let's go outside. the woods look good to me.
grab my hands.
i want to spin so fast.
throw my head back.
AND SCREAM.

it's dumb to be scared of things. holds me back so much, and i'm scared about
every aspect of my life right now. but its 93 degrees out and i can't worry about my feelings.
whatever they may be.
about anything and everything.
both lacking and overwhelming.
ebbing and surging like the tide.
that i'm going to go dive into right now.

!

she's just shy

the miasma of frost and greys
gives way to my dreams
of jammed windows and spider-webbed screens
of mulch covered t-shirts
and fresh young greens
sea grass pillows for my wild schemes
with the sounds of waves yawning
while those stars wink and these eyes gleam
sharing air as sweet as ice cream
i know what this means...Y

now it is.

Rose petal lips
for my kaileidescopic eye.
Ethereal oils smearing
moonless night skies
blue and lavender.
Pages of head too heavy
hand to heart
heart too fast
fast to run?

magic of disappearing
art of illusion.

Lust is cheap
love is rare
Trust is treasure
glass hearts can scare
is this clear?
As dusty roads and summer haze.

"Try not to remember any of this. It's not important."

I've Seen Jerusalem.

I like the edge
but heights make my head float a little.
I can walk a line
but there is no doubt I'll trip.
My feet are big
and I never had balance.
Mistakes follow me like pigeons
but I'm the one who leaves breadcrumbs.
I always colored outside the lines.
In ink that can never erase.
So don't be surprised when I hold a flame
to that edge
until its fire.

My head was hurting so much when I drove to you last night. The cd was the right volume and the hum of my exhaust was almost soothing, but the pounding feeling in the back of my brain was almost too much. I took the snaking black roads through giant doll houses and rolling sea grass dunes. At the top of the hill, I saw you and you were what I was feeling inside, wild. You reached up, punching into the air, throwing spray and brine. You swirled and threw yourself against the rocks that were plunked into your center, all around. The wind was whipping when I got out of my car in that empty parking lot. I knew I shouldn't be here alone, it wasn't safe. But I wanted nothing near me, I wanted no one to answer to, I wanted no one to know I existed. I knew something was wrong and I always think you have the answer.

In my sandals, I climbed over the guard rail and onto the rocks, shaking. I sat down and held my legs close as I watched you roll and dip, crash and recede. I couldn't see the horizon, which made me feel like you were endless. So I told you in my mind what was going on with me, and I told the lighthouse what I was scared of, and I told the small shack on the rock island what I wanted most in life. I whispered into the stars what I didn't believe in, and what I did. And you were all the best audience I've ever had.

But I didn't speak a word. I hope I don't ever need to.
I think I'll see you soon though.

Bubbles and the Details.

The steam clings to the window.
Billions of little dew droplets
clear baby marbles.
The steam carries the scent
of vanilla mint tea
and red velvet cake.
The steam wafts the music
and my men sing me my songs
of escape, renewal, and sometimes
the heart.
The steam makes my body heavy
and my skin lobster red.
Pretty soon the drain will swallow
my self indulgent lounging and thoughts
but for now
they leave me feeling
warm and full, and content?
I think I'm getting there.

It's nothing.

What.
Am.
I.
Not.
Getting?

IT'S RAINING AND COLD I SAW A SNOWFLAKE TODAY AND IT'S APRIL. WHAT IS GOING ON WHEN YOU WAKE UP AND STILL FEEL ASLEEP? WHEN YOU WAKE UP

and you're back at square one?

I bet it's nothing.

Hit me like Bricks.

I could not wake up this morning. The most awful dreams kept swallowing me back up, but I was so close to consciousness I lost the ability to tell what was really happening. Finally I broke free of them when I thought I was lost in a hostel on a tricycle with Portugese police after me.

When I walked upstairs and no one was home I felt relieved, then instantly lonely. So incredibly lonely. At this point I just want to talk to someone, sit close and have a very long conversation with someone I care about. I don't even know what I would say, what words would fly from my lips but I know once I started I wouldn't want to stop. It's such a different and bizarre feeling, but I am sick of always being the quiet one, not even "quiet" but the reserved one I guess, about everything.

I am angry with myself for proving yesterday that I am still so young. I am still very naive. I am still putting myself in bad situations that cause me stress. I saw a lot of things jeopardized running through my head, and all of a sudden I cared a little bit more about the people and things and goals I have in my life. And I feel like I have been an awful and selfish person for a very long time now and I want that to change. I miss my family. That was the first thing I really thought when I got out of that car yesterday was " I miss my family". I wonder if all idiots in that same situation instantly think of that.

I need to make myself some boundaries. I need to mature a little bit more. I paint a lovely picture in my mind that only I can control myself and my fate and I have it all figured out and I dont need to live by the rules of this world, of the "American Dream". I embrace my unconventional views and ways of thinking but at the same time they blur me from the reality of where I come from. I think sometimes I like to think I was hatched out of an egg, that I don't have to answer to anyone but myself because of the abandonment I have felt before. But I definitely have dished out that same sense of abandonment to so many in the past, and even now. I want to balance. I need to balance. I want my family back in my life again, they've been on the outside peering through foggy glass for far too long. I have to balance what is important, and what really matters. Family is a responsibility too, and a precious gift that I no longer intend to ignore.

My dad once gave me a rosebush to plant when I was about twelve or thirteen. A little note was in it that said "Pretty roses for a pretty girl", his wonderful attempt at some play on words. I found that note when I was fifteen and held a lighter to the corner of it, wanting it to catch on fire. It was slow to catch but when it did, I panicked and I put it out quickly. Only the corner was blackened and I tucked it away, knowing I was acting out of irrational anger. I found that a few nights ago and I felt I had come so far since blackening that edge. But then I realized, there were no roses, the plow had ripped them up 3 years ago and I told my dad I would buy the next rosebush. But all I still have is that blackened little notecard.

I want them to be pink and little like they were last time. And I want them to grow nice and slow like I still am. And I want only my Dad to help me plant them. And I want my mom to make me lemonade on the warm May day when I probably do this. Then I want us to go out to lunch or to play a board game and have us all hate it but laugh at the same time. And I want Teddy to come home so we can all sit home at night and watch bad reality TV and laugh until we cry. Like we used to.

Things changed alot but it isn't too late to fix them. I don't think I have to say a word about anything, just show that now I'm ready to not be such a background figure in this family anymore.

Meaning means 21 grams of nothing to measurements of everything to attachments full of...

I have to write everything I'm thinking right now. Everything that is rushing and swirling and smearing in the squiggly cracks of my brain and rough walls of my mind. I'm pourng it out in a torrential whirl as fast as it came streaming through.

Creative Writing was incredible today.

We started presenting our "about me" kind of projects, and I sat there knowing they were going to be really good, some great even. This class so far has taught me to reserve my usual harsh judgement and dismissive nature. Everyone is something else underneath, it isn't just a select few like I once thought.

This one kid goes, Adam. Very brooding, very dark, he's kind of a pretentious asshole but in the best way possible and we embrace him for that. His is a picture and a written poem. The poem is about his drug abuse, about vacant rooms and heavy air. About lying in filth and wishing to die. His picture, well... he took it of himself in a tiled shower stall. Cracks between the tiles were jungle green with mildew and dirt. Mold stains streaked the dusty rose colored upper walls. He was nude, facing profile, and in black letters on the back wall it said " I'll rape your wife".

Then we have Nick. He is quirky and humorous and deep in an enlightened way and we embrace him for that. He talks of meanings and what that means to him. He likens himself to a seed, only to show that he isn't a seed, he is himself, and there are only similarities. And that in life, things are meaningless until you attach meaning but the meaning you attach is empty to everyone but you, so is life full of meaning all around you or empty attachments and hope?

Then there was Dan. Dan is funny and a big joke and I've known him forever, but I never knew he had a deeper side. He wrote a beautiful monologue about regretting the past, about lost relationships, second chances that land you elsewhere, and in a sense, love. It was raw and hard to hear, but listening to it all made me think, and I walked out of class with a piece of every single one of them because a piece of each of them were floating in the electrically charged air of that small classroom on the corner.

I have been asking people some pretty weird questions lately that have been popping into my head. The other night sitting with my mom I asked her " what are you made up of?" and she never hesitated in her soft response of "well, I guess I'm made of my family and my experiences and my memories. Thats what defines people I guess. Make sense?"

Yesterday I asked little Mia, the six year old I watch, " Hey Mia what are you made up of?"
In the innocence and literalism only a child can throw at you she says " Um...blood and guts." So matter of factly too.

The other night, I asked Rory if he believed people have souls. He brought up the fact that when someone dies, there is 21 grams that is unaccounted for. Always.

What does this all mean to me, does it mean anything?

So i sit in my cluttered red car, rain collecting, with the skipping cd on, with the windshield wipers off, in the traffic of students, wanting to leave the tarred roadway to Massasoit and spill out onto the dirty streets to wherever.

My thoughts begin to work again, they stopped replaying over and over the class I was just in. I thought hard about what I believed. Is everything we find meaning in all so meaningless? And if that is true, am I just so overly sensitive to find so much meaning in everything I see, or attach meaning to places and objects. But if I'm so overly sensitive how is it that everyone sees me as "the robot", emotionally detached and incredibly stoic? Is the meaning we leave in places and people the pieces of ourselves, those missing 21 grams? Is everyone, past and present, preserved in memories and familiar attachments to otherwise things that are nothing? And why do we even give things meaning? Seashells from a fun day at the beach, a lock of hair, a movie ticket stub, a crumpled picture, a dirty penny, all of this is trash to someone, but treasures to another. So what does that mean?

We are all made up of blood and guts. But whats makes them churn? When we hear our favorite love song or see a rare natural wonder, why do we feel it in our hearts or stomachs? Why is there a sinking feeling, a squeeze, and that dizzying sense of spinning circles when you dig through your dirty room and find your old shoebox of past pictures, dried rose petals, old poems, letters, and miscellaneous items? Is that our souls stirring fo a minute? Is it really in there, holding everything that we feel is so profound and different about our own lives, that we feel sets us apart? Is that where our meaning is, and when we die does it burst free like a bubble into the air?

A week or two ago I hit a cat. The road was really dark, and it scurried out so fast my brakes didnt even have time to slow me. It went through both wheels, and died instantly no doubt. I went back to it and Rory moved it out of the road. We knocked at a nearby house to see if it was theirs, they said no but gave us a bagfor it. Rory picked it up by the legs and I held the bag open.
" Ok Elaine don't look please."

But I did. I was already white as alabaster and choked into silence but I looked. I didn't see blood or any odd angles, it was just a cat, like it was sleeping. Only there was something so different about it. It hung limp. It's eyes held no glint. Instead of green marbles, they looked like mossy stones. And as he lifted it to be placed in the bag, all I could think about was how heavy that cat was. How much weight dangled there.

"I can't do it. No I can't please, I'm sorry I can't put it in the bag."

I couldn't bear to feel the weight of what I caused in between my own hands. That cat was someones pet, someone fed it, pet it, loved it. And that was all gone because I was doing 45 in a 35, have shitty brakes, and poor night vision. My voice was strangled with panic of this realization and regret. Was that little kitty, as heavy as it looked to me, 21 grams lighter?

I feel better that I wrote this, but I still feel confused and on the verge of someting here. I have more to say on the subject, but my battery is dying and I need to find the cable for my laptop. I'm going out tonight, and it will no doubt be an eventful evening with many different parts and moods to it. I'm going to try and relax, take a hot shower.

Breathe deep. 21 grams worth.