rollerblades.

it's a Monday night and you're rollerblading down neighborhood streets with your best friend. the sprinklers are on and the street lamps light up your dark brown eyes you've hated since you can remember. there's eighteen days left of Senior year and you just figured shit out. and that's okay. and maybe it's taken you the past three years to figure out that you aren't compatible with football players. that he's been there the whole time. that you won't find him under the Friday night lights. the Friday night lights that blared your vision. and that's okay. you waited eighteen days before graduation to dust off your rollerblades. but they were in the damn garage the whole time. you're almost to the end of the street and now your breaks are broken and you're a little too far away from Featherbed Lane. and the sun isn't slowing down for you to make it home before dark. and it feels really shitty. because you forgot how much you liked rollerblading. and painting with crayola watercolor sets with the contaminated yellow. and having a low key crush on the class clown. maybe it took you those three years to come to a higher, better understanding of the 2006 you. the one with the dark brown eyes that someone might love someday. the kid that was there the whole time. and still is, and will be. even if she was the yellow tainted by winters that lasted much too far into March and dropped AP classes. but you look ahead and although the end of the street is unfamiliar, there isn't a glaring rhombus screaming 'dead end' in your face. there are untraveled avenues and you realize you've got your old Crayola paint set and a little bit of understanding in your backpack.

i want to hear a poem
an i need poem
an i bleed poem
an i breathe poem
a what makes you breathe poem
a what makes you forget to breathe poem
a song from your bones


i want to hear a poem
a poem about infestations in your imaginations
about the taste theirs lips provide
about the taste their lips provided*


i want to hear a poem
about the moment you discovered something you'll die for
about your resilience
about your great fear of shallow living
about how you make space for dreams


about how you weren't brave enough to say goodbye
how you'll never be
about the french phrase "tu me manques"


about things that have such an emotional charge for you, that you avoid thinking about them.
about how you wish eyes saw souls instead of bodies.


about who made you smile again.
about a craving so deep the ocean would be jealous.
about being mad and passionate,
but extraordinary.
about who makes you laugh that embarrassing, earnest, healing kind of laugh.


i want to hear a poem
about how your growing older, and your heroes are becoming more and more human right in front of you
about how now you understand why peter pan never wanted to grow up
about Neverland


i want to hear a poem about who you choose over and over and over
and over
who you keep choosing
i want to hear a poem


a poem about being homesick for heaven.
about the holes to heaven.
about how we're all just walking each other home.


i want to hear a poem
about how you're a work in progress,
and you think you like who you're becoming.


my poem is one without a rhyme
maybe even one without a rhythm
but one with a beat
a heart beat.

i remember.

i remember Christmas morning 2005

waiting for my parents on the top of the stairs as they ritually searched for the dinosaur video camera to film our reaction

i remember wanting to grow up

i remember my first pair of chuck Taylor's

i remember when I fell in the love with a paint set and a blank canvas

i remember the bonfires

i remember going down to the creek in our red rain boots

i remember memorizing how to spell Mississippi

i remember crossing my fingers on both hands at orientation that he would be in my second grade class

i remember always wanting to grow up

i remember my white first generation iPod shuffle 

i remember my obsession for uncle Jesse on full house

i remember fresh rain and the endless streets of Boston

i remember the boardwalks and the full moons and the blue cotton candy

i remember a world where technology didn't take over

i remember wanting to grow up

i remember when i wasn't grown up

when i didn't come home to college housing options on the desktop of my moms computer

when there was huge gap in between my two from teeth

when i didn't understand what it felt like to be broken

i remember

where your heart is.

where your heart is.

"if you want to know where your heart is, look where your mind goes when it wanders."
but i hate that
because hearts are unreasonable. illogical. hopeful. unrealistic.
they long for the taste their lips allowed.
the way your horizons met.
the way their heart aimlessly beats on the radio.

but that taste was lost months ago.
and your horizons will never fuse again.
and your radio blew out last week.

hearts.
they leave the door unlocked.
they leave the lights on.

love, it's killing me.
damn you, heart. why did my first grade teacher tell me you kept me alive.

one of the most courageous decisions i'll ever make is to finally let go of what's hurting my heart,
but i'm not brave enough to say goodbye, cause i don't want a new hello.

mother nature.

dear mother nature:

thanks for the cheesy cotton candy sunset after i lost my best friend on my drive home. it helped a little. thanks for making emerald green horse pastures that i believed rolled on forever as i grew up  in that little white farmhouse made of your wood. the honeysuckle on featherbed lane, its scent is still with me. thank you. thanks for flurrying on my street corner for my corny first kiss. i'll never forget how the snowflakes covered his eyelashes under the street lamp. thank you for your lightning. we watched it four hours on the porch and it sparked the best heart to heart of all time. thanks for the view of they valley from my room, the city lights that shine in my dark moments. actually, screw "mother nature" thank you God. thank you God for pouring rain on the nights my sleepless nights. i know you're crying with me. THANK YOU GOD.

single best invention of life.

  

the tragedy of life

is not that we die

but what we let die inside of us

when we are alive

be ashamed to die

until you've won

some victory

for humanity

the trouble is

you think you have time

"If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live."

Martin Luther King, Jr.

make space for dreams.

losing your freedom
the unknown
pain
disappointment
misery
loneliness
ridicule
rejection
death
FAILURE

 the mind fills with fears and leaves no space for dreams

make space for dreams

be a mermaid

have no fear of depths

and a great fear of shallow living

aim to be fearless

to be resilient

to be yourself

fear is only temporary.
regret lasts forever.
take the risk
or lose the chance.