If I die in a school shooting
I'll never go home again.
My room will sit unused,
A capsule frozen in time,
A snapshot of how I was.

If I die in a school shooting
I'll never see my dog again.
She will sit at the front door
Waiting for me and wondering,
Why I never came home.

If I die in a school shooting
I'll never graduate from high school.
My yearbooks will sit stacked
Stopped short of their goal,
Missing years that should have been.

If I die in a school shooting
I'll never see my mom again.
She will sit distraught,
Planning a funeral
For a child taken from her.

If I die in a school shooting
I'll never see my friends again.
They'll sit together, missing me.
One empty seat among them,
A constant reminder of their loss.

If I die in a school shooting
I'll never see my little sister again.
She will sit through high school
Knowing I can't guide her through,
That she has to figure it out alone.

If I die in a school shooting
My school will be stained.
Pools of students lives will sit,
Blood tattoos on the brick structures,
Marks of death ground into it.

If I die in a school shooting
Everyone will wear black.
They'll send their thoughts and prayers
To a town marred by death,
Forever to be the home of a shooting.

If I die in a school shooting
Will the world change?
Or will I become one of hundreds  
Of kids who have to die?
What will it take?

If things continue this way
Children will have to live in fear.
They'll look over their shoulders
Always worried and wondering,
If they'll die in a school shooting.

a good way to cry is to read your old yearbooks alone at night
to see that in fifth grade your whole class signed their names
sixth grade was a competition to see who had the most inside jokes
in seventh grade your friends wrote you long notes and your crush took up a whole page
"you make coming to school every day actually enjoyable" and he signed it with love
in eighth grade most of the pages are blank
you got a hot boy to sign (twice) but your crush didn't have time until the promotion ceremony
he wrote that you forgot about him
he signed it with a dash and he added his last name
the only person who took up space in your eighth grade yearbook was your spanish teacher
who you promised to visit but never did
a boy you have known forever was moving away
you will never see him again but he had nothing to say about you
your oldest best friend told you she was saving her usual "novel" for senior year
but you don't plan on being friends by then
a good way to cry is to flip through the pages and count the people who you used to call your friends

There is no need to dwell on the exterior cliche of an injured soldier, the propaganda is superficial. Civilians have only plastic green men, heavy dusty movie set costumes, and Army-of-One heroes to populate stereotypes. Keep your images larger than life, no use touching up a paint-by-number. Mine was banal, foolish, and 19; enough said.

One fence is the fraternity itself, the next is brain injury. No other way to understand but be there. A Solid-American-Made-Dashboard cracked my forehead at 45mph.
Crumpling into the footwell,
unaware that the flatbed's rear bumper
was smashing thru the passenger windshield above me
the frame stopped just shy of decapitating my luckily unoccupied seat.
Our vehicle's monstrous hood had attempted to murderously bury us under,
but the axle stopped momentum's fate and ended the carnage under dark iron.
Shards of my identity joined the slow, pulverized, airborn chaos.
Back, Deep, Gone.

Unconsciousness is the brain's frantic attempt to re-wire neurons, jury rig broken connections, the doctor's desperate attempt to re-attach, stand back and say, good enough. Essential systems limply functioned, but unessential ones were ditched. Years later a military doctor diagnosed an eventual triage: Hypothalimus disconnected from the Pituitary Gland, Executive Function damaged, long pathways for emotional regulation interrupted.

I woke up still kinda bleeding, crusty blood in my hair, a line of frankenstein stitches wandering across my forehead.   My sense of self had literally dissolved into morning dust floating in a sterile hospital sunbeam.  My name was down the hall, words and the desire to speak were on a different floor.  Life became me and also a separate me under constant renovation, a wrecking ball on one half, scaffolding and raw 2x4's the other.

Waking up in the hospital, I realized I needed help to get the blood cleaned up.   A nurse came in, largely glared at me in disregard, and quickly left… for an hour.   She returned and brusquely dropped a useless ace comb and gauze on the blanket over my feet and abandoned me again.  This was my introduction to the shame of a VA hospital.  I minced my way to the bathroom, objectively examined my face in the mirror with shocking stitches above one swollen eye.  Gingerly rinsing my hair, the water ran pink in white porcelain.  I remembered the sound in my skull between my ears when a doctor scraped a metal tool across my skull, cleaning debris before stitching.  I recalled that in the ER I was asking Is he ok, repeating it like a broken record, knowing I should stop but I couldn’t.  There was also perhaps a joke about an Excedrin headache.

It was morning, and since there was no such thing as time or purpose or feelings anymore, I wandered to the hall with my only companion, the IV pole. One side was a wall of windows, and I was, what, 10 or 12 stories up from the streets of a much larger city than where I crashed.  The hall was warm and sunny.  I wheeled my companion to a blocky square vinyl chair to sit next to a pay phone.  I didn’t have any thoughts at all, or care about it.   After about an hour my first name floated up from the void, then with some effort my last name.  It took the rest of the morning to remember I had a brother.  After lunch we resumed our post, and I spent the afternoon in concentration piecing together his phone number.  God had pushed the reset button.

Thirty years ago the doctors didn't understand head injuries; they only recognized the physical symptoms. At first there was good reason to be permanently admitted to the hospital.  My blood pressure was unstable, sometimes so low that drawing blood for tests caused my veins to collapse even with baby needles.  My thyroid had shut down completely, only jump-started again with six months of Synthroid.  I had to learn to live with crashing blood sugar and fluctuating appetite.  For years afterwards, any stress would cause arrhythmias, my heart filling and skipping out of sync, blood pressure popping my skull.  Will the clock stop this time?  

There is always at least one momentous event in every person’s life that becomes punctuation, before and after.  The other side of Before the accident truly was a different me.  I have a vague recollection of who that person may have been, and occasionally get reminders.   Before, I was getting recruiting letters from Ivy League colleges and MIT, a high school senior at sixteen.  After, I couldn’t balance a checkbook or even care about a savings account in the first place.  Before, I had aced the military entrance exam only missing one question, even including the speed math section.  They told me I could chose any rating I wanted, so I chose Air Traffic Control.  Twenty years later, I thumbed through old high school yearbooks at a reunion.   I saw a picture of me in the Shakespeare Club, not recalling what that could have been about.   On finding a picture of me in the Ski Club I thought, Wow, I guess I know how to ski.   A yellowed small-town newspaper article noted I was one of two National Merit Scholars; and in another there’s a mention of a part in the High School Musical.  

This side of After, I kept mixing right with left, was dyslexic with numbers, and occasionally stuttered with word soup.  Focus became separated from willpower, concentration was like herding cats.  The world had become intense.

(chapter 1 continues in memoir)

I knew a kid in highschool
Rather to say I knew him would be an overstatement,
He was a friend of a friend at most,
The boy that sat directly in front of me in my economics class
Second seat from the right, second to last from the back
The corner of the classroom between the whiteboard wall and the windows
I remember that scene like a diagram,
I couldn’t tell you anything I learned from the class but,

I knew a kid in highschool
He was best friends with my childhood best friend
He wasn’t quiet, wasn’t loud- he was a normal highschool boy
I remember the last words I said to him
Well not quite, I remember the vague idea
Something along the lines of it only gets worse
He was talking about the theoretic project where we role played
Each kid acting out as if they were in the real world
He said he was overwhelmed by the amount of work
I told him it only gets worse

I knew a kid in highschool
He killed himself during the weekend
The Monday they announced in I was sick
I was sick
His obituary isn’t up on the internet anymore
Neither is his facebook, he is nothing but a yearbook page
The page to a book I couldn’t afford
He is a memory on bookshelves filled with dust

I knew a kid in highschool but I had to ask a friend to confirm his existence
That I didn’t just make up a daydreamed suicide
I’m so tired of wondering what’s left of us when we die
I spend most of my life running from evidence of my existence
No photos, no yearbooks, nothing with me or my name
I knew a kid in highschool

The formulae for well being
is found in those memories,
a preparedness to unearth
yesterday's yearbooks;
which releases those far flung controls of analogue, 
resurrecting belt driven
record players
to play Starbuck and Brothers Johnson
reviving  '76,
mentally speeding on pristine motorways,
buzzing by on a chevy  corvette
humming to the suggestive "Afternoon Delight"
vying with your Radio's antenna.

It's been drilled in every poor man's head,
by a man only slightly less poor
"money cannot buy happiness."
But I disagree!
If you say that,
You have not watched your father scream at God at 7 in the morning,
questioning His existence,
as we get kicked out of
the second house that year.

I no longer find excitement
in new places.

You've never waited for the first of the month.
Every month.
In order to eat something other than spaghetti
and dollar store hot dogs.

You've never had your power shut off for an entire month
And watch as your family rips apart,
boiling water on the stove just to bathe.

Your parents owe everyone money.

You've never worked in order to buy your cleats, yearbooks, and school supplies.
Only to have your parents take that money, too.

You can send your vibes,
and tell me to think positive.
But the world is distorted!
Our lives are only better now because my family got jobs.

Before,
I watched a bulldozer
go through the house I grew up in,
as the bank sold our home
and built an auto-parts store over dirt
I used to ride my bike on.
The last pieces of my grandmother, crumbled.
My father stayed up every night
and slept through every holiday and birthday, since.

Is that happiness?

He keeps the contents of his life in boxes. The clear Rubbermaid totes with the locking lids that keep the contents from spilling out across the floor when they are least needed. The same containers that keep everything within protected against assailing liquid falling from above. Most of his possessions have long since been discarded, but there is an odd assortment of memories that are kept safe.

A model rocket that his grandfather, long since passed, used to take him to open fields to launch towards the heavens. It never quite reached, but in his mind he was chasing down the parachute of a spaceship returning from a long voyage.

Birthday cards received when it was still exciting to count the years. When the cards still had happy monsters devouring birthday cake and the short handwritten messages read "We are so proud of the person you are becoming".

First place medals from sports competitions, spelling bees, and field days. A single second place medal from a martial arts tournament where brute force could not overcome the wisdom of an elder opponent.

The metal plates off of every baseball trophy earned since playing teeball at age four. When the shelves could no longer support the weight of the trophies they were discarded, and the cheaply made nameplates are the only reminder left that they ever existed.

Too many years of school yearbooks with sloppy signatures following words of wisdom reminding him to stay cool, and that he would see you all again after the summer.

A red, sweat-stained Schlitz hat that was stolen from the older, much more cool, cousin. He stopped asking for its return years ago, and has probably forgotten that it even existed.

Certificates that prove he was once a member of Builder club, Beta club, Phi Theta Kappa, National Honor Society, Student Government, and Junior Ambassadors to the Chamber of Commerce. Reminders of times when joining clubs meant you got to miss class to hang out with your friends.

A single blue ribbon knotted three times as a reminder that it should never be untied. Beyond those simple knots are all of the love letters that were written between him and the first girl that was able to open his eyes so that he could see what love, and loss, truly meant.

An old, barely functioning, paintball gun that he bought with the money from his first real job. The same gun that, through some miracle, gave him and his father their first common interest. He picks it up from time to time and pretends that they are still hiding behind bunkers ready to charge the opposing team.

A tiny red Rock 'Em Sock 'Em robot ring used as an excuse to wrestle around in bed with one of his closest friends on a lazy Sunday afternoon. The blue ring moved far away and has long since stopped answering her phone, knowing that the rematch of the century will never occur.

Diplomas from high school and college that will probably never hang framed on a wall. He was never truly proud of accomplishments so easily attained.

Hiding in the shadows of these boxes is each first kiss that is a stone sitting beneath the shattered mirror friendships that could not hold their weight. He is reminded to find either lighter stones or more sturdy mirrors in the future.

Friends that he has met in countless towns huddle together, trying to stay warm amidst the bitter cold they perceive around them. He calls or texts from time to time, but the embers cannot replace the pyre he used to provide.

Lovers that never expected the love they received in return bask in the solace of the fact that they are rarely seen or disturbed. He smiles when he comes across them, but knows better than to retrieve them from the storage where they are kept.

He still keeps all of the contents of his life in boxes. The same clear Rubbermaid totes with the locking lids, whose transparency allows him to view the contents from afar without disturbing them. He says he uses them so all of the contents don't spill out when he doesn't want them to, but his blurred vision reminds him that he chose the waterproof variety for a reason.

It would only take an hour or two to unpack everything at each new location he moved to, but he knows that the next time he unpacks he will not be doing it alone. It becomes more difficult for him each time he has to condense everyone and everything of import into totes light enough to carry to the next location.

Friends fake endearments written in yearbooks

Or until the reunion when age can’t pretend

Many attend only to feel better about themselves

One night to reminisce, pity accompanying  regret.

The young novelist wrote in his rented room, a claustrophobic nook under the stairwell, where the ceiling sobbed dust each time the owner hurried down to work or hurried up for a forgotten prescription. Shelves crammed with the owner's yearbooks and photo albums lined the walls. He typed at a long oak desk. On which, he had one plant, a gardenia, white flowers in full bloom, and a quote by Buddha on an index card in a four-by-six-inch frame. "You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection."

The sun had quit for the day. He got up and poured out his cold coffee in the bathroom sink across the hall. He dried the mug with a paper towel. Then to the kitchen, where he pressed the button on the box of Merlot, filling the recycled mug. The denouement was coming together. But he hadn't hit his stride, tapped into that secret space where words flow with natural rhythm and proper grace. His hungry or starving or emaciated mother character--he struggled with the diction, the balance between subtlety and a Coca-Cola slinger's criminal word abuse--would decide to eat her baby. Not the ******, the denouement. Critics would **** as only critics could.

He drank one cup of wine while standing in the kitchen then refilled and stepped back into his room. The plant and the Buddha quote were suggestions by his mom. She didn't like him spending so much time alone. Time alone killed her uncle. The young novelist argued it was an indiscriminate heart attack. No, his mother said, it's from all that cheese he would eat. Cheese, his mother contended, was the unitary measure of loneliness, killing you one comforting slice at a time.

Google the symbolism, his mother said of the gardenia.

Secret love.

Oh good.

That's just the first result.

I always loved them.

That was only the first. I bet they're part of the funerary tradition.

Your father used to get them once a year for Pastor Mike. Do you remember that? Around Christmas time. It was your father's way of saying we appreciate your work.

Secret love.

The quote made just about as much sense. A devout--dare he think staunch--Methodist since she was old enough to disagree and berate, his mother's selection of a Buddha aphorism begged suspicion. The young novelist assumed this was an appeal to his academic worldview, a panoramic ideology that protected him from having to value or defend anything, really. Buddhism is **** electronic dance music; Methodism is vaudeville, tired and exploitative. And if his mother was trying to be cool, that disgusted him. But if his mother was trying to meet him halfway, that excited him.

That's it, he thought, the mug now half-empty. The mother is not hungry, not starving, nor emaciated. It's a loving mother. A mother that knows the lows of living. She eats her young in an act of compromise, to protect, to prevent confusion and isolation, hell even Kraft Singles.

He sat and scooted up his chair. He wrote in a fever, a frenetic fictive dream, page by page, scene by scene through the night.

It's a strange thought, isn't it?
That everyone moves on by themselves
And every year we grow older
And that's another yearbook on the shelves

If you asked why I am distant
If you asked why I am scared
It's not that I am not ready
The truth is that I've long been prepared

But all of these people are happy
And I cannot understand how
For when the last show is over
What happens when we take our final bows

Not enough time
Simply
Not enough time
Simply, I

don't know how to thrive
I don't know how to improvise
And with all of these pressures and all of these heights
How do I survive?

It's deeper than anyone should ever dive

If you asked me on a date
I'd say yes, of course
But wait...

Four years,
Two have gone by
Two years,
Soon we'll say goodbye
One year,
So tell me, what's the point?

Stop looking at me like that
It's not up to debate, it's just a cold harsh fact
That soon we all will say goodbye
And all of these people I've known all my life
Will be gone
Far away
Moving on

Reunions, and photos, and dances, and caps
Speeches, and files, and bridging the gaps

Leaving, and going, and never coming back
And still, I'm under attack
Why can't I fight back?

Collecting information, and rumors proved true
If you can be honest, there's nothing I wouldn't do for you
So this year I'll do it differently.
That's what I said before.
But this year I'm committed
To honesty and nothing more

Maybe if I get them to trust me
Who cares if somebody gets hurt
Cause then they will feel it
And know what I'm working for

So keep to yourself
Keep to your dice
Keep to your stories
And the truths that you write

Keep to the dungeons
And the friends who come to play
And maybe if you can't take the future
The past is where you'll stay

My mother,
small thick and
sixty-two this year.

I know her advice on daily measures
resonates much deeper than I admit;
always seeming to pry at that
lone heart-string.

Sometimes, when I am home alone,
I go through her things;
her old photographs,
her high school yearbooks,
her letters;

and I read them.

I imagine her this way:
young, like me,
and in love,
married,
driving a babyblue
Volkswagen Beetle,

telling of how it was the
best car
she ever drove;
the American Dream.

I like to think
my mother
was a pin-up girl instead;
her peroxide hair
glowing in the sun;
the summer of 1971.

Old ballet shoes,
Yearbooks with letters wedged into the cracks promising friendship until the end of time.

The yearbook signatures that promised to call or catch up,
and the signatures that actually should have ended with "good bye".

Children's books and children's clothing,
Tiny t-shirts and itty bitty shorts.

Ticket stubs and concert tickets,
ID cards and senior portraits.

Long lost poetry and crinkled letters
To boys I thought I'd love beyond the time I did.

Photographs of us in our youth
And some of us apart, outgrowing each other.

Homework from freshman year,
Art projects I thought deserved life beyond the magnets on the kitchen fridge.

Baby blankets and old rosaries
for when I thought Jesus could keep my faith in all that's good.

Books I haven't read in years
that still make me smile when I roll my fingers down the spine.

My grandpa's memorial announcement
and his old fishing hat.

The CD's we used to make dances to,
and perform for ourselves in my old costumes.

Friendship bracelets from girl's names I can't remember,
and friendships I lost
Numerous diaries with long entries about being older,
and how someday older will be better,

How age will bring me adventure, maturity, love, resolution, clarity, a sense of myself, happiness.
Here I am with more age, and these endless memories make me wish for the time when I could still fit into the little shorts and stick my tongue out in pictures.

The someday I wrote of is today
and I'm teary-eyed over what used to be.

I'm missing the old you and the old memories,
the old friends and the old ways of happiness.

I'm here, older now,
and I wish I knew if older was better.

When I pointed out the harvest moon to him,
as it hung in the sky, blurred yellow edges
hiding behind a fog,
he laughed at me.
And as the car pulled forward, I saw the shining yellow shell
of the Shell Gas Station shine over the street.
This moon is nothing like your’s.

I find
that when people try to impress me
it all becomes the more unimpressive.
Your talent and true skill
should speak for itself,
jump off the page of your notebook
and indulge my sights with the vision
of your gift.

So when you try
to oh-so-casually remove your shirt
and change as you walk by me
sitting on your bed, reading a text
on my phone and now starting to wish
that I was home,

leave your shirt on—
show me your love.

Don’t tell me about your award from the state.
Let me find the plaque as I wander around the room,
waiting for you to come back from the stove.
Your wallet is thin, but the food is most delicious
when it’s served at your kitchen’s round table.
And as the smells creep into your bedroom
from down the hall,
I slide my fingers along the bookshelves,
pulling out yearbooks and quickly searching for your picture,
hoping to find it before you can notice
I’m not there.
That’s when I’ll find the plaque, resting on a corner of the shelve,
not even hung up.
I’ll bring it up at dinner later, ask what honorable thing you did, good sir.
And then you’ll tell me the story,
And it will be love
ly.

But rather, I’ll sit on the edge of the bed,
nestle my jacket around me tighter
and reach for the intoxication.
I must make myself drunk with something other than love tonight.
I must find the part of me that only knows moonlight, reach her,
touch her, and pull her closer to me. Embrace this new me.
I’ll breathe in her breaths and then press them onto your lips.
And I will forget that this is not love and this is not safe
but I left that harvest moon in another state.

A scrap of paper, photographs
Bills and letters torn in half
Busts and trophies, dust encrusted
History to the yearbooks trusted
Books and writings left unfinished
Home in which the life's diminished
Slight wood carvings, half a speech
Tales of hiking, latched on leech
Kids and wife left in tears
Remembering well my too-short years

I went to visit my friend, Frank
I shouted his name and to no response...
this was the first time in six months
that I went to visit him....
he already depressed about losing his father
and having his wife leave him....
I tried to get his number, to call him
but... he simply disappeared
I got in touch with one of his co-workers
to get his address...

the first I notice when I visited was the unhinged doors
and the broken wine bottles

I went to the kitchen
the first thing I noticed there was the smell of spoiled milk
and the first thing I saw were the rat droppings
and roaches crawling in the bread pantry

I spotted the rusty knives, and smashed plates
the walls were filled with fungus and mold
the roof was the leaking and the doors
were torn off their hinges....
the garbage bags were ripped apart
rotten apple cores, half-eaten oranges
1/3 of a whole pizza and a rusty razor blade
laid bare...

I went upstairs,
they creaked and any second they were about to cave in

on the first door to the right was his room
spiderwebs cuddled with the doorknob
once inside, all I saw was stacked up **** magazines
dried up tissue, and a static TV.....
the pictures were smashed and there was hole in the wall
*******, rusty needles and ****** filled his dresser

I walked out and went to the second on my left
there was the attic.... filled with yearbooks,
degrees, pictures, just so many memories left untouched...

I walked to the last door on my right
that was his bathroom...
I open the door, the first thing I noticed...

it was Frank's body hanging from the rafters
he was wearing a white wedding dress
with makeup smeared all over his face
roaches ate his eyes and his arms
were coated with dry blood...
the toilet was filled with feces
the shower curtains were ripped
and the sink ran brown water
there was no note.....
but the body spoke for itself...

We turn our eyes, grasping with our vision
For the horizon
For the edge
Of a sphere
And we’re lying now
Beside the twilight and the motion
Beside the sea
Beside our fear
We couldn’t fathom
What we should believe in
Reciprocal force, reciprocal affection
Just bodies, Just planets
Just planes
Of existence… in our closets
Under boxes
Beneath yearbooks
On your bed
Weathered autumn
Leaves approaching
In this, our youth’s Winter
Exposing brittle branches
Containing remnants of those lives
Easily extracted from the core
Of my eyes
Then swallowed in the high-tide
Of horizon
Bringing us the future
Of life’s Summer
Enlightened in the morning
Past our fears
As we stand here in mutual Spring time
Grasping vision, with our eyes, of the sphere

(hi, you reading this. I would love some edits and help on how to make this better, thanks so much!)

The air feels like
the backseat
of an old car
that’s been sitting
in the sun
for too long,
and the white,
gunky sun lotion
is sticky and
slippery
on clammy,
red skin,
sweating under
the heat
of the sun.
The same sun
that spills lazily
over the horizon
each morning
to be mopped up
by sandy beach towels,
as the day closes to an end,
each day after another,
melding together
in a band of
memories,
then neatly tucked away,
under old yearbooks,
and faded
photographs,
only to be pulled out
months later
over clusters of sleeping bags
and a flashlight
that’s almost dead.
No longer important,
just another summer
gone by,
the next one
will be just the same.

i feel it in the wind that rattles my window when i can't sleep,
it is always calling out to someone who won't respond.

in the snow that falls and falls and falls and falls,
a fresh start for everything but me.

i feel it in the cars that look like little bugs from my airplane window,
all of them filled with people who are moving and changing and growing.

i am moving too, much faster than them and much higher up,
but i feel like i am at a standstill, stuck in hole and letting time move without me.

on new years, at midnight, taking shots of cider and throwing confetti and wanting to cry,
when my friends aren't enough, when i all i want is to feel his lips on mine but i never can.

i feel it in my folder of school work that i haven't opened yet,
in the thought of going back to take tests and to walk down halls by myself.

i feel it in the three and a half more years before i am free.

in thinking about the future and how many more days they expect me to live through.
in the words i keep repeating in my poems and in the words i don't know how to write.

i feel it in endings and beginnings and in my stupid hope that this year has to be better than the last one.
in the pages of my yearbooks and the texts on my phone and in the mirror every morning.

i feel it in the bottom of my coffee cup and on the underside of my pillow,
in the blanket that holds me when i am afraid nobody ever will. (and they wonder why i love staying in bed.)

(mpr)

It's you.
You.
It's always been you.
From the very beginning
All the way back to when we were little kids without a clue.
Running aroud the school yard in our uniforms.
It started as a cute little kid crush
Then we grew and feelings did too.
Middle school came and you made my heart skip beats when you looked at me in the hallways.
Then I was really sad cause you went onto highschool and we grew apart and I thought
owell it wasn't meant to be
But here we are again all these years later and somehow we've found each other again
And as I look back through old yearbooks and I find your pictures circled or with hearts around them I realize it's always been
You
No matter what no matter how I always ******* come back to you because it's you.
It's always ******* been you.
You...

reading our texts, remembering that it takes you hours to text back
looking at your pictures, seeing how happy you are with every one else
reading my yearbooks and realizing that people change
wondering how i've changed
wondering why i don't change
considering telling you how i feel
considering telling her how i feel
considering deciding how i feel
thinking about how i feel
picturing us together
picturing us apart
picturing you
you
hoping that one day it'll be 3am and we'll be together

right now
i'm imagining
the feeling of sweat
and hairspray
and suspecting that the
church will be hot

the knees of friends
and family all
sticking to the edges of
the blue padded pews

i can practically
feel my clammy hands
and the robe hanging
from my shoulders

rosin on my fingers
i expect that i will
need rosin
and nail polish
to keep me
glued together

i hope
i won't cry
i kind of know
i won't cry
but i bought waterproof
mascara just in case

and i won't be able
to feel my toes because
they'll be numb
in my finest heels

all i want is to be
out of here
but it's still only
in my mind.

and as i'm sitting in bed
contemplating

(you could call it
dwelling or
obsessing but i will
call it good
old-fashioned
contemplation)

i'm thinking about
my graduation
and how i don't even
really care

about a kind of
paltry milestone
inside this year
compared

to the feeling of
the last day of class
that moment on stage
dancing in sneakers
my finest poems
late nights
mornings too early
yearbooks
and every weekend
spent together

i'll miss
everything i had
and dread all
that i don't

but i sure can't wait
to get out

i just have to get
past graduation day.

Every time I drink from that bottle you gave me,
I think of you
Every time I meet someone with your name,
I think of you
Every time I look at yearbooks,
I think of you

Every time I talk with my friends,
I think of you
Every time your best friend texts me,
I think of you
Every time I try to move on,
I still think of you

These kids been out on battlefronts
Holding pistols like prayers
Seeing yearbooks on the news
Mothers folding into themselves,
Masses march streets for solace,
Searching for an end to all of this,
But when firearms fight the fears,
It's hard to dream without one

Someday,
we are going to be looking back at yearbooks,
notes we've written,
other cursed things from the high school years,
and we will find something,
that reminds us of that girl.
We are either going to laugh,
or cry,
or set the thing on fire.
And my god I hope it's all three.

I was so young,
I thought I knew it all.
But it wasn't long,
Before I found out I was wrong.

I did what I wanted without a doubt,
They say actions are louder than words.
And my actions were definitely loud.
I was determined to stand out in the crowd.

When I was younger I thought I ruled the land.
I wouldn't give a dime to be in those days again.
The town was small, but I lived large.
Life was my stage, and I was in charge.

I look at those days now and couldn't believe myself.
I took the yearbooks off the shelf.
Reminiscing my past friends and loves.
All the signatures in the pages.
I put them back when I had enough.

Sometimes I like to live in my past.
The great memories and the trouble I caused.
But you can't stay there,
You can't put life on pause.
Sometimes I like to live in my past.
Just sitting and remembering living young and dying fast.

for years they have wandered,
they have tip-toed through wonderlands and graveyards,
through cities and villages, through meadows and forests
you can tell from the scars that they were damaged,
that each terrain made a mark on their fragile skin

we spend an absurd amount of attention
on how those marks came to be; not enough
on the middle, who struggles to wash them off

no,

i will not tell you how
they felt as a tiny speck of pink dust
being brought into this enormous universe;
but i can repeat the story of their
breeze of a birth, a breath of fresh air

i will not tell you how
they felt changing addresses;
but i can repeat the story of how
their family packed their bags
and moved two blocks away,
leaving their father to grow
a collection of empty bottles
in his empty apartment

however,

i will tell you of the time
they found a constant star
in their ever-changing sky;
it burned them with each touch,
but they kept coming back,
intoxicated by the light
this star burned too bright for
our flickering lightbulb of a hero

i will tell you of the time
they changed zip codes, twice
in the span of eight months;
lost everything except for
dusty yearbooks,
hidden scars,
and a broken body.
each land pushed our hero
into infectious isolation
our hero began to grow in,
but they wanted to grow out

i will tell you of the time
they stared into another person's eyes;
felt caterpillars crawling
in their stomach,
unsure if they would grow
into moths or butterflies
but these caterpillars
never wove a cocoon
and our hero was left with
wriggling worms in their stomach

i will not tell you of the past
if it does not affect the present.
old scars are no concern;
they are only reminders that
the past was real

this life they lead
is something in-between;
between firsts and lasts
between new scars and old
between beginnings and endings

this origin story is being rewritten.

The Ecuadorians sit languishingly in the stairwell,
Staring at their cell phones,
The bizarre circus of humanity is about to begin,
As I wade through the perpetual crowd,
To dive in the back,
To my unknown fate,
There are characters,
Waned and waxed figures,
They caress trinkets,
They ****** their egos,
They stretch their forlorned backs,
They stroke their everlasting devices,
They return day after day,
There I am,
Making due with the,
Space,
I’ll stand and see,
If being personable,
Really makes a difference.

If it doesn’t,
I shall be a hermit,
Permit,
I will delude to the hills,
To a town far away,
To the ocean,
To the many faces,
Torn from pages,
Of someone else’s yearbooks,
To the anonymity of pure intension,
I’ll curl on my back every night,
Waiting for the end,
Content in the bleakness,
For what’s the point anymore,
The rugs have been pulled,
Time and blood spilt,
Salvation waits in the word,
The solitary significance that,
Arises from the perfect form,
The daring unrest of the thought,
The silly unkempt ruling,
The turbulence of being,
Ripples across ages,
Hoping to hold dear,
The image so clear,
No matter foolish sages,
This was all just the ends to a mean.

If you asked any of my peers from the schools I went to
From elementary up through high about me
You would possibly be surprised as to how many
Never even knew my face.
My name.
The fact that I even existed.

So…..forgotten was I, that I didn’t even show up
In yearbooks.
Though I had my picture taken every year.

A mere six months after high school,
And the people who did know me have
Mostly forgotten.
Say my name, and they may recognize it briefly
However that’s as far as that recognition will go.
Only a name.
Even then they’ll be uncertain.

I have no redeeming qualities that would
Come to mind nor imagination.
I was just a sheep, following the herd.
And yet, I’m always lost to vague memories
Of things that likely never happened.

Often the only way to even be noticed
Was to do something considered wrong.
Crazy. Immoral.
And then I would be told that if I wanted attention,
That I was going about it all wrong.
That doing as I had been,
Being invisible,
Was the right –no…correct- way to get it.

If you ask the teachers and principles, they’d all only say I
Was a “problem child.”
Yet, I never did drugs or such things
And never got into fights.
The only time I was a “problem” was when I tried
To change my own situation through means that
People would actually pay attention to.

With public schools,
It takes violence and immorality to get things to change,
For people to finally listen to what you are saying.
Now, I’m not promoting such things.
However in my experience
Diplomatic talks have never actually accomplished anything.
At least not in regards to dealing with adults.
Whether you’re eighteen or eight,
Adults will likely ignore your existence till you
Make them listen.

These people, with their ignorance and stiff minded ways,
Are why our societies and governments are so corrupt and immovable.
Even when you find a person who listens just a little bit,
They never really hear what you say.

So when people say I had so much potential,
So much to live for,
All they’re doing is lying to themselves
And saying they had no part in any of it.
That they were always there for me to talk to,
Except they really weren’t ever there.

Either way, no one really listened to what I had to say.

I finally found the love you were sending
As my heart relaxed in the hot waters of passion..
Bending cold steel into blobs of fantastic and beautiful mind blending..

Into one another..like a song
Sung in old days....

Where Love was truly known and blind lust was forever old
Withered to it's needed resting place
With the legend's voices of yesteryear making pages in yearbooks fold.

The pictures in our past are cherished and placed in the walls of the heart's gallery.
Do you see such?
In the heart of your other?
Do you hear the sweet song sung..
A beautiful love song that your true feelings brung

Into a "togetherness" that filled a once empty heart
Placing the true trophy on the Soul's mantle...

The memories...
Our  future......
that only true and dear fused hearts mend
Cold and tear drops of a heart ... a teared up cloth...
A tapestry now woven from the parts of each loving trend
One other's souls, forever, to never fall to part
in lustful ignorance that needed to be put out...
A flame..... that burnt our souls to be taken apart.....

Stronger than steel
Colder than ice
Our souls
True love
One force

That is the "us" that had drawn us together,forever,right from the start.

It's a saturday evening. I'm sipping a cold redbull and *****, talking with a loved one. When suddenly one sentence, one look, one change in tone, and all the puzzle pieces fall together. But it all lacks one, do I have my father's eyes?

October 21st 2017.
This is the day I found out, I do not know my biological father.

Let's rewind back to June 25th 1993 roughly 7pm, I was born.
This is the story I was told from that day forth.

In September of 1992 my dad met my mother through mutual friends at a party, he said she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. He knew he had to pursue her, for weeks she told him no, he wasn't her type, but he gave it one last attempt with two Reba McEntire concert sometime in October. At first she said no, but my grandmother insisted she atleast give the poor boy a shot and go. So days later she reached out to say she would go out with him. Little did she know he had already sold the tickets thinking she wasn't going to go. But, being the persistent ****** he is, he picked her up anyways but took her to a friends house get together instead, they slept together that night and I was concieved. Now this last part was only revealed to me at age 12 when I started to put some pieces together, but in my head I was just busting my mom on Pre-Marital *** which felt great towards a mother who was so over controlling I wasn't allowed to date until 17 years of age, and I mean so much as a Co-Ed birthday party. She knew where I was 24/7/365 and if she didn't all hell broke loose. But to get back on topic. My parents fell in love, mom soon realized what an amazing man he was and then shortly the found out they were pregnant. They decided to get married on December 26th 1992.
That was my story.
Rather, that was the one they delicately fabricated by the people who's sole life lesson to me was, Honesty was the most important thing in the world.

Fast forward to age 14.

I find out my mother is having an affair, physical proof. To be honest, she did not hide it at all. My father worked all over the US, hotel to hotel for up to 3 week at a time. When he was gone, she was gone.
"I'm going to the grocery store and to run an errand and then I'll be home. What do you want for dinner?"
"The boys want sonic and a chocolate milkshake sounds pretty **** good."
"Alright, I'll see y'all in a little bit."

....
3 days later.
Her car is halfway parked on the curb, halfway slanted in the driveway. It's running and the lights are on, I wake up around 7:30, get the boys breakfast, I've already called dad worried but he assures me she is just probably with a girlfriend and will be home after we're in bed. He ordered us pizza to be delivered with his card. I proceeded to call all jails and hospitals just to check. I know she's most likely ****** up, with another man or worse hurt or dead.
I hear something and go outside to check, I see her. In the car passed out. I pull her out, no response. She's breathing fine but obviously not ******* waking up. I'm scared. I try to pull the car out of the street. It's parked like ****, but out of the road. I couldn't drive stick but it would do.
I put the boys in their room with a movie and some yogurt "Breakfast in bed & Veggietales. Our little secret". I drag her up 2 flights of stairs. Into the bedroom, the bathroom and into a tub of ice water. She comes to but just ask for water and where she is.
I lay her to bed with water, a trash can, warm towel and bell.
I tell dad and he says to just let her hang out, she's just hungover. I think wow, hangovers are gnarly.
2 days later, she's fully coherent, begging for forgiveness. She promises to never do it again. Unsurprisingly, she would break that promise consistently forever the remainder of my life.
She was with a man named Eugene, coked out. At a ******* doing ecstasy. The product, a pregnancy of a mixed child. Which I only add as an important role in, my father being Caucasian, it would be well known. But she leaves him, comes clean to dad and he says he will raise the child. Believing her when she says it's a very small chance, a one night stand. A mistake and most likely the child was indeed his.
She lost the child. A few months later.
She broke.

I don't know if any of that is true now.

Fast forward to 16.

She's openly at it again. For months she's seeing an old high school fling. He lives there when dad is gone. I tell my father everything, text messages, pictures, grotesque even.. all of the evidence and it ends the same as always. He's mad, then she's mad, he apologizes, begging for love and forgiveness. She successfully manipulates him and then the wrath is on me.
She's pregnant again.
This time, she denies it all to him. It's his child. It's his child.
My beautiful little brother is born.
And now I know that not only do I not know mine and everyone else truly knew, he too will not know. And I don't know if I could break his heart. This man is trash.


Fast forward to 24.

We're talking about my parents, my mom. How everyone knows Jacoby's father is not dad. But he is in denial.
I laugh.
"Ya know, I wouldn't be surprised if my father isn't my biological father."
....
He did not laugh.
"Britt.. there's always been a conspiracy but no one really knows. But no one thought you could handle it, or they feared your mother's recoil."

........
It doesn't sink in. I get home. And I rack my mind over and over. Where do I start? Who do I ask? Why didn't they tell me? Was he bad? Will I ever know?
...
Could he love me?
Do I have his eyes? I've always wondered why mine were different.
My smile, its huge. Does his radiate the same way?
Is he kind?
Would he want to know?
Do I want to know?..

Yes.
The hunt begins. I give into impulse and call my Mimi, moms' mother. She sighs long and hard and I know. It's true.
All she can tell me is it was a short lived fling, an attractive young man, a few years older than mom. Tousled blonde curls and the most beautiful blue grey eyes. MY eyes.
His name is Michael. He was from Marietta. And lived in Hughes Springs at the time. No last name. No job known. Not where they met. Mutual friends. Just those three things over and over.
Michael.
Blonde curly hair.
Blue eyes.

It has to be.
Facebook, classmates.com, high school records. I drive to Hughes Springs a kind retired teacher keeps the small town library open an hour later for me to review yearbooks. 1987-1994.
Two matches, but it's still not much to go on. I need proof.
I call uncle, grandparents I haven't had a relationship with since childhood. Not one extra bit of information is found.
Except this, the father that raised me. He knew, I was not his.
So what do I do now?
Somehow get DNA from my father and pay hundreds of dollars to test it?
To get proof that he's not?
I can compare blood types..
But who's to say they will tell me the truth?
Will they ever tell me where I get my eyes?
I'll lay in bed all night long, staring into the abyss, trying to find a way to find you.

...to be continued..