When I was nine
My mother asked, “What do you want to do when you’re older”
And I told her
Honestly
With my nine-year-old smile
As wide as an ocean
My nine-year-old heart
As deep as infinity
I told her, “mama, I wanna touch the stars, I wanna find pirate treasure, I wanna climb mountains and live in the treetops”
My mother,
She looked at my nine-year-old smile
She held my nine-year-old heart in her hands
and she whispered,
“Baby, how are you gonna do all that?”
I didn’t have an answer
You see,
At age nine,
I didn’t think about practicality
Or actuality
Or logicality
Or any big word with an -ality stuck to it
At age nine I had aspirations that I rode like angel wings
Dreams that would carry me to the stars I longed to hold
I was nine years old with a mind full of colors
And a mouth made to love
My heartbeat was the drum I marched to
The melody to my song
I told my mother once again “mama I wanna touch the stars”
Flashforward
I am a freshman in high school now
I stand before you,
Age 15
A year and a half away from driving
3 years from applying
4 years from finding what I’m gonna do with my life
Since then
My nine-year-old smile has dwindled
My nine-year-old heart has shriveled
These dreamers shoulders have hunched
Under the weight of textbooks and GPA's
The fingers that spewed color like a 64 pack of Crayola crayons
Aimlessly type out the final paragraph of an essay
The cavern in my chest, that was filled with infinite possibilities and wonders and questions that I longed to answer
Now sits
Empty
Instead of looking for mountains to climb
My aged nine-year-old mind
Searches for the college that will accept me
Not even the real me
Not the seeker of possibility
Not the tree climber
Not the wannabe fingerprint artist
They will take prim and proper not-nine-year-old me
the one who tells her mom she’s gonna major in finance but she hates math
The one who’ll have a steady 9-5 that’ll numb her skull and make her contemplate if death can come from boredom
A coffee tainted room of pencil skirts and high heels
Instead of her favorite blue jeans and Chuck Taylors
A nice job that’ll pay well but only for the price of her nine-year-old originality
But she only tells her mom that because it sounds like a real job
A not nine-year-old treehouse living
Cave exploring fantasy
I mean, I have to move on from that dream.
It's time to be practical
Actual
Logical
Now instead of making up new words
I learn definitions of the ones that already exist
Instead of painting with my own colors
I use the ones handed to me
Because its practical
Actual
Logical
Its how it should be.
I am no longer nine years old
Far from it at that
And yet,
I still long to touch the stars,
just a little less
I still want to search for treasure
But just as an afterthought
My eyes are still glowing with wonder
Just a little bit duller
Nine-year-old me isn’t dead
She just
grew up

When people ask what I do for a living,
I respond

“Listening to my heart ******
as my mind garden blossoms
incandescent indigo constellations
humming the songs of nature’s entirety.

I sensually embrace the entirety’s
divine lips kissing my spirit
with sacred words
merging into me—
a blissful osmosis of neurotransmitters
waltzing with my consciousness
flowing liquid electricity
and molten rhythms of oxygen
in kinetic unison through moments
of subjective apocalypses
slowly returning to yugen.”

When asked where I see myself in ten years,
I respond

“Copacetic contentment—
having surrendered my life
to more than just the digital currency
of likes and retweets
and the constantly dissolving paper coins
because I chose to see people
as breathing pieces of naked art,
in progress,
stripped down to their thoughts
jettisoned through this spherical time
of infinite space and possibility
slowly accepting there is more out there
beyond traditional political religical flimflam,
beyond abnormal logicality,
beyond nirvana.”

This is me
Breaking softly, softly
Like crisp mounds of sand
succumbing to the winds.
Because sand
is porous. Unretentive
I'm like this sand
Forgetting good memories
Forgetting conflicts
Forgetting them all at once.
•
Breaking softly, softly
like a house
losing its life to a fire in minutes
Because fire
has no regard for history.
Is wild. Persistent
And I'm like this house
Yielding to the gentle build up of this sweet inferno
Disregarding my age-old vows to "never be bait"
•
And breaking softly, softly
like a feeble brick-wall
Under the downpour of torrential rains. Because brick-walls
are volatile. Unstable.
I'm like this brick-wall
crumbling under the weight of my shortcomings
under the weight of my non-stop errors.
•
You are wind.
Blowing away my reasons for guardedness
Because you've given me less reasons to be
You are fire
Having no regards for the history behind my careless habits
Because there's really no need for it anymore.
You are rain.
Eroding this sanctuary I call
"The place of logicality"
Because logicality never won in the Place of Emotions.
•
But this doesn't mean that I'll stop
Resisting the winds, the fires, the rains. Resisting you
And why?
I don't know either.
And I don't know who will win this war
You, or my stubborn heart.
•
But truth remains that
this is me
Breaking softly, softly
For you.

Two stations’ negation
Clasped by ands, the
Parentheses betroth
Like wedding bands.
But faithful constants,
Anything but,
My mistress, she’s thine
And from permutations
Is thusly cut.
But embrace, do I
This incestuous reality
And all for the love of my
***** Logicality.
And that, in one sense,
Flagrant ambivalence,
And yet, in another,
I blush with kisses from
Tautological Equivalence.

In this electric wind
I've found a senseless care
A prevalent doubt of the sound
heard as a cry of the masses
Drowning out observation
I am told to learn
from some instructing voice
and to disregard the question
of where his knowledge
and right
do actually come from
I'd rather dream my own Bible
I conclude on my own
because of intuition and independence
logicality?
or fear?
I refuse
for the same reason you close the book of mystery
and conclude
My head hurts and I feel eerily like you must have

Snow comes down
Bombarding, blinding.
Streets bustle.

Love, though beauteous,
May raze one’s sanity and logicality
Plunging them into an epoch
Of incapacity and hysteria.
Time may feel as though it has
Ceased it’s progression.

The depravity eats away at the heart,
Wringing out all hope, all happiness.
Though composure may be maintained.
Or it can be spilt on the hard floor.

The snow stops,
The air becomes crisp and clear.
Time finds its equilibrium
⋯
The streets bustle once again.

the end
is nigh

when ink blots drip on stark white pages  
curling and crawling along
the crisp white of paper
telling a chilling tale
of something sinister

it lurks in depths of devilry
heavy darkness scraping down strong
dragging its spiny black fingers along
the remnants of cordiality
puncturing at the corners of rationality
drowning all logicality
for you know it writes scouring all identity
building demons in intensity
peaking in tantalizing brutality

its contempt robs the light of your pages
albeit, this is a story familiar to all ages
for you know the chronicle of this beast
he who bloodies his teeth
as a begrudging and hateful feeder
whose name

is Jealousy
dear reader