Silence after Company (It's just you and me, Billie Holiday)

I was inches away from his neck, watching his jugular pulse, when I found myself aching for the strange relationship I shared with my Endocrine System not long ago. I've been waking up everyday with my game face on, but have no found a reason to exist here. There are probably people trained to deal with that, but I still haven't sought them out. No one needs to tell me what I know best.

This is it, staring across from a couch where I hardly exist. I'm watching kids have fun, the same way I used to have fun at the Artspace. They're dancing, pushing each other, laughing, and exploring extroversion. I keep telling myself I've been a part of this, even though I know I haven't been. Maybe, just like Shep, I helped create a place for them. Except, I always believed that I would always have fun with it. I never imagined myself as an adult.

Him and I, we're not friends. We're not anything but some untied loose ends trying to bury memories under new albums, new girlfriends, or, in my case, 2,000 miles. Somehow, I've managed to only see the best parts, but I'm sure he's reminded constantly of my abuse. I'll never forgive myself.

I gave up. I failed a class, quit my jobs, split town, and headed towards the Blue Ridge. When I thought about it, I dug a soft grave of incapacitation. I sold off every part of myself to avoid my pain, the daemon crawling below my skin, and watched myself turn into a pile of ashes. I wonder all the time if I'm strong enough to change. My life is like a cycle, and I'll never stay close to anyone for long. I ran away before I tore through more friendships like a wrecking ball.

This is the conflict, Intimacy VS Isolation.

I couldn't take the silence when everyone left.

GMTFO Haiku

Why wont someone help?
Why is home so far away?
Please help me go home.

Sunflower Seeds (or why I hate cops)

You're probably an anarchist because the law has been unfair to you the way it's unfair to anyone without a hefty checkbook.

I thought about her as an anxious-avoidant baby with dimples. That's probably why I have an A in Psychology AND a meeting with the Dean of Students to discuss conduct issues.

After 8 months, I've reached an end where I no longer have patience for the insincerity of the Upstate. I've stopped trying to make friends, or just be pleasant. There is no room here for individuality. This is everything Ayn Rand feared.

In New England, I was happy, accepted, and surrounded by people who nurtured me. The Upstate is a toxic pool where I am swimming with every daemon, every fault, and every issue I ever tried to wash away. There in no life guard on duty, I am out in the waves all alone, and the sun is almost disappeared below the horizon.

This is the outlaw land to all my childhood rules and lessons.

Mozaiks

"Se habla espanol?" Said a tall man to a nervous looking foreigner. My mind had been searching for the words to explain to him what I needed to know.

"Si, Si," he replied enthusiastically. When he returned to my register, he said two things to me: "First time," and "I know, next time."

"Some people yearn for the open road, some people just yearn for their driveways," the tall man said. I felt something, affection, complacency leaving my bones.

It's harder for certain people do things like, picking up the pieces of future mozaiks in Tony's backyard. Ceramic and porcelain that belonged to an artisan or a collector at different points in time.

"I wanted to prove to you on Sunday that I could get up and work."

I get up and work 6 days a week, school for 5, drink a cup of coffee in the afternoon, and lay my head on a pillow at night. Still I ask, "why am I not strong? Like the wheel that keeps travelers, traveling on." I figure in not too long a time, it will take me home.

But like I said, it's harder for him, and 5 hours, starting at 7AM is a huge accomplishment. My 12 hour days continue to go unnoticed, and the North acts as a Beacon of hope in my chest. I hardly think about Central, or Mountain time anymore. Just about the man on a box that is New England.

North Station, and places I used to explore on my own.

The Lonliest State

I don't get their jokes, they don't laugh at mine. I've been trying to smile more anyways, as if I could fool them into believing I found them amusing...I don't.

Still, in Lowell, I remember belly-aching laughs. Tirades that would last for months, become user-names, and facebook groups, and work its way around campus until you heard someone you had never met laughing about it.

I don't go to Church. I've been twice, maybe. Once for a funeral, once because I slept over a friends house on a Saturday. I've considered lying to my peers and telling them I was Jewish just so they would give me that same sad, sympathetic look they give foreigners. I may as well be a ghost, or the shell of a human walking about without a soul.

"You're a bad-ass, like me," Tim assured me in the parking lot. Great.

Still, I remember the glass crashing at my feet and the smile on that fiery red head, the Alaskan Fisherman. Afterwords, I thought he might come back to the store a second time. I realized later that that had been wishful thinking. I'd get on better anywhere else but this place. Every time I remember what it's like the get along with people, it tears at my heart. But being alone is okay too, I guess. I can't wait to go home.

Dreaming

Head on pillow, breathing softly in and out, harder now, trying to move my limbs, crying out. Nobody can hear me.

I keep waking up thinking I've just cooked my roomates soup, or given into my most evil desires. The one's that leave one asleep in the car, or hopefully asleep at the wheel, but not to endanger anyone, just to drift over enough to jolt them awake.

I wanted to go to school today. It just reminds me of everyday in my life I've ever been snowed in. Every time I've had to wipe off my car, or drive when it was far too dangerous. It reminds me of the first blizzard I ever drove in, except without the fleet of plows, like guardian angels, flying down the highway. It reminds me of the almost accidents: fishtailing, sliding, snow banks, screams; Being jolted awake.

Americana/Folk

Way out, across the ramparts,
Are these corners of what could have been a tender seed of grass?
Or what's more across the shore?
Sixteen dozen doves fly,
Towards a million miles of freedom,
Save the shore line where we were born, and we will lie.
Let's walk in remission,
With feet stuck in the mud.
"For crying out loud!"
There is broken glass that I broke myself.