With Me

Drive through sleepy towns with me at 3 in the morning.
Blast music through the house we bought and dance with me in the living room.
Listen to me rave about the last book I read and rant with me about your coworkers.
Sit on the kitchen counter with me and drink endless cups of cocoa and coffee and tea.
Pose for pictures with me on every adventure.
Walk along the beach with me and soak in the sun and kick the waves.
Laugh with me uncontrollably and freely and unashamed.
Go to concerts with me and scream until we lose our voices.
Save our pennies and our dimes to see new cities with me.
Stare up at the stars from my truck bed with me.
Dance through the kitchen during sunrise hours with me while I burn the toast and spill the coffee.
Fight through the hard days with me.
Revel in the good days with me.
Tell me, tell me you're in love with me.
Fight with me and cry with me and stay.
For the love of all that is pure and good in this world, stay with me.
See the hope in me; see the future with me.
Build a life with me.
Believe in the impossible with me.
Live your best life with me.
Whatever you do, just stay with me. 
Because everyone else has left and I don't know if I would make it if you left me too.
Whatever you want, whatever you dream, just do it with me.

Old Scars

I want to stop writing about my past, but what else do I have?

Everyone is gone and I'm still here trying to sort out what happened.
The few people I cling to now are hours and cities and states away.
So I sit in an empty backyard and hold my battered heart in my hands and all I see is my past.
The heartaches.  The traumas.  The people who might have been good for me if I hadn't let them go.
All I see is myself at fifteen taking one wrong step that send me tumbling down a flight of figurative stairs for the next seven years.  Now, the falling has stopped and everyone and everything is gone.  I was left at the bottom, broken, with a head full of stories and words that I use to medicate the pain.
I guess I'm still there, at the bottom of the stairs, but I don't know what the next move is.
Move out? but where would I go?
Fall in love? but with who? who would want all of this?
Be happy? but how? how do I even begin that process?
I don't know.  I don't know the answers to any of it.

Instead, I sit in solitude and pull at old scars and stitches until they bleed out onto the paper and leave me empty again.

Stuck

The sky here isn't a bright enough blue.
The air isn't warm enough to stave off the shivers.
The sea is too far away.
This town is too small, too old.
The roads wrap around me, holding me back.
The memories of these places crash in my head until I can't see anything else.
The faces of these people haunt me in every store, at every light, waking and sleeping.
And I can't escape soon enough.
And I've got no one and no where to run to when I go.

I Imagine

I imagine what might happen if you were the one for me.
I imagine us sitting on the roof, watching the sunset.
I imagine that when I tell you about my fears, they don't scare you away.
I imagine that instead you take my hand and reassure me.
You would listen to my stories, and tell me your own.
We would laugh and things wouldn't feel the way they do right now; all mixed up and wrong.
You would look in my eyes and see the truth and nothing in my past would be too much.
You would find the beauty in these scars that I can't see and the hope that I have buried deep inside.
And on the rooftop in the dying light, we might come alive.
And you might be the one I prayed for.
And I might finally fall asleep happy.

Friends to Live For

There are two types of friends.

There are ones who seem nice for a time, but slowly, make you feel more and more alone when they're around.  You smile more than you speak.  You nod and listen to the stories.  You watch them make plans in front of you that don't include you.  You find yourself thinking about how irrelevant you are, how much more fun they'd have without you.  You think of the age gap between you and question your own maturity.  You realize no one is listening and let your words trail off and slip into a silence that feels like choking.  You feel like you're watching them in a TV show and no matter how loud you try to interject, the sound won't go through.  You force out laughs that feel like knives in your heart and lumps in your throat and when the night is over, you feel so much worse than you did when it began.  And you can, you should, do without them.

But then there are others.

There are ones where you laugh until your face hurts, and the laughs are ugly and genuine and whole.  Your chest aches for air in between the laughs and the stories and the talking because you haven't stopped to breathe.  Your breaths feel like magic filling your lungs.  Your veins are full of sunshine and fire you feel silly and loved and crazy in all the right ways.  The night is dark or the morning is young and even when all the stories have been told and you're worn out from laughter, you sit side by side in a wholesome silence that fills you peace instead of anxiety.  You are lightheaded with the joy of the future with these people, and with the possibility of this moment.  You don't have to say the right things, or do what makes sense because everything is so incredibly messy and beautiful already.  And the world somehow feels both huge and tiny but in a way that brings goosebumps to your skin and a smile to your face for days to come.  And for every one of the these friends, you thank the Lord a dozen times because they make you feel like the world belongs to you and like you have a home here.  And that is beautiful, that is what you live for.

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.