Closer To Fine

Two years ago, life was hard.

While I hid out in my bedroom with books, 
but no laptop, no Netflix, no iPhone, nothing but me,
I blamed homework for my lack of social interaction.
My roommates stopped asking me to go out with them,
and I sunk deeper into myself. I thought I was content.
In an English paper, I wrote that I knew how to be alone
without being lonely, and that might have been true. But
it would be more accurate to say that I learned to be
alone without admitting I was lonely.

Where the guy across town didn't work out,
I crushed on the guy across the hall.
That lasted about three days, because then
my roommate made out with him in his bedroom,
and he sang her to sleep at night with his guitar.
I listened outside the door once, and pretended
that someone would care about me like that. And
it was nice to pretend for a little while, but he was
her rebound and they broke up three weeks later.

When classes ended, I would have lost my scholarship
but for a few anxious emails. I spent hours agonizing
over my future and when it was salvaged, I held on
to the value I placed in my own independence.
It didn't take long before I returned to the blissful state
of ignoring the reality of my future, because back then
graduation was distant, and even when it did happen,
I thought I wouldn't miss it when I left. I thought that
this was another thing I couldn't wait to put behind me.


Last year, life was harder.

Though I found ways to escape, so did the girl
across the parking lot. I talked to her for hours,
borrowed her books, and we didn't talk again
until one of us remembered we didn't live that far away.
I lived with the same roommates. I got what I expected,
except I didn't expect it to be so hard. I tried to make up
for the last year, but I was late. I haven't seen them since.

There was a guy I thought I liked. He was clever,
made me laugh when he said 'pneumonia.' I didn't care
about the difference in our age. Maybe he wouldn't have
either, if he'd given me a chance. I couldn't blame him
when he didn't. I'd gotten used to disappointment.
And I held back, because I didn't trust my own judgment
any longer and I couldn't trust them if I couldn't trust me.

Then I let go of my childhood faith. It was hard,
but not as hard as I thought it would be. The worst part
was telling my parents. They didn't understand the way
I hoped they would. But I thought it would be okay
because I thought I was doing what I thought was right.
Even though I wasn't really sure what 'right' meant,
or whether truth existed, I thought I could find it out.


Life is still hard.

Now the words etched in my heart echo the red ink
on my hands as it fades into cracked, bleeding skin,
the colors indistinguishable from each other. Still
I work myself to sleep, laugh myself to tears, and
refuse to make my life a production of trial and error.

Near the end of what I thought would last forever,
nothing is scarier than an end. And I'm getting through it.
When people ask me how I function, I say I don't know,
but I just don't want to explain that the people in my life
are how I stay alive. That words don't do them justice.

Never thought it would turn out like this, but I wouldn't
have it any other way. Waking up forty-five minutes early
to sit and talk before class. Staying up an hour late just
for that long-awaited phone call. Calling in to work so you
can spend a day together. These things are everything.

And I made time for the people I care about,
and I learned to be more okay with not knowing,
and I realized how much I have to live for,
and that makes every difference.

I didn't think I could be this close to fine, but I am.


I am.

Second Time Around

I step inside my dark apartment,
make sure to lock the door behind me.
The streetlamp outside casts my shadow on the wall,
green light from the microwave tells me the time.
My boots echo on the fake hardwood floor,
feet still freezing through two layers of socks.

I hear the heat running but I don't feel it,
instead notice how cold it is now I'm home alone.
Look out through two layers of glass,
see nothing beyond the streetlamp past the parking lot.
Alone here where it's empty,
where there are no fairy lights or Christmas trees
to make my life feel magical,
lock the bedroom door even though I'm here alone,
or maybe because I am. 
Might just sleep with the lamp on tonight.

I can feel the redness in my eyes,
the burn of wanting to close them
but it hurts too much to do so.
The dried tears on my face
are not the product of today's grief,
but a reminder of what it was like
to feel infinite.

I remember minutes ago,
when I didn't want to let go of that feeling
We held on to each other in a dark truck.
and I could hear his heartbeat
even through two layers of clothing.
And then the moment passed
and I came inside and
maybe someday I won't be scared. 

I sit on the floor of my bedroom,
boots still on my feet,
and everything is so, so cold.
Maybe someday things will be different.

Making Promises

I didn't get drunk last night,
but I might have been a little tipsy.
Not too much to forget what happened,
because I remember what I did and said.

I talked to foreign men and avoided one person
who makes me more uncomfortable than anyone should.
I watched people smoke weed on the back porch
while I sat on a cold couch laughing with a short guy
drinking a pumpkin-flavored beer.
It was my second, but he said he's had too many to count.

I walked up a hill with some people I knew,
and more that I didn't, to get good food at half past eleven.
I didn't buy anything because I've
already indulged enough this week.
An Iranian man hid his beer in the bushes while we ate
on the roof. The bisexual man who sat in the next seat
ran away when another girl wasn't interested in him.

I had fun, but when we went to move her car,
I fully supported driving indefinitely. And we did.
We just drove and talked and everything I told her
had nothing to do with the alcohol.

At midnight I spent time with the gays,
and my father wasn't happy when he found out.
I spent a week with wet eyes, but ever since then
I've just been mad. She understood that.

At one she went to jail; she told me how
she never thought they'd get caught
out in the middle of a field in the middle of the night.
But they were, and she paid the price.
It almost ruined her life, but now she feels like
there was a reason for everything that happened.

By two I had left the church. I was fed up with the
hypocrisy, the double standards,
the twisted sexuality and unhealthy self-image.
She's heard it all and she still goes,
even though she calls herself a sinner. Though
she doesn't always live it, she believes it's right,
and it makes her happy. And that's what matters.

By three we're better friends than I could have imagined
when we began this five hours ago.
She didn't have anything to drink,
but she didn't need it to decide to trust me.
We told each other our stories and
heard those of everyone else:
the political activists and the potheads,
the already drunk people and the ones just getting started.
The people in the corners and at the center of attention.

I fell somewhere in between.
Not stone-cold sober
but not too drunk either.
I may have been a little tipsy,
but I remember every detail.

Touch Me Fall

You don't know what to do with days like this,
when you haven't left your house
and then it's dark outside again.
When you speak barely a string of sentences
to another person for hours,
and you stay inside.

Some days there is solace in the being alone;
today is not one of those days.
Running the same playlist on repeat helps,
or at least that's what you tell yourself.
You don't know what you're feeling or why,
and you're afraid to consider it too much.

You don't mean to cry but you do,
and you can't separate the tears of sorrow
from those of anger, and you realize
that you are so much more than that:
gratitude, pain, confusion, healing,
love, rage, fear, fury, uncertainty

all find their place within your cracks.

It may not be as bad as you think,
but that doesn't stop you from crying over it.

They Won't Have Me

I remember back then.

A phone in pieces on the floor,

silently begging to be acknowledged

but I stubbornly ignore its painful presence.

It's harder than I want it to be. It seems simple at first,

but simple things turn out to be less simple than we thought

Sometimes when I move the wrong way, pain shoots up my spine.

I've had plenty of that pain in my past, but it didn't hurt as much as this;

now the pain is more than I can bear alone, but luckily I don't have to be alone.

When my world fell his chest was the only solid thing to hold onto,

and it was enough for me. Not in spite of it, but because of it.

I walk down halls that smell like elementary school

and I am transported back to days years ago

When college was a probable possibility

and I didn't know what a crush was.

When gay still just meant happy,
and fathers were always right.

Run

I watched it for fifteen minutes,
black beetle on the edge of a desk,
shell edged in red,
antenna trembling,
trying to take stock of its surroundings
and failing,
flailing,
never getting anywhere.

I didn't give it a chance to run
before I crushed it under my shoe.
I held nothing against it but existence,
and even I got a chance at that.

I spend my days living a routine—
an endless spiral
both familiar and foreign in its consistency.
I can neither fly away
nor find my way to solid ground,
so this is where I have stayed.

I have to get out,
run while I can,
or I'll be crushed before I've gone anywhere.

Burn All The Letters

Precision of language
is an impossibility.

Junior high me liked attention.
She exaggerated the emotions of her life
in ways that were unrealistic and untrue
and she got her attention.

Present day me still likes attention.
But I also value the preservation of authenticity,
the precision of language,
saying what I mean.

Today that precision failed.
I failed it
and I failed me.