dear

to my perfect mother. (i don't say that sarcastically.)

you've done basically nothing wrong. you are always trying to be a better person, make our home a better home, and make our family a better family. you're voice never raises and you've never spanked any of us. you make us do chores, you let me extend my curfew every once in a while, but you always make sure i'm on time. you've never fallen asleep if i'm out, even for a midnight movie. and i tell you "just go to bed" but really i think it's adorable how you wait up. never in my whole entire life have i doubted your love for me.

it's your perfection that alienates. you're that one friend who i can't let see me fail. i understand you'll always love me. you never actually told me i need straight a's. or flawless technique. or long curled hair. or top-notch friends. (well maybe you did say that one.) or strong lungs and a lean body. or untouched faith. but you exude those things, and your mere presence makes me hide the parts of me that are tarnished. i read other blogs, hear other stories about how other people scream they "don't want to end up like you" to their mothers, and i'm here praying you never find out how much better you are than i ever will be.

to you, i'm
a hard worker
faithful
"at grandmas house"
truthful
BYU-bound
pure
well on my way to motherhood.

mom, sometimes i'm some of those things. (never the latter.) overall, i'm not a bad person. but i can count on my toes the times i've seen you cry, and three were my fault. the bishop promised you'd be a source of comfort to me during that time, but the mascara on my cheek right now says that wasn't the case. because how could something you produced be so broken? you never said that, though.

i feel renewed shame and sadness at myself whenever i remember how i made you feel. how i can't let you feel again.

i wish that was enough motivation for me to change my actions, but i've lost that capacity; and i'm good enough at lying to let you think i'm as wonderful as you don't know you are.

i don't actually write

the Hardening. (define: a time when suddenly everything hurts and unshakable general life philosophies shake, resulting in a cynical heart and a pessimistic mind.) it's sad, because that should be an unusual thing, but it's not, and i feel minimal amounts of heartbreak for them, probably because there isn't much room for my heart to break after my own Hardening, but i'm buoyed when i see people who haven't succumbed. people who've somehow retained that incandescence. (qtd.) and i'm glad for them, but not quite jealous.

because, truth be told, i like being in control. (especially of my emotions.) i hate myself when i lose that control. weak and malleable, why would i want to be that?
good question, because ever since i started writing, i feel a little more. i look to tap into something inside that produces a clean fresh spring, and i think i have on this blog, but it's overflowing into the rest of my life, and i'm trying so hard to stop it because it feels a lot more like drowning than taking a swim.
but i've really never been good at compartmentalizing.

so i have to choose: drink that water, or thirst? (thirst has worked out pretty well for 547 days)

i don't write, i just feel.


but at least i'm learning to feel again


 "i don't want to repeat my innocence. i want the pleasure of losing it again." f. scott fitzgerald. 

but who am i to even care

the leaves of this plant next to me are blackening a little more every day i sit at this desk, but i'm not watering. i feel the heart-shaped anvil against my adams apple every time i sit at this desk and look at my phone and see a message from you. i know we rarely (ahem never) smile in our texts and we don't converse with our phones but the fairly frequent message that only says "5:30" holds all that promise that i'll get to see you tonight. we don't have to talk about it, because we know we always have things to do together.

i like that you know i get home at 5:20. when you didn't come over for two summer months my family asked about you.  even when i saw you that morning. i like that couch at your kitchen table, and the pencil in your hat. i like your hat. i like your hair a lot more, though.

drives to hart's for hot chocolate, just means we'll be out til 2 a.m.
one time you were still here when my dad woke up for work.
we text during class. next to each other. (our teacher definitely knows but she thinks it's sweet.)
we've never touched.

you can't have two disasters together, but you're the realest thing i know. thank you, for introducing me to love. (it's nice [it hurts] to meet you.)

i know, this post could never do you justice

yeah, love?

you were nearly 40 minutes late for curfew today. my fault, of course. you left so recently my lips still pull and throb as though you are attached. and i am cold. didn't realize the warmth of you and me cocooned in quilts. really, i'm freezing. i'm getting into bed right now.
at once, my mind races and sleeps. it is a clear high note, a deep lulling one.
i am filled with warmth in this frigid, companionless bed, even though i just drank a glass of ice water.
i am light and heavy and loving and confused and scared and trusting and golden, and blissful.

blissful.

when i'm by myself i feel...well, you know. like i believe him when he says, "we must be in a movie," or "there's nothing i want more than you." and right now, only 18 minutes since i locked the door behind you, i'm still in this wonderful place. where you are, even though you are not, and i am, and absolutely no one else. this world of sleepy eyelids and over heating quilts. (speaking of, my blankets aren't nearly heavy or warm enough to drowse me.)

boy, would it be easy to spend hours and days in a row in those quilts with you. your contented sighs that both awake and sedate me. the anonymity when we are alone, together. the wholeness, somehow, that comes from our littered, ravaged, blotchy edges fitting together. i'm sure you've got them, even if you only guess at mine and haven't told me of yours. (it's okay, i know we'll get there.)

when you are you, i am me, it is we
and we are anonymous.

old

nine years old. my best friend's bed. "i don't think i'm going to live past twenty-three."

"....."

fifteen years old. neighbor's living room. "i don't think i'm going to live past twenty-three."

"you mean you can't picture it?"

no. but thanks for making me seem less suicidal. (i'm not.) 

i don't want to grow old. nope. that's different than wanting to die, by the way. i'd freeze my life at twenty. (unless i'm married at twenty. *shiver* actually, nineteen.) every time i see someone so old that they can hardly get out of a car or up a curb, or into the kitchen for dinner, and every time i walk into deseret industries and smell that old smell, or that cloying perfume all of our grandmothers own, and every time i hear the old talk about family history, or them telling me "if i don't wear a coat i'll catch a cold" all i can think is how much i don't want to get there. 

i like jumping on my bed sometimes, and swinging, and not putting little house on the prairie on the tv and muting it. i like wearing scents that aren't lavender (maybe that's just my own grandma). and i always hate myself for not wearing a coat, but really i've never gotten sick from that.  

i don't want to be so out of touch with technology that i take classes on how to use it. (that's a real thing.) i don't want to groan in pain when i get out of bed (except mental pain, because waking up is hard.) 

most of all, i don't want to lose fire. i don't feel lots of things i'm "supposed to" but the things i do feel are deep and rich. call it "hormones" or "disengaged frontal lobe," whatever, but it sure makes life better. spontaneity and tears from laughing so hard aren't bad things, and i'm afraid for the dullness that seems to develop with age. right now, everything is sharp and acute and piercing, sometimes in a negative way, but that's okay. in fact, that's good. at least right now i can listen to loud music and dance in my car even though that's not safe driving.

cheers to growing up, but not all the way. 

ignite me, then maybe i'll show my human

there's nothing you look forward to more than the smell of me on your hands as you fall asleep. you told me so, and i bit the inside of my lip to cage in the butterflies. there's nothing i crave so innocently as the smiles simultaneously spreading across our lips when (you think) we're kissing too long.

there's nothing i crave so innocently as you.
and that's important, because the last time i craved anything innocently must have been before 26 august, my sophomore year. 

you, though. you make me feel dizzy and young (like a kindergardener) and bubbling and wanted.
it's what i adore most, that childlike air about you. grey area is nonexistent, as is skipping class, and your blind belief in the goodness of people overpowers anything bad you hear. my, does this act as fire to my ice. (i know we agreed to keep the opposite favors, but in that matter I would be the fire, now wouldn't i?) you melt and soften my Hardened heart. (i'll have you know, it wasn't always so, and sometimes i wish you had been around sooner to prevent the Hardening.)

when you tell me "we are invincible" i smile, kind of wryly, kind of really, and pretend to have fallen asleep because i don't know what to say. that rarely happens, me not knowing what to say, but it does then, because i want to think you are right. it's an alluring thought, having something "invincible," that is. does it even matter the person? but perhaps we are in your unperturbed mind.

i know me better than you do, even though you say you want to know my story. i know if i tell you i will crack, or more likely just shock it a few times over. the person left over after the Hardening is less what you would have loved than what she was before. you would have loved me. i don't love you now, i haven't, i doubt i will, because i've fallen for real before, and this doesn't quite have the makings, but the thought that you would've loved me then feels warm like my rocking chair by the fire. 

i know your fire to my ice (or your ice to my fire, for that matter) can expand me and warm me and even ignite me, but i know what lies beneath my cooled surface, and it's messy. i am ready to feel the reaches of your mind and touch that incandescence you've somehow retained.

but i'm not ready to dim that sunrise, and i am the kind of messy i want never to brush your smile.

on how to live

from the left, that glow

     but i won't look

just lay back 

into the tremor

close your eyes,

don't touch that glow.

i needed a little light 

(to see my own dark)

     but i won't look

     won't even acknowledge

that lamp 

unless it's illuminating 

the silver-black glint.

prologue

let's go.

 (out of the bubble)

 (salt lake county doesn't count)

some place where: 

- it rains more, snows less

- it's okay to say marriage terrifies me more than murderers

- we are together

- the smell of coffee is

- the act doesn't dictate your life

- no one asks if i'm going on a mission

- is Paris.