Fifty Five

  

Im tired of the fleeting weather. Hot when cold is supposed to come home. You’re worth more than this, you know. More than cigarette ashes coating your glass table (the one your mom let you keep) more than crushed beer cans and terrible jobs at grocery stores no one shops at. I’m overwhelmed with the idea that we are more than this town. More than the dirty river we refuse to stop swimming in, more than blue blankets used as curtains and cheese sandwiches poorly made. We are fingertips, day dreams and heated discussions with your bedroom door locked. I found the key that you hid underneath the welcome mat. (Except it didn’t say welcome, it read go away) and ive slid it into place in its lock. Rusted and peeling, yes but still a perfectly good lock and a perfectly good door to push open. Behind it you were hiding. Behind it you were cowering below your parents expectations and the familiarity with endings of fresh beginnings. Isn’t it odd how beginnings,begin? Always unraveling at the ends of another. I want you to know this though. I’m rooting for you. Im rooting for your escape from this small town. I’m rooting for the dirt roads winding to the city, where you belong. Where we belong, buried deep in old library books and each other. 

Only searching for stars

If i had a set of hearts to give, I would point the bow and arrow at boys that want to kiss you back. Men would never leave their families behind in a condo the single-mother cant afford, friends would never whisper jokes when you arent around, babies wouldn’t stop breathing on their third day. The tide would rise to the perfect height and the moon would always be full; never hiding of herself away. Hungry girls wouldn’t cut themselves open and drown in their own rubies. Their mothers would kiss the wounds closed, tell them tales that will come true. They would never be found in a bathtub at two am, and put into miniature boxes in the ground with padding all around. They would weave stories together for the others to follow. And somehow they would make it out of the dark. 

 

Home. Piglet covered coffee mugs filled with tea before 11 am, cuddled up in floral blankets and sweet pups. Flower petals scattered across the carpet because it looks sweet.  Doors slamming at ungodly hours as others leave for work. Little whispers into pillows when your love calls too late. Laughing behind doors, at silly shows when you're too tired to realize it really isn't, that funny. Gentle moms singing old tunes in the shower, steam peering out from under the bathroom door. Nail polish, and lots of it. Sitting on the curb watching the boys toss a ball around. (They are so horrible at it) Favorite shows at the same times. They have been the same for years. Diet cokes and secret smokes in the evening. Vanilla candles and bedside lamps, dim for reading poetry when the world is asleep. 

What is home to you?

desperate and yearning

they always warned you about talking to strangers,

but they never told you about falling in love with the way

your strange, quiet neighbor reads on his rooftop

or how tears will pour from your eyes when youre watching

a love movie, desperate and yearning for it to

overtake you, or how one day you might want to

bring a blade to your wrists because you feel 

too much (or too little) They never told you

how it’ll feel when his fingertips are swimming

below your waistband or how to break up with someone

you once wanted to get married to.

We know not to take rides from strangers and all, 

not how to let a stranger bring your heart on a trip. 

     

"Summer is ending," the ruby leaves whispered to me, as I stepped outside into the un-expectant chill of the early morning. Last year, summer was filled with heated kisses, heated arguments and too many doctor visits. I drowned in it, really. And when it ended, I feared what that meant for me. What it meant for someone who was too sick to go to college like the rest of her friends, what it meant for someone who was surviving on deprivation alone. Alone, is what I really was. And now this summer is coming to a close. But it was entirely different than the last. Singing in spinning chairs at five am, with sweet boys creating mixed drinks with band shirts on and strangers whispering in dark corners, trying to get close. Late trips to burger king for fatty foods and not caring about its content, bodies moving fiercely on bare mattresses one after the other and kisses on foreheads as eyes fluttered shut. It was peaceful. It was the break I needed before the fall. And now Autumn has peered its head through my window, waking me up. Bringing me back to reality. Shaking me from my willowy dreamland. 

School begins in September. I have about two weeks to gather the notion of sleeping in my own bed, with no mommy or boyfriend or brother and sister to call on in the night if those terrors crept up again. I'll be in a dorm, in the almost-real-world for young adults. By myself with a too clean roommate and a bathroom all to myself and empty hangers that need cashmere hugs. I am awfully afraid but so ready to dip my toes in.