the art of exploring a human being

Thinking about actually being able to study and explore someone excites me so much. the most intimate and tiniest of things just get me so anxious. and I mean actually watching them, taking in every tiny little aspect of their body while it’s living right there with you. to watch the skin stretch along their rib cage whenever they take in a breath. to watch if their lips move even just for a few words while they’re reading, to watch and see if any emotion strikes them from the page. to watch someone’s cheeks fill up furiously with a flushed red, splotching their neck and their chest and their shoulders and every which way it spreads. to watch the skin of their lips tear right when they’re pulled apart from one another, and actually watch the corners of their mouths curve noting when exactly the dimples dig in. to hold their palm and watch their knuckles roll while their fingers fidget against yours. to watch the exact moment someone’s eyes glaze over when tears are swelling up their eyelids. to watch their limbs tremble and their teeth chatter when a chill slides through the room. to watch the muscles in their back contract when they stretch and their body just slightly shake for that brief and calm second they lose control. to watch their habits when they’re laughing so hard it’s difficult to catch their breath, what they do with their hands, their toes, their lips, their eyes, their bodies. to watch the water drip from damp, showered hair wherever it travels off to. to study their expressions shifting from disgust, to irritation, to fluster, to sympathy or to disappointment. to watch them get goosebumps. to press your fingers into their skin and watch it fade to a perfectly imprinted white before the blood rushes back. to watch their stomach jump when they have the hiccups. i don’t know, Such little things could keep me content and locked up in a room gone nearly mad with a list of things I’d like to marvel at. okay yes. That was just on my mind okay. Alright.

( and then, to think, no matter how many times you commit each of those answers and findings to memory, another body entirely would leave you completely clueless and unsatisfied, hungry once again.)

THIS IS NOT A LOVE POEM

I have written too many love poems
 

to write another about the stars


and the way the sun always visits the east
 and west so neither feels alone

so this is not a love poem


but instead it is a poem about the way 
your chest rises and falls
,

when you are sleeping and I cannot.


You have found peace in your bed, 

while
 i am still struggling to share my space,


but you have let me in
 and I am leaving my doors unlocked.

This is not a love poem,
 but a letter to your hands
,

because I feel more beautiful


when they are touching me
,

and even the summer breeze 
cannot boast that honor.

I will not write you a love poem
 because they become about the metaphors
,

and no one is sure
 whose Shakespeare’s sonnets were really about.


I never want you to be anonymous.

There are too many poems


lining the boxes in my head
,

so this is not one
 because 

I will love you,


without needing to write it down.

goodbye November

Christmas, come sooner

cinnamon and spice cake candles, crisp wintry air, flushed cheeks and blood rouged hands, thick cotton knits comforted around necks, constant sniffling from raw noses, snowflakes freckled on long hair, fogged breath, slosh of foot prints, a midnight fires indecisive shadow, crackling of the miniature forest folded beneath, garland strung to greet each hallway, ice cold milk alongside mother’s home made recipes, apple pie pungent throughout each room, carols sung gently from each station, huddling to one another’s body heat, the gust of warmth stirred from home’s entryway, fingers cradling hot chocolate endlessly, skins’ pale translucence, evergreen en maroon. 

1:20 A restless night

       My legs are twisted within my pale blue sheets, the heat of my laptop humming against my lap as I sit with eyes wide, aching to close though nowhere near able to. Bold crisp letters are listed on the screen before me, the color raging against my mind as my toes and fingers fiddle numbly. Sitting back with a huff, the headboard creates a dull imprint on the skin along my spine, limbs aching of discomfort and procrastination. My eyes scan the bulleted points for the fifth time this November evening, stress fully credited to this last week before thanksgiving break. Inhaling is difficult, sleep is near impossible, a restless night it’s sure to be.

Everyone knows the incredibly grueling feel of hours of sincere restlessness. Eyes aching from a few chunked, dedicated to a English paper. The next few minutes occupied with a few distressed breaths out, groggy blinks and an entirely elsewhere mind. Homework seems to be such an enormous understatement, more so a home deprived of sleep, though plentiful in slow, and mostly unenjoyably seconds being ticked through a skull while the clock seems to take it’s time reaching an hour reasonable to use the excuse of “It’s getting late, time to turn in.” Though with a handful of papers and tasks yet to be checked off, the bed seems dragged miles away.

The neon numbers flicker up in increments at my side, it’s only eleven o’clock. Checking my to do list, my to-stress about list, my unanticipated and worry producing chores, the satisfaction of a strike through across one dainty line seems minimal compared to the text that stretches nearly halfway down across this document. Brief moments are taken to crack my knuckles, one of my short but somewhat fulfilling split second breaks pursued while suffering through a six page paper on a topic in which my mind has never grasped. My eyes square in on the top right hand corner of the current page before me, the blinking cursor intimidating with it’s constant ticks, still, page two is filled a quarter of the way through. My stomach churns, my fingers lifting up from the keys they so fervently have been fingering, slowly pulling my hands back while the debate of whether or not a bite of food between paragraphs could truly hurt.

The last sentence my fingers had keyed idled as the finish of this paper for merely an hour, during which time my mind was not wrapped in anything nearly worthwhile or serving as any bit of an excuse to delay. Page two still lingers upon another opened document strolling along side by side on another, both of which unfinished and mid thought. Yawns are continuously coaxed up from my now sinking body, the heat radiating from beneath my covers beckoning me towards it, to just crawl in. Yet five tasks remain for homework, stress-work, worry-work. Nora Jones is streaming from the television perched on the opposite side of my living room, the music is captivating, alluring, beautifully strung from chord to chord. My topic should rather have been on the comfort and soothing nature of a piece of music. That is, until the channel is indecisively scanned to a cartoon, a lifetime movie, a horror flick. The soundtrack of my thoughts are constantly swarming back and forth from genre to genre, and all that seems to exist is the bed cradling my weight, all my ears desire is a lullaby. Instead, all that speaks up are keys.

Page three exists, though it is blank spare ten words. And now thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, it’s not nearly midnight. My eyelids are tugging themselves shut, only for a few seconds my mind murmurs to itself. Those few carry on through the next, after all five minutes on an hour’s worth of a research paper seems fair enough. Two more tabs are opened within my browser, Bach’s Canon in D is streaming from the speakers on each side of this open pad, while a blog of tire inspired words is filled with text that would rather easily fill the requirements my fingers and mind cannot reach. It’s just past midnight, and now my mind is mustering up desperately to me, searching frantically for some bargains. To give in now and finish as soon as my eyes awake the next morning, though knowingly it will not be until late afternoon. My fingers have officially decided, picking up the laptop burning against my skin and replacing it with the comforter tickling my legs.

12:46 in the morning is a time for sleep, they say nothing good happens past 12 o’clock. My still, though entirely unstill, sleepless body is a prime supportive detail of such a thought. My legs fidget, my arms try and find a proper way to grasp and hug the pillow molded to my side. My body seems to find a content position, and within a few minutes I feel myself being lulled into unconsciousness, though it likes to tease me. Three pages are already complete, tomorrow is another day. Restless thinking and a restless girl occupy this bed, through an entire twenty-four hour period my concentration managed a subtle two assignments out of seven, the last sentence of this will complete three. As anyone would agree, now is a time that is for sleep, now is when my body should give to the sheets while a sigh passes my lips, my mind drifting off to dreams beyond me. Three assignments out of seven, headlights illuminate my bedroom with every passing car, my stomach’s rumbling again. A few minutes’ worth of a snack could do no harm. This is the life of a restless night, a procrastinator’s fight. 

If only you knew

People are so quick to tell others with disorders that they’re “too this” and “too that” - they tell someone with panic disorder that they’re too dramatic and someone with depression that they’re too emotional, like these people don’t know this already. Like they don’t know that they live only in short bursts between attacks and pits, a brief moment where they actually feel like they’re okay and have any kind of control over themselves. You tell the person with panic disorder just relax. You tell the person with chronic depression just be happy. There’s nothing worth all of that stress and fatigue. Panic and depression are just as strong as addictions, you say that we feed off of it, that it seems like we crave it. And we do. Because our minds are so fixated that it gives up all control. You tell the one with panic disorder that they’re being irrational. The one with depression is just being downright ridiculous, pessimistic and stubborn. And you’re right. But don’t be so ignorant as to think we want to be this way. It’s not a quick fix. It’s an illness, much like that of which occupies those of you that speak down on them or give up on them or refuse to see it as a serious issue. We know that we are sick. We recognize it just as clearly as you do. But Until we learn how to dictate our own minds we feel as if we have no control. We do, but we don’t. It takes patience and strength to get through a disorder. All it takes is you thinking twice before opening your mouth to rid of the ignorance you’re consumed by. You aren’t telling us anything we don’t know. We know much more than you think. Now it’s your turn to gain some knowledge. 

chapter one

    you wore a peacoat because you remembered that i liked them, and it didn’t take you long to hold my hand which is nice because he used to always tell me that I was needy, when all i really wanted was a sense of someone else besides myself. you promised me coffee on our first date but it took me long enough to parallel park that we got there just as they were closing, and you reached for the door just to spin us around and you gave me that little smirk and told me not to worry, because you had something better in mind. so i just walked with you, fingers shaking but stuck in yours and legs somehow keeping up and i could smell the chocolate before you even opened the door for me, and when we walked inside there were flowers made out of chocolate and cases and cases of chocolate covered-everythings and you led me right to the chocolate covered strawberries and told me to pick which ones i wanted. i had told you nights before that i hadn’t had them since my birthday. you told me tonight was close enough. 

     you bought me homemade hot chocolate, too. and you carried the box and handed me a neatly little wrapped strawberry and i turned around so you couldn’t watch me take the first bite, and i had chocolate all over my fingers but you held my hand anyway and gave me tissue paper to get rid of what my lips couldn’t. it wasn’t until we started turning down lightly lit side streets that i asked you where we were going, and you told me that i’d just have to see. just wait and see. we walked through the beautiful part of downtown, and eventually i could see the lapping water of a lake, and the road turned into grass which turned into gravel, which led us to a long dock that stretched out over the water. you remembered that i liked those, too. you sat with me on the end of it and asked me about my family while i asked about yours, you told me your mom was one of the best people you knew but that you didn’t see your parents very often. i asked you if it scared you to get close to someone knowing you’ll be leaving for college soon and you said i’m not really leaving. at least you weren’t leaving yet. we’d let the silence sit between us and watch as it planes passed over us and you swore that it was the same one just circling around and around again. there weren’t many stars out, only a few big ones which i focused on many times that night when i couldn’t grasp onto any sort of reality. i asked you what you were thinking about and your hand was so soft on my thigh that i had to focus to hear your words and you told me you were only thinking about the fact that you were on a date with a beautiful girl.

    i kept telling you that i didn’t feel like i was here. and did that make sense? does that make sense? i’m here, i am here of course i’m here but it doesn’t feel like it. i don’t feel like i’m here.

     you pulled me back to lay with you and we just laid there on that dock with your fingers playing through my hair and my own making designs on whatever part of you i could reach, and you kept tightening your arms around me as if i could possibly go anywhere and you just kept asking me what i was thinking, and i just kept asking you what you were thinking. you pulled me up to the edge of the dock and i stood there facing the water and imagined everything beneath it, and you whispered into my neck to just imagine. to imagine with you. to imagine my own little bakery on the most beautiful street of paris, right on the corner, and fresh tulips would be delivered from holland every week and you’d have a regular, pierre, who would come in the mornings and share a croissant. and he would buy lilacs for his wife. he would always buy lilacs for his wife. i just closed my eyes and the only thing i could think to say was that the water was still now.

     you held my hands out with yours as the breeze toyed with my hair and i’d just keep folding you into me every way i could and slipping my hand beneath the band around your wrist. we held our thumbs out to the little sliver that was the moon and decided that it wasn’t in fact always larger than our thumbs like the movie had said, and you told me that there was someone out there holding their thumb up to us just the same, comparing and looking right at one another without looking at anything at all. i turned to you to bury my face in your chest and told you i wanted to go dancing. i’d always wanted to go dancing. you cradled my head to you and i asked you now what you were thinking. i could barely hear myself but you did. so you cupped my jaw and gently, too gently pulled it up to yours and kissed me. and you kissed me again, and another time, and then i was giving you them in return. and after awhile you pulled back and it was quiet again, and you told me that’s what you were thinking about. me too.

all i could say was me too.

daily excerpts from a complicated heart, 2 November 2013

I swore that I would be kind and not harsh, that I would share and not build walls, but promises from these lips are like already broken glass. There is no piece or place in me that is starting from a comprehensible whole. I am in pieces. Be warned - I may cause you to bleed. And I do not know where my heartstrings start and end but they seem to be constantly short-circuiting. I think I’m trying to fix this. Trying to fix the dead-end statements and passive aggressive meanings that seem to have gotten loose from my faulty grip. I may be trying. Or I may be making it worse. But I swear something is happening because I get these daily messages engraved into my palms or sometimes whispered in my dreams telling me that I am changing. The signal is out. Habits are altering and my home is shifting. My passion, love, and attention are all being remodelled. There is something critical happening in my nervous system, something worthwhile is forming from the fragments that I thought had been empty all along. I am becoming more than these shattered pieces. I swear. This is the first time that I did not cry. Maybe it does stop hurting. Maybe leaving does get easier. But I don’t think I want it to be easy. And while you may say this could be growth, I must say that I don’t feel good about it. Not one bit. So for now I will keep hoping that my tear ducts are temporarily broken because leaving without a knot at the base of my throat doesn’t feel quite right.

  

my heart and I belong somewhere else

my heart and I would be somewhere where it’s raining. Where even the night can pull off looking gloomy, too dark, too cloudy. A moody night when the weather has a temper and my heart just keeps fluttering too much for it to think straight. At first I’d just like to have my raincoat with me. Dark blue, dangling down to just above my knees, big buttons crossing all the way to just beneath my chin, and a hood to swallow back my hair, even though it won’t save the drips from getting to my forehead. I want cute polkadot rain boots too. I’ll walk to where I’d like to go, just with the night’s company. The puddles can talk to me and the scuff of my boots can join in and the sloshing of the sleepy eyed drivers out at such an hour passing me can pitch in too, if they happen to be around. Then I’ll get to my little cafe. I want to be able to see it from a block away, when everything else is asleep and every window’s eyes’ are closed and the cafe is the only thing illuminated it seems for miles. That tangy, dim light. The light ding above my head to greet me. Then the night can wait outside, until of course I’m ready for it to walk me home, to tuck me back into bed. There’d be a cute dainty little waitress, the only one willing and able to work such a night shift, weary but present. I’d whisper my order to her before I sat, and I’d make my way to the very end of the cafe, against the corner window. I could let my hood fall and the ends of my hair send droplets to scurry and slide down my thighs, my fingers tingling. Waiting for the warmth. I’d get some delicious coffee, some sort of cappuccino or how about french vanilla. Yes I’d like that. And I’d hold it between my fingers until they blushed from the scorch of the heat and I’d stir, and I’d stir, and I’d stir, just to hear the clinks of the mug writing me a short little sonet. A love poem, even. If I could, if I really really could choose, the only company, then, that I’d ask for is a set of handsome eyes sitting on the very opposite end of the cafe, at his own round and tiny table with countless empty and body-less ones between us, the same aroma and scent clinging to his lips and skin as mine. Dark coffee to match deep set eyes, untouched and unrefined scruff to compliment a nice jaw. A light brunette. A red rain jacket leading down to a wonderful pair of hands, an artist hands, a creator’s hands, passionate hands. Hands that look like they’ve touched ground. Touched someone, somewhere, something. Actually touched. Maybe a book at his table, like there’d be one tucked in the slouchy pockets of my coat. I’d like to look up, for him to do the same, to meet in the briefest of ways and know that at least then and there I belong to someone entirely, and they to me. 

lead me

My heart breaks for other people a lot of times. For friends that are struggling. For those I know are better than what they allow themselves. The people I allow to know me, I love a lot and I love hard.

Then other days, my heart just breaks. I get lonely and my heart aches for things I don’t know. I’m one of those people that doesn’t know how to stop loving someone. I’ll be sucked right back in the second things start going right and when they go wrong again, I know that I know…I should’ve protected me better or kept my mouth shut. I just don’t know how. I’m like this really weird paradox that hates vulnerability, but enjoys being real. So I’ll tell the hard truths and I’ll be honest with people, but I still protect the deep parts of my heart. I’m genuine in what I say and I’m known for it, but laying it on the line when a part of me is at stake, that’s a different story. 

I know parts of me are a disaster; they’re just a complete mess. Sometimes I say too much. Sometimes I don’t say enough. Sometimes I shut down and walk away when I’m frustrated. Some days I seriously wonder if I’ll always feel some things deep down and if I’ll just push those to the side to make it through the day. I struggle with feeling redeemed. I struggle with grace. I struggle to pursue Him back. Sometimes, I just really don’t want to. In the aftermath of all of those things, though, I find myself running, immediate or delayed, to the one place I know I can be vulnerable and broken and still be known. So, today I’m a bit of a mess. Tomorrow, I’ll be a mess, too, of a different kind I’m sure. All of these faults in myself and things that threaten to break me may never change. I’m just thankful that even if they do, 

He won’t.

October is the best month because ...

• You get to snuggle since it is so chilly
• Hot chocolate
• Pumpkin everything
• Lots of candles
• Rain rain and more rain
• Time to watch a scary movie
• Halloween (duh)
• Colorful leaves
• There’s that certain smell in the air
• You get to wear a lot of layers
• Blanket overload
• Cute cardigans
• Hot coffee and tea
• Boots
• Cute Fall Starbucks cups
• It’s not so bright outside
• Breast Cancer Awareness month
• Cute crafts and pumpkin carving
• Naked trees
• Fireplaces
• Bike rides
• Long walks
  

A start to a New Me.

“Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”

 —  John 13:7

What is HAPPINESS

The loneliness you feel after having finished a book. 

The absence of the protagonist’s touch, being entirely unoccupied and realizing that you are lying in bed and that is the extent to your existence when the cover is closed. 

The sadness, the hollow in your stomach and the pang in your chest, the feeling of complete hopelessness and confusion as to who and what you are. 

Restless because you had truly believed your body walked around with the scars of the woman/man in the book, and now you’re sterile and pure and your skin looks too fresh. 

You want to be dirtier. 

You want bruises. 

You want to be worn. 

All of this, and then the weight that stretches itself on top of you when you acknowledge that it was never yours to begin with. 

That nothing really ever is.

But that doesn’t mean that you can’t exhaust and experience it, anyway. Nothing has to be yours to feel it. And with that, you can feel anything you’d like to. 

Happiness is created and felt

By you. 

Because I know you will read this

It’s funny because I might be one of the only people who knows how miserable and pathetic you actually are, away from all of the fronts. Even if you’ve gotten yourself to believe differently. I know how empty you are. You have absolutely nothing when it comes down to it. And I don’t for a second feel sorry for you. You think surrounding yourself with people will hide you in between them and people won’t see through it and the people I feel sorry for is the ones that believe that you’re anything different than what you’ve always been. Spiteful relationships will get you nowhere but even more of an excuse of a full person than you already are. I’d rather have moments of loneliness and lack of true friends than find comfort in people that aren’t any sort of benefit to me at all. I am happy with the fact that I have very few but solid close friends, and that they have been my friends since the relationship bloomed in the first place, they haven’t been back and forth friends. They haven’t ever been against me or cruel towards me. They have been genuine friends throughout the entire friendship, not spotty and whenever they choose that they want to be. That is a friendship. That is a source of happiness. Not the makeshift life you are simulating yourself into. You are a sad person. You are drained of everything but faux happiness and a good time. You think I care about you but you don’t see I stopped awhile ago when I realized you didn’t either. You think I worry about who you are with and broadcast it to be noticed for what you’re doing when in reality if you were truly over it and didn’t care about me whatsoever you wouldn’t have any point to prove. There would be nothing but silence between us because there is nothing there. And there never will be again. And that bothers you. That hurts you. That destroys or has already eaten up some part of you that you will never get back. I’ve moved on. We have moved on. My happiness has nothing to do with you in any slightest way, the people I surround myself with are of intentions that have no single inkling of relevance to you. You do not exist in my life. You are trying to, I can see it. I can only hope for your own sake that you someday learn to accept the person that you are and have been and maybe grow out of it, rather than swallowing it down and keeping yourself from actual happiness and life. 

Free.

The best thing you can do about the assholes in your life REALLY truly is absolutely nothing, who gives a shit if they don’t believe you’re happy, who gives a shit if they expect you and every source that brings you any sort of light to just fail out. Be happy regardless of them, and just thank god that you aren’t in that miserable of a state to dissect someone else’s happiness for truth or fault. They just don’t have enough of there own, deep down, and you’re already above them.

YOU inspire me

Lately I've been thinking about things that inspire me.

I am inspired by: nights. photography, people on the street. books, words, a turn of the phrase, a play on words, blogs, writing, rants. music, the sound, the lyric. people, personalities popping, smiles, originality. scents, nostalgia. voices, great laughs. the oldies, music, people, style or otherwise. fashion, the thrill of the find. kids. other countries, other cultures, the clash, the mix. the sun, the healthy glow. food, the smells, the sights, the melting tangy tastes. art, colors, vivid, design. my thoughts.