ceramic skin

You had a penchant for breaking plates
when things got tough, you said.

Now remember staring across at me, through
the hope of candlelight, cradling promises
across to me on your lips.
You look like porcelain. milky skin;
soft. white. clean.

Now remember laying in my bed,
never quite believing I was real, you said.
Your tongue marbleized, crystallizing
around mine, melding me to you in
the most beautifully cruel way.

Now remember when your digital
secrets found me, even as my love
grew. Sharper than actions are words.
Sharper than the needs shaped like you
lodged into my ceramic skin.

Even then you were graduating to breaking porcelain dolls;
your specialty changing from plates to people.

via *

warning

Healthy raspberry scented flames burned
through the cathedral of his heart.
They whipped out and reverberated down
his spinal chord where she had touched him.
Her worshipping fingers were brought
to justice one by one.

With each tentative tip toe of her fingertips
down his spine, the flames grew hotter. Wilder.
Eager to eat her hands. She had selected this fate,
willing to let her fingerprints dissolve for the chance
to feel his heat. To pull him into her chest
until they both stood in cinders.

Passing from first to third degree in no time,
they stood in bewildered silence except for
their heaving breath. She would inhale,
he would exhale, curling smoke easing
back and forth in their dirty lungs.
The sin to her was worth the taste.

via *

all we can do is keep breathing

There are some words that just sound exactly like what they are. They taste like how they feel when they play across your teeth. Bite. Love. Choke. Breathe.

Breathe.

I'm the world record champion for holding my breath. I held my breath once for twenty minutes. Then I held it for five months. Then I held it for one year.

The ghosts stole my breath and replaced it with shattered glass that got caught in my lungs until I was exhaling blood where the carbon dioxide should be. Then I coughed out all the glass and picked up a pocket of air that was hiding at the back of my closet. I swaddled it like a baby and kissed its forehead. As I did, the breath found its way back in.

My eyeliner wings were blacker and longer and the breath had a faint air of raspberries and happiness as it caressed the world around it.

via *

if I lay here

"I hope you're old boyfriends tickled your back for you," he says and I can hear the pout playing on his lips. I shut my eyes and feel his chest rise and fall slowly, my ear pressed against his chest bone. I feel those first few pinprick tears starting to play around inside of my tear ducts and blink hard to push them away. Keep myself here in this moment, with his hands painting swirls across my back.

"I honestly can't remember the last time anyone tickled my back," I whisper towards the darkness in front of me. The dark is pixelated by the city lights peeking behind the blinds. The dark is made softer by the crooning records spinning endlessly and closing us into an insular world.

He pushes his lips softly into my midnight hair and inhales deeply. I inhale too, taking in every molecule of this moment. "That's a shame," he speaks, "your skin is so soft."

via *

bleeding out

Feel the pinprick in your heart,
right in the left ventricle. The sweet spot.
Right where he tattooed his fingerprints,
unspooling those swirls and winding them
down your arteries and nerve endings
until they were clouded in cotton candy
films of blood.

Feel the hole in your heart,
smaller than a needle tip begin to grow,
widening very slowly with every
shared word and photo, every fantasy
and dreamscape you share late at night,
picturing him thinking of you
with just as much hunger.

Feel the blood leave your heart,
cascading and dripping over your bones,
dyeing them like wine on carpet.
Dark red like his lips and the tongue
that lives inside his mouth-
aching for a vacation inside
of your mouth.

With no blood in your heart,
all of it pooling in your stomach and
the quivering area right below your
abdomen, try to breathe normally.
Wait for the blood to flow to your
extremities and to taste it in your mouth
instead of tasting him.

via *

climbing trees

I told you you were like a tree trunk as I wrapped my body around you like vines, every pore of my body shaking like quaking aspen. So solid and so big, dwarfing me in the best way. Making me feel so small with you looming over me, shoving me into the door frame and back on towards the bedroom. Both of your hands together fit perfectly across my waist, squeezing the breath right out of me only to breathe in more with your young, thoughtful lips.

When you climb into me, you ask me if I'm ok. And you mean it. That takes more strength than moving with me and taking feeling for yourself. If only you cared less, maybe I could too. If I could stop wanting to taste the breeze moving under your skin, right at the thinnest part of your flesh on your neck. If only I could stop wanting to feel you grow around me like a tree reclaiming what man tried to steal from it.

Self Portrait taken in Midway, Utah

What They Were to Me

A night of milkshakes and split latex.

A wasted wedding in all senses,

A tired and slipping drive home,

The smell of cigarettes buried in my hair

follicles, broken air conditioners.

Unanswered messages and easy

Conversations gone silent after

Confessions of President’s Day.

One night in summer snow watching

Deer skirt past the truck.

Casual coffee. Nothing serious.

Awkward movie nights with

Christ on the walls watching.

Wiffle balls and baseball bats.

Midnight walks in small towns.

Lost socks, broken shoes, laundry.

Broken ribs and suffocation. Suffocation.

A jacket shoved in the back of a closet.
A pot of flames burning memories
one by one, realizing how small he made me.

Moving forward. Drinks in bars.
Memories of two years of different men.
Different hair, different skin.
In my bed, my skin. And in the end-
I am better for it, even alone.

via *

drinking shocktop on the hill

The raccoons fighting outside of my window sound like children being lowered into vats of boiling water and the sound of this song reminds me of your face in my hands. The indent you left on the pillow and the smell that rubbed its way along me as I curled into the sheets on your bed. Over shitty diner coffee you come alive for me and I feel sixteen again with your name on my lips. The tears never dried and the rip inside of my vocal cords has never healed quite right after all of those lonely nights screaming into my blankets.

I told you once what you did to me. I told you of the six year marathon I ran to get to you. I told you everything and no one stopped me, even though they knew it was meaningless. But at least you know. You know I loved you and you know what you were to me. You were golden days and painful nights. You were tears never wasted and the reason for years of sad poetry. You were a novel waiting to happen that people will read and see you as I did.

Once you said you'd loved twice in your life and that I was one of them. That was a pretty lie.

via *

High Noble

I'm happy I've gotten to a point in my life where I can see couples and instead of being jealous and annoyed, I can look at them with hope and admiration. I cannot wait to have what they have, I think.

I cannot wait until a man looks at me like that.

I cannot wait until I find my person.

I cannot wait to feel the peace of having my soulmate by my side.

I cannot wait to feel love again.

I watch TV shows and movies now and when I see a couple in love, instead of thinking "I want that man with ME" I think "I am so happy they found each other. These two souls have crossed paths somehow and made a beautiful, complete relationship. (Note... there are some characters that do belong with me. cough cough Jay Gatsby cough cough.)

A lot of people seem to call this attitude foolishly hopeful, young, inexperienced. But you know, as young as I am, I have had my fair share of experiences venturing in to the storm clouds of relationships and love. I've seen smooth sailing, I've seen stormy seas, and through it all my little boat has managed to hit land and endure, a little cracked but still afloat. What breaks us in the world, what rips our strings until they snap is what makes us hopeful.

"I'm not saying that everything is survivable. Just that everything except the last thing is." 

- John Green, Paper Towns

I was talking again with the dentist I'm currently working with when he asked me about my family. I told him my parents were divorced and he asked me why their relationship didn't work. I was surprised by his question but I slowly answered "They were different people. It wouldn't have worked no matter how hard they tried, I think. I wasn't there. I can't know." 

His eyes softened a bit as he thought for a moment. He smiled a bit and finally said:

"I'm sorry for that. But you know, relationships take a certain amount of science. It's like fusing two metals. You can take two base metals, two ugly metals that don't belong and through fire and heat, they come together to make an alloy, a high noble metal with such great value. But first, they have to start out weak and broken and ugly. You have to be very broken to come together to form something beautiful. Year after year of being broken and torn down lead to the heat of another person and after being broken down some more with them, you become this beautiful high noble. You have greater strength and greater resistance. And it's because you have them with you."

Let yourself be broken, let the fault lines rip you apart. Feel everything, but don't be afraid to fall in love again. I have fallen in love four times in my life and after each time, I thought there was no way I could ever feel whole again. But each time I let myself fall again, I felt my faith grow stronger instead of letting myself lose hope. 

The more broken, the more beauty is locked inside, the more precious of a metal you become. 

via Tumblr
Quote is from The Book Thief <3

wasted daylight

Water color clouds bleed across

the azure page as your

thought inch up my spine

like ink.

The ghost of your fingertips

brush past my wrist,

down my palm,

nesting on my nail beds.

Do you remember?

Wasted days

sitting in twisted sheets,

sipping scalding coffee,

mussing my hair,

mapping your back

with eager hands 

exploring

learning

yearning.

The daytime 

sparks and scalds our skins.

so we stay in.

Huddled in each other,

until the moon called me home.

She wears your face now,

obscured by clouds,

she's made brighter,

as you made me. 

Irony, no?

Wasted time, enjoyed,

was not wasted.

I still waste daylight with 

you by my side. 

EmJ

via WeHeartIt

Based on this <3

Two Hearts

Enmeshed in each other,

violet eyes locked, 

your heart beating against my palm

Your scent lives in my lungs,

huddled into my chest,

hugged by my ribs. 

Em

via WeHeartIt

Mumford and Sons Wins

Have you seen the new Mumford video? Because it's a testament to how perfect they are. Just... Just watch this. I can't handle.

The best. But I miss this face.

via here

Get. Marcus. Mumford. Out. Of. Here. and in to my arms. What?

Also in an unrelated story, I started my first dental assisting job today. WOO! More words on that to come. 

Happy Monday!

On Love and Lola

I love when a book keeps you awake at night and makes you hold your breath because of how much you love it. I love when you root for a character so much that when they finally get something they want, you cannot help but shed a tear and smile like an idiot by yourself in a dark bedroom at 2 in the morning.

I love books that inspire me and make me want to read more and more.

I love books that make me want to write.

I love books that make me want to love.

I finished a book called Lola and the Boy Next Door a few nights back. It was the second book published by Stephanie Perkins and the second book of hers that I have read. When I read her first book, Anna and the French Kiss, I could not wait to get my hands on Lola. (I just reread that... I love the awkward. Apologies to any readers named Lola.) 

Perkins, man. Girl can WRITE. She is hilarious and pure and full of love and hope. Her books always leave me wonderstruck and ready to fall in love. She writes these boys... I just.... they are unreal. In Anna, the boy de jour is Etienne St. Clair. He's British, and also French, and also American. And also the most perfect specimen I have ever met. Read. Whatever I love him. In Lola, it's Cricket Bell. Adorable, awkward, excited, lovely Cricket. 

Don't you hate it when you read a book by an author and it's just so good that you cannot imagine anything being better? And then you go into every other book comparing it to your favorite, never imagining anything could top it. It makes it hard to get in to the other book. I walked in to Lola missing Anna and that world. Luckily for me, ANNA IS IN LOLA! AND SO IS ST CLAIR. And I loved Lola and Cricket enough without the other couple being there. I didn't think it would be possible for me to like a book liked I like Anna but man, Lola won me over. 

If you know me, you know that I'm not the biggest fan of the "chick lit" genre. I don't read a ton of books about girls falling in love with the argumentative but suave boy in her math class. I like my books a little bit deeper. But these books are anything but chick lit. They are so smart and so funny. Stephanie Perkins writes these strong girls who aren't chasing boys but seem to happen upon them, just like real life. Her boys are charming and perfect but they have secrets and burdens that humanize them, like real life. Her books are real, if you catch my drift. The characters don't meet and then hate each other and realize through a series of shenanigans that they are meant to be. They just ARE meant to be. 

Back to the writing for a hot second. Stephanie Perkins, if you are reading this... first off... I love you so much. Your taste in music is superb (GUYS she makes playlists on 8tracks for her books so you can hear what she heard while writing. Get her out of here. She is perfect.) Here is my question for you. How do you manage to write such romantic and sexy books without every ONCE being corny or cheesy? 

Never once during these books do I feel like the romance is forced or cheesy. The whole time I was reading Anna my heart was racing with anticipation and lust for those two to get together. During Lola, I wanted to cry from the beauty and delicacy of it all. It never went over the top, the words were never cliche. It was fresh and alive and heartbreaking. This sentence happened in Lola and I wanted to die:

Did you get that? Anguished. ANGUISHED. Can any word describe love better? It's deep and overpowering and it hurts. Being in love hurts in the best of ways. It's honest and so powerful. Stephanie Perkins gets this. Probably because she loves her husband more than anyone on this planet. Seriously. I've never seen a woman more in love with her husband, and I'm only seeing it through her words. Each dedication is to her husband Jarrod. Also, read the final paragraph of each of her acknowledgement sections at the end of the books. It's for him and it is so lovely and overflowing with love. Stephanie Perkins you are beautiful. 

These books make me realize a lot about myself and my writing. But mostly about love. I have been in love a few times in my life. All consuming love. But I don't think anyone has ever loved me back. I have been loved, I have loved, but never equal amounts simultaneously. These books make me so thrilled to find my one. They excite me and urge me to keep on loving, even when it seems in vain. They show me what that love feels like, that one love that tears you apart easily and carries you to the ends of the Earth. Love shouldn't feel forced. It should click like these characters do, or like Stephanie Perkins with her husband. 

I can't wait to feel that mutual anguish and honesty. I cannot wait for that day when it all clicks. I cannot wait to find my own St. Clair or Cricket. In the mean time, the books will have to do.

Everyone. Go read these books now.

And Stephanie, thanks again for your words. You are truly beautiful.

Logan

On Saturday Niki and I drove up to Logan to see a handsome friend of mine in Fiddler on the Roof at the Utah Festival Opera. All I can say is Logan is so gorgeous. It's one of the most picturesque places I have ever been. When you walk around the main street, it feels like you are transported back into the 1960s, walking around an All-American street. It's so adorable. And the drive up. Mmmm.

Someone buy me this so I can be on Mad Men

Niki and I love shoes. We have one pair that is the same.
We both wore them today. Best friends.

The inside of the theater was stunning. It was like being inside of an
old cathedral with exposed buttresses.

We really nailed that whole Lana Del Rey/ disillusioned American Dream angst thing we were going for with these two pictures. 

The show was amazing and the sights were better. Casual lunges (inside joke. Just... I can't explain it.) abounded and the night was topped off with screaming Bohemian Rhapsody at the top of our lungs on the drive home. Because really... you cannot sing that song unless you are incredibly serious about it the entire time. And if your best friend in the whole world is with you. 

Road trips are perfect things, everyone. Go grab your best friend and head to Anytown, USA. 

Dear Sir,

Hallo, sir. Today I came in to the spa you work at to redeem a massage coupon that has been gathering dust in my room for a few months. I received the certificate as a gift but have felt too guilty to use it. Then when the guilt went away I felt like I only wanted to use it when I felt like I deserved it.

Seeing as last night was the last night of my job and I will be finishing a program I have been working on for a year, it was high time I treated myself to a day of relaxation. You were very charming and so kind and even through the dim spa lighting, your eyes were bright and clear.

I was scared that the massage would be awkward; I was unsure if you were going to talk to me or if you did, I was afraid it would be stilted and bizarre. It was anything but. You were so personable and so driven. Your love of music was so inspiring and brilliant.

Thanks for talking to me about how much you love the little pure moments in music that everyone seems to miss. Thank you for telling me about your dreams to build the perfect guitar amp. Thank you for telling me you loved my name and telling me it sounds like the name of an author. That right there won you about 800 points.

It's people like you that make me love art and love creativity. Your soul was so connected to your hands and your hands were connected to your heart. When you started talking about your dreams for your music and electronics, I could feel the passion spilling from your hands into me. Thank you sincerely for sharing that with me today. Your passion is remarkable and something that is deserving of praise and love.

Passionate people are hard to come by. Even worse, passionate people who aren't afraid of their passion are hard to find. You aren't afraid of it and you embrace it. It's beautiful.

I loved talking music with you and talking about the horrible people who hit on us at our jobs. You're funny and sweet. Also cute. That too.

Let's go get curry sometime?

Yours,

EmJ

september orange

A gasp of sunlight pulls through

the September orange coating the walls,

curling with the winds and rains

of an approaching storm.

The eloquence of your heartbeat

grows stifled and changed,

enumerating your fears,

encapsulating them,

dragging you down.

A moment of grace deflowered by regret.

A breath of tomorrow exhaled by desire,

inhaled by reality.

Em

via Tumblr

To the Creeps

Dear Creepers,

You know who you are. You are the old guys who sit in the cafe watching me mop, hoping I'll drop my mop on the ground so I have to bend over to pick it up. You are the guys who come up to me in the cafe and offer to take me to Las Vegas for some "good times and cheap liquor." Sorry, sir. Busy forever. And no, I don't want to be friends with your daughter.

You are the guy who comes in for some free dental work and tells me that my surgical mask really makes my eye color pop. (I bet you say that to all the girls.)

You are the guy that makes girls have to ask their manager to walk them to their car. You are the guy who makes girls call their friends to come follow them home after work so you don't.

You are this:

via Fanpop

I feel like your parents taught you better than this. On one hand, I admire the crazy amount of confidence you have. I mean, you are nothing if not forward and persistent. But on the other hand, THE MADNESS MUST STOP. Yes, I like when men show an interest in me. But... I am also 21. You are what..58...63 years old? I know that age is just a number but... Unless you are George Clooney... imma draw the line here. If your mustache resembles any of the three above, or you start any sentence with "my last wife" or "This woman I dated when i was your age was just as spirited as you" I AM NOT INTERESTED. I'm assuming that it was YOU that broke her spirit because you gave her creepitis. Your creep infected her. And it's infecting my bubble. So. Away with you.

I don't know what it is about a guy turning 50 that makes them think they have the right to say anything they want about the way you look if THEY think it's a compliment. Guys: IT DOES NOT. You super don't have to tell me some compliments. I'll actually take it as a greater compliment if you keep that to yourself. If your compliments or date proposals start out with "My heart surgery last month went really well so..." Straight. Up. No. Nope nope nope.

Creeps, when you hear I have boy troubles, it doesn't help the situation to say that I deserve someone better, someone older who will only support me with my goals. "Those young boys are too wrapped up in their own crap and you need someone who only focuses on you." Really? Cause... I thought a relationship was about teamwork. Not you sitting and staring at me with a creepy grin on your face as I make your latte. RIDDLE ME THAT.

You never have the right to make a person feel afraid of where they work or of driving home. You don't have the right to stare down at my body as you sit across from me until I feel naked.

Creeps, keep it in your pants, keep your eyes to yourself, and NO I don't want to come to a yoga workshop you teach. Or come to the Greek festival with you, or to a new church your friend is starting.

Sincerely,

Every Girl Ever

PS. All of those stories/ references = 100% my life. What even is reality? What is my life?