Day 15

No one likes to know the dark spots.

They want to pretend Whatever it is that allows them the comfortability of small talk is all there is to know.

My bruises are a major source of discomfort for those that think me made of porcelain, And polite smiles.

Maybe it's because they don't want to know that I am actually made of flesh
and that being broken results in blotches of blue ink emerging under my surface,
it's a lot harder to process than a chip or a crack.

Maybe They realize I can't be fixed with plaster, or super glue

or maybe it's because they know I did it to myself.

I wanted to throw my body into those that thought me delicate based on the sun dresses that frequently dawn the thin skin stretched over my smallish bone structure.

I wanted to be throwing punches because I am expected to be executing pirouettes

I thought I could handle the brutality of unpredictable bodies. strangers thrashing too fast and too close to my own, I wanted to prove that I wasn't scared, but all I did confirm that I am fragile.

Day 14

There will come a time where our bodies will be weighed down, by the heavy of our hearts and brains and all the people and things that we've collected in them, like elementary school lunch boxes packed with love from our parents, who will be only a memory by then.

We will curve forward, our backs bending under arthritic decay and we will rely on steal wheels and chrome walkers to carry the wisdom that feeds on the marrow of our bird-like bone structures.

Our hands will look like grains of sand misplaced by the wind, our joints slightly out of place from holding together all the pieces of all the memories of all of our lives, but I will strain my fingers to curl around yours despite their displacement, just to hold onto the last thing I may ever know.

Day 13

A day of spirituality

In a car, with a friend, on our way to a city west of here, we spoke about life and things of that nature.

I remembered the morning just before, his mother with her war torn cheeks, the caving skin around her eyes swallowing wading pools washed in honesty and turquoise, she asked me "do you believe in god?"

And I love her, for the hell that she lives in every day, but continues to attempt to make into a heaven for her five children.

I wanted her to be happy, So I lied and told her "yes."

Discussing my beliefs with her son on this night, in a car, with woods surrounding us like forever, I tell him all the reasons why I believe in a thing that I don't understand.
some thing.
Not a god. Not a white man with brown hair. Not an old book. Not a judgmental society.

I believe in a thing that loves all the people that are good,

not just all the people that are straight,

Not just the people that keep their unloved fetuses,

Not just the people that say "fuck" less times than I do,

Not just those that attend lectures by traditional old men thumping on the decaying word of a book of too many authors.

This thing loves everyone that does what they can with what they have, because in this world, we don't have much.

We only have our ability to try our best to be something useful.

My friend tells me that he believes in the sensation of life that he feels in his heart when he plays music, "that is my god" he says. And I think this god is right for him. I think we all need some thing that is just right for us.

We all have our art that lives in our own bodies.

it drives us to be good,
to be humble
and vulnerable
and to reach out to people that don't always deserve our open hand,

because we know that we have created things from our own human imperfection,
and sharing is our god.

So when his mother asked me if I believe in god, maybe I wasn't lying.

Day 12

A fat cat rests on the end of my bed.
Unusual.
because I've long since exiled felines from my living quarters

but it's raining and this one knocked...

So I let it in to keep my company while I lay in bed, avoiding the site of my bruised limbs and listening to the song birds converse on wet branches.

Cars are whizzing by on the main road outside my open window, creating the deafening sound of rushing on slick asphalt, but the cat doesn't seem to mind.

I think, neither do I.

Maybe it is a morning lullaby, and I am meant to sleep again.

Day 11

I drive up the parkway like I have something to prove to every other car around me. To them, I am a little station wagon, presumably falling apart, but I tear up the left lane like it's my job.

It's not really my job, because I work in a craft store.

I work behind a cash register, consuming mass amounts of shit from the ignorant consumers that supply the revenue for my paychecks.

The useless products they buy pay for my meals and my mobility, and this is what would be considered an "honest living."

When I squeeze my body into a helplessly uncomfortable work uniform, I am automatically forced into conformity and an inexplicable sadness.

The sadness follows me from the space in front of my mirror, into the car, onto the parkway and stays with me behind a cash register.

On the parkway, I see two options approaching, the exit that I must take in order to get to work on time, or a toll plaza.

The toll plaza seems to be the only thing standing in between me and a world of unknown wonder. The fifty cents that separates me from freedom.

On the parkway, there is a single moment of emotion that takes over my body when I pass under the sign displaying these two opposite options.

On the radio, there is a line about the difference between living and truly being alive.

I think that I could be truly alive if I just take the toll plaza instead of the exit.

There is a burning.
There is the urge.
There is the desperation.

There is the exit.

And there is disappointment. There is depression.
There is the right turn, and the jug handle, the left turn and the all too familiar parking lot.

Behind the cash register, there is just me, and the crushing weight of all the shit that I must put up with for the sake of an "honest living."

Day 10

Why Janis Joplin hates GPS

I still glance down at the gps because I know the roads don't always say what they mean, meandering for miles when I'm just trying to get to the point.

Its not that I don't know where I'm going but Moreso that I don't really trust my car to slow at the appropriate exits, I know that She likes to cruise, what with being a Cutlass Cruiser and all, and I only know this because upon hitting the breaks everything in the car begins violently shaking like the engine might dance right out of Janis' chest.

I always take her to the breaking point and although she never calls it quits, it always feels like this time might really be it.

If she could, I think she'd run over the gps multiple times, and although that would cost me a lot of money, how could I blame a car after my own heart?

How could I punish my love for just being herself, not wanting to take orders from a monotonous robotic tone that carries small hints of arrogance with each knowing direction.

I know darling, you were created with rebellion!

It is so obviously manifested in your reverse direction back seat. I must say that as far as cars go, you are the most bold and most deserving of wood paneling.

I understand the oppression that you feel, Janis Joplin, you beautiful creature called station wagon, but this is our exit, so just take it slowwwww.

Day 9

A prayer to asphalt

I pray that you will always stretch to all the places that my restless tires yearn to travel.

I pray that once you turn from back street into parkway, it will be a smooth transition for the both of us...I pray there are no major pot holes or crevices to steal the speed from under me and send all the things in my front seat flying

I pray that you will evenly distribute all the daily traffic across your broad back so I will not be met with bumper to bumper madness on my humble journeys.

You are a vision of fairness and vast coverage of this Earth.

I pray you will not be closed for renovation but Focus more on all of the wonderful ideas and people that have traversed your beautiful structure and found a home in the broken white lines that symbolize freedom.

I pray you won't bother with the petty imperfections that fringe your wholesome body. Realize that You make up an awesome structure, asphalt.

So never let cement or steal try to take that from you.

Day 8

The beat is slow. Perfect for a simple two step. Her body is short, awkward. and she attempts to smooth her hips in circles to the song but the movement is jagged like mountains when she wants it to roll like valleys.

She is the trust that I naively place in the general public.

I allowed her to rent space in the apartment of my heart for far too long without even a mention of rent,

the debts are an uncomfortable silence between us in the car, at the table, in between sets at shows.

When the music starts and her swaying wreaks of uncertainty, I don't mention it, like so many other things.

Because I bread my love in her freckled countenance
knowing she was born with the inability to keep a beat.

Day 7

The miles melt under my new tires reminiscent if the way chocolate icecream would shamelessly run down the sides of my tiny toddler hands. I look at my torn cuticles today and marvel at the idea of a previous me.

a time when me was still my mother's baby.

My fathers apple seed.

not yet my little brothers big sister and biggest critic.

My hands used to be sticky with mischief and Untouched by the coarsest callous one could ever acquire, a callous that clings to my finger today as a testament to every scribble that I've ever introduced to paper.

Day 6

She sports a steal cage chest that lacks a song bird to rouse her heart awake each day.

I tried hanging a pocket watch in its place but no machine can substitute for nature.

Some mornings, She spends whole hours going through the motions without a single tick.

The pocket watch was my uncle's. Her incompetent father.

he timed her life compulsively recording each tick exactly for every milestone, but the universe intends for some things to be secret from the numbers, maybe that's who keeps the watch from waking up in the mornings.


The watch knows the spinning, but not its meaning, and she knows she's living but not really. So the pocket watch sits complacent in the ghost town of her empty bird cage body

My cousin, the clock tower.

Day 5

I collect scallop shells.

I read once that when you're having a bad day, it helps to carry something in your pocket to remind you of your own serenity.

All the scallop shells awkwardly weighed on the pockets of my zip-up sweatshirts, broke under their own weight and made a sound something like crunching leaves or turning the pages of a paperback...as I uncomfortably strut down the middle school hall ways

I held all these little pieces hoping the more I held onto at once, the better I'd feel but hoarding them only broke their fragile bodies and I still felt quite anxious in my own.

A girl on my bus, she is older but she is shy and her face shows signs of stress in the form of swarms of angry acne,
she looks at me like I am a flame, an entirely unpredictable element.

I think she nearly expects for me to one day deviate from my candle wick and set the school on fire.

I approach the girl, she is walking in the school courtyard and spring is blooming while she is staring at the ground, so she doesn't see me until our sneakers are looking into eachothers laces.

I say "here" as a shell emerges from the bloom of my grip, and I plant it in her palm like a flower pot

She looks at me and closes her fist around this thing, smooth and sure. The first words I ever heard her speak were "thank you"

Day 4

This is not "I love you"
This is not "I miss you" or "where are you now" or "where have you been"

This is collecting my shit and storming out of the house, purposely leaving little reminders of me as I went, hoping to torture you with my absence.

This is Key kissing ignition and just as I am thinking that the sound of starter is something mechanic like my rigid body, I see you standing in the doorway, waiting to watch me shift to drive...

This is the reason I put it in park instead

And I stood in the street with my arms in the air displaying a concave chest for you.

This is me screaming "What am I supposed to do!?" with a choking sob and fleeting breath.

This is panic attack at the thought of a gut wrenching goodbye kiss.

This is going to be unbearable at times because this is what they will judge us for but this cannot be goodbye

This is not "I love you"
This is "as long as we are both living I will never be without you"

This is FUCK them
Because this is what they are whispering about

And this is where you can burn all the excuses you made up in your head

So we can make room for all the reasons that this is always.

Day 3

We fit together the way I have wanted to fit into someone my whole life. Since the moment I was manufactured, I knew I would not find my home in hundreds of hungry mouths, but in the concave bend of a lover.

I am little spoon. And I had been looking for the right counterpart to encircle my shiny body in the, and by shear luck i found him, here, in my own kitchen.

Now All I want is to be a part of the servings he experiences...

I want to see the inside of all the soups and all the cereals and all the jaw bones that he has seen and I don't want anyone to judge us because we don't fit perfectly into the image of household organization that leaves butter knives and steak knives mystified about the other's existence.

I refuse to lose him to an arrogant plastic division that thinks it can decide which side will make us happiest based solely on the size of our rounded middles.

This separation has been wearing into my handle for months now, all I've been thinking about is letting our love be known to more than just the other drawers.

I may be a centimeter smaller but I am useful too!

I'm not just some understudy whose soul purpose is to save a dinner guest the trouble of getting up Incase they've dropped something.

Despite my Size I've been through the dish washer my fair share of times, so don't you dare bring me to mind as you uncap that Gerber jar.

I am legally considered a valued part of a silverware set.
I am an entity in the name of all things liquid. With viscosity as my witness I will prove my worth in silver.

I'm only willing to play little spoon with his big spoon curves enveloping me tightly

So when my forks don't approve of our difference in circumference, we will run away to an ice cream parlor called Paris and although we will most likely be thrown away, at least we will be free to stick together.

Day 2

I am still mystified by the miracle that is life.

I am the green-thumb of my family but that isn't saying much.

My mother is the grim reaper to all things plant

and I feel bad sometimes as she tends the garden

while I tend my social life.

She deserves a sprout in honor of her labor but plants seem to smell the sweat from her hard day's work and cower under the soil until they are sure that she is no longer looking.

My grandfather grew sunflowers.

He sang "Home, Home On The Range" and made apple sauce with his own apples

from the tree that he planted with his own calloused hands.

His whole life he spent making life

as a testament to the one he drank away sometimes

and my mother was another one of the seeds that he planted

My grandfather died of a heart attack, suddenly, in his fifties.

There was no warning

no history of heart disease

or signs of wilting

No evident need of watering

or fertilizing

I feel bad for my mother, because she can't make plants grow,

but then again I don't imagine flowers are sad for the sake of not being able to keep their own garden.

Day 1

There are too many things here.

The carcass of my parents dead love is here.

The crucifixion of my innocence, in my bedroom with the bright yellow walls like childish optimism

But it was never really my bedroom.

It is plagued with my mother's unending distrust and compulsive tendencies.

There are countless screams after screams locked airtight in these halls like the reverberations never completely left but just grew so minuscule that we began mistaking them for sounds the house makes in the night.

There are tears here, so many tears that they've spawned mold under the carpet

mold in the corners of the bathroom

mold around the dark spots of our hearts that tears are born from.

There are some smiles here.

They are birds that sit atop the gigantic sill of the window, meant to frame the chandelier for passers by to admire, but we can not reach them, realistically.