"So what can we do for you today?" he asks
My expression unwaveringly content as if wearing a mask
"A lobotomy!" I say with a half-subdued smile
The doctor says he hasn't "heard that one in a while"

Little does he know I am completely serious
And in just a few minutes we being to discuss
"Now why would you want a lobotomy?" he asks leaning in
After a deep breath, I'm all too eager to begin

No bills, no job, no expectations
No depressing lack of motivation
No world hunger, no homeless men
No fear, no stress, no depression

"No love" doc says, sensing I'm the romantic sort
"No heartbreak, cheating, or divorce" I snarkily retort
No lies, no betrayal, no used-to-be friends
No mortgages, no insurance, no trying to meet ends
No hopelessness, no emptiness, no what-ifs or regrets
No innocence or loss of it, no piling up debts
No 8 A.M. alarm, no "what's the point?"
No recurring pain in my left shoulder joint
No waking up from a dream and facing reality
No resenting myself, no one taking advantage of me
No broken sink, no "I'll deal with it later"
No bug problem, no blasting-bad-music neighbor
No thoughts, no feelings, no doing a thing
Just sit, breathe, and eat what the nurses bring
No voice in my head, no have to eat healthy
No "rest when I'm dead" or work 'til I'm wealthy
No final straw in my constant fight
To try to find reasons to keep living life
No fear of the future, no lies from the past
No more constant sadness, I finish at last

An empty silence falls over the moment
The doctor is thinking and his face starts to show it
And then he said something I'll never forget
"I guess you're right, let's get a date for it set"
Doc so strangely agreeing I suddenly hesitate
And before he says more, I can only say "wait…"
"Maybe not yet," I sheepishly say
Maybe there's hope, if even just a ray

I think about life then say "what the hell, why not?"
There may still be hope even if it's impossible to spot
But hoping for hope might be enough for me
To save my brain from a lobotomy
And if in a few years things still aren't going well
I guess I'll still just keep living because eh, what the hell

On the evening of my sixteenth birthday
I remember curling my hair with an iron and
burning the tips of my fingers pink,
mumbling pained words under my breath
that I probably shouldn’t ever repeat
unless I desire to live beneath the shadows
of adult eyebrows being raised so high
they might never come back down

as if they had never said something like that
before

that night I put on a silver dress,
and lipstick so red it almost gave the illusion
that I had been bleeding from the mouth
but I felt unstoppable, so why not?

“why not” was the question
that was always replaced with stone-cold silence
and the shrug of a shoulder
instead of an answer

that night, I blew out sixteen flaming candles
and felt beautiful,
surrounded by the smiles of friends I had met in high school
and ones I had known since the days when our only worries
revolved around who had the prettier Barbie doll
and who held hands during recess in the fourth grade
and these thoughts caused my stomach to somersault because,
now that we were illuminated by candlelight and the brightness of celebration,
everything had changed.


I blew out my candles and did not wish
for a car, or a new wardrobe, or for more
faces to call my friends, but rather,

I wished to be taken seriously.

I knew there was a deep-rooted problem
when I became acquainted with real love for the first time
And everyone said that I was too young, too incompetent to understand
What that word even meant,
That I was silly for believing that such a concept could exist
When you’re sixteen and five and a half feet tall
and not that great at chemistry or parallel parking
and can barely even hold up a strapless dress
as if somehow that dictated
that I was too small, too stupid to realize that
love was something much bigger than I am
but I did.
I do.

And there is something so contagiously twisted
That lurks in our society like a epidemic
The idea when your age lies between thirteen and eighteen
you are not really a person
that instead, you are a shadow of ignorance that sleeps all day
and clothes yourself in different shades of apathy
and that the only things you care about are
alcohol-induced parties on Friday nights and
losing morals and hours of sleep while gaining temporary highs
as if that is the highest I will ever go in life

you have to be kidding me.

because you might look at someone like me
and snarkily remark that I never look up from the screen of my phone
and you might think that my taste in music is repulsive or that
I’m only holding his hand because I love the thrill of letting it go,
and you might think that people my age have brains
that contain only a spoonful of intellect and the rest is just
empty space filled up with disease
but maybe it is time that your pedestal falls
and you realize that the older the wiser
is hardly ever true at all

I have witnessed lives spiraling out of control

the truth is not that we are dirt
and no, I am not taking pictures of myself unclothed
or chatting with strangers in online rooms
maybe the reason why I’m on my phone
is because I’m talking my best friend out of killing herself
and I’m researching time travel and why the happiest people hurt the most
and a cure for my own depression
and better words to fit my poetry
I am not equal to the garbage you see kicked to the curb of the street
Or scenery while you ride on by in your horse and carriage

I am just as great
As someone who has spent 80 years of their life achieving
And if time is uncontrollable
Then why am I being treated like somehow,
I have not chosen to be here long enough to know anything at all

And one day I dream of having my words praised for the truth that they are
Rather than having eyes roll back in guilty judgment
Because I have not lived as long as you have
And yet I am the one writing the words

Because yes, I am sixteen.
I haven’t even been here for two decades
but I do not search for happiness in empty glass bottles and clouds of smoke like you think I do
and I do not play with hearts like they’re made of matches
because I know that they burn
and when I tell him that I love him
I am not doing it to **** time
and I know that life is sacred and
impossible to retrieve once it’s gone and I am not going to waste
the precious seconds of my own aching until someone decides
that maybe, I am worth listening to.

Because I know that I am.
And on my sixteenth birthday,
as I smiled scarlet in every photograph
I was right--
I am unstoppable.

During finals week, I’d spent days on various reports and papers, scribbling in the margins of notes and books, checking facts, revising flashcards and prepping with friends.
I’ve an unshakable faith in plodding persistence.
We were tested and sent packing.

Today, I’m in Geneva, with Peter (my bf). He works for CERN. I’m on vacation - but he has to work sigh. Peter apartments with a roommate, so, oh-****, we had to make alternate arrangements.
We’re ensconced at the fabulous Hotel de la Paix. It’s my treat, I’ve been dorm-roomed for months, and Vive la différence!

The hallways are hushed here, as if moss-covered - noises fade quickly after use. The purposeful quiet feels physical, like a cotton covered fairytale hug after noisy dorm life - where doors slam and people yell at 3am.

Freshly cut flowers accent with color, and infuse the suite with scents that calm and relax like subconscious aromatherapy. This is the land of chocolate, and little treats are stashed everywhere to surprise and delight.

I’m a cryophile - from the Greek "kryos" (cold) and "philos" (lover) - I like my environment cold. In the dead of New Haven winter, when it’s 20°f, I sleep with my dorm room windows open and I seldom use more than a sheet for cover. When Peter would sleepover, he’d try and close the windows, “GEE-zus,” he’d say.
“Don’t be a big baby,” I’d suggested, generously cracking them back open again, “I’ll keep you warm.”

That being said, have you ever slept under freshly starch-pressed egyptian-cotton sheets?’
The cotton is orchid petal light and soft - the starch-pressing means the top sheet stands-off your skin, only barely resting on you, as needed - like an angel's kiss.
At college, I handle the menial chores of daily existence, like laundry service, and there are no freshly pressed sheets.

Hmm.. ok, something poetic-ish

Our experiences are stacked,
laid and layered like bricks.
We’re making something
but the form isn’t clear.
Is it solid and cohesive
- will it last - who knows?

I’d been Facetimimg with Lisa (she’ll join us next Friday), while Peter looked through some work papers. Since he isn’t on vacation, he wants to finish something before we leave for Paris tomorrow, where we’ll meet my parents for mothers-day.

As I came into the bedroom, Peter, propped up on the bed, said, “You ladies were talking for a while.” And still not looking up from his papers, he added, “How’s Lisa?”

I thought I’d made a firm decision - but now I was afraid.  
Still, after a moment - I just blurted it out, saying, “I told her I love you.”
I’d said it in a rush - my pounding heart sounded like thunder.

He looked up. “You did?” He asked, radiating an irritating amount of pleasure.
As I’d said it, I felt a relief that turned into a wave of anxiety verging on nausea.
He still had an open mouthed expression of success and pure joy, so I said, “Shut up.”

“Say it again,” he asked, laying down his papers and taking off his reading glasses, “what you said to her.”
For some reason, I felt a sudden hopelessness. “Not now,” I said, turning away.

“Why,” he asked, I could hear the smile in his voice of insistence.
“Because.. reasons.” I explained, then I went into the bathroom and turned on the water.
“Tell me!” He pleaded from the other room.
I felt flushed, and didn’t want to talk, so I squeezed-out too much toothpaste and started to brush my teeth.
“I can’t heah muuf,” I said, purposefully inaudible through a mouth full of suds.
“Anais,” he called, but I closed the bathroom door and leaned back against it.
I suddenly wanted to go home.. or back in time.

Later, I’d calmed down. Was my declaration really a secret - or common knowledge available to the most casual observer?
We’d had dinner room-serviced (Nordic-fusion cuisine from the Fiskebar) but I still felt a little off and moody. We were settled on an uncomfortable, Ikea-like, off-white couch and we’d queued-up ‘Parks and Rec,’ when I had a terrible thought.

“You must think I’m easy,” I voiced it, looking down, my hair hiding my face from him, “the way school ends and I just flee into our arms.”
“You.. EASY?” He said with a chuckle, “NNNOO,” he added snarkily.

I turned on him sharply, tucking my hair back behind my ears for verbal combat. “I feel like I’m being very vulnerable with you and you’re just laughing,” I pronounced.

“ALL right,” he said softly, as he turned and wrapped his arms gently around me, “don’t get yourself all wound-up - or I won’t get a chance to say ‘I love you,’ back.”
.
.
songs for this:
Good Life by Sammy Rae & The Friends
​​Swingin Party by The Replacements
Redwood Tree by Jamie Drake
All My Girls Like To Fight by Hope Tala