“I’m at the wrong house. It took me three hours and running through the rain to figure it out but I’m at the wrong place. I thought this was my adventure; I thought you were my new adventure but… there’s nothing new about this feeling… about standing here and feeling like there’s some hole somewhere in me that is still empty. I thought I was supposed to be here, I thought I was supposed to be in love with you because like something romantic, like I’ve always been in love with you… but… I Haven’t. And it took me coming here and… I’m sorry. I’m at the wrong house.”

“This is your new adventure, you said that.”

“I know, but it’s not. Its the adventure I’ve been on, over and over, thinking that this time we’ll go somewhere different, we’ll see something different, I’ll feel something different. But I don’t. All I feel is that I am in the wrong place. And I always have been.”

“You don’t have to go.”

“Yeah, yeah I really do. I know where my new adventure is. I’ve known for awhile. I just took a wrong turn.”

________________________________

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“There’s music playing in your head, isn’t there?”

“How could you tell?”

“You’re smile is crazy big like when you’re thinking about romantic comedy scenes.”

“You’re good.”

“You’re wet.”

“I’m supposed to say something witty and cute here but I’m kinda out of breathe.”

“We’ll skip that step, then.”

(kiss)

stream of consciousness

All the days I've missed you, dear one. The house has been too dark for too long, light switches flicked up and all. The weight might be too heavy but I will carry it by myself, letting you wander ahead looking for a light I cant find. If you find the light, I'll carry the load. If you open the doors Ill squeeze my bloated body through them. If you find a space, Ill fill it with my weary presence and my wasteful presents. Where you lead, I will follow, falling and rising and rising and rising. When you go I will wait. When you leave I will stay. When you close I will break through your rusted, ragged wooden walls. When your skin breaks I will put it back together again. When your smile cracks I will bask in it. When the bows break and the dam rushes and the trees bend and the sky splits, I will post up beside you, barefoot and bruised. I will lie in green grasses, burrs sticking in my skin, so I can breath in the sun with you. I will stand in Windsor rain and baptize myself in the grace of you. I will blaze across your dark sky, slowly burning through your atmosphere, my sights set on your steady waves, your deep oceans, your rugged mountains, your hills and valleys, peaks and ridges. Your plains. Your simples. Your complexities. The grit in your teeth, the dirt under your fingernails, the stars in your eyes. I will sink into the softness of you when I need rest. I will sharpen myself against the hard edges of you when I need strength. I will breathe you in as you breathe me in, flowers blooming across our skin and sun spreading across our faces.

the physical illness of mental illness

Last night, I went to sleep at midnight. It's not a particularly early bedtime but for a Friday night, it was something different for me. The boyfriend and I just got a new mattress, one that is supposed to feel like the epitome of cliche. Like "sleeping on a cloud" or as James put it, "like angels were carrying me off to sleep while playing harps."

This is not what falling asleep felt like to me.

The sheets were suffocating me, wrapped so tight around me I feared I would stop breathing right there in my bed, with James in the next room, never knowing how I was suffering, being pulled under and out of sight as if I'd never even been there. The sheets were too loose. There was too much air billowing in all the extra space, it was filling me up and pushing me around and the sheets were bunching up, rubbing against my legs and I didn't like how the wrinkled fabric felt against my skin and I was going to go out death by cotton.

It was too hot. I was sweating and constantly reaching for the bedside table, where my cold glass of water was growing more and more empty, warmer and warmer, unable to quench the driest throat I'd ever had. Then, it was too cold. It was snowing in my room and no matter how far I cocooned into my comforter, the flakes soaked through, freezing the hair on my arms and making my teeth chatter.

When I finally fell asleep, I fell hard. I fell into worlds of tornadoes and wars and the world ending and screaming and screaming and too much screaming. Nightmare after nightmare of terror and heartbreak, all night. And I never woke up, all night.

I woke up this morning at noon. My entire body ached, especially my neck and my shoulder. My body felt like a hundred pounds, my back clenched with every movement. I dragged myself to the shower where I nearly suffocated, again, on the steam. My head swum in the heat and my stomach lurched as I grew dizzier and dizzier. When I finally managed to get out of the shower, clothed, and onto the couch, I fell asleep again....off and on, for the rest of the day. When I was awake, my mind was all over the place, I couldn't concentrate on one thing for more than five minutes. My motor skills were barely functional. As I sat on the porch, watching a sunset that my brain could barely even register, my thumb struggled to move against my cell phone screen no matter how hard my brain told it to. I fell asleep sitting up in my chair.

Dinner tasted bland. It was spicy Indian food.

As I watched television, still struggling to stay awake, I became angry at everything every character on the screen did. Why did that character just make that face? Why is he talking like that? His face is so annoying! I HATE THIS SHOW. I just want to go to sleep.

It's 11 o'clock. I'm in the bed, again, and I could fall asleep for the night right now.

my best writing

My best writing doesn't come on paper. It doesn't flow out of the tip of my pencil and roll over the lined canvas of my notebook. It doesn't bleed from my fingertips and weave through the interwebs to settle on the computer screen. My best writing has never been read by anyone else, not even you. My best writing is never even written at all. My biggest words and my beautiful allegories and my blossoming hyperboles come when I least expect. The perfect description of your beauty builds up in my brain when I stare at that scar on your cheek. A metaphor for your pain plays out in my mind as I kiss the scar on your knuckle that I can only eloquently describe as a "blob" right now. But then it was the shape of a newborn baby, grasping for just the slightest sense of something familiar. The way your voice sounds in the morning and the look you give me when I poke you, a look that says you find me frustrating and wonderful all at the same time and you don’t know how, form in the veins and stream out of the pores of my fingers splayed out on your arm and soak into your skin and you don't even know. My best writing isn’t written on paper. It is written under your skin, where only I know where to find it.

my mother's fingers

My mother gave me long, skinny, piano playing fingers to get tangled in my hair and for rings to slip off of.

When I was little, I would climb up on the player piano, its opaque shine nearly blinding my young, fascinated eyes. I’d glide my tiny hands over the ivory keys, feeling their perfect smoothness under my rough, playground marked hands.

I would listen for the sound of my mother traipsing through the house. If I timed it just right I could jab the player piano button right as she edged into the hallway and by the time she walked past the living room door I was bouncing my fingers around in the air above the keys as they played themselves. I would try to hide my satisfied giggles as she would walk by, stop and trudge backwards to see her little, six year old plunking out “Beethoven’s 5^th” with a look of pure professionalism plastered on her face. She would stay there for the entire song until I finished in a dramatic flourish then bust out in applause as I hopped off the bench and bowed my head all the way to the floor. She would call me her “little Mozart” and then escort me to the kitchen for some ice cream.

One day the player piano broke halfway through my song. I paused there, my fingers still in the air, and stared down at my friends that had abandoned me during the climax of the song. I heard my mother let out a slight gasp from the door as she waited for me to make my next move.

I turned to her, fingers hanging and my face holding extreme poise.

“I seem to have forgotten the rest of the song, Mother”. Mother sounded like something piano players would call their mommas.

Without hesitation, she glided across the room, swept me up into her arms, sat herself on the bench and plopped me right down on her lap. She motioned for me to put my hands on top of hers and then we played the rest of the song together, right where the player piano had cut off. We bowed to each other after then shared the rest of the ice cream with two spoons.

The player piano was magically fixed the next week but I never “played” it again. Instead I would wait on the piano bench for my mother to walk past the door. I‘d call out to her that I couldn’t remember the song anymore and needed her help again. My mother and I played the piano together every day for a year until my sister was born.

After that, I’d wait until my mother lay down for a nap to sneak my baby sister out of her crib. I’d carry her into the piano room and situate her on my lap at the piano. I’d guide her baby hands over the keys and help her use her chubby fingers to plunk out mismatched chords that created a song that sounded to me just like the glorious tune my mother and I had played together.

To Caroline, sister #2

You are a painter. You are a baker. You read chapter books that are too old for you while drinking cups of coffee too strong for you. You are growing up too fast. You paint a mask of what you think is perfection on your face yet I see more beauty in your cheeks still holding baby fat, the freckles spattering your nose, and your bright, unlined, emerald eyes. You dig your sharp elbows into my ribs and swing your size 8 feet (yes, I know they're bigger than mine) swiftly at my head. You scream, roll your eyes, stomp away and I love you even more. You filled two years of your life throwing quarters in fountains, chasing shooting stars, blowing out candles and kissing clocks all with the same wish. Your wish came true. You dream about wolves and teacups and meadows and clocks. You talk in your sleep. You have a straightener and a curling iron in your drawer. You wear bows in your hair and boots on your feet. No one understands you. You are always right. I don't know what I'm talking about. If that's so, you are not a singer. You are not a dreamer. You are not confused. You are not searching. You are not beautiful. But I do. And you are.

zombies

Sometimes you turn up in a dream out of nowhere. One moment I’m chasing zombies through New York City and then you appear. I spot you in the crowd of blood-thirsty undead and everything else falls away. As I jump into your embrace, zombies collapsing in on us, the shock of your skin and the softness of your lips is enough to make me believe that this is real. I believe that you are here to save me and that you will do so by kissing me in the middle of Fifth Avenue. I believe that we are the only two humans left alive and that’s how it will stay. We will hunker down in the subway and live off the food we find in vending machines and abandoned lunch boxes. We will sleep under benches and spend our days wandering the tunnels in the darkness, chasing rats and playing Marco Polo. This all races through my mind in the split second I have of your lifelike hair and mouth and nose and hands before I burst awake, my body on pins and needles and an array of colors mixing together in the dark canvas of my room.