Sharp

I am far too young to have seen your blood sucked up, flowing like velvet ribbons as it diluted itself into the water. I keep making that excuse for myself, like it is going to help me be anything but a helpless little kid. A helpless little kid without textbooks or a ride to class. I might be sitting against the wall in a grocery store with my phone plugged into the wall, but more than that I'm obsessed, and unable to look away, or less frightened when we talk about the past.

This is how I remember you best.

You're escaping to somewhere darker, and colder. You're sitting with your back turned to me. You're staring into Autumn. You're in the Delaware River Gap. You're in the North. You are the North.

Waking up Crying

Tonight is like pulling myself away from that twin mattress on the floor when I had to go to class. I remember thinking of how unfair that it was that I had to walk outside, into the cold street below, while you got to stretch your long legs and press your face deeper into the pillow.

I miss us in Elon, NC when we got woken up by that freight train. I miss comparing the tastes of tap water. I miss picking hairs of your sweartshirt. I miss the desire to run away, as opposed to the aching of homesickness. I'll miss our silhouettes at dusk in your driveway, ending an era, and understanding eachother like we were young again.

I can only feel you curling up next to me as if to say, "look what I did," while a feeling of admiration overcomes me. We'll fall in love, or something similar, in an egg shaped chair, like the one on the deck of the Montecalvos when I was young and used to know them.

Wide eyed, we are black eyed, and gray eyed.

I want to put you in an envelope and ship you over here and ride you around on my bike. then ship you back when you've had enough

I haven't seen anyone I need now, just a photograph of familiar faces with a tree in the fall behind them: blood red leaves contrasting their pallor, flushed from the brisk fall day. I'll wince when I go out on the porch because it is 95 degrees out there. I wont be putting on a flannel for a good long while. And yet somehow, it can feel like fall in my belly. Maybe it's the mere fact that it is August and I am going back to school soon. I'm am anxious. Maybe I just miss everything.

I'm thinking about walking with Luke down Pawtucket St. How Autumn became Winter and then Spring with my hand wrapped in his, our legs curled together, giggling at some movie playing on his computer screen. Cooking Mexican food in his kitchen with the duct during that blizzard in January. Meeting him after Accounting in the skate park. Recognizing warm air. Saying goodbye in my driveway in Lowell.

Or just driving away from Lowell. Maybe driving away from Ipswich too.

I am opening letters from Germany, anxious for your words. I am plotting ways back to Kentucky.

I am watching C.H.U.D. on a couch and thinking about Gloucester in the fall, blood red leaves.

I have to get to the Ocean.

I wish I could smush our faces together until we were smushed together

I could smash you into a pulp but I forgive way to easily. Life can be beautiful if you break free, but you wont. I hope you fall off Paris Mountain, right down the cliffs, hitting your head, bleeding, bruising. Maybe you'd wake up with a better outlook. Maybe you would see the beauty in a handful of people, coming together to make a space for music that is positive, and safe. Maybe you would understand the things that make people feel face, let them think freely, let them be human.

...but you are militant. You would burn a bar down because that's what they get for having a beer with friends. You would hurt someone. You are everything that is wrong with faith, everything that is wrong with Merrimack Valley Hardcore, everything that is wrong with society: Fear, close mindedness. You are afraid. You would rather remain anonymous than face confrontation. You are a coward, and I have no room in my heart for it.

Home Coming

This time is different because this time I don't have to stay. I can't imagine what changed these past two weeks, or why I am frustrated. I was put on this earth a certain way, I just don't feel obliged to fight with it, or condone patriarchal views on the issue.

I don't know what I expected anyways. There are too many people in the Northeast. They're all rushing about, squeezing down congested arteries like a disease and I'm sitting here wishing for the South. Of course I'd find a reason why I hate it or have to go. The truth is, it's colder here, it's more tolerable but I'll never feel free if I stay.

I would be hard pressed to find someone longing for Appalachia: the Smoky Mountains, or the rolling hills of West Virginia. Someone young, clutching onto a book about the Concord and Merrimack rivers in a used book store in Asheville.

I'm leaving with my bicycle.