My friend, no my best friend.
a bright bubbly soul.
how do I describe you?
you are a sunshine after the clouds pass.
you are the rainbow after an awful storm.
we all have hurt and pain yet you teach me to survive.  
you taught me how to move on.
in a moment of desperate despair I meet my little sunshine.
someone who I can console my feelings with.
a beautiful, bright girl who made me see the world shining.
you are a hand when I have fallen down.
a shoulder when I need to cry.
you have a joke ready when I need to laugh.
making me have the best memories to look back at.
turning nights of social media scrolling into a night of adventures.
Andie a girl who changes my life everyday.

Del sat on the steps in front of a brick building, smoking a cigarette. She looked more like a thick, young teenage boy that a woman in her mid-twenties. With her track jacket collar pulled up tight around her, she recoiled into herself, slinking back into the steps. She siphoned a long deep inhale of smoke.

Andie blew the cigarette smoke through her tightened lips and whistled the smoke at the mirror in front of her. She reviewed her reflection critically with squinting eyes. It was cold and dark in the room except for the hot glow of cigarette and the glare of a bare light bulb without a lampshade. Her skin stood up with goosebumps and her ******* were small and hard.

She put her ears up in a
perky
quirky manner,
and smiled with a full tongue out at the purple clouds cast against the salmon sun.

Finally, we had found something in common.

We sweat and gasped together, but we felt beautiful together.
And I scratched the exact spot on each side of your face simultaneously
which cripples you momentarily as you fall over in excitement just to hear me say one consonant.

And for the two seconds we gazed, the leash in my hand became more than vinyl weave.
It was a connection we didn't understand, something money doesn't own, and something God never created.

We were us.


But peaceful bliss dies as quickly as the squirrel she smells,
had the leash not been wrapped around my blood-thirsty, suffocating forearm.
So back down the stairs we walk (run) as her smile tightens and mine fades like the pigment of my arm's skin.

some things in me dying are gods
(but not magic

    no


                                 magic always


unfurls 'er little
tickling
in my
and
                   i

                                )she the


              magic


to caress
'gainst my cheek

the easy span:
her innerest thigh

(i to kiss which up
crawl
fantastically into
tightness


                andie    )

H,

We can be two halves of one idiot,

You take Jupiter, and I'll take Mercury

Together powerful though laughable,

We are asked for mercy.

We are messengers and we mean you no harm

Earthlings. We may look fierce, but we are

Even fiercer so. We may have soft skin,

But our hidden edges

Don't hide

We were created from destruction

And we destroy our path

No, we won't destroy what's in our path

But rather

We will destroy our preemptive destinies

And create new ones for ourselves

You can call us revolutionaries,

Or hopeless romantics

Inlove with life and its soil

And sand and toils and

Hands held and

Beverages boiled

Beauty is skin deep,

But diamonds cut farther.

You are a deep cut

That bleeds and bleeds

That wants to be freed

You are burnt skin that peels

A medication that heals

You are the essence of life

And strife

And a beloved wife

You are swamps and rivers

You are the campfires

That cure the midnight pool shivers

You are the spark behind the lighter

A lover, a fighter

The smoke that drifts off the match

The wake and bake (the best batch)

I love you deeply, steeply,

And I love you to bits

Cheers that tea exists

With HAD on your cup

And my lipstick prints

With a pop of 2018 champagne,

I wish you a life free of pain,

A lack of fuckery,

And beauty to have the world slain

May your flesh be tattooed

And your toes sandy

Signed, Andie Pandie

You came home with us yesterday after we connected at the local homeless shelter.
Mom wanted you, and so she channeled through our eyes to guide us to the right decision.
Her absence was never unnoticed.
But we did well, with a soft heart we found you and you accepted our invitation.
Soft spoken quickly became pack leader.
As pack leader quickly became elder.
As elder became...
... Are you there? Did you wander too far again? Should I start the car to drive the blocked radius you love to rome?

But no, there's no need to locate my car keys, because you slipped beyond,
And I payed no attention to your foothold.
I never said my goodbyes because you fell so soon, without warning you moved into the darkest realm.

But I'm thankful for your simple passing at the same time that I weep for you, for my mother, and for your now lonely sister.
The transition was graced by something bigger than us.
Too long did we wait for Sarah,
When we had the chance to relieve we deceived.
And we thought it was beneficial but you had the worrying eyes that told all emotions,
You knew it was time, but we couldn't read you.
Thankful are we for the extra hours,
But pained are we for her extra suffering.

The last time I saw you, those eyes came back,
And I knew it was for you and not for Andie.
At this point I could have wished you peace for the last time but I didn't.
"In four weeks she'll still be here", I thought and denied myself of pain momentarily.
I patted your head when I should have hugged,
And I should have given 30 minutes, not 30 seconds.
I regret the time not spent just looking at you.
So I apologize for ignoring the signals you sent,
And I hope you forgive the lack of attention I gave.
When I see you again with everyone there to greet me-
Mikey
Jeffy
Sarah
And now you-
I'm going to love you deeply.
I'm going to make up for past bath times neglected and postponed.
But most importantly, we will all love you together as deep as the ocean,
And who knows where we will swim to?

As I near the inevitable end of summer break, I am filled with excitement at a new school year..... but I also feel dread at the reminders of student life.
Although I love the poetic justices of 80's movies occupants and their school life, I cannot help but feel cheated.
Watching Molly Ringwald have rad adventures with Anthony Michael Hall, I couldn't help but think that I, too, would get to experience a magical birthday or fall in love or have a wacky adventure.

  I wished to be Andie in Pretty in Pink, or Claire in The Breakfast Club, or Sam in Sixteen Candles.
I longed for the friends who were as weird, or even more so than me.
To have the beautiful boy fall for me in that cliche way we all love.
To be a different kind of unusual beauty in a plastic world.

   I would still love all of these things, HOWEVER, I love my life.
I would not trade my current comrades for Duckie, or ******, or even Sara Baker.
I wish not to change the circumstances or a crush or a mutual liking that may never happen.
I can't, unfortunately, say that I love my natural beauty.

   Even as I long to live like Molly, I long to live like me.