My life is a book
But I don't know how to class it.
Horror?
Thriller?
Romance?
Each chapter brings something new,
Not necessarily good
But something new.
I couldn't have guessed
The twists and plots
And how things would end up
For the main characters.
All I know is I can't put the book down,
Even when the reading is painful

You gave me a glass jar
We collected fireflies and put them inside
We admired them every night.
Only the two of us understood
what the flicker of the tiny lights meant.

Only the two of us understood.

One day, we walked down the beach
We walked by a stranger whose eyes
sparkled like our glass jar.
I lost my mind
I dropped our jar
I gave the stranger our fireflies
I thought he was worthy.

You ran away with tears in your eyes
and wounds in your hand
from all the broken pieces of our glass jar.

As I tried catching up, I stepped on broken glass
I hurt myself
I stopped chasing you
I let you go and went after the stranger with the sparkly eyes.

For a moment, I forgot about you and our jar and our fireflies.

One day, it rained.
The stranger left and I felt my wounds fresh again.
I thought about you and our jar and our fireflies.
I missed you.
It hurt and I cried and I promised
not to collect fireflies anymore.

I haven't seen fireflies or sparkly eyes since then.

Six hundred and seventy three days passed
I went back to the ocean and saw the broken pieces of our glass jar
The wounds are now healed but I still miss you
I picked up the pieces and glued them back together
I sent them back to you in a box with a bow
"This is yours", I said
I did not wait for a response.

One day, I saw you holding our empty jar
You were looking at me
I looked back, holding my tears
I moved close and I saw
There were no tears, no pain, no anger in your eyes anymore

I moved closer 'cos I thought I saw your eyes sparkle
I thought about our fireflies
And in that moment I realized

It was you all along
It was not the stranger with the sparkly eyes
It was you
It is you
You are my fireflies.

1000 nights of you
500 days without you
It only took one day to fall in love with you.
Im glad I share it with you.
I love you.

you were merely a gut feeling
that ate at me,
like a syrup in my stomach,
eating away at all my acid,
and dragging me
down,
down,
down.

but you were heavy, and
i could tell that you
knew this,
for i guess
i was the same
as all the others
in my place,

and it was only today, when
i woke up once again,
and realized that i dont have a clue
what youre thinking,
that i remembered that not only
do gummy worms exist,
but that everything would
be okay.

I guess I just expected
Something else

It happens every year,
I get excited
Hopeful
Giddy
That maybe
This year will be
Different.

Maybe I'll find an awesome friend
Who does my nails
And answers calls at two am
Like Nicole did
Before she moved to California

Or she could be like Kayla
Who would be silly with me in
Drama class
And use chocolate sauce for blood
In our Black and White movie
Before her dad died in combat
And she went to bury him in
Some foreign country
Where cell phones
Don't count

Or a boyfriend like Louis
That I could see a future with
Sitting listening to Relient K
In a college dorm
With a million years to spare
Before he left for London

But the girl in front of me
In English
Pops her gum for the boy
In the next desk
And could poke my eye out
With her fake straightened hair.

The girl in my drama class
Cakes on her mask and
Participates in pageant after pageant
And calls her anorexia
A diet

And I heard the rumor
That the boy I thought was cute
In chemistry
Was caught ******* his
Girlfriend
Under her desk in
Español Dos.

I didn't think my standards were too high to meet.

It made me
Sick.

The kind of sick
That books describe
As green,
Ghostly skinned
With red rust noses.

Sick to my stomach
Like when you wake up
At 2:00 AM
And realize that
Something
Is
Not
Right
Before you sprint
Down the hall
To the bathroom
And ***** pizza bagels into the
Pristine marble sink.

It made me sick like
When it gets so bad that
Blowing your nose hurts
Because the extra soft Kleenex
Have scratched your skin raw
Over
And
Over
Again.

It made me sick
When I realized
That it wasn't you that I loved
But the feeling of being loved.

It was my cousin's wedding reception,
And I wore some creamy lacey dress
That had to be approved of by my mother
Before I shoved it in a bulging duffel bag to endure the
Six hours of Dunkin Donuts bathroom stops
And that weird stop-and-go traffic that makes me
Feel like the color green.

As I stood at the brim of the dance floor,
Trying to ignore the half-drunk staggering relatives of mine,
I thought about whether it's
Polite to pry your eight inch
Torture-o-thon heels
From your swollen toes
Before anyone else bothers.

There was a boy on the other end of the disco lights,
A silhouette that I knew to be slightly more muscular than the last time I'd seen it.
Just about my age, or maybe eight months older if you had to ask him,
Which I had about thirteen years earlier
With some sand in the crotch of
My Gymboree bathing suit.

I tried my best not to look over.
The lights mostly blinded me,
But I still wished to glance at him to see how straight his teeth were and how his acne had cleared up
Because of
Neutrogena SkinID Plus
Or something.

I could tell that he was looking at me,
At the too short lacey dress
And my straight teeth
And my peachy skin
And I wanted so badly to peek over.

I wanted him to ask me to dance,
Please oh God ask me to dance.

(Of course he didn't.)
He was a shy kid, even at seventeen.
He didn't say a word to me all night,
Even though we'd gone to the beach together
Since I was in Huggies.

The soul he needs,
It should be wise.
It should be sweet.
It should care.
Their feelings should be strong, but not too overwhelming.
It must like the closeness of his body.
The soul he needs,
Must be strong.
It must be tender.
The soul he needs,
Should be a soul like his.

Let's call it Big Fish in Small Pond syndrome.
Trying desperately to get these guppies to see the beauty of swimming against the stream.
It's all about the struggle, man.
Do you know what I mean?

Forgive me for being so angsty.
Chalk it up to a Holden Caufield complex.
Too much time contemplating what comes next.
I guess you could say I'm obsessed with death.

I'll drown eventually,
meanwhile trying to get them to believe it's not my fault.
Blame it on a flawed support system.
Blame my family, blame my friends.
Blame everyone and anything but me.

I'm starting to see it a little more clearly,
(though I'm not about to go for a psychology degree,)
but I think I now know what my problem is:
Hubris.