Things I Love

-Sunrise and Sunset
-Long summer days full of saltwater and sand and sunshine drenched in laughter
-Road trips made up of equal parts of music and storytelling and silence
-Getting lost in another world when opening a book
-The way the ocean glitters underneath the sun
-Hot cocoa in spirited mugs
-Quiet fall evenings wrapped in a sweater staring up at the darkening sky
-Goosebumps at the beginning of a song as the notes make their way into your soul
-The way words spill out of broken hearts in the dead of night under cover of darkness
-Secrets and jokes that give way to the instant where friendship is born
-Pictures taped in notebooks promising our past that it won't be forgotten
-Empty paper begging for art and love and pain to be spilled upon it from the tip of a pen
-The lull of road noise when you're all alone in the car making your way toward something new
-The way the things we love come bubbling up out of us and paint our cheeks with red and eyes with light

But more than all of that, I love the way my heart beats of of sync when you look at me as if I am your whole solar system standing here on earth.

Charcoal

The way she spoke about him was like drawing with charcoal.  

Dark but hauntingly beautiful.  

Sharp lines that smeared into smooth patches and blended into everything around.  

Sometimes, it was a rough sketch, but there was depth, there were shadows, there were lighter spots amid the darkness.  

That’s the way she talked about it and that’s how he felt to her; like a vague outline with enough potency to stain her soul.  

Rough edges that you could smooth out with the right brush of a finger.  

His charcoal darkness stained her the minute she reached out, and she was never clean of him again.

Absent Prince

Can you imagine a fairy-tale where prince charming is everything he’s supposed to be?

Can you imagine his beauty, inside and out?

His valor, his courage, his righteousness, his justness?

His smile like sunshine and his eyes like precious stones?

His gleaming armor and his battle ready sword and his wisdom like a crown upon his head?

Can you image him being everything the stories always said he would be?

And then looking up to realize, he’s not there when the castle is burning and the dragon is attacking and the world is falling apart?

Can you imagine that sometimes, it doesn’t matter how beautiful his smile or his soul is, because he didn’t show up to the fight?

Sea and Sky

It's been far too long since I last laid my eyes upon the sea.
My skin craves the graze of salt water on cheeks and feet and shoulders.
My lungs beg for the crisp, stinging freedom of the open air, fresh and unpolluted by the land.
I need to lay out under the stars with the sand beneath me and listen to the unbridled ferocity of nature in the lapping waves upon the silent shore.
I need to look up into heaven and count the stars and search for planets while I whisper your name and our stories into the atmosphere.
And what I need, more than all of that, is for you to lie beside me while your hand weighs mine down or I might just drift away into the night sky.

Words like Fingerprints

Our words, like fingerprints, press against the air between us.

Each unique, but somehow made for one another.

Secrets and memories reach through time and space, holding us together.

Two strangers each looking and finding a mirror in the other.

Despite the distance, the air between us is heavy.

Full of late night conversations we never meant to have.

Weighed down by secrets slipping out of sleepy mouths.

"I know you" both hearts seem to say.

"I have seen what you have seen.  I have ached how you now ache."

At twilight, and at dawn, the hearts break over the space between them.

We promise them, soon, and then we delay.

Everyday making them beat more in sync and yet,

Everyday putting a few more steps between them.

Save Myself

I wake up to a name I haven’t seen in years. 

My blood runs cold and I have to catch my breath.

It’s like reliving one of the worst fights of my life over again.

Three words with no meaning make me roll my eyes.

I’m older now, I know that things have changed.

I see words they wish they had said to me.

Evil words and nasty thoughts and broken hearts.

It’s too much and I have to walk away.

Because they’re like poison and I have to save myself.

Puzzle Pieces in My Pocket

Words stretch across my chest and try to fill the holes in my heart.
They don't reach.
Lyrics of songs pour in and fill me up until my eyes start to leak.
They won't stop. 
It's a never ending fountain of flood waters.
I hold my breath.
I will it to stop.
I pretend it's okay.
But it's not okay.
The songs hurt like knives and the memories plague me and I can't stop thinking about you.
About all of you.
About every soul that pushed me to my breaking point.
And then pushed a little more until I broke.
Now I'm in pieces, and I was never any good at puzzles.
The pieces of me are all mixed up.
Some of them still want you, still love you, still need you.
Some of them hate you, and hate me, and hate what we had.
Some of them feel lost in a sea, unsure of where they stand.
And me?
I can't find them all, all the broken parts.
And I don't know how to fix them, how to stick them back together.
So I gather up what I can find and I shove them in my back pocket, like that might help me heal.
But it doesn't and I don't think it will.

Why I Write

We were asked in class a few days ago to say why we write and why our writing matters to us.  I don't like verbally sharing my feelings so I said something mildly sarcastic and non-emotional, but I kind of regret that now.  Because I feel like it's such an important question to answer.  My feelings about this topic are a little messy, so forgive any messy explanation to follow.

I write because I want to change how people view femininity.  I've grown up in a society where feminism is growing.  And that's awesome, because women should never be treated as less human or less worthy than men.  BUT I think in some cases it becomes so fanatical that it kind of works against itself and it pushes women back into the corner we're fighting so hard to get out of.  For example, my love of glitter and Starbucks and love stories and Taylor Swift music now makes me "basic" and "girly" when it should just make me who I am.  I write to challenge this idea that a "strong woman" can't also love kittens and glitter and princesses.  I write because I think a strong girl doesn't have to be the underdog, or the "Katniss", or the "pretty-in-a-nerdy-way" girl that fights through the ranks.  I think a strong girl can be anyone.  I think she can be me; she can be in the middle of the popularity pyramid, relatively smart but not a genius, and mildly outgoing.  I write so that we can have more of the middle and less of the polar extremities.  Don't get me wrong, I ADORE Katniss and the entire Hunger Games series, but I don't think that's the only kind of "strong woman" out there.

I write because I believe in the complexity of people.  I don't believe in stereotypes.  I've written here before about my old friends who used to call me by my hair color instead of my name, and that just sickens me.  I write because I want to show girls out there that they can love skateboarding AND tutus AND their favorite color can be pink. I want to show them you don't have to pick one part of yourself and that you can love it all.  I write because I want to create characters who are walking contradictions, just like people are, because I believe in that so much more than I believe in stereotypes.  I want to show people that you can love Disney Princess movies, and your room can be pink and you can love glitter, all while you kick tail at Call of Duty and drive a loud truck and jam out to Van Halen.

There are so many opinions out there on what a woman is, and what it means to be strong, and what feminism is, and it's honestly too much for me.  I write to challenge all of those few points that say we have to be all one thing or we are less of something else, because that's simply not true.  I write to show the world how I can be all the little mixed up parts of myself that don't match but that make me unique.

Moonlit Secrets

Moonlight trickles through the window and warms the soul like whiskey as the stars wink, daring us to tell our secrets; and we do.
They bubble up from the wells of our souls and spring forward into the space between us until we're breathless and lost in our words.
Nighttime loosens the tongue and coaxes forth the darkest thoughts.
They leap from our brains and through our mouths and hang between us like dirty chandeliers.
Instead of tucking them away quietly, and pretending they didn't escape, we watch the way the light glitters off of them and we hang more in the air.
The glint of our truest thoughts is different in the softer, paler light of the moon.
They don't seem so dangerous hanging there between us like that.
They seem more delicate, more genuine, more unique.
We close our eyes on them before the sun comes up so we don't have to watch them transform from darkly beautiful antiques to the monstrosity that the sunlight makes of them.
And then we wait until the horizon has gone dark to pull them out and stare at them again, in the glow of the moon, giving into the coxing of the stars.

It's Easier With Strangers

It's so much easier knowing where we stand with strangers.
There aren't so many words passed between us.
So many secrets slipped back and forth like currency.
So many glances that could be confused for looks.
With strangers, there's no question of where you stand because you don't stand there long enough to care.
You don't count the miles between your hearts to the nearest inch.
You don't count the days that start to stretch between you or the seconds of silence that linger on the phone line.
With strangers, you can just let go.
And with everyone else, you're left wondering and holding on and overthinking everything.