The Champagne Soapbox

  • crinkle toes

    My little trinkets and toys. We have a birthday and your wedding and some babies. We share the attention we once yearned for, until it reaches overseas. Until the fat man sings about how unlucky stardust could be sand for another rich man’s feet. Can mankind be resolved of egocentric immaturity? The gift of witness is protective from decomposition’s mystery.

    Stop motion claymations in rouge and puckered smiles. I put my fingers between the layers of tulle and scratch them together. Clacking wood toes on the ground, staring out at the staircase with eager eyes to blue eyeshadow and tights. Yellow chalk to grind the tops of your nails on. 

    I’ve tried not to outgrow the colors of my youth. 

    My closet looks like beige mush. 

    I’ve slicked back my hair so long that the edges don’t return. My cat and I shed the same out of hair. I shed so much hair and nails and emotion. The things I do and watch and endure for the betterment of soul. Eager to yearn betterment when all I’ve learned is earned. 

    Our cars become sunburned and healed. Peel at the skin of my lips and press rouge into my toughened maturity. Homogenized mush will be mushed so much that my moisture will wicker and my throat will produce the familiar booming laughter. An echo for, and my siren noise to call them back again.

    Holy love water soaking up the flick of your youth’s cigarette in spite of your purity. The candle hints over between the wall and I, white mush. Stickers in the grass, in between toes, pick apart by fingers and found in my hair. Just put on my jacket if you want the hug. Give it back to me when you’re done. 

  • soft animal

    I’ve been trying to write a poem like a tattoo. Ink on a pen. Underneath the skin. Except now it comes up my throat. I say words I could’ve never wrote because ink is forever and I shake stutter when I give speeches. Becoming more of a bitch lately. Young, fresh smelling leather. There’s a lot of empty space. And, I contemplate the difference in a circle and a hole. A lasso before it catches the animal, and what it looks like around something another something needed. 

    Needles, guns, grass. 

    Some important song.

    And, most of my words will pass. 

    The ones not written by tongue.

    My arthritic hands flip hymns from mass. 

    To do and not to say. 

    Slurring laughter with a meaningless hum. 

    Wake up asleep, just another day. 

    Believe the foggy lullaby that shares the tune of my future hand’s shakiness. The surrealist is opening his eyes. How can you be nostalgic for things your mind made up? Feel the eternity lineage women making up your fingerprints? Pushing each other for a chance to catch the light of your reflection. No phones until Friday, far from parents or road toll. A broken fresh individuality in independence, staring into the mirror for years picturing wire steel hairs red nails cigarettes accents curves like the ones you grew into. They thought of you, never knew you, “couldn’t be you” they moan and release between scrunching dirt between motionless toes. 

    That’s what they all say. The soft animal of our bodies when they become stray.

    I’m doing the same shit another day. The same shit stomping mommy come feed me again. Daddy I miss you again. Do you think of my voice when you want to be needed again? My room is red at night. I didn’t bite. My tongue is numb from cutting my teeth throughout the night. I’m doing the same shit yelling mommy don’t look at me again. Daddy do you see me? A sister is here and we love to play pretend. She lives alone now, we both do. Mend the urges while his forgiveness is true. Pray that when you get caught, the folds in your forehead wrinkles are warm and eyes you look into still seafoam.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • the ongoing sentence

    go outside feel your shoulders burn and freckles form to look in the mirror at a blushing face realizing the sun kissed you too much because you are loved deeply by whatever made the reflection that stares back i like to think they want you to find love outside of empty conversations and instead with the moon and the stars that pair the opposing yet agreeing texas sun one day you’ll find love in more than just yourself like the way you’re 23 but still braid your hair to show off how much you love the girl who grew up too early and make grocery lists with pink pens to feel how much sun loves you again in the parking lot of the grocery store and how much you hate the rain and driving home and overcompensating how much you can carry into to a lonely apartment in stormy weather and how the rain makes you feel like you have to cry when you don’t have a reason to so you convince yourself of a reason and crawl back into the bed that you never made because you knew you would return to it later but then you wake up to the sun peeking through a sliver of a curtain and see the freckles on your shoulder and the scratch from your cat so you start the machinery of the day and the rurring of your coffee and the ice falling in the fridge and remember the mortality of your existence glaring at your cat’s reminder of playfulness in the form of a scar and open the window to send good morning to the sun because your aunt told you that your freckles were kisses from heaven and you wanted love so badly that you would spend your hours in her backyard in your school clothes looking up and thinking about whose looking down except now you’re older and imagine you as your aunt watching the younger you from behind a window

    Once that’s over it’s be there in five I’m sorry I’m late be right back don’t worry about me I’m doing just fine how are you I’m okay and okay is okay because my body is a vessel for my soul to remain stable and okay is better than imbalance we are fine and the stars have aligned and my dreams could be mine all if i really work for it or if i really manifest it by writing down my assumed obsessions three times in a row or pray hard enough to someone or something I’m still debating the name to or ask around to have others guess at my fate for the sake of not knowing or you should just collect crystals and write their meaning attempt to use them to find your meaning over again and write it down loose papers half read books notes don’t forget write down and notes on the app using wordpress to buy the rights to your own words that sit in a tear stained journal with flowers on it because it symbolizes that you’re always growing or maybe even in the italian leather journal you spent extra coin on because on special occasions you need to separate your current reality from the future curiosities using words that your hand gets tired of repeating things like “would your higher self approve of this” “would your younger self dream of this” “would you be here writing still if it worked out (the way you saw and not the way the universe planned or the way your parents wanted them to or how that boy you’ll never see again imagines it to?)”

    you get a job that wants you to travel which means you can sit in the airport at four am and stare at strangers and imagine their morning or their life or your lives together and smile in silence and prioritize the aisle seat because you need an escape plan from everyone to even your own mind sometimes to dissociate when scheduled peer over a strangers shoulder and watch the space grow between you and the ground feel the idea of feeling grounded become harder you can’t focus when someone else is in control until you accept that not everyone is egocentric in their protection like you have been lately even the pilots kids tell their friends that their daddy spends his days in the air and his wife sleeps alone with a glowing phone text me when you land I’m glad you made it I’m glad to let others drive for me when it’s convenient just tell me what to think but not too much because I’ll still recover my own conclusion and since we don’t own the right to the route can I at least find the control of the wheel do I just need to hand my fear to pilot who splits clouds and looks down at the ground to imagine his life perfect as is?

    all of a sudden I’m fine being the wife with the glowing phone with the guy who flys planes or saves lives or plays in a band and makes shit money it doesn’t matter because his lips show his gums when he smiles and i get lost in his eyes trying to find out his fate and if I’m in it his jeans are ripped it was an accident skating surfing skiing driving with white knuckles because he gets nervous around me how much is the weighted blanket of his heartbeat that covers me in childish warmth I’d spend forever melting in the couch just to have him steal my breath for a second longer he takes a shower and already smells expensive like commitment and yet still cheap like a puberty crush it’ll put you back in the middle school hallways when you rediscover that feeling of finding a boy attractive again about ten years later at 23 basketball baseball football i hate sports but i could play with him forever with those ripped baggy jeans and the thin t-shirt from an era i didn’t know him from i want to rub my face on it exactly how my cat does to me in the morning when he misses me even though i was there the whole time was he there for me the whole time will he be there for me when he’s not even mine i think he was always in the back of my mind because his tattoos are etched into my memory as if they are the folds in my brain and i like to imagine our hearts beating to the same melody like a song my recycled soul used to sing when she first fell in love that now she sings in the car alone thinking about what love is going to be like now that she’s capable of accepting it

    I’m not a wife yet I can’t honestly imagine what that would look like because at heart I’m the girl with red lipstick high heeled boots being shy on purpose old fashioned with cherry juice lots of it and hope that it tastes tarte so you’ll slip into a hazy sleep and have lazy sunday with a sore throat from a selfish cigarette that you stepped on after finishing with your friends with sticky shoes from gross clubs and a guy you knew for five years (5 hours) till he smiles for too long and you wonder if you made the mistake of getting ready for him I hate that feeling that devoting my femininity to men by taking extra estrogen to make sure their mistakes are forgiven by science and not religion it’s like a reward to earn your womanhood back once he drains you of your gentleness because when it is over you care again about proving him wrong and having nice bras and doing face masks whitening teeth lash serums jergens self-tanner using fresh towels with a clean robe after scraping your skin clean with razors and brushes I value my effort more when I’m alone instead of with a man who expects more of me anyway because he grew up with a mommy with red nails and a daddy who flew planes so I’ll walk around in high heeled boots and a push-up bra with my hair bouncing toes painted eyelashes touching my eyebrows and smiling big because he said he loves the color red and that it reminds him of his mom like why are you looking at my lips and thinking of your mother and why am i looking at him thinking about rest of my life battling eternity with a stranger just for an hour of an unheard conversation and silly time-limited attachment

    I’ll get my nails done with Alexa and ask her if red is a good color and we’ll consider the way planes hold all this weight but are skinny enough to split the sun so selfishly and how much better we feel when summer comes around because we can spend more time in her backyard drinking red wine and talking about our pets as if they’ve spoken english to us and I’ll daze off into psychological oblivion thinking about how my favorite thing is this world is to be a girl and be girls with other girls simultaneously and be girls with boys who recognize my femininity and don’t want to take it from me by handing me their clothes like a coupon for 40% decreased effort the next time you see them or buying me drinks as an exchange for a great (literally cant hear you) conversation next to an ear-splitting set by a sixth street DJ about tech sales and how his dad flies planes and it fucked him up by not seeing him as often so he love his mom and women-alike out of pity and “so do you want to take this somewhere else?” “if you tell me what my name is I’ll consider it” hop in the uber and go to the place that smells like you and wake up to the peeking sun and the cat whose scratching you to see if you’re still alive because they love you.

    I was listening to “Pretty Boy” by the Neighborhood and he talks about Devon so gently that it made me think about all the love I’m a witness to, the love I can’t wait to experience, the love I discount or take advantage of on a daily basis, and the love that I once thought was love but am now smart enough to know that’s a misrepresentation of words (like … toxicity or projection). Everyone my age is so worried about maintaining love, finding love, keeping love even when it hurts… I guess this is an American thing, to believe we have to work and earn things. We live in a scarcity mindset, when life has proven to us so many times that we are capable of almost anything – so why do we feel like we aren’t capable of something so genetically-disposed like love? If you’re imaginative – you’ll find love somewhere in between some drunk guys slurred words or on sunny days or when your cat blinks at you slow or in an airport for a quick second in a guy you fantasize about living with (because why not).

  • kill bill

    My name’s Bailey Champagne. I’m 23 years old, and I work for a living at a job. I have a bedtime of 11pm on a good day, 2am on a really good day. I have a cat who is now one- I think that makes 15 in cat years. I live in Austin, I used to see myself here forever, I’m not sure about that anymore or about anything- other than the next day maybe. Being alone in your college apartment is comforting. Being alone in your apartment that you pay for is necessary, complete with a personal rebrand and a cat that cries for its dinner. I have a sister, who knows Bailey best other than my parents. I’m the oldest child of two, the standard for which my sister separates herself from maturely. You can hear my dad in my humor, I have to thank him for that. You can hear my mom in my advice, I have her to thank for that. You can hear Billy when Bailey fails, and I loathe her for that.

    Billy was born from drunken slurs of men trying to say my name but never held intention to understand my words clearly. She was, is, relevant to an inner child but more reliant on self-destruction for social acceptance. She spoke through bat shit eyelashes, whatever she could mutter replicating the same speech of those who named her. She was quite skilled at sneaking drinks from willing pocketbooks and witty personas. She was a liability for the guilty behaviors Bailey wouldn’t claim as her own. The chaotic fun girl who squeezes her body through crowds just to find a table to stand on. To lock her knees and scream “accept my crazy, but in a chaotic fun girl way”. The crowd would stretch my arms so far that upon rebound I was a wrinkly fetus of who I saw reflected in mirrors.

    I don’t think people pay attention to me enough to see me squeeze my body through the crowd, feeling so uncomfortable between the sweat of slurring men and vulnerable girls. I struggle more to find an expensive car with unknown driver, even though I wanted to leave early anyway. I fob myself through the gate and finally feel my chest lower once I slip into the silent depression of an unmade bed. I get up, I’ll lay around, and I’ll get up, and lay back down. This season of singleness, there’s no place like watching my life pass through the comfort of a broken-in room. The silent and sobering Bailey wakes up from her nightly death to find Billy’s fandom fatal ego reborn. Window to the phone. I’ll wake up and make plans, because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re scared that you might be depressed.

    Bailey is at a point of realization of identity, again, always now a days. I guess that’s a thing that happens at 23, when you work from home and feeling like you’ve been at home since the pandemic began when you were 20. I felt so young when I behaved 23, now I’ve grown into a tall child with mild anxiety and wild performance syndrome. The perfect balance of my light femininity and love of the deep dark stuff, all wrapped up in an oxymoron of a smart human.

    To think of it, I’ve always been into the deep dark stuff. Let’s just say that’s the scorpio in me. The guilt behind asking for advice, the halt of emotions after the action is over, the rush of contemplating an explanation for said action and professing opinions like you’re running for office (or from yourself). Campaign for Champagne just like I posted around for fifth grade politics. It’s a rush to scratch the deepest part of your wounds and realize you have the same evolutionary evidence as someone else, mentally that is. I like to think that Billy is part of that dark stuff, but as much as I can convince myself- I cant accept the fact how shallow she is. She pretends to drown herself in order for someone to realize she wants help compared to Bailey, who fights daily to float above it all. In fact, I’m so used to holding my nose and stretching my socially wrinkled arms to reach the edge of the pool. Being at a party and feeling like an open wound, all the people ask if I’m going to put a bandaid on it. Bailey would nod, Billy would scream.

    I guess “Billy” (which if you haven’t caught on, is a big metaphor for my party persona) is the offspring of the child who never asked for attention but received it anyway, but who instead demands attention as if it’s an earned prize. In some way, like all fun friends, Billy was a liability. In another way, she’s greatest pool float I could find when Bailey was holding her nose and trying to stay afloat like a wrinkled fetus. It was an identity that felt needed to remain active in order to feed Bailey’s damaged identity from seeking other approval, outside of herself, because Bailey is always (say it with me) going to find it on her own anyway. She’s a sort of dissociation that allows me to show others I’m worthy of performative socialization, temporary flirtations, or validating secretive motivations. Break her down a bit more and you’ll find Bailey asking you to lay by her.

    Billy is sure an alter ego – who mirrors my insecurity of feeling like social praise is a reward, mostly in confronting events. The outspoken Bailey, the chaotic Bailey, the good at fun Bailey all wrapped up in some entanglement I created to eliminate the processing of minute responsibility. When you suffer from seasonal depression, or you process events the way a rollercoaster rolls, you kind of form these imaginary motivations to avoid the seatbelt from releasing at the top of the hill (healing is a life long ride, buckle up). I understand that I never felt accepted enough socially to stand on this table in my given name and lock my knees to say “accept my crazy, but in an empathetic and innocent way”.

    And this is all to say that, Billy and Bailey are much the same – she is me and my honest imagination after all. To dismiss Billy is to assume she isn’t of my own creation, an act to deny myself of further acceptance for the parts of me I may feel uncomfortable or too comfortable with about. She is the crutch to an injury I may have inflicted: the smiling angel face to a gut punch of demonized anxiety. The cheerleader, the performer, the mirrorball and all. Let me admit we have a duty to ourselves to embrace our singular selfs, the duality of ourselves, the multiple parts of ourselves that make us ourself.

    I hope if you struggle with identity, you find some relativity in this. I found myself blaming Billy for things Bailey did, in a bad way. I found myself laughing at things Billy said when it came out of Bailey’s mouth, in a good way. This is a long way to say at the end of the day, I am okay. If you suffer from seasonal depression, avoidance of said emptiness until it overwhelms you, I found that the part I once understood as distraction was actually my greatest therapy. That’s through savoring my connections, a worn discrepancy between what I thought Billy favored but truly a deep necessity for Bailey to have to feel supported, loved, human, grounded. The window will be there to watch when you come home and the phone will be there when you wake up to set up tomorrows plans. Just give yourself grace, there are so many parts of yourself you haven’t met yet.

    Seriously though I am very happy.