Go. Anywhere.

There is a need somewhere within me, a need that wedges itself between my ribs and wraps around my bones, a need to go.

Go, it whispers.
Go.

Anywhere.

To walk new streets until my feet know the pebbles in the road like old friends and maps are obsolete.

To wear the city like a sweater until the itch of unfamiliarity fades to a warm, soft comfort that wraps me tight each morning.

To breathe in the air and breathe out the slang and the language like I was born with it in my lungs; like nature planted me the words in my chest when I took my first breath.


There is an itch beneath my skin that begs me not to stay put for too long.

Go, it tells me.

Go.

Anywhere.

Live in new places until they are old friends.

Meet strangers on every corner until every corner is filled up with familiar faces.


Go, it tells me.

Go make the far away lands home so many times that one day, not a place in the world will feel foreign.

Wear the culture like a jacket and the streets like shoes and the language like breath and become the all world wound up in one, single body.


Go, it tells me.

Go.

Anywhere.

Between Two Worlds

Sometimes I feel almost whole.
Sometimes, I can put the trauma behind me and pretend it never happened.
Sometimes I feel like I belong here, in this time, in this place.

And then there are other times where nothing is right.

Times when my chest feels so hollow it aches.
Times when the bones beneath my skin feel like fragile branches of an ancient tree.
Times when winter ice creeps into my veins and freezes me to the spot.
Times when the world around me feels so foreign that I can't see straight.
Times when the wounds I've carried so long that they have scabbed over start to crack open again and sting and bleed and hurt anew.

There are times where I feel like a changeling, left in place of a human girl and destined for something ugly and scary and grim.
There are times where I feel so invisible I'm tempted to scream or to run just to see if anyone would notice at all.

Goodbyes and Reminders

I screamed goodbye to you four years ago with eyes full of tears and a throat full of nails.  My world was ash back then and telling you goodbye was snuffing out the last burning ember of hope.

I cried goodbye to you in my car, alone, counting my way through a panic attack when I saw you in the store six months later.  I've rarely hurt so bad in my life but I still remember the pain lancing through my heart like a needle into fabric, even after all this time.

I whispered goodbye to you every day for a year as I trained myself not to look for your car in the parking lot at your old apartment building.  Even when I knew you had moved, my broken heart found the habit hard to break and I kept thinking you'd appear right there where I left you.

I said goodbye to you again today when I saw a picture of you.  You're not looking at the camera because you're looking at me.  I'm out of the frame, but I remember.  And that picture of you posing for the picture I was taking caught me in the chest like a taser until I was stuck replaying that day over and over again in my head.

Every time I say goodbye to you, I have to say something to myself too.  I have to remind myself that I deserve better, even if you never believed it.  I have to remind myself that I have worth, even if you never saw it.  I have to remind myself that I am precious, even if you never thought so.

Every time I say goodbye to you it hurts just a little bit less.  Maybe today was the last time I'll have to do it.  Maybe by this day next year, I'll have forgotten you and the agony of goodbye will be over and the reminders will be truths etched into my heart.

I Wrote Down the Story of Us

I wrote down the story of us.
I changed your name and the color of my truck but the rest is truth.
Just truth.
I wrote down the story of us, in vague sentences and in specific details and it only takes up ten pages.
Two years of my life summed up in ten pages.
It feels like a joke.
I wrote down the story of us and I couldn't help changing the ending.
So that part isn't truth.
It's all wishes and wants and should-have-beens.
The end is my favorite part because it saves us.
It turns our shipwreck into a painting.
It takes the broken pieces of us and glues us back together in some new, undiscovered masterpiece.
I wrote down the story of us and I miss you so badly I can't breathe.
I miss you and I'm angry and I'm hurt.
It reminded me of so many things.
I wrote down the story of us and I don't know if it should make me laugh or cry.
I do both.
I smile at the beginning, when we were close and things made sense.
And I write through tears in the middle, where it gets messy and we turn into a disaster on the page.
I wrote down the story of us and I wish it was different.
I wish we were different.
Or maybe I wish we had never changed.
I wrote down the story of us.
I changed your name and the color of my truck but the truth is still the same.
The truth is that it hurts.
And the truth is I still keep wishing that the ending on my paper will play out in my real life.

Ghosts

This town is small and full of ghosts.

I walk in the coffee shop and a bell tolls above me.
To my left is the long table where we used to sit.
And I see us there every time.
Blue eyes and soft smiles and whispers floating between us.
And it's so real, I might as well be sitting there with you now.
But I'm not...I never am anymore.

I pull into the parking lot with tall brick buildings lining every side.
The space where we used to park is nearly always empty.
And I see us there every time.
Loud laughter and louder music and smiles so wide, the sky is jealous.
And it makes my chest ache so hard I can't breathe.
We're not there...we haven't been for some time now.

I hear that song on the radio and the memories come back like a tidal wave.
The room where we met is bright and alive in my head and my heart.
And I see us there every time.
Jokes as sharp as tacks and sparks burning in the air between us.
And it makes me sick with the bittersweet remembrance of it all.
You've been gone...for a long time.

This town has no ghosts of it's own.
They're mine.
They live deep in my heart and linger on the corner of my vision.
And I don't think I can ever out run them or be rid of the scars on my heart that they're tied to.

Another Letter I'll Never Send (#3)

Dear ******,

Fifteen weeks wasn't enough time for me to know you.  Years have passed and I still think of you most days.  In the car, I'll hear the song that came on the day I met you and wonder where you are.  In a crowd, I'll see someone with eyes like yours and wonder how you're doing.  Fifteen weeks was all we had and it felt like a breath and a lifetime all at once.  Sometimes, I daydream that you'll walk through the doors of my local coffee shop and come back into my life forever.  Sometimes, I daydream that you'll read this and know I miss you.  Sometimes, I daydream about what it would've been like if we had stayed.

I split my life into phases.  You were the beginning of light.  Of coming back to life.  And I don't think I ever told you just how much you saved me.  My whole life, I've felt invisible-partially due to my own desire to blend but also because people never really see me.  They see my laugh and my smile and they stop there.  They never see the quiet moments when I panic or the nights when I cry myself to sleep.  They never see just how hard I'm trying to maintain.  But then you looked at me and  in that moment I began to truly exist.

My moments with you are so clear in my memory, laser cut and bright and vivid.  I never want to forget the day we met, when you made a quiet joke and I was the only one who heard you.  I never want to forget the moment when our eyes met and I knew I had met my match.  I never want to forget the day I made you laugh-really laugh-and how the sound felt like coming up from beneath the waves and taking a full breath of air.  I never want to forget the way you fought for me; the way you saw the pain in my face in a split second and changed the energy in the room.  I never want to forget anything about you.  The green eyes and bowties and silent challenges.  The tiny spark of hope you lit in the ashes of my broken heart.

Because of you, green eyes still bring a smile to my face.  Because of you, I know I'm not invisible.  Because you, I will always do a double-take when I see anyone in a bowtie.  Because of you, I'll always be holding out hope that the universe might bring us back together.

Love Always,
Boots.

Just Gone, Not Forgotten

When he said my name, it felt like a promise.
And when he smiled at me, it felt like being set on fire.
Those feelings are a memory now.

I miss his voice some days.

When it feels like I'm forgetting him and the edges of his face are blurred by time.

When our moments feel faded, as if they were captured in on film but the photo was left in the sun too long.

That boy, lost in a sea of faces but remembered.

In the memory of the laughter that rumbled through his chest and then through my own.

In the moments when the sun paints the ocean the color of his eyes.

In the moments when memories roll out like tapestries on the back of closed eyes and feelings flit across the skin like whispers.

I was a girl then.  

I was fragile and naïve.

I saw the world through rose colored lenses.

I miss that girl some times.

When the world is grey and the weight of living seems too much.

When I spend days in silence and the word "hope" feels foreign and vague.

That girl, gone and forgotten but in still paid tribute to.
In the songs on the radio.
In the tear stained pillowcases.
In the moments when memories roll out like tapestries on the back of closed eyes and I drown in the feelings that seem so far way.

There are days where I look in someone's face and half expect to find him there, a smile on his lips and a joke rolling from his tongue.

There are days where I look in the mirror and see the girl reflected back at me with the shadow of a warrior keeping her in the shade.

Both of us are gone.
But the moments of us will stay forever; etched into our ribs by our beating hearts and seared into memory by the sparks that flew between us.
Both of us are gone.
But we remain forever.
Never forgotten.

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.