inky skies and midnight divulgences

my moon. 

my lovely moon. 

i dreamed you called me shooting star, and thought you meant i glow across your black night. i dreamed you called me unearthly, and heard the word heaven. you told me you'd hold me, and i dreamt of your arms. 

i didn't realize you called me shooting star because the sparkle you saw on me would fizzle out. and unearthly meant different. dreams meant fantasy. and love meant nothing. 

and when you spoke of holding me, i didn't understand you meant with a cruel, unrelenting gravity. 

the sun gently tugged me away from earth, it wasn't exactly falling in love, and everything stopped being numb and took on a golden sheen. i barely splashed as i left the freezing current in ascent, and for a while i still felt the phantom current wrapped around my ankles. the current relinquished slowly, and my frozen eyelashes started dripping. and every other part of me appreciated the word "cozy" a little more.

i broke orbit long ago, i just didn't realize that a shooting star has to keep moving. and i know now the moon's austere and distant glint may never compare to breathing in bits of sun until every inch of you shines.

but the marble moon still gleams, and sometimes on my darkest nights i stare through the window panes, letting it's stone-cold love drift through my ribs like smoke.   

and i think that's okay, as long as i wake up searching for sun. 

to: my moon and my clouds, but mostly my sun

my cold wet hair can't chill me
neither can my open window.
my blankets are on the floor.

i don't need them anymore.

i gave my mom my space heater
and haven't worn gloves in months.
i leave my thick socks in my drawer.

i don't need them anymore.

because i was shivering for so many months,
maybe so many years, and i loved a far away moon
for all that time,
and i thought that moonbeams were bright enough
to keep my heart from going numb,
of course i was wrong,
and the sun rose eventually
and dew disappeared
and even the clouds i didn't see for so much of my life
clapped as they watched me
learn how to breathe
remember how to love
live in the sun
and heal.

lyrical and i'm aching for you

the dull throb again, that's new. (re-newed) my hipbones and teeth. i could stop sleeping to understand, start crying, start staring, stop playing, stop eating, anything to understand. but i still wont. (i already tried it once and what a mess)

i need to stop thinking. and now i remember that thinking equals feeling and i didnt want to feel so i tried to stop thinking and look how that turned out, and now you're the mess but only inside and in your hair, when i really look i can see it and i ignored it for 

but stop. 

you're thinking again.  

shut it off because it's not worth it right?

and to think i always thought you were being figurative and poetic. 

from june

hello, you.

can you be quiet for a minute, so i can look at your eyes and gauge if you're whole? yes, i've seen them in pictures (a lot) but i can't tell through a screen. smile for me now, the smile that comes in the corner of your couch when it's kind of dark. next, show me your veins, please say they're untouched. i'm so glad to see those freckles glide down your bone.

now i hope you know you made me burn. all the way down to ashes. black and gray, it only made sense. i hope you know you made me red (literally) (well you certainly didn't help). i want you to understand that you emptied my tank of gas and filled my head with plans. those plans are still here, broken remnants of the storm you leave in your wake.

i'm glad you came and smashed those windows, that's when i finally jumped. then i realized clouds aren't actually soft, just pretty, and at least concrete is honest. that's when love leaked onto the street and you sat down with me to watch.

you're when blood became beautiful, and i became broken.







don't worry, i healed without you

yeah, love.

i'm always looking for you. that slight strawberry shines in any crowd, and you're stuck in the corner of my eye. even at night, in my bed, i see you in yours, and pretend they are one. i fall asleep with a smile on my lips, because in you i've found home.

you're not an apartment with white walls and a cheap fern. you're where i drink tea and read a book, where kids learn to play the piano, where the boys watch the game, where you write in your journal, where nails secure my pictures, where wednesday is laundry day, where we bake cookies and play scrabble on winter nights. 

i always wanted the apartment with white walls. with a coffee maker and one mug. everything tidy and well-lit, with pale wooden tabletops. but that's not a kitchen where soup simmers all day or deep, late-night talks occur. that's not a kitchen i can put bowls of fruit on the counters or red on the walls. these things i had no idea i wanted until i found home. 

and ever since i really found home, i've never wanted to leave. 

i got figurative glasses

 everything is framed, and even though i can see everything better, i can mostly see my own hands a little more clearly. and tree branches. that's what's really getting me.

but my glasses unearth everything i am now and i didn't think all that fear lived in my bones, growing, feeding. fear that i'm going to snap under the fall's weight, fear i didn't deserve what i got, fear that i don't actually have the capacity to be a good person, fear my parents are on the stairs, it goes on. (i'm afraid of my bones not containing those sleepy sighs from that mouth)
so i go to my room. and it gets real when i take them off before bed. i'm alone, there's no music or humans to fog up my glasses, but i still take them off. because when i'm laying alone in bed, i'm not trying to see long distances anymore. it's just that moment, it's just me. well, in actuality, it's just you. you. all for you.  
.... but it's me.

because you don't know that you've lived here, in this room, on this bed, in this mind,  for as long as i have. that you are the old mascara tube i haven't thrown away and you're the stash of gum behind my basket and you're the implicitly bleeding pages of every piece of paper and you're the corner of my down pillow. you're the mirror hanging on my wall, but i keep thinking of the down pillow. you're mostly that; i like having you around when i shut my eyes.

not having your echoes,opinions,dreams,eyes,laughs,mind linked with mine already feels like pain, and i can't wait to wear leather and have an exposed brick wall and ride the subway as a necessity but some days you break that dream and do you know i would give it all away? 
don't you dare insist i keep it

pavane, prince

because i haven't been sufficiently occupied since five pm today and i don't know what to do with three whole hours of spare time except pretend to clean my room and who knew, classical music actually makes me feel (PLEASE just press play now) and oh no maybe i want this -- stuck in whirlwind where i spend my hours with headphones listening to Ravel and i feel opened and like hand sanitizer is pouring into my cuts in a way that leaves me so very certain i'm supposed to feel that clean but then like TEARS then NO DAD i do not want a massage right now just kidding ah i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry it's just i'm listening to this music and it's ripping me up because it's called "pavane for a dead princess" when translated and it makes me think of you and i love you i love you i love you i miss you. there's a spot inside i didn't know you took up before you left and now it's huge and bleeding and i bet my favorite aunt still cries herself to sleep about it because every once in a while i do because you should be here. i hope in heaven your soul still feels the tingles my body does when i remember you spinning me around, my big brother, and i look at my left wrist for the bracelet with your name and oh darling your little brother is in texas now and i miss him terribly and i'm sure he misses you every single day and he's so wonderful it's easy to forget that he lost you but please please i'll remember the picture on the front of the funeral program and watching a slideshow of you thirteen point five times in a row because your little brother was crying in the bathroom and darn it all, classical music, for bringing this up

you'd be living your life far away from me             it hurts
i love you i love you i lo

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.