I often wish that I was still a child.
So many things change when we grow up.
Innocence becomes lost,
days become shorter,
the nighttime still scares me,
playing house becomes a game of survival,
boys become men, men become frightening,
I become sad, worried, anxious, and self-aware,
friends will lose their half of the necklace or their friendship ring,
being loved by someone will determine my worth,
I no longer feel small next to the kitchen counter,
but in the presence of everyone around me,
“Forever” loses its meaning,
everyone will eventually leave,
death is no longer a myth,
I will not smile as often as I did,
I will not cry as little as I did,
I will not feel safe in school anymore,
I will not go outside and play anymore,
I will try and pick the imperfections off of
my skin until it is red and bleeding,
**** in my stomach whenever I walk,
work myself into exhaustion,
feel overwhelmed by every task,
have anxiety attacks in public places,
and wish that I was a child again.

Isn’t is strange how we notice things when it is too late?
This is probably the last time that all of us will be in the car together. There will be no more midnight drives from hillside theatres. No more 2am dinner plans at kerbey lane.
This is the first time that I have noticed that you twirl your hair when you drive. My eyes have shifted from cityscapes flying across backseat windows to watching you wrap your hair around your finger.
It’s not slow and flirtatious, but quick and desparate, as if you're trying to distract yourself from the fact that we are growing up. It’s making me anxious, but I can’t look away.
This is the first time that I noticed the change in our silence. We are driving down nearly empty highways, and we are leaving behind our time. We are no longer laughing, and this silence doesn’t feel like it usually does. For once, none of us have anything to say. Or maybe, we know that there is not enough time to say all of the things that we should and want to say.
This is when I noticed how much I love driving down empty highways at midnight. Everything is slow, there is no rush, and, for once, there are no expectations of me.
I am finally, truly noticing that there will never be enough time to tell you all that I love you,
to hear you talk about science,
to hear about your travels,
to talk to you about your struggles,
to drive, and laugh, and cry with you,
to watch you twirl you hair.
Now, we have grown up, and our distances will strain our years of friendships,
and there will never be enough time with you.

I have locked myself inside of my car in the middle of the school parking lot.
I can still hear the ringing of the bell that caused us to scatter out of the school like ants escaping from a disrupted colony ringing in my ears. I am no longer a fire ant, but a caged animal, and I’m not sure who the metal barrier around me is supposed to be protecting. I still don’t feel safe.
I am thinking about how the glass at the zoos muffles the sounds of the animals, and how you might miss their cries unless you stopped walking and got right next to the glass. I don’t want to be seen, but, at the same time, I am hoping and waiting for people to stop walking past me, stand next to my car, and listen.
I am laying down in my back seat like a wounded animal, and my screams are being muffled by me burying my face into the seat. I no longer feel like a caged animal, but a fish inside of a tank. I don’t know how long I have been crying, but I feel like I am drowning. You can’t hear noises in the water unless you are below the surface yourself. I feel like I am the exhibit in the aquarium that everyone ignores because whatever’s in the water is hiding under a rock.
My head feels as though it will explode, I can’t breathe, everything is blurry, my chest hurts, I can’t stop crying, and I have convinced myself that I am dying. When my cousin was three, he would have died if my dad had not performed cpr on his blue, limp little body after he was pulled out of the pool. Now, he is eleven, and he knows how to swim, but I don’t have the heart to tell him that you don’t need water to drown.
Now, I am wishing that I had been the one that drowned that day.
I am sitting in a fish tank, I have no gills and I can not breathe.
My screams are silent, nobody can hear me, and I am kicking the inside of the car to try and make some noise, but everyone has gone home by now.
I am able to breathe again and I have grown a pair of lungs.
I am sitting in a zoo after closing hours, and all I can do is practice my roar and try to be heard again in the morning.

If you are afraid of the unrequited, there is a chance you might have learned it from a parent. and you were probably young; children are too impressionable. it lingered in the air and echoed through the silence when you asked your mom when you were going to see dad again. the word “unrequited” is a taste bud on the back of your tongue that will always remind you how even the sweetest things turn sour.

If you are afraid of the unrequited, you will start to type a message to your friends because the loneliness has become to heavy, but you will always be stopped by the sour taste of trying to swallow your pride.

If you are afraid of the unrequited, you might apologize for yourself every day and tell people that you wouldn’t blame them if they cut you off. maybe being alone will feel a little easier if you are certain you did something to deserve it.

If you are afraid of the unrequited, you might go out in public to make sure you are seen,

talk to yourself to know that you have a voice,

watch strangers converse to convince yourself that everybody has somebody, even you,

you might write poetry to try and teach yourself the lessons on the love that was never requited to you.

There’s an “e” in your name.
2. It’s also composes a syllable of it.
3. Things will always empty, no matter what. Even bottles, for example. Especially ones that contained alcohol. You seemed to enjoy emptying those quite a lot.
4. Once, I emptied a pen of it’s ink while writing about you.
5. There is no “e” in my first name, but you pronounced it as if there was, replacing the first “a” with an “e”.
6. I always, and still do, get annoyed whenever people mispronounce my name, but never when you did it. I always knew that you were the one calling it. You were the one thing I was always sure of.
7. The other night, I tried to think of other things that started with “e” and “a”. I found “always” and “eventually”. Just as you substituted the “e” for the “a”, we substituted “always” for “eventually”.
8. Or maybe it could stand for “eventually an alcoholic”?
9. I just wish that you could have emptied your heart out to us just as easily as you could empty a bottle down your throat.
10. Ever since you told us that you drove home drunk I’ve been thinking about writing an eulogy.
11. Please don’t make me write one. Not while we’re so young.
12. Eventually, everything expires, like our patience, our vitality, and our days.
13. You haven’t spoken to anyone in months, and I don’t know how to reach you, or if you even want me to. When I saw your mother this past October, I wanted to ask her if she knew had badly you had been struggling, but I didn’t because I know that you would have hated me for it. There was a reason you had tried to keep your addiction a secret.
14. The letter “e” is the most used letter in the alphabet. How can you ask me to forget you when nearly every word I write has a trace of you in it?
15. I would never pick up a pen again if it meant that I could hear you mispronounce my name one more time.

What I mean to say is that I heard the angels weep when I first saw you smile. I imagined that there was an invisible string wrapped around my heart and tied to the corners of your mouth.
        When you smirked, my heart skipped a beat.
Before that, your lips were parted, your mouth was open ever so slightly, and I have never ached so badly to kiss someone.
        I thought about how they would feel under the touch of my
        fingertips.
Your eyes--the color of the soil of the earth.
        I've dreamt of being buried in both.

So it goes--God created everything, and everything he created was good.
        And you are the firmament; you are the most heavenly,
        wondrous thing.

Sometimes, I feel like being a magician.
I’ll open my box full of wonders and curiosities, and I’ll pull out the stacks of old birthday cards that I have received throughout the years.
I’ll fan them out like a deck of 52.
If I had you pull out a card, I’d already know who it was by the way that your hand hesitated to touch it.
He writes his love on postcards, and she writes hers on lined paper.
You see, guessing who the cards are from is the easy part.
Making them reappear is what I haven’t mastered.

Daydreams that exist only inside of my head have been laid to rest in the corners of my mind.
Lately, I’ve been looking at the raindrops sliding down my car window and wondering what that feels like to be water. I watched the approaching headlights light up the raindrops like twinkle lights, and my body began to ache for my childhood innocence, for the ability to believe in Santa Claus and his reindeer, in the tooth fairy, in the Easter bunny, and in the idea that I was always going to feel that happy.
Lately, I’ve been watching everyone around me live, and I’ve been wondering what that feels like. My heart feels like a retired opera singer performing to the empty auditorium of my chest that she once conquered. I see my purpose as a single, insignificant star in the sky that I can never seem to find. My bed sheets have become a second layer of skin, and turning the **** of my bedroom door has become one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.
Lately, I’ve been reading back on my old journals, comparing entries that are a year apart side by side. “This time last year,” I say to myself.
This time last year, I told myself that things will change. The only thing that changed is that I have made a jail cell out of a dorm instead of my home. I am a year older, but I still feel as anxious, exhausted, and defeated as I used to.
Lately, I’ve been daydreaming that I love myself, about being happy, about not feeling out of place, about being where I want to be.
“This time next year,” I tell myself, “This time next year.”
This is the one mistake that I can never seem to learn from.

My name is not one that is so easily forgotten. I’ve met faces
who shake my hand and admit that my name has a familiar ring. It
will wrap itself around your tongue,
take shelter in the grooves of your brain,
etch itself into your flesh,
and make a drumbeat of your pounding heart.

I am the red flowers that bloom in the Western Cape.
I am the violet quartz, the precious gemstone,
and I may be worn around your finger or wrapped around your
neck if the month of lovers breathed life into your lungs.

I am rooted in the grounds of Israel.
I was promised by God in the Hebrew tongue.
My blood is spread over the Middle East,
my complexion is of light-bathed soil,
and I am a unity of scattered heritage.

You cannot forget me, no matter how you may try.
I am cradled in the back of your mind.
I live in shades of red, from flowers to blood.
I live in shades of purple, from gemstones to sunsets.
I am the embodiment of love,
and I linger in every inch of this Earth.

We are stuck in a memory, a time that no longer exists. Haunting the abandoned cavities of chests, the still chambers of hearts, we are living in a standstill. When we gather the courage to speak our piece, we are failed by the echoes reverberating off of hollow walls.
We are waiting for someone to break the back and forth, to hear something other than white noise,
the ticking of a clock,
and our worn out affections that have long since lost their worth.
We are ghosts living in the ashes of old flames,
until life is brought back into these bones,
or we are laid to rest in our graves.

But you will soon leave back to the place you have been longing for.
And when you get there, another woman will find her way into your veins. She will pull my hairs out from your carpet, wash my fingerprints from your walls, and throw out my skeleton that you kept in the closet. She will try to lay me to rest, but I will always be restless. I will be doomed to haunt a heart that never belonged to me and to linger in the moment when our eyes first met.
I cannot go back to the place I have been longing for.

Whitened by aged wisdom and wonder, you reminded me a lot of a dandelion: I’d see you here and there, a thing so full of mystery, only to be blown away into the next moment where our paths would cross once again.
Whether it were days, months, or years, I knew we’d see each other again.
A spirit so strong that it frightened my youthful being grew to be one that I held brought me to my knees in adoration. You taught me how to be loud, how scream at my timidness and make it cower in fear. You taught me that words are so much more than ink on paper, that they breathe, they are alive. You taught me how to command a room, that I deserve to be heard, and that, like nature, all I needed to thrive was a light.
You see, I’ve always took Dandelions for granted, because I knew that I would see them again one day, and then, there would always be another chance to make one more wish.
If I had known that our time would have been cut short, I would have made a wish for you.
My hands will plant what you gave me, your wisdom will grow a dandelion.
I will pluck you from the earth, I will let your love glide through the air, and I will make sure it spreads to every corner of the world.

I can’t forget you.
The both of us share a face.
I can’t see myself.

Should I be trying to repair the bridges that she so easily burned?

You won’t live there forever.
One day, you will leave this place, and you will
take all of your things with you. You will decide what to keep and what to throw away.
When you are cleaning out your home,
emptying your room,
what will you do with my skeleton in your closet?

I'll never understand how the things that made us fall in love became the things that made us fall apart.

Everything has an ending.
Today, my shift at work ended, and I walked to my car. On the way home, I listened to Balance and Composure, and I thought about their breakup a few months ago. Two years ago, my friend and I saw them at the Mohawk. I wish that I had known that it was going to be the first and last time I saw them live. I would have gone a little crazier, I would have stage dived, and I would have brushed up on the lyrics a little more.
On the drive home, I also had my window rolled down. The sunset looks prettier without glass in front of it. I thought about how days end, and how, on the end of this particular day, I didn't cry on the way home because my sadness had temporarily ended. I started thinking about the ending of more things.
High school had finally ended, and I had graduated. I was eighteen now, and being a child had ended as well. Friendships have ended, and there have been times when I wished that my ending would come sooner. There were times when I didn’t want to see another sunset, hear another morning dove, or get myself out of bed. There were times when I wished that I could drown in the crowded hallway’s sea of bodies. Sometimes, when I read I count how many pages there are between where I am and the end of the book. I wish that I could just be patient, enjoy things instead of worrying about when they’re going to end.
I think about the future too much. I think about the inevitable. I wish that I had known when the last time was going to be the last time.
I would have stage dived, I would have told you that I cared for you and made you understand that, I would have told you that I loved you, I would have spit in your face and told you to go to hell, and I would have gotten the courage to start a conversation with you instead of biting my tongue out of fear that I would say something stupid and stutter, like I do every time that I get nervous.
But I’ll keep the window rolled up so nobody has to listen to the music; if they don’t ask, then don’t tell. I’ll keep quiet. Does the end of something even matter if nobody cared enough to be a part of it’s journey?

This is not a soft resting of the head, but a surrender.
There is no seafoam to float on, but instead, bones
made from the metal of the anchors of boats, heavy
with the desire of returning to the earth. It is true, light
does exist so long as the sun still burns. But here, in the
depths of a cold that has never been touched by sunlight,
there is only blindness.

The sirens sing melodies reminiscent of the lullabies that
fall from the mouths of mother and into the ears of infants.
To be held, to feel at peace, these innate desires.
To be unborn again.

Fingers grip, the theory of magnetism and the body of an anchor.
Here, there is blindness, a pressuring cold.
Here, the sirens return me to the womb.