MY OWN BOHEMIA

wordpress

2008-08-28T16:12:00.001-07:00

http://collegehippie.wordpress.com/

gonna be working from there more so check it out, comment, send the love k?

college realities

2008-08-28T07:43:00.001-07:00

I spent today shopping for zebra bedspreads and sunny shower curtains with two beautiful brunettes that have the same smile and my cheery eyed dream interpreting goddess mom. we ate meatballs and swedish fish and hugged when it was over, but oh
it hasn't even really started.
in less than a month all these college fantasies will become a reality and as I walked through my hippie paradise of a room I touched all the tiny things I might have to leave behind because there is no room for them in my new world- the Indian Cupboard i begged my grandma to buy me and covered with plastic pearls and glitter, the tiny tin bucket with the vines weaving around the handle my mom gave to me at our sacred gathering, the old battered Rent, Beatles, and Madonna posters that have watched me journal and cry and dream countless times from their home on my wall. I think of all the treasures from my childhood that don't belong in this black and pink haven that will soon feel like home- and something inside of me collapses with the realness of it all. something in me is scared and anxious and aching for her mommy and her phsycotic dog.
Today was the first time I've seen you since I felt naseus in your car and spent a sleepless night in my sisters bed. We bickered and kissed and fell back into this easy routine of loving eachother that feels like it started years ago.
hard to believe it was only last summer.

18 years old

2008-08-22T09:23:00.000-07:00

my 18th birthday has come and gone and with it it brought yellow punch buggie pinyatas, lip staining sloppy joes, scrapbook pages created by the hands of the most beautiful girls i have ever seen, poems from my mother that made me cry and want to cradle my 18 year old body in her arms again, singing cards promising tropical vacations from this bland Ohio landscape, tye die balloons screaming GROOVY, pictures with ancient nuns who smile with their eyes and prefer dogs over children, and sweet smelling vintage perfume that will be the scent wrapped around my wrists the first days that i walk into this new college world.
i was nervous when you gushed about the scavenger hunt and Get To Know Mallory games my friends would be playing but you gave me the best birthday party ever in our magical backyard and made me rememmber that i'm never too old to bask in all my innocence. After all, I'm only 18
I have my whole life to grow up.
I clapped my hands when i saw that tree trunk you personalized just for me. our initials carved into the thick wood look like they've been there forever and smile at me every morning when the sun rises and shines it's jubilant light on those letters. MD+MM, and a jagged heart enclosing us together. The best birthday present you could've given me and it cost NOTHING.

i felt infinite

2008-08-12T07:37:00.001-07:00

last saturday i saw sisterhood of the traveling pants with my pink lipped grandma and my favorite workout-aholic. we laughed when her wrinkled eyelids drifted shut before the previews were over and ate our low calorie popcorn we snuck in our purses. watching those four best friends on the screen took me back to days when i thought best friends were forever. maybe they are. maybe we will come back to eachother and realize all the times we have missed out on, realize that our laughs still sound the same. but for now we all look at pictures from those crazy sophmore nights when we wore red lipstick and war paint under our innocent eyes and we yearn for something we never realized we were leaving behind. we yearn for the memories that have become pictures that we look back at on sunny days when the house is quiet and we feel loneliness in every corner of our minds. we have all spun off in different directions but i have faith in best friends and boomerangs,
they will always come back.
after the movie i let those tight french braids my sister wove into my scalp that morning unravel and go wild. my hair was a jungle of corn colored waves and i let it hang while i put coral colored chanel lip gloss on my lips and waited for two blue eyed blondies to pick me up. we sped off to your house and oh that august wind felt so good on my face. the festival that night was a blur of pretty girls and drunk old men and funnel cake sugar sticking to the corners of my mouth. we laughed and posed for pictures and in the end i had to lay down on the pavement and look at the stars because all those stands and rides and voices were overwhelming.
later that week when the concerts were done and the festivals were over we drove around in your car and pretended we had a destination. we didn't. we were driving to nowhere and i know it sounds dumb but when you turned dave matthews on and put the windows down and rubbed your thumb over my hand,
i felt infinite.

Somebody's Hero

2008-08-07T09:07:00.001-07:00

watching Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants with my sister while the sun shines through the cracks in our closed blinds and mu stomach tosses and turns the chicken dumplings i downed a half hour ago. this summer is dragging on and on but at least the nightmares have stopped and i can sleep again. I guess i was dragging around all this bad energy but once that floral pant wearing artist put her magic hands on me i was centered again.
yesterday we ran accross car filled roads, dodging trucks filled with trashy hicks who hollered at me out the window and honked with dirty fingers. they don't see me- just a tall blonde in a tank top. they aren't close enough to see the blue eyes, peace sign necklace, dreams of european cafe's and 18th birthdays. they don't see an artist, a girlfriend, a daughter, a dreamer. they see a piece of ass. sometimes this world makes me sick. open your eyes all you gritty truck drivers of america, that seventeen year old you honked at is so much more than another girl to honk at.
you held my hand even though i was dripping sweat and my toes were still caked with dirt from the soggy lawn at the Dave Matthews concert. we found refuge in Barnes n Noble while you flipped through UFC magazines and I looked at glossy pictures of toned perfection. 31 moves to get your abs toned this summer. 20 foods to slim down. how about 100 reasons why i should put down this magazine and start loving myself in spite of the fact that I am so far from these starving beauties? that's what i should be reading. by the time we picked up your car from Pep Boys my purple eyeshadow was smudging and my head felt too heavy on my neck. thankfully, I had you to rest it on while we waited in traffic and your dad yelled at you to get your head out of your ass. we both laughed silently as the sun beat down on your adorable farmers tan. If my camera wasn't so heavy I'd be snapping pictures of us at that red light, but it is so the last time i felt my finger on that button was at my cousins birthday party. we filled three tables at Friday's and her strawberry blonde hair looked shinier than ever. Her blue eyes are so full of the world and when she looks at me I feel like i could actually be somebody's hero. When she reaches up for me to hold her,
I feel like I deserve to be looked at that way. I feel like I want to hold her forever.

snapshots of my summer

2008-08-04T08:00:00.001-07:00

walking around the movie theatre as the sun set and made everything pink and blue and orange. this time of night the world turns into a hippie's tie dye dream and i snap pictures of the sky while I breathe in all this Ohio air and listen to the two supermodels on either side of me laugh. they are beautiful and geniuine and i know you think your arms look flabby but i promise you- they're not. pree teen boys with messy hair and cargo shorts whistle as we walk by and you say they probably got droppped off by their mommy. i laughed- until i rememmbered i had too.
Dinner at PF changs and goosebumps painted pictures on my tan arms while i tried to work those plastic chopsticks and watched that brown eyed beauty twist the ring around and around her fragile finger. too in love to take it off but much too free to wear it for eternity. so sure of herself in that polka dot dress- people are never what you expect them to be. she is so much more than just another pretty girl. after dinner you picked me up and i couldn't see that face i love because your windows are tinted too dark. twenty years old now and you still play your music so loud it makes the car shake, and catch slimey frogs on sunny days, and kiss me like it's the first time. these are just some of the reasons i love you. i know i told you to grow up but i don't know what i'd do if you lost that twinkle in your eye. i take it back. stay just like this forever. stay mine. we drove down windy roads until we reached his grandmas house. he lives there now with that blonde lifegaurd who makes me laugh so hard when i least expect it. she curled up on his couch while he demonstrated UFC moves and refused to make her macaroni. these nights seem so insifgnifigant but im writing them down because they are the tiny moments of summer i want to rememmber- the way i bury my head in the curve between your neck and your shoulder and breathe deep. sweat and cologne and sunflower seeds. these are the snapshots of my summer.

driving

2008-07-22T13:37:00.000-07:00

my dad has a new house. and oh, it is beautiful
and gigantic
and bustling with dirt streaked construction workers
and barefoot little girls
and smart mouthed high schoolers
and bikini wearing college freshman drinking diet cokes and watching their skin turn browner and browner. laying on their backs on a smooth wooden dock. legs dangling in the man-made lake thats full of oversized bass and carp and a million other mysteries my boyfriend tried to catch on a pole for three hours last week. that freckly skin i love so much turned cherry red and burned against his blue armani shirt we bought for half price in new york. oh well, his eyes are still the same dark brown i lost myself in last summer.
today i drove to panera and ate salad for the first time. well, i didn't drive. these seventeen year old fingers have yet to grip a steering wheel and take a hold of all the freedom that a liscence brings. i am happy being stuck in the front seat, hand out the window and wind in my hair. I'm not in control, but I'm completely blissful. my 14 year old sister is already looking at cars, jeeps and lexus's and oh she is in such a hurry to grow up but she has no idea how beautiful she is. this will be her second year of high school and i watch her and the "Core Four" lounge by the neighborhood pool and giggle and share secrets. they think that it will last forever, how do i tell them that by graduation they may not even speak to eachother? that one may be pregnant, another an addict, another valedictorian? how do i tell them the world changes and so do the people in it, how do i remind them to love eachother regaurdless of who they all become? thats something i've learned recently. the people i used to devote my heart to somehow slipped right through my fingers. forgotten friends and broken promises and high school dances just passed us by and we speeded over them and called them bumps in the road but i don't want my friendships to be just another speed bump. i want to take my life by the wheel and drive on and keep all those forgotten loves in my car, fill up every seat with the people i have neglected or hurt. fill it up with the friendships of my childhood, the bonds that never break no matter how different the paths we drive down may be. i want to floor that car towards a future where we can all remember that this is LIFE,
and we are in it together.

Saturday Morning Surprise :)

2008-07-19T08:25:00.000-07:00

thank you so much nici for giving me this award :) you actually inspired me again to not let this blog o' mine go to waste, cuz i forgot that there are actually some people who read it <3

Cinda's beautiful && creative blog

Sues Views because i love her beautiful photography

Georgia's creative musings

Colors on My Mind for her photographic beauty and loving mothering <3

Bohemian Girl for her totally unique style and photos

Tangled Wings for her insights into life, beautiful photography, and inspiring blog

Dreamer Girl for her passionate and creative art, writing, and photography

Rules for Accepting -->

1) Put the logo on your blog
2) Add a link to the person who awarded you
3) Nominate at least 7 other blogs
4) Add links to those blogs on yours
5) Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs.

sweet sweet summer

2008-06-24T13:55:00.001-07:00

i havent written in so long but this summer is so sweet and toxic and wonderfully fucked up it would be a crime not to capture in it poetry and run on scentences.

last night i danced around in a victorias seceret bikini and laughed. and laughed. and laughed. and when the night got too heavy and sleep took me over i dreamt of the way your omelets tasted two weeks ago when you cooked them just for me. this morning brought floppy microwave pancakes and a stupid fight with my brown haired boyfriend in the Wendys parking lot. i hung up on you and swore i woulndt call back but my fingers had a mind of thier own and i texted you for the next two hours. my fingers are a slave to my heart and my heart is a slave to you. but you know that by now. soon i will be meeting you for greek food and sweating my ass off in this peace sign baseball cap but it will be worth it when you kiss me on the forehead and tell me all is forgiven. by friday we will be on a plane to the city i will call my home one day and i can't wait to see the way the lights of times square reflect in your eyes. I can't wait to hold your hand and skip down the streets of New York. can't wait to eat ungodly hot dogs and steaming pad thai. can't wait to kiss you on the subway. i wish i could say you were as excited as me but the truth is you're not- now its your turn to be seduced by the big apple.

summer has turned my pasty skin into a golden brown. i've replaced shiney lip gloss with cherry flavored chapstick. it doesnt smear when i plant a big one on you after you catch a cicada or canon ball into the pool out back. my once blonde hair is even blonder. it shines in the Ohio sun and whips into my eyes when we cruise down the street with the windows down. now that its summer again you say my eyes are blue instead of grey.
i think your wrong
i think they were blue all along. <3

Worth The Ride

2008-04-04T08:26:00.000-07:00

April is finally here and oh it is so different from the spring i blossomed in last year. When i was a Junior and the blonde haired Ken doll everyone adored so much painted on my window- asking me to prom in red letters with a heart by his name. I was short haired and tan and smiling every second because my teethe were no longer imprisoned by bitter tasting braces. I was fresh from quiet Idaho and bursting with poetry. I am still this girl. My hair is longer and my tan has faded but my poetry still flows and my heart beats to the same rythems. The only difference is that that blonde haired hypocrite is lightyears away from me now and yes, I cried last night when he told me to leave him the fuck alone but while my tears seeped into my pillow my beautiful boyfriend soothed me with white raggae rapping and quiet I Love You's. He let me cry until the Sudafed kicked in and I exploded into sleep.
I dreamed of our Spring Break. Of the way you smiled at me as we crossed the state line into Florida. Of the Ooohs and Aaaahs we whispered while we drove past our first palm tree. Of the six hundred twenty seven pictures i snapped of you and me and our painfully pretty friends that painted Panama twenty different shades of wild. I let my blonde hair flow loose under a cowboy hat that matched yours. We bought them at a cheap surf shop along with sleezy tee shirts and overpriced water bottles. When we kissed our straw hats collided and sang with scratchy bliss. Your lips were chapped and tasted like salt water and oh, I have never felt so head over heels. You picked out the black dress I wore to that expensive restaraunt. Stared at me until I felt like I was worth staring at. Held my hand while we walked those Panama streets and squeezed it at all the right moments. Our dinner was charming darling but you know I couldnt wait to go back to the room and throw on my gangsta hat. Slip my feet into your Timberlands and freestyle with your frineds. They are shaking their heads and laughing and you just hug my crazy body and tell me you think its cute I don't care what anyone thinks.
Why would I?
I already have everything I need.
But those Florida nights are miles from me now. We left them behind when we got lost on an endless Alabama road. It was the hottest day all week and the four of us were crammed into your Abercrombie smelling Audi- singing Lynard Skynard and Kenny Chesney, Backstreet Boys and Lil Wayne. Windows down, radio up, cowboy hats on, purple toenails bouncing in the breeze as they dangled out my window. Those sixteen hours were long baby,
but it was worth the ride.

Ready for Spring

2008-03-10T08:29:00.000-07:00

The snow is melting and I'm thanking God because I'm tired of bundling up in all these mismatched layers. I'm ready to trade my thick, striped scarves for paisley ribbons and flip flops. I'm ready to sip on pink lemonade and lather my skin with coconut scented lotion. This is the spring that I am starved for.
Yesterday we played in the snow and you told me I bring out the kid in you. Blonde pigtails peeked out from under my red and black hat but by the time we made it inside my hair was soaked and my hat was lopsided. A 6 foot college boy made snow angels with me and his black dog named Lucy. It was beautiful and while I craved my camera it was so much easier to tackle you without that Sony in my hands. When our fingers were numb and our boots filled with snow we retreated to the warmth of your house and cooked hot chocolate. There were no marshmellows so we picked out hearts and stars and rainbows from your box of Lucky Charms.
Sitting on your plaid couch and watching Quinten Tarantino flicks. You'd never take me for a gory girl but oh how I love all that bloody action. After Death Proof and Planet Terror my eyes were growing heavy and my hot chocolate wasn't so hot. I count the freckles on your arms until I fall asleep and thank God you know just the right way to hug me because your basement is freezing and my socks are still drenched.
When you finally take me home I chew on minty melatonin and look at all the black n white pictures you took of us on my laptop. You trying desperatly to look like a hard ass. Me throwing peace signs and making fish faces. Both of us laughing. and laughing. and laughing.
I slept like a baby but my dreams were filled with nerf gun wars and cotton candy. Bizzare, I know. My dreams aren't better than my reality anymore. <3

Natural Disasters

2008-03-08T08:39:00.001-08:00

Yesterday started out with fat free smoothies and pudding cups on the couch. I laid back in the recliner and watched the style network while everyone else went to school. I waited for snow and licked low cal pudding off my fingers and wiggled my toes in my fuzzy No-Slip red socks. When it finally started snowing a beautiful blonde that could be my sister picked me up and took me to get smoothies. Low fat strawberry goodness that wound up to be a mistake because i forgot my gloves and while it tastes like heaven coffee would have been so much warmer on this winter day. We avoided school and talked about love and beaches and high school bullshit until we snapped back to reality and looked at the clock. Second period was over and it was time to apply ourselves, time to admit there would be no snow day for these desperate spring-hungry seniors.
We took our time walking to class, stopping at lockers and shuffling our wet Ugg boots with ease. When we finally said goodbye I was alone and my footsteps echoed on the pastel colored tiles. This hallway will be swimming with teenagers in the middle of an identity crisis in a few minutes. It will smell like body odor and expensive perfume and fund raiser chocolate. It will be loud and hot and chaotic but for now it is mine. and it is quiet. and it is empty. and it smells like the shampoo at my grandmas house. so i will savor each footstep and swing my arms through that empty hall. All this lovely silence is only t.e.m.p.o.r.a.r.y.
Finally in forensics and for once I paid attention instead of doodling poetry on my hand. We talked about natural disasters and liability clauses and preventable deaths. We talked about tragedy like it was this distant faraway thing that could never touch us in our suburban fishbowl of safety. We are comfortable. We are invincible. We are untouchable. And deep down i think we all know,

that we are just fooling ourselves.

Tragedy can seep into the most clean cut universe and implode the most innocent hearts. Natural disasters happen naturally ANYWHERE. And while I will not live in ignorance I will also not live in fear. Because I believe in something bigger. something greater. something divine and nameless because my lips can't form a word for all that beauty. Something some call God, some call Love, all call upon when they are in need and on their knees and tired of desperation. Something not confined to religion, or country, or individual. Something that lives within each and every one of those confused looking sets of eyes i see day after day at my high school. It's that ease that overcomes me when I surrender to the world and know that everything is going to be alright. Everything is going to be as it should. Everything is out of my hands and that lack of control is a GLORIOUS thing. It means that all i have to do is
LIVE IN LOVE.
Nothing more. Nothing less.

After forensics the snow started to pour. Our world was coated in white and oh, it was so beautiful. But that beauty was bitter as we walked to our cars in that arctic parking lot. I couldn't breathe without swallowing snowflakes and your car door was frozen shut. I grabbed out with both hands and yanked on the handle until the ice cracked and snow fell onto my seat. We laughed and wiped it off. We drove and talked more about the scruffy faced loser every girl used to lust after. Now he is just another cocky ass hole heartbreaker and to tell you the truth
I'm not surprised.
It was only a matter of time before he realized you were too good for him. I just wish you could see it too. Stop wasting your brown eyes on someone who is blind.

On the drive home you tried to hit the breaks but the car wouldn't stop. Images flashed through my head, Alicia Keys videos about bloody loves saying goodbye in a hostpital bed and damn all that VH1 i watched this morning. I was texting my boyfriend while you were whispering "stop, stop, STOP" but we didn't stop and you could hear the crunch of metal on metal as we hit that SUV. You looked at me with an expression I've never seen before and I put my cell phone down. My hormonal boyfriend bitching came to a halt and I was suddenly filled with regret for the words i yelled at him while he sat in a college classroom. My screeching voice echoed through his phone and to tell you the truth
now i don't even remember what I was so upset about.
All my period bullshit became inconsequential and I was left with an utter appreciation for life and love and these are the mini natural disasters we avoid every day. The woman we hit was a long haired brunette but she only smiled and asked if we were okay. Thank Buddha for the friendly people still left in the world, I was anticipating furrowed brows and screaming about insurance. I'm glad I was wrong. <3

You and Your Penis Have It Easy

2008-03-05T15:29:00.000-08:00

Right now I am sitting in bed with my legs crossed trying not to cry. I just got off the phone with you and the persons voice that should have soothed me the most only filled me with these murderous tears that are teetering so dangerously on the edges of my eyes. Last Saturday you told me that my eyes get greyer in the winter, but in the summer they are blue. I have been staring at myself in the mirror ever since in critical evaluation. No one wants winter eyes.
Today I am bloated and cranky and groggy and awful. My bad vibes are pulsing and waving and infecting everyone around me so it's safer to sit in this little room with the snow white lamp and pound away into my laptop- i don't want to spread this kind of miserable Wednesday virus around. Not even Hannah Montana in the minivan with my mom could help me today and I'm thinking it's time to meditate again. You will be here soon in your loud ass car with your death stick and your smart ass comments i usually adore but I am dreading today. I could snap at any minute because I am insecure and exhausted and just praying for someone to drench in all this menstrual depression. One wrong move and it could be you and I don't want to spend all next week apologizing for the thoughtless words my period brought me.
And oh, you are the lucky one. The broad chested love of mine who will never know the agony of changing a tampon or buckling over in choir because your cramps hurt too bad to hit the high notes. You will never know the overwhelming self doubt you feel when you have to suck in to fit into your favorite jeans because your stomach is busting with water and chocolate bars from your last emotional breakdown. No, you can sit back and laugh at me when I cry because of that final episode of Party of Five. You can call me whiney when I need you to offer to hold me more than anything in the world. Because that's all I need right now. Compassion, understanding, and hell, this may be stretching it, but maybe even a little bit of sympathy. Because honey, you and your penis,
YOU HAVE IT EASY.
You should be praising me for the hell that I skip through. I do not fall off the face of the planet when that special time of the month decides to grace me with its presence. I go to first bell at seven fifteen. I eat chicken fajitas with tan beauties and talk about spring break. I make websites and poetry and go to yoga classes at the gym. I live my life. I try to spread love.

And I do all of it while bleeding out of my vagina and smiling.
Now tell me
have YOU ever done that?

I didn't think so.
So before you start to rag on me for my slight bad moodiness,
look between your legs honey, and thank God you don't have a uterus.

escape from this winter

2008-03-04T11:05:00.000-08:00

We got two days of beauty before the storm came again. Before the rains blew over Ohio and turned all our perfectly mowed lawns into brown puddles. Yesterday we drove with the windows down. I sat in the car with two beautiful girls and sang. and sang. and sang. I threw my hand out the window and felt the wind whip through all this dirty blonde hair. The sun was shining and my body was screaming for summer.
We ate chili and pretzels at McCalisters while we talked more about the scruffy faced asshole who broke her. He would trade three years for a pretty mouth in a pea coat and I'm sorry but you are pathetic. Now she is free and one day she will see that she is so much better off without you. The days to come will bring loneliness and I know all this Tuesday rain isn't helping but just wait darling. I promise
THERE WILL BE MORE SUNNY DAYS.
Just put on some Billy Joel and let the lullaby from your windshield whippers croon you off to sleep until spring decides to show it's lovely face again. Until you can laugh like you used to without wondering if he's with her. Until you can wear capris and flip flops. Heartache hurts so much less under the sunshine. <3
Days are dragging again. Last night we watched Dane Cook and ate pasta and I miss him everytime I hear his car drive away but oh, sleep is so wonderful and I'm drinking it up because I don't get nearly enough of it these days. I spent my day at school avoiding the art teacher with bags under her eyes and doodling on my hand. Writing reminders about keeping good karma on my wrist and yawning until the bell rings and I can go back to my grandmas for diet coke and Lifetime movies. I am more than ready to escape from this winter.

Knowing That I'm Right

2008-03-04T10:52:00.000-08:00

This was a snowy week of loving you and sleeping in. We slid down ice covered roads to your sweet smelling car. Wore matching trucker hats and bought one dollar movies. The kind filled with busty blondes and bloody torcher scenes. The kind that gives you nightmares and makes you scared of the world.

The three of us sprawled out on your couch Thursday night. Ate cheese It's with Tobasco sauce until I fell asleep and woke up alone. You had tucked in my feet while I napped the day away so my toes didn't get cold. Me and your newfound best friend sloshed through the dirt covored snow while you were gone. Our hair was damp against our foreheads, our fingers jammed into our pockets, but we fought that bitter cold with warm conversatin and dreams of independance.

When you got home you cringed as I threw my wet body on your chest. I was soggy with snow, gorgeously disgusting. Smeared eyeliner on beige cheeks. A pink nose and unbrushed teethe. Hours from now I will be sparkling clean with a Crest white smile and leopard print sweater but for now I am a disaster and you love me anyways. You love me when I try to rap on youtube even though I'm white. Yu love me when my breath smells like BBQ. You love me when I lick my fingers in nice resteraunts and leave you 20 minute voicemails. YOu love me when I'm knocked down, fucked up, tired of the universe. When I'm a total nerd, a liberal minded hippie, an artist with ADD. You love me when I can't look in the mirror because I'm tired of my eyes, and just when I start to forget,
you remind me of how blue they are.
This is why I talk about you in Muliticultural Literature
and Entrepreneurs in Action
and Choir
and Math.

This is why I've traded knee high boots for tie dye sweatpants and a UC Tee shirt. This is why when blonde haired football players tell me you'll break my heart again I can tell them that they're wrong.
No amount of homemade calenders or late night facebook messages can thank you for that,
because nothing feels better than telling them they're wrong.
Nothing feels better than knowing that I'm right.

Skeptical Beauties

2008-02-28T07:02:00.000-08:00

The girl sitting next to me wants a tattoo of a cherry blossom on her back and I'm jelous because I wish I'd thought of that. All I can dream of are peace signs and henna.
Long haired girl with high water and grey flannel socks stood in front of the class 40 minutes ago. She is the kind of girl my boyfriend would make fun of but the more I look at her the more beauty I see behind those brass rimmed glasses. She is hiding under layers of Goodwill clothes and selling candy bars to skinny bitches to raise money for anime club. She is brilliant but she stuttered through that 20 minute presentation about Japan. Her cheeks grew redder and redder and I wished she'd look at me so I could smile at her with my eyes. So I could send her golden rays of reassurance from accross this stoney morning classroom.
She is the kind of girl who never hears she's beautiful,
and if you tell her she'll only think you're lying.
God bless the skeptical beauties. They are walking tragedies I pass in the hall e.v.e.r.y.d.a.y.

I swore I would workout yesterday but I didn't. Instead I did someone elses final exam and ate three bowls of white chili. My brown eyed boyfriend rang the doorbell for the first time and I saw how firmly my stepdad shook his hand.
I geuss chilvary's making a comeback
Just in time<3

2008-02-27T06:35:00.001-08:00

http://web.mac.com/malpal5708/Site/Welcome.html

let me know if this link works <33 it is my real new website!

fears of the future

2008-02-26T20:25:00.000-08:00

It's almost midnight on a Tuesday and there are a million things I could be doing instead of sitting at this kitchen table pounding words onto my blog. Feeling my toes brush the cold tile of my grandmas condo. Licking calorie filled drops of chocolate ice cream off a tiny spoon and knowing I will regret it later.
I could be studying for exams. But of course that would be useless. These numbers have been drilled into my head for months and nothing's stuck. No, I'm not dumb. I'm actually pretty intelligent, but I can't stop my fingers from sketching peace signs on all those practice Tax Forms and Chapter Tests. I can't block out the poems streaming from my anxious pen when I should be watching pastel colored power points. I'm a hopeless dreamer and I'm praying this disease isn't fatal. This senioritis that has infected me quickly. College applications are scattered throughout my universe and I want to fill them all out perfectly but I feel much to young to answer these questions. I'm dying to be on my own, to make something of myself. To be a writer, a singer, a wish granting hippie a sight seeing gypsy a librarian who smiles with her eyes and smells like coffee. I'm aching for the world. All of it. Every inch of this pretty planet. I want to step out on my own but oh,
moving my feet seems so hard to do.
And the minutes are flying by and my eyelids are getting heavy with all this talk of the future
So I suppose it's time for me to surrender to dreams.
Tomorrow morning will come too soon and be too cold but still
i adore this reality. <3

A Familiar Voice

2008-02-26T09:59:00.000-08:00

Tan knuckles knocked on an oak door in a suburban cul-de-sac. Marissa’s blue eyes glanced sideways into the mirror. She smiled; for once there was no brace-faced child staring back at her. She hardly recognized this young woman with silk gloves up to her elbows. She was a poet in a prom dress anticipating a night that would fill her hungry pen with inspiration.
“Marissa! For crying out loud!” her mother wailed, “He’s here,” her last word fading into an excited whisper.
“DAH! Okay, okay,” she hissed back. She briskly turned off the bathroom light and walked towards the steep stairs. She took a deep breath, paused, and lifted her red stiletto off the ground. Marissa descended the stairs, countless movie scenes running through her head. She prayed through parted ruby lips that when Nick saw her, he heard music.
At the foot of the stairs Nick stood patiently, foot tapping on the wooden floor and hands shoved in the pockets of his tux. When he heard the clicking of Marissa’s heels he looked up. For a moment she was suspended, gloved hand delicately resting on the stair rail. Silence filled the house as they stared at each other- sharing a stolen moment no photograph could capture or lyric could express. The spring rain fell softly and the universe applauded.
“SMILE!” her mother screeched, and it was gone. Their instant of mutual passion evaporated into a million prom pictures and stereotypical poses: his arm around her waist and her hand glued to his chest, her carefully pinning a fading white rose to his midnight tux, the two of them joined by and scattered amidst twenty tan friends while a whirlwind of eager parents rejoiced in digital camera bliss. They filled their Canons and Kodaks until everyone’s cheeks were sore with artificial happiness.
The two of them walked to the car silently. Nick held a plaid umbrella over her golden hair and opened the car door while Marissa slid in and kicked off her heels. She placed pedicured feet on the dashboard and threw her head back in relaxation. As Nick made his way to the driver’s seat, Marissa faded into deep thought. Visions of crowded dance floors and first kisses filled her mind until her shrill ring tone erupted in the peaceful silence.
“Heeeello?” Marissa chirped.
“Hey baby,” a familiar voice met her from the other end of the line. Too familiar. The last time she had heard that voice it had been a crystal winter, screaming words most would consider unforgivable. Screaming words meant to bring a sixteen year old girl to her knees.
“Hey daddy,” Marissa was quiet, a faint whisper in the humid spring heat. Her breaths were making tiny clouds of smoke on the rain covered window as she rested her forehead on its cold surface and dug her nails into the soft car seat.
“I…I miss you, Marissa. And I… I just wanted to call you and tell you to…” he was unable to finish. His words got stuck in his throat and the sound of a grown man crying chilled Marissa to the bone.
“…to have a good time at prom,” he finished. Marissa bit her lip and willed glistening tears to sink back into her heart where they belonged. Her eyes looked far too pretty lined with all that charcoal to spill tears for her father on prom night.
“Ok daddy,” she inhaled deeply and dabbed at the corner of her eyes with the tip of her gloves, “I will.”
“I love you Marissa.”
Silence.
“I love you too daddy…I love you too.”
The words tasted hot and bitter and she had been aching to speak them for far too long. She had not seen his face for months now. She had not been his baby girl for even longer.
With the click of a button Marissa ended the phone call that had filled her mind with foggy memories of a home she used to know. Of a father she used to make proud. Of a life she could no longer grasp no matter how far she reached or how beautiful she looked in that two hundred dollar gown. Nick reached over and wound his fingers around hers- she had completely forgotten he was there. He heard every word and suddenly she was drowning in a sea of embarrassment. When she looked at him his eyes showered her in understanding and she laughed in spite of herself.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah…”
She looked out the window and then turned to meet his eyes again,
“I am. I just… I didn’t see that coming you know?”
“I know. What did he want?”
“He wanted me to…” Marissa sniffled and released his hand so that she could wipe her eyes yet again. A sob exploded in her throat and her shoulders began to heave as she battled the sadness.
“It’s okay babe. It’s okay,” Nick stumbled over his words. He would have given anything to stop those tears. To erase that phone call. To rewind back to when she stood at the top of those stairs and he could have sworn he heard music.
“He wanted me to have a good time at prom.”
“Well,” a smile began to spread across Nick’s face and he reached over to Marissa. He grasped her chin with icy fingers and turned her blue eyes to meet his, “Then have a good time at prom.”

2008-01-10T14:19:00.000-08:00

It's a rainy thursday and I'm missing you.
I had my camera charged and my favorite tie die shirt on but you were caught in traffic and i can hear your frineds rapping in the back seat of your car.
oh well
i had a headache anyways
these bobby pins i shoved into my scalp are starting to hurt and my stomach is cramping like a bitch. im regretting all the days i forgot to write because now the world will never know exactly how i fell back in love with you.
i don't really know how it happened either
promises of expensive dinners and that stupid Buckcherry song playing over and over and over
29 missed calls from you
christmas on it's way and you were all that i wanted
i need to stop worrying. stop being anxious and paranoid. stop reapplying lip gloss when im sitting in this condo alone watching lifetime and biting my nails.

jolly old saint nicholas

2007-12-05T15:43:00.000-08:00

It snowed this morning.
I woke up with cold feet scrunched up in blue flannel pajamas. somewhere around three o clock last night i tip toed to the fridge and ate all those esther price chocolates my grandma was saving for christmas. smoothe silky chocolate seduced my tongue and quieted all these winter fantasies.
i love people the most when it snows
when their cheeks are pink and their noses are stuffy and their hair is covored in snowflakes. i love them most when they're filled with the possibility that that first snow breathes into their rusty fall hearts. when they shiver as snow crunches beneath their feet and seeps through their soggy boots. when for a moment they are restored with that childish innocence christmas morning inevitably brings to all ages. writing letters to a jolly man in a red suit. one who never judges and pats you on the head. one who loves. and loves. and loves. and always eats your cookies.
a man who will never break your heart.
a man who will never let you down.
where have all the santa clauses gone?

Missing My Confidence

2007-11-06T10:56:00.000-08:00

Just got yelled at by some hollow eyed librarian in a tangerine sweater but all I can think about is how comfortable these sweat pants are and how I shouldn’t have eaten that oversized chocolate chip cookie on the way to class. The hallways were crowded and I shoved bite after bite of sugary sweetness into eager lips because my best friend wasn’t there to laugh at and my stomach’s been growling all day. In the silence of American Government it cried out for food while we watched Mark Mallory try to pitch a baseball. I told it to be quiet and crossed my arms over the giant Buddha on my chest but the pleading continued and when the bell finally rang for lunch I bolted as fast as these soft pink boots would take me down two flights of stairs and into the cafeteria. I tried to tell myself not to eat it but I did, before I knew it I had chocolate smeared on the edges of my candy pink lips and an empty Otis Spunkemeyer wrapper crumpled in my hands. Damnit damnit damnit. No, I am not one of those girls who weighs herself each night and spends her afternoons with her head in the toilet. My happiness does not lie upon a scale or within a size 2 pair of jeans. I am not killing myself to be beautiful but my mirror is not the friend it used to be. It does not greet me on those early high school mornings with a smile and a wink. It does not whisper quiet affirmations on the days when my phone never rings and this house seems worlds away from reality. I used to find solace in that blonde haired reflection but my gym membership is expired and I eat raisonettes for breakfast. I stopped tanning because I was losing myself to a bronzed stranger and stood out too much in winter. Now my face is dull and lifeless and I swear if you stare long enough you’ll see your eyes in these porcelain cheeks. The complaining must stop because I’m missing my confidence far too much. I forgot how beautiful I was when he traded me in for someone else but I need to remember so that these sunny fall days are not wasted on an insecure seventeen year old with a camera in her hand.
And oh, that camera is in my hand. Every day I’m snapping pictures of the world only I can see. Downloading them so that-if only for an instant- everyone can bear witness to the beauty that overwhelms me. They can realize how gorgeous the specks of gold are in their eyes or find peace within the way the sun hits the wet pavement on dewy afternoons. The only thing keeping me grounded in this cyclone of change are these pictures and the people posing for them. I meditate as I snap shot after shot and by the time their cheeks are sore with smiling I have found my center again. I have found my Om. I have forgotten you. I have forgotten it all.

autumns wind

2007-11-02T06:38:00.000-07:00

I'm filing these weekends away in my heart so that I can relive them on those nights when tears come easy and nothing tastes right. These automn winds are whispering winters promises and picking up golden leaves to blow them in my hair. Things are changing like they always do and the only difference is that I finally don't love him anymore. I can see him and buy him a buritto and know that he is destined for sadness because he has not smelled compassion from anyone but me and I am gone from him now. I will not hate him because hating anyone tears down the walls of my universe and makes me bitter. I love the morning too much to be bitter. I love this life too much to hate.
His best friend calls me late at night to stumble over confessions of "love" and I'm sorry but I could never kiss you. You and your jeep and your bad directions and your promises. These boys need to stop watching The OC, it makes them too damn dramatic and they get silly with ultimatums. Him or me, this or that, never or eternity. Just shut up, I have too much on my plate without your college boy problems. I will listen but I will not love you. I will love my best friend and my mom and myself. That's all the love I'm handing out for now so you can wait in line or surrender to my truth. <3

2007-10-26T06:16:00.001-07:00

rainy days

2007-10-25T11:05:00.001-07:00

Every day is a rainy day. Golden orange leaves sticking to my best friend wind shield- adhered firmly with crystal raindrops that don’t seem to be able to stop falling all over this quiet fall suburbia. At first those rain clouds were comforting, shielding a sun that hurt my eyes and reminded me of summer days in the front seat of your car. Now I am willing them away because the bottoms of my favorite jeans are soaked and my moccasins are slippery on the cold tile floors of my high school. Because my hair is frizzy and the hood on my new red jacket isn’t big enough to cover this blonde mess on my head. Because the only songs I like to listen to when it rains are the slow ones that make me think of you and everyone knows I grew sick of that long ago. I’m tired of talking about you. I could say that I have moved on but here I am blogging again and you seem to be the center of my poetry. You seem to make my fingers fly across the keyboard.
No, I am not jealous of that brunette sophomore kissing you at the Bengals game. I’m sure she is a lovely girl but those circles under her eyes scream of sleepless nights and I wonder how long she will stay innocent with a boy like you in her world. You took a picture of her pressing her lips to your cheek while you scrunched up that freckled face and tried to look like a hard ass. I took a picture like that. Exactly the same- that kiss, that angle, that face. You’re living through cheap imitations of our summer and I’m sorry she can’t edit pictures like I can. Maybe then it would look like you were actually happy. And yes this sounds bitter but the truth is… I have every RIGHT to let the phone ring when you call. I have every right to deny your friend requests on facebook and delete your ridiculous texts. I have every right to shut you out of my life and if I had a little bit more of a bitch in my blood I would have done it long ago. I should have done it long ago. So don’t whine to your friends when I hang up on you and don’t return your messages. They are meeting up with me at Krogers to watch the OC and listen to Sean Kingston in the car before they party the night away with you anyways. The truth hurts, doesn’t it? I forgive you. I wish you happiness. But I have been a dumb blonde for much too long.
I am pale again. My tan faded away when my gym membership expired and I realized I would rather be an Audrey Hepburn than a Paris Hilton. I was born with this porcelain shade so I suppose there is beauty in it somewhere,
but damn Barbie for having such bronzed plastic skin. I yearn for the smell of a tanning bed again and the shade of my eyes when my face is brown. I will accept my beauty. I will love my body even when I shove my face with caramel apples and too much candy corn and hot banana nut bread. I will worship the mirror even when I feel far less that beautiful, because if I don’t believe it- nobody will.

rasberries

2007-10-17T05:52:00.000-07:00

Sour apple slices and ADD medication
Thick fog hanging on my bronzed shoulders and crocheted green scarf
Yawning and blinking blue eyes to life
I don’t want to see those high school halls but I know they are coming
Last night we ate at The Cheesecake Factory and revealed our dirty secrets over parmesan chicken and too much bread. We walked quickly around a deserted mall hunted for green eyed cuties and came up empty handed but oh, it was a lovely time.
This week is wearing me down.
I have been reading about wacky chicks in Paris and Milan who speak their minds and open cheap vintage boutiques in the center of the universe. They take off their makeup with tampons and dare to defy all those blonde haired beauty queens and bow-tied communists. They swim against the mainstream with a passion and take baths with Baking Soda. They collect iguanas and inspire the likes of Andy Warhol.
They would never let an asshole like you ruin their day.
And even when you told me you were with some brown haired sophomore,
I chose to be a wacky chick.
I chose to laugh in your face.
Go ahead; call me in a month from now. See if I remember how you used to smell.
See if I care about your apologies then.
I hope you’re happy,
But I’m sure you’re not.
Yesterday I sat in awe while a hobbling Holocaust survivor told her story in front of a hundred high schoolers in ironed pants and fuzzy red sweaters. She wiped her eyes and brought life the terror of her past. She made jokes about the return of Elvis and I laughed at the way her polish accent wrapped around pop culture references.
She told us about the selfless courage of an eighteen year old Jew. This stringy haired girl presented a dusty raspberry to her best friend on a leaf, and in my mind their world is black and white- maroon raspberry and green leaf the only color illuminated in a world drained of all color.
She represented all that was beautiful and her 83 year old skin told stories written in every pale wrinkle and saggy laugh line.
One day I will have a story to tell,
She did not make hers a tragedy- she made it an inspiration.
I refuse to live a tragedy when there are all these raspberries in the world.

ready for an adventure

2007-10-12T05:19:00.000-07:00

Last night we decorated tie die tee shirts with cursive writeing in puffy paint and cheap plastic rhinestones. After an hour the floor was covored with glitter and I could barely keep my eyes open. I crawled into her bed and felt my face sink into her hypo-allergenic pillow. yes, sleep. i remmember what this feels like. six hours later we are rushing to get coffee. hot pink lipstick and blue glitter eyeliner. yes, we are seniors. yes, we love life. yes, our tee shirts are so much cooler than yours.
armed with lattes and early dismissal passes we floor it to school. first bell was a joke and second is even worse. I am restless and hungry for the world. I am dreaming of New York in the fall and all the pictures my camera is ready to take. I am fantasizing about the people i will meet, the journals i will fill, the freedom i will taste in a few endless months. they will fly by when all these pep rallies are done with but oh they are dragging by so so slowly now.
I have never been more ready for an adventure.

candy corn tummy ache

2007-10-11T06:20:00.000-07:00

It has been so long since my last post.
Days have passed and my hair has grown and I have new favorite songs. Homecoming is in two days and my arms are tanned and silky and my stomach is full of candy corn. For some reason I can't seem to pass the purple bowl without grabbing two handfuls of edible pre-halloween joy. they leave me with cramps and regrets and soon i will do crunches on my cold bathroom floor
but oh, they taste so good.
Since my last post I have seen him,
and waved him away. I have thrown his sweatshirt into his glistening car window and avoided that gaze as I slammed the door to my best friends car and ajusted my Buddha tee shirt. Thank God my eyes looked blue that day. You threated me and texted me pictures of the money you owed me. "This is the closest you'll ever get to it."
Real classy,
grow up.
And now I have met new boys. Green eyed charmers with cheesy pickup lines that work at the mall. Dreadlocked band members singing in a window downtown. Spikey Haired Seniors who just got their braces off and love tacos. Broad chested skater boys who think I'm funny.
And still you call.
And still you text.
And last night i finally let your voice fill my phone.
I let you apologize. I let you promise me roses I will never smell. I let you ask about school, family, friends. I did not let you into my heart. I did not spill my emotions over a static phone line like i am so accustomed to doing when it comes to you. I gave you no rope to hold onto after you jumped into the light blue abyss of honesty and emotions. i let you say how you felt, acknowledged your guilt, and moved on. I politely loved you, with the kind of heart that has been used and recycled and reproduced stronger and thicker and worthy of someone more devoted than you.
And my fuzzy headed rebel boy worries that it has begun again. Worries I am as weak as I used to be, as susceptible to lovely promises and hazy apologies. He worries you will win me over with thai food and Guster. He worries I will fall back into you and that disaster that made my summer beautiful. I convinced him at 4:30 this morning that I am not his fool anymore. Before I hopped in the shower he texted me to tell me i was right,
i am strong.
i am smart.
i am independant.
and i do not
need
you
anymore.

not much time to write

2007-09-21T06:29:00.000-07:00

Not much time to write today
munching on apple chips and Immunity water that leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. slipping off my clearance rack golden shoes because they are one size too small and squeezing the life out of my wide Hobbit feet. Just read an e mail from my blonde goddess inspiration. i miss her and love her and long to hug her. that day will come.
last night i didnt even need those herbal supplements to fall asleep. i spread lavender lotion over my dry hands and slid between my rust colored sheets. i smiled before i fell asleep and woke up early with a craving for lemon frosting. i have been talking to him little by little, but i have abandoned those homecoming dreams. i have let go of red dresses and expensive dinners downtown. i don't need it. i really don't.
first bell we talked about middle school pop songs and how underneath those pretty pink lips all girls are evil. they will three way call you, tell your best friend your a lesbian, make fun of your plaid skirt from L L Bean. they will love you and leave you and take all your secrets with them. they will be your best friend and your worst enemy.beware my darling when you surrender your intimate fantasties and hidden desires. they will slander your name if you let them get to close and thank God i am not a girl like this. thank God my best friend is not tainted by that middle school bull shit. the drama that holds high schools together and tears relationships apart. the crying in the bathroom stall and slamming of yellow lockers. i didn't live all those tragedies we read about in first bell and my heart goes out to those thirteen year old girls with orange foundation and stubby nails. the ones walking alone and exposing their stomachs. straightening their hair until it is brittle and straw like and even then the flawless faced bitches won't let her sit with them. i'm ranting and raving about a world i already lived through but all those articles about 7th grade catastrophe made me want to rewind and help those lonely hearts.

Achings.

2007-09-19T05:28:00.001-07:00

Every day a new ache.
an ache to hold you ache to be rid of you ache to slap you and kiss you and forget you. ache to find new songs to play over and over on the way to school. i am tired of this worn out soundtrack, sad angry melodies and chorus's that swim around in my head until third bell when i laugh them all away. You start college today and I know i shouldn't but I'm thinking about you. Wondering if that new world will change you. Wondering who will sit next to you, what you will learn, where your life will take you when i finally find the strength to say goodbye and refuse to be a part of it. I have talked to girls who loved boys like you. Girls who got sucked into a universe where space and time and boundaries cease to exist because of a pair of brown promising eyes. Girls who cry in their dimly lit rooms and don't even want to call their best friend because they wish they were over you.Girls that hold on because it is so much easier to accept that 'i love you' at the end of the day than it is to break free and find someone that treats them with all the sweetness they deserve.
It is so much easier to pretend that his lips don't taste like unsaid words.
It is so much easier to let him slip a corsage around my wrist and slow dance the night away like we planned. But in the end i will be dizzy with too many disturbing deceptions whispered in the name of what we wished was love. And yes, i do still love you. but i will not be one of those girls for much longer. i will buy ice cold yohoos for blonde haired football players who are becoming my best buds again.i will get smoothies with my beautiful friends and start to love my body again. you claim to LOVE me, but if you loved me you would make goodbye easy. you would stay out of my life because it is much too hard for me to let you go when you keep calling and reminding me of those summer nights. you would hug me for the last time and let me find the passion that i deserve but i am bracing myself for angry words and bitter phone calls. i am getting ready for hell but after it's over darling i will walk confidently into the heaven only a single seveteen year old girl knows the secrets to. I will let my wings grow back and soar far away from all of this earth shattering emotion. These feelings are not wrong- they are just human. So I will let myself feel this pain,
but baby I'd be a fool to make myself suffer over you.
I talked to her on the phone for an hour last night and it's tragic but at least we can share these heartaches together. at least we are only a seven digit number away. at least i can nod understandingly while she cries and send her hugs from my faraway forest home. these disasterous boys will bring us together. <3

baby it's for good.

2007-09-17T06:26:00.000-07:00

That peaceful sunday evaporated after i called you. i shouldnt have waited until the stars were so bright and the house was so quiet and i was all alone in my room. i shoulndt have dialed your number with so many expectations. i shouldn't have dialed your number at all.
before i talked to you my blonde haired prom date called me. a beautiful blast from the past and everytime i hear his voice i can breathe again. a whole summer escaped from us and i havent eaten thai food with him in far too long but laughing with him is natural.
i spilled my secrets and you lost your temper. yelling at me until you started coughing and couldn't stop. making me curl up in guilt on my purple bedspread and pull the long sleeves of your sweatshirt accross my body. hugging myself because in that moment i was the only one who could.
yes, i kissed him. a small sin compared to your nights of mayhem and forgetting to call but the tone of your voice gave me goosebumps and a craving for tea. you told me you were starting to love me again.
too bad.
you said we would work it out
you would give me a second chance,
well guess what
you can keep your second chance.
im not crawling back to you-
begging for forgiveness. we weren't even together so what my lips do on their friday nights is far from your testosterone driven concern.
i'm not going to let you hold that over my head
paint me insignifigant
reminding me of my mistake every time i leave your side. not answering my questions. hanging up on me.
you don't make me feel beautiful.special.talented.unique.appreciated.respected.orloved.
so tell me why i should answer when your ring tone fills my basement. tell me why i should text you back.give me one good reason not to rip up all those pictures of us when my teethe were so white and i believed every word out of those thin freckled lips.
i'm not listening to all those country songs that made me believe i loved you anymore.
i'm not holding onto a pretty couple. their love faded in august.
and the truth is
i fucked up once. i ran back to you. i could pretend it was because i believed you were sorry but the fact of it is that i was scared of how i felt when you weren't holding me. i needed to be needed.
i don't need anymore.
i have everything i need.
and this time when i say goodbye,
baby it's for good.

smells like fall

2007-09-16T11:28:00.001-07:00

Laying on my back in the grass on this quiet Sunday afternoon.a Red ant bites me on my stomach and i flick it off before i hang up the phone with my long haired step sister. she is beautiful and free spirited and i miss her bubbly laugh. i miss her rap music.
friday night was long and smelled like fall. his backyard was filled with shaggy headed strangers with bad breath and a love of alternative bands. there were no cheese cubes like he said but the band was good and this house brings back so many memories. buck toothed me in an awkward one piece. diving into their crisp pool and trying to suck in a pudgy chocolate pudding stomach.i have had a crush on him since we were 5 and i was sleeping beauty. he kissed me softly on the lips and his strawberry blonde hair fell in freckled blue-green eyes. he had a hat covored in pins from australia and dave&busters. he was in the room when i was born and stopped talking to me when we hit puberty. things changed and our smiles hid all those uncomfortable recollections about easier times. when he was a prince and i was his princess. now here we are again and high school has made our smiles sloppy. he kissed me and after i let him i pulled away because too many thoughts of you were threatening to swallow me whole. too many thoughts of how you called me last night sounding so sick and sad. too many thoughts of us at homecoming and me in a red dress. and even if i didnt have these stupid fantasies about being with you this is not what i want. you will regret that kiss tommorow.
waking up saturday morning with a craving for cold pizza and a million pictures to download. the day dragged on and on while i cleaned the bathroom and played around with photoshop. later that night family came by and oh how i longed to make them laugh and play hillbilly golf with them- smile in their pictures and show how much i care. but my head hurts too bad and my eyes are foggy with insomnia. i fell asleep on our leather couch but an hour later my mom was waking me up to eat chicken dumplings and apple pie. God bless america. Around one in the morning my body surrendered to sleep after i lit inscense and re-read a british novel about an edgy motherless rock n roll bitch. i have no plans for today. no agenda. nothing to look forward to or dread. it is just a day. a gorgeous, slow sunday.
and all too soon it will be monday morning.

TGIF

2007-09-14T06:38:00.000-07:00

A thousand screaming high school students in white
and me and my best friend are wearing jet black tee shirts. Splashed in school spirit, pig tails, war paint, black bandana, beads. Beads. Beads.
This is our last year.
Our last chance to drink up all this Thursday night joy. Our boys looked so pretty in those green jerseys but the scoreboard didn’t lie and I’m sorry to say all the cheering in the world couldn’t save us now. But the stands are filled and the lights are bright while the sun sets and we all scream for the drum line. I take too many pictures of beautiful girls that walked straight out of a magazine and into my high school. I smile even though it’s hot and muggy and I feel bloated from all that spontaneous candy corn.
I didn’t call you all day. Didn’t text you to tell you I cared or ask how you were doing. My fingers were screaming for my cell phone but I shoved my anxious hands in my pockets and took deep breaths until thoughts of you drifted away. Eventually you came to me. Missing me. Wanting me. Telling me how pretty I was. I push away and you pull me back and we are stuck in this passionate tug-o-war and I honestly don’t see either of us coming out victorious. You told me you loved me and I told you the score of the game. Laugh to myself and finally fall asleep. This morning came far too quickly and even that blue energy drink could not bring life back into my eyes.Oh well,
Thank God It’s Friday. :)

so much more than you

2007-09-12T10:43:00.000-07:00

Six AM alarm buzzing in my head as i brush pale pink blush onto my cheeks. I feel dizzy and pale and disoriented. Feeling my way around the bathroom but this churning in my stomach won't go away and even though these jeans she let me borrow fit just right i don't think ill be able to make it to school.
lying in bed watching Somethings Gotta Give and imagining what life will be like someday when I'm old. When my skin isn't smoothe and my laugh lines sink in. When my eyes sparkle with secerets that only come from extra years in the universe. I have decided I will laugh often, love loudly, grow my hair down to my waist. Blonde and grey waves with daiseys woven into that mess of luscious locks. I will shop at flea markets and tell stories. I will learn to play the piano and cook thai food for my neighbors. I will embrace every wrinkle time has painted on my face.
I always get sick on the truely beautiful days. Yesterday i went job hunting with a beautiful brunette and got interviewed for a resteraunt i would never eat at- let alone serve. A large woman with a hair lip and mini-fro asks me about my past experience and i can never picture myself in one of those turqious button downs. So i thank her for her time and buy him a slice of cheesecake. I lie sleepily on his shoulder and resist kissing him when he drops me off a half hour late. yes, i am getting stronger.
tonight he will go party at a club with his frineds and probably call to tell me about how much he loves me. tommorow he will mumble that he doesnt remember anything and make an excuse to hang up. i'm breaking this cycle before it starts again. i'm buying new CDs and stopping myself from sleeping in his oversized hollister sweatshirt. i'm breathing and living for this moment, not tonights or tommorows. a universe revolving around a pretty boy is a universe full of catastrophe and heartache and darling
i am living for so much more than you.

not writing you off just yet

2007-09-10T06:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I wrote a novel for this blog.
I sat still and poured my heart out while pounding on my keyboard and sipping on a diet coke. I mindlessly spilled my secrets onto the internet. I did not hit save. I did not copy my words. I just hit enter and then sat in shock when my computer crashed. All those lovely lines lost forever. I could look at it as a tragedy but this is just one more chance to rewrite my history. Take a step back and breathe and look at the situation in a new state of mind. These words will not be the same ones I wrote yesterday. These will be the words of a girl wiser than she was 24 hours ago. Someone refreshed by a weekend of flirting with blue eyed boys working at green tea stands in the mall. Someone who walked on the pavilion in Mount Adams in high heeled cowgirl boots and a golden corset. Someone who had nightmares filled with Cameron Diaz and trips to Paris all last night but who feels stronger than she ever has.
That Friday lunch date did not go as I had planned. My stony silence did nothing to ease this aching heart and even though when you tried to hug me I pulled away in defiance I am talking until my lip gloss has lost its luster and my lips are chapped from too much honesty I swore I would never cover you in. You don’t deserve to know what I spend my days thinking about. You don’t deserve to sit there so beautifully. You don’t deserve one second of this awkward apology and yet somehow the way you’re blinking your eyes and looking at your freckled hands makes me think maybe you really are sorry.
The words your best friend told me during all those 4 hour phone conversations were lies. A well thought, gorgeous stab in the back. I believed him blindly because you hurt me once and I wanted to believe you were the monster all those angry teens write rock songs about. I drank up his elaborate stories about your mind games. I let them sing me to sleep and woke up with a soggy pillow case. I did not think to as you or her or them. I did not need a second opinion or proof.
And even though they were lies, there is one truth. When I was home you were with her and yes, I know you regret it. I know how sorry you are but sometimes
Sorry is not enough.
Sorry can’t make me trust you more. Can’t get you back all those friends you pushed away with your dizzy nights and eagerness to fight. Can’t take back the way you talked to your mom or the doors you slammed in the faces of people who adored you. Sorry is lovely but baby, it will take more than sorry to make me jump. We sat on the curb of my favorite Thai restaurant while you smoked a cigarette and blew angry smoke away from my face. Angry with yourself for you mistake, angry with him for his lies, angry with me because you know I wish I could love you like I did. You flick that death stick into the street and cradle your head in your hands. Your friends are far away and your mom is dying and you have no idea how I am longing to hold you. But those days are over. I can’t make the pain go away, only you can do that darling. But I will put my hand on your back and promise you better days. I will pop my gum and damnit I’m sorry but this is my confession.
He kissed me
And I kissed him back.
And I’m scared the faces of the people that love me enough to want to protect me will stare at me in disappointment. Shameful eyes casting glares at the still girl who lets her heart get the best of her. But please know that I am not blind anymore. I am not caught up in your lies like I once was. And if I kiss you again, you can be sure that if you give me a disaster like this summer again it will be the last time. You can be sure that I will not let you ignore my calls, blow me off, make me feel less that beautiful and loved and adored. Because I know I deserve that now.
I may give you a chance to prove yourself because I truly see something in you.
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.
And maybe ill be shamed but if I am I am walking away without looking back. I am closing the door on you and us and your countless apologies. I will feel for your pain and love you from afar but you can bet your ass I will put up walls to keep your brown eyes far from me.
But I’m not ready to close that door.
Not yet.
Because I have made mistakes too. Let people down. Lied. I am not evil. I am not a monster. I am a teenage girl.
I’m not letting you throw your arm around my shoulders and claim me as yours. But I’m not writing you off just yet.

Goodbye.

2007-09-07T05:46:00.000-07:00

Today I feel strong.
I feel funny.
I feel skinny and radiant and full of love for every lost teenage wanna-be aimlessly roaming these high school hallways. The grungy indie boy I used to love smacked me with his elbow in first bell and I didn’t even scowl at him. He hasn’t showered all summer and he wears the same tee shirt twice a week. He smells like old acoustic guitars and Halloween. He is a part of my past just as much as you will be. One day you might nudge me with your elbow and I would not even look your way. I would not remember the way you used to hug me. I would not miss those summer nights or magical fireworks. I would smile, and breathe, and move on.
I have a date this weekend. A first date with a sophomore in college who wants to be a policeman in a bad part of town. He remembers me laughing too loudly in the hallway when he was a senior and wants to know what’s behind these blue eyes. We aren’t expecting forever. We aren’t expecting love. We’re expecting to smile and nod and get to know another heart while watching a baseball game and splashing in the pool. When I said I was moving on,
I meant it.
But today I will meet you for lunch. In a few hours I will be in your car again-for the first time in days, for the last time ever. And the strange thing is, while my stomach churns at the though of smelling your musky promises again, I am not scared. I am not scared of falling back in love with you. I’m not scared of falling at all.
I will listen to what you have to say- apologies, regrets, well-wishes. I will forgive you and then leave you behind. I won’t wince when you call me baby. I won’t give in if you reach for my hand. Even though you don’t deserve it, I will give you this one chance to say goodbye.
Goodbye my brown eyed freckled armed free style rapping Hollister wearing obsessive compulsive liar. Goodbye.

Too Far Gone

2007-09-06T06:24:00.000-07:00

The sad thing is
Yesterday I spent hours convincing myself you deserved a second chance. You were sorry. You meant every word of that e mail you sent me at two in the morning.
I was wrong.
I spent hours lying to myself and the people that love me for the sake of avoiding the pain of losing you. But I don’t feel pain now. I think of all the times you touched me and it burns my skin because I now know where your hands had been before I got dropped off at your house. I know whose pony tail was on your wrist next to mine. Some sixteen year old brunette across the street and if I didn’t love life so much I might just be sick. I was ready to meet you on Friday at our favorite pizza place. I was ready to sit across from you and color you purple with forgiveness. I was ready to let you hold me again like you told me you dreamed about. Your dreams are my nightmares. Swearing you loved me while you snuck around with your junior high sweetheart who lied to you too many times to count. I called and told you pizza was off. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to hear your voice- mumbling apologies and whispering I love you’s and searching for some redemption from a seventeen year old girl you can’t save you. You took advantage of my forgiveness, of my honesty, my easy going love I gave without question. I was there when your college dreams collapsed. I was there when the people you loved left. I stayed behind. I surrendered my summer. But I am not your savior. My forgiveness will not get rid of that guilt. You will have to lie in bed and think about what you lost. I will be sleeping soundly to James Taylor lullabies and Elton John records. I will be spending weekends at festivals. I will be tasting all that freedom again and licking my lips for more because I am rid of your head games. “Dude, I’m just messing with her mind.”
You can’t touch me anymore.
I’m too far gone.

Radiating Love

2007-09-05T05:50:00.001-07:00

It’s a new day. My blonde hair is no longer short and choppy and hopeless. Thanks to birthday money and luscious extensions I can flip these long locks over my shoulder and brush them with a passion I forgot I had. Ha. Girls and their hair<3
Yesterday I tried to heal while reading a Buddhist manual for spiritual revolutionaries. I lie on my tummy in a well lit courtyard with an expensive fountain and read about forgiveness, the eightfold path, the four noble truths, cleansing my soul and body and mind and radiating love out into the world. All morning I have been radiating love while I sip this French vanilla coffee that burns my tongue and warms my hands. All morning I have been forgiving you while I close my eyes and breathe deep and count to ten and feel all that suffering fade away. Pain is real,
But I made myself suffer.
I made myself suffer when I put my head on my desk and thought of our first kiss and then our last one. I made myself suffer when I searched the computer frantically with lovesick fingers on the keyboard and forced myself to look at pictures of us before we were broken. I made myself suffer when I refused to see that it is out of my control. Pain may come and go, ease in and out of my universe but I will not avoid it. I will not shut it out or fight it off. I will embrace it, I will love this fucked up human reality of pain because when the pain is gone I am left with confidence and the power of knowing I did not sink to your level. I did not use your secret torments you whispered in my ear late at night when the crickets were outside your window and your friend’s cigarette smoke was filling up your car. I did not lash out at you with blood red words and a mouth full of profanity.
And I forgive you. I forgive you. I forgive you. When you call my best friends and beg for forgiveness they will probably hang up on your monotone mumbling frat boy voice. They will shake their heads and tell me to move on and believe me I will. But I will give you a chance to apologize to my face. To look at me and attempt to shower me in all the sincerity a 19 year old boy is capable of. I will sit across from you and stare you dead in the eye when I tell you that I will not bring you happiness. I will bring you phone calls and butterfly kisses and wrestling in your basement. I will bring you someone to make fun of and tickle and confide in. But until you find out who you are, until you forgive that girl you loved for four years before you even knew my name, until you let go of all that anger that’s flooding your brown eyes and making your fists clench into a tight ball- you will not know happiness. Not with me-
Not with anyone.
And as much as you hurt me darling,
I’m still radiating love.
I want you to be happy.

take your memories, i don't need em.

2007-09-04T06:18:00.001-07:00

Back where I started again.
Blonde haired and broken hearted and thank God for best friends who will hold me while I cry my eyes out on an orange shag rug.
Our day started with Buddhist books and cheap Chinese food.
I find sanctuary in a book store and we sat for an hour with our legs crossed while we marveled at all the glossy covered miracles in front of us. We sat in a naturally lit hole-in-the-wall and ate broccoli and chicken for 7.50 with chop sticks we stole from Trader Joes. We planned our futures and laughed at the neon painting of paradise glowing above us. Surrounded by paper bouquets and fresh peas and hungry construction workers, her blue eyes made me calm. They eased my anxiety about that brown haired catastrophe I convinced myself I was in love with. Hours later and I’m bawling again. The radio is broken in her car and the silence is eating me up and making those tears sound like screams. While I was home taking meds and sipping tea and watching too much O.C he was out tasting someone else’s lips. Breaking promises at football games and dance clubs and then swearing we would be okay. That he still loved me.

Driving to his house in all that summer heat and even if it wasn’t 100 degrees I still think I’d be sweating in my Clash vintage tee and low rider jeans. All the makeup in the world couldn’t cover the tear tracks that have been streaming down my face but my eyes never look bluer than when I’ve been crying over the boys I love. He gave me back my Tiffany’s necklace and Guster CD. He gave me back the five page note I wrote him before I flew away to Hawaii. He gave me back my pony tail and flicked the other one on his wrist. “this one isn’t even yours.” It hurt and he knew it and I ran back to that music-less car because I’ll be damned if I let him see me fall apart over him. Him and his Hollister uniform. Him and his stupid raps. Him and his bad taste in movies and distaste for literature and smoky smelling car. Him and his promises and his brown eyes and his tickle-happy fingers. Him and his lies. And his lies. And his lies. I want him to know that today I will cry. I will talk down high school hallways in a pink Indie top and smile, then rush to quiet bathrooms to silently cry in closterphopic stalls. Today I will grieve, not because I miss him. Not because I want his freckled arms around me or his car in my driveway. I will cry because I stayed up all night making him that scrapbook for his birthday. Because I planned sunset skies in a hot air balloon and him in a tuxedo at Homecoming. Because we will never go sledding like he said we would.
But tommorow, tommorow darling boy that thought he'd shatter me, tommorow I will not cry. I will sing those break up songs in the shower and sway my hips when I walk and forget how bad it hurt when you text messaged me at midnight. I will eat lunch with my best friend and dream about weekends of not having to call you. Not having to hear your voice and wonder why it sounds like its dripping with deciet. I will laigh and flirt and smile and wear that pink lip gloss you never liked. I loved it.
tommorow is a new day.

capable of love

2007-08-10T14:27:00.000-07:00

bare feet on hot black pavement
i ran accross four roads to get away from that condo.
the one where i screamed and she cried and we slapped eachothers wrists in anger.
the one where we watched The OC for two days straight and drank in the drama like diet cokes on summer nights.
the one where i finally yelled into her beautiful face and regretted it for a million footsteps while i ran in my pajamas down familiar streets.
and now,
i do need to apologize.
because now i have let my truth break hearts and dim spirits and it's haunting me even as i add senior pictures of lovely best friends to my computer.
it's haunting me as i look forward to country concerts with my brown eyed boyfriend and eat lightly salted pretzels that taste like honey.
it's haunting me and im sorry but i am not ill.
i am not sick with society or broken from this life. i am not in need of a savior or a facility to mend my wounds. i am whole and unbroken and unscathed by these daily sitcoms. i am capable meditation and peace and music. i am capable of apologizing. i am capable of forgiving.
i am capable of love.

perfectly flawed

2007-08-04T10:34:00.000-07:00

When I say I am sorry for not being the girl
you wish that I was
I am not apologizing for my free spirit
my blue eyes
my untainted honosty
i am not sorry for my journal entries
the countless pages where i spilled the truth from ballpoint pens
and scribbled broken hearts and painted wings
I am not sorry for
my laugh
or my songs
or my knee high boots
My bracelets my turqoiuse rings my twisted truthful toungue
My night time dancing
my day time doodling
my afternoon meditations and twilight kisses
My dreams or my sins or my soul
I am only sorry you can not see the beauty in those things
sorry for you because your eyes are shielded by rolex's and jaguars
Rehab and protein shakes
Blue pupils clouded by perfection and i am perfectly flawed but you can hug me anytime you like. you can always love me.
i will always love you.

i'm sorry for this poem.

2007-08-02T13:44:00.001-07:00

smile wide while you shove that greasy American Dream into your perfect Crest mouth
smile that secret smile you save for short haired waitresses and curious passers by
the ones who think we are a lovely family
a charming combination
a pretty disaster in midriff bearing shirts
with umbrellas in our drinks and fingers crossed behind our backs while we swear we are happy
i love with a passion foreign to those manicured fingers
i love with a heart you shattered and mended and promised the world
i love with a love only she understands and only we share and im sorry if this poem breaks you or makes that tan face turn fuscia with anger and hurt but underneath this teenage angst
behind this stream of conciousness bullshit
hidden within these words that i am pounding on my keyboard
is love
is pain
is an apology
im sorry i wasnt good enough to be in all those pictures
im sorry i screamed lyrics too loudly in our overpriced paradise
im sorry i coulndt make you laugh on that choppy ocean water
sorry i coulndt smother you in sentences that made you feel complete
lies about how great our life would be
deceptions that would pollute my soul ive worked so hard to bring back to life with meditation, pad thai, Elton John
i can not be the girl you want to love because she is a fantasy
a blonde haired hypocrite who bites her tongue and hates the mirror and shaves much too often
i can not be her because she smiles when she wants to cry
and when she laughs
shes really screaming.

wisdom in her hands

2007-08-02T13:32:00.000-07:00

Up till two last night reading Harry Potter and crying over fictional characters. Looking at old pictures of us and wanting to rip them to shreds but instead hiding them in old drawers to find on some rainy day when i dont still love you so much. Today i ate lettuce wraps and won ton soup with a wrinkled goddess i used to resent because she corrected my posture and critiqued my wild pink highlights. I used to eat fresh salted peanuts in her epic looking kitchen and buy her fanny packs covored with giraffs. I have fallen back in love with her because I am finally old enough to appreciate all those birthday cards and lunch dates. I can finally see the beauty behind her age and the wisdom in her carefully moisturized green tea smelling hands. I play her my music and restore her faith in this generation of chaos. i convince her we have morals and good taste in literature. i thank her for a wonderful afternoon and hug her like i mean it.
because i do.
Flashback to lying on your chest and watching Grease with my mom. My blue slippers were too big and made me slide accross our wooden floor. They led me into your toned freckled arms and I watched you chug a bitter tasting diet drink. I watched with wide eyes while i swung my legs and sat on the counter and prayed you woundt be angry if i went to the wedding escorted by the big brother i never had. If i sang hillbilly songs on a crowded reception floor and laughed a little too loudly at drunken jokes told by distant uncles. I hate when your lips get tight like that.

Live in Love.

2007-07-31T10:55:00.000-07:00

i am home from hawaiin skies, coconut bras, perverted surf instructers, midnight cheescake, chinese room service, overpriced tanning lotion that makes my skin peel. i am home from trying to mend what should have never been broken. a family with gold necklaces and six kids. two rebels, two quiet eyed angels, two wild youngsters. i will not slander their love on the internet because i am not that girl they see me as. i love them when i bite my tongue and hold back words that i should probably scream. i love them when i stopped being a hypocrite and started accepting the father he has become. i loved those siblings when i didnt even get to say goodbye. i spent hours in an airport thinking of you and hopefully one day you will be able to forgive me. hopefully one day you will be able to see i didnt mean to throw you off that sea-do so many times. i didnt mean to mumble that profanity when i slammed the hotel room door. i didnt mean to take all those pictures of you when your face was so sad and you missed me the most. you sobbed into my lap in a dark neon limo and i made promises i didnt keep. promises about being a better sister. about holding you tighter and putting you first. i fucked them up and when you come back to Ohio darling im begging you to watch Gilmore Girls with me and let me tickle your tummy. please give me another chance.
things are starting over with her now. shes moving out and falling in love with a green eyed boy who knows the words to every song and promises her the world on long distance phone calls. she is breaking just like i broke but i will be right there with her through all those sleepless nights. nothings worse than shattering alone. I will take her to downtown shops and buy ankle bracelets that jingle when we walk. we played hide and go seek in Honolulu and a neverending game of charades while we waited on a plan that wasnt coming. we will make the best of this topsy turvy world because what else can we do? Live in Love.

days when i love the world.

2007-07-12T20:40:00.000-07:00

This morning I cried into a chocolate birthday cake after the batter made messy art on the kitchen counter. I cried because I'm leaving him and her and them and I'm scared and excited and bloated and sometimes I dont feel beautiful enough to be in their family photos. I cried because I still can't sleep at night and my dog ate my retainer and as much as I want to change the world I'm still just sixteen damnit. I can't drive and my life dreams of being a famous performer are dimming fast. Flickering under a lampshade somewhere because too many people have laughed when I told them one day i would be a star. I don't want to sell myself to suburbia. I don't want to surrender to Ohio. This is not my kind of place to fall in love.
But while I'm here, I will love as deeply as I can. I will dream of downtown vintage stores and spicey food and acoustic guitars. I will write about the hobos and the gypsys and the dreamers. I will make magic wands for blonde haired girls who don't know how adored they are and decorate Altoids boxes with confetti stars and rose petals. I will covor this suburbia in glitter and wonder and magic.
I will bewitch myself with all this overlooked beauty. The beauty of the small things-
the grocery stores and hand holdings. The first kisses and denim overalls and muggy summer days when cookie dough ice cream has melted on some concrete sidewalk in the neighborhood down the street. The high school hell and prom songs and hugs from your grandpa when he gets home from Ireland and he smells like first class.
Or even the beauty of days like today. Days where I wake up and my sister is hugging my waste and the house is buzzing with Carol King and my birthday cake is a beautiful disaster. Days where he kisses me softly for what I'm terrified will be the last time before I fly away. Days where we walk hand in hand down a gravel road next to an old convent and the sun sets and the wind blows and for one moment i know exactly how blue my eyes are. Days where I have so much ahead and so much behind and so much right now right here that I can hardly breathe.
Days when I love the world.

2007-07-10T08:50:00.000-07:00

I fear hitch-hikers, blue eyes, and promises. Deserted movie theaters and bad fathers. Lonely winter nights when the hallways are creaking and you can't see out your window. Pale passionless faces and wedding vows.

Love is my enemy. I hate love and I love love and I have willingly given far too much of my heart to that twofaced emotion that promises eternity and leaves you with NOTHING.

My worst subjects are Handling Hearts and Standing Up for Myself 101. I am failing miserably though i enrolled myself in both of these classes. I enlisted in desperate hopes of becoming strong.

My teachers are middle aged hippies, a homosexual with a crown on her head and art spilling from her fingers, blonde haired heroine who slays vampires on day time TV, round bellied buddha with a childs smile. They educate me through heartache and adventure and meditation. They they hold my hand when the world collapses.

I feed my mind with Kashi bars, green tea, pad thai, chocolate covored raisins, and strawberry smoothies.

My universe is coral colored with flashes of yellow and orange that ignite nights when the stars refuse to shine.

This is a glimpse of my world,

---> these are pieces of my TRUTH.

2007-07-10T08:42:00.001-07:00

While I watched my sweat drip on an overpriced elliptical machine you texted me. Reminded me of Moulin Rouge duets and all those times i promised to teach you to meditate. Forced me to run until i was gasping for breath and i still could not escape you.

So i admitted I missed you and told you goodbye. I crouched on a sunlit curbside in silver aviators and cutoff shorts and waited for something better to come and drive me away from your dizzy dreamland that couldnt last.

Funny how I fall for boys with sick dogs and a passion for thai food. This new song singer took me to an ethnic hideaway with blue shutters and butterscotch mints. He told me he wants to take care of me and make me happy but I'm not ready to believe him.

Not yet.

He tries to touch my unshaven legs and tells me I intimidate him from behind my brown glasses.

He honks at strangers and plays his music too loud.

He is just as tattered as I am. <3

I am more than content

2007-07-09T13:18:00.001-07:00

Weeks and weeks since my last post and I'm sitting here feeling bloated in my sisters flannel pants- missing four rings from my hand that i accidentally left at his house that chaotic morning. It's strange to tell someone i love them again.

It's even stranger to mean it.

Fireworks lit up a summer sky right before the thunder cracked and I was sitting in a luke warm hot tub with three sisters i used to know so well. I am falling back into their world because part of me belongs there. We will fly to Hawaii with ipods full of new music and I will wave goodbye to my brown haired free style rapping boy toy and ask him to forgive me when I miss his birthday. I promise to help him blow out his candles after I have hulah danced on tourist beaches and laughed out loud in an island oasis.

I wish i had more to write but for now I can only tell you that this summer has brought me bittersweet independance and sloppy kisses that taste like BBQ sauce. It has brought me a freezing bedroom in the basement draped in silk scarves and army letters and a punishment i deserve. I lied to spend a night in those arms. To pretend I was a patriot and watch Star Wars with a hollister wearing college boy on the fourth of July. I lied and now I can't see those big brown eyes for weeks but i have countless seasons of Buffy on DVD to pass the time. I have a puppy who licks my cheek in the morning and a mother who steals my CDs and makes me chai tea when i need it the most. I have a best friend who knows all my favorite songs and who can sing them more in key than I ever will. I have a brother who hugs me tight around the waist and cries when i try to break away,

a sister i can tickle at midnight,

a free spirit no one will ever tie down.

I am more than content-

I am joyful.

I have so much more to give

2007-06-07T14:52:00.000-07:00

We sat on the computer until midnight making videos in an abandoned kitchen. Singing the wrong words to backstreet boys songs and pretending to know spanish and laughing.

and laughing.

the next morning came far too fast and i can't stop yawning even though it is the hottest day we've had so far. Job interview in a dimly lit resteraunt and I swear if you hire me I'll smile while I open that door and make their Friday nights beautiful. I'll charm them as I hand them their menus and steal their hearts while leading them to their table. I tried to make eye contact and sip my diet coke slow and classy and maybe I wasnt sophisticated but I was real. In the end, I think that's all that counts.

I read my poetry for a quiet classroom yesterday and the love notes they scribbled on ripped note cards take my breath away. They fill me with renewed inspiration and make my pen fly. They forgot their high school bull shit while I read about love and Paris and the non conformists they long to be. They listened to the music I was making even though my throat was sore from a chaotic weekend and nights of insomnia. They clapped when I sat down and now I remember why artists are so happy. Because they give something to the world. Because when they give, they get. I have so much more to give.

The more I read about these Jack Keroucs and Steppenwolves the more I long for escape. I taste freedom and oh I can not stop licking my lips. I have forgotten about promises and love and something I used to pray on. I am living now. This second. This moment. The universe won't wait for me to define my perfect romance so I'll simply take the beating hearts it passes over to me and be as gentle with them as I can. I'll savor the last Friday I will walk into that high school and surrender my restless hunger for adoration to a night of meditation. I'll find my "Om".

It Isn't Funny Anymore

2007-06-05T09:10:00.000-07:00

Thunder crashed and he hugged me for the first time in months. The power’s out in a house full of a family that used to mean Chinese takeout and Joss Whedon on Tuesday nights. In the candle light I don’t even recognize them. They are warped by the faint flicker of flame between us and I want so badly to laugh at their jokes but that humor is bittersweet and it isn’t funny anymore.
He held me and cried into my sweat stained gym shirt but my body was limp under his desperate hands. I blinked and read Herman Hesse and promised myself that in an hour I would sit on a rain soaked patio in my pajamas and cry under an oversized umbrella and purple clouds. Smell the sweet storm that just raged over my summer fantasies and wave goodbye to the daughter he used to know. She is a phantom walking barefoot in circles around that mansion she used to call home. Promising love to strangers and swallowing her truth. Conforming to rules that would break her spirit and teach her to hate art. I refuse to be that girl.
Bald headed uncle flew back to Atlanta skies but I wish he was here to criticize mainstream music and smell Skyline with me. I wish he was here to go off on tangents about the details of life unseen by the residents of my world. He rants and raves and makes it beautiful. He sees me the way I wish everyone I ever loved did. As an individual. An artist. A beatnik sixteen year old sucking strength out of poetry. He is far too brilliant for this small town so he returns to his music filled house. To a house filled with cats that know all his secrets. To a manikin dressed in vintage clothes that watches him eat breakfast. But I don’t worry. He’ll be back.
Coffee in the morning with that springtime boy and finally I am a regular. I walk through a mahogany door and they know my face and my smell and my passion for caramel and expresso. It’s nice to be known.

the taste of summer

2007-06-01T04:55:00.000-07:00

Spring is fading into summer and I am singing new songs. Songs that make my hips sway and my heart hurt in all this humidity. Unrealistic expectations I created myself because I wanted to badly to believe I was worth holding. I wanted to badly to live out a fairy tale- I forgot I am no princess. Just a mixed up hippie child with a digital camera and home made perfume. Just a brown haired misfit who loves in run on sentences and ethnic food. Last night I walked downtown by my mothers side in a short skirt and floral print silk. We ate crab cakes with thai sauce while a bearded faced bohemian played the cello. Everything tastes better when there’s music. We dreamed of Greece and watched slow paced southern love unfold in a cold abandoned movie theatre. We browsed for vintage clothes and golden Buddha statues and silver rings to warm callused writers fingers. We were suspended in a mother daughter paradise.
Swimming under hot rain clouds and there’s a sun-burnt boy in that pool I used to think I loved. While his skin turns red he smothers me in memories I have been killing myself to forget. All those pictures last fall- my purple polka dot mittens and his blue hat. Cold ears and pink noses and golden leaves scattered on haunted roads in the middle of nowhere. It was just us and her and a whole lot of deserted bridges to stand on while the sun set and the wind warned us it was time to go home. He reminded me of bible studies and sweaty concerts and being his bands biggest fan. He told me the picture I made him was still hanging in his room and damnit I am so sick of those green eyes staring at me. For months they wouldn’t even look my way but here we are and oh how I long to be far from him and his memories- his words are no accident.
So we swam and ate sticky brownies and at the end of the day I can taste summer on these chapped lips of mine. Last night I said goodbye to a boy I barely know. One with blue eyes and dreams of the army. One I won’t see for months but kissed me softly on a Saturday night. Maybe I should regret giving my lips so willingly but I don’t because I’m just sixteen and hopelessly brainwashed by countless romance novels and Hollywood love stories. Don’t get me wrong, I know that was not love. It was just a goodbye kiss he can think about those long nights away from home. When he’s writing me letters from an army camp in cursive and I’m checking the mailbox barefoot in early mornings. We both know this is pretend.
I have become desperately addicted to five girls. We drink Starbucks at ten o clock and pile in a blue car. We sing and we cry and we love each other in a way only best friends can. Unconditionally. Beautifully. In endless nights and groggy mornings and heartache.

Words of Wisdom

2007-06-01T04:46:00.000-07:00

Dearest Mallory,
I am writing to you with hands you would not recognize- callused, wrinkled hands. My fingers are gnarled and twisted but don't worry. On my wrists there are hemp bracelets and Earth-tone beads and silver charms from Barcelona, Paris, and Amsterdam. These hands are eighty years older than the ones you are holding this paper with now but darling they are still yours. They are still draped in memories and thrift store jewelry. Some things never change.
If I am not mistaken you are currently sixteen and utterly lost. You're in love and out of your mind and you cut off all those long blonde waves that cascaded down pale shoulders. You bite your lip when you lie and spend anxious nights anticipating midnight calls- praying for a blonde boy to sing you to sleep while you light lavender incense and scribble peace signs on your ankle. If I am not mistaken, you wish you were a tie-dye-tee-shirt goddess.
Before I go to sleep tonight I wanted to write you a letter to reassure you that yes, you do master calligraphy. You spent weeks in that Sunday morning class downtown but you can finally bring beauty to uppercase S's and lowercase y's. Your signature makes overweight store owners gawk- they have never seen penmanship so closely resemble art. And don't worry, you fall in love. Oh, you fall in love. Over. And over. And over. You surrender yourself to brown eyes and acoustic guitars with engraved initials of reckless lovers. Sometimes you get hurt but you wrap that broken heart in silk scarves and mend it with green tea and Kashi bars. You paint your pain on white linen canvases and hang your masterpieces on a lonely wall. You grow into a Picasso fueled by these next few years of pain so keep all this beauty in mind when you’re drenching your pillow in sweet tasting tears.
Remind yourself daily that there is a rhyme and reason to the seemingly random disaster of our America. Stop eating Weight Watchers fudge bars when you could devour straight up chocolate heaven from your favorite ice cream parlor. I know you think your sides are chubby and your thighs are too wide but trust me on this one, one day you will realize how beautiful you were and long for that summer figure. One day your joints will ache while you do yoga in Central Park. You'll look down at your thirty-something year old cellulite body and remember the days when you could wear low rider jeans and not terrify lollipop licking toddlers. You will regret every time you looked in the mirror and hated what you saw. Please start loving yourself, before you start losing yourself. Please stop writing your poems for everyone else- yours is the heart that needs those lovely words the most. You have always loved to fix what’s broken- always lived to breathe life into the eyes of the hopeless. But as a personal favor to me my dear Mallory, breathe life into your own eyes. Learn to play the guitar. Tell that boy you love him. Forgive your father for not being able to hold you when you needed those arms more than ever. Embrace your best friend. Make the world as beautiful as you want it to be.
Live for today. No regrets. No what-ifs. This is your time to shine darling.
Love,
Mallory

mylogo<3

2007-05-25T04:47:00.001-07:00

my logo for digital image design. peace and love baby,

peace and love.

my logo<3

2007-05-24T04:21:00.001-07:00

While I Live

2007-05-21T13:27:00.000-07:00

Hours of crying on a blank canvas and praying that it came out as art. i ended up with a bunch of old Vogue pictures and snapshots from lazy childhood summers- sprawled out and scrambled and on top of all that loveliness i scribbled LOVE in a white pastel. Pearls are draped around those beautiful face, hot glue gunned down and covored in a thick layer of sparkles. Maybe its art or maybe its just a disaster but in the end it got me through another Sunday night waiting for my phone to ring or the sun to set or the right song to come on. John Mayor and The Shins sat with me on a glue covored carpet and let me miss him. It's not that I cant stand the taste of this pain. it has lingered on my lips politely for years now and i would swallow it but i would rather let it make me strong. This morning i left all those tears to yesterday and laughed out loud in a ying yang tank top. Yes I miss those bear hugs and lullabies but these jeans fit just right and it's eighty degrees and I'm tired of complaining. Tired of letting that pain get in the way of a beautiful spring. SO i will miss him while i smile. Miss him while novels spill from my fingertips. Miss him while I fall in love and find salvation in European poetry. While I cross smooth legs and bare feet and bite my nails. While i live.

breathing in spring

2007-05-20T10:16:00.000-07:00

I'm breathing in spring. I'm taking in pure air that smells like Olive Garden and aromatherapy and a million memories I want to carry around in a golden locket. Wrap them around my neck in a hollow heart that sits on my chest on the days when I'm not strong enough to smile on my own.

I feel the need to update the world on all this happiness. To tell them I've found reasons to sing again. Reasons like a blonde haired boy with an Australian grandma. Reasons like a best friends car to clean in cut off shorts and blue bandanas. Reasons like sunny days created for long bike rides and kiwi slushis. unlimited bread sticks and choirs full of girls who hardly know how beautiful they are. I'm attempting to capture all these lovely fragments in run-on sentences and candid pictures but my grammer is awful and my fingers cant type fast enough.

these past few days ive been letting myself live in the world and said things that i wish i could take back. ive cut up people that i love with words when they werent looking and i hope you'll still love me when im done being honost. im sorry for thinking you were annoying. im sorry that when i was sick i called and calld and called because i couldnt stand any more VH1 and i ached to hear your voice. I thought it would make me feel better but i found myself depending on blue eyes for my happiness and i never want to do that. happiness comes from me. from music. from an infinity of journals i have filled with my truth. from unfinished sketches and a sea of dreams. not from someone else. they have their own happiness to find and if i can help i will but i cant give it to them. all i can give anyone is love and these words and pray that it's enough.

next summer I'll hear wedding bells but i swear darling

i refuse to let them shatter me.

im sorry i cant smile for you yet

maybe one day I'll fit in your family picture

Until then,

i suggest you brush up on photoshop.

my favorite duet partner && the greatest tragedy

2007-05-08T05:10:00.000-07:00

This is the greatest tragedy
Tired eyes and scarred arms on a Monday morning
Steaming tears on a tile floor and not enough words to clean up that blood
Apologies slipping through unpolished fingers and flying into the deep blue silence
Vibrating in open mouths and shaking you to the core
She will wear long sleeves and softly kiss the boys who stroke her heart with bad intentions
Hate herself for loving too thickly and pour salt in her wounds until the sting makes her smile
No remedy can heal how deep those cuts go
This is the greatest tragedy
Crimson lips selling artificial love on a glossy 8x10
Blue eyes lined with regret and a beautiful girl getting lost in the lies her mirror whispers
The fairest of them all is falling into a generation of misplaced Cinderella’s
And those snow white cheeks are tanned to tainted perfection
That billboard body’s a bullshit body but her limbs ache for that airbrushed happiness to sweep across soft pink flesh
Desperate for something only the flash of a camera can ignite
Her smile frozen forever but behind that blissful grin are throbbing memories buried amidst lovely deceptions
This is the greatest tragedy
Liquid sin robbing the innocence from her eyes in a hot basement
Bitter taste on the tip of her tongue and that southern accent is thicker than ever
Hungry boys with popped collars and bad breath reaching for something those fingertips can barely brush
Empty bottles and smoky promises but in the morning their bodies ache with blurry regrets and their childhood lullabies are light-years away
This is the greatest tragedy
Silky words given to a boy who would love her like lightening
A fragile heart beating in his open hand
When that summer fades into golden leaves and three ring binders those thick fingers close around it until the beating stops
And she forgets how to love
Wasted songs and poison kisses
Oh how he adored that blonde hair but her poetry meant nothing
This is the greatest tragedy
A fathers heaving sobs echoing in pierced ears years after the tears have been dried
His baby rocking that man back and forth
I forgive you. I forgive you.
Hiding wet eyes in his worn Abercrombie polo
Be strong, hold him tight.
Maybe tomorrow those songs won’t make him think of pretty women and sleepless nights
This is the greatest tragedy
A broken goddess tied down by a prince charming nobody asked for

She cried into those wedding vows but the bells were haunting
Nothing but a sarcastic savior in a silent house
And while she slept he stole her rock n roll
Hid it in his favorite bottle of wine
drank it as she sketched her dreamland behind diamond eyelids
Someday I will learn to love him
This is the greatest tragedy
Naked honesty typed with unpainted fingers on a black Dell desktop
The truth of a sixteen year old girl screaming to be heard
Aching to be acknowledged
She’s painting it out on a dirty canvas for your judgmental eyes and praying you will love her anyways

exploration

2007-04-30T05:16:00.000-07:00

fairy tale disaster

2007-04-30T04:34:00.001-07:00

Phsycology Letter Project

2007-04-29T12:48:00.000-07:00

Buffy,
Happy birthday darling. You're eighteen but I can still vividly remmember you baking cookies in a princess crown and finger painting to the sounds of Elton John. I have no idea how you have become this beautiful young vegetarianwith a head full of possibilities and a hand full of college applications, but at least it shows I must have done something right.
I know how often you ask me about your dad- that anynonmous man you never knew. I know how you long to know the truth about our lives and your cihldhood and the beautiful disaster created when the two collided. So as part of your present this year my dear, I promise to shower you with honosty no matter how ugly the truth may be. I only hope after reading these words I will still be the heroine to you that I was before.
You were a product of Pina Coladas in Paris. You came from midnight dancing on cobblestone streets beneathe the Eiffel Tower and sheets of Egyptian cotton. Never think you are a mistake Buffy becuase you aren't. You were art. You were a masterpeice in the midst of a European Revolution. Like all beautiful things in life, you were unplanned.
Your father was a musician I met while spending that summer in Paris. Eighteen and he stole my heart with an acoustic guitar and pretty peniless promises. When my stomach began to swell and the morning sickness came, he stopped singing songs for me and fled. He left us for a red lipped senorita that taught him to tango. That was your father honey, a traveling gypsy who gave me the most precious thing in my life. You.
I know I haven't been the best mother. Ramen noodles were a sad excuse for dinner and I should have surrendered thosel ate nights in the studio for Mommy-daughter time with you. But if i could give you any advice about parenting it's that a good parent loves thier child. Unconditionally. They are patient and understanding and they embrace the teenage rebellion that eventually takes hold of all of us. They forgive. And forgive. And forgive. And love you while you stumble through the bitter flavored years of adolescence. If i was strong in anything as a mother, it was in loving you. Perhaps this is the reason for my suprising success- at 18 I was terrified of being a mother. I would look at you and your calleidescope eyes filled me with horror. You were so small, so innocent, so untouched by a material world. You were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen and I was so scared I would shatter you. I would raise you wrong. I wouldnt be there when you needed me. But my unjaded love for you overcame it all. I have always been proud of you Buffy. Always.
My hope for you is that you will always know it's okay to cry on the phone with the blondeb oy next door until three in the morning. It's alright to admit you can't do it all, throw up your hands and scream to the universe for a savior. You work so hard to save the planet darling,
please promise me you won't forget to save yourself.
Be careful with other people's hearts- remmember many have been beaten and bruised and are barely beating but you would never know it because in this world weakness is ugly and being beautiful is all that counts. HA. These are thelies the world feeds us with glossy spoons- please don't believe them. I'm begging you to keep standing out. Blending in is overated and the death of any poet. Don't fade into suburbia- unless that's what you want. I know you dream bigger than two car garades and jean skirts in grocery stores so don't settle for that. Don't settle for liking a man. Don't settle for thinking he's sweet and looks good in a suit. Do me a favor and fall in love. Passionatly. Recklessly. Sloppily. Fall into a love that is epic. Fall into the kind of love that hippies sing about.
Speak your mind. Don't swallow words with a sip of green tea- let them echo on crowded subways, in opinion filled lecture halls, in best selling novels. Don't worry when you get writers block. Anything meant to be written will be written- just open youe mind and close your eyes and be prepared for greatness and callused fingers. Never regret yesterday, it's a waste of time and an insult to the universe. Remember we are all moving in a circle- connected and never ending. Life flowing into death and bringing new life. Hearts beating all around the world and the circle still spins.
If i could dream anything for you it would be that you live the life you've always fantasized about. That you never doubt your intuition and you always know what an imprint you have left on my world. That you make music out of your tragedies and smile while you sleep. You are my inspiration. You are my best friend.
Happy birthday baby
love, Mom.

Life in a Yearbook

2007-04-29T10:18:00.000-07:00

One day,
you'll regret all those times you ignored me in the hall.
One day it won't matter how electric it felt when he forgot to kiss you.
One day
No one will remmemeber the beautiful drunk girl in the denim skirt
Whose laugh was stolen from romantic comedies
And skinny legs were spread wide open
No one will remmember the overachiever who sat next to them in English
Her navy turtlenecks covering one sided opinions
And suicidal academic perfection
No one will rmemeber the long haired actress who starred in school plays
Her soft voice and articulate words will be lost to an era of breast implants
And merciless cameras
And the blonde teen dream who made you shake with envy?
In a few years her blue eyes will be forgotten
And she'll gain back all that weight she starved herself to lose
One day my life will become a yearbook
All these faces I wished loved me
All those boys that made me cry
All those girls that made me scream
They will be black and white faces in an amateur layout
They will be four years that I could have been loving myself
STOP WASTING YOUR TIME PERSUADING THEM
Their eyes are open but their minds are closed
and their hearts aren't worth it anyway.

Highschool of Heros

2007-04-29T10:10:00.000-07:00

Black and white dresses filled that February night. Glistening cheeks and chapped lips disguised by red lipstick. We made love on that dance floor; elitist snobs, beautiful poets, strong willed jocks, big haired artists, skinny waisted sluts, blue eyed virgins, hooka smoking hippies, boa wearing misfits all bumping and grinding to nameless rhymes and for a moment in time we are a highschool of heroes and we love eachother with a reckless passion.
Monday morning we will trade this freedom dripping from our chests for a uniform of insercurity. For history books and ADD. For whispers and keyboards and fake smiles. But we will bathe this night in meaningless kisses while sour breathed parents watch with shaming eyes. We will nap on crusty couches with dark haired boys in our homeroom as Donny Darko lights up on the TV. We will let our laugfhter ring through a yellow Waffle House- eating grits and falling in love with our chinese waitress. Yes, we got down on our hands and knees to scrub away crimson blood. Yes, we made promises our rebellious hearts will never keep. But we will sing those songs for an eternity,
and someday when our cherry cheeks are wrinkled and the world has worn us down
we will find refuge in these digital pictures snapped with frantic fingers.

We are just a generation of plastic angels.
I have ink in my teethe and it tastes like the truth,
I would rinse my mouth but your listerines are nothing but minty poison.

one day we'll fly away

2007-04-26T05:22:00.000-07:00

sitting in a mellow musiced design class and missing you. last night was so long while i slept on her floor and this morning came way too soon. please let this vitamin water be enough to help me make it to Friday. <3

breathing art to life

2007-04-26T04:38:00.000-07:00

Black Sheep Poem

2007-04-24T19:35:00.000-07:00

She is a peace sign tatooed on her wrist and screeching laugh stuck in her throat
she is knee high boots, hand sewn denim, and forgotten cigarettes
she is a fallen homecoming queen sufficating in a quiet suburbia
toe nails chipping red and a cuss word stamped to nude lips
hemp weaving vegan who spends reckless weekends kissing dirty bussiness men and saving the planet
sipping whiskey dressed in diamonds and tying forest green scarves in chestnut hair
she used to smile at strangers and light up a room
dazzle ying yang hearts and cheer at pep ralleys
scowl at horoscopes and revel in rap songs
she was loved and admired and her grey eyes were empty
now they're filled with poetry and harmonicas and slow dances in quiet graveyards
Joni Mitchell and Maya Angelou
now they're filled with the kind of truth that you only find in the strum of a guitar
with ethnic food and quiet meditation and candle lit alleys
now she paints her fate on tarot cards and stores her heart in a crystal ball
outcast from the life she knew because
all that honesty is witchcraft to the world
and the spells she is casting are starting a revolution

elton john photoshop

2007-04-23T05:16:00.000-07:00

Made in America

2007-04-13T10:42:00.000-07:00

Made in America

Perfection is like muscles stretched taught over bone
Covered with a transparent layer of sun kissed flesh
Tan skin sweeping over an aching machine
Tired and worn from seventeen years of performance
Sixteen years of heartache
Fifteen years of questions
Fourteen years of confidence
Thirteen years of awkward adolescence
Created on America’s assembly line
Beautiful blondes pieced together by worn Indian hands of underage workers
Angel’s wings dragging on the dirty floor of a toxic factory
Sweeping up combination skin and yellowed teethe
Vacuuming the discarded flaws of the broken hearted into a dumpster of unrealistic expectations
New shipments of billboard bodies in trucks advertisement covered trucks
Pouting lips
Dainty waists
Wide eyed stupidity to cover the pages of magazines and set standards you will never reach
Thin wrists draped with silver charm bracelets
Pretty poets evaporating into sunny skies in a world where the truth
Is airbrushed
And beauty
Is manufactured

pearly white teethe fantasies

2007-04-08T12:20:00.000-07:00

Walking my puppy down windy easter streets lined with victorian houses and I'm beggining to love this new life. Waving goodbye to my charmed days of credit cards and lean cuisine meals was hard but now i have someone to talk to on the phone until three in the morning while candles burn and shadows of skinny deer walk past my bedroom window. Now i have michael buble songs eating me alive and a puppy im falling for with each passing day. I have best friends to drive with and a beautiful faith to mold with glitter covored hands. I have job applications and dreams of pearly white teethe. I have hope to cling to on this cold Sunday afternoon.

I have been snapping pictures like a mad woman these past few days. Trying desperatly to capture all the beauty swirling around me but my finger doesnt work fast enough and the moments are slipping through my new digital camera. Blue eyed best friend dancing in the rain, blonde haired birthday girl wearing a crown with her hands on the wheel and her heart hungry for freedom, track running goddesses banging on a brown haired boys drum set and laughing. Tommorow I go back to school for the first time in a month and I can not wait to smell that dirty beautiful fucked up world called high school again.

Nothing to Hide my Blue Eyes Under

2007-04-04T05:20:00.000-07:00

AT THE BOTTOM OF MY PAGE I NOW HAVE A PLAYSLIST OF SONGS--> the soundtrack to my life. for your enjoyment<3
2 AM and I collapsed on top of my purple covers last night. Oh it tastes so sweet to be home but my hair is gone and I keep reaching for those long blond waves. Now they are lying idly on some salon floor and I have nothing to hide my blue eyes under. Maybe I never should have hid them in the first place but I can hardly recognize myself in this short bob with the bangs that fall in my face like a pretty accident. One day I'll blow kisses to that mirror again but right now my confidence is teetering and I can't stop looking at pictures of girls in prom dresses that make me feel hideous. I guess all girls have these days. Wasn't I the one who said we were beautiful on our own? We are, but I'm only human.
Dancing in the rain with two of the most beautiful girls in the world. Splashing on slick black streets and soggy white petals from the flowering trees fall down onto our shoulders and stay there the whole car ride home. A million digital pictures because if I could have an eternity oh those moments would have been it. Twirling under charcoal skies and sprinting barefoot to my best friends car. Singing with the thunder and laughing until my sides were throbbing with joy.
I have new songs swimming in my head these days. New melodies to ride bikes past preteen skaters and dust mahogany blinds to. New tunes to sway my hips to and fall in love to and shove my face to and dance and dance and dance to. These songs have won me over and I have surrendered to their every acoustic guitar because i am so easily seduced by one brilliant song. I can't wait to sing in the front seat of your car again.

censor my heart

2007-03-29T15:50:00.000-07:00

Sliding on the kitchen floor in my socks and watching my little Hippie wag her tail and eat pinecones in the front yard. Nuns in navy blue Expedition's driving into the convent accross the street and Hall&Oates on the radio. Yes, I am home again.

I am home and singing in the car while I drive to Krogers to eat icing in the deserted grocery store aisles with my best friend. Home again to read about my tarot cards and waste away in licorice flavored therapist appointments. After sitting in a wheelchair in the Cincinnati airport alone my father looked like an angel in Abercrombie. That hug didn't last nearly long enough.

Back to school this morning and I have never felt as loved as I did in their arms. Beautiful smiles and smells of my high school hallways. Those florescent lights and tile floors are a blessing in disguise, and I wish I could see the green and white of their pep ralley. They don't know how beautiful they are.

Sweating in an overseized gym in purple shorts and old nikes. Running towards nothing and away from everything while Queen drowns me from the overhead speakers. These people smell like tanning oil and protein shakes and when I get home I'm eating a pint of Graeters. On the phone with my dad and I'M SORRY FOR THESE WORDS.

I'm sorry if they hurt you. I'm sorry if they made your face flush with unwanted knowledge. I'm sorry if they stopped you in your tracks. But I'm not sorry I wrote them. These are my truths. These are my soul. I refuse to take back all this brutal honosty with a click of my mouse because this poetry is too precious for that. Maybe someday you'll see, I never meant to hurt you,

but i refuse to censor my heart.

Lying on the back porch, bathing in Ohio spring sunshine and talking to a boy about Austrialia and MTV. Someday we will eat thai food and talk for hours over coffee and small miracles happen when you get to know a stranger in the hallways of your highschool. You can find friends even in the darkest places.

The Greatest Artist of All Time

2007-03-27T08:43:00.000-07:00

Sizzling spiced hamburger and melted cheese, today I made my first enchilada. Dominating the kitchen in my best friends sweat pants and sweet smells of mexico fill this house. Sitting alone and smiling because tommorow I will finally get to run into my mothers arms again. Tommorow I will remmember how gently she held me- how breakable I was all this time. Yes I am fragile but oh, I did not break. I did not shatter. I stood tall knowing that I can do this on my own. I can write poetry in the chandelier glow that lights my nights of insomnia and soak up musicals about unrequited love in the sands of ancient Egypt. I can ride a bike down gravel roads in a floppy pink hat and freestyle rap about wasted weekends under my breath as I fly by wrinkled strangers who stare. I can find sanctuary in books with tattered pages and open my eyes to the love that I am being showered with. Because I have stopped worrying,wishing,regretting,aching about tommorow’s lovely trials and yesterdays dirty words. I have stopped wondering what could have been and what might be- its all inconsequential. What matters is the windchimes singing through this open window and the newly born enchiladas sitting on an oak table in the other room. What matters is these words, because they are here. Right now. In a moment they will be nothing but a memory- a pretty inspiration that struck before dinner but right now they are infinite. Right now they are flowing from my fingers with a life and a soul all their own. I can breathe again because I know that all of these dead ends have lead me to a masterpiece. I can stop worrying because every second of my world is a piece of art that can never be duplicated. I can find peace because the greatest artist of all time is painting a masterpiece. And I am living it out.

Today a pretty blonde boy restored my faith in our generation.

Thank you.

It was fading fast.

looking for love in a vintage store

2007-03-24T17:04:00.000-07:00

I have fallen for open fields and long bike rides. I have fallen for conservative churches and jean skirts, welcoming families, big sunday dinners, red pickup trucks, country music, tightly pulled sheets, edited movies. I have fallen for a world that once petrified me as I sat alone in the Dayton airport listening to Enya and wondering where this journey would take me.

It took me to questioning my faith but always having it. It took me to long trails of weeping willows in the spring sunshine and 150 crunches on a tan carpet before bed. It took me to a place that showed me I don't have to work to be worthy of love. I don't have to lie or change who I am. I don't have to know the words to all these songs, i just have to start singing, and they will clap. and clap. and clap. until i realize i have always deserved this. This comfort. This peace. I have looked for love in vintage stores in Idaho. Searched frantically through the racks of musty smelling jean jackets and parachute pants, passion hungry fingertips skimming through baby blue lace slips and Led Zeppelin tees. I found treasure in the midst of oudated chaos, in a bin of old price tags and family crests. I held it gently in my hands and savored it because

this love is a novelty.

Strip me of my thumbrings

2007-03-21T20:25:00.000-07:00

These past few days have made my heart beat to a thousand different melodies. Phone call from my dad and I laughed while he told me about my future nights of sleeping in teepees with alcoholic strangers. Hiking for miles every morning and then maybe after 45 days of un-needed therapy and incurable homesickness, kacky shorts and rehab, sleeping bags and diagnosis, maybe then he will finally look at me like we have the same color eyes again. Maybe then he will remmember all those nights I sacrificed to hold him. Remmember how I gave up on my Neverland so I could dry his tears when all those pretty blonde bimbos broke his heart. When sweet sins came back to haunt him. I'm not bitter.

I am not broken.

And yes when I hung up the phone I fell to my knees in the Idaho sunshine. Charcoal eyeliner making art on my soggy cheeks. Head in my hands and praying to whoever could hear those lovely whispers coming out of my chapped lips. Where do I go from here. Where do I go. But even though I'm on my knees I know soon I'll be standing tall again. In my tan leather boots and blue floral dress. Smelling like vintage perfumes and singing Fleetwood Mac and knowing that this is a miracle in disguise. This is a canvas I will fill with beauty. Show the world what I created out of all those shattered peices of stained glass I found on the floor while I was on my knees.

Flying home on Tuesday and as much as I want to see their smiles again I know nothing will hurt as much as saying goodbye for the second time. Knowing the pain that has plagued me these three weeks at the end of the day. Coldplay CD in my walkman but the batteries are dead and the only songs filling my head are the ones that remind me of home. A few days and I'll be back. Looking at all I have to fly away from. Feeling that puppys wet nose again. Riding shotgun of that shitty car. Sliding on the kitchen floor in mismatched socks. Waffle House at three in the morning, eating grits and falling in love with our chinese waitress.

Some of the most amazing people in the world work at Waffle House at 3 in the morning.

Who else could put up with red eyed teenagers, booze scented party girls, and pot bellied truck drivers for minimum wage? Flipping flap jacks with a smile. Those are the tiny things that give me faith. I'm not ready to give up on this mixed up human race. Not by a long shot.

So I'll repack my bags and take off all this jewelry. They can strip me of my thumbrings, bracelts, peace sign necklaces and Buddah earrings but this girl isn't going anywhere.

Getting Off My Carousel

2007-03-19T22:26:00.000-07:00

These days are flying by faster and faster as I finally find a home in these gravel roads and sunset bike rides. Falling in love with Idaho families while they teach me how to cook and love and laugh even when the pain makes me shake on nights like these. Nights when the uncertainty of tommorow is overwhelming and my best friends poetry makes me cry. Beautiful words strung together that inspire my tired fingertips and make me want to breathe in all those nouns and verbs and adjectives. Angels are the people who breathe art to life.

And I am sorrounded by them.

My little sisters voice drifted over the phone line and I can hear how old her eyes must look now. Miles apart and she rehearses a presentation about The Giver like I'm sitting at the kitchen counter again, cheering her on and eating ramen noodles with a sloppy passion. Too much seasoning in a green porcelain bowl my mom got on her wedding from some nameless relative. All these pieces floating in my memory like a carousel. Spinning spinning spinning. An eternal circle in my mind.

Laying out in the sunshine that I know could be gone tommorow. My new red bikini and Fleetwood Mac. Another moment of sheer peace with my head rested on my Algebra book and my heart beating against the itchy grass. Feeling my body compressed against the earth. Grounded. Gravity taking control as i relax. as i surrender. as i let go and smell the bar-b-que scent of the suburbs. breathe it in deep and turn up the music. pretend I'm by the pool with my best friends again. It's not so hard to pretend with these tinted aviators on. When I open my eyes I'm alone again and the songs have stopped. Sometimes I think the only thing keeping me from happiness is reality.

Encouraging words on notebook paper that I'm sticking inside the cover of my favorite book. It doesnt matter how much I ache for his approval, his brown hair hasnt fallen in his face when he smiles for a long time now, instead blonde highlights shine in produce aisles while unhappy housewives stare and I feel sick because he used to wear Micky Mouse tank tops and speedos. He used to be so many things I am finally letting go of. I am finally forgiving him for not knowing how to love me. Because this pain will turn to anger. And that anger will paint my world a shade of red until all the colors fade and my heart is as cold as his is now. Please don't hate him. Just pray for him. It had to take so much pain to drain the life from those blue eyes and make them something plastic. My dad is in there somewhere. I know he is.

So now I'm giving it up. Handing my life to the universe and letting the stars fall where they will. Praying for a cosmic miracle to bring me home again. Jumping off my carousel because the circles were making me dizzy and I wasn't getting anywhere.

Unconditional Love

2007-03-19T11:50:00.000-07:00

Last night my mascara ran all over striped golden pillow cases and the white cardigan sweater of my gaurdian angel. She has black hair and wears jean skirts. She loves pineapples and Jesus and makes me want to have faith again. Sitting around a card table and the church congregation of mothers and fathers and children and college kids laughed about undeserved spankings and walking their daughters down the aisle and memories of being a family. They love eachother unconditionally while we eat lemon cake and sing happy birthday. They forgive my mistakes and welcome me with open arms. When they hold me I can't help but cry because I don't deserve to be held like that. I have never been held like that. I didn't know how much I longed for someone to hold me like that. To stroke my blonde hair and whisper in my ear that they were proud of me. That I was strong. That I was beautiful. That they would to take care of me. That I was safe. That I didn't deserve the things in my life and that

it wasn't my fault.

I didn't know how long I had been doing the holding. How long I had been doing the whispering. I look at their modest sweaters and jean skirts, long unbrushed grey hair, silver cross necklaces, unpolished fingernails, compassionate eyes. I look at them and sob because my family has never known this beauty. Oh yes, they love. But they love in rated R movies and well meant lies and self centered motives. They love in new jaguar convertibles and beautiful whores at our dinner table and fifty dollar bills. Their love is messy and unclean and broken. I have never known dinners like the one i had last night. My brother and sister have never known dinners like the one I had last night. Never known love like the love that I was showered with. Pure. Whole. A love that doesnt ask for anything in return.

I have been in the darkness for so long that when these people bathed me in light I wanted to run. My body is trembling because in three hours from now I will know if I can finally come home or if my pretty words i spent so long to write were not enough. Please

Please let them be enough.

Beautiful On Our Own

2007-03-17T17:18:00.000-07:00

Biking again but this time there's green haired women in leopard print shorts and tatooed men holding brown snakes in wrinkled hands. The sun feels so good and for a single moment in time when I caught my reflection in a cafe window I was overwhelmed with peace. I could breathe. I could listen to the sounds around me and feel like I was part of something bigger than all these e mails from my mother. Usually I find that feeling when the car windows are down and Elton John is singing about some lovely tiny dancer. Or when im rolling around in the snow with an angel who brings me chocolate milkshakes when I cry in mango colored corners. Or when you dedicated Postal Service lyrics to me on crumpled paper and drew hearts by my name. I could have gotten lost in you when you played acoustic guitar on her plaid couch by the fire. That fall I fell for you in golden leaves and vintage trucks and sweaty concerts. Now I avoid your green eyes in the hall because those songs were nothing but pretty lies. You captured me with promises you couldn't keep.

Why oh why do we do this to ourselves? These high school romances that end in petty tears and meaningless pictures that make our knees ache when we look at them. Smiles frozen in time that we will never wear again but we still rememmber in the dark on lonely sunday nights and wonder if they think of us too. We are in love with love itself and most of us don't even know what that is. Movies, poems, articles in seventeen magazine painting a picture of something every girl wants to get lost in. But being lost inside love is not hallmark cards and daiseys on your doorstep. It's paranoia and jelousy and lies and insercurities. It's pretending to understand a feeling that could swallow us whole but oh, how we adore drinking up all that chaos <3 size="5">we are beautiful on our own. without a shaking hand to hold. without the smell of cologne on our vintage tees. It's an endless cycle and there's a whole world of lovely hearts to break.

Monday morning my parents will decide if I get to pack my things and fly away from these Idaho skies. If I get to see my best friends and finish the school year. If I get a second chance to make them proud again. Even if I go home she's scared he will break me down with sarcasm and a new jaguar convertible and his girlfriend who has taken the place of his children. I know I've let you down dad, but I would give anything to be your little girl again. I would give anything for you to hold me like you used to and sing off key Billy Joel lullabies. I would give anything for you to stop looking at me like I let you down.

Useless Worries, Hungry Eyes

2007-03-16T14:37:00.000-07:00

Windchimes and revving truck motors floating through my open window. It's a beautiful day and I'm sitting here on the computer struggling to find the right words to bring me home again. I have to write out the mistakes and faults in myself so that they can be read and judged and analyzed and hopefully in the end, if i prove worthy, i can see my best friends husky blue eyes and start looking for prom dresses like the rest of the high school universe. I can stop worrying about plane tickets and custody and start worrying about my roots showing and my pale skin. Put away this game of pretend that I'm sick of playing.

I don't want to grow up.

I shouldn't have to. Not now. Not yesterday. Not when I was seven and you locked those doors for nine hours while my sister screamed and my brother cried and I shoved my face with more chilly dogs than my pudgey body could handle. Not when you were heartbroken again and i held that heaving body with tired arms.

I'm learning that all this worrying is useless. Worrying if they will still love me when I get back, worrying if my laugh will sound the same, worrying if all the pretty eyed boys I put my faith in never really cared. Worrying if I'll be at an airport a week from now or flying high above these corn fields and legislative lunches. Worrying if i miscounted my calories or gave my heart to the wrong person. These things are inconsequential. I live in a world full of worriers who are missing the beautiful simplictity in every single moment. Who forget to meditate because the news is screaming and time is flying through their acyrilic fingertips. I've been burying myself in books and reading about art and Buddah and reincarnation and the soul. About love and illusion and God and sin. These are not the kind of books that end with happily ever afters but they are opening my mind and helping me breathe through the lonliness. Pages of inspiration that I'm drinking with hungry blue eyes.

Fragments of my Life

2007-03-14T08:59:00.000-07:00

Taking countless pictures of myself while a bee flies in and out the window of this red pickup truck and The Eagles sing to me softly. It's a perfect seventy degrees darling but I'm freezing because I'm starting to forget what home smells like and that terrifies me.

Bike riding through Wal Mart parking lots and over bumpy sidewalks while dogs bark and all that sunshine hides behind some big ass cloud the second I start pedalling. Freezing in a floral print shirt and sweat pants but I won't stop because if I do I'll feel that homesickness wash over me again and I don't know how much of that I can take.

Strange how all those things I took for granted are the ones that dance in my sleepless memory. Driving darkened streets in a Geo with a beautiful black haired girl in oversized sunglasses and jeans her mother hemmed. Lovely bohemian boys in the hallway, country music mix CD's, photography teacher who's seen me cry, familiar faces around a circular table starving for conversation and tater tots, Abercrombie wearing dad who loves too deeply, hippie throwback mother who inspires, soft spoken sister with my eyes, wild blonde brother who aches to be loved, short southern grandma who never wears shoes, gorgeous step sister who can't be tamed, awkward step dad who takes hours to cook, bad smelling puppy i barely know. These are the pretty fragments of my life. These are the things i want to touch again.

Insomniac attack

2007-03-13T02:13:00.000-07:00

Three AM again and insomnia is winning, tired of battling with stiff sheets and creaking floorboards
this computer is my neon escape from open eyed nightmares and shoving my face with hawaiin chocolates hidden under the stove in the kitchen
theres a man that lives next door who stands in the street naked and peeks through open blinds
i see him in his truck in the mornings and his green eyes give me goodbumps because that is the kind of world that we live in
lost naked men in the middle of the road. i dont know weather to laugh or cover the eyes of every child I've ever loved.
I want more than anything to fall asleep and dream of a revolution.

2007-03-13T00:51:00.001-07:00

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Caramel Macchiatos and Pad Thai

2007-03-12T22:34:00.000-07:00

Today was caramel macchiatos and pad thai in a sunlit coffee shop. Crossing my legs and biting my lip while i spill a lifetime of stories all over a stranger who loves me. By the time I remmembered how to breathe my cup was empty and six hours had passed. All that truth made my lips chapped and my throat dry and I'm still missing those meaningless days in a lovely suburbia but now i know
I'm stronger than I thought I was.
I'm strong when I rock him to sleep and turn off the news. I'm strong when I remmember the words to all those songs and lose myself in obscene poetry. I'm strong when I realize

this is just life.

not a sitcom

not a novel

I can't live inside phony snapshots and broken promises, I can't be terrified of things i can. not. change.

But I can know that someday

this pain

will make me a masterpiece.

I can know that someday these words will just be a foggy memory, and we will laugh about the weeks I spent alone.

But until that someday comes, I refuse to live in promising tommorows and artistic nights of insomia.

I'm starting to live

right

now.

falling in love with Allen Ginsberg and chicken fajitas

2007-03-11T22:36:00.000-07:00

Creaking floorboards in an Idaho gettaway and there's a fly buzzing around that beautiful light in the hall. These floral bed sheets are old and musty and i wonder whose tired body has dreamed in the same spot as mine. I wonder if they believed in God.

I wonder if they were in love.

I wonder if they ever had nightmares as terrible as mine.

Today i fell in love with Allen Ginsberg, chicken fajitas, and a million brown eyed boys.

the world used to watch him kiss his girlfriend in the hall. Corner maybelline lashes against an aluminum locker and promise her it was REAL. Steal her lips before second bell and there they were watching the whole thing.

High school passion is so damn beautiful.

Probably because those kisses are just an illusion and in a month that boy will be learning to love some blonde haired hippie's favorite band while that girl bats her lashes at his stoned best friend in a cold basement.

Some days,

I can't tell the difference between love and a car crash.

It doesn't matter, both are fatal.

Metal hearts manufactured by Victoria Secret adds and happily ever afters.

If it isn't a fairy tale

it's porn and love falls somewhere in between.

For now, I'll smile at boys with pierced ears and empty eyes. I'll eat meatballs at hockey games and wish I could be drunk on you again.

I'll cover my eyes with cheap golden aviators and wear knee high boots with black dresses. I'll discover Buddah and finally forgive myself for not being able to save them.

I'll come across old family photos that make me want to cry and watch a sweat covored preacher scream about Jesus.

"The savior is coming!"

"Where will YOU be when He rises again??"

Drawing peace signs on my wrist and falling in love.

I'm sorry, I want to put faith in your black and white suit because your face is so sweet and your wrinkles show a lovely history. But the pages of your Bible are tattered and torn and written by the hands of men like my father and he boys who have broken my heart.

I believe in first kisses and lullabies. I believe in stained glass windows and lightening bugs and poetry. I believe in record players and falling to your knees when you can't fight anymore and you should'nt have to.

I believe in a soul so divine that it can love a world full of sinners and forgive a universe of lovers.

I believe in the God we find when we admit that sometimes there are things we can. not. change.

Sometimes there are fruits we are not meant to eat.

We do not live in an Eden,

But Oh,

We do live in love.

beggining of an unwanted adventure

2007-03-08T17:12:00.000-08:00

I held onto his neck while snow danced around us and he sobbed like a heartbroken father.
hell, he was a heartbroken father.
I thought the worst of this was over but I'm sitting alone in an airport listening to Enya and fighting off wicked tears. These fresh pages mean more than an unwritten story.
They mean carrying a wallet and talking to strangers and walking away from my mother at a deserted security checkpoint
They mean blowing kisses to a sunny Dayton sky and slying away from my beautiful chaos
They mean putting faith in a power higher than all these reality TV shows and dependable alarm clocks
I'm taking these first steps on my own but at least my best friend wrote memories with a ballpoint pen on the inside of my moccassins
This is the beggining of an unwanted adventure.

missing angels

2007-03-08T17:09:00.000-08:00

Tonight is one of the saddest nights i have ever spent in this house.
after chocolate chip cookies and mix CDs we took digital pictures and were horrified and enchanted by all this American Beauty

When the credits rolled the tears started coming and i wanted to rock my best friend back and forth with rock n roll lullabies
the four of us collapsed on the carpet and there's still an imprint of our bodies in the blankets.
my fingers dug into their backs and it wasnt until they drove away that i realized
That was my last goodbye.
Now i am left with pictures of Amsterdam

encouraging words
and the soundtrack of my life.
tonight i got gifts from Angels
So ill softly kiss the blue beads of my favorite Mexican's rosary and turn out my light.
Tommorow's just another day of missing my world<3

Accepting these tragedies

2007-03-08T17:00:00.000-08:00

I am dissapearing behind Kurt Vonnegut and Indie music.

I am eating in windows of sweet smelling cafes with my mother and drinking Chai tea with a passion.
I am accepting the fact that America is perverted
and roaming the streets are men who pray to a prostitute
I am slowly learning that I have no need to fear the future
whatever pains await in those days ahead will only give me poetry
and there can be nothing more beautiful than realizing you're an artist
The universe is full of people who will only realize they are artists when it's too late and everything beautiful has died.
This is an unspoken tragedy.