The Violence of Blue Stars

When the Stars Go Blue
Ryan Adams
comes next on the playlist
dances into my ears
careens into my ribs

cracks
me
open

reminds me to breathe

It's the
talking to pine-cones and
the fear of roller-coasters and
the drowning in
voices and

I was a stranger
child

It speaks of
my desperation
I lied to
make you love me
I hid in the dark but
no one was
coming

I meant to say
"I'm sorry"
but I said
"Don't leave me"

This feeling is
bloodshed
the things we have
been through
the way my cheek
was pressed down on
cold Italian cobblestone

and on the dorm room bed

and on the grit of
where I should not
have stumbled

I said no
but they didn't
hear me

It's the reverberation
the cyclical effort
the love I gave

compulsory

The waves I choke on
endlessly

The woman I tried
to be-
come
sing with me

Do I preach
to the choir?

I see me at
maybe fifteen
and the mix CD
is in my
mini-boombox

Elder millenial
nostalgic becoming -
ache with me

That friend
I wanted
to absorb
wanted to breathe her
wanted to fuck her

I had no language

She said
"This is Ryan Adams,"
and I said
"It's good."

And pretended to
enjoy
as I was destined
to continue
to do

A decade later
I still feel gravel
in my teeth

Roommates>Lovers

I have found it is far easier
to live with a roommate
Than a lover

While I worry for her in
the general sense
(car wrecks, alien abductions,
etc.)
I do not begin
to wring my hands
at the dark sky when
she has not yet come home

I do not worry about
what she is drinking
(or with whom)
And she has yet to punch
a hole of passion
in the plaster just to the left
of my face

She has yet to lie
about her location
or her company

(Or rather, I have yet
to psychotically verify
her claims with a
"friendly drive-by")

She has no power to,
by the sum of her choices,
make my bed feel bigger

It is always half empty
And I am always reaching for no one
in fitful sleep

And she cannot help that
my "Lonely" is now
a chronic disease

The turn of the lock awakens
no wild expectations

She could not come home with flowers
and fix what I have done

Le Chaos

I.
I was brushing up on my French this morning for the first time in, I don't know, over half a decade, and I really think the French are onto something.

Here I was, wondering to myself, '"Who decided that the word for 'cat' is a masculine noun in French? Aren't cats supposed to be feminine creatures?" Then again, I am realizing, who decided cats were feminine and dogs were masculine? "Man's best friend," and all that nonsense. I haven't seen many women so avoidant as felines; it's generally men that so quickly flip the switch between laying their head on your chest and adamantly shunning your advances for days on end.

II.
The hospital is so busy today, so noisy and unruly, but I wonder to myself, looking at my neediest patient, if he misses the feeling of human touch. How long has it been since he felt the brush of skin on skin?

I put my gloves on anyway.

III.
Sitting outside of any McDonald's in the main stretch of my city, you will hear classical music playing rather-too-loudly over speakers situated in the doorways.
"Why do they DO that?" I remember asking my father, when I was too old to think in fragments but too young to turn my feelings off.
"They play the music like that to keep homeless people away," he said matter-of-factly, and kept walking.
I remember, even then, realizing how ridiculous that was. How distasteful. My heart felt like it had torn open, just a sliver, but still. What evil person thought to themselves that beauty was best used as a weapon? And how did they know that the urine-soaked vagrant hadn't played violin before he slept on the pavement?

IV.
Maybe that's how hearts grow so big in the first place. Like any other muscle, they tear under stress, and grow a little larger.

Is it any wonder my chest feels insurmountably heavy?

V.
I thought that by now I'd have found a new way of writing. Less T.S. Eliot copycatting with the Roman numerals, less talk of "heart" as though it were anything but a physical mass, a vital organ. I thought there'd be less cheese on the pasta now, so to speak. But here I am, as close to thirty as to sixteen, and I'm still pouring prose merely confessional in nature. Nothing new under the sun, always Biblical allusions and forgetting that "effect" is a noun but "affect" is both a verb and a psychological term...it's hard to say what, exactly, I wanted, but I think "to be smarter" begins to scratch the surface.

 VI.
Sometimes I wonder if I would feel more comfortable if everyone who touched me wore latex gloves, too. Not because I don't like to be touched - on the contrary, I crave it in unbearable waves like a dope fiend at the end of his stash. Maybe it would just feel more "correct." Something in me repeats, with the rhythm of a torture device, that I am untouchable, false, diseased. If you get too close, I might never stop writing about you. If you keep your hands on me too long, I may never cease wishing you'd put them there again. Maybe a protective layer, present at all times, a reminder that love is not ethereal but chemical, would serve me well in my search for peace.

VII.
I am half a step away from becoming a nihilist. I just wish someone would push me over the line. I don't want to say, when asked why I'm cold and unfeeling, that I became that way of my own free will.

VIII.
It's the feelings that will get to you. It's your right brain that's out to kill you. It's love that is going to eventually kill us all.

Pragmatic marriage-pushers say that love is a choice, but that isn't the kind of love I'm talking about, and they know it. I don't know a lot of people who chose to stay together merely for the good of their children, or for the strength of their assets, or for the convictions of their religion, and found themselves in a heap on the bathroom floor by the sum of their choices. I'm not talking about magnanimous compassion, or Christian charity, or tireless devotion, when I say that love is the culprit, the thief in the night. I'm talking about being set on fire, with a love so white-hot that walking away would be suicide. I'm talking about the love that brought me to the brink of insanity, motioned broadly at the canyon, and left me with only a penny to throw over the edge for my wishes.

IX.
Something about the fact that "chaos" is "chaos" in French and English brings me such comfort in these moments of lone silence. The word itself carries the vibration of the state of being. They couldn't think of any better way to say, "Everything is a fucking mess, and you can't save me."

Math for Mourning Lovers

I have broken my love down

To a mathematical equation

Stumbled upon a truth that has applied

Each time I've drowned in an ocean

Of anguish for love that was lost

My mourning lasts exactly

1.5 times the length of the relationship

From the day of its conquering

To the day I release it completely

(Don't ask how I discovered this

I think too much about this shit)

But what this means for me today

This horrifyingly exact truth

Is that these last twinges of dulling grief

For you

Have only thirty days left to live

I feel like a soldier

I feel like a survivor

Only one more moon cycle until

I no longer have to taste your absence

On my breath 

The Sunset Struggle

The weight of all these sorrows is
So unbearably heavy
At times suffocating and grey
A thick fog of toxicity
(I need fresh air)

The sky provides no relief
Streaked with the citrus and fresh blood
Of a July evening
That only serves as a reminder of where I am not
(I feel older than the calendar says I am)

I want to sink into it
That sky-scape watercolor reality
But instead bury myself in the bed that once
Belonged to two people
And now only to one

Sabbath Thoughts

Thankful for the challenges, loving every minute of even the hardest lessons, because I'm in the classroom that was shaped for me. Thinking a lot about aliens, always feeling the presence of angels, surrounding myself with light. Feeling into the static, wondering why I don't fit into the sound, what strings are attaching me to the last of the broken signals? Wonder and amazement at the things that haven't changed. Some energetic connections never dissipate - magnetism, past lives, maybe it's all love but it feels a lot like screaming into a pillow. Sometimes the reverberations only go so far. Some people don't WANT to be touched, some people are afraid to be free, so let them be afraid. There will always be fences and I will always be wearing a skirt too short to jump them while still looking lady like, but I never did care about social graces. I've been running in heels and giving where I'll never receive for so long that it's starting to feel like a calling. Care for the sick, heal the wounded, be the muse that never gets gifted with anything permanent. I may be a stumbling block, or a drug you can't stop hitting, a sign in your path like the yellow butterflies that keep following me down these city blocks, but at least in my own transience, I never break the bonds. My mortality makes me feel alive. 

I know I am invincible. 

All-powerful hands hold up this ship. Wisdom comes with never belonging, accidents happen, but I'm always tripping forward. Falling on my face into the next square on the board. At least it's been soft landings these days. At least on the ground, I remember to pray.

Sour Diesel

We should go get Ben and Jerry's.

We should go get Smashburger. 

We should go get more of this fucking peanut brittle.

I want to violently make love to whoever invented peanut brittle.

No. What we should DO...is RIVER RAFTING. 

We need to get off the grid. 

We need to start a commune.

We need to grow our own kale to make awful tasting smoothies with.

I want bacon.

I want to understand why humans can't seem to mate for life.

I want to be able to see the color of Barack Obama's aura.

Feel my pulse.

Tell me a story.

Fuck, man, not that story.

This is boring. 

Shia LaBeouf as Savior - A BPD Narrative

"Shia LaBeouf is so weird," everyone says, but secretly, I think I, and I alone, understand  him. As we speak, at this very moment, Shia is traveling through my state, the state I have called "home" for better or for worse my entire twenty-three years of life. Tweeting the coordinates of his location in regular intervals, he's allowing local folks who still care about him and his celebrity to "Take Him Anywhere" - I guess it's an art project of sorts, but to me, it feels like someone threw a rope down my well of depression. This is it. This is what's going to save me. 

I am going to go take Shia up on his offer, and damn it, I am going to show him a good time.

I roll up to greet him like I'm in a high speed chase. No one, and I mean NO ONE, will get to him as fast as I can. He gets in the car. He seems more nervous than me. I try to put him at ease, immediately begin to call him "Shy" - an affectionate nickname that takes him off guard because I'm clearly so *not* star struck by him and see that he's like, you know, a *real person.* He easily makes me laugh like, belly-laughs with the snorts interjected that I may as well have trademarked by now. He loves my snorts. He dances to my music in my passenger seat. He tells me, with conviction, that he really DID find Jesus after Nymphomaniac parts 1 and 2. That was a true story. He still won't judge me for my smoking habit, though. He doesn't even complain about the ash all over the car. 

He has mental illness issues too, he says? What a surprise! We joke about the various medications that we've tried (I say, "Dude, how is Risperidol even LEGAL??" and he says, "I KNOW!!") He tells me all about his breakdowns and his run-ins with the law. I hold his hand and let him get upset. He's vulnerable about the stories he's telling, openly remorseful about the messes he's made. We're about to cross state lines - we don't even know where we're going. 

"Do you want me to drive a while?" he asks. He looks so earnest, I am reminded of his Even Stevens days, when I first fell in love with him. "Sure," I say. I haven't been driven around in such a long time. It's such a relief, not having to control anything. I trust him behind the wheel more than I trust myself. 

Somehow we end up in some Mormon-run town in Utah by nightfall. We check into a cheap motel. He doesn't even try to make a move - he can see in my face how fragile I am right now, so all we do is sleep. He lets me be the big spoon. I've always preferred being the big spoon. We fall asleep, feeling safe, warm, understood. In the morning he tells me, "I don't think I ever actually want you to leave." 

So I don't. We just keep driving. Adventuring. Bonding. Cue the pieced-together montage of all our video clips - the Grand Canyon, the desert, the rest stop in Nevada when the engine overheats. Not to worry, he just buys me a new car. He's not flashy or gross about it, but he is, after all, a millionaire, who seems to be falling in love with me. He buys me an old VW hippie van, because I told him weeks ago that I've always wanted one. I am flabbergasted. He hugs me tight while I cry overwhelmed tears.

Of course, we end up eloping in Las Vegas. It's only been a few months since we met. The magazines briefly speculate, "Are they insane? Will this even last?" To both, we answer "YES." Cue the music. Fade to black.

The rest of the story I make up, it doesn't matter. I mean, I'm married to SHIA LABEOUF, what else could I want?? I guess I trail into thinking that he could get me hooked up with some editors and a nice agent. Maybe I could write a novel that DOESN'T suck. It would help, especially, if he woke me up in the morning with his motivational "JUST. DO IT," and a cup of coffee in hand. He's so damn thoughtful that way.

(Snap back to reality, as the Eminem song goes. 

Oh...wait...where am I? How long have I been sitting in the car? Why am I in my pajamas? Is it REALLY 2pm? My mouth tastes like metal. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I'm going to die. God, please don't let me die.)

End scene

Was That ME?

Sometimes it just blows my mind that about four years ago, I had the mental and emotional capacity to travel alone across the country on a bus. Like, I packed my own bag! I booked my own hostel! I busked on my own street corner and made my own friends and I don't even think I really panicked when I found out I was pregnant and had to come home! Who WAS that reckless, hair-in-the wind gypsy? Was that ME?

And sometimes it just blows my mind that about two years ago, I was engaged, and I was living with my fiance, and that I was not only working two jobs, but also (sometimes - keyword sometimes) doing laundry, and dishes, and cooking food, and playing with my baby girl, and maintaining a semi-healthy adult relationship. Who the hell WAS that responsible, domesticated wife-and-mother? Was that ME?

And sometimes it just BLOWS MY FUCKING MIND that only about three months ago, I was writing all the time, and performing every week, drinking vodka with abandon, becoming a regular at the Mercury, having no trouble with my words, with my words, with my words...

Who was that confident, sure-of-herself poet? Was that ME?

Because I can't even remember how to put the tip of the pen on the paper. I can't even remember how to open my lips to speak. I don't think I should be allowed to touch another human for at least half a decade, for fear of creating a mess like the last one, and you can't let me travel, because I get lost as soon as I walk out of my front door. How could I possibly be the same woman that did all these things? How is it that I, who am now afraid of going outside, once jumped on a Greyhound with the intention of never coming home? How is it that I once thought of myself as brave and now have to shut my closet doors in the dark and sleep with my head under the covers?

I've been thinking a lot lately about how little kids hide behind grown ups when they're afraid. I'm starting to think it should be the other way around. We have so much more to be afraid of. I have so much more to be afraid of.

My "Special Trip"

Super special moment this morning.

So I come into work...Monday morning...I have only finished about a quarter of my venti coffee...naturally, I am grumpy. We are all grumpy. It is the first day of the work week, and I am properly dressed for such - my wig is squeezing my head, my five-inch heels are squeezing my feet, my waist trainer is squeezing my internal organs. I feel, basically, like the life is being squeezed out of me.

Enter, coworker. I am in my cubicle, answering emails, minding my own damn business, when he peeks his head around the corner and says, "So, I heard you took a special trip on Thursday!" He's smiling. 

I swivel in my chair. Stare at him. At first, I am confused...did he REALLY just say that? Then, I am enraged. DID HE REALLY...just say that? Then I am calm. Of course he said that.

For your information, guy-I-only-marginally-know, YES, I took a fucking "special trip" on Thursday. The grin on your face only further confirms your tone - condescending, teasing, joking. My friend, this is not something to joke about. Allow me to beat you over the head with the baseball bat of my crazy.

Yes, my friend - on Thursday, April 21, at 2:30 pm, I had to drive myself to the crisis center (which is code for "pre-psych ward") because I was experiencing an absolutely terrifying episode of dissociation, psychosis, and amnesia. I calmly checked myself in, calmly spoke to each mental health professional, calmly explained that I was having an out-of-body experience, calmly waited for SEVEN HOURS to be admitted into the psychiatric hospital. 

(I admit, that when no one was in the room, between bouts of being calm, I wept bitterly, because life is unfair and most people don't have to deal with this shit.) 

Then I calmly drove myself to the psychiatric hospital, calmly did my paperwork, calmly did my admissions interviews, only to be told by the admitting Doctor that they COULD NOT HELP ME. That I needed to see a neurologist. That psych meds could not fix what I was experiencing. And still, I was calm. I did not scream. I did not go crazy. I just drove myself home. Brushed it off as a wasted day. Pretended it didn't happen. None of it felt real anyway.

So I calmly went through my weekend. I calmly wrapped myself in the cocoon of solitude. I calmly binged on Netflix, calmly ate delivered Chinese food, calmly did not leave the house. Then I calmly coaxed myself outside, calmly interacted with friends, calmly informed everyone that I wasn't dead and it was okay, even though it wasn't okay. Even though it is still not okay.

This morning, I calmly put on my work clothes, my wig, my makeup, my perfume. I calmly prepared myself to interact with people all day. Calmly prepared myself to explain my absences last week to everyone. Calmly put my hands on the bathroom counter and breathed, telling myself, "This is real. You are not dreaming. Do not do anything stupid." 

Now I show up at work fifteen minutes early, after CALMLY handling this exhausting battle, with few moments of panic, few moments of visible insanity, for NINE YEARS, and you want to ask me about my "trip"? Like I went on the Magic Fucking School Bus to Mars? 

You are, without a doubt, the most insensitive motherfucker around in this moment.

But I just took another sip of my coffee and said, "Yup. I sure did."

Spiritual Confusion

I was nine years old the first time I found myself “spiritually confused,” I remember the incident very clearly. I was in my fourth grade Sunday school class, and my extremely charismatic Sunday school teacher, who had recently anointed me with oil and “the power of Queen Esther,” sat my class down and told them to ask her anything. It was an open forum about the Bible and God. Young minds were being encouraged to explore. But I don’t think she was quite ready for my question.

“So…” I started, “God knows everything, right?”

“Of course,” my teacher said.

“And God made everyone?”

“Yes,” she said.

“So when God makes people, He knows everything they’re going to do in their life?”

“Yes.”

“Then why does God create people if He knows they’re going to hell?”

She paused. “That’s a very good question,” she said, “but we do have free will…”

            And thus began the paradoxes and logical fallacies. This did NOT make sense! How can you say that going to hell is the individual’s choice (based on their decision to reject Christ) if God basically made the choice for them when He created them? My addled nine-year-old brain couldn’t handle this bullshit. After a time of arguing, I remember my teacher, flustered and impatient, moving onto the next question.

            I was not a very light-hearted kid. I was very serious, very quiet, very thoughtful, and, at nine years old, perhaps already growing a little skeptical and rebellious. I questioned a lot of things, from the necessity of homework assignments, the rules of my classroom at school, and the unspoken norms of society. I was not a “Why is the sky blue?” kind of kid. I was a “Why is the world so evil and cruel?” kind of kid.

            Fast forward four years, and at thirteen, I think I was driving my mother crazy. I was drinking alcohol at parties, getting in trouble at school, and flaunting my barely-developing body every chance I got. I was depressed, anxious, almost constantly on the edge of emotional ruin. And, for the first time in my life, I openly scorned organized religion. The rules were confining, the traditions were pointless, and the theology made absolutely no sense. My parents and Christian-school teachers brushed this off as immaturity and angst. They weren’t necessarily wrong, but the questioning and doubts continued long after I stopped wearing thick eyeliner and wishing I could change my name to “Daisy.”

            All throughout high school, I spiritually “flip flopped” between two extremes. I have a feeling there are at least a few Christian school kids who can relate to this. Spiritual Emphasis Week would happen, and I would be compelled by the messages or touched by the worship. I would read a convicting Christian book directed at wayward teens, and do an immediate 180 in behavior and thought. I would go on a mission’s trip, or go to a Christian conference, and come back “changed.” But the “change” never seemed to last. After a few weeks or months, the doubts would creep in, my normal behavior would resume, and I would look back on my “spiritual high” with scorn and skepticism. “Brainwashing” was a word I used a lot back then. I also liked the words “agnostic,” “searching,” and “myth.”

            But of course, things change. This proved to be just a phase after, when I was seventeen, one of my dad’s girlfriends gave me the book Eat Pray Love. To say that it changed the landscape of my religious experience forever wouldn’t be a strong enough statement. That book changed my spiritual DNA. It opened my mind to an entirely new reality – I could believe in an all-knowing, all-loving God, and yet not buy into Christian dogma or theology. I had found what I saw as a middle ground, and I jumped on the chance to live in that fray. I reveled in it, rolled around in the dirt of it, and fell in love with it. Suddenly lacking that angst and hatred I had once directed toward my Christian upbringing, I suddenly liked words like “open-minded” and “universalism.” I liked signing my letters with the phrase “Love & light.” I meditated. I smiled at strangers. I felt like I was radiating wisdom. I felt enlightened, god damn it.

            But the pendulum still swung.

            There were still chapels to attend every Monday. There were still Bible classes to go to every day. My peers were still mostly devout evangelical Protestants, and I had no one to share this new spiritual elation with. So it died like that parabled plant that didn’t take deep enough root. I swung back and forth wildly, changing my religious and political convictions as often as I changed the color of my hair (which, if you don’t know me, was often enough to scare people). I was spiritually volatile. I was in a crisis. I was always so sure that I possessed complete certainty, but in reality, I was extremely confused.

            Eventually, blessedly, the pendulum seemed to stop swinging. I sat in one spot for a couple of years, with only occasional, short hiccups of change. I pressed into my own path. I grew in my knowledge of auras, portals, past life regression, indigo children, pendulums, crystals, shamans, reiki, chakras, ascension, enlightenment, Higher Self, spirit guides, Christ consciousness, and soul agreements. Some of my best friends were like minded, growing in their knowledge of the same New Age-y stuff as me. It was, quite possibly, the happiest time in my life. It’s hard not to be happy when you truly believe, with total assurance, that Love is god (this phrase was tattooed on my arm, to my mother’s displeasure) and that humans are inherently good. It especially made me happy to believe that all religions were equally right and equally wrong about God. God was too big and too incredible for humans to truly understand, I thought. Religions were just grasping for knowledge of the same beautiful, universal deity.

            To say I was a hippie at the time would be fairly accurate.

­            I won’t bore anyone with too many of the details of my Christian conversion in 2012. I was pregnant with my daughter, in a toxic relationship, and terrified of the uncertainty in my future. I was extremely vulnerable. So I shouldn’t have been so surprised when I had a religious experience at church. I begged God for forgiveness, cried bitterly over lost time, took communion, and left the church “changed” again.

            This time, it stuck.

            For two and a half years, I went to church nearly every Sunday. I dedicated my daughter to Jesus. I vowed to raise her in a home based on Biblical truth. My “Love is god” tattoo was covered up by an ornate cross. My free-spirited self was shoved in a corner, replaced swiftly by a new soul I did not recognize.

            Somewhere in the midst of all of this, I found a completely different kind of happiness. It felt purposeful and mature. Somehow, for me, being a follower of Jesus Christ also meant being and adherent to the American Dream. Where I used to envision raising Paige at Burning Man, there were new visions of traditional marriage and white picket fences. I had done a 180 all over again. But my 180s started to have consequences. My relationship changed. Friendships were strained or lost completely. Priorities shifted. My mother got excited over the return of her prodigal child. I realized pretty quickly that the changes I had made could not be undone. This wasn’t high school anymore, and I was expected to have my religious views figured out. “Searching” was no longer considered kosher – I was a mother, damn it, and I squashed every religious doubt that ever came up in my heart. I went from having a wide-open mind to having a very, very closed one in a very short period of time. Deep down, it didn’t sit right with me, but everything was going so well. I didn’t want to ruin it with any kind of cynicism or admission of “not knowing.”

            But then, 2015 happened. My then-fiancé became my now-ex-fiancé. Everything fell into a kind of chaos that I had not been familiar with for years. My future that had been seemingly set in stone, seemingly certain, was now a series of blurry unknowns. I was mad at God for “taking away” the love of my life. So I stopped praying. Then I stopped caring. Then I stopped believing.

            Some days, it feels like I’m spiritually stuck in my high school years. The last year has been a series of insane changes in every aspect of my life, and I have migrated between belief systems at least a couple of times. I’ve been ecstatic over the course of the last year about new mantras and sage cleansing ceremonies, but I’ve also been ecstatic about Pentecostal prophecy and my mega-church. It’s been a very confusing twelve months, to say the least. But I can no longer swing back and forth so comfortably. I can see the ridiculousness of my position. You cannot believe in the healing power of a moonstone rod one day and the healing power of speaking in tongues the next.

            Or can you? In all honesty, I haven’t got this figured out at all. I’m trying to settle into a middle ground, with opinions and ideas that are more nuanced, but I have always been an all-or-nothing kind of person. I have always been very extreme.

            It’s hard, however, to just “pick” one belief system or the other, when both belief systems (conservative Christianity and New Age-y universalism) have so powerfully affected the direction of my life and shaped my personality. Christianity gave me my foundation. It somehow got me through high school intact and alive. It gave me hope in some of my darkest times. But my hippie-ass, cherry-picking system of belief grew me into an adult. It got me through my eating disorder. It taught me how to love my body and myself. Both belief systems have “saved” me from all kinds of shit, up to and even death.

            So I guess I’m having a moment of doubt. A long, drawn-out, irritating moment of doubt. My poor friends who have dragged me through this past era of my life must have been rolling their eyes the whole time. Certainty may be the mature thing to possess at this point in my life, but I have no certainty to speak of in this area whatsoever.

            I don’t know what would need to occur for me to be faithful to one spiritual path, once and for all. “Proof” does not normally impress my fickle heart. I have read The Case For Christ. I took an apologetics class as a junior in high school. I am well-versed in all of the reasons everyone should believe in the Bible as God’s inerrant word.

            I’m just not personally convinced.

            I have so many questions that I wish there were easy answers to, on either side of the aisle. And I have so many reasons to continue going to my church. I have plenty of reasons to raise my daughter in the Christian faith. But I also have so many personal reasons to reject Christianity as a whole. I know that what I need is more exploration, more time. And I need to give myself permission to be fickle again, to be wrong, to get messy in the mud of “What do you believe?”

            But not knowing can be very uncomfortable. Watching a sunrise and not knowing the character of the creator can be unsettling for someone raised firmly in a certain religion. But at least I can see that the sunrise is beautiful. And I’m waking up to watch one more.

            Whoever made me still wants me here. I still have a reason to be on this plane of existence. And if nothing else is comforting today, that fact alone will do.

Cold Pizza and What I Wanted to Say

I hadn't seen her in two and a half years.

I invited her to go out to get pizza with us. It was a beautiful, seemingly simple task - catch up on the last few eras of your life with an old friend. But my heart raced. My head was spinning. I asked her a lot about her. I spoke very little about myself.

I hadn't seen her in two and a half years.

There was plenty I could have rehashed. Plenty of stories to tell, plenty of dramas to unfold, plenty of pages of the past to revisit. But I didn't know where to start. My hands shook a little. I sipped my Coke. "Is it hot in here?" I asked.

I hadn't seen her in two and a half years.

I tried to keep it light, airy; I tried to be the friend that she must remember. Optimistic. Fun. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at any time of morning or night. A hint of insanity behind the eyes. I tried to mimic things that THAT girl would say.

I hadn't seen her in two and a half years, so maybe I have her fooled. But maybe not.

I felt so tired, so inexplicably exhausted, so profoundly dead inside. Oh sure, new romance, new job, birthdays have passed by, vacations and holidays. Things have been great. Things have been great. Isn't that what I keep telling myself? "Oh, things have been great." But I could feel an empty space inside my head, a flickering, dim light that once burned so brightly. I felt unrecognizable to her, and maybe I was.

What I wanted to say was, "There's a reason I look like a corpse. There's a reason I have bags under my eyes. There might even be a reason that my hair is orange."

What I wanted to say was, "There's also a reason I'm acting robotic. And cold. There's a lot of reasons that I can't laugh quite the same anymore."

What I wanted to say was, "It feels like I'm being slowly crushed in a trash compactor, over and over again, every single fucking day."

What I wanted to say was, "The bad outweighs the good. And I haven't read very many books lately. And really, I'm not okay."

What I wanted to say was, "Damn, it's hard to breathe in here."

What I wanted to say was, "Yeah, I lost the love of my life. And it was at LEAST half my fault, and I'm willing to admit that now. And I'll likely never get over the guilt and regret."

What I wanted to say was, "You don't get it. He's a good guy. I never deserved him in the first place."

What I wanted to do was run to the bathroom and cry.

What I actually did was, I sat there, and played with my daughter's hair. I tried to pay little attention to the lies coming out of my mouth.

What I said was, "You know, it just didn't work out. I guess that's life, sometimes." And she agreed.

The pizza was cold.

Oh, my wild heart

Oh, my wild heart. Nothing awakens you like lost love returned, does it? They tell you to be patient, and to be careful, and to be wise, but here we go off the edge of the next cliff. You always were a jumper. 

But I love you all the same.

Oh, my wild heart. You twirl in toddler-like circles, frantic, a little dancer in a kitchen asking only to be praised. And he praises you. He turns to you and says "I've always loved you," and you stop for just a moment, the stillness overtaking you like fire. It's one beautiful moment in a dumpster of harsh realities. 

Keep dancing, oh my wild heart. Even if they tell you to stop. Keep jumping, and I will follow you. Because the love that is coming is sweeter than all we've left behind. 

I Summed Myself Up (In Two Sentences)

Fragile, fickle heart, full of foolish Tomfuckery, must you beat so fast at the first sign of blossoming affection? Must you always be so hungry to feel?

I Had Seen a Ghost

The realizations trickle down slowly

From head to heart like rain on a roof

I thought I was over it

Maybe a thousand times over

But I guess the organ in my chest

Never got the memo

My inner protector can yell all she wants at you

"Go away! Shelby needs her space!"

But you still stand there, very quietly

In my dream world and waking thought

Boring holes into my skull 

With your mystifying gaze

I thought I saw you yesterday

His movements made him a dead ringer

But his shoes were the giveaway

I don't think you'd ever wear those shoes

I felt myself blush all the way into my feet

And shuffled away, my heart pounding

As my daughter asked "What's wrong Mommy?"

I guess I looked like I had seen a ghost

Mornings are the Worst

I wake up slowly, the grey November seeping into my consciousness, warding away dream remnants, chasing out the wishes of a bright summer. It all comes back to me, my skin crawling with familiar regret, my head filling like a pitcher with a year's worth of memory. It's been a long time since there were two of us in this bed, but in sleep I still feel the safety of presence, the warmth of a body no longer there. 

I drink enough coffee to bring the dead to life. I smoke enough cigarettes to calm my sunrise nerves. I blaze through the past on a bullet train of thought. Reminiscent nostalgia takeover. I am no longer my own. 

"What a waste of a heart," I say to myself. "To spend so much love on a soul who cannot even feel it." 

Like putting money down the sink disposal and throwing the switch, I just keep tossing these sentiments out into the universe. My chest keeps pulling me, magnetic, towards the future, where it hopes it will find him waiting with flowers. 

But all the benches we pass, my heart and I, are empty, all the grocery store lines devoid of familiar faces, and the fantasies we weave of serendipitous events fade into the background of reality with every passing bleak twenty-four hours. No letters are ever ours to open, no two AM phone calls ever missed as we sleep. My heart and I, we are disappointed, still hoping for better, kicking through the dirty snow of shame. 

Keep Dancing

                The gym is quiet, almost eerily so. A few burly men lift weights in the corner. One woman, sickly thin, frantically runs on the treadmill. It’s 11 pm, Friday night, at the local 24 Hour Fitness. My responsible friends are all asleep; my friends determined to explode through their early twenties like dynamite are out drinking vodka tonics and going home with strangers. And I’m here, alone. But I prefer it that way, anymore. I’ve started to enjoy my own company.

                I walk, silently, practicing being graceful, into the studio, the room with all the mirrors. You know the one. Zumba happens here. Kickboxing and spin classes happen here. Depressed, heavy-eyed young women choreograph dances in the middle of the night here. (Or is that just me?)

                I toss my gigantic fringed purse onto the floor. The loud thud reminds me that I need to clean it out. There are about seven lipsticks in there. Crumpled bills line the whole bottom of the bag. Coins and my keys jangle together in an irritating melody. There’s a book in there on how to overcome your daddy issues, right next to a book called How Not to Write a Novel. My wallet, fat with coupons that will never be used, pokes precariously through the top. There’s also, of course, my phone, a couple of McDonald’s toys that I never unwrapped for my daughter, and three e-cigarettes, all out of juice and with dead batteries (the quitting smoking thing isn’t going so well for me).

                The purse, like my life, is basically a mess. I try not to overthink this as I take the speaker and set it up right in front of the mirrors. I turn on all the lights in the room. Sitting on the floor, I begin to stretch, remembering with a deep nostalgia that I used to be able to do the splits in high school. My grandmother, who is in her seventies, can still do the splits, and has showed me many times. It’s like a party trick that she pulls out at Christmas. I’m so disappointed that I, at twenty-three, with fifteen years of dance classes behind me, can barely even lean forward, at this point, if my legs are in a v.

                I stare into my eyes in the mirror. I am stretching. This burns. This feels good. My eyes are, as I mentioned, heavy with depression and exhaustion. But god damn it, I’m going to dance tonight. I came here to dance my sadness out. I came here to dance you away.

                Moments later, the music is starting. I stand still through the intro, launching myself into motion as the lyrics unfold. I try not to feel it, try to push it away with my body, try to push through it with the fluidity of my movements, but it still comes up. That feeling of heaviness, of sorrow. I’m choreographing this dance for you. It hurts me to admit it, but the dance is yours. It’s about you. I can’t deny that it’s about you.

                My first memory is from the backstage area at a dance recital. I was three years old, and in a bright yellow costume. My mom even let me wear lipstick, so the stage lights wouldn’t wash me out. I think the song I was dancing to was “Lollipop.” I had a gorgeous Italian spitfire as a dance teacher. The memory has nothing to do with the actual dancing, but I think there’s something telling about this. Even in my very first memory as a child, I was preparing to go on stage and dance.

                There’s always been something in me that wanted to perform, that wanted to be seen. I was a cheer captain in high school. I was the social butterfly at all of my jobs as a young adult. I remember bringing my guitar to work one day when I was a button-pushing, paper-stapling tax assistant, and playing and singing on the roof for a handful of coworkers. I used to busk on the streets of my hometown, even. Something about the spotlight suited me.

                When I met you, your eyes were the spotlight. Your gaze was my stage. I remember playing guitar for you, too, in parking lots and bedrooms. You used to make me feel like the most important person in the world. Hanging on my every word, actively engaging every syllable. “Is he always so intense?” my mother asked when she met you. But that’s what I loved about you. Your intensity. Every moment with you, I felt like I had won something, like I had done something right and been something significant. The best writer, the best mother, the best fiancée, the most beautiful girl in the room – I felt like I was all of these things when I was with you.

                You’re gone now, I know it, and as I twirl around the room, occasionally falling on the floor in total frustration, I feel the weight of it, the weight of your absence. I can’t find the right movements for this eight count. I can’t find the right words to express how much I miss you. The air is a thick fog, and I often break down in this bright room full of mirrors, watching my contorted face cry for you like a lost child cries for their parents.

                It hurts.

                I face the mirrors again, red faced, mascara-smeared. “Five, six, seven, eight,” I mutter to myself, and begin again. And again. And again.

                If this is the only way I can get it right, if this is the only way that I can articulate what is wrong and what has changed, if this is the only way that I can fill the void that you left, that I can pick up the garbage in your wake, then I will keep dancing until my legs break beneath me.

                I’ll keep dancing until I don’t feel so alone.

               

To the Mystical Palm Tree on Coronado Beach

I.

The black coffee tastes, artificially, of hazelnuts. The keyboard is sticky – from leftover tears or yesterday’s lunch, I cannot be sure. The GM of our company is doing rounds this morning, and gives me a dirty look upon viewing my sweatpants and tank top. My yellow tennis shoes are spotted with dirt. There is no makeup on my face. I am hungover and high on pain pills. I must leave this place, I think to myself. I am fading into nothing, I am going crazy, I must leave.

II.

The trouble of it is, Walker doesn’t want me anymore.

He with his beard. He with his real job, his bachelor’s degree. He with his girlfriend who looks rather manly. He with his ambitions and dreams. He wanted to go to Europe with me, he had said once. He wanted to take me everywhere. Let us take the world by storm. Show me off to the masses. “This is my woman. This is my love.” He wanted these things once. He doesn’t seem to want them now.

I eye him from my cubicle – the back of his head, the green of his shirt, sure to be bringing out, right now, the very-green of his eyes. I am a fifteen second walk across the office from him, but it feels like the Grand Canyon has been placed between us.

He sat me down yesterday, and said to me, “I have to stay with Kat. I cannot leave her for you like I promised I would.”

 

III.

At home, I climb the ladder to heaven. I pop three pills at a time, wash them down with stale soda water (which I suppose is just water). This is the way I have been dealing with the darkness.

I sit in front of my computer. My fingers fuzzy. My head fuzzy. My lips turned up ever so slightly at the edges into an imperceptible little smile.

“I’m going to get the fuck out of here,” I say out loud to no one.

I think what I mean is, “I’m going to kill myself.” But what I do instead is buy a one-way Greyhound ticket to San Diego. I’ve never been there before. It sounds like it should be lovely this time of year.

IV.

To the mystical palm tree on Coronado Beach; to the piece of pink gum on the cobblestone in the Gaslamp District; to the tan faces of the women of SoCal; to the rich fuck who will snub me when I ask for directions; to the homeless man who will offer me his last dollar as I busk on the corner; to the vagabond I will fall in love with; to the cupcake shop worker I will fist fight on the corner of seventh and Island; to the hot sand and to the warm ocean; to the sky and to the inevitable afternoon rain in June; I implore you all to consider me a nomad in a strange land. Consider me lost. Consider me fragile, no, consider me broken already into a million pieces. Consider me your friend. Consider me your lover. Consider my wounds, my flaws, my masks. Take me into your arms and let me weep at the feeling of finally, finally being home.

Please, please, change my miserable life.

V.

When I board the bus that will stop to connect in Las Vegas, I laugh to myself at the absurdity of what I’m doing. I have a backpack full of clothes and my guitar in its case. I left all my pills at home. Withdrawal is sure to be a bitch.

When I said goodbye to Walker, all my cubicle decorations sitting in a box in my hands, he eyed me blankly, with no desire in his face, and said “Good luck. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

Here I am finding a seat. Here I am accepting a Reese’s from an old man. Here I am striking up a conversation with the ten year old across the aisle from me. Here I am leaning my head on a stranger’s shoulder. Here I am making out with that stranger an hour later.

There’s something about getting up and leaving forever that sits just right with me. I’m sure my mother will miss me. But this feels right.

VI.

The bus screeches to a noisy stop in a seemingly deserted part of town. I feel nothing.

My feet take me onto the city sidewalk. I feel nothing.

I walk, walk, walk towards the heart of the downtown, reaching forward, ever forward, to feel something. To feel just one more thing before I die.

A Surgeon of Sorts

I.

Lost in the cavernous grief that enveloped me, freakishly attached to our dead affection, I waltzed, clumsily, with all memory of you. The good and the bad, I stitched in lumps to my skin, voluntarily cancers, consensually received tumors of self-loathing, longing, and loss. Trembling from the weight of all this decaying baggage, I tried to dance, awkwardly, through the dark, constantly knocking things over with this piece of you or that one, flailing, nearly collapsing, beneath the burden of your broken corpse.

II. 

I desperately looked for a surgeon of sorts, to separate you from me, but found that the knife and scalpel were clutched in my hands - that I had to bleed, awake, for my freedom.

III.

I walked the path I'm on alone, alone for what seems like an eternity, before I found someone who noticed my scars, the places where you were cut away from me, and called them "beautiful." But he was not the doctor. He is not my savior.

Looking back with an honest eye, neither were you.

How Beautiful

Extracting feeling from a moment already lived, feeling a year-old ray of sunlight hitting my face, taking myself back to the summer when everything was beautiful, I lose myself, suddenly. I lose myself in you. 

How beautiful it was, to be loved well by you. How beautiful, to see you kneeling there before me, the smell of gunpowder and grass all in the air, the spotlight on us, the crowd's eyes on us. How beautiful it was, to say "Yes." 

And how beautiful it was, that day at the lake, to be happy again, to feel alive like I never had before. How beautiful it was, to feel your body next to mine as I drifted into sleep. How beautiful, to let the wind in through the window. How beautiful our life was together.

Let's forget about the ending, my darling, my runaway, my lost-at-sea. Let's forget about the space between you and me. Let's forsake our memories of a red-hot January, when our screams did carry through the neighbor's walls, let's forsake it all. I'm letting go of it all.

I'm letting go.

I'm letting go of the hatred, the anger, the fear, the rage, the depression, the darkness I held so near to me. I'm letting go of our last goodbye, your face all grey, your bones visible through your marked skin. I'm letting go of the worst of it, but I'm holding onto what we had.

How beautiful it was, watching my daughter run into your arms. How beautiful it was, watching you grow and change beside me. How beautiful it was, being your everything, your family. How beautiful we were in the mirror together. How well we fit.

These are the things I will remember. 

The best of our love, I will remember you by. 

Thank you for everything.

I will never forget.