You & I
this night when it gets too cold
we come inside to sleep
and whisper secrets under covers.
I put my hand to the back of your head
fingers in your hair
and breathe in smells of campfire smoke,
your skin marked with ash
(and I am also marked)
I taste the cold air in your mouth,
feeling out of place indoors.
We tangle up together
You & I,
like the evergreens that bend together in the wind.

Twenty-One and Three Quarters

I'm anxious to turn 22. Not in the way I was anxious to turn 16, 18, or 21, which was to not have my age matter anymore (besides Melisa, Lauren, and a handful of other girls I've known since Jr High every single one of my good friends are at least two years older than me, most of them about five, it's been this way with all groups of friends I've had) and have my age validated in the eyes of the law; be able to drive, vote and drink (three things that very important to me). I just want to leave this entire gloomy year of being 21 behind me. It sounds like it was all extremely depressing, and it wasn't, but I look at it as a year of heartbreak and I don't want to be in that place anymore. I always divide up my life by how old I am, it came naturally in categorizing the school years and summers because my birthday is in August. The year of being 12 was an awakening. The year of being 15 was a metamorphosis. The year of being 16 was first love and first heartbreak. The year of being 18 was becoming my own. The year of being 20 is too delicate and hopeful and a million other things to really speak of or even categorize yet. The year of being 21 has been dark (with random bursts of sunlight thanks mostly to Melisa and The Pajama Game). So, in keeping with my Declaration of Ignoring (see previous entry) I am making a second declaration, which is that since April 25th I am labeling this few months of my life as Twenty-One and Three Quarters. I'm in the light for the first time in what feels like forever. I told my mom a few days ago that if someone told me a year ago that it would take a year to finally feel like myself again I don't know how I would have been able to deal with it. I truly feel like a darkness came over me and clouded my senses. You can call it depression, sadness, loneliness, whatever. They tend to come altogether. Some people have a predisposition for melancholy and I know I'm one of those people and I know that I'll deal with it again and again in my life, but the whole point is that I'm not drowning now, I'm floating and feeling the sun on my body and it is glorious.

I took this picture yesterday and it captures I feel lately:

K

Today I decided that I am ignoring my broken heart. I no longer have the need to feel it all out, to open my heart to every single emotion and memory and dream that never materialized, to examine every aspect of all the events that transpired in the past x amount of years. I am metaphorically bandaging it together, putting make-up over it, and trying to forget it. And (to keep the metaphor going) hoping it doesn't get infected but just heals while I'm focusing on all of the fun days I've had lately and the fun days to come. I felt Melancholy come over me today and felt my entire body and soul start to shift to sadness, but then I had a thought that I would just ignore Melancholy, pretend I don't see or hear him. So instead I thought about how much fun it would be to throw a Mid Summer's Night Dream party this summer and if I was going to practice riding my new scooter later. So that is my new tactic. I'm not dwelling on my heart, not thinking about my sadness or lonliness. I'm thinking about my sisters, friends, my puppy, and the sun. Wherever it is (Seriously, Washingto? Seriously!).

Amor
K

I just don't think I'll ever. Get over you.

Sometimes it comes like a tidal wave. I was sweeping at work, sweeping, and out of nowhere it's a message being sent through wires in my brain. "He's not here anymore. Stop. He's gone. Stop. That beautiful red headed boy. Stop." I remember every day that he's not walking this earth, that I'll never see him again. In the two and half years it's become a thought I carry with me always, but every so often it's a gong someone hits right next to my head and for a few moments it's all I can hear and see and think and understand. And I miss him, I miss him more achingly than anyone else because even with him or him (both of whom I do not see ever speaking with again) there is that thought, that possibility, that somewhere down the road (be it decades, after marriages and children and everything else) we could get coffee and express a mutual, heartfelt, appropriate love for each other that is too buried to possibly express healthily right now. But I know that I will never be able to see his face, feel his presence, hear his ridiculous jokes, shoot some meaningless shit, see him disappear into the night on his bicycle, all of the million other things that made him so uniquely himself. And this sense of loss, this missing of a being, drowns out all other feelings of loss and takes over all the songs, all the lyrics written for someone who isn't around.

And I am terrified at the thought of losing anyone else. There are people I haven't spoken with in years, but knowing that they are breathing, walking, talking, laughing, crying, feeling somewhere is a comfort and it would be very hard for me to exist in a world where they don't. I believe in Heaven and Hell. I believe in judgment. I believe that once someone passes from this world they go to one place or the other by one definite law, and before I find myself eternally perfect, as close as possible to God and completely fulfilled I will be completely, staggeringly and heartbreakingly aware of the fact that several people who I love fiercely I will never see again for all eternity. And there will be accountability, which swerves into another topic (or sub-topic) entirely. (Hardly)Suffice it to say, I miss him I miss him I miss him to the most extreme extent of the word and it broke over me again suddenly on Saturday, the healing scar was ripped open and the wound is burning still.

K