The Unbearable Fragility of Being

It has always puzzled me, the way we move through this life.  I've tried to make sense of it, but I don't think there really is a good way to make sense of it.  Like anything else, we've created ways to interpret it, how much money you make, your relationship status, race, class, offspring, etc.  It's guesswork, at best, and at worse, it's just nonsense.  It is irksome that it's just so well accepted that this is the way it is supposed to be, that we're supposed to create measurements and schemas and whatever, and that we're all supposed to assume they're right.  What if they aren't right?  What if everything we do is wrong and we don't even know because we don't even have the right language to say that it is wrong?  What, What, What?

Nobility.  An interesting concept.  Dictionary definition, "The quality of being noble in character, mind, birth, or rank."  That gives you nothing.  You're not supposed to use the word in it's definition and everyone, everyone, knows that.  But what does it mean to embody it?  Can anyone ever really embody it?  We've all done non-noble things and does one non-noble thing negate the existence of a noble act?
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I am always worried. I have always been worried, no matter how hard I've tried not to be.  What if this isn't right, what if I'm not doing this right?  And that devolves into, what if someone moved my things, what if they changed my sheets or cleaned my room, what if the dust particles aren't even anymore, what if this is too little words, and what if it's too many, what if I will never be able to function again, what if my teeth fell out and what if I broke all my bones; where is this even going?  Does it even matter? Does anything, really, anything, matter?

This might seem like an overreaction. It most certainly is, and I am very aware of that.  Humans, however, have the ability to think and overreact in much the way I currently am, and that gives me a certain sort of pause. My dad's favorite quote is, "I think, therefore I am."  I'm pretty sure everyone has heard that before, whether it's been from your weird history teacher, or the old guy who was essential in your creation.  Creation.  Another interesting concept.  I don't know if we were created to overreact.  I'm even skeptical of the notion that we were "created" at all.  But here I am, overreacting, thinking too deeply, existing. But here I am, overreacting, and the world is continuing.  Something makes me think that isn't an accident.
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Poems are not Cute

You’re like snow, every day in July,

and November.  If I look close I can see

where you’ve been nicked and scratched,

where your cheekbones end and begin,

where your rings are twisted and

un-twisted. 

Everything will start, everything will stop

but I wish you didn’t, you were the ocean,

the night never came and sleep wasn’t

real.  If I close my eyes, I can smell

you on my sheets, I can feel the bones

of your hands.

Nobody says sweet like you, no one knows

what it means, like you. Milk and honey,

sweetness that doesn’t know it is sweet,

but when you blink, I know. When you

move your hands, one-two, three-four,

I know.

And laughing, you know.  You

know what sadness tastes like, what

it means to be asleep so deeply that the

world ceases to exist and the trees detach

and that teeth come un-glued. You flick in

and out, on and off dreams.

You are like snow, every day in July, and

November; I want your flakes

to fill every sky. 

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At this point, all I can say is that I wish I knew a better way to convey how I felt.  And I'm sorry.  I am always sorry, always.
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"And in the nighttime, she's beautiful
I'm sure her mother knows."

Never-Never Time// We the Animals

My favorite thing was the green chair.  We had a rotation, a way to make sure that each of us got to go up with each other, all eight of us switching off constantly.  I did not understand the closeness, didn't understand the feelings, only understood that it felt good to be loved. When Sally would make us hike up the practice hill, run after run, we'd laugh.  Our gloves were soaked, our cheeks tanned, our boots unbuckled. And then after three o'clock, when our parents would sit and drink beer, and we'd slide down the hill on tiny lunch trays, praying the groomer wasn't nearby.
It wasn't real, the snowshoe trails and jumping over waterfalls, the french flies and sleepovers, the mogul runs and hiking out back onto the road.  It wasn't real, and we lived in a vortex where nothing existed but the eight around us, where nothing but the snow and the skis and the eight were important.  It wasn't real-- it was never-never time.
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When I was younger, I used to see how long I could hold myself still for.  I would still my toes, my ankles and calves and knees and thighs, my torso and fingers and arms and shoulders, my chin and cheekbones and nose and eyes, one by one, until I was stone.  I would sit, and sit, until I had an itch or had to move for some other reason, and then I'd start all over again.  My theory was this- the longer I stood still, the less time I was taking up.  Movement equaled time to me, so I thought that by not making any, I wouldn't take up any time.  I wanted to save these moments, seconds, hours, weeks, months up and use them for when I was old.  I always thought it was hours that I held still for, yet by the end of my ritual, only a few minutes had passed.
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When we'd just moved into our house, we played hide and seek a lot.  Unused to all the space we now had, we would hide in the same few places until we realized that we had an entire house to use.  I climbed up to the top of my parent's closet, cocooned myself in a sheet, and waited.  I felt utterly alone, wrapped in silk that felt eerily like an entire world.  I waited, and waited, and waited for what felt like forever.  And then suddenly it felt harder to breathe, like the sheet was getting smaller and smaller, and there was less and less air, and my whole body was shrinking along with the sheet.  I felt like the only person in the world, and the world had become inside this sheet.  My house no longer existed, my siblings and parents and pets, nothing was real, but me and the white sheet.  I screamed. And I threw the sheet off, and climbed down the levels, shaking, landing with a thud.  I ran downstairs, running my hands along the walls, making sure they were still there.
My brother hadn't even finished counting to thirty.  And it seemed like years had gone by; never-never time.
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We cannot go back.  Only linear, we are bound by the confines of time, no matter how much we wish we weren't.  It exists to trap us within normal limits.  We will be born, we will live, and we will all die.  In between, we muddle, we differentiate, we exist, but in the end, it will all end.
Linear- we cannot go back.  And it takes one second, one nanosecond, to change, irrevocably and indelibly, but that nanosecond will end and we cannot go back. It is hard to choose, because those choices determine where we will go and as long as you don't choose, anything is possible.  Time brings us back because as those seconds, those nanoseconds tick away, we are reminded that this will all come to a close-- we are hurtling at light speed towards a conclusion we already know.
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"We ran to the cupboards and pulled out the biggest pot and heaviest ladles and clanged them as loud as we could, dancing around our mother's body, shouting, 'Happy Birthday!... Happy New Year!...It's zero o'clock!... It's never-never time!... It's the time of your life!' "

So Far// How Soon is Now?

I've struggled a lot on whether or not to write about this.  I've struggled a lot on what I was going to say.  I've just plain struggled.  And now I'm just sad.  I can't think of a reason why I shouldn't write about this, and I'm almost at a loss for words but I firmly believe this is something that needs to be written, needs to be remembered.  So here goes.
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On Sunday, we woke up to a different world.  One distinctly missing the presence of five, and the blue and white of Facebook made it seem like a joke.  It wasn't real, because one didn't equal five and one couldn't take away five, could it?  Scrolling and scrolling and then the texts came in, fast and furiously and then all I felt was my little sister's tears, hot and heavy on my bare shoulders and all I could hear was "Whywhywhy?" The words melded together and became one and everything melded together, and became one.
Death is hard to wrap one's hear around, in any context.  Untimely death is even harder to wrap one's head around, death so violent and purposeful, that it leaves a hole where you once had skin, organs, bones.  My sister was born in 2000.  So were they.  She was purple and squishy; I thought she was an alien, but still tentatively handed her the stuffed elephant I had.  She was a baby.  She is a baby.  They were babies.  They were someone's baby.  They will be babies, always.  Babies, purple and squishy and new to the world.  Just babies.

I keep thinking that this isn't real because one is never supposed to be able to cancel out five; I learned that in first grade, maybe earlier.  We rely on the rationalities of every day life during times that make no sense to us but I can't seem to reconcile one with five and they can't equal each other and how can this be happening, how can this be happening?

Tragedy is a natural disaster that doesn't pick and choose-- it resonates.  Facebook wasn't a good enough conveyor of how much this hurt, but it was the only thing we had, the only thing we knew how to do.  Our hearts, so young and unaccustomed to tragedy and now so, so heavy, didn't know what else to do.  So we shared, and we hoped it conveyed how much it hurt.

It still isn't real.  I went to the vigil, I sat in the freezing cold and sobbed silently as paper lanterns light up the sky.  I've read their obituaries.  I saw where it happened.  I've talked and talked, I've hugged, I've texted and I've taken stock.  I've shared, and shared, and shared, and I'm keeping my candles lit.  But it's not real.  How could this be real, this awful and horrible thing that should never have happened? How could people so new to the world already no longer be in it? How could one second be the deciding factor, the vessel that carried them away?  It doesn't add up.  It never will.

And in this moment, a community is aching.  Our hearts will never quite be whole.  No one will ever really be right.  And that is part of it.  We will never really be right again.  We will find ways to live because what else is there to do, but we will never be really right again.  We came together, thousands of us at the drop of a hat, and many more who wanted to but couldn't, and we were there for each other.  As much as anyone could be in that moment, we were there.  I have never felt more alone, or more connected to such a large group, as I felt when I watched those paper lanterns go up.  I don't know if that all-body ache, concentrated at my heart, will ever be as painful as it was that night.  I don't know if I'll ever feel the cold pierce me as much as it did.  I don't know if I'll ever not feel the cold as much as I did.  I don't know if I will ever be that numb, that sad, that brokenhearted for so many people at once.

I do know that you were so loved, that you are so loved.  I do know that I will remember the way it felt, the way you felt.  I will remember that five will still always be five, no matter if one tries to take it away or not.  Five, will always be five.

"Blue, blue windows behind the stars,
Yellow moon on the rise,
Big birds flying across the sky,
Throwing shadows on our eyes,
Leaves us,
Helpless, helpless, helpless."

A Real Renegade.

I started this blog based off of the movie, "Charlie Bartlett," because I was obsessed with the rebellion portrayed in it.  It was 2012, I was fifteen and I wanted so badly to be anywhere but in the in between of teenager-ness.  Not quite an adult, not quite a child. This was my rebellion, my chance to give an anonymous account of how screwed up and out of place I felt.  Here's my renegade account.
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Our lives are really not our own, and we decorate them, much like the way I did my bedroom.  I was in seventh grade, and my mom had expressly told me not to do it.  "Well, fuck her," I thought, newly aware of the word fuck and what it meant.  I sneered and promised not to, and then I stole her magazines and tacked up an obscene amount of stupid and meaningless photos on my walls.  I put up pictures of hot boys because that's what I thought twelve year olds did.  I cut out trendy things and pictures of makeup because wasn't I supposed to like makeup and wear trendy things? I tacked random odd knickknacks up, the bow from a present, a badly-constructed paper airplane, in a desperate attempt to signify that this was, indeed, mine.  I wrote random places I wanted to go down on paper and tacked them up, places I'd never even heard of, because anywhere had got to be better than middle school.

I decorated my body in the same way.  I wore makeup, even though my mom told me not to and even though nobody could tell because I was so afraid of irrevocably changing myself, but so convinced that I needed to change.  I spent hours obsessing over what I would wear, what my hips looked like, what new things I could get my mother to buy, how many new pimples were popping up on my face and what I was going to say to the cool girl the next day at school.

I was fat.  Well, I wasn't fat, but I developed faster than a lot of the girls in my class.  I had hips, I had curves and every weekend when I would stuff myself into a spandex suit and hurl myself down a snow-covered hill, I knew I looked different from everyone else out there; the no-hips, no curves no god-damn boobs crew.  I launched myself into whatever I could think of to forget this-- homework, the internet, newly discovered on the computer I bought myself because I was convinced I needed it to succeed, skiing, makeup, clothes, making my holy terror of a sister feel as miserable as I was. I went away to a school with a hundred people, with only four in my class, and I would spend every day making a checklist of what Katie did that was better than me, how Megan had gotten a boy to kiss her, trying to catch the last rays of sun of the day so my hair would go back to it's former tow-headedness so that I could have Kara's blonde hair.

I supposed my middle school experience is not as out-of place as I thought it was.  It's rare to like yourself or your world when everything is changing and betraying you.  I had always had nervous tendencies but they amplified ten-fold by the time I hit puberty and then everything worried me.  I cried at nothing, I cried at everything and I wrote down rules of what I was and wasn't allowed to do on pink index cards that had tiny daisies on them.  I guess this worked moderately well, or I guess ignoring the absolute, all out, terror I felt, until around the end of tenth grade.

And then April happened, and then the spring came and everything went off the rails and I spiraled.  I became acutely aware of my own sexuality and I embraced it in the way no one ever should; as a way of forgetting everything else that was going on.  I would fool around with whatever boy I could get my hands on just to prove I could do it, just to prove I was okay, and then I'd go home and cry.  If my mom cleaned my room I would scream and cry uncontrollably.  If my sister looked at me I would yell and get physical.  Everything my dad and brother did filled me with an inordinate amount of anger.  I hated everyone and everything within walking distance, and even beyond.
I went to therapy for the first time, and took a deep breath.  I convinced myself that I'd walked right to the edge of the abyss, but that I'd never do it again.  That I was so, so fine and everything in my life was perfect and I'd spend long hours arranging and re-arranging anything I could get my hands on.

My sexuality has always had a huge, but largely unrecognized part in my life.  I went to a high school with a hundred of the same, white, mostly upper class, middle of the road republicans and I didn't realize there was anything else out there.  The first episode of skins I watched had two girls kissing and this fascinated me.  I watched, re-watched and re-watched this then I watched all of the Skins episodes I could get my hands on.  I switched to the American version and imagine my delight when I found another main character who kissed girls and, was, herself, a girl.  I convinced myself it was just curiosity and would spend long hours watching and re-watching moments of closeness between female TV characters.  It wasn't sexual then, it was a fascination with the female emotional state. I dismissed it, just plainly as curiosity and pushed it to the back of my mind because like so much else in my life, it had no significant meaning.

The middle of Eleventh grade came, I gained ten pounds and hated myself even more, even though my braces were finally off and my pimples were going away and I'd finally found a way to style my unruly, curly, Jewish hair.  I got a little better at skiing and it felt like victory was mine-- I finally meant something to someone.  And an infinitesimal amount of people were actually paying attention to me, but they felt like millions.  My wit and sarcasm were finally coming through and I was a bitch, but a bitch who loved it. And then I injured myself in about ten different ways, as I am so want to do, and it felt like I was right back where I started.

And then, twelfth grade came and my brother left for college.  But he more than left, he jetted off to another 'frigen country.  And college came down on me, full force.  I was convinced this was my year for skiing, the last year I'd be able to do it so intensely, so I threw myself into it.  And I hated it.  I got a concussion, one week before my ED college application was due, when someone dropped a weight on me in the pool.  January came and I got into the college of my dreams.  Everything was supposed to be fine.  I would go to the hill in the morning, leave in the blue Forrester which was considerable less nicer than many of the SUV's which populated the mountain's parking lot, and go home as early as possible.  I would make myself lunch and eat it in the total darkness of my brother's room, with whatever Netflix show I was watching that week.  I couldn't bring myself to go back to school most days and would constantly feign illness.  I was tired of being me.  

And so I started antidepressants because I was clearly depressed.  I slowly got better, started skiing less, hurt my knee and decided I was done with skiing altogether, and was fending off lesbian jokes left and right because of the all-girls college.  I couldn't wait to graduate, to leave all these people who I hated far behind.  I made it to graduation and I made it through that summer, complete with all the weirdest feelings I've ever experienced and until the moment my parents said goodbye to me for real, standing outside of Comstock at four o'clock in the afternoon, it felt like I was running a marathon of existing.

Thrust into this new environment, I realized what I had been too naive to see, that this 'curiosity' was not just a curiosity, and I was fooling myself by not giving it the proper attention it deserved.  I was gay.  I was really, really gay.  And it wasn't an emotional or painful thing to realize.  It just was.  I could finally, finally relax.  I fell in love, I fell out of love and back in again and as painful as all these experiences have felt over the past year or so, I was finally myself.  I was so confident in who I was that no matter what I did, I would do it comforted by the fact that I was no longer rebelling against who I thought I should be.

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I was a renegade.  I probably still am. I was a depressed, anxiety-riddled, secretly gay, body-hating, ski-racing, privileged white feminist renegade.  And I was so fed up with shutting up that I started this blog to detail my inadequacies, how fucked up I thought I was.  So, here I am, four and a half odd years later.  And I'm still trying to make my life my own, still decorating my bedroom without consent.

But I have become who I was so afraid of becoming.  I kiss girls, I eat cake and pizza without abandon, and I go for long walks most afternoons before I do pilates.  I love without abandon and I would do anything for my friends.  I don't do surface level interactions but I can finesse the hell out of a room.  I want everything, and I want nothing and sometimes I'm given to fits of anxiety and temper tantrums. I've realized my privilege and I am trying to make up for it; I've realized sexism and am trying to rebel against it.  Sometimes I dress in all black, I have face piercings and tattoos and sometimes I get drunk and sometimes I get high and I love Vermont.  I am ridiculously close with my mother and my brother and I am most certainly a cat person.  

My self-realization has been the greatest favor I have ever done myself; greater than therapy or antidepressants, greater than realizing that I wasn't okay, greater than realizing it was okay to be happy, okay to be love.  All we can do is make these lives that are not our own, ours.  It's all I know how to do.  I guess we can only operate on what we know.

And that's okay, too. 

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"Be brave. Take risks.  Nothing can substitute experience."

Wild Horses

It feels like everyone's world is falling apart. One minute, it was all fine, the trees and the mountains and the people were all where they were supposed to be and the next, it was all gone, and the people walked upside down, and the trees split in two and the mountains floated away.  And everyone keeps asking me what they should do, as if I'm the scientist, or the lichen wall, that's going to save them. As if I, somehow, know what to do.

My anthem of the summer has been, "I'm sorry."  For all the things I wish so badly I could fix, I'm sorry.  And not for myself, for the millions of other people who only exist in my life who's lives have been uprooted or irrevocably changed.  I want to fix it so badly, I want to be that scientist or that lichen wall or just be whatever can save them.  I am so sorry, so sorry.
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Not

Everything around me isn't real,

and in my back pocket neon fades,

but I'm spinning and my braids catch

the twilight and suck it in.

Triangles envelop my body,

and within a war-torn arena of blonde hairs

are the curls that marched off to trains,

two by two.

Chicken scrawl worse than a chicken's,

an un-used pencil grip and,

the stubbornness of a seven year old

who knew she was just perfect.

Ocean eyes with rings of yellow,

too light-lashes too little

ankles that will never match

tiny toes, tiny nail beds.

Gingham sheets with tatters

in the corners but not the middle,

and chamomile tea, only ever honey

and nothing around me is real.

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I don't know if I'm okay anymore.  I'm just waiting until Emily comes, ticking down the days until my best friend in the world will be here, until I can hug her and hear her laugh and know everything will be ok.  For now, I'm in the limbo and I don't know if everything is ok.  I don't know if everything is ok.
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"Wild horses, couldn't drag me away,
Wild, Wild Horses, we'll ride them someday."

And This

Driving home today, right as I turned onto Common, from East, it hit me.  My soul playlist was on and it just hit me.  I don't even know what it was, because I've taken precautions so that no single song will show up that is going to remind me of anything. Driving and being emotional do not mix.  And usually, I shrink away when this happens.  If you run away, it isn't happening, right? This has been an effective strategy for me up until now.

I've preached about running away, how it doesn't work, how it isn't helping, and that eventually, it will catch up with you and it will not be pretty but I couldn't take my own advice.  It's easier to pretend everything is ok.  It all went to shit in January and since then, I've been trying to figure out how to right my entire world.  And you know what? It doesn't make me weak to admit that I was upended in January and have been since then.  I'm not weak for saying that and it's taken me a long time to understand that.

If we're being honest, I've been upended since November. I've been in constant free-fall and only in the past few days have I finally started to hit ground.  A strange sensation, of being able to feel solid-ness beneath you, when just the opposite has been your norm.  Today, I sat in my car, as I drove home, and I let everything hit me at once, from November to right now, the end of July.  I really felt it, and it really sucked.  I mean, really sucked.  I went home (well, not home, but to the house I'm currently in charge of) and I refused to let anyone come over.  I needed to be alone, to let this fully happen to me.  And let me reiterate, it really sucked.  Hitting the ground after months of being in the air is not a pleasurable experience.

But I hit the ground, and I lasted through it.  And I'm okay, and I will be okay.  It's a lot easier to keep running, gulping air and water and the few respites you get.  It's a lot harder to face your reality, to understand that something has happened, something has changed.  And to go on.
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Shea asked me today if we were all really going to die.  We were bowling with this little wooden set he got a few years ago that has different little monsters you get to position and hit, and he stopped and said, "Are we all really going to die? Someday?" And I froze because sweet ten year old boys aren't supposed to ask their babysitters those questions.  I couldn't ask his parents what to say, so I floundered for a second and then gave him the truth.  "Well...Yeah.  We're all going to die."  He looked unperturbed, amazingly, and then continued on, "But... Will you die before me? And what will happen to you if you do?" And when I said that nobody knew the answers to those questions, and nobody really could, he said, "Okay, I guess we can just bowl, for now."
That's kind of what life is, right? I'm hoping it is.  I'm hoping the world gets more ten year olds like him.  God knows we need it.
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"I can hear you when I wake up,
In the distance, like the ocean,
You calling me back to your side,
Holding my breath in the night,
I listen again for your song."

Everything Stays

I sit at the granite island in the early afternoon; unsure of what I should say.  I never know what to say, I never know what I'm supposed to do and I'm just pretending.  I'm only nineteen; I'm not mature enough to know how to be a good person, right?
I've decided to stop using that excuse.  Nineteen is a bullshit age in a bullshit world and it would be a little less bullshit if we all stopped using our ages as scapegoats.
At this point, I'm just trying to make it through the days.  My world is a haze of never-ending stuff; kids and work and dishes and pancakes, rivers and sunburns and cooking and my mothers hands, broken bottle-openers and scorched lighters, fireworks embedded in my skin, painting and submarines, octopuses and rashes, blonde hair and wasps, hammocks and porch swings. It's too much, it's all too much, but since when is anything ever manageable?
I couldn't manage my siblings; they just thought I was a bossy little girl (true, unfortunately).
I couldn't manage my depression without a therapist, without meds.
I couldn't manage my life schedule without my mother.
So here I am, just trying to get to that point in the day when I can collapse, sunburnt and spent from telling children what to do, from figuring out their plans and food and sunscreen, finding the towels and cats and getting them to wear their seatbelts.
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Bri told me that there was peace in everything.  I think she's right, in a way. Or maybe she's not, who knows.  But it gave me a small comfort, and these past few days, were the eye of the storm that is currently my life.  Albeit, a few days isn't a very long eye in the wake of four months, but it was something, and I knew it when I saw it.  I grabbed it and soaked it in and everything was better, just for then.
If there's one thing I've learned from my myriad of mental health problems, it's that you just have to take today.  Yeah, yesterday probably sucked, and yeah tomorrow probably will too.  But if today isn't so bad, or a small moment of today isn't so bad, you take it.  The kids might start screaming in the next few seconds or you might run out of gas on a highway, but that tiny moment can make a world of difference.
We all need those eyes, in the middle of storms.
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Blood//Bones//Ribs

A moon carved out of cheese, the curve of your lips

the scratch of wax paper, softness of your pillow

the shape of your nose, accumulations of cat hair

penguin sheets, a too-loud fan,

Stripped to their atoms, piles of my bare bones;

all I can think of is you.

It doesn't matter who or what this is about; all that matters is that it exists.
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"ever so slightly, daily and nightly,
In little ways, when everything stays"

Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Big Wild

Pink/Black/Grey Matter

can you fade away towards light speed?

is there a pounding against your temples

on the back of your eyes and scrawled

into the tiny holes in your surface skin.

can you remember what it was like

to be weightless against the lights

in the back of the car windows?

Your daddy’s cracked leather seats

and the clunking incessant who begs

on one more year for me.

that copy lost the crispness as

you fold and line and the corners

of your face crinkle and fade in time.

can you become a spider’s web?

your incandescence could never warrant

it but your bible will tell you-

the worst kind of hopelessness

is hope.

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Why do I like poetry so much (you say as you roll your eyes because I've written yet another poem).  That's a good question, but I can't, or I won't answer it.  I don't have to answer it; and that's why I like it.  I'm learning, that it's okay not to answer.  To have an answer and not say it because really, when did it become anyone's business? Mary asked me if I was going to tell, and I said no.  Which really sucks because isn't it nice to be open about who you are?  It's really nice, but it's a privilege I can't share in, not in this moment, not with everyone.  Is that okay? I don't know.  Well, I do, but like I said, I'm not going to answer. 

Really, because I'm sure your interpretation is as good as mine.  I'm sure anyone's is as good as mine, and I think that's the fucked up and really beautiful part of it all. 

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This is All I Choose To Tell

I can feel myself fading into your wallpaper, smoothing my edges and lines. God, I'd make a beautiful beige. I'll lose myself in the swirling paint that adorns those which cage you; another eternity in a finite container. Eyes will ebb, limbs grow together and I am your wallpaper.  God, I'd make a beautiful beige.  A grandmother's beige; one that yells about running on wooden floors and upholstered furniture.  A grandmother's beige which will compliment her hair and linen pantsuits.  I'll fade, fade away and into your wallpaper.  Another eternity in a finite container. God, I'd make a beautiful beige.
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"If you built yourself a myth
Know just what to give
What comes after this,
Momentary bliss."

To Me//Cavalier// Turn to (Each Other)

Closure.  All I wanted was closure but you just wouldn't give it to me.  It had to keep going, I guess, because neither of us wanted to let go.  Neither of us was ready to just not be around each other and I think that's the worst part of it, how much we felt and how little we could do about it.

It's better now, so much better.  The same page, you kept saying.  The same page, you've kept saying; it's what you wanted, to be there, with me.  To be there, and have it be confusing and unknown, to not know what was going on.  But to be there, with me.  The same page; you and me.
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My greatest tragedy; your Saturday afternoon.
I could've rung it a million different ways;
your taste buds, hallucinating helicopters.

Disguised inside me now and I won't
ever want it again; you're a liar and
don't you never want to know it.

Perfect pitch shouting into the desert winds;
black spider's silk tempered with cotton
envelopes my body like ghost fingers.

At the very bottom of your old lady's well,
snails can be a murky version of happy;
don't you wish you could?

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Why did I stay?  You know the answer, you've always known the answer as much as you'd like to pretend that you don't.  Empathy is a really strong quality, it's almost like my bible, my torah.  As much as I wish it wasn't, that I didn't feel so much, it is.  Suffering is never easy to watch, especially in one's self, and what are you but a different version of me?
I stayed because I wanted to.  Not because I was told to, woken up in the middle of the night, so frantic, so immediate; and not because it meant so much to someone who means so much to you.  No, I stayed because I wanted to.  I could say so much more about it, believe me, but in the end it all boils down to what I wanted and what I wanted was to be there, to keep you safe.  That's all I've ever wanted, was to keep those I care about safe because wouldn't it be great if everyone was safe? If I could gather them up in a boat and fly away into the sky (not unlike that Sailor Moon episode), and nobody would ever be hurt and wouldn't that be so great?
Because these kind of boats don't exist, I had to settle for staying.  And I did.
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"When you curl up in bed and, just in your head now, are you livin'?
When you look straight ahead and, you wish you were dead now, are you givin'?"

Hushpuppies

Listen.
Let it wash over you, pass through a curvy piece
of skin, permeate your brain,
you are not alone.
Saltwater is a favorite, a necessity,
indigo skies have faded to their true black
and the stars have gone out,
for tonight;
You are not alone.
And wishing for it, will give only
more faded black dinginess.
Listen.
Syrupy sweet, sliding over
the airwaves towards porousness,
because you are not alone.
Listen, listen listen:
You. Are. Not. Alone.
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That's it.  I'm really struggling to come up with something better to say, but I'm struggling too much to struggle with words.  All I can do is listen, looking up at my faded indigo black skies, devoid of stars, for tonight.
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"I can finally see, you're as fucked up as me,
so how do we win?"

That Kind of Winter

Winter, a time I've dreaded since last April.  Winter, a time I've been waiting for since last April. Every time someone says they're glad it hasn't been so cold yet, I must restrain myself from scoffing (I usually fail).  I can't explain it, I love the snow, and the cold, but I hate what it used to entail for me.  My life was ski, hate self for not skiing well, ski, go free ski, decide to become a freestyle skier, go back to racing, hate myself; for such a long time.  I tried so hard to convince myself that I loved it, but I didn't.  I loved being able to be on the mountain every day, because I loved the feeling of my skis on the snow, and I still love skiing.  But wasting your life to look at numbers on a clock, wasting your life to wonder what you've done wrong, to constantly be critiqued by everyone and most harshly by yourself, is not a worthwhile pursuit.  Maybe for someone who loves it, but I couldn't lie about loving it any more.
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"Are you skiing this year?"
"Do they have a team at Smith?"
"How's the training going?"
"Have you raced yet?"

No is the answer to most of those questions, and the no is said with a smile because I am so happy. I've never been so happy, to not be skiing.  I haven't gone out for a single day, and that is ok.  I probably will, before I go back to school, or maybe I won't.  And if I do, it won't be about carving and my ankle flex, my forward pressure or my inside hand.  It will be about me.  Me.

I lost myself, those six years, I lost myself.  "Private school," it was, it is, my apology.  A "special" school, I say, averting my eyes while I describe what it is.  "Intense,"  I produce, with some amount of difficulty.  I try to make my eyes crinkle around the corners, like my mom's do, because it makes her look more relatable.  Nothing about it is relatable, shouldn't have to be relatable, but I try so desperately.  My apology to the world, "private school."  I'm sorry.
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"Private school," my apology,
for my father who will probably go to his grave
in his work chair.
"Private school," my apology,
for my mother who will never understand the desire
in others to exclude.
My apology, for all the trips, for the gear and the books,
for the money.  The money, the money, the money.
"Private school," my apology,
and for that, I should be sorry.
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"It's that kind of winter", my dad keeps saying.  It is, I guess.  The kind where I can't stop staring at everything that is going on-a freight train of activity, of outdoors and indoors and netflix and baking, of my mom and dad, of wine, a hive of motion which surrounds me.
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"Let's get rich and buy our parents homes in the south of France,
Let's get rich and give everybody nice sweaters and teach them how to dance,
Let's get rich and build a house on a mountain, making everybody look like ants,
From way up there, you and I,
You and I."