The sheer number of blank pages here is terrifying. I have decided to begin filling them since I can't fill my stomach. To have a conversation I can't, because I have no one to talk to. Isn't it supposed to be true that you appreciate art more when you're hungry because artists usually create when hungry? I've heard that, anyway. I am not an artist but maybe I can appreciate each word and letter more this way. I see blank pages to be filled. My life is empty. I came to school today after a weekend of play and couldn't even occupy myself for an hour and a half. I am now resigned to this aloneness; before I somehow thought I would make friends. Now I do not make the effort to smile as I pass people, my classmates, and I do not want to make eye contact. My ninth grade self again, it's true. A weekend of play, but not really pleasure. I don't know how to have a good time anymore, I guess. Stupidity overcomes me and I choke. I smile, I laugh, I answer, "I'm okay" and I do not tell the truth. I'm lying to everyone and you're the only one who notices. I don't understand why you listen when they don't, why you care, why you insist, why your wind blows a different tone. My jaw aches from clenching my teeth, my smile is a stretch of hell across my plagued face, I want no one to look at me. Baby, this is the truth. I love you, I do. I know it so certainly now. I can't think of anyone who understands me better, or who I would rather stay with until I can't stay anymore. We're not traditional, we like that. When I talk to you, I know we'll be okay, no matter what I'm saying or what you're thinking of me. I can keep it together long enough for us to be okay, I promise that. It's the fifth day of fall. It still feels like summer and I'm already fucking falling apart. In 3 weeks I'll be with you. Then 2 months after that. We'll be able to live together in a city above water soon? Tell me it can happen, that we can make it and do this biggest thing. I don't know how to live, but I know where I want to be. I'm sick of people looking at my thin bird legs, hairy and misshapen, short and unwilling. I stood in a full-length mirror for the first time in years, and I saw what my mother always said was true. My ankles, as thin as bird bones jutting out and setting off the balance in the poetry of a foot.

I owe her $12.50 thereabouts. I owe her apologies and words I don't have. Say. I could not find my place so easily among your cloudy breathren, the stairway to heaven is a dorm fire escape, and I am afraid of heights. I fucked up and got fucked up, I'm sorry. I felt alone when you were there, I'm sorry. Did I push you away? Did I embarrass you? Today is Monday. The weekend was a blur of smoke, stairs, and conversations that I had no place in. Should I have fallen off the fire escape? No, it was not far enough. What is far enough: the distance I have helped create between us. The silence in the noise without our voices together. The empty corner of a couch where we used to sit. I talk to your fringe dwellers, on the fringe where I belong. I see you from across a desert, tearless and aching to be fed. (At this time yesterday I was in your bed. You didn't want to cuddle me that night, and the night before I slept alone. Remember when we had innoence, when we spooned and traded secrets? Ballet moves on the carpeted floor? I miss these things and you.) The changes here are innumerable. I think I have ruined my prospects of ever fitting in again, I feel our group has been torn now truthfully -- look at all this separate change, we will never come together again. You love them more, just say. Say. In a world where I become my grandmother, where am I to find change? There's none in my pockets and I still owe you $12.50 so it would seem I'm in a bind. Bound by time and place restrictions, bound down to the thick pavement of Memphis ground. My boots hit hard each block of pavement, this is all I can do not to cry. I read about history and write about movies. There is no solace here when the day ends, I have nothing new except the count of tears in my well, just waiting. I don't shed tears in front of people on the bus, in the classroom, on the walk home, on the phone, or even in my bed these days. I know that I'm crying but no one else does -- they can't see what isn't there. I keep smiling. I say I'm doing well, my classes challenge me, I have made friends. These could not be bigger lies. All I want is to share this, what they all have that I have been denied. Is nature trying to scream to me? Go back, this was not meant for you. This happiness was not yours to know.
Maybe I'll see him on the next train, I'm dying to skip this town. I know what and where happiness hides. I will make it one day. Baby, please wait. I am coming.

i woke up without reason to smile. i tried; i was even saying hello to strangers. little good it did me now with no hope and no soul. i yell at my father, feel nothing. push my boots firm on each block of pavement, a rush to the head. fill me stone kill me clean. i stay on track, but i don't get what i almost had. happiness evades me like tomorrow, i have done it wrong. there's no money in my pocket and i continue to make small terrible mistakes. i didn't call. i did. i fell asleep. i fell off a building. i spoke. i didn't. whatever is said and done, i'm still wrong, still unhappy, still can't drive, still not free. it's the lesson i missed although i emulate it rather well when i think no one's looking. prick me where he left whole flesh. sink the stickers in. before the prince could cut the thorns down, sleeping me jumped in.

What is hurts, my love-a-dee?
Could it be this bad treaty?
We sued but still we got no peace
We take what we get on our knees
I stand you up with my hands on your hips
But still you sway, as curved as roses there
My mission was heavier than it was right
Like trees, we crash and tear
Our song inherent in the bad wind
Whistling through the tipsy limbs
Nothing stays, we’re trapped again
We learn only how to sin
I rattle the bones hung round my neck
Pull out my hair and call the dead
My marriage to this giant bends without a break
There’s sickness stuck in what I’m fed
I want back everything I lost
I take back everything I said
I have not changed, I’m still the same
I still hide in a shoebox under my bed
But please can’t I begin again?
I promise to do it right
I want to feel the flow of peace
To find a home tonight
Show me again the old red road
There’s nothing for me here
I learned to accept that what is just is
I’ve swallowed lies and beer
It’s getting colder with each flame
Can you come back inside?
I want to feel that warmth again
It’s better when I cry