January 2012
5 posts
1 tag
Lately I’ve been mostly crashing. Counting calendar boxes again, shaky fingers still searching. I listened to that poem about trying to find God in everything and tried, but with every opening of the eye, his stature only got smaller—had me asking “where have you been?” (What sullen audacity grows in me.) There is something to be said for all of these run-on sentences. When...
1 tag
We watched spoken word videos until far later than we should’ve, padded quietly around your kitchen, finished a documentary about cave diving and you kissed my knee. Missed my bus and fell asleep next to you instead. Shuffled to bed, arranged limbs right, laughed in the dark, and eventually fell asleep again. Woke to the postman at the door, messy haired and soft, caught the train together...
“we’re really doing it”
in the year of our lord, twenty-eleven.
no: Anxiety abounding, moving out, tequila, crying in public, paying bills. Botched phone interviews. The formalities of growing up and the side effects of taking chances. Shady co-workers, silence. Saying farewell to Hogwarts. Technology’s constant need to malfunction at only the most inconvenient times, hundreds of hours wasted watching Netflix, and a rise in apathy, goddamn.
yes:...
December 2011
14 posts
Stood in my empty house with all of its white walls and the echos nearly brought me to tears. Tried to tell you about how the idea of the exchange of physical space is hard for me to wrap my mind around. Such finite things. Such terribly finite things. Gathered up the rest of my belongings and said goodbye for the last time.
2 tags
It got dark. We broke our bones in all the right...
1 tag
I have just been trying to get warm. And you leave my house late, tell me things I can only nod my head to. Caught my edges on something a little too quick, I guess. Curled up inside of a notion that wasn’t fully realized. The cons cut me back every time, fingers intertwined on the couch with all of the worrying. I’ve been weighing feelings heavy like objects in my palms, trying to...
1 tag
1 tag
it’s been a lot like living vicariously through myself this last handful of days, trying to claw my way back into my own goddamn body.
Day Twenty Eight: sewed a patch onto your shirt while you picked the music we sang to. Day Twenty Eight: tried to watch a show but had too many stories to tell to pay attention. Day Twenty Eight: shared a snack at the food carts in a tent strung with Christmas lights. Day Twenty Eight: you asked if you could kiss my cheek, I said yes and fell asleep smiling.
You drove twenty minutes to pick me up from my apartment. Merged the wrong way into traffic and swore, bright smile, at the cars honking at us. Who cares. This life is strange, stranger every day. Here I am, shoes off, in your house. You have a laugh like the winter, creeps itself all the goddamn way into my bones. I’m fumbling with words and jokes, you’re in the kitchen with the tiny...
2 tags
Can I just say that when I was fourteen all I wanted to do was be involved with music—have friends and go to shows and write and put up bands—and I find myself, at twenty, contributing to a small magazine, having the most amazing tour friends, and getting texts that say things like “wanna put up seven of our friends?”
“Your words “let us forget the meaning of defeat” hugged my tired...”
– Getting messages like this from people who’ve received their ‘zine order is like an endless high five or pat on the back. I can’t say enough about how much it floors me every single time.
Day Twenty: Rootbeer floats and friends from the road. December, you started out on the right foot.
hey december,
Today friends from the road will be sleeping in my living room and art will finally be hung on the walls and I can stop staring at these tabs full of job applications and maybe stop stressing for a few seconds, you know, let loose. Today I’ll pay bills and buy myself a new camera (even though I shouldn’t, really, I shouldn’t) and nurse this head cold and do the dishes and keep my...
November 2011
11 posts
A red front door and someone’s hand to hold.
day ten.
There are so many people in this city who look like you, and, here I am, wandering aimless through the city, hands dug so deep in my pockets like I’ll find some sort of escape route there. You’d think in all the rush and flash, all of the new places and faces, I’d find something new to catch my edges on. You smile at me from across the street and I walk towards you, picking up my...
day seven.
Didn’t have heat until day six. Almost hugged the service man when the furnace kicked on and my breath stopped hanging visibly in the air. Ate soup out of the same tupperware bowl (washed and re-washed) on days three, four and five. Walked to the store in the rain and forgot, again, to buy a can opener. Ran out of juice early on day seven (well, that’s today). Went to three shows in...
1 tag
day two.
So far, living in Portland has meant:
Moving the furniture in the rain and dancing in our cluttered living room to White Fang. Stealing wifi from the Safeway across the street—the one where I stocked up on cough drops and soup, the one where I can’t bring myself to ask questions because all of the male-employees are so attractive that it makes me nervous. Crying on the couch when...
1 tag
Tonight marks my last day at the job I’ve had for an entire year and the last night I will sleep in a bed that I’ve made in my mother’s home. By Friday I’ll be in the new place with the creaky cupboards and hardwoods and in two more Fridays my mom will be newly married and move out of this house altogether. If you ever wonder why there are certain people who are obligated...
for a ghost you bleed just fine.
One out of three songs heard on shuffle tonight makes me think about the time we walked through the ankle-high grass with the stars at our backs. Six out of seven sleepless nights has me writhing in the tangles of it—caught up in the endless knots. Five out of my ten fingers ball themselves up in endless fists, white knuckle all of the memories, and they’re not over yet. I know that....
The leaves are still clinging. I cling, too.
3 tags
1 tag
2 tags
(Oh, what I am waiting for? A spell to be cast or...
October 2011
14 posts
1 tag
This is the weekend where your best friend moves a state away. She’s been day dreaming about palm trees and sunny skies and now she’s living with them outside of her window instead of just on the insides of her eyelids. She left you teary-eyed in the post office parking lot, but that’s okay. You’ve got to feel things sometimes, even if they sting. You’ve got to walk...
1 tag
Anonymous asked: you have been single for a very long time! i'm not trying to be rude at all, but how does that feel or is it even something you think about?
The thing about bravery, I think, is that it has little to do with the outcome and everything to do with the action. I believe that being in the business of buying the ticket or dialing the number or knocking on the front door or leaning in, eyes closed, and trying is more commendable than exhausting the options with careful planning. And you’re gonna get totally shaken up sometimes, and...
“go after her, fuck, don’t sit there and wait for her to call, go after her...”
– helena kvarnstrom
The whole world spins scared. It will haunt and charm you, leave you scraping at the moss that grew beneath your feet when you stopped paying attention. White-knuckling the wheel made me feel like a child, learning things I should have already, and I felt the earth shift beneath me for a second while we were still tethered, attached. Everything straining a little until it broke and fell away.
...
2 tags
I spend a lot of my time trying to decide whether I want to dedicate my life to being a real badass, or whether I want to dedicate my life to being the sort of girl who bumps Katy Perry’s “Last Friday Night” in the car on the way to punk shows. The latter option is often the one that wins.
Please, for the sake of everything good in this life, find something you love—something that feels the exact same as taking a big breath—-and do it until you physically, mentally or otherwise cannot do it anymore. Do it until they lock you up. Do it until you’re old and grey. Do it until it’s not feasibly possible. Don’t sell yourself short and don’t fill up...
“the truth resists simplicity.”
dear so-and-so,
Not everything is cracked and ruined, and neither are you. You’ll never hear it when I tell you, so I’ll just keep leaving it in the dark for you to find if you want. This is where I tell you that sometimes I think you’re a bright idea in a dark room, waiting on everything around you to match and catch your goddamn pace. And swinging for the fences doesn’t always mean a...
September 2011
11 posts
#
On the way home, every street light except for the one in front of my house was extinguished. I think about what home means, and wonder if that’s how it’s always going to be—a street-full, a handful, a block-full of places that seem so similar, that hold similar things inside of them, but one that will always stand out, illuminated and singular from everything else. I’ve...
I still drop your name like it’s mine to drop, sometimes.
Tonight was this:
Wu Tang on the way to Portland in Sam’s car, and unexpectedly spending the afternoon next to that handsome boy with the killer smile—the one who has a beautiful brother, the one whose family pulled up a chair for me and let me drink lemonade with them in the sun. It was listening to Eluvium in the echoing lung of that central city block, all of the white-faced...
1 tag
2 tags
Tonight, I saw the first boy I think I ever really loved for the first time in six years and he wouldn’t look me in the eye and we were singing all of the same songs at the same time in different corners of the same room and this life is very weird, okay?
Tonight, Brand New’s last song was “Soco Amaretto Lime” and after the hook “you’re just jealous...