The Champagne Soapbox

  • ALICE IN CHAINS

    Are you ready for this life? Like tracing fingers on baby feet, you only notice emotions when you feel excitement or pain or certain specific things. Drunk breathing keeping you from going to sleep. Your body vibrates from the movement of your drumming heartbeat. Between the cities and thrills we keep cheap, something inside doesn’t rest. A social unrest: the collective understanding that when we lay for our final rest, the rest will watch us regress into the wet paved grass. They will see you at your worst and joke about death, but in death, we don’t see or think or joke at all. We just cease to exist.

    The last time I saw my dad smile was when he saw my sister and I argue. His brother loved sailing swamp water and shooting guns and Alice In Chains. I inherited more things than just my father’s pain. He lied about getting his tear ducts plugged. I tasted the cajun salt from my tears and saw my dad looking at me like a mirror with broken glass. Surrounded by strangers, it seemed as though he does not even recognize me when my water is not enough to warm my frozen expression. I learned to stop crying when he took my phone away, after my window was locked and the belt withered.

    Though a crowd of familiarity, I notice his red face and blue shirt and pale white skin stained with colorful emotion. The last time I saw my dad cry was the first time I saw him as someone other than my dad. Pictures of his childhood flipping over like a book on a screen. He got a new phone the other day and called me from it. The child now standing in front of me, pointing at me, telling strangers how proud he is to have made me and how sad it has been to lose you.

    At my new home, I walk around like there is a veil protecting me from maintaining peace. I feel people stare at me when I tell them where I have been. I’ve become accustomed to this sheet in front of me. I fucking hate therapy because i can’t tell people about myself, i just want them to see me without having to ask me about my favorite things. Have my friends wonder about me without having to ask them if they want to meet for coffee. It’s not their job to look after me. It’s my job now to work on getting me back to me after losing you.

    You haven’t talked to me in months, but your dad commented on his memorial page. I valued us, now the me after you. When I die, will you let me know on the internet?

    I’m starving but bloated from the sea I’m swallowing. She told me that my face looked really puffy, so I sat in the bathroom stall swallowing my own spit. I think I made myself sick from all this mucusy saliva succumbing to gravity when I cry prior to sleep. I went to the doctor, got a shot, and look at the bruise. Now I’m the sick one.

    My friends are sending me pictures of their babies. My dad is telling me he needs to pull himself together. My work expects me in the morning.

    It’s raining tonight. Tomorrow, sun.

    I lay in the pool with my pale skin and hairy legs. I realize how much effort it is. The sun reflects off me as though I have become water. The overcast afternoon: I have disappeared behind billowing blue waves and feel covered by the sheet in the sky. Doves fly around like angels, and peace becomes independent from my struggling white flag. I’m tired, so I close my eyes. Finally warm, you surround me like a plaid flannelled hug. Don’t make me think about how you became the light that clouds invade.

    I don’t look like myself, and you don’t either. I think of you and how I will always remember how you went to sleep forever. Play Alice in Chains until my restless sleep finally becomes a slumber. They’re playing some Cardi B or some shit by the pool. I can hope it’s just my beginning.

    Are you ready for this life? Tracing fingers on baby feet. Drunk panicking keeping you from going to sleep. Between the cities and tricks we keep cheap, some guttural growl reveals that it can’t go to sleep. We all look up at the ceiling and wonder why the dead people inside painted it so cheap. In life, we joke about death. In death, we don’t see or think or joke at all, we just live in someone’s corrupted memory.

  • voyeur

    Dear voyeur,

    I think about looking through your windows, just to see if you clean your dishes when you come home or if you finish them after you sit-down to eat. If I think of you enough, would you think of me as more than just a memory? You keep our shallow time together as a reference for your deep fantasy. Something to replicate when the girl on the street looks a bit like me, someone a bit easier maybe. That’s not a bad thing by the way. I’m justtoohardonmyself for anything about me to be as simple as easy. I keep my place clean waiting for someone to come home just to make it dirty.

    At the right place and right time, I’ll gift you a peek.

    The person above me is moving out today. They would vacuum in the mornings and passivishly encourage me to get out of bed. My mom never rushed me to be up, so I roll around until someone expects me. The couple below me moved out too. I still make steps on the ball of my feet. I float around my apartment and to other people’s places like my laugh is an echo and my only question is “do i really exist to you” or are you just a fragment of my reflection. me, me, me.

    They’re as real as they want to be.

    Down the street, I’m considered the girl next door. On this train, I’m considered a girl who thinks of the whole world. I feel the car shake with the environment, and I think about how this life wasn’t free and the guy next to me might consider me to be a girl whose skin would look good by a pool. That’s not a bad thing by the way. I’m too hard on myself for anything about me to be free.

    Life can be easy when I allow it be.

    The clouds looked like mountains. She’s thunderstorms, coming from heaven and wrapping around you like a wet blanket. Slapping her feet on the ground allofasudden because she learned that no one listens to the sounds she makes. The people around her moved away.

    The clouds look like mountains. I feel like thunderstorms today, coming from hell and surrounding people with noise. I rumble words from my tongue and my stomach growls. People don’t expect me to snap, but I wake up in a pool of sweat and my bed on fire and I swim to the bottom of the flames and feel sad and happy at the same time that two opposites can coexist simultaneous to each other.

    The clouds looked like mountains. I feel electric today. I woke myself up in the middle of the night sweating. I looked at how skinny I was in the mirror and smiled. Desire’s baring teeth,bitingintome and it hurts buthesaid he was kindointo mesoiletitbelettheemotionsrevealthemself during my timeof the week – at least that’s what he thinks. What are you thinking my maybe baby? My neighbor hasn’t seen me lately. All of guys tell me lies I fantasize growing into a smaller waist size. I forget the last time i cried because it was unproductive and it lacked the structure of KPI’s.

    No one asks me what the weather is. I always ask the question and give the answer, and my friends listen to my noises and smile. I like to picture life from another person’s eyes. What they see when they fantasize, if they do – do they criticize myself in the same perspective as mine. Trees flow by I can’t ask why I don’t feel sad so I wonder why I consider old friends acquaintances and guys as a general disguise for why I feel like love is a prize.

    All I ever wanted

    was to do as i wanted.

    Maybe sometimes that means that i want to be wanted.

    After all that self-mercy its easy to love me so consider yourself lucky

    i’m going to let down my hair

    break things in here stomp around and scream in my under-

    wear opened the window and saw him across the street just to match me in my sneaky stare

    am i here or there do you hear me or do i just listen to myself scream at the walls and watch how my body moves in the reflection of my mirror?

    we both enjoy this carousel, fair enough going up and down between here nor there.

  • pink eye

    [subtitle: things i notice when i focus]

    It’s hard to fall asleep in a restful mundane when a screaming inner child hides behind these adult doors. I wake up in the middle of the night sometimes with my chest swollen with pain and throat scratchy sore. I’m on the second floor, downstairs exists two dogs a quiet girl and a smiling boy. Growing up, it was a quiet boy a smiling girl and a blondie with me on the other side of my door. I still fold my hands over my eyes and stare at the glow behind the window because the body keeps score there’s more to my morning than a husky howling at the goodbye moon and the slam of your neighbor’s heavy door. Payten was always up before me, anyway.

    Why does the sun go on shining?

    Why does the sea rush to the shore?

    Why do the birds go on singing?

    Going over another day’s morning, under a newish roof, surpassing an okay pay, licking against the grain of my ragged front tooth away. My dentist told me that I grind my teeth in my sleep, but really I just keep things in my mouth long enough that I can taste the color dye. Suck the flavor dry. New people watch my satiation’s demise and feel my eager heart rise. I text my dad once a week, but I… – fuck, I forgot to call when I said I would last night.

    A headache started, because I used to wake up to my mom coughing up pollution from downstairs. Four hours away, and I still imagine her voice so easily like it’s relevant to my subconscious memory. Maybe I’ll be like her one day, and maybe I am her just in a different way. She learned what is okay and her eyes ask for kindness when her words rough play. My parent’s mirror reflects my face. I get lost in this independent place hoping that I find peace in drowning mundanity and staring at dead flowers in my mother’s old vase. They wake up and think of me maybe when they brush their teeth, while I just think of myself and the chip that I made in a piece of my smile.

    My outfit is already paired together. I’ll change it to something not much better, knowing that the people who will perceive me today will label me with a Gen-Z header despite the fact I had donated that sticky college-aged pleather. I can do makeup under ten minutes now, because I care about skin care more now, maybe taking care of myself better now knowing that at least I’ll have depth to the lines from belly-ache smiles instead of frowns.

    I like my face. I like my body. I like this place. I step on a long checkered rug and crease my belly when I brush my teeth. I get a notification that his veterinary appointment is next week.

    The drive to the void is a release. Getting the giggles and screams out before the everyday abnormalities cease. Becoming focused is a feat under fluorescent lighting and cubicles that smell like stale coffee or Texas heat. It was more fun to focus when Adderall was freshly necessary.

    The coffee pot is cool. It has beans that shake and grind themselves for my pleasure. My co-worker told me his wife’s mother passed away. Her husband’s life was her and now without her, things remain the same unchanged. Still her on his mind at least. He tells me about his upcoming calls, and all I could think about was his father in law how he helped his faith and all but his mother in law who isn’t with us baselines his mind she’s a call he can’t make. The edge of my fingers throb raw after I used my teeth to razor them off in reaction for the things I had to say in passing hallway interactions. It was the most real conversation I’ve had between conversations of product passions and random numbers turned into fractions. I looked in the bathroom mirror because that frown did not feel natural at all. Did my tooth chip again?

    Us and them in equal opposition. A cross-stitched hem on pants I bought half off in college and an ink stain from when his golfing bored me. For a while, I could turn myself on for others, but it would make me feel off. Now I just feel on and run along, not for long until I stop and ask myself if anything is wrong. Nothing usually is, because I know myself now – (at least as much as I allow). I don’t really argue anymore. I run away, not for long until I stop and ask you if: “we can work it out together.” Since our problems are related and not new, something humane and an invisible line lassoing me into you. Snap out of it. One dry blink and I return to the Outlook blue.

    Routine malaise. A lump of normalcy drowns itself in the rusted tunnel of my throat. My voice leaves easily, not received as noticeably, like wind is a breeze and my words are just a breath to those who picture a version of me for their own pleasing. I don’t mean a lot of what I say, but when I think about it, I do and I downplay it too so we can reach complacent agreement or and agreeable longer conversation by an hour or two. It’s fine when you’re learning how to become an adult – deciding whether or not the communal design is meant to keep you sinking or filling you up with bloat. Or maybe I feel sick because I skipped breakfast. Or maybe I’m thinking too much about his dead mother in law. No, they don’t look at you and see your mom too.

    A new day decides on a new design, a deeper smile line. When I’m not at my desk, I’m at epoch with a dark-aura stranger and a shared power line. Through the casual phrases we intertwine, I cherish how my words are being heard from a new person in mind. A new girl decides to step in front of me in line it’s honestly bullshit but my coffee guy sneaks a smile through that invisible string we tied. I look at myself when I’m on camera just to wonder if the environment suits the wandering eye. My hair not tied, thicker liner on my eyes, are those glasses real or do you just like to lie? I like to think when I’m in public, someone is looking at me wondering if I met the right guy.

    When I think about the world in detail, what parts are real and what parts did I fantasize?

    I focus on today and notice the details about my life that are real and not romanticized.

    I don’t live a lie I guess I just see the world through a third eye. Through the mother of mine, she sees her daughter and sighs a sign of relief that I ended up with a life the sun favors frying. Through the strange power line, I touch my table neighbor’s hand and try not to smile. I wander into the record store next door and spend $50 on Elvis because my dad is always on my mind, just not at night. Turns out I’m fine.

    I just moved down toward the east of Austin. Driving down my new roads with my windows down is a sign of newfound peace. I feel a bit of release when the duties of my fiscal upkeep are temporarily complete. A restaurant receipt is breathing by the force of windows-down wind and my hair is tangled between sticky sunscreen and hormonal grease. I was so pissed off last weekend that all I saw my heartbeat, but now I’m going the speed limit and notice the letters to the exit for my street. Open my door and see my cat asleep, his lungs expanding and eyes open begging for me to give him something gross to eat. Stare at my tired self in the mirror and notice my mother’s crows feet from squinting from smiling at people I have yet to meet.

    Why does the sun go on shining?

    Why does the sea rush to the shore?

    Why do the birds go on singing?

    I am a horribly limited person who always wanted more. Lately, I’ve been trying to focus on the details rather than creating because I’m bored. I spend more time at the movie theatre than I do talking to the Lord. If indecision and reveries are the anesthetics of constructive action, why do I keep analyzing the folds of my brain instead of leaning on my pre-existing explorations? Force myself into a haze (or god forbid, I read a BOOK) in order to have a more informed opinion. I think when I think, I force myself to revive thoughts that were extinct, so much that I think that I think myself into a dark hole where my thoughts remain incomplete or indistinct.

    I pull out of the theatre and notice that the “O” in Alamo Drafthouse is slightly pink. The men on the exit of my street, who usually sell fruit, have gone home to their families and fell asleep. My cat noticed me turning my key and ran to meet me at my feet.

  • guys and christ

    When you’re young, you can easily recall where you first learned something. Now that I’m older, there are some things I wish I could forget.

    When I was little, I had a list of people I prayed for every night. I would run through it, mention world peace, and blanket statement friends and family if not already covered. I did the father, son, and Holy Spirit three times. Said amen three times. Said I loved him, and I hoped he forgave me maybe once. That was on me, I guess.

    He punched the wall behind me. Somehow I felt always stronger, even when I acted weak. I ran into the bathroom and locked myself within. I imagine his dad patching up his son’s wooden bruise that night, thinking about how he hoped better for his own daughter.

    He loved my body. The way I could slump into a seat and disappear. Sometimes, I feel like I’m still tucked away between impounded feathers and thick brown strands of hair. When you find a penny in the couch, do you throw it away or put it in a jar? Donate a dirty dime to penance and act as though your hands are clean.

    We rode to Louisiana in a top-down Porsche and I thought about flying away, landing in the brown bayou. My mom makes the best gumbo when come running for her comfort. No matter the season, she makes me feel better.

    He drove the same car my dad does, only black. When I gave him love, he would lose it and beg to find it in the backseat. I sat in the passenger seat, happily willing to let him steer.

    When God made Eve using Adam’s rib, did he intend on men to lose themselves constantly and find primal comfort in my female shape? I make eye contact for too long, and I realize they wants to tear me apart until I’m in loose limbs.

    They talk through sharp teeth, using soft words like “slow burn” and “sexy” to get to know the parts of myself that I reveal alone in pity. If people confess their sins when they feel guilty, why has no man begged for my mercy?

    I’m not sure why when I feel overwhelmed by masculinity, I question God and his plan for me. I ask why he gave his only son instead of a girl, realizing that our existence in outlined by convincing the human world his mother is not a whore. Maybe I ask should ask her what was I made for. If not to be loved, then maybe to be worshipped.

    Words from a woman, so controversial it seems. Not one word from a woman in any religious text, and maybe that’s why they are easier for me to trust. Hide from male pride until they recognize my femininity as divinity.

    Maybe god is a woman. I was taught to forgive men easily. We would sit in a pew, during silent arguments, and hold hands for Our Father. He never forgave me too easily, even when I asked. I looked at the priest who knew all of our sins, and his eyes told me that it would be over soon. I prayed the rosary as penance, and asked Mary if she loved me too.

    She never told me, but I always knew.

    Roses follow women, the same way men do.

    He punched the wall behind me. I imagine his dad patching up his son’s wooden bruise, thinking about how his son would become a martyr for his own failed lessons.

  • knobby knees

    I used to fall on my knees and get up easily. Using skateboards and helmets to throw myself down, now I look around and notice how many people grew up before me. Just over five foot tall, twenty four looking over the edge of the Baytown bridge and find the world watching waiting for me to be weightless among the breeze. Being gentle means reacting to light things like floating swings or changing leaves and time not agreeing with my plans for a self-fulfilling prophecy. Being gentle means being me before the world affected me. Looking into the eyes of someone I love and finding a child who’s excited for life to always be free. Is death just cheap or am I just skewed from the TCP refinery thing? Spend time chasing happiness when peace is all we need. Feel the full spectrum of emotion, welcome your sadness like a friend you missed seeing around the neighborhood of hurricane leaves. I watched her cut the bruises off fruit that fell from the tree. Snubbed her thumb and sucked the blood dry as if someone taught her young that water turns into wine. Here we go with all our needs. So many things, so many of me. Your body knows how to breath automatically watch them expand fully and release all necessity to control destiny because love or life comes easily when you think beautiful things of simplicity. When the swing set sits empty, my friend cuts the bruises off the peach and looks at me with such empathy, as if there’s a child in me that she’s dying to meet.

  • strangers at walgreens

    I only want to leave when I’m comfortable. What does that say about me? I get in my bed and imagine my life better overseas. I leave my peace in a room with two queens thinking that my bed is a better place to sleep.

    I found familiarity in a stranger today. I wondered if the area was safe and she interrupted my thought to say that this was her favorite place. They have one back in Austin, but I guess I wanted to see what the difference would be. The difference is a girl who doesn’t know me yet looks like someone I might have seen. I bet she wore ribbons in her hair. I wear them still. Maybe that’s the thing that ties us together.

    I met a few more people today. I rode in a car with a stranger and turned out okay. I find that I’ll find my way when I push myself to resolve future problems today. Get that thinking shit out of the way so I can stare blankly and not be filled with constant dismay. I stood outside of a Walgreens and this guy told me he liked my headphones and if I was gay. He didn’t say that exactly, but I knew if I laughed too hard or smiled too big he could either take me or make my day. He skated off, (of course he did) and my ride arrived asking for my name.

    He looked back at me. I only know because I was waiting to see if he was looking at me like a feen. Dirty boys are kind of like my nicotine. Dirty like slept in sheets or stomping cigarettes out on the street. Fingerprints left on an almost empty cologne bottle and hugs that feel like a stolen heartbeat. We can share clothes and toothbrushes and stare at the same screen. Feel the same depressions and raise each other up like a late sunrise in the spring. Just a little fling, make myself a bit dirty until I think it’s time I get clean.

    What does that say about me?

    I like the way clothes feel on me when I’m clean. Swimming in bubbles, my namesake. It’s like no one has seen me naked and my car muffles the sound of my scream. It’s like no one has seen me at my worst and I’m worthy of bigger dreams. I’ll scape my skin dry and slather myself in anti-aging cream.

    I want things so opposite of me.

    I just hope that we can all get along. I look over my shoulder cause I hear her singing my favorite song. Scream at the same sun asking some god if he has a place for my mom. If god was a girl, she would remind me of where I came from. It’s not like I forget anyway. It follows me like a shadow, because I only notice it when the sun is too bright and I turn around.

    Just because I can, I buy a teddy bear and say it’s to socialize my katze. I only know a single Germans phrase, and I repeat it over when I get really tipsy. I’ve only been to Germany once. I never left, and now I only listen to hard techno when I get a little boozy. My mind goes crazy when my body is lazy. Easy rhyme, falls off the tongue reasonably like clothes to a sleazy. I forget that my mind and body are a single entity responding through millions of filled or occupied capacities.

    Nothing bad is going to happen to me. It’s all in good time. Something bad is going to happen to me, but it’ll end up fine. One day, I’ll respect my time. I get scared when I realize everything is safe. I’m in a perfectly fine place, most of the time. When I rest my head, I think about how privileged I am to be paranoid about losing my peace when the only thing that leaves me is time and that guy who wanted to look at me twice – one first and last for the last time.

  • blonde

    Blurry morning sky, and I’ll rub my eyes awake in an hour. Sitting in the shower, feeling dirty and clean. I wish I could ask him to suck the rot right out of my bloodstream. Gentle baby, touch me just to relieve the part of the seams that are too tight and strung. You’re gone, so I press my cheek to the floor. The dirt that pollutes my environment are footsteps walking through the door. How do you tell the girl in the black sheets there will always be a layer of darkness above her? We can watch the same sunset and I’ll still get sad that it has to say goodbye so many times. You have my other hand. Promised me that you would make the time pass easily, indefinitely. I just think anywhere you are is the coolest place in the world, and now I’m homesick.

    My sheets were pink before that. Feet on the bunk boards above me and a jumping George on the screen. Double bounce so I can feel high even when you feel like my shadow – in my privileged house with a trampoline and a cat that follows. Held my hand through the crowd when you got too drunk, until we laughed about you getting too drunk and you said you thought I might be too drunk. I thought I thunk myself into a coma, until you woke me up. When I think about it, I feel like throwing up like you made this up. The highlights pulled you out of a funk and I wish you would have just owned it, like this is finally the moment. When you were my other hand, I thought about how you only took care of yourself.

    Depollute me. Water me down like rain running from my roof. My window is boarded shut from jumping too many times. Preforming myself into seclusion, and now I’m a magician with a wand and a rabbit. I sit awhile and guess my sicknesses. The shirt I wear that’s not made for me, it’s too big for me, I dried it on accident and now it hugs all of me.

    It’s funny that I only feel like myself when I’m not home. Maybe I like being a stranger among aisles. A child looking at normal things in awe. I get along with them all because I grew up with people who say y’all. A sister who answers a second after I call. Would you recognize me in a room full of people and hold my hand again after it all? A hotel room that’s too big for a girl this small. I feel comfortable in public restrooms when I’m the only one in a stall.

    Water slaps my window. I think about jumping just to feel the wind, never pain. It would only take a bit of effort to fix this. A bit of money or medications or more isolation. Finding myself in a different place, with a bit of money, medications, and isolation is enough. Music to make the cough go down. For someone so void of emotion, you knew how to make someone cry. That was a while back. I don’t cry anymore, and when I do it’s because I’m thirsty. Staring at the ones left who haven’t left and say “Bailey, I hope you never leave me.” To be fair, I even leave myself sometimes. Not recently though.

    My hair is flat from laying down on my back. Rolling around the carpet at the hotel next to the laundromat in a city where I might host my final act. Feet in the air like I’m pushing boards. White sheets with a clean smell, unfamiliar and perfect. Peace is a privilege, and I know myself too well. I know you’ll never see this. I’ve mopped my floors and your name is becoming hard for me to spell.

    2 responses to “blonde”
    1. Avatar
      Anonymous

      Awh

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
    2. Avatar
      Anonymous

      Misery loves romance, and I’m getting married

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

    Leave a comment

  • masterclickbaiter

    When I get scared on the plane, I picture my neighbor being you. I prop my shoes on the bag you bought me when I turned twenty two.

    The media is fucked up for selling me this idea of being okay before letting someone play with your emotions. I want to boundlessly skip in the field of someone else’s mind, let them push me on the swings for me to fall into and follow through with abnormal motions of attraction. Spreading lies like that across social media and shit as if you’re the Buddha of being the babygirl, when I haven’t found a match, makes me believe that I’m not okay. That the universe rewards false sense self-healing with a … man. I look around the playground and hope that the old boys will stay because if they leave that means the influencer girls consider me to not be okay and do tenfold more healing just to say on another day that I’m in fact not gay. Whose place is it to determine my relationship status based on my psychological status. The fact is you lack the authority to assume my aura’s attractiveness. I believe life is a journey of constant healing from past mistakes and accepting your future as fate and understanding that mistakes aren’t real unless they create pain. The idea that a partner will come when I’m perfectly perfect is imperfect because i wouldn’t want a partner who wanted me at my perfection. I still wake up and add to my to do’s in case the next morning I forget to be the better image of my reflection. If that’s the case, my heart will never be enough and they’re always in advantage to take advantage of my heart. In my divinity, I’ll only know love and until then I’ll be enough for myself to judge.

    I think it happens when you are just okay, not the best or worse on a given day but just fine enough to be normal enough to give enough of a chance on destiny’s date. Not with a guy who calls you strong because he values strength and knows your weaknesses better than your deepest passions. I’ve been thinking about strength lately. Let me be weak and have the privilege to find strength in love, as it was meant to be, as if there aren’t multiple forms of love in a relationship. Maybe I love myself too much for a funny man to be confident he can match it. Maybe they get jealous of how i sit on my couch without grace and I tell group stories about how a strong woman acts. They invented the definition of strength, so they know when you’re being it or not. I’m tired of being strong, so I’ll be gentle. At least to myself and others. Emotions have grown capital, the corporations are mining humans for their gold. Let it be your own, and evaluate what things you classify as reward.

    I’m just over it is all. It seems like life has become a monopoly and romantic love is an asset reserved for the emotionally wealthy. It’s weird because I don’t necessarily think about a relationship, but I do think about my emotional wealth and how it can be perceived as a threat. Funny thought.

  • Birthday (SAD)

    I’m sick and I’m crying in my car. I keep looking around to see if people are looking. I cant stop looking.

    The nostalgia of an incoming autumn always puts me in some weird headspace. I always get sick. This is my first time being sick alone. It’s incredibly depressing. You make your stupid soup and take your stupid meds and get overcharged at a medical facility and judged for not mastering the art of taking care of yourself. Being sick alone is almost embarrassing, but the act of being sick is almost pleasurable when there is someone who is there to acknowledge your sickness or sulk in it with you. The weather is turning over a new color and there is a filter that makes the world look fulfilled. I envy that.

    So, I’m crying in the car again. I realized my birthday is next week, and I have no childlike expectation to experience it in depth. Maybe growing up is finding comfort in simplicity and losing nostalgia in serendipity. Aging past the post-teen boy-feening depressions I had a few years ago, I experience sadness like a clown after people laughed at him. They say southerners can smell the rain before it comes, and they can. I can smell the depression before I start to feel nothing.

    My sister would always have swimming parties. She’s born in June. We’re both water signs, so playing mermaids came naturally. We would push each other in and meet each other at the bottom and flap our fins until we believed we were magical actually. Now that I’m older, I don’t believe there is a bottom of the pool. If I jump too deep, there’s no one to help me find my way back.

    Competitively, my mortal buoyancy reminds me that I’m at the lowest seat of the plane that’s taking off. The lowest low and highest high. I’m dangling my knees from the highest branch of the steepest tree. I’m constantly flying freely and dodging things in the shape of love or opportunity. I see love as a temporary loss in identity. I got a concussion once and had to wear rose glasses to see. I stopped wearing them because they looked stupid, and I started looking down at independence as something earned and not free.

    I don’t think I have ever thought so high of myself. I don’t think I’ve ever considered myself. I’m finally considered, and I’m finally enough. At least to myself. That’s the mid-twenties part about this piece. It’s that crying in the car won’t exactly give you anymore peace. You start to think until you can’t breathe, and you realize your birthday is a funeral and death (when it comes) will be a breeze. I think the universe likes to watch me be, and I often think about the television screen she uses to judge or improve me.

    The warm breath of summer starts to thin and so does my anxiety, well to a point. Kisses feel uncomfortable when the Texas sun chooses you to be its target, but autumn tastes of the freshness comparative of snogging someone new. It’s like watching your parents grow old and expecting you to take care of yourself when you’re sick. My mom picks up the chance to take care of me when she sees I’m doing it quite well alone. I wonder if people think of me when they’re alone, or if I’m just the pillar of a balance beam measuring the vibrations between seams of a jagged tapestry. I was sick for a week. No one knew of me for a week. I didn’t exist for a week, and yet they wanted to know if I were free for a drink. I always am. A drink feels like family and adjusting communal moods is like finding an apple close to the deserted tree. Seems fair.

    I care so much about the perfume I wear. I hope I can control the sense you make of me, intentionally. I’ve landed at a point where my self-image reflects my ego and touches upon reality. Someone told me I always smell good, so I change what I wear hoping that my aura wears stronger and lasts longer.

    I’m sick and no one cares. I sneeze and no one blesses me. How am I supposed to sleep well at night half trusting my divinity? I crave a bit more than self-intimacy but my curiosity for men who lack the ability to understand me emotionally has led me toward clarity. Lately, I cling to my independence like it’s become endangered. Mary loved Jesus before they met by the manger. The burning marsh by the feeder road church reminds me that men and my raised religion taught me anger.

    My birthday is just a few days from Halloween. I hated sharing a holiday. I forget that my birthday is coming up, yet I am quick to check if my neighbor started decorating. I’m barefoot on my balcony looking through peoples windows making sure my life appears to be a bit more interesting. The girl across me just got a boyfriend. The couple on the first floor switch holding a cigarette in the morning. The guy adjacent from me has a weed pen, a big dog, and an addiction to p***. I close my window when his opens, and I wonder what they think of me.

    A girl with brown eyes and shorter hair – an inch every time I reveal myself to be seen. Everything about her is big. Big denim pants, big t-shirt, and big over the ear headphones with a pace that sometimes includes a hop skip or dance. She keeps holding her cats hand. She smiles with all her teeth. She talks incredibly too loud. She doesn’t cover her mouth when she coughs. She sits in her car and cries when she feels no one is watching her. She closes her curtains too late, hoping someone is watching. What does that say about me? I watched this guy walk in the bush ahead of my car to go pee (lmao). He played it off like I didn’t see. Do people even see me when I don’t ask or prompt them to attend a birthday party to grieve my 23?

    I spend most time being hard on myself and soft with others. Sometimes life reminds you to be soft to yourself by being hard to you. I got slapped by whiplash from the flapping wind driving windows down on the freeway. I woke up with a steel boot on my chest after sharing a cigarette (or more). I’m sitting in the car looking to see how fast a puffy face will disappear when the gold sun asks to invade my sunken space. It took my breath away, in a painful kind of way. I got out of the car and let my face dry. I wish I could feel weightless everyday. This week is my birthday, and I wish my birthday hadn’t become just another day.

    Everything’s changed, everyone’s changed, I’ve changed and yet I’m the only one who ended up the same. Nothing every seems perfectly settled and I toss around my comforter like it’s a hair out of place on my wedding day. I run my tongue over the chip in my tooth like a dog that’s dying to get loose from the collar ball and chain that’s holding it back from being lost. It’s hard to get out of bed when you actually like your boss. Life is good when you consider time to be of high cost.

    As for this next year, I let go of the friends who ran away. I let go of the pain I carry when I know it’ll all just be okay. To the boys I’ve let back in just to watch them rot and crowd my mind with their deliberate decay. The birthday feels like I’m the ring leader for my own circus and I have to beg people to come let me entertain. I got pancakes and chocolate chips to make the morning of – just so I can wake up and know that being alone is okay. I wish for more slow mornings. I let go of quick mornings and mourning younger versions of myself that I hated at the time. I trust the universe to course correct my path when I accept things not for me. I let go of love that’s hard and accept love that finds me. All I want to do in this life is be me because I’m the only one capable of complete understanding of my own being.

    I’m cool as shit (that’s okay to say). I write, and I care, and I’m passionate, and I’m wise, and I’m crazy, and I’m loud, and I know myself, and I only have two secrets, and I’m sure of myself, and I love deeply, and I’m expressive in my own right. I hope that my life continues to be this bright, for the light to crash through my window when I’m crying in my car just to ask if I’m alright.

    To be real –

    Thank you for being my friend over the years. I get fairly emotional thinking about this 23rd. I’ve traveled the most I have ever in my life, and I’ve discovered a passion for the aisle seat. I’ve shed the shyness the world granted me after a rough year with a rough relationship and rough expectations for myself. I live a life that I’m happy with. I forget about concert tickets, I don’t beg for forgiveness, I trust myself and I love being my dad’s princess. I just expect happiness to return after sadness. A funeral is a celebration of life, and I thank the universe for allowing me to explore some more and hopefully forever.

    Cheers to those who get devastatingly depressed when their birthday comes and you ask if your friends really care about you and fuck you’re getting older and you just want your mom to call the grocery store for you to see if they can make you your favorite cake. Twenty-four is next door.

    Bye bye

  • white noise

    Some people feel what most people don’t. Some people watch people until they implode. Put me in a movie and everybody will know. I’m a star, the one the people say you are, of the movies we watch that remind us of a future not far. The shooting one that disappears into oblivion for me to chase into eternity without a vision of its journey. The empty minded, and the heavy minded, and the heavy bodied, and the empty bodied – all individual versions of my own humanity screaming at the sky and asking her why people give more credit to the guy. My eyes too wide to become wet again in my own sack of sacred skin. My limbs too foreign to become known again in my own sacred sack of skin. A biological phenomenon participating in spiritual experiment. A psychological phenomenon convincing that I was a misprint.

    Around the round world, she chased after her star so far that she found the waking sun instead. Of course, we believe we are worthy of more notoriety for creations apart from our own manifestation of reality. The sun is brighter than me. She’s warmer than me. She’s more than I’ll ever be. She cares for everyone. Becoming unsatisfied in my own fun, coming home to no son, I become lost in finding a direction to run. Too tired to keep running, so I sit where I am and wonder why the sun feels so nice. The grass where I have laid leaves a bed in my shape. When the season changes, again, I will peer back at dead grass and remember to mourn the woman once scorned.

    I make it look easy to be squeezed, like a lemon with stolen skin. How are you still hungry for me even when I’m so sour? I’m living in given skin, although it doesn’t feel like my skin, and it takes work for me to feel as it my own again. “This is what I need to remember when I’m depressed” every time I win. To prepare for your children grieving your cat’s death when it’s only the beginning. It sucks to be the trying flower and the shitty gardener when there is nothing you can do without water. With every anticipating moment, there is an assumed recovery for me to prepare for. My therapist never heard the term “anticipatory anxiety,” and since then I’ve been listening to only my own advice. At this point, it’s like I’m paying for a friend and I tell my friends that and they say that it’s the same. I forgot that my therapist is probably selling my data to third party companies to better predict my consumer patterns. I forgot that my therapist is my friend.

    Do you realize how human I am? Most men don’t even perceive me to be woman. They look at the girlhood of it all to find a brunette doll at the core of my being with a belly button that giggles when pressed. Everyone looks at me like a mirror, so I’m careful with those who look through me like glass. They’ve seen me shatter like glass. I hold them as if they’ll be my last. How much depth do you see below the pane? Put your face up to it and expect me on the other side of their perspective spinning around a selfish spiral of self-ego and imploding within paranoid suspicion. Talk to me through practiced lines, appropriate and exploitative despite their refine. Genuinely – most of them just hear mumbles that don’t completely register as words, believe some blurred lines of my clear headline, and only focus on the image of me that’s fabricated in their mind. Maybe nothing is interesting, and maybe nothing matters, and maybe that’s the good part of it all.

    I lie to Uber drivers when they give me a reason to. I tell stories to Uber drivers when they don’t. Stare at me with your wrinkled eyes through the mirror and tell me how basic I am to be writing on a blog about basic shit. I can’t tell if your spit qualifies as drool. You’re not reading this, but I want to let you know that I went to the grocery store yesterday and stared too long at a stranger. If you took anything from this conversation, let it be that you’re dying and so am I. If I die alone, is that all I’ll be remembered by? I cry without blinking, I drive without breathing, I grind my jaw while sleeping. Nothing is new, everything is new, and I forget that you too are human.

    You know, you should really schedule your un/predictable emotional recessions. There are ways to hack it now. Just focus on your wellbeing and dance in the sun or some shit. Read something thick and fulfilling that you forget to think about how thin you are becoming. Drink water when you can’t find your appetite. Focus on your breath when your heartbeat is bouncing. Take a relaxing bath and see how long you can hold your breath underwater. Light a candle, try holding the match and see if you feel your finger get hotter. When it burns, let it remind you of your mortality. Go get a band-aid, slap it on, call it a day how about we? We can reschedule depression. Let’s ask depression what time works best? Hey, Depression – what time works best? Anytime. Any day. Sometimes all the time. Always some time.

    A past time. My parents would describe me to have been a quiet kid. I’m sure most people would’ve pictured me as a happy kid, and I think I am a happy kid. I was very observant and smirking in my shy nature, pretty smart, pretty for a girl and smart for a girl. I got so excited to meet the tooth fairy that I pulled a few more out to save her the trip. I got so excited to meet my sister that I would sleep by her crib. I got so excited to slip into my dreams only to wake up still feeling asleep. I feel so much more awake now in memories, and I wonder if I’m living too much in the past in order to make the present time fast. I don’t mean to speed things up, but I’m on the run.

    You said I was mellow. Maybe I’m just exhausted. I like listening to sad music. I like listening to music so loud I can’t think. I’m begging people to hear the music I have in my head, constantly organizing a lousy hum drum of quite pessimistic voices while masking optimism. It’s like “hey, I forgot who I am and I hate the casualty of a repetitive day-day, but you’re fine so you just represent the community of being fine and satisfied while I try to open my window today.” I’m not doing much except practicing a genuine smile in the mirror, do my friends use me and I’m oblivious to it, hugging a dirty blanket while experimenting with metronome breathing, do I find passion in anything other than my thoughts, staring through my ceiling with a steady ice cube melting on my forehead, taking care of myself to a maladaptive obsessive compulsive point, do you ever think about purpose. That’s the thing: if nothing matters, why are you worried?

    Positive Nihilism. The once neon starkness of emotional stunting now faded and dusty in the childhood attic I visit when it’s a holiday or whenever there is a happy yet sulky occasion. Wait, why am I talking to you again? Yeah, you seem like you have it figured out? Studying psychology with a focus on cognition while being active in therapy was just me playing the part of Pavlov’s dog. Salivating every time I pulled out a treat and rang the bell with my own paw. I’m rewarding myself for solving a problem I created. At one point you become comfortable knowing that someone is sleeping in the same position directly above and below you, in a different dimension or in a separate unit.

    You paint yourself white and fill up with noise, like a reflection of a nuclear bomb and you’re the last one remaining. You paint yourself white, acting like you are empty when really you are every color. The emptiness inside of you to be felt as full, too full, almost never full, a sip remaining of the spilled milk you cry over. Exchanging energy with yourself and becoming higher with every thought. People keep asking you why you are blue, red, green. Let them perceive, finally.