[x]

throwing rocks.so i want to grow up and get a job and make happy, make money, make forget. i can't though, i'm too concerned with windchimes. i mean, fuck windchimes, right? i lie awake at night and listen to rigs on the rumble strip and the windchimes, (mostly the trucks), but damn, the tinkling is enough to keep me awake all night. but sometimes not, and then i dream i drown or maybe i marry a serial killer who props up corpses in rocking chairs or sometimes i dream about my ex-boyfriend's little sister because why not. then i wake up and it's taxes and credit cards and grades and people dying and shit.

and windchimes.

i don't know what is wrong with me

waiting.he has been there for so long that the girl sometimes wonders if he is part of the beach, if the seaweed and shells fuse themselves to his ankles at night and grow over his browned legs like ivy. he is always still, so still, eyes focused on something distant in the waves that the girl can't quite see, though she tries. the man has a face like a creased paper bag and she finds herself wishing that she could see inside his head.

she watches him all day from the corner of her eye but no one ever joins him in his vigil. he is alone in casting shadows that grow longer and longer as the sun sets. the girl wonders what it is like to be so alone an

the soccer game.the thing is, i need
the deer to mean something.

-

i go to the soccer game and smile
and nod while something furious
inside of me is screaming.
a deer appears while the sun
is setting and it's like a scene
from a movie: green grass and gold rays
that spread out, tingeing our feet
with one last bit of wednesday.
everyone watches the deer and makes
noises of appreciation and i look
around and i think to myself
"okay, this is it, i am happy."

-

the deer is watching me and i try
to decide if it's a metaphor.
i want the deer to be death, see,
to represent fucking or blacking
out or apathy or loneliness.

someone does something

Thank You, Slater.I used to go to the nearby campus coffee shop in the early evenings, armed with a pen, a blank notebook, and writer's block. The sense of loneliness was unspoken but well accounted for.

I always shared coffee-counterspace with the same boy, who never smiled or talked and who had a penchant for bedhead and argyle sweaters. He liked to lean back on his stool, balancing precariously as he read novels, and I liked to pretend I wasn't watching him watch me. We coexisted in quiet companionship, thrived quietly under fluorescent lighting which sometimes caught his thick-framed glasses.

His novels changed while my notebook remained the same; his do

Fourth of September.1.

I am writing a poem about my birthday and candles and alcohol and dead people.
And how I have a really good imagination and every time I walk by that stop sign I see the car slamming into her and spreading her across the asphalt and every time the lights flicker I imagine his brain swelling against the confines of his skull and every time I walk in the front door I am reminded that my baby brother is dead.

And balloons.
I am writing a poem about balloons and dead people.

2.

It is the fourth of September and I am full of longing. I want bare knees and raw elbows, untied shoes, green grass that bites into the tender palms of my hands.

heart crossed.

"who's that kid?" i ask, pointing at the boy whose hair cannot decide if it is red or gold. he holds a basketball in his small hands, bouncing it, once, twice, before putting it through the hoop in a perfect arc.

"james," the counselor responds, and leans closer. "he's a foster kid, you know."

i don't know.

the boy turns at that moment and catches me watching him. unthinkingly i form my thumbs and index fingers into a heart and flash it at him. he nods to his teammates and leaves the court, climbing the bleachers to where i sit.

"did you see my shot?" he asks.

"yes." pause. "i'm kelsey."

"i know," he says, and runs back to his game.

at

fog.have you ever driven through
a fog so thick that you can part it
with your fingers? a fog so dense
that you stick your hand through
the car window and watch it disappear?

these special fogs press
heavy on your eyes and ears,
fill the dips of your collarbone,
quiet the murmurs living
inside your throat.

before i drove through this mountain
and through this fog there were bills
to pay and children to teach, people
i hated and people i loved. there were mental
disorders and electrocardiograms. fears.

now there is only the positioning
of my hands. a steering wheel. a whisper
in my ear that says "drive carefully."
a cliff a

march 24th, 2008.there is a chinese proverb that says your teeth will fall out if you tell lies.

i used to always dream my teeth would crumble from my mouth and lay glittering on the street like coins. i used to dream that the slightest touch jarred them loose, knocked them from my jaw leaving only swells of broken tissue behind. i used to dream of rivulets of blood streaming from the corners of my mouth, of thirty two pieces of myself lying naked on the ground, thirty two tooth fairies that would never come. i used to dream of screaming.

"you know," said my psychology TA, "to dream of losing one's teeth is very common. it typically means that you're concer

thirteen ways of looking at--one crow sorrow
two crows joy
three crows a wedding
four crows a boy
five crows silver
six crows gold
seven crows a secret
that has never been told.

---

i suppose my secret is that i never told him that he is a blackbird.

he is all sleep-crooked eyelashes, dark and glossy, and his wingspan
is over seven feet long which seems big enough to pull down the sky.
i could tell him about birds as cliche symbols but his mouth is forceful,
his body is warm and needy and there is no room for literature in bed.
my hands flutter needlessly against his shoulders and i hope
i am a bird of paradise but in truth i am no bird at all.
i gue

telling a sad story backwards-17.

it smells like grief and sterilized metal.

i climb into andrew’s bed, though the nurses have strictly forbidden it. he closes his eyes and holds me tightly, because he says when he can’t see me, it is easier to pretend i never happened to him.

15.

he pushes the cart aggressively down the aisle, pretending to mow over old ladies doing their sunday shopping.

"stop," i say giggling, lobbing a can of ravioli at him.

for a moment i think he simply didn't see me throw the can; it glances off his chest and falls to the floor, exploding in a pattern of red arrows. i don't notice his eyes rolling back in his head or the graceful wa

Riding BikesGoing off medication is like riding a bike.

The doctor holds tight to my handlebars and lowers my dosage. The training wheels are off, and oh hey, look at me go! It's like flying but not, and I'm doing so well but then there's a horrible accident and I'm somehow upside down at the bottom of the sea with both wheels still spinning.

"Help," I say, and my doctor pats my head, puts a band-aid on my knee, and writes a note on my chart.

I've balanced by myself for months at a time, but I always end up hitting a fucking tree or falling off a cliff or something equally catastrophic because I am a catastrophic person. Except that is an exaggeration

the perfect strangershe misses colin the most at night, when, waking from nightmares, her hand reaches out into the darkness for someone who is no longer there.

-

an unexpected message flares briefly on her screen, long enough for her heart to drop into her stomach in surprise—her ex-boyfriend's little sister's ex-boyfriend? sighing, she types a hello and strains her memory to recall what she knows of this boy from their one brief meeting. his name is aaron. tall. shaggy bed-head hair. sleepy hazel eyes. she lightly touches the keyboard, entertaining the notion that other people might feel as lonely at night as she does.

"tell me a secret," she types to

paper cranes and picket fencesi am folding you one thousand paper cranes because it is all we have left.

legend says that if i fold one thousand paper cranes, i will get a wish. i could wish for a pair of iridescent wings or an ocean in a teacup or just to finally be happy again, but i don't want any of that--with every crane i fold i am imagining you. one crane for the circles under your eyes, one crane for your jutting ribs, one crane for every seizure.

i love you and you're dying and i will run out of paper trying to fold your broken pieces into birds.

-

you drew me a picture of us in the future.
our houses were next door to each other and a white picket fence sep

ask the butterfliesdear girl,

i have a brick house with old wooden floors. vines grow up onto my porch and i sit, thinking i can watch them grow. i have white stone paths that lead to my front door, made of old, heavy wood. the cherry blossom in my backyard sometimes reminds me of you - your bright eyes and gorgeous skin. sometimes their flowers are scattered across the yard; flecks of pink and white on wet green grass, just like your mind - scarttered but still more beautiful than ever.
the doors in my house creak when opened, and i don't own a comfy couch or matress. my porcelain teapot is covered in small, blue floral patterns and flowers grow on my window

sticks and stones.broken people like to write poems about how they are broken.
they like to turn people into words because no one's heart
has ever been punctured by parentheses, but by god it's not
for lack of trying. in a poem, broken people can have hangnails
and they never have to brush their hair because the tangles
symbolize the time they lost their virginity and there are no mirrors
unless they write about one and force themselves to look into it.

-

broken people also like to use cliche metaphors
but that is okay because when you are broken
sometimes cliche metaphors are all you have left.

"i am a rose and you think i'm beautiful so you

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trilobite.look:
don't ask me to prove to you that evolution is real,
because i lost the notebook with the proof written
out in pen. i could try to sum it up for you anyway,
about how i didn't used to love you and then one day
i did and how whales used to have legs.

also i was once a flower or a seven year old
and my hands didn't know how to hold yours
or how to draw sunsets and make sandcastles.

evolution was you one year ago saying i was perfect,
that i should never change myself for anyone.
now you say that you are trying to fix me,
which means that perfect things could always
be trying harder. and that's evolution.

i'm tired of my hair

interstate 81.there's a metal star that is wasting away on a hill overlooking interstate 81. it blends in with the surrounding area; you can't really even see it unless you know it's there.
and no one does.
i like to think that it is a signboard from god, and i make tiny little prayers on it. my religion is in curling wires and burned out light bulbs, and my lord is the same colour as the sky and the treetops. honestly, i believe that rusting metal has as much a chance as anything for inspiring faith.

there's a deer lying broken on the side of the road. it's sprawled in a shallow ditch with its four legs splayed awkwardly, hooves plowing tiny furrows in

being in love.it's like when you were five, when your pet rabbit died
and you learned that nothing good lasts.

it's like the time you dropped him off at his house to watch tv
before you drove yourself to the emergency room, sobbing.

it's like the first time you saw your kindergarten teacher cry.

it's like ring around the rosie, a pocket full of posies, ashes. ashes.

it's like when he went too far, and he said, "is this okay?"
and you said, "no," but it didn't matter.

it's like when he said, "but i want you."

it's like the number seven, or rubies.

it's like when you almost drowned in the pool in north carolina
and when you looked up through the

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encephalitis.

by ~estallidos, Apr 30, 2011, 5:08:16 PM
Literature / Prose / Non-Fiction / Biography & Memoir / Stories & Vignettes

she asks, "is it weird to have one day where you really intensely, for no good reason, think of a dead person?"

-

the intercom was the one to announce that his body had finally given up. i don't remember what i was wearing that day, or how my hair looked, or what noises fell out of my mouth. death has dulled the sharp edges within me. this is what i do know: some people burst into tears and some people sat frozen and pale and some people simply got up and left the room.

"are you okay?" someone asked me, and i found that i was lying on the floor, though i couldn't understand how i'd gotten there. the overhead lights were buzzing and humming, or maybe it was just my heart. confused, i sat up quickly and let the blood rush to my head in one glorious fell swoop.

"are you okay?" they asked again, and i said yes, yes, i am okay. i am alive. i have to be okay. the linoleum is still cold against my cheek and i can still see i am alive i am okay i am okay i am okay.

but sometimes i wish i had told them no.

-

i keep tally of the dead and i never know whether or not those who are dead to me ought be included. or those who just are done with living.

-

(seven.)

-

"i am sad," she says, and i think this is the most apt way to describe it, the most poignant and true and believable words that exist for this.

"it's hard to know what's right anymore," she says, "perhaps you understand."

i do and i don't and i can't and my words catch in my throat and she speaks again. "i just wanna know that at some point in the future it's gonna be okay."

i am reminded forcibly of the announcement, of only being fourteen when he died, of the cool linoleum against my cheek, of all of the possible responses to, "are you okay?"

"it won't be okay," i tell her. "some people weren't meant to be okay."

she pauses and i wonder if she, too, is struck with this enormous truth. "we weren't meant to be okay," i think of telling her, but i don't.

i wasn't meant to be okay, but these days i mostly tally the living.

and i'm okay with that.

encephalitis.by ~estallidos

Literature / Prose / Non-Fiction / Biography & Memoir / Stories & Vignettes

for justin, who never came back from the hospital. i'm sorry that my get well card didn't work.

love 3 3

~~joy 0 0~~

~~wow 0 0~~

~~mad 0 0~~

sad 2 2

~~fear 0 0~~

~~neutral 0 0~~

~Leuthy29 Dec 11, 2011

I'm sorry.

I'm glad you tally the living. It gives me hope.

~tiraluv Oct 9, 2011

i think it helps a bit. to finally be honest, break down and say "im not okay". your writing hurts and soothes me at the same time. thanks.

~KearaClearwater Jul 27, 2011 Hobbyist Writer

God, I'm crying.

~EsotericHeart Jul 13, 2011

_{oh you are gorgeous.}

~DanceWithoutYou Jul 11, 2011 Hobbyist Writer

Just grips my feeling although I haven't lost anyone... I've lost them in soul, so thank you for the blatant honesty.

~enamel-hearts Jul 6, 2011

I love this to peices... it really brings out a lot of emotions we usually keep hidden. And I agree with you; it's awful when someone tells you it's going to be okay. I'm sorry for your loss; it's terrible to lose someone close to you , isn't it~

~XxOver-The-EdgeXx Jun 30, 2011

_{my brother's name is justin....}

~guagna Jun 14, 2011 Student Writer

^{you have a heartbreakingly gorgeous way with words}

~ATPenergyforthesoul Jun 11, 2011 Photographer

the last line sums it up perfectly.
I have a drug problem and a fucking problem and everybody has problems every day, pain and suffering and one day we're all going to die.

and i'm okay with that.

thank you

~MirellaBailey Jun 9, 2011 Hobbyist Writer

It's an interesting read - I was struck by the last part, the bit about "we weren't meant to be okay". I think when something awful happens to us, the natural inclination is to just want to be okay... but often it's better to just say "it is what it is" and make some sort of peace with whatever must be.

Of course, I might just totally be misinterpreting the whole point of the piece...

I'm sorry, by the way, even though I know my apologies can hardly help. But I get how crappy it is to feel the way you did/do

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