I had money again. I figured I would work the warehouse until summer neared then I would take off and escape the heat, the life, the living past of home. I roped about twenty carts and moved toward the big doors. It was my longest haul yet. I had to really bear down and push the bastards. I looked up to see the entrance so I wouldn’t mow over any customers. She walked out and I saw them.

Insane, large, turquoise eyes that did a double take and fixed on me. Long, long coal hair all around them. She was dressed in dark shades of blue, black, dark green. The eyes were claws sinking into my guts. I buckled in there. Everything quivered. I had never felt such a punch. The eyes were drilling into my back. I could feel them. I shoved the carts into place and wrapped the rope around my palm and elbow, watching her walk. She glanced at me and kept moving, her high black boots pushing the earth back. An old man caught up to her. I knew it was her father. She looked back again then her father said something to her and they were walking and talking.

Out there was mine. She was mine. She was my girl. She was different from the rest of them. I stalled. Butterflies in my stomach crashed into each other, fell, and dissolved in the acid, screaming. They were nearing his car. My feet were glued to the floor. A voice in my throat said take it, take it, take it.

A finger snapped in my head, and I blurred myself in between her and her father. He looked at me and kept walking. She stopped. I couldn’t recall what I said to her. The moment went around me in waves. The car pulled out. In my hand was a part of a torn pink envelope with her name and number. I placed it in a tomb of my memory and sealed the tomb with the blood of her years. I could not believe what had happened to me. I could not stand the hypocrisy in my head. Nietzsche fell over a tombstone and died. I was in love.

That night I cleared my throat twenty times and dialed the number. It was late. Everyone was in bed. Each ring was a paintbrush up and down my chest. She answered.

A slow seep of water between stone carves the heart, transforming even diamond with the passage of time. Moisture gathers, forming drops, becoming rivulets, as subterranean lakes build in recesses, away from logical eyes and linear paths leading to the surface. Gratitude wraps my shoulders as a blanket against chill autumn mornings glistening with hoar frost. It is a spell of being home in the world, above ground as below. You have been a cave of unconscious dreams, a magic kaleidoscope where I believe deeper with every refraction. We all have totems, Neal, spirit guides, and shamanic talismans that form a bridge between the world of possibility and the material. When you appear in dreams, I climb back to waking, certain that I am stepping towards welkin. Like Gideon asking for a sign and waking to drenched wool and dry ground. I hope you have a signal like this, that your halls have a protector and a champion who comes to you and whispers, “Ultreya! See it through! Stay on the path.”

as beautiful as the night's sky

Stars shining in his eyes

As bright as a sunny day

A warm heart and hot embrace

when the heavens began to cry

On the day that he died

I found a letter that he wrote

A little sketch and so much hope

Knowing he would watch over me

To make sure I lived happily

I couldn’t stop watching

Big blue eyes

Flowing blonde hair

In that froufrou blue dress

I was obsessed...

Like a naïve little girl

She traveled a wonderworld

Chasing white rabbit out of time

And the Cheshire’s smile...

In the game of life and death

One must be careful

Not to lose your head...

But whether big or small

Alice was the most wonderful of all...

To me, there's nothing more wonderful in life than music. It's mathematics, science, psychology, emotion, it's everything. There is nothing that I have more of a hunger for than music. I grew up listening to country, wanted to be Garth Brooks until I was 11, found (rock, grunge, alt. rock) and wanted to be Chris Cornell, Eddie Vedder, and Brent Smith. I'm okay at guitar, but my girlfriend and best friend say that I have a good voice. I don't know how to read music, but I don't let that stop me, I still sing along to Randy Travis, Old Crow Medicine Show, Shinedown, Alter Bridge, The Leo Project, Crossfade, and many more. I don't think my bond with music will ever end, it'll just meander like a river in a valley, until I run dry.

I was nearly six. It was, I believe, before Hurricane Katrina wiped out my apartment. I lived in a small trailer home next to an alligator swamp, I want to say it was called "Honey Island". I always loved animals, of every type. I even had mice once! (Sugar and Spice) (Spice had a tendency to bite)

Well at the time, I had no animals to love except the animals naturally surrounding my house. I would always do that, in all the homes I had, I always lurked for an animal. Well, the whole trailerhood kept telling my mother I need to move somewhere else. They kept saying I'll die out here. Why, you might ask? Well, the place was basically a bridged island, surrounded by alligator. Alligator were the only animals around, crocodile too. So I loved them.

So every morning, every night, every time I had nothing to do, I went out the little beach. I had an amazing view of the swamp, and all the alligators. Nobody could see me, so nobody could flip out and pull me out of the water. I never understood why people didn't like it. I would just stand in the water at my hips height. I would admire the alligators, who always crept up really close. I always laughed and thought they were playing hide and seek. So how I told them "I found you," was to grab a big rock and toss is at them, I wouldn't hit them. It would just scare the shit out of them and they'd run back a few feet. This one time I had 7 of them, 1 was a crocodile. It was so much fun!

That basically sums up my first love. The alligators and crocodiles. Unaware they are trying to kill me, I played with them every day. They were my best friends, entertainment, and love.

Looking back isn't always easy. Sometimes, even years later, the wounds are still deep. Other times, I see how foolish I have been to put my entire world in undeserving hands and expect them to hold on as if it mattered. What is more absurd, is to focus one second of energy on the person that has blown off what they have done to you as child's play, or...on their "new" indistinguishable world. Let them drown in the justness of karma, or let them flourish despite their black soul. It is out of my hands, as it has always been. My life is full of peace, the love of family, a rewarding self-assurance, and a magnificent world I have yet to see enough of.

The funny thing about my first love is that as soon as I stepped into my honors History class and saw him sitting there, in the space in front of mine, I knew that he'd end up being special to me.

I've been told my intuition is wickedly accurate, and I'm not one to doubt it. Even then, in my freshman year of high school. How could I have known that you would end up being so important? Even if I only got one glimpse of your charming smile?

But I did. I knew. And after a year of a friendship where he saw my heart get torn in every which way and we told each other our most innermost thoughts and even told each other about our crushes, that's when I realized what I had been chasing was right in front of me for that whole year. That's when I knew it, right in my bones.

He made me feel bold, confident. I knew that he felt the same as I did through a mutual friend, so I just went right out and told him how I felt, and I still remember his amazed yet soft smile, and my name being whispered on his lips, followed by the return of his mutual feelings.

Here I am, a year and three months later, and he still makes me feel bold and confident and above all else beautiful. Because he's still here, and in love with me.

And I'm still in love with him.

Don’t ask me what my parents were thinking, because I cannot begin to imagine. He was 27 and divorced. I was 18. I know. It’s a head-scratcher. Anyway, we both worked at a fast-food joint. He was the boss (another morsel of inappropriateness).

My family loved him – a real Southern gentleman from an old established family, and a silky drawl that could charm the pants off any woman. And he did. You see, he was also a serial cheater. Talk about baptism by fire! My first “adult” relationship was with a man who not only dated immoderately (Tom cat-style), but he felt compelled to share details with me.

Finally I had an epiphany: I, not he, should be the person I was loving. Once I realized that, it was game over. I never looked back.

He was nice.

Just, nice.

Terrified of my dad,

just like all seventh grade boys would be.

And it isn't called love;

it wasn't even my first.

So if 'dating' someone for a month and a half is equivalent to love,

maybe it was.

I doubt it.

I wish I saved his text messages

and the pointless stuff he gave me.

It would be cool to be friends,

But we ended it

and he changed.

So why do I feel like a monster?