He's An Old Friend

Worry comes to me in the night time, to talk and to speak and to explain the difference betwen the two. He pours himself a water from the sink and watches me closely. He can be as large as the sky and as small as the dirt on the kitchen floor. My mouth opens but words don't come out; Worry makes its way in and nestles, couch surfing in the sanctuary of my innards, making his sorry self at home, leaving signs of lifelessness everywhere. I pick up after him, caps from beer bottles and relics of the past, ticket stubs from places he went without me. How does Worry travel so far and still manage to come home? He leaves the bed cold and my fridge empty, my stomach full but my appetite dissatisfied. He makes me meals that I never taste and leaves his stench in dirty laundry all over my frontal lobe. We have breakthroughs together over wine in dirty glasses, but he points out the mess and we start all over again. You can medicate anxiety but you can't erase the patterns that have followed you for a decade; there is no such eraser. Goo-Be-Gone doesn't hold a candle to this melted wax all over the carpet. I can't eradicate the scent of Worry from this place. He is everywhere and in everything, invading me with impregnated thoughts of weight loss and hair color, appearances and motherhood, responsibility and joy, tipping scales with sugar and yeast, fermenting the age-old voices into whiskey that goes down like nail polish remover. I would stop inviting him over, but he's an old friend. He fills me up and keeps me company, even if it's the miserable kind, and Lord knows I spend more time with him than I do with my own self, but I lost my own self in the dishwasher and the dryer, and she won't come out unless I put these fingers to the typewriter, and even then only in trickles. Worry bleeds on the paper and we start all over. I bandage his hands and we start all over. I kiss his wounds and we start all over. He says he'll never leave me, but it's all I can do to keep myself from drinking him down deep and then out the door for good. 

You and Me Under the Sky

I lifted up my soul to the sky and realized the connection between. We are all atoms, together in one body. The darkness and the light, negative and positive charges, flying around like magnets, centered by proton-peace. A rainbow of reality just beneath the heavy grey veil. I can see glimpses of it but never the whole. Only through your lungs have I breathed the truth in oxygen. You've experienced the clouds, the heaven above and the hell below, relaying the sights to me through backwards binoculars. I cannot see as you have seen, but I love the way you talk about the view. Your lips drip symphonies, the notes like inner tubes to float on the river. Downstream there is no judgement. Jealous of your understanding, I hide in my warm bed of ignorance and let this anger wash me to sleep. Why can't I escape from this? Trapped in the Matrix of past and future, I long to be in the present with you, only with you, and what we have. My soul already married yours. Why does anything else matter? Tied to you with cords too strong to break, too soft to hurt, I know I'm never leaving, and you're never leaving. And fuck everyone else's opinions, fuck the darkness in the background. We've been through too much to let this dust get thick. Let me love you, let me let you love me. I'll look through your eyes and learn where the water comes from. I'll let go of my black and white and let the colors take over. Give me your kaleidoscope and I'll give you my heart. Nothing else matters now. Just you and me under the sky.

I'm So Sentimental

AS LONG AS YOU LOVE ME

NOTHING ELSE MATTERS

EXCEPT FOR STOP SIGNS

AND WORLD HUNGER

AND OBVIOUS SHIT LIKE THAT

Stay Classy San Diego

When I stepped off the bus in San Diego, I could smell the vibrations and taste the heat. I walked to the hostel with a guitar on my back and a knife in my hand, afraid of everyone I passed. I was a little girl away from home, alone at last, but for the very first time. My blood ran acidic until I reached the gas lamps. There, the crowd smiled a collective smile at me. I realized that I was home.

I left half of my heart in your ocean, San Diego. I soaked half of my heart in your salt, Coronado. I thought I would stay there with you forever, serenading the streets with my hat on the ground for your coins to fall into. I thought I would start over with you, it's true, I thought I would never leave. 

I left half of my spirit at the Greyhound station. I left half of the wind in my lungs on the corner of 7th and Island. I left half of my brain on the concrete where the vagrants slept. I thought I would return for it, but now I don't think I ever will.

I came back to Denver with my strength doubled. I was bound and determined to do right, to be perfect. With a new life inside of me, with an expectation in my womb, I disowned my danger and denied my feet their dance. "I just want to be a good mom," I said. "That's all I want now." But I lied.

I need what I left with you back, San Diego. Send me my courage in the mail, Coronado. I need back the honey that fell from my lips there, that husky-voiced tune, my cartwheel into the ocean. I need my daughter, and I need more than my daughter. I need my self. I need Shelby. 

Maybe I'll see you again, San Diego.

Give me back what you took from me. 

I just need to be whole. 

#selfie

Here in our hearts where the sacred lies, we splay ourselves open like we unzip our coats. We use no discretion as we sow these wild oats. The cameras follow us to sleep like the paparazzi. Hashtag no makeup. Hashtag all natural. Hashtag no filter. Let the masses see us naked in the limelight as we litter. Our precious moments are on the ground like cigarette butts, our proverbial lungs are filled with cancer, and this girl on the other side, she wants to be a dancer. Pictures in her lingerie all over the worldwide, tangled in her own web, desperate to be fed. Our former selves didn't have the foresight to assume this narcissistic self-hate, our unironic minds that keep nothing private. MySpace top eight nostalgia, allow me to share my dreams with you. Affirm my worth and watch my days float down the river with me. Throw up your once-Poliroids, your weddings and your babies, your depression and your positive vibrations, show the world your life in albums and one-liners, what are we coming to if not to the bottom? I used to be in therapy but now I self-medicate with the use of all-new technology that gives me the power to write what I ate for lunch in stone, and code. It makes me feel important, like everyone cares, and everyone understands, but everyone lies. Hash tag forever alone. Hash tag but at least I have my cat. Rock yourself to sleep on the winds of this false security. Nobody cares that you can't sleep tonight. The dark is still dark when you turn on the light. And your life moves on, while you sit back, to get a photograph, of just, the right, angle, but you never step into your own picture, and live.