
You’ll write the final chapter of my life
Give me the unsuspecting ending you believe I deserve
Stuff me in a suitcase and bury me in the backyard
Make everyone believe I ran away
Chasing a romanticized version of life I could never give

The girl with fluorescent eyes
She wears neon dyes
She tells me kaleidoscope lies
About being in love with me
About being love with love

I’ve been sitting around wondering why I couldn’t be enough for you
And why you never wanted the love I was willing to give
But I know why
I am Manic Pixie Dream Girl to you
And when I became too human to admire
I was no longer enough for you
We all know what happens to any of John Green’s female characters
After we close the books
They either end up alone
Or dead
There’s only two options for a girl like me
Either I am manic pixie dream girl
Drinking some IPA my father would drink
And probably throwing up my lunch in the bathroom
Or I am nothing
I never asked to be Manic Pixie Dream Girl
I dreamed of being dream girl
The one in the movie with the long blonde hair
And the rich father
And the stay at home mom
And the trust fund
But I guess this is the next best thing
I promise you that you know exactly who I am
The girl in the movie with the dyed hair
and the love for some obscure random poet
or band
or artist
She's quirky
And wears flowers in her hair
She smokes too many cigarettes
Or does too many drugs
Or has some mental illness
She has something wrong with her that the audience loves
And she barely speaks
But when she does everyone stops to listen
And the protagonist loves me in his time of need
But once he gets what he needs from me
He’ll get to go back to dream girl
I give him his sense of self worth
And he gets the girl
But the author of this story never bothers to worry about me
He never wonders if I have feelings too
So overtime, through pain and heartbreak
I’ve learned better than to get attached
Manic Pixie Dream Girl knows she only gets a few moments
I did my job here
You learned your lessons
So I guess my time is up
It is time for me to move on
To some other ordinary guy
With an ordinary life
And I will come in, shaking the walls
And once he gets what he needs
He will find his dream girl
And fall for her instead
I will be back here
With this same silence
These same regrets
These same bags under my eyes
I will once again be too human to love
I will be a pile of hair dye and ***** and Bukowski books
And you will be so in love you never wonder about me ever again
But when you grow old
And you have your house in the suburbs
And your cubicle job
And you’re married to dream girl, who you never really loved
You’ll wake up and wonder how you got here
And you’ll remember me
The girl who changed you
And you will feel so nostalgic you will tell your children about me
And I know you’ll only call me manic pixie dream girl
Because you won’t bother to remember my name
anyway

Here I am, the manic pixie dream girl of, you guessed it; your dreams. I am here to ask you questions about your boring, probably something generic, major like business or management or maybe even some type of art form that no one really knew existed until you decided to bring it to your high school and of course the liberal arts school of your dreams has that EXACT program and all the means to support it financially. Of course, I will always ask about you. How your day is, how your plain black coffee is, what you thought of that one song that played as we were walking into the train after a date that both of us probably went on looking to get laid. But in the end, it will always be you. I will continue to fluff your deflated ego that was caused as such by some hollywood trope from your hometown like a cheerleader or maybe even someone who was on AV Club with you, who really knows, because I sure as hell don’t care to do any research into it. Now, part of being your early to mid-twenties manic pixie dream girl, it is essential for us to bond over old broken up bands that neither one of us were actually alive to see perform yet that dream of ours is still so prevalent as we make conversations over whiskey you assume I like because of it’s pretentious name that you will describe as “harsh yet creamy, dry but sweet” and on bad nights I will tell you that it tastes like the back of my father’s hand and you will laugh at a joke I did not intend to tell but then again I will have to ask you what is so funny. I will always be the one asking you about a life I am so willing to leave without even meeting your family. Being a manic pixie dream girl is all fun and games until I am the one always doing the starting of conversations, until I am the one sending you Spotify playlists that I know you will never listen to, until I am the one showing up unannounced. My name will roll off your tongue like smoke from your American Spirits, but only in the beginning, because by the end; you will cough when I finally tell you to stop calling me.

Last weekend,
one of your friends called me your manic pixie dream girl.

So in the movie that is my life,
I'm not even the main character,
just the quirky sidekick to my male protagonist.

And it's probably my ego speaking,
but I don't think that's right.

And I don't think that I,
of all people,
should be the one showing you the beauty of a world
that I only see in kinetic blurs and swatches,
passing by me in my free fall from this life to the next.

Because I tried once to see the world without a filter,
but its stagnancy sent me in a downward spiral
and somehow I ****** you into it--
into me.

And I don't mean to be your whirlwind woman,
destined to spit you out--disoriented--
somewhere that you've never been before,
somewhere that no map ever cared to acknowledge,
somewhere stained with my essence,
my idiosyncrasies,
and your new found head trauma.

And you're a rational guy
and I'm an on again off again rational girl
who needs a little help stilling the edges of her narrative,
who longs for a tether or a buoy
to keep her from flying off or sinking down.

So maybe if you held my shoulders to stop me from spinning,
my vision would sober up,
and I'd focus solely on your curves and your angles
as they entered my retinas,
while the rest of the world behind you
faded into blurry suggestions
to be adhered to by someone who gave a **** about them

And after you wiped the puke from your shoes,
maybe you'd see me focused in your eyes
and maybe, just maybe...

...you'd just call me your dream girl.