toxic hippie emissions

nevermind; it wasn't
all so bad as we
thought it would be


was it?

looking at you across a thousand unsaid words
my heart aching
eyes drinking the electricity of your glare
and how quickly will i forget
when you are gone?

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anyway, i love you.

the misty highlights in his eyes
that smile that seems to find its most comfortable resting place across his lips
the way his voice drops to a whisper,
breath so warm across my cheek -
we're in love.

never gonna let you down. her face wet, hair rain-sticky and frizzled, dark against the whispery gray of the sky. she'd picked up that female habit of rubbing underneath her eyes when they got wet, just in case her mascara was running. it wasn't, but then she wasn't wearing any, and it was beside the point anyway. i remembered the way she ate those valentine's chocolates last year, unpeeling each one like undressing a lover, then slowly flattening the squares of foil and laying them gently on the stack of all the others. for how much time she seemed to take with each one, she went through two bags far too quickly. i try not to remember the sounds of her tiny body heaving, her face inches from the stale water, and the acrid smell that never quite left that bathroom.

never gonna let you down. what she said. you heard me i shot back. i didn't turn my head. just kept walking. couldn't let her see me crying.

which was stupid, because it was raining anyway.

they said she's dying, the death of strawberry soda and angelkissed silences.
i wish i could make myself care enough to cry or something. it seems appropriate.

don't you think?

shout.
shout.
let it all out.

i wonder how much you love me.

they say in the streets it's all about ketamine.
no, really.

the way you tugged at your pants, skinny hips, now that was wild.
i watch the cross-section hive through my sixth story window and say i love you to the air.
did you forget to buy diapers again?

don't worry, we have your old wedding dress to cut up still.

does it ever occur to you that you're just showing off

i wrote a fairytale story about a girl and a man named jesus. and some orange soda. we can't forget that. somewhere along the way it disappeared.

this should have been terribly upsetting. like a power outage on the last paragraph of a midterm.

it does not occur to me that i write this for the sake of a boy who might never see it.

maybe i should write it for you.

gherkins, anyone?

why are you so lost in tomorrow }

: don't you wish you could be like her

: who

: sarah man she is wicket haaaaat

: oh i thought maybe you meant nick zeto or something

this place feels like forever.

keep telling yourself that, she said, staring at me over the little row of petunias we'd planted one early spring morning in a fit of stir-craziness. they had promptly died, sending her into convulsions over who'd watered them last and me into a spiral of gray that ended only when the stars stopped falling. that's code for never, remember.

why do you love me she said.

it doesn't matter how fast you run he said you always end up here again.

the quiet told me it was time to rain.
so i did.

being on the back edge of belonging.

it was like a carrot, only orange.