I got  stitches for the first time the other day; they used blue thread.

I am almost done knitting a light blue scarf for my mother.

When I was very young my mother told me that when we die, your entire body does not go to heaven; just the soul.

That is when I knew that it was all fiction.

I’ve read one book over 15 times and it is still my favorite.

On my sixteenth birthday I fainted and I still don’t know why.

At my cousin’s 8th birthday party, the boys were squishing fireflies and smearing the glowing lights on their hands.

This made me cry.

In middle school one of our classmates passed away and a lot of people cried, but I didn’t.

That was the same year I let a boy kiss me on the lips.

That boy told me my skin reminded him of milk because it was “smooth and white”.

My mother says I inherited fair skin from my father’s side.

In my pre-teen years, I used to lie about my nationality because I thought “Yugoslavian” sounded ugly.

I have family in Croatia and Ireland whom I have never met.

I have a lot of freckles, and I had to get one removed.

That is why I got stitches.

Whiskey and a dog’s tongue on my palm; That’s the first thing I remember, besides the snow and the morning light as I walked home alone. I felt myself melting from stone, but still, it didn’t feel quite right.  Awkward and hopeful, I ignored the inevitable end.

It was Wednesday when I found him, cheeks brushed with rose petals and an enticing expression. Knee high socks and empty beer cans; entangled in darkness; erotic and heavy.  I awoke to light through lace, while delicate bruises bloomed like flowers on my chest.  He annoyed me, I ignored him; until there wasn’t a single day without him. 

Sweet summertime. Sleeping in cars; driving to nowhere, the sky the color of rotting lemons; while my foot hung out the window, and my fingers tap-tap-tapped on my knee. Wearing a necklace of brown grass and smoke- I held your hand, and decided I didn’t want to let go. Meteor rocks littered the sky; sweat beads on the back of my knees. And I am happy.

The wind tore apart the tufts of clouds like summer cotton.  I had my own apartment with my own fire escape and my own roof and my own space.  My scarf got caught and snagged in the tree.  It was October so I closed the windows.  I decided to make peace with old friends- all accepted except one. 

The sun hid it’s face.  Sorrow clung to my ladder rungs and I tumbled down again.  And I sank, wrapped in that dark blue cocoon, helpless and fed up enough to fix myself.  I pressed my foot into wet cement; I layed my head on a sawdust bed.  And I wear my hope around my neck.  Life is like a clouded dream: on stage, in a theater emptied of everything except your ego- then the trap door swings open, and there you are.

it hangs over you
like a crown of rotting flowers
it lingers in the corners of your room
it creeps up your crooked spine
and weaves between each strand of hair
it’s in the creases and the folds
of the curtains; of the faces;
printed on your eyelids
the cosmic weight on your chest

There I stood
on an upward
floating platform
next to a pile of
rotting wooden planks


 

Sprawled out like lifeless dolls on the floor
of an old creaky wasteland and
we’re talking but all I can hear is this
deafening silence that has replaced the
stomping and the laughter of
souls just passing through.
The floorboards have stopped breathing
and everything is still.
One hundred unanswered questions and
one hundred children’s graves
was all I could give you.
I’ll meet you somewhere between
now and never. 

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.

they cancelled the fireworks this year
this winters been warmer than most
maybe that’s why I only stumbled
and never completely fell back under

my fingers smell like smoke and orange peels
and I’ll never be able to explain how I feel
except for when I’m warm off wine
and even then I just write it down

I’ve read this book about nineteen times;
it seems that I dog-ear the same pages
and ‘chartreuse’ is a beautifully misleading name
for the color of the house on christian street

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…