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 *

checking in

Every word I'm trying to write feels contrived. Or maybe I'm just tired and stressed and a weird version of lonely that I am severely not ok with. Every metaphor feels reached for and foreign on my tongue. Then again, I doubt that it's new or fascinating that another twentysomething is having an existential crisis. But it feels important. It feels big. And I miss you. All of you. And I miss the words in my own head as much as I miss yours. I'm still here. The here is just very flexible and strange.

All the Songs and All the Stars are Yours

I have to kiss you. It's as simple and as complicated as that.

a prayer of inspiration

The wind is not nearly bracing enough tonight.

It's calming and balmy and chilly

while I sit here demanding hurricanes

and hail, the wind on fire coming to 

carry me away, to burn and to purge

with sandpaper skin sailing through my window.

I've tossed and turned in every reachable sea,

made my own oceans and drowned myself in them all

before the baptism could begin. 

It was a baptismal breath,

a barely palpable gasp into new being that

kept me clawing at the barricades

pushing me beneath the waves, into

catacombs crawling with spirits and spiders,

macabre reminders of dark days gone by.

The wind was silent then, is silent now.

It was lush and never lonely. 

It caressed and coddled

when I needed it to throw me down,

make me its rag doll.

Tonight, with the moon dancing in the breeze,

the jigsaw pieces meandering into place,

I'm craving destruction, the human spirit

quivering to feel confusion and pain. 

Feeling lost to feel found.

Cutting flesh to wrap it up.

Blowing towns to shreds to rebuild them.

via *

lightning rod

I like him, I think.

I don't remember how that feels.

The tripping trepidation,

the bubbling bewilderment,

the thought of someone new

on the horizon. 

A few weeks back

he told me he was ready to

give up on love.

He's been so hurt,

his care never being returned.

He says my friendship means the world.

How do I tell him

I've been hurt too,

I've given all of myself

and lost every inch of who I was

for love.

His words always inspire me,

his last name sounds like adventure,

his first name sounds like hope.

He is an artist.

I'm weak for artists.

His mind is marvelous.

He makes me feel creative.

Heard.

Understood.

Worthy.

Talented.

I don't want to see our 

friendship disappear. 

I can't make him ready if he's not. 

But every time his name flashes

on my phone screen,

my heart flips.

I told him not to 

give up forever.

Just for now.

Wait it out,

love will strike again.

How do I tell him that he

has become my lightning rod? 

via *

challenges

I feel bled dry of words. All of the pretty words that usually swim in my head seem to have drowned or have gotten out of the pool in my thoughts. I have this horrible habit of stopping writing when I feel like what I am writing is crap. I know it's a process. I know it will not be Gatsby on the first draft. I know that this is a challenge to get words on paper so I can move forward from there. But I feel dried out and like I'm sabotaging myself.

Writing a novel is hard. It's tedious and draining. Not every word is beautiful, not all the dialogue is clean. I never understood when authors said it took them years to get a novel ready for publication and that by the time they got to their final draft so much had changed. But now I do. John Green said that in his first draft of Looking for Alaska, there was not even a hint of Pudge's obsession with last words. THIS IS A CENTRAL THEME IN THE BOOK. I couldn't imagine the book without it. How far that book came. How far mine will come.

It's amazing. Even when I feel bled dry of them, I find my solace in words. I write out my frustrations. I read books for more. I listen to music, engraining the lyrics on my skin. I want to talk to people. Watch words form on their lips. Trace them against their skin.

I guess I'm a writer after all.

warm visions

via Tumblr

I have a mere two weeks of my internships left. Two weeks until I can get back to my life. Two weeks until I can stop living for others and begin life for myself. Mr. Larsen told me a few weeks back that there is only so much a person can take of sitting in the used grey shadows of the dreams of others before their own dreams come busting forth too powerful to contain.

Life keeps inching forward toward happiness and growth and it's giving me warm visions for the future. You are in every single vision. Every night as the moon crests the mountains and life gets clearer and closer to the finish line of September, your face eases in to my mind like ink rushing across a page. Our hazy grey days keep swimming in my mind and brimming across my eyelids in steady waterfalls.

My inconstant moon- just out of reach- is keeping me up at night. I'll take the moon's indirect gaze until it is ready to warm my nights with it's silver grey light. I feel big things coming. I feel the moon pulling my hand forward like the tides.

Walking Irony

Time is flying this year, isn't it? Was it not JUST New Year? I remember New Year so vividly like it was yesterday and so much has changed. It was 7 months ago! It's gonna be Christmas tomorrow at this rate.

I sort of hate how time flies. And just like everyone always says, it goes faster the older I get. Good lord, I'm only 21. Time better simmer down if I plan to enjoy being 30 eventually. I just find it amazing when big things happen after loads of planning and time. It's like your high school graduation. You know it's coming for 13 years of school. You know it's always on the horizon. But one day you wake up, slip on your graduation robe, adjust your tassel, and have your dad drive you to your graduation. It feels surreal and is over so fast, just like everything amazing in this life.

I've spent so long planning for my future and now it's here for the most part. At least, the future I've been working towards for two years now. January is on her way, which means I finally get to be back at a University studying English like I want to be. (Brief side note, how DARE America not speak like the British do by saying "I'm at University reading English instead of majoring in? Real missed opportunity there.)

As excited as I am to get on my way to my dreams and my future, I'm so scared to leave where I am right now. I love my little twin size bed in the room I grew up in. I love having my dogs around me. (Real talk, I'm the saddest to leave my girls. Unbearable. Un. Bear. Able.) I love how my bed smells. I love my small town. I love knowing what I'm doing.

I like to be the best at things. I like to be good at what I'm doing and know what I'm doing. I hate feeling unsure or stuck in limbo. However, I love adventure. I'm walking irony. I love new things, but I hate being imperfect. I love new bedrooms and decorating, but I hate leaving my home. I thirst for new places and new people, but I'm so afraid to be hurt. I love irony and I hate it.

 I'm human juxtaposition.

This is a weird sort of word vomit of a post, but writing catharsis is always needed, yes? Not all words are flowering and pretty, but some rambling is needed for the flowers to grow.

via Tumblr