No wall to separate my dreams from my reality
both run like water and bleed into each other 
mixing brilliant colors with bright light
Is this now?  Or was this then? 
The house is simply magic—
where time ceases to exist
and the days are long and hazy
and the night brings on the dancing
and the heat wakes us in the morning
and I open an eye just enough to glance at the
significant year tattooed on your thigh
The floor is sticky and the air is humid
and the staircases are swollen
like our hearts

Tomorrow is my birthday and I am on the cusp of things.

I fell into it in a complicated way to begin with.  Woke up holding someone I was only holding to block myself from another someone; A someone I was trying desperately not to love nor hate.  I looked down at my hands and couldn’t tell the difference between accidental paper cuts and anxious finger biting.

Spring melted in and I left New York City for home.  Then I left the country.  And when I came back, I left the boy that was shielding me, in hopes of something more- and I ended up with even less.  I turned my back and got a shiver of panic at the once terrifying feeling of being alone.  So I danced around in the growing heat and found someone who had all the right friends and all the wrong traumas.  I was shut out and he was dramatic and I was drunk and left smelling of fireworks and heartache on the Fourth of July.

Many let-downs later; many parking lots later; many drinks, moments, angry messages and sobs later, it was mid-summer and I was alone.  I severed myself from everything and everyone I knew.  I spent most of my time in my car.  I drove it a lot.  I drove until I got lost.  I drove until the red and white car lights smeared together.  I had never before wanted so badly to not exist.  I left behind the burdens; I left behind the friends that weren’t really friends;  I left behind the roads that contained my histories, memories and regrets that I spent too much time walking down;  I left behind everything, including my ability to feel anything at all and it was beautiful.

I went back to the only place that made me feel as awful and empty as I felt that summer.  I spoke to a boy who’s conversation I enjoyed- who knew the anger and the solitude all too well.  Met new friends.  Got drunk often.  Walked home by myself at 3 A.M. to find I was never quite alone.  I accepted things I was afraid to admit to myself.  I found your apology in my inbox.  I spent time tossing and turning.  I spent time sleeping.  I spent time scribbling poetry on pieces of paper that eventually filled my pockets and purses.  I began talking with my hands again.

Winter came without warning and I felt an old feeling tingling in my toes.  I wanted to open all doors and let change flood the floor.  But I couldn’t and I can’t.  My heart remained in limbo. I said goodbye to New York City and set my sights elsewhere.  I moved to Philadelphia.  Made my apartment a home.  Met incredible, whole people.  I started classes and loved them- art became like breathing again.  

Now I spend most of my time laying on floors.  I spend it drunk.  I spend it writing.  I spend it listening to my neighbor’s noisy garage door.  I spend it wondering if the hundreds of open windows across the way can see me naked when I get out of the shower- then I realize that I don’t care anyway.  I spend my time growing.

My head is made of thoughts and ashes
from the bridges that I’ve burned
in hopes their flames will light my way.
Many moons have come and gone
while solitude has sheltered me
like a blue and dismal blanket;
and I’m slowly being smothered
but I love it more than 
letting someone in.

I am awake for the first time,
this genesis is cold and blinding
but I prefer this cement wasteland
to dreaming in a flower bed.
Old roads have tired of my tires
and I can never sit still for too long,
thinking that my past may catch up to me;
I can’t tell if I’m running to or from

Time will heal your wounds, they say
but it will never hide your scars;
I can only hope that time will 
have me stumble heart first into someone,
young and angry, whispering truth,
who has seen the roads I have;
who will compare their scars with mine 

I get drunk and steal things sometimes… like all the time.

And tonight I came home and just when I thought “hmm, I didn’t steal anything tonight…”  I looked in my bag and found a fork from the diner.

When I was little I had a goldfish and a little Tamagotchi toy thing, and in the same day they both died but I only cried when my Tamagotchi died lol…

And I don’t want to speak too soon but I think that, finally, I am okay with being alone.  It’s a weird thing, really.  It’s like, over the course of the two and a half years I was with someone, I little by little emptied myself into him- into the relationship- until I was hollow.  And after I left him, I ran around and tried to find solace in anyone I could but it never proved successful.  They always fell short.  I always fell short. Over and over and over and now I’m trying to fill myself up again.  Alone.

I guess the difference between me and most people is that most people think about what song will play at their wedding, and I think about what song will play at my funeral.  (Which will be: Another One Bites The Dust).

Love is the worst thing ever invented.  Those who think being in love is a beautiful and wonderful thing are right, but those who think it lasts forever are delusional.  It leaves your heart cracked open and confused and wanting nothing more than to find something, anything to mend and renew itself.  I used to think that people who believed that love was a myth were just bitter that they had never experienced it- now I’m unsure of whether or not I envy them; they’ve protected themselves.  Never fall in love, for then you will forever be a slave to it.

When I hear the phrase “put the past away”, I think of literally shoving it into drawers of this giant dresser.  And I can’t close the drawers all the way- you know like when there’s too much stuff in them?  So all of this past is hanging out of the drawers and dripping on to the floor and flooding to my feet and crawling up my legs and consuming and swallowing my entire body.

I think the problem is that people are so sad- myself included.  You ever go into places like post offices, banks, DMV’s or grocery stores and just look around?  Everyone is so gray and dead and sad.  Then you think “they weren’t always like that, were they?”  I wonder when people’s lives get so depressing- if there’s some sort of deadline or age where everything fades to a melancholy state.  We’re too young to be sad.