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encephalitis.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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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.
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
stop ruining autumn.listen:

fall makes me think of leaving and of apple cider, though i never liked apple cider.
but i liked the idea of it.

listen:

two years ago i met a boy as fragile as dead leaves, who called me his little spring girl. (i'd always liked autumn the best.) he kissed the two soft dimples on the small of my back and told me helikedme helovedme hewantedme.

and oh, by the way, "everything good must come to an end."

listen:

on our one year anniversary we picked out two pumpkins and i drew elephants on them for us to carve. he cut his out so aggressively that it lost its shape.
lopped off tusks and broken trunks became just a large, jagged
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
numbit is two o' clock in the morning and i can't sleep. or i sleep too much. one of the two, and the pills make three. they stew and burn the back of my throat; the chemicals dissolve and form words.

the medical literature didn't say anything about that. or the numbness in my arms and legs. the tingling has crept up my right leg for the past week, weaving itself between my toes and nipping at the back of my knee. maybe it's a side effect, or maybe it's diabetes. or a blood clot. maybe my foot will need to be amputated, and i will have to hobble down the aisle for our wedding.

he coughs beside me, still fast asleep, and i touch one of his eyebr
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
serbian mermaid.in five years i want to move to georgia
or serbia or atlantis and start a family,
name my children after odd numbers
and teach them russian lullabies and
the art of manipulating those you love.

in five years i want to marry you, but
i don't know if you like odd numbers,
or even if you like me all that much.
maybe you'd like me if i tell you
that i'm a mermaid, but i'm not
and you can always tell when i am lying.

in five years i want to be seventeen,
but wishes don't work like that.
i tried.

in five years i want to be on a plane
and i want the plane to crash
into the ocean and i want everyone
to be okay except me, but if i w
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numbit is two o' clock in the morning and i can't sleep. or i sleep too much. one of the two, and the pills make three. they stew and burn the back of my throat; the chemicals dissolve and form words.

the medical literature didn't say anything about that. or the numbness in my arms and legs. the tingling has crept up my right leg for the past week, weaving itself between my toes and nipping at the back of my knee. maybe it's a side effect, or maybe it's diabetes. or a blood clot. maybe my foot will need to be amputated, and i will have to hobble down the aisle for our wedding.

he coughs beside me, still fast asleep, and i touch one of his eyebr
no one warned the little girlssometimes you will fall in love with
the hands or with the jawline, not with
the penis. watch out for boys whose eyes
are rougher than their voices. little girls
love hard and fast, and it is a lie to say
that words will never hurt you.

kissing in the rain is not romantic. it's cold
and wet, and your nipples will be like pebbles
digging into his skin. he'll wipe water from your
lashes, and, if he is polite, he'll pretend
not to notice his thumb blackened by mascara.
later as he sleeps you will watch his lips,
unable to feel anything except your hair
curled damply against your skin.

when you were young, sex was strange
an
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

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throwing rocks.

:iconestallidos:

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.

i mean i do, though, it's called obsessive compulsive disorder and major depressive disorder and severe anxiety and a bunch of other shit that takes too long to detail, but i'm talking about the pieces insurance won't cover.

also fuck claire danes.

it's just like, when i close the door behind me i push on the doorknob six times plus seven plus seven, because shutting the door counts as one and then we're at three sevens. odd numbers.

people watch me do it and say "don't."
"i have to."
"no you don't."

oh.
i don't have to be sick but i am.


i don't have to watch romeo and juliet but i do. see, when shit got rough for juliet she made out with her dead boyfriend and then stabbed herself, but me? i just throw rocks and calculate my GPA. we all cope, and by "we" i mean everyone but me.

they say once in your lifetime someone comes along who you are absolutely meant to be with. like john cusack or some guy down the road or the person you're dating, if you're lucky. and they probably won't have obsessive compulsive disorder but they might, and maybe they will tell you that you don't HAVE to push on the doorknob twenty-one times, but you will. and it will be alright.

maybe you get it all wrong.

i got a lot of it wrong. choices, i mean. free will and shit. it'll fuck you up.
you'll choose lonely, throwing rocks at walls seven times and wondering why you have to pay people to teach you to be normal.

i hate windchimes, i do. and fucking claire danes.

i mean, i was babysitting this little girl the other day and she said, "do you know that disease that makes people have to finish things?" and my first thought was no, but why don't i have it? it would come in useful for writing essays.

only it turns out that she was referring to obsessive compulsive disorder and i said "yeah, i know it. i have it." she just looked at me all cockeyed and asked what it made me do. "count things, i guess. like the number of times my boyfriend's chest rises and falls and how long i can hold my breath. and i flick light switches or whatever." she looks at me like she almost understands and then is all, "so you know you have it? you know you do weird things? why don't you just stop?"

and the windchimes tinkled all dramatically.

i think someday i might run away. the crosswalks tell me to wait, wait, wait. i am not crazy, they are engineered to speak to people with mechanical voices. i was engineered to count things and throw up. i wonder what it would be like if i threw up all of my insides--better, maybe. worse, maybe. maybe, maybe.

i am so tired. if you offered me the chance to do this again, i'd pick no lonely and more pine trees.
:iconestallidos:
shamelessly imitating him and uploading text files that rot inside my computer.
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:icon914four:
Mood: Joy *914four Jun 5, 2012  Hobbyist General Artist
“The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web. ” - Pablo Picasso
Of late I've been writing a lot of scraps that aren't good enough to stand on their own but I don't have the will to try and fix them. Reading your post suddenly inspires me to try again. My wife claims I have OCD, but that's a whole other story.
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:iconkylaboo2:
Mood: Wow! ~KylaBoo2 Jun 2, 2012  Hobbyist General Artist
I have to ask, but is it you with the OCD, or is this written from another perspective? Either way, this piece is amazing. Everything I've read from you has been.
Reply
:iconestallidos:
~estallidos Jul 19, 2012  Professional Writer
it's me, to clarify. good question.
Reply
:iconxshiningxstarrx:
~XShiningxStarrX Apr 16, 2012  Student Traditional Artist
Oh wow, this is a lovely piece! I love how much of yourself you put into this and all the points you made really think! Especially "i don't have to watch romeo and juliet but i do. see, when shit got rough for juliet she made out with her dead boyfriend and then stabbed herself, but me? i just throw rocks and calculate my GPA. we all cope, and by "we" i mean everyone but me." I always feel like that, like I'm the only one who just doesn't get over it like everyone else-thank you for writings this, it really gave me some inspiration for my assignment tonight! :'D :huggle:
Reply
:icondqsstring:
~dqsstring Mar 25, 2012
I usually just lurk, but I related to this piece more then I am generally comfortable with admitting. I was just diagnosed about 3 months ago and I'm still trying to understand and feel... I don't know...less like I am the only person who gets it. Thank you so much for writing this because right now, I feel like someone else does too and that is really comforting to know.
Reply
:iconestallidos:
~estallidos Mar 26, 2012  Professional Writer
:heart:
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:iconyagamiseven:
~Yagamiseven Mar 23, 2012
I love the energy that is in this
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:iconestallidos:
~estallidos Mar 25, 2012  Professional Writer
thank you so much :heart:
Reply
:iconyagamiseven:
~Yagamiseven Mar 26, 2012
I especially like the last line of this and your welcome
Reply
:icontheparanoidinsomniac:
~TheParanoidInsomniac Mar 21, 2012  Hobbyist General Artist
This is just... so easy to relate to...
Reply
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