23

9/20/08

Introversion
4/25/09

I almost miss this.
ALMOST.

30

12/28/08

29

7/24/09I'm On Grass

28

12/20/08

27

12/23/08

26

2/13/09M is for Minimalism

25

7/10/08The Gallows-Tree Had Taken Root

24

9/22/08Generations

22

7/29/08

We Should Have Worn Our Bathing Suits

4/1/09
and you still feel fear

(in my reflection,
there was a man with a knife
pointed at me.
i did nothing, though,
because i was hanging myself
at one)

even though,
what's the point?

21

9/22/08

Replication

3/13/09
Lime

I chose lemon and you chose lime and we even ate the peels. It was the worst dare of the night. We came out of it with streaming eyes and immovable grimaces. The whole thing was actually kind of healthy. Fiber, don't you know?

That was the first time we met, do you remember? It's funny, but even though now I know everything about you, I can't even remember if you wore glasses back then. You always wear your glasses now that we're friends.

Now that we're friends, you drink lemonade and I drink limeade just for old times sake, just to rot our teeth and laugh.

20

2/11/08

2/4/09
D is for Dollhouses

If the rooms hadn't been quite so small, the whole thing might have been a little more structurally sound. Mostly we just sat on opposite sides of the living room and glared at each other, because we weren't absolutely certain that the stairs would hold our weight, and climbing rickety stairs was the only way to get to any of the other rooms.

Neither of us was willing to be the first one to try the stairs. That was the problem, or at least half of it. Neither of us had the guts, the balls, the gall to take that initiative. Or maybe it was that we didn't recognize the problem until fixing it wouldn't have done anything, anyway.

19

7/13/08
The Rooster Moon
1/22/09
The Green Children of Woolpit

It was a far cry from ordinary,
that was the important part:

I was depressed, too, but I didn't let it destroy me.
And even though they thought I should be happy,
when the green faded, I cried.

18

9/15/08

Bedridden

N is for

Someone thought this was based on my life.

Emily (my assigned alter ego name) and my narcoleptic twin Montgomery. She's sitting over there on the couch right now, don't you know.

17

8/30/08

Speaking in Tongues G

Q is for

I pretended to be surprised that morning,
because you wanted me to be surprised,
but I knew you'd arrived;
I'd heard the creaks
your footsteps made in the night.

16

7/23/08
Reflections, Reality
Coral

We slept on the beach that night and only woke up in the morning because it was starting to rain. The night before, you had been angry because your mother had taken away the keys to your car just to spite you. So I picked you up and we drove out to the beach even though the signs told us that was illegal. After all, what are friends for? We wouldn't have even gotten arrested, anyway.

By morning, you were laughing at the raindrops. We made fun of everyone who'd ever sucked, and ate the peanut butter and rice cakes and built a sandcastle that was taller than we were. We found an old plastic knife and I used it to carve the detail.

Bits of coral washed up on the beach and we put them in our pockets.

15

7/18/08

Corde Brisée

Cream

Peaches and cream
and roses
and the thorns that scratch
to make the roses themselves--
you've mastered these colors.

Someone might say you're pretty
but I disagree.
You're something,
but you're sure not pretty.

Here's the truth:
I think you're sort of crazy
but still sort of awesome
but this isn't a love poem,
or anything.

You're pretty decent
and maybe we could be friends,
the whole neurotic
insane thing aside.

I'm thinking that
maybe, though,
you should forget about the roses
because peaches are better
with just regular cream.

You're prettier like that
and I sure hate kissing roses.
Too sharp.
I might change this to a love poem.

Better, naturally.

14

4/18/09
8/2/08

Akash offered me a hundred bucks to clean out his grandmother's apartment when she finally kicked the bucket. All in all, this seemed a little callous, but a hundred bucks was a hundred bucks and I was fully prepared to take advantage of the riches of my roommate.

It sort of sucked how loaded Akash was. The dude was freaking Midas. Sort of a selfish bastard, but Midas just the same.

And so who was I to turn up my nose at his offer? I kept my comments to myself and, on my day off, made the trek across town to the crappy apartment where Grandmother Akash had lived out her last.

13

17/8/08

Clowns May Be Present

8/7/08
I felt a little too self-aware
standing there in just my socks
and a hospital gown.
The ice-cold doctors, milling around,
en masse
were hardly real people
at all:
they didn't care at all
that my butt
was poking out the back.
They mostly just wanted to know
what was in my blood.

12

9/16/08Waffles
8/31/09

The new girl rejected my random act of kindness. She was from New York City--how exotic!--and I was dying to ask her all kinds of questions. She looked a little standoffish, and a little proud, but I hung on her every word.

"Would you like to eat lunch with me and my friends?" I asked quietly outside English. Mrs. Ford had asked me to help her to her next class. I had a zillion and twelve questions to ask, but I needed time to work up the guts to ask them. Anything outside Little Rock was interesting, cosmopolitan. I wanted to know about it all, but Mrs. Ford was tricky: she'd picked me because she knew I didn't like talking to people at all at all at all. I liked being antisocial and shy. And maybe this girl would enjoy talking to someone with less energy than a peppy cheerleader.

"I don't need your charity," the girl snapped, as she flounced into Health.

11

4/15/09

4/14/09

I don't know The Stranger
and I don't know what The Stranger did
and I don't know what in the Stranger I am to do
but Zach is doing it, anyway.

My belt broke
and I'm marching
and I can't hold up my pants.
But I can get a new one, regardless.

And I'm getting my new glasses
and I'm not entirely sold
and they make my head sort of hurt
but I guess I'll just get used to them.

But I can wrangle four more days
without any school at all
and friends! friends!
lots of time spend with friends.

So I'm thinking everything will be good
glasses and pants and Strangers aside.

Silly petty grievances work themselves out.

10

7/26/08
Proverbs 6:253/4/09
Orange

We ate eight oranges, shared them, and each one tasted a little different, so it was almost like eating candies. I kind of thought it was better than candy, and you were diabetic, so you didn't know. We were nine years old and you had just moved in next door.

You were just the neighbor kid, so we were friends. We were friends because it was convenient for us to be friends, and so our parents made us play together Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. For three years we played together Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. And then we hit middle school.

I really don't think you understand what a disaster middle school was for us. I mean, you had all these friends, and all these girlfriends, and you always had plans, and you became a soccer star. But the pinnacle, the absolute cherry on the cake, was that time when, instead of giving me a ride home from school, you drove through that puddle to splash me.

9

7/28/08

Repeat As Necessary

3/20/09

Do you remember back in elementary school, when they told us that our votes could change anything? They told us that we had to go vote, that it was our civic duty, that we'd make an impact on the world. Voting seemed like something so glamorous, and I kept that childhood idealistic version clutched to my heart for far too long.

Now I'm starting to realize more and more that everything they taught us in elementary school was bullshit. Christopher Columbus didn't befriend the Indians,you actually can subtract five from four, and your vote doesn't change anything.

Because of you, I voted for the war to end, even though my family mocked me for being a stinking liberal.

8

7/31/08

I'm Finally Gonna Cry

1/22/09
The Green Children of Woolpit

I was depressed, too, but I didn't let it destroy me.
In some ways, it was just nice to be different,
famous,
exciting.
But nobody likes a sore winner
so I kept this to myself:
pretended to be sad all along.
And even though they thought I should be happy,
when the green faded, I cried.

7

9/6/08

Ennui

12/31/08

I showed up early to school on the last day before Christmas vacation. I had had clean clothes stashed away in the trunk of my car, so I didn't have to show up in the same blue dress I had been wearing for twenty-three days. I had showered at the local YMCA so I wasn't wearing the same dirt I had been wearing for the past twenty-three days. I didn't really feel clean, per se. It was being here. Back among the bullshit.

At five before seven I was the only one sitting in the cafeteria, reading Fahrenheit 451. Who even knew if my English class was still reading it. I personally had read it about four times in the past twenty-three days, simply because it had been the only book in my car.

6

6/10/08

I Like Submarines

9/10/08
Might As Well

: my thought when I decided to kiss you instead of shun you; when I decided to take AP Chem instead of AP Bio; when I decided to drop out of high school to become a mime.

My carelessness has served me well--all the best things in my life have happened just because.

5

2/22/09
V is for Vestiges

9/1/08
Cleaning

I was going positively stir-crazy. It was that feeling when you feel dirty just because you're not running around, or jumping, or expending massive amounts of energy in some way. It was worse than being lazy, because at least you could enjoy your own laziness. I shook my head angrily, just to get some of that energy out.

Sean chuckled. "You're doing that a lot, lately."

I sneered at him. "When you've spent a night with your books in your bed even though it's still summer, then we can talk."

"I wasn't accusing." Of course he wasn't.

4

11/3/08
3/6/09
Red

I sat in a room full of people who knew I'd done it, and who all wanted to convince each other that I hadn't. Nobody wanted to believe that a nice girl from a good family with a good education and a good job could kill twenty-seven people in cold blood. Even those people who wanted to see the killer fry didn't want to believe it had been me to kill their brothers, their mothers, their friends. They wanted to believe the stereotype: a brilliant but misguided man, antisocial with greasy hair, gaunt and haunted with a disturbing past. They didn't want a little girl in a knee-length skirt looking cute as pie and sweet as sucrose.

My lawyer was tapping his fingers against the table; I took this to mean he felt nervous. I wasn't nervous. I didn't feel much of anything anymore. I was bored utterly by all of these proceedings. I just wanted it all to be finished.

3

11/10/08
9/17/08
Honesty

There were seven things I wanted to tell you; one of them was significant. And now I can't tell you even the stupid stuff, like how you needed a haircut and that NO3- was always soluble in water and that was why you got that problem wrong on the Chemistry test.

I didn't forget to bring your birthday present; I didn't buy it on time. Your leather jacket was at the dry cleaner, and you left your hat at my house--I kept forgetting to tell you. I didn't enjoy that movie because I hate hate hate Jet Li.

And I told you that motorcycle was a bad idea. What annoys me the most is that it's almost cliched, how it all happened. And I don't give a damn about what everyone else is saying, about how you've "gone to a better place" and all of that. I'm pissed off. You can't even begin to understand how pissed off I am. Even if you were around, you wouldn't be able to comprehend the magnitude of my irritation.

2

12/19/08

3/24/09
Afternoons and Sleepovers

"Black," I started.
"As pitch," you finished.
"White," said I.
"As snow," said you.

When you lost the bet
you had to use only idioms
for the rest of the day.
I giggled every time.

We played hopscotch
just to pass the time
and chased down the adventure
with a sniff of actual scotch.

1

9/1/08
Cleaning

7/12/08
Big Trash Friday

Lourdes smelled of vanilla and Fabreeze, which meant she’d had some sort of wardrobe crisis this morning. Even on Big Trash Friday—-which, for us, meant moving day—-Lourdes looked perfectly put-together and pristine. She’d been like that for as long as I’d known her. Raised by a strict, old-fashioned grandmother, she operated on the idea that it was proper to look nice for every occasion, not just special ones. And, through some magic I could never quite master, she always managed to make everyone else look underdressed.

Because I could smell her—-her vanilla-cookies smell only became really noticeable when her skin began to heat up—I knew Lourdes was beginning to tire. She was always embarrassed at being the smaller and weaker of the two, so I sat down first on the couch we were lugging around. Lourdes collapsed onto the seat next to me, face flushed prettily. Had she known I was catering to her obvious needs, she would have been furious. That was the second thing Lourdes got from her grandmother: pride.