I love Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings and Star wars. I love books-classics, non-fiction, sci fi; anything that will make me feel. I love sweaters and clothes in general and knowing how I look, and I especially love the way other people look. Whether they just got out of bed and it’s obvious because their hair is flat on one side and the pillow case wrinkles are still on their face, or if they spent a lot of time getting ready I especially try to appreciate it because that might mean that they just needed an extra confidence boost today and we all have days like that. I love the city that I live in and I also miss where I came from. I realized that I prefer taking the bus or the train to driving places because I’ve come to enjoy this familiarity that I’ve found in strangers. The ones that I know I’ll see if I take the 8:30 bus, the ones that say hi, the ones that sit there and look sad or hopeful or tired. I love expensive coffee even though I know I shouldn’t buy it because I should be frugal since I’m a college student, but sometimes a pumpkin spice latte can make things happen. I love falling asleep knowing that I don’t have to wake up at a certain time. I love doing couple things even though I dislike the idea of being cliche. I love the rush of mental energy that comes with planning something I’m excited about, whether it’s a trip or a photo shoot, or just what I’m going to wear tomorrow. I’m realizing how important it is to appreciate every little thing that makes you happy, even if it’s embarrassing or cliche or might cause others to judge you, because if it’s something that makes YOU happy you should be aware of it and open to it. I’m realizing that accepting what makes you happy is one of the first steps to accepting and loving yourself, and that, lovelies, is so incredibly important. 

It’s a wonderful thing when you’ve known someone for long enough that you start to actually notice their growth as a person. You start rooting for them in anything and everything they do and you just WANT for them. You want them to succeed; for them to have the best of everything and all of their hearts desires to be possible. 

It’s mind blowing, isn’t it?

How one day a person is a living breathing moving speaking loving thing you can touch and feel and hear and see and talk to, and the next all that’s left of them are memories that are so much more significant now than they should be. 

I want to find one of those places that is so unlike anywhere you’ve ever been and seems so removed and untouched by man that it makes your brain explode with poetry and song and words unimaginable before you set foot on that sandy beach or forest floor or cobblestone street. 

Spends her days perusing Barnes & Noble and her nights in pursuit of something so much more than what she is. She loves temperamentally and gives up too easily; if the back of her mind was a place you could visit, there you’d find forgotten and/or forsaken dreams. My mother’s daughter is a girl unsure of what societally qualifies a girl as a woman and no longer a girl; what, then, qualifies one as a lady? In her mind it is unwavering poise and self control and the fiercest spirit in all the hemispheres. My mother has a daughter who is set on leaving but not forgetting where she came from. She is always in love, be it with the sunset or the ocean or another person, and she walks with her head towards the stars though her feet may never leave the ground.

Today I tried to write and I tried to read and I tried to play Debussy but none of it was happening for me so I just sat here and considered the sun’s arc through the sky. 

and the way you can roll with anything is really hot.

and it’s an idea turned reality and no kiss goodnight and it’s walking alone the whole way home.

in the shine in your eyes. There’s a suggestion in the arch of your brow and the way your teeth brush your lips. Your skin like satin transitions to your hands that are a collection of shivers and goosebumps. The bridge of your nose brushing my chin in anaphora to all as your trailing fingertips beg the question I cannot answer.

There’s still bits of you in the things I see everyday. The sunrise I used to send you a picture of every morning while driving to school still draws my eyes away from the road where they should be. I notice you in the lack of beauty I see. You always made it so easy to see the beautiful side of everything, especially myself. There’s still a picture of us in my car that I haven’t bothered to do anything with because what would I do with it? Sometimes when my garage door opener knocks it out of its hiding place I hold it and look at it for a few minutes. I look at the people in the picture and try to remember how your arm felt around me like that; not because I miss the feeling, I just want to see if I can (I can). The only thing I miss is how well you knew me. That, and you were a damn good listener.

I’m either filled with love or drowning in self-deprecation on any given day and my clock tick tick ticks away the time bomb that’s my life and at night if I listen hard enough I can hear the soft sounds the stars make or maybe that’s just you listening for me at the same time and right now someone is falling asleep in a street without a bed and I’m just worried about whether or not it’s going to rain tomorrow and the black and white that covers my mind shifts to shades of gray and your eyes are all I see and that bit of hair that covers your forehead and the leather is soft and supple but everything slides right off it, nothing gets inside not even me so I’m stuck out here but you said you’d leave a window open and I don’t even know if you did so I cover my mirrors with the negatives of our lives and as they reflect back at me right side up I can see two happy people that may or may not remember it in the morning.

Ask me your questions and I’ll tell you lies.

Ask me why the bluebirds stopped singing and I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you why.

I’ll tell you that the bluebirds stopped singing because you are too beautiful,

that all that gazes upon you instantly perishes from this Earth for who can gaze upon you and not be overwhelmed by their life’s completion?

I’ll tell you they stopped singing because the power’s out.

The power’s out and that power’s the power that powers the whole world and so the bluebirds had to stop too.

I’ll tell you that the bluebirds were never really there.

They were merely the result of lucid dreaming and the fairytales you wore out all too well.

I’ll tell you all that when in reality,

in reality the bluebirds stopped singing because nobody cared when the flowers stopped blooming and the sunrise stopped coming,

nobody cared when the grass stopped growing and the clouds stopped raining and the waves stopped crashing. 

Not even when the road stopped winding and the footsteps stopped falling and the hearts of the world stopped beating did anyone notice

because the ambitious stopped dreaming and the lovers stopped loving and the joyous stopped dancing

and the bluebirds just didn’t want to sing anymore

because

who’s still listening to them?  

Faces and places are replaced by cold hard screens and blood no longer spills from concrete hearts and metal veins and the eyes that once reflected the universe are now too shallow to swim in.

When I was younger, I didn’t like going to funerals. At first I didn’t understand them, and as I got a bit older I understood that someone was gone and it was supposed to be sad but it was never anybody I knew personally so I was never really truly sad. I would sit in the car while we drove to the burial site, which always seemed to be hours and hours away from where we started, and I would think about how I wanted to be somewhere else, doing almost anything else besides sitting in that car.

Two years ago (almost exactly to the day) I had to attend my own papa’s funeral. This was the first funeral I had been to since I was about 8, and the experience was so different and new and awful that it might as well have been my first. Where the minutes used to drag on at funerals and I would be counting down until I could go run around outside and play again, I could feel every second moving by this time. Each second was another chance for me to think of everything I would say to my papa if I had just one more minute with him, how much I would thank him for. The seconds passed by like numbered breaths. Those last seconds that were spent talking about my papa were like the last real moments of his life ticking away, because he may have already passed then, but in those moments I could still feel his presence. The drive to the burial site was something I’ll never forget. We drove 40 miles and I stared out the window the entire time and saw nothing. This time, I didn’t want to be anywhere else. Those were the last hours, minutes, seconds that it would seem like my papa was still around, I knew it. So I held those moments as close and tight as I could and I don’t think I ever let go.

That’s all.