I never once dreamed

that I'd start writing poetry

Sure I did it when I was young

But as a teen, it seems so cliche to me.

I guess I'm just a cliche after all

I probably shouldn't be surprised

I apologize to anyone whose read these

I'm sure the shitty prose hurt their eyes

But you see, it's too ____ here

I don't even know how to define

how the wind pulses against the trees

or how the wires keep me in line

My head won't stop hurting

all these brown eyes accusing

Everyone is shouting

But this is too confusing.

God, I don't know what to do.

Is life always this way?

Maybe I should-no. Maybe? 

Or just save it for a later day?

My throat is loaded full of knives

And my shoulders stained with blood

They trace wings along my skin

Like I could fly away- 

(maybe I should)

for you ♥

I think
I am in love with you?
and darling, for me
that’s something quite new

I’ve never done this
so do please forgive
if I blush when you notice
just how widely I grin

and of course it’s for you
my one and only love
that I smile and skip
(you make me feel overwhelmed)

and I do hope you’ll forgive
if I stare at you too long
but features like yours
deserve their own theme song

which is silly, I know
but I’m a silly girl
and I’m sorry if it’s a bother?
But you’re my whole world.

so do please forgive me
(this is something quite new)
But I’m a reasonably certain
that I’m in love with you.

paradoxical darling.

i’m hungry but there’s nothing worth eating
bored, but there’s nothing worth reading
tired, but it’s no use sleeping
lonely, but- no, not even.
hollow, mostly- but not.
i’m a paradoxical darling
and that title’s all I’ve got

since the rain is too bright here
for my thoughts to act right here
I thought this was better?
but nothing has changed.
I’m still hollow-paradoxical
winter-rain-gasoline
paper girl, strike a match
watch me burn up in a flash

(maybe then the boredom
will leave me?)

love you, liar.

I could be better if you told me to

'cause there's not many people like me and you

and I get tired sometimes but baby I swear

I'll stay up all night if you give me a dare

I waited up till dawn just to see how you'd look

and you laughed sadly- your head frantically shook

so I smiled along, hard cheekbone-stretch

I'll pretend to be normal, when really, you're the best

you're the better of this duo- 

but I think you already knew

after all, how could someone like me 

be friends with someone like you?

Sweet N o t h i n g s

i'm ripping apart and i'm breaking at the seams

i'm forwards backwards falling

and i'm drowning in my dreams

there's blood on my breasts and
a weight on my chest and
when i breathe in,
my heart takes a  r e s t.

it stutters and i struggle
and heave the air back out
for the hummingbird-beat
that I can't cope without.
and so i'm left gasping,
stopping starting  p a u s e.

love letters.

You write to her every day. Sometimes it's little things, like "You're the loveliest person I've ever seen". But some times, you write pages and pages. Word after word spilling out of your heart, bleeding out red ink onto the lines of your torn notebook paper. Sometimes, if you think she might like one of them, you fold the page into an envelope and slip it through the slats of her locker.

Tape it to the top of her desk.

Wrap it around her water bottle at lunchtime, when her back is turned.

You always scribble a heart on the peak of the envelope, forcing the heart to split in half once she opens it. Lets her break the crease on your ever-quiet heart, lets her hear the words you're too petrified and too mystified to speak aloud. 

Scars

i've been picking at my scabs, lately
because i love the scars they leave behind

i want to point at my knee one day
and say
"that blotch? right there?"
"that's from flying away."

i want to keep a record of my life
in a patchwork of skin
etched like tattoos
so i don't forget who i've been
or the places i've seen
or the people and words and things
that've hurt me


it's been going on for a while, now
my arms are mottled with uneven circles
odd little welts
nicks and burns and bites and bruises

i still have an ugly circle on my right arm
(where a big mole used to be)
they thought it might be something bad
so they nicked it away
and afterwards
i picked it away

"to remember" i told them

(they didn't understand)

the pavement was thick
and my boots made
the most satisfying scuffing noises
when I walked up

the brass gleamed
like the lights strewn
throughout the fronds
and the house smelled of pine

ive cried myself to apathy
theres nothing left inside of me
(be thankful you can't feel
all these things from the left
they're real)

the pretty girl
with black eyes?
we've seen her pictures
we know your lies

text her
call
fuck her hard
and bare your plastic smile
let the paper believe
let the crowds be decieved
weak in their naivety
clinging to inevitability
let me drown in gasoline
let me fade the way you want
as I said; there's nothing left in me
stop chaining me to these haunts

for thats all I am
a paper

ghost

girl

with nothing left to show
how I wish you'd make sense
wish you'd understand

oh please, just let me go?

Writing on Napkin Backs Pressed to Barstool Legs

Haha, wow- I think I've sunk to a whole new level of pretentiousness with my previous post. Frankly, I'm impressed with myself.

But! My truly ridiculous dirty partnership with pretentious prose is, surprisingly, not the topic of this post. The topic is, once again, NaNoWriMo.

Well first, it's a belated Happy Halloween. Hope you all had gloriously 2pooky times!

But otherwise. Totally about NaNoWriMo.

She Writes in White Ink

I've been instructed to write something "to make me happy."
The problem is, I have about 4 drafts in my folder right now, all of which are attempts of completing that goal. Of "making you happy".

I can't do it.

Authorial Addiction

I, um.

Wow. 

Tonight is unprecedented. Which I've said before but um,

Wow.

Sorry.

First off: I'm really, really sorry for the general duplicity of my last 2 posts. They're essentially the exact same, just with different words. And that's boring.
And a waste of time.
So, sorry about that.

The Misconstruable Title of NaNoWriMo

Even though November is about a month away, I'm already getting inproportionately excited over the prospect of NaNoWriMo. Despite having showcased my badges from YWP, Camp NaNo and now NaNo 2012 on the sidebar of this blog, I don't think I've ever really mentioned NaNoWriMo? If I have, please forgive me for the following repetition. If I haven't, then allow me to welcome you to the wonderful world of NaNo.

Southern Death

It's too bright here.

The south, I mean. 

The white-washed walls and the faded red roofs and the crunchy pale grass- they all start to blur together, after a while, mixing with the stark white of the clouds, until it seems like the entire scene was doused in bleach. 

It's too white, too faded and dull- the roar of the cicadas a constant thrum in the back of your mind, the kind of noise that you hear echoing through the house as you stare up at the ceiling and try to will yourself asleep. 

It's hot here, too- despite the fact it's August and, y'know, Fall should be kicking in right about now. You walk outside and you're drenched, cheeks flushed and breath a harsh pant and your knees stick to the backs of your thighs when you crouch down onto the grass. When you walk barefoot along the hot asphalt, it burns your feet if you stay still for too long. 

So you run. 

You run until the sweat-soaked locks of your hair go flying out behind you, until your shirt ripples in the non-existent breeze of the dry air, until the soles of your heels are stained and callused and burnt and you feel the oddest sense of satisfaction later - when you're in your house and the air conditioning is turning the sweat on the back of your neck into a chilled sheen - you feel pleased when you trace your fingers along the thick, burnt-brown skin of your feet, and you smile. 

It's hot and dry and lazy and after a while all of the gas stations and strip malls and Wal-Marts turn into a continuous line until you have no clue what intersection you're at anymore; they're all the same damn thing anyways. You could loose yourself here, amongst the Spanish moss and tanning oil and the condensation that drips down bottles of Diet Coke. 

It's so easy. 

Just drive and drive and drive until you're at the very top, until the state lines blur and you're 3 states away but it still looks the same. There's a 7-11, a Waffle House, a Publix. 

It all looks exactly the goddamn same. 

And it could kill a person. It could, I swear. The bleached asphalt mazes and the gas stations and the palmettos could become the sort of prison that winds itself slowly around you, the kind of death that is long and subtle and sickly-sweet until one day, your last day, you look around and realize what's happened. 

You could die here, could sink down underneath the palms and just wait until your eyes go unfocused, and the little brown anoles come to perch on your waxy calves, to sunbathe on top of your unmoving lips. 

But maybe that'd be for the best. Maybe I should wait for the tendrils of Southern death to come curling around me, maybe that's better. 

After all, it's too bright here.

John Green, Pasta, and Crumbling Pedestals

The problem with John Green is that, while I regard him as one of the greatest men of my time, he never fails in making my mind swim with philosophy and human nature and mirrors and windows and gigantic white cows.

So that means, to be blunt, that I end up writing another silly thing about love and humanity and so on and so forth.

The Fame of Mirrored Windows

Writers write to be remembered.

Well, that's my personal belief, anyways. We write because we want someone to look back over the words we've put on a page, and we want them to see us. Here we are, a marker-pin to prove our existence.
We lived. We wrote. We were here.

Some Pretentious Bullshit for my 90th Post

I'm bubbling over

And everyone can tell. 

It’s obvious in the swell of the chaos inside of me, in how it dribbles from my eyes and creates tide pools that reflect my tired face. The swell comes and goes with no discernible pattern, unlike the tide. The moon is a calming presence that I cannot hope to have, and oh if that doesn’t sting- doesn’t prick barbs into my skin as brackish water comes, soothing, out from the pinpricks up and down my arms. I spend days connecting the scabbed-over, clammy dots, trying desperately to find the hidden picture, but the chaos just overflows and washes the lines away. Down, down, down my arms, salt mixing with ink and dripping black tears from the tips of my fingers. Sometimes I paint pictures with the make-shift brush, swirling my fingers on the blank walls like a child. 

But whenever I wake up, they’ve gone. 

So I stopped making them. 

The water never drains though, and it’s risen over the days weeks months years that I’ve been here. From my scarred ankles to my knobbly knees- it’s up to my belly button by now.

Sometimes I swim in it; close my eyes and drift down to the soaked carpet floor, drowning slowly in the chaos that’s been inside me for a lifetime. 

In Case of Amnesia, Click Here

There's a writing project, of sorts, that I want to do one day. I keep planning it out in my head, scripting sentences and considering plot points.

It's an emergency failsafe, in case I ever forget who I am.

Some Days

Sometimes the light goes gray.

Somedays, the clouds bunch together like flocks of pussywillow, and the sky hangs heavy with the moisture that refuses to let go.
Somedays I wrap a scarf around my neck and pretend I'm somewhere else, somewhere Northern, somewhere without dry heat, and sunburns in March.

And somedays I sit on this floral beige couch, wrapped in a scarf and wearing boxer shorts, and I just stare out at the sliding glass doors, and admire the way the overcast skies reflect in the golf course's fountain.
Then the air conditioning kicks in, and I dig my toes into the cushion on the other end of the couch, and sigh a little too loudly.