daisy's last poem

It was with eloquent larceny that he
gained my eloquent heart.
He snuck inside with pernicious claws,
easily removing my brain and beating organs,
replacing it with liquid nitrogen and venom.

That first kiss felt like riding through
a carwash, locked inside
a phantasmagoric dishwasher of colors.
But all of my paint chipped clean away,
leading to a final kiss of lead and decay.

via *

7.5.2015

The last elephant died in a zoo in Arizona, across the street from the dental office specializing in incisor implants and Novocaine overdoses. She stared across the street as ten men tried to push and pull the elephant onto an oversized stretcher while she felt her hands play inside the sandy blonde hair of the man in the chair. He let his deep set eyes finally rest under her touch, closing the lids over the murky waters hidden inside of them. The mountain range extending from his nose to the purse on his lips was too delicious to leave untouched and she let her fingers wander between the valleys and hills.

"She cried for months before she died, didn't she?" He asked.

"She needed attention. Nobody wants to die alone even when it's for the best that they do."

"I want to die right here." He was nervous. The blood in his veins shook when the needle went in and began to pulse to where she attached the other end to the center of her heart. They shared grief and blood and the death of the elephant. Their blood spooled back and forth between them as the elephant was dragged away.

via *

These Words are Nice Enough to Leave Scars

I've been very brave recently. 

And you've inspired all of it. You're beautiful. You're pure. You're hurt in all the right places and golden along those scars. 

I'll never paint you, but I'll write you time and time again. I'll make your paintings jealous by how much I have to say.

via *

hot summer nights

My heart is made of summer nights,
that crushed velvet violet tye-dyed
with wisps of hot pink ribbons
cutting across the surface.
It sneaks up on you and then
presses down on you entirely,
imprinting itself much deeper
than you'd realized.

But once you notice it,
that violet fades to tender blue.
That's where you live in my heart.
You live where ocean breezes and
oil paints cascade in summer
nights framed in silver and gold.
You live where that blue never
burns out and winter never
eats those nights alive.

My heart is made of summer nights,
and those nights were made for you.

via *

cookie cutter

Weeks of rain led to dripping lightning
and sugar cookies, lovely with roses.
He smiled and my heart bloomed;
I owed myself some bravery.

I organized my words like the outline
of a puzzle, working to connect the
skyline before the center can become clear.
Truth tastes better dipped in tea.

His fingers spread across the table top,
I ached to join mine with his, create
a paper doll chain of two before his hands moved.
The cookie remained uneaten, the tea growing cold.

Deeper words came flying out as
he watched the crumbs on my plate,
licking his lips as I dipped my finger
from the frosting to my teeth.

The broken cookie broke his heart
while mine finally unloaded.
The past was long, full of twists.
I needed more time to make mistakes.

I needed to earn someone with a soul of silver,
lips I imagine taste like sugar crumbles
to match the rosebuds that
grow on my cupid's bow.

Again I've said too much, fingers
typing faster than thoughts can fly.
working to close the gap with every word.
My life has never been cookie cutter perfect.

But I'm willing to wait.

the daisies

I shut the light off and bathed in the dark. I let the black velvet water come to nearly the top of the tub until only my neck and head were left uncovered. The music that was playing embraced me like you never did, seeping down through the water and sliding across my skin. It was like an underwater cathedral in my darkened tub and my body was the altar, finally learning to praise itself again.

When the humidity finally loosened my cough, I coughed up the daisies you planted carelessly along my heart. They were bright and sick and smelt like lies. After all of this, I have learned something after all. Don't trust the daisies; they keep poison in pretty packages.

via *

there was a boy

His quiet intelligence simmers just below his clouded and curious eyes, eyes that have seen and hunger to see more. Eyes hungering for the feeling of true connection and more than a shared cigarette at the last call of a bar. He knows he is intelligent, he has worked for it, but for reasons unknown he masks it in jest and drink. But the moment you get him alone, feel his hands gliding across your arms and feel the blood pulsing through his deep veins, you feel his mind pressing through the insecurities. The mind of a true artist; someone gentle, kind, protective, passionate. A silken pompadour sits on top of a quizzical brow, always seeking to be inspired, brows that move up and down to an unheard melody of a song only he can hear in his heart. How can this boy not know how truly grand he is without the input of others? How can he be so nervous when he could be so great? Youth will fade to experience and he will soar and we will all be lucky to have had his hands upon us.

His mouth requires pause. It’s like whiskey. It’s deep and you feel it in your knees when you look at it or taste it too long. His tongue wisps at his teeth, framed by full lips, wisps like a string of smoke sneaking out as they part. With your thumb pulling pouting lips to parting, you know how it would feel to have his mouth on your rib cage, piercing through your skin like scissors through tissue paper, forcing the breath right out of you. His skin is smooth and firm, the skin of a breath of fall air and moonlight. There’s nature and grace and beer and musk, a will to prove himself, a will to succeed, a will to feel everything the world can offer him. It’s an old soul and a young heart, a mind on Neptune, and lips on mine.

via *

drifting

With his name resting on my tongue and images of a night soon to come on my mind, the city lights drift by as the melodies brush through my hair. The car drifts cooly and we laugh together, laughing with the comfort of close friends and knowing we are young and beautiful and strong. We know we will cry, we know we will be hurt, but tonight in this car, nothing hurts and there is nothing but hope and stars.

via *

charm and fury

The lake was lovely, dark, and deep, the promises promised in Robert Frost's poem lurking somewhere just below the surface. They were tangled in the water lilies and spread with the algae on the slimy surfaces of the stones that created a mosaic on the floor. A gentle hand found my gentle waist, an ever softer fingertip rested against my parted lips. I could taste the memory of your tongue on mine. I could feel your hand pulling me closer and tangling in my dress as you kissed me. We were so young, my darling. So young and out at midnight sneaking onto private lakes to skip stones.

You were cigarettes and moon dust. You were charm and fury and mine. You spun me round and we stood facing the lake, standing together and pressing our bodies together until the only barrier was the air. Hands clasped, we skipped stones caked in neon across the water, your voice whispering snatches of old tunes into the curve of my neck. The stones pulsated on the lakebed, a beating heart of the Earth, the beating heart of us. In our now frozen and forsaken town, the heart is beating too still, too faint for the ears of strangers. With you far from me, and I in my bed, I still feel our hearts combining and diving below the murky depths of the past.

via *

the smallest memory

People say I'm romanticizing you and making you better than you were. They remind me of your shortcomings. But I just keep reminding them of your dusty blonde hair and how it stood straight up in the morning. I'd brush it down while you made french toast and hummed softly along with the playing music. You told me we could stay in bed all day long. You'd cook us french toast and we'd pick at it all day and nap together and read together and make love. I wrapped my arms around your waist and could smell my perfume glued to your shirt.

I'm not romanticizing you. I'm trying to romanticize the pain of missing you. Make it into something beautiful. Meaningful. Not the toxic emptiness that spreads like cancer from stomach to heart to bone.

via *

a visit

Cemeteries are playgrounds of names and stories all ripe for the picking. I’ve walked through many cemeteries in my day and always spent more time jotting down names and piecing together ideas for stories than mourning my losses, facing a hunk of stone that is now supposed to be a place holder for a spirit that is gone. Crossed over. Vanished. But this cemetery, this headstone, her headstone, I know her story already. I cross back into it every time my car finds its way back down the familiar path toward the tree she rests under now. Even when I’m a few streets away from the cemetery entrance, I turn my music off and let the wind carry me forward. Maybe I’m afraid of silence and that’s why I need a constant stream of music. But in this place, I feel silence pressing in and I want to be alone with that fuzzy sound it has. 

My aunt died tragically. She was fine on a Monday and by Wednesday evening she was gone. Nine hours later my uncle, her brother, followed her into death. Unrelated. Both cancer. One known, another a sneaking viper that took her heart before mine had time to handle the break. I’m not a religious person but I always feel her at her headstone. I feel the eyes of all of these names watching me as I write them down in my notebook for use in my stories. But I feel her entire being at my back as I clear off the lighthouse on her grave. She was always so connected to the world around her and to her own mind. The borders people normally had didn’t seem to block her from knowing more than seemed possible. And now with me in ratty jeans, her beneath my feet in a white gown no doubt rotting and tarnished, but really her at my side, I feel light in my head for the first time in months. I see her opening a door and releasing pressure from my mind. 

All the names I’m seeing around me seem bigger than they should. Bourne. Blood. Killpack. Holding. Holding onto what? The decaying flowers sitting above your skulls? Born into what? The secret world we all want a peek into but that we are all dying to avoid. This cemetery is drenched in history and memorials. A marble angel stands guard over its child corpse, an angel that would turn from lovely to fearsome in the moonlight. A sand blasted headstone stands not even two feet tall for Millie Clair next to my great-grandfather’s headstone. Born October 20, 1891. Died February 12, 1892. Her headstone has a tree stump and a lonely little dove. I can see her blonde curls, pure as the dove’s wings. Next to her headstone is a newer model. Decorated with a basketball carved into the stone, another actual ball at the base of the statue. Flowers overflowing the pots. Did Millie see this boy’s family leaving the flowers what looks like hours beforehand? Did her little heart break at a lack of visitors for over 200 years? I vow to bring her flowers next time I visit. Yellow like her hair. 

An amazing pyramid while I am here. I stand with my Aunt. Three rows away two gravediggers are finishing filling a new grave. They are smeared in dirt and decidedly less cheerful than the clowns of Hamlet, headphones bouncing around as they swing their shovels back and forth. A few rows behind them a casket sits on a pyre high above the ground, all guests having left minutes before my arrival. Two maintenance workers work at removing floral arrangements and throwing them back into their bed of their truck. A few petals fall into the hole beneath the casket. One worker curses as he stubs a finger against the wood. Is this what we have to look forward to? 

via *

desert pages

The virgin pages of this sketchbook

were deflowered by charcoal and 

graphite in the desert.

Sweltering stars bore into my

retinas, begging me- urging me-

to paint their sparkles onto her cheekbones.

I could smell her lavender moans

mixing with the juniper and sage brush,

the aroma growing stronger with

every stroke of my pen 

against the sighing pages.

Her flesh prickles when I tickle

beneath her earlobe; I tickle

the page, as smooth as skin and just 

as mysterious Just as new.

Just as supple as her.

Page upon page glows like the 

innocence that drips from her lips

as mine move across her thighs in 

even, moonlit paths.

With the silence pulling her out of

my fingertips, the desert grows

ever hotter like our fire kissed 

summer nights in June. 

Silence and pen strokes.

Howling and longing.

She'll breathe on these virgin pages

and I'll live drunk on her caramel curls.

via *

*Inspired by the words of an artist I know

leaking glass

I dreamt of you last night. You filled my darkening soul with the moonlight I remembered you bringing each midnight when the book fell out of my hands and your shirt became knotted in my palms. Your fist beat against my door and there you stood, shirtless like when you'd brush your teeth in the bathroom in the morning. The words pouring out of your mouth weren't words but melodies, curling ghostly fingers into my hair like a breeze curling around headstones. We pushed back onto my red fainting couch like we'd pushed against each other time and time again with bodies hanging off of each other.

Hands turned manic and hungry in the dream as we shoved on through each room in the house, your hand slipping down my skirt and hazy clouds troubling my eyes until they are leaking glass on your bare chest. How did we get here? How did we reach this world where only in a dream can I feel a goodbye leaving your lips and lodging in my ribs? I loved you more than that. You loved us more than that.

Seeing you in your new life woke your ghost up for me once more, let him wander through my door and letting him stain my bedsheets. That immediate and intense recognition at the bar hit me like the bourbon always settles in my kneecaps and makes me faint. If her cough syrup hair can soothe you more than my mocha strands, I am truly happy for you. Her soft eyes and curved chin, I can see they will fit perfectly in your palm.

via *

trimalchio

At the end of your dock,
at the end of your world,
what keeps you from jumping off?
What emerald lights your way home
on those velvet evenings when
you fall asleep on your own?

That will.
That fight.

The breaking waves inside your heart
that beat you on against the current
of your incorruptible dream.
That golden afternoon in her arms,
her blossoming beneath you, your world
bubbling into the modern as she breathes.

That girl.
That night.

She was everything and nothing at once.
She was money and fame and gold.
She was heart and soul, booze and jazz.
The honey of her golden curls bounced
as you bounced for her too,
her sunburned words cloaked in satin.

That love.
That light.

The shot rang like her voice but stuck
in your chest like hot, bleeding nostalgia.
The greatest of men fall
hardest of all.
Your ripple still pulses through the pool
of red, white, and blue.

via *

a calling of sorts

This was the second year that my dear friend and mentor Mr. Larsen, my once Honors English teacher and now friend, has asked me to come teach his Honors English classes about The Great Gatsby. And just like last year, this was my favorite day. This year even more than last year. These Honors students are truly spectacular. They were actively listening to me, they participated and talked with me (even in first period at 8 in the morning, something I can't even say I do in school), and they fought what I said and we came up with new ideas together.

Teachers, back me up on this. There is nothing at all in this world more encouraging and meaningful than when you see a light spark in a student's eyes based on something you've said. Seeing a moment when you say something that can have the power to fundamentally change someone is so incredible. Or seeing someone begin a lecture half listening and ending in rapt attention with a hand in the air, begging to share their ideas with respectful people who will listen to them.

This happened a few times to me today and my heart has never felt more full. I felt comfortable speaking to these kids, but of course there will always be a level of nerve in sharing something that is so vital to you, like this book is for me. And come on, it's High School. For some reason my desire to impress high schoolers has grown exponentially since I was actually in school. I wanted to look pretty so these kids would respect and listen to me. I wanted to seem cool and approachable. I wanted to be heard by the quiet kids who might not ordinarily speak.

I think I was. After each lecture, a good majority of the students came up and thanked me for coming to talk to them. One girl told me that I completely changed her opinion of the book, that she can't wait to read it again. Another told me that I was so funny and that I should come teach at the school. One said I had pretty hair and great style. "You're just so legit! You're so cool! I just looked at my watch and saw that the lecture was ending and got so sad that I couldn't stay and listen to you. Thank you so much for coming."

Teachers, after a day like this, do you go home crying? Because I did. These kids touched me so deeply in my soul and reminded me why reading and English and discussion of ideas is so important. It forges these amazing connections. I love sitting in my English classes and being able to talk freely with my instructors, knowing my ideas are being respected and heard. But being on the other side of that, knowing these kids are soaking up everything I say and sharing in my obsession and letting it morph into their own, is so so cool. Life changing really.

After the teaching was done, Mr. Larsen and I evaluated the day. I expressed my joy at how the day went and assured him I'd be back next year. I also said I hoped I never came off as pretentious or "holier than thou." What he said sort of amazed me. He said he could tell I was self-conscious about coming off as pretentious and that I would never need to worry about feeling that way. He said I had a natural gift for teaching and relating and being. I seemed honest and approachable and open. An expert, but an expert eager to learn and grow with my students.

And then I walked to my car and cried for the entire ride home. I think I've found a calling. I want to reach the world through words on a page and words hand delivered to open ears.

Thank you so much to these students for hearing me today and pushing me. Thank you to Mr. Larsen for being the single most lovely man I know, a true Nick Carraway and a stand up man. Thank you to every single teacher who has respected me and helped me grow. Thank you thank you thank you.

via *

4.16.14

The day I stopped hating my hips,
the day I welcomed these rosebuds
that had bloomed at my sides
was the day I heard the flowers dying.
She said they were flowers from
the day their love was spoken,
flowers that had fluctuated on
our windowsill for months,
volleying between life and death,
unable to water themselves
while she leaves, licking her lips
and showering in his name.

That morning they wilted,
parched and empty like my insides,
wounded, alone, beautiful and damaged.
Their hollow stems shake and flee
from the garbage disposal like I
shook from his vinegar words.

I speak to them in dew drops
and they beam against the window,
the symbol of another's love,
cradled by my hands.
The hands I wrap around my back,
just to remember what it feels
like to forget myself.
To remember what those undiscovered
curves and valleys have been
to my Magellans, I the only
native still standing in the
middle of the poppy fields
sweeping away the ashes
with gentle, open palms.

via *

to the artists

Let me be your muse.
Let me breathe inside your mind
and wrap myself in technicolor.
I want to drive you mad,
make paint bleed from your fingertips
and watercolors drip from your pores.
I want you to taste me as you dream,
Taste my aqua gaze,
my tangerine tongue.
Run your fingers through my hair
and sculpt every strand in clay.
I'll live in canvas and dance in marble.
I'll be your Nike, your Sistine Chapel.
Whisper my name to Van Gogh,
let Manet long to have me as you do.
Never let me die or fade.
Let me be your muse.

via *

be

Be open
Be fun
Be wild
Be free

I know these are all words you've heard
a thousand times. Believe me, I know.
But don't let them hang in the air like frozen
snowflakes on a translucent phone wire.

Be open.
Open to change, open to growth
open to forever and open to now.
Most of all be open to yourself,
being who you are meant to be,
who the world needs you to be,
who you are afraid to become.

Be fun.
Go out and breathe fresh air,
play on a swing set because
you can. Make jokes with strangers
and smile at them. Let them know
it's ok to laugh, it's ok to let go,
it's ok to have fun without apologizing.

Be wild.
Kiss a random stranger,
wear the shirt you feel best in,
even if your mother hates it.
Dance all night and sleep all day,
continue the dancing in your dreams.
Let your hair tangle in the wind.

Be free.
Be. Breathe. Taste the world around you.
Walk through a crowded place
without faking a phone call.
Drive until you reach the top of a mountain,
get out and become the king of the world.
Don't be ruled by the weight of your own body.

Be. Be. Be. Be.
Be unstoppable and never settle.
Never let anyone tell you not
to listen to a cliche. Never give
anyone the satisfaction of tearing you down.
You're better than that.
You're better than them.

via *

thirty dialogs bleed into one

Happy New Year, lovers. I was right about last night being wonderful, and incredibly surprising. Incredibly Surprising. In fact if last night is any inclination as to how 2014 will be, it will be crazy and surprising and beautiful and unexpected. I could use a bit of all of that in my life.

Last night I talked with my dearest friend for the first time in two years, and I get to see him today.
Last night I spent my new year with my James Dean and got my heart served to me on a platter.
Last night I went to bed at six in the morning after having my head scream for hours.
Sometimes there are just too many words for how you feel.

Today I feel settled. Excited. Scared. Anxious. I feel a lot of things. As it turns out, my life will never be uncomplicated. Ever. But I am surrounded by gorgeous people, inside and out. That's all I can ask for, really. I'd rather be constantly unsettled than bored and uninspired.

via *

The Book Thief

Some books transcend everything, don't they? They change the way you think. The way you write. The way you see the world. They change everything. It gets to the point where you feel incomplete without that book living on your nightstand staring at you every night. When you see other people reading the book you get jealous that they are spending time with your best friends among the pages, cradling the spine like you cradle those characters in your heart. The book has become so completely yours and so completely you that you simultaneously want to share your love for it and keep every single copy in the known world under your bed for yourself.

This is The Book Thief. The untouchable, perfect, heartbreaking, groundbreaking work of art that changed everything for me.

via *

I read this book for the first time when I was about 15. I was immediately pulled in to this world as I watched Death walk alongside these characters and sit by their side in the snowy streets of Molching, Germany. I was immediately in love. I had never read words like this before in my life. The way death described things. The way he saw the world. I wanted to stand with him as he told me his stories, to see the world in the colors he saw it in.

DEATH AND CHOCOLATE

First the colors.

Then the humans.

That's usually how I see things.

Or at least, how I try.

***Here is a small fact***

You are going to die.

I loved the voice Death had. The tired, dry, sarcastic wit. The love he feels for Liesel. For Rudy. For them all. Death's narration makes this book. The way he describes colors. Every time I reread this book I find a new description to love. The first one I underlined? The eyes of a dead pilot the color of coffee stains.

I've never seen description like this. It's an amazing feeling to pick up a book, not realizing how different you will be after you read it. This book changed my writing entirely. I began going description crazy and I saw the world around me twist and turn while I read some passages over and over again. I had never been so taken by a book. 

When I got to the last fifty pages or so, I slowed down. I had tears cascading down my cheeks and I felt like I would never be able to breathe normally ever again. It took me two hours to pull myself through that mountain range of rubble and I emerged on the other side tear-stained, exhausted, and wholly swept away. It still takes me about two and a half hours to read those last pages. Those are some of the most gorgeously brutal words I have ever read.

I've never felt so attached to characters. They feel like family. Because the author spends so much time letting you get to know these characters, you cannot help falling in love with them. He tells you stories that really have no consequence in the grand scale of the story. They don't move plot forward per se, but they make your heart ache for these people. Rudy with his lemon hair, Liesel's love of words and hours spent on the floor of a secret library, Hans breathing with his accordion, Rosa's hidden moments of tender love with Hans, Max sweating fear every hour of the day. Lord, I can't even type about this book without getting tears in my eyes.

This book gives me the most visceral reaction of any book I've ever read. I feel my entire body pulsing when I read it and when I even think about the words. If I ever feel the need to cry, I can think of a scene in the book between Max and Liesel and in seconds glass tears will fall. If I need a laugh, I think of Liesel and Rudy saumensching with each other in the school yard or along the Amper River. Even the name of my blog comes from this book. Liesel reports the weather to Max one morning so the hidden Jew can have a small taste of the sky.

"The sky is blue today, Max, and there is a big long cloud, and it's stretched out, like a rope. At the end of it, the sun is like a yellow hole..."

Max, at that moment, knew that only a child could have given him a weather report like that. On the wall, he painted a long, tightly knotted rope with a dripping yellow sun at the end of it, as if you could dive right into it. On the ropy could, he drew two figures- a thin girl and a withered Jew- and they were walking, arms balanced, toward that dripping sun. Beneath the picture, he wrote the following sentence.

***THE WALL-WRITTEN WORDS OF MAX VANDENBURG***

It was a Monday, and they walked on a tightrope to the sun.

via *

I've spent a lot of time thinking about why this book has affected me so much; enough to lead me to read it once a year, each year highlighting and underlining more and more of my beloved well-loved copy. (I would read it more but I physically and emotionally don't think I could handle it.)

I think at my core, I connected with Liesel and her love of words. Her inspiring, motivating, life changing dedication to reading and writing and taking control of her own world through words. The power of language is a theme that is so central in this book and that is also a big part of my own life. Nothing moves me more than the power of language and watching this little girl fall in love with words reminds me of myself discovering words and using them as a weapon, a crutch, an embrace, a friend. I see so much of me in Liesel. I see me in her feeling of displacement and her deep love for those she cares most about. Her quiet watchfulness and powerful soul. I love that little girl. 

I love all of those characters. I am in love with Max Vandenburg. Hans and Rosa are my second parents. Rudy. To quote Death:

He does something to me, that boy. Every time. It's his only detriment. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry.

This book kills me. This book steps on my heart. This book makes me cry. 

via *

I was so nervous when I heard this book was going to become a movie. Actually, screw nervous. I was livid. I was in my bathtub reading the book when I decided to look at Tumblr tags, hoping to find some pretty fan art. Instead I found a cast list and filming locations. My heart burst open. No, I thought, this is The Book Thief. Not the Movie Thief. Where will the words be? No. These are my characters. They'll have to leave out so much. No. No. No.

I remained furious for months. I got protective and angry. I didn't want people to start claiming this book that was my lifeblood as their own after seeing a movie and never holding these characters in their hands. I wanted the movie to be done right, to do justice to these words that are so ingrained into me. I didn't want people who I felt didn't deserve this book to be able to see the movie and cry. They don't know these characters like me, they don't deserve to sit and cry with me. They will cry because of the Holocaust, I will cry because I'll be watching my family and my heart on the screen. 

Then I saw the trailer. And lost it completely. It blew me away. I was crying within the first three seconds. I was so happy because it looked exactly like what I always pictured, but also different enough to let me keep my images of these people and places alive in my brain. I calmed down with being so militant about this book being mine. My perception of this book and the meaning I have assigned to it will always be mine and nobody will ever touch that. But now the world will see why I go so crazy over this. They will get to meet my loves. 

I am so scared to see this movie. If watching the trailers is any inclination, I will be a horrible sobbing mess the entire time. I went to a movie last weekend and saw the trailer for the first time on the big screen and immediately started weeping, much to the embarrassment of my sister, brother in law, grandmother, and fellow movie-goers. My mom flat out refuses to see the movie with me because I won't be able to stop crying throughout. That's alright, I'd rather brave it alone. 

This was a whirlwind to write. I'm once again tear stained and exhausted; it's like I just finished reading the book. I love this book to pieces, with every beat of my heart and I am so happy to share my love of this book with you all. 

via *