31

Then, you gave me a song, which may not have seemed like such a big thing at the time.
Now, I listen and it gives me the utmost comfort.

30

He told me not to "beat myself up about it."
I cried and cried and cried.

29

We held hands as she explained her philosophy on life:

"The way I see it, we never do anything alone, because our experiences are the summation of the people we share them with. Essentially, my high school years are over now that you all, the ten or so of you that were my high school experience, are gone. And maybe I'm still a senior and you're still part of my life, but you aren't part of that part of my life, you know? When I'm there, I'm hardly there. And maybe you will be the same people to make up my college years and maybe you won't. But this chapter of my life is closed, I think. Time is ticking pointlessly. But I can live that way. That's love, I think."

28

She wore the same lipstick every day for so many years that her lips were stained its color, wore the same perfume for so long that, even after washing, all her clothes retained the scent. Every time he smelled it, oranges and sharp like fall, he assumed it was her, and would turn around, expectant.

And this time it was.

Fifteen years since they'd seen each other, fifteen years since, "Goodbye, good luck, see you soon," only soon hadn't happened, unless you only counted soon in terms of eternity. In all the times that he'd thought he'd seen her, there were a thousand scenes imagined; mostly all he could see were tears as he'd known them. And when he said, "Lizzy?" she turned with the same look of patient expectation he'd known, and then smiled.

27

As a joke, I posted on a dating site:
"The women in my life don't tend to live very long."
Seventeen people requested a date.

26

Is there something wrong about me because I'm not afraid of shows with serial killers in the lead? That doesn't scare me.

I'm afraid of losing, of succeeding too hard. I'm afraid of working too much for all the right benefits. I'm afraid of crazy. But I am not afraid of killers.

I'm afraid of a future of unhappiness, I'm afraid of not being able to cry when I need to. I'm afraid of surgeries that could save your life. But I am not afraid of killers.

Mostly, I am afraid of fear. And killers kill that too.

25

Until you came home--

Until you came home I was finally feeling okay again.

Now I'm not talking again.

24

Now my goddamn posts are out of order. Saying this to fix that!

!!!

I'm happy tonight.

23

Sometimes when I'm writing
I get VERY VERY DISTRACTED
and things get rambling.

Sometimes short is better,
even though it feels like just a teaser
instead of the whole thing,
even to me.

22

When you thought about them, as a couple, you had to say that he was crazy about her. It was a passionate kind of love, the kind that made him grin and ruffle her hair, the kind that had him boasting to all his friends about how great, about how absolutely fucking fantastic, his girlfriend was.

But she loved him in a quieter way, in a way that cried herself to sleep the night he left, in a way that lost ten pounds when he was gone, in a way that always gave her smile a twinge of sadness in his absence. Softly and gently, she bloomed in his presence, as if his brightness was the only thing that gave her light. Her sweet smiles were sweeter, her shining eyes shined more brilliantly. She seemed less helpless and more hopeful, but only if you were watching.

In the fact of the matter she loved him more, and to my jealousy, that made all the difference.

21

My last thought before drowning:
"I could see how you think this is nice."

20

Dear Nicole,

Sorry I've been depressing you so much recently!
Like dissolves like.
Oh, Chemistry.

19

World Literature (M), Day 44

Adam didn't really care too much about literature, to be honest. He was just putting in his hours so he could have all the English credits to graduate. After finals, he would have only one more year of high school, and all the English he needed to get into college. His dads were all for their alma mater, which wanted four years, but Adam was more into the co-ed option, anyway. He'd heard that they gave you a broader education.

18

Family Living Class, Day 44

"If you take nothing else from this class, remember why men and women live apart: they can never expect to understand each other. It simply does not make logical sense."

Eve chewed on the end of her pencil, reading. The only reason she didn't hate Family Living was that it was completely brain-unnecessary. It was the same nonsense they'd been feeding you since the second grade, with a few more gory details: don't do drugs, or you'll get track marks and then AIDS and then die. Don't have sex or you'll get syphilis and then go crazy and then die. This is why boys love boys and girls love girls.

17

Today I miss you.
And you.
And you.
And something to do.

I am busy, but not in a way that occupies my brain nearly enough. I keep twitching at what I perceive to be the ring of a phone, but never is. My day is not yet two hours long.

Today I miss me.
And you.
And feeling like I used to.
And the times when I refused to rhyme.

16

A man with his hands in his pockets learns to read literature like a professor in front of a castle in France where I cried, lying on my couch on my side.

Mixed imagery and mixed metaphors make sense. No sense. I have bruises on the side of my hands that make it sort of difficult and sort of painful to type, and this jumbled running style is how I'm feeling. I can't organize into Frankenstein and this Kohlberg moral development because my thoughts are scattered.

I am scattered and all over the place and lonely and sad and I miss things and I blame this on a lack of busy or maybe just the wrong kind of busy and I'm even jumbling my languages, jumping from one to another and then to the dentist.

15

This morning, I was tired and ready for bed when I realized the day had only just begun. This kind of tired was different, it was bone-weary and mentally drained. It was crying over dropped socks and staring at the glob of toothpaste when it dripped onto your stomach, however that happened. It was realizing three hours later that the toothpaste was still there, dried and caked on, spit and fluoride.

And yet there were responsibilities. Neglected friends called for attention and I rose wearily from my repose (too tired even to sleep) and work nagged at my brain in the most unpleasant fashion. This I postponed for a more rested time.

Half asleep and unable to dream, I watched my summer's ends slip away.

14-A True Story

This morning, just in time to feel lonely, I found a fortune on my floor.
A mystery fortune--I don't like their cookies and haven't eaten Chinese.
I could only assume it was a sign of something or other.
Other.

"The entire sum of existence is the magic of being needed by just one other person."

13

At the circus,
I rode the rabbit-horse
because I felt love
for things that were ugly.

12

Maybe this sounds crazy, but I wish I had a negative memory of you. Just one time that you shoved me too hard, and not playfully enough. Something you said that was truly cruel. A single incident of taking back your sentiment of love, just to be petty.

It's hard not to miss something wonderful.

11

Dear Me (From Three Weeks Ago),

You lazy bag of muck, WHY DIDN'T YOU DO THIS WORK WHEN WE HAD TIME?

You suck.

Love,
Taylor

10

9

8

7

When is it clean? When is the mountainous pile of past a neat and orderly present?

When I started to ask myself these questions, I knew I was getting back to the old ways, the micromanaging ways that ended with a disorder that made me pull out chunks of my hair. Trichotillomania, they called it. Trich. Trick. Damn, but wasn’t it tricky.

When I asked myself these questions, I knew I was getting too philosophical, too sneaky and clever and like the way I used to be, when I read Plato and Aristotle and then made sure everyone knew it because it wasn’t just enough to be worldly. Everyone had to know I was worldly.

6

I do not know who I am what I am or where we are.

This is a lot of not knowing and it’s incredibly disconcerting and let me tell you that this is why I don’t usually drink. And I don’t usually do what we did. But last time I did and we did and I think it was fun but I don’t really remember.

So the where we are is actually a legitimate concern. That’s actually something I do not know. It’s someone’s house. Probably yours. Hopefully yours.

But the who I am or what I am is something more of a personality crisis. Maybe an identity crisis. Because like I said, this is not me.

5

I smell like coffee. This is the remnants of a too-clean and caffeine-filled life.

Once upon a time, I may have smelled like something else, my classic coffee-and-vanilla combo, former from my morning beverage of choice, latter from my perfume, the same perfume I’ve used since the seventh grade. Sometimes I get something like self-pity out of the thought that I, the burgeoning professional, uses the same perfume she used as a zit-pitted middle schooler, but then I remember that I just really like the way I smell, and so what does it matter anyway?

I’m sure at some point, I smelled differently. I must have spent my early years with that unmistakable baby smell, the one that’s impossible to replicate after the age of four. You can use Johnson&Johnson’s baby shampoo and baby wash until you’re thirty, but you’re going to lose that smell. I hypothesize that it has something to do with not maintaining an entirely milk diet. Though I do drink milk, still. It’s childish and unsophisticated, but I love milk. It’s delicious.

4

Today, by my own admission, I am old.

I am old because I know that the plural of passerby is passersby and I remember the original GameBoy when the present young generation is lost in a haze of Nintendo DS. My childhood is no longer a present—it’s just a past, because there isn’t any child living it now. Things are different, times they are a-changing, as the song goes and all that jazz.

Think about when we were young. I had this pair of shoes that was made entirely out of this malleable plastic—we called them jelly shoes. They had stripes in them, like the too-popular gladiators of today. We would play in the dirt and not care and Dad would carry us upstairs to the bath so we could wash our feet. When we took off our shoes, we could see the stripes of dirt. We don’t use that bathtub anymore, because we don’t live in that house, because there weren’t enough rooms after Kelsey was born.

3

I am: me. I am what I am what we are when I’m a group of us. When something that I am comes into play. Together I add a general flavor of being of feeling of seeing, a sense of individuality and all that other trite shit.

I am: myself. Unable to create a carbon copy. Glasses meet writer meet brown hair meet color guard meet pale skin meet choosy insomniac. Friends I have and friends I don’t are part of everything. We come into a trippy metaphysical connection, a spider web of something that is an existence ad maybe I’m making this purposefully babbling for the sake of the incense and the hippy summers and the way I’m wearing a sweater even though it’s august.

2

I clove the clove in half, releasing the scent into the scene, making you sneeze. Oh, but wasn’t wordplay fun but anyway. Don’t worry, I’m just messing with you.

That’s not really how the story goes. The story goes like this:

Once upon a time, I hit you with my car. Oops. Maybe you shouldn’t have been running down the street in the dark with dark clothes on. Luckily for you, I was only driving like ten miles an hour, because I was going down my new street for the first time, and wasn’t entirely confident I could find my own damn house in the dark.

1

You let the snot drip from your nose onto your sleeves—that’s how we knew you were truly miserable. It was ridiculous, how far you’d let yourself go. All this over some girl. Some stupid girl.

“Jude.” You were blotchy and spotty and had a pile of tissues building up next to you, for when you actually bothered to wipe your damn nose. You were Julian and I was the only one who called you Jude, after the Beatle kid, and I was June and so it was extra fun because our names sounded sort of similar.