Ideas and Feelings

The idea of staying feels stagnant.
Consistency feels stagnant too and it scares me half to death.
I sit in the car and I love the feeling of movement and I want it to last forever.
But I don't want to run.
And when I get tired, I want a place to call home and the same pillow to rest my head on.

The idea of a picket fence and a house with a porch makes me feel sick.
Though if it's from fear or from wanting, I can't quite tell.
And I want the ring and the white dress,
But what do you spend 50 years talking about?

The idea of my future terrifies me because it's so vast and so empty.
But there's also room for possibility.
There's room for more than the small things that pile up on top of me and crush me until the world blacks out.

The idea of staying feels stagnant.
The idea of commitment is scary.
The idea of going feels vague.
And the feelings are what take me by the throat and squeeze until I want to curl up and let them rage while I sleep.

I Am All Color

In my bones, I am color.
I am vibrant explosions of sound and light.
If you were to spill me on a canvas, there would be no straight, clean lines.
No blank space.
There would be colors overlapping and spilling off the edges.
Neons and pastels and primary colors mixing to make new hues the world hasn't yet discovered.
There is so much of me that one canvas might be too small.
You might need two, or three, or five.

I spent years trying to tone myself down.
Be dark.  Be quiet.  Be small.
The colors in me faded and soaked back in until I was a translucent ghost.
I hid the colors like powder in tiny, secret pockets.
And in the desert, in the heat, in the fire, the powder hid.
But when the rain came, giving me new life, the colors started to show.
They dyed the ground around me.
They dyed my skin and my hair and my laugh.

Now, the colors are home, living in my heart and bursting from me in every sentence, every smile, every breath.
And I won't give them up again for anything.
For anyone.
Because my color, my life, my vibrancy and exuberance are integral to my existence and to lose them for any reason would be to lose myself.

Friends

He says we're just friends and I choke on the breath I've been holding.
Smile-my brain tells me-and I comply.
My heart is short-circuiting.
He would appreciate the metaphor, but we're just friends now.
That's all.
I inhale caffeine like oxygen because it's sweeter than the bitter taste left in my mouth when I replay his words.
They echo over and over and they hurt and numb me and make me cold.
Even when he asked before, it was a miscommunication.
That's all I ever do-miscommunicate.
I wait too long and I hope too high and I use all the wrong words.
Always friends, never more.
Always a step behind the curve.
He says we're just friends-just so I know-and I swallow my pride like a mouthful of nails.
I nod, despite the sloshing in my head and the ring in my ears.
But never a ring on my hand.
Because I'm easy to talk to but not the girl you want to date.
Because I'm just your friend-in case someone misunderstood the way we joke.
I guess it's easy to misunderstand.
I did.
I always do.
But we're just friends and I laugh because it's fine.
It's always fine.
That's just what friends do.