I hope to burn holes in mattresses

I found your letters
and I didn't even read them
I set the fire and tossed them in

I realize the great big irony of you. Sisyphus of a digital era, building walls out of non-corporeal bricks. It would be one thing if you were the best but Olympus understood that punishment came from the nuance of the rules. We call people who see things crazy, but what about those who cast digital illusions to quell their mind?

Go ahead and blame it on ineptitude. Go ahead and call me jaded because I found out those great big lies life.

Familiarity is the biggest lie of all. The word has been misaligned. The word should not hold positive connotation. Instead, it should hold us at bay. It should chastise us with the fact that all junkies know: you'll spend your whole life chasing that high because it will never be the same.

Familiarity is the warning for destruction.

Blue Screen

I have been thinking that I could find you in the coded ether—  That you have been fragmented into bits and blips,  scattered across years of digital history.

I am like an archeologist excavating the data, 

A historian piecing together you,  A cartographer drawing lines through the entries left behind.  Every inconsequential keystroke,  every pixel one more tiny piece I steal back from the–  Wherever.   
All of it is you –   yet you are not.  
We scattered you in the wind—  like a snow crash  an entire system torn apart by the incurable virus of life.  
I had been thinking that I could find you.

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I recently rediscovered that I had access to my sister's Livejournal. Well, the bits that she granted me access too many years before she herself left it behind.

I think a lot about the whole "death of the author" thing and how it relates to some of the things I write. I think about what it would look like if anyone was to explicate any of the poetry I bravely share with the world--- and I think about what the "world" means to me now as a human who had the experience of both not having, and having the digital space to one day leave behind.

Happy Birthday To My Half-Life Counter Part

I have been thinking about you a lot. I think about a reality where I could open an MSN chat window and talk to you across time. Thirty-two year old me wants to tell sixteen year old you everything I know, and thirty-two year old me wants to hear sixteen year old you tell me just how wrong I am and how you’ll prove it so.

I see you in my eyes mostly. Because they were your eyes once, and I want to remember how it was you saw everything. I want to remember and feel the way you felt when you sat down every single day to ramble your thoughts away to the beat of the blinking cursor and all that J-Pop.

I feel your back pressed against mine and it’s strange how we are the same but somehow you were smaller. You were so strong from all the hours of dancing, and I am strong because I had to learn to put in the work. I am strong because we still day dream about being a sci-fi hero wielding our fists, out flying our squadron mates and cutting everyone down with the sharpest tongue the backwaters has ever heard.

I found you in a stack of faded pages. Embossed with angry ink from rage I can no longer comprehend. Some pages are crispy from dried tears and it’s a little funny to me that you have no idea how many more were to come; I want to warn you that tears come for many worse reasons than you had faced up until then.

You are me but I will never get to be you. I just wanted to tell you how much I love you and all your silly banter. That I look up to you sixteen years later. You didn’t know it then, but you know it now - you are the hero in the story; you are the survivor of our wreckage. Thank you for being you and thank you for allowing you to become me.

I'm not me

today i see the black you greyed for me

layered minutes, hours, days and years

to dull the blow you feared to make.

casually you placed it there

for others, not me.

but why not me?

why not me?

not me.

i

I struggle with self worth. It's this slippery slop where I try to avoid things that give validation. The stress of anticipating feedback makes my insides melt and solidify all at once. Today I really feel it. So I'm trying to be productive. Magically got a doctors appointment for a general check up in a couple of weeks. Now I'm hunting for a therapist to help me deal with me.

Until then, enjoy the bad poetry.

I Want to Talk About the Weather (02/05/2019)

There's places in my memory that can only be unlocked in the right kind of weather. Thick fog paired with a cold cutting bite of a front coming in the middle of the night.
Like a ring of keys waiting for the right lock to appear. Every time one of these memories is unlocked it's like traveling in time. Not an older or wiser me remembering but a complete transfer to who I was then. Messy yet so sure I could get away with out a mark.

Eight year old me feeling the neck prickling majesty of fall leaves swirling around. Some ice crunching under my shoes as I stared off into the woods, hearing them call out for everything I carried within. Sixteen year old me rushing to find the boy that I was ready to call mine. There was something thick about the air that day. It turned my running steps into those moments in dreams when you can't ever move fast enough. Any time I see the leaves blow across a sidewalk I can't help but think you're a few steps away. That rustle is the sound of a moment so profound that I'd give countless miles to thank you.

So today I'm thinking about you. This key is everything I have about you. Blue eyes, bright smile, all that floppy hair and the way you'd take a deeper breath when you saw me.

Somewhere in my mind your voice reaches me and says, "don't forget this". What did that mean? My mind can't hold onto the tangible dates. Instead it's fleeting feelings that are washing over me, soaking me in the past. Both good and bad, yet I never wonder how I can stay a little longer. A time and a place for the memory of you, for the memory of us.

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02/10/2019

It's pretty rare these days that I sit down with a real pen and write what comes to mind. I was walking across campus to get to my eight AM class. There was this thick air and bite of cold that was threatening to pick me right up off the ground between my steps. I stopped to breathe in the moment and when I closed my eyes I found myself somewhere different. It was like a highlight reel of a specific time in my life. Specifically one perfect first kiss.

I feel like as we get older (and married) we tend to shy away from some of those past romantic moments. There's something unspoken taboo about looking back fondly on happy times in past relationships (a part of me blames Ariana Grande's Thank You, Next for introspection). Maybe this is me being sixteen again, once again thinking I can get away with out a mark. Thirty-one year old me isn't batting an eye. Be damned you small boxed in stunted romantics.

The truth is that one day I learned a lot about myself, it's a moment that I call on to remind myself that I am capable of bravery. It's not profound to others looking in on it but for me it was a defining mark on who I became. Take that deeper breathe and run to find what you want, what you need. The initial shock fades and you'll be okay. Funny how you were the one who could swim. I wonder if you'd be proud to know I've since jumped into oceans too deep to stand in. There's always a life jacket involved but that's exactly what that memory is to me. A lifejacket to brace myself into the unknown.

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