There's a road -

not like, a metaphorical road that Robert Frost writes about -

but a real street, that I lived on.

I characterize it by what I did on it when I was a child

which honestly wasn't much because I had a fence

and I stayed inside it until I was 9.

Actually 15, but 9 sounds more poetic

and less recluse-y.

That's my mother's fault though.

She just wanted to protect me from all the creeps

and weirdos that got at me anyways

from inside the tv screen.

This is that existential suburban cry of desperation

from the mouth of a kid who didn't even understand

what a potluck was until her freshman year homecoming dinner

where kids took a night off from their pills and drinking for a wholesome family event

where I felt even more out of place than I would have at the party

because who knew anyone even did pills anymore anyways?

I wonder how many times my street has been repaved?

I don't ever remember seeing them ripping up the concrete

or having to take a different path to get home,

but damn it if I didn't want an excuse to stay outside of my yard

for an extra 15 minutes, sidestepping the holes punched in the sidewalks.

Okay, it would have been more like 5 minutes because the streets in my neighborhood

are all interconnected but let's say that for the sake

of my pre-adolescent dreams of freedom that it was much longer.

So I'm a lot older now, and I complain about the same basic stuff,

and I know, I know that there's like a million different solutions

to my stupid, ridiculous, over-exaggerated problems,

but I think I got trapped, okay? I got shafted from an early age.

This attitude is learned and hard to break

and there are at least 3 different streets

going in 3 different directions around my building that I can immediately think of

which I could walk down,

or wait, drive down, because hey, even if I got my license a year after everyone else,

I have it now and that's what counts.

It's like when I say I'm going to take a shower or go running though.

You walk into my bedroom three hours later

and I've been sitting at my computer in a towel for two of them,

and I would have put on my sneakers this morning

if I had only been able to find a matching pair of socks.

There's no real excuse for what I'm doing

but it's... I guess the easiest form of escapism

For a girl who got fenced in and was told not to open the gate

even though I knew the combination... and how to pick it,

just in case they changed it.

They never did, in case you were wondering.

I told all my friends the code too,

you could probably still get in if you wanted to raid my kitchen

or say hi to my mom

who really doesn't know how to handle sudden visits like that

so you might want to call ahead

even though we never pick up the phone either,

which is actually disconnected now

and that's not metaphorical either,

that house is like a veritable communication fortress.

We have a dog.

I want to kick him.

We've had dogs since before I was born, and he's

the 5th in that long line, but that doesn't change the fact

that I don't like dogs and never will.

The fact that I tried so hard to bond with my father

by playing baseball and poking the eyes of fish he'd caught,

and sitting next to him in the garage for hours at a time

while he drank and smoked and read a novel

maybe about the compassion I would later

completely refuse to give him because he yelled

at my friends for approaching the fence

and making the dogs bark and called me a whore in the 6th grade

which wasn't damaging, just funny because at that point

I was used to quietly, angrily defending me and my sister,

silently staring and daring him to hit me like he so dearly wanted to ever

since that one time that my mom yelled at him

and stopped him from being the abusive fuck I know he would have been

had he been allowed

makes me even more sure of myself when I bitterly spit sentences at him

that hold up a younger more feminine mirror of himself

before he got all old and sad and sorry.

And you're gonna laugh because I'm a happy white girl with daddy issues

and a goddamned whore mouth who makes damn good sammiches

thank you very much,

but I'm working on it

sometimes

kind of

not really since that April in 8th grade when I decided it'd be a really good idea to

well, lots of things, not eating was probably my favorite because honestly

I still have no idea why that happened and I think it just

the most perfect example of how I operate. I do things

I just do them, okay? I don't have many feelings about them

or needs to rationalize them to myself,

just to the voices of my friends who are a lot harsher than they need to be

which is maybe just me trying to psych myself out so that when I actually

have to deal with people asking why I can just give them an answer

I prepared for one of the voices without having to put much conviction behind it.

and oh my god to think I'd forgotten about that stupid

stupid stupid harmless juvenile party in the 7th grade

that I was embarrassed about for so long

when I do things now that are just so not okay

but kind of are because we're a society just plagued

by dumb taboos and feelings that there are things

we should be hiding about ourselves

and that makes me question why I think it's okay to keep

some people around when they do nothing but

make me upset about what I think and want,

and sometimes I say that's what real friends are

who show you the cold facts about yourself.

But honestly I haven't felt like someone's taken

me and exalted this god awful pit for one minute

because they are too busy telling me why carrying

this pit around is a safety measure

to keep me from running and jumping off some bridge.

But that's not right because I wanted to jump

off that goddamned bridge,
and I was wearing a bungee cord anyways
so you should have just chilled out and been like

you go gay baby or magical unicorn or princess puppy castle dreamboat supreme.

I knew what I was doing. Now I'm just so aggravated all the time

and I say I know what I'm doing,

but do I really? Am I going to wake up in 10 years and not be able to get out of bed

because of the way I behave now?

I think worst case scenario, I try a lot of different things that I always said I would

and that are as awesome as I wanted them to be

and that allow me to throw you the biggest goddamned middle finger on the planet

while I tell you why you were wrong to remind me about GPAs

and the reality principle and the people I'm responsible for

because we all would have been a lot more fucking miserable

if I had finished anything

because finishing something defeats the beautiful dream I had at the outset

and closes that chapter like a job well done that doesn't ever need to be revisited

and I don't want to be the 25 year old who ends back up on the same road

on her mother's couch with a thousand yard stare that envelops

the neighboring houses that are a different shade than way back then.

I don't know if it's in my building or in my bed,

but all I know is it's a bassline thumbprint

in my brain, a telltale heart

tapping me on the shoulder

in these inescapeable moments

when I'm stripped down

without strangers to distract me

or the television to do the same,

to make sure I remember

how small I am:

A pinprick disruption

in the fabric of black that I'm huddled in now.

I pulse as I curl it inside,

thump thump with the beat of the same cloth I'm cut from.

My heart is an orange peeled,

bringing scents of sunshine everywhere.

It grew up in the summertime.

Not clockwork but wild,

with vines trailing sideways

reaching and running

until they hit something they can crack though.

I am insatiable and I'm holding on to a ghost

but that's another story.

Right now it wants to give you everything

you've ever thought you'd needed.

Blossoms and seeds

held in a fist you've made

and I don't even feel

confined. I don't mind.

This isn't about you

and it couldn't be about me

I'm just a tool used

in an attempt

to do anything gentle

that a summer fruit is capable of.

You've become more

than the sum of your parts

and I hope you'll think

to pocket these seeds and bring me along

for whatever unreal

dream of a journey

you're going to start on,

via the hands

of those who love you

and turn the wheels of creation

just to see you smile.

I'm happy patching holes for others

the ones in myself can wait.

'Cause doing good for you

doesn't get you very far

if you're smugly sitting cross-legged

by yourself on someone else's lawn.

So I work for other people

asking them what else I can do.

Really, please give me one more thing,

A labor I can complete with love,

and certainty that the traces I leave

on a person or room when my fingers

aren't busied by their objects

will be more than they were when

they were with me. Or at least

longer lasting, not a thin veil

of wavering sensibility

that couldn't really affect anyone

unless it was keeping them from breathing.

Maybe if I let myself go a little soft

you know, loosen up a bit, stop caring as much,

then everything else will follow from that.

Soft is a good word. Nice and warm

Not weak or offensive or tired

just simple and yielding and there.

Soft just is.

I'm so goddamn lonely.

And I can't just fucking let go

and be among people, as peers,

or as friends

that could possibly take me

to be anything other than a base

immoral

immature

bitter

sarcastic

profane

unattractive

rough hewn patch of a person.

I don't give them a chance

so why should I ask for one in return?

Warm bodies to stand in for friends.

I just want their representation there

for me to turn to and smile at

sincerely, but emptily.

I'm just getting along

until the next time my hibernation ends

and everyone else crawls back in their caves

right as I'm emerging.

What even is winning. It's cold.

I have a right to be sullen

I have a right to be a lot of unpleasant things

that I complain about other people being.

I don't mind that these things contradict each other

because they're both true.

I hate them, and I sometimes hate me.

But that's the way it has to be

if I'm going to be happy and free

inside the tyranny of my anger.

You wake up at three

and prop yourself up on your shoulders,

shrugging the sheets down your front

and staring at the wall in front of you.

Maybe if you stare long enough

you will tunnel your way

through the brick and mortar

and see the bright air

that will remind you

of all the time still left in the day.

Barring that, there's just

the yellow overhead light

that you haven't even bothered to turn on

for thirty whole minutes.

You roll like an oil slick

out from your cocoon and over the edge

to spin circles on the ground,

noting the gaps in the poorly lain tile.

You flop onto your side,

contemplating the pros and cons

of lifting yourself off of the floor.

You won't be hungry

for another hour at least.

Maybe it's time

to take a stroll

to a quiet spot,

where everyone passing

will just think you're waiting for a friend,

where you'll gain license to just

sit

and sit, and sit,

without this funny feeling you've got

about laying here

and staring at these chair legs right now.

You scoot over to your shoes

that you always put on and leave on

in these situations,

like their presence

will somehow guilt your feet into moving,

instead of slipping them off hours later,

and giving up on the feeling

of going anywhere.

I so very wish I were a delicate, gentle girl with proper sensibilities which became offended and guarded at the crass and extreme. I would have creamy pale skin and inky hair and honey eyes that had nothing but softness and light in them, and a mind which struggled to ever start to reach the edge of depression, instead living high in the clouds and sun. There would be no reason to abandon a sound path set on education and New Years Eve and my birthdays would still be exciting, and my heart would still ache when I forgot to wash the dishes so my mom had to do them and swears harsher than "damn" would be unheard of. I wouldn't even think about boys until I was 19, and the only kind who would talk to me would be quiet and gentle too, with a strong resolve, and there would be no worries if it was 3 years before we had sex, we'd be companions and the core of it all would be love and kindness. I would find a healthy group of people and hobbies and never make the decisions that make me hate myself and question what my worth to the world is, and if I could ever become what some people used to look at me, smile and tell me I could be. I'm really not a person, I don't think I have a conscience, except maybe sometimes in hindsight. I hurt people and myself and I have a disregard and irreverence for things that matter and I can't be fazed and I'm slowly becoming a danger to everything I've worked for and I think one day I'll wake up and find myself in a dark room with a minimum wage job and not even care that I could have gone to Russia or found a cure and helped the world or helped countless people find hope and love in themselves instead. I'm a pitted person with nothing but self hatred and guilt and countless tears to selfishly cry over all the time I've already wasted and all the things that I wish were said or done to me but never were. I need to be given other people's love and words or an inordinate amount of sadness takes shape in my head. I'm not strong, or smart, or beautiful in the way I should be inside. I'm a shallow selfish brat with a whorish mind and body who likes obscene people and piercings and nasty thoughts and troublesome words and shock value and I didn't want to be delicate in this way.

Shine a light on it and it is hollow.

Like a door clicking into place, locked.

A swinging pendulum brushing closer to the floor, cutting stone.

Each shallow cut running nearer to your heart, but no blood.

The door is locked and they can't get in.

You are safe, you are trapped.

Defeat yourself and shine a light inside.

You are hollow.

Oh, these tangled lyrics that float off you skin,

holding my mouth open to the summer light, honey drip breeze

down my chin.

We were almost strangers lying there

so warm. So much is different

in the close corner of your room,

my impossibilities flourish.

There's so much in this speck of dust

you have to wonder if there is

a little more to me and a little more to you

that is shared by the stars and the dirt in my shoes

that makes these little hurts

more of an acceptable incidence

rather than a stain I can't ever get out.

Find a theme and stick to it.

Otherwise You will always wander, carrying a reaching black pitted thing sticking to your ribs and scratching up your organs trying to get out. It will whisper and scribble out your eyes from the inside, hold its hand over your mouth while you scream and kick, but you can't shake it off.

It is this. Visceral and real, hunching your shoulders and sharpening your spine, you will find it hasn't left you even when everyone else has. It will hold your hand at night, stroking your hair and dripping ink so you don't forget this feeling.

Forgive it if there's a slight stinging, that's inevitable when one's treading on the brain. You didn't think you could take feeling like all this in conjunction with one's absence, so it dipped your mind in dust and shoved it in the corner, forgot to mention it. Stings will be aches now, then only a far off throb. It hopes you will work past this, and stop falling into its arms. It brings matches and lights up that smile and convinces those of us still left you're still all there, when you don't have the energy left to.

And even mountains come crashing down.

We will forget today and what we said

and the tilt of the grimace

which you pulled off your face

when you saw I was looking.

I can rewind my VHS tapes and watch them again

and recall what parts made you say what things

and how your hands fluttered up in frustration

when you couldn't hit that note

or think of the phrase

or remember to ask how your parents had been.

I asked, they're fine.

The times of we, they have been dissected

and pulled apart to pieces of pasta

digested and spit back out.

I feel like we're still speaking

over that dinner in the summer

or was it the spring

where you had on a funny color

and I was wearing socks.

I never wear socks.

You loved that orange cup

and I kept picking up pieces of lint from the bathroom floor.

I don't think those leaves were ever so green again.

I'm writing this song I said I would

I think I showed you one time

but you didn't know so much

back then.

We did this thing where you'd find something to think on

and maybe you remember, maybe you don't

I'd think with you, like it was osmosis of the minds

and you'd hand me a rubber band

and I'd show you the right keys to press

and we made lots of food

to eat, and think over

how much we loved how easy this was.

You told me, on the street, when my nails were blue,

in one manner or the next

that it had been slow shades of goodbye

peeling back and back and further yet,

down to the very quick, since we had met at first,

when I was on the lawn,

and my nails weren't actually painted at all.

We knew, I knew.

It was to wreck this pretty picture

that we made it in the first place.

There was the once, when your window got broken.

Sorry about that.

Well, you busted up my sidewalk anyways

and I spilled something on your shoes,

so I guess it evens out.

I'll leave you back there,

from when I knew you

and not as the cold stranger

who really I could call

but honestly could I?

When a mountain falls, it meant to.

it wants to stay down and sleep

too tired too sad to be a bright spot

for us to look at

and wonder about how it went from that to this.

You'll stay back there. I like you there.

This is heaven, surely not here.

When I turned 15, everyone started catching up with me

At first it was a fun game.

I bought new running shoes

and stayed a good mile or two ahead

Never minding the people I brushed past.

But bystanders are only bystanders

if they don't speak.

Mine knew me and how I see.

My feet were walking quietly but quick

and the race didn't seem as such,

and I retained my tenuous rank

as leader untouched by the pack.

Fine, and funny,

those behind can sneak by too

when you do not look to check

yourself against them.

Walking now, sliding down

Not given up but steady

not good enough to break

the mold is cold

and a few years down the road

I won't be worth that effort.

Pop, bing.

I hide you away, become myself.

The mad grass feeling on your arms

Deep blue, cool blue, roll and dive

I don't know what I'm writing.

Dirt and walls crumbling onto skulls

standing there plain, in a white dress.

So. Soft and brush your cheek

Freckles. I bite my nails

My eyes whipped on wind taking me to a different place,

we're back and I'm crying

Blood on my palms, dripping.

Does this mean anything?

Smoke ring, dancing

Oh, cry cry.

Sorry.

Flashlight eyebulbs

take my words love them not me

No, didn't mean. Love the latter

purple white and the stripes

have you seen them today?

Vomit bubbles up and please don't leave.

This is pathetic

Back on a cliff, forks fall down before I do

You built me a table and a lamp

and I hug you

on the way down. Stay here

There's a theme.

Oh, you know?

I think

I'm done.

...

I am so sorry for everything I put you through.

Do you know what you did?

They've never seen the likes of what you have of my utmost heart.

The path to it is all grown over with thorned vines.

And you thought it was pretty. Sunny.

There was an air of reckless abandon on it you couldn't,

can't, help but admire.

But you prefer paved roads made of concrete.

So you put up a gate and charged $100 a head.

Nobody but you would see the intricacies

in how the flowers grew in the dirty dusty road,

so would never think to pay so much to pass,

and slowly you would so starve me of company

and hoped the dirt would dry and turn to ash;

for you to mix with water and stick bricks in;

for you to relegate to another back-road for your personal use.

But I've loved you for the time you spent walking with me.

These thoughts so often now seep

and crawl into the folds of my brain

and settle in between its soft tissues,

saturating and bonding with the rest.

Your winter comes to call,

to lay its hurt down.

The words arrive in flurries.

You obscure my vision for all else.

Ice in the brain, ice in the brain.

You exit and leave only the cold,

my mind to atrophy

after your echoes have knocked down icicles

to slice into me

and leave rivers where warmth once was.

I swear I'm back the moment it all melts

licking at puddles in my palms

to tide me over until I find your face.

This is crippling.

Oh, how I long to bring you down to my level

and make you stay.

I could take you and keep you and twist you.

But I'd be sorry.

That's the difference between you and me.

These hands have not made for days.

Days. Days is a word of time,

and time escapes me.

It presses in on me.

Evades me and pounces again,

knocking me down each time

certain it has done the job for good.

But I dream of leaves

and I smile in this space

I call home, which I have built

and shaped into something acceptable.

A place which offers,

if not solace,

then at least a private venue

to thrash my head against the objects inside.

I could leave wherever I am,

and wherever I went;

back and forth.

A bullet in a box of lead.

Never sure, because certainty isn't permitted.

It's all on me.

Thrash thrash thrash.

Since she was a child, she saw colors in sounds

and felt the way you'd pronounce a word with her fingers.

Her feet were in the sea and her hands in the trees,

Anchors, reassuring. Solid bits to tie the drifting veils in her head to.

Bugs and plants and wind and dirt kept her sane and satisfied

far past what any person seemed to be able to.

She'd walk with them and smile, sincerely enjoying her time with peers,

but the thought of a home at the bottom of the ocean,

of existence as an everlasting patch of sand

was what really set her heart on fire,

what brought her to life.

There was an untouchable, indescribably profound piece of sadness

in the very heart of anything she'd do,

after she realized that's not how the real world works,

rising up from pits in her stomach to reach around and wind tight knots

in her throat and mind and breath.

Slowly she choked on this sentiment until the colors stopped pouring from her.

Though they stayed as tints and shades

rippling in her muscles when she ran,

pooling calmly in her heels when she came to rest in a spot of sun

quiet and kind.

A fanciful phrase from a friend or a story will slosh the hues

against the walls of her mind, set her off again,

tilting toward a horizon she knows doesn't exist,

but is still worth reaching for.

I hope that when you hear someone passing by

mention me,

you feel like you've just missed me,

as if I was across the hall and had left

before you'd gotten up to come find me.

Do not attempt to tiptoe past my door

and do not smile and wave hello

when I finally do catch you.

It's wise to wait until you're safe

and warm in your bed

before you open your eyes and sigh sweet relief.