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.

I have so much more to give

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.

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

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.

Words of Wisdom

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

my favorite duet partner && the greatest tragedy

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

Phsycology Letter Project

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.

Black Sheep Poem

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

Made in America

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

censor my heart

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.

falling in love with Allen Ginsberg and chicken fajitas

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.

Accepting these tragedies

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.