The Question

On Tuesday she asked the most peculiar question.
"Are you sick of dying?"
In a low voice, she added,
"Because, believe me, I'm not."

Yes, Tuesday she developed the terrible habit
Of saying to all she met,
"Are you sick of dying?
Because, believe me, I'm not."

My Heart has Seen the Ages

My heart has seen the ages

Flicking past

Like a passenger on a train.

The blur of trees and towns

Kings and queens

Castles and skyscrapers

Until nothing is certain anymore.

As a part of me, it wanders

Like a villain

Through these timelines

Never waking.

A somnambulist

Forever dreaming

Of what it let die.

Hannah and the Halo of Stars

  When I was in kindergarten, first grade, and second and third, there was one girl that I hated more than anyone else. Her name was Hannah, and I remember that because she would make a big deal out of the fact that it was the same backwards and forwards. She was the biggest know-it-all you could ever imagine. She would spell the word “exasperation” at you until you obeyed her command. She was snotty and unkind, and she never had any time for me.

One Friday out of every single month, our school would sell crowns made of star garland, with curled ribbon hanging from the back. I wanted one of these more than anything, but they cost one WHOLE dollar, and my mother refused to give me the money, on the grounds that I wouldn't know what to do with it once I got it home.

Now Hannah got one of these crowns every time they were sold, and I would watch her with extreme jealousy as she walked down to the buses, her golden curls bouncing and mingling with the different colored ribbons. I wanted so much just to BE her, to spell with confidence, to know everything, to wear the beautiful star halo, and to have those luscious curls to mix with the ribbons trailing from the back.

One day I found a discarded star crown on the ground, and I carried it home, keeping it safe in my room. It was my little secret from the world, this small peace of Hannah that I got to copy and have for my self. A while into third grade, or maybe it was fourth, Hannah moved away, and I became the smartest person in class. I didn't have the curls, or the money for a star halo every month, but I still found myself with a joy that was all my own. I don't remember what happened to that star crown that I stowed away, but I wish I could wear it every single day.  

The Chronicles of Spencer

These are a collection of stream of consciousness written poems about a boy that I liked in high school. I just dug them up and decided to share them here. 

I think I love you

I think I love you

I think I love you

But you will never love me

I am invisible to you

You will never notice my face

I will write a thousand poems

Burning through and through

But you will never notice

And less still will you care.

I will haunt you from the shadows

A ghost you never see

But you will never love me

No you will NEVER love ME

I must get this through my head

I must get this through my heart

You will never want me

In this same way

Oh God my darling

A god you are to me

But you will never see me

No you can never know

I am so heartbroken

Heartwrenched

Heartfucked

Heartkilled

I just really really want you

Please

Come to me

But you never will

That is not my life.

I am a pathetic sea creature

While you roam the lands

Oh my Prince, dearest prince

I forgot I was unworthy of your grace

All I wanted was to know you

And you whipped yourself out of my grasp

I wouldn't have tried to taint your soul

And you could have told me

If you had a problem

Instead of just pulling away passively.

And now these words I say with dear dear love.

“Fuck you. I will now pine more.”

I know I said I loved you,

But I think that I was wrong.  

Him.

Today, for the first time in months, I looked right into the eyes of the man who raped me. I knew how I was supposed to feel, a terrifying mix of rage and fear, the desire to kill, a definite certainty that it was, in fact his fault and his fault alone. But what I actually felt was even more scary. When I stared down into those brown eyes, I felt...nothing. I didn't feel a damn thing.
I didn't really feel much at the time, either. It didn't even really feel like rape. Even though I said no. Even though I fought.
I guess, sometimes, that strong feelings of love and hate just cancel out automatically.
You know what the worst part of this is? No one knows. I can't tell anyone. We seemed too happy for someone far on the outside to believe me, and another close friend was raped by another man that I had close ties to, so I can't tell any of our mutual friends, my best friends, in fear that they would just think I wanted to sap their attention. I can't tell any of my new friends, because they would all have ideas of what I could do about it, actions I could take, getting police involved or my family. But I don't want to get anyone else involved. I don't want to alert the police. I just wish that I could tell someone, one person, so that one person could know, and one person could assure me, with complete and utter certainty, that everything is going to be alright, and that I will live again someday.

Another anonymous letter

Fuck you, yes you.
Fuck you for everything you've never done for me.
Fuck you for all the gifts that you gave everybody else.
Fuck you for all the inside jokes you didn't share with me.
Fuck you for loving them all more than you love me.
Fuck you for not giving a shit if you lose me.
Fuck you for hurting me every single day.
Fuck you for expecting me to be there, but never being there for me.
Fuck you for all the things I did for you.
Fuck you for the time I've wasted.
Fuck you. Just fuck you.

The words I could never say

Are clearly written here. I could never say the tiniest hint of this to your face, ever, not even in the nicest way possible, because you don't accept criticism. When I try to make even the slightest suggestion, even when you're being a Class A jerk, you freak out on me as if I've attacked you merely to hurt and in the most brutal manner possible.

I cannot quarrel with you, because you are so “fragile.” All attempts to do result in others coming to me and reprimanding me because of your fragility. How dare I upset the one who is so easily intimidated, so insecure? How dare I do anything but coddle and add to the lie of a life you're building for yourself?

I hope it crashes to the ground around you. All the lies you've built up to make yourself feel better. The fake friendships that you've built with so many others. I hope it crashes and burns and I hope you sit there, smudged in ashes, extending a hand to me and begging me to come in and give you the smallest bit of safety. I will deny that hand, I will scoff at it, and I will throw dirt in your eyes.

I don't even know what you are, because you are so fake. As soon as I try to sink my teeth into some small part that I think is really you, I find myself spitting out plastic whilst choking on Styrofoam. I'm done trying to know you, trying to trust you, trying to love you. You can rot with all of the others now. I wasted so much time thinking that I was special to you. I wasted so much effort trying to make you love me. I wasted so many tears, trying to believe you every time you lied and said you did.

No one understands me. No one understands why I'm not the type of person who can just let go and chop people out completely. I can't chop you out completely. I can't cut anyone out completely. Once you enter my life, you are a part of me. I consider you to dwell only in the deepest, darkest, most hated regions of my mind. You are everything that I hate about myself, rolled into a human being. And when I found myself becoming you, I fought my desire to rip out my heart, throw it into a fire and watch it burn.

Is this where we go on from then? You pretend to love me, I pretend to want it, and we stand with each other, bound together by our loathing, one and the same. I am you as you are me and we are we and no one will ever be able to tell us apart again. Sometimes I daydream about some magic man on a horse who swoops in to save me from you, but those are really just false hopes now, because you really are my past, present, and future. You are both the child in me, and this foreboding, dark cloud of adulthood that hangs over my head, waiting.