everyone always thinks i’m talking about god.

i’m starting to think his image is just too similar to flower’s,

form too invigoratingly passionate and

i just don’t know what i believe in sometimes so

i’m screaming about hands gripping

plasma membrane screens like toddlers trying to keep safe,

the phantom press of her body leaning into mine.

whispers “this is what i’m here for.”

watching hair fall staticy onto the back of her

abyss colored sweater and how her high top 

laces have to wrap around her ankles to keep her in her shoes.

i ask flowerpower if she believes in anything external

and she says yes, love, but she doesn’t say what it is.

we’re digging through storage bins at her dad’s place

looking for posterboards. thirty-one out and icy.

we don’t want to walk to the store.

i ask flowerpower what the bloody hell she’s even doing,

what science project is worth this much trouble,

not just accepting a fail and moving on and

you already got into college; i ask flowerpower

what she’ll even report on this late.

her perfume smells like frustration and the density of hollister

polos, how you wait for them to cut off blood flow to your chest like

seeing your best friend in a jessica rabbit costume on halloween, but 

everything around us is science, she says. 

she points to a spider on the wall and i back up.

it is science. i am science. you and me and the spider and the ocean 

are equals

and that’s pretty encapsulating too. if that’s all there was i’d believe in

things so much easier, wouldn’t you?

flowerpower does her project on the lid of a

rubbermaid and says that’s the grittiness of being nowhere…

the way we’d walk for miles in summer and be in the same town, the way we’re

trying on each others clothes and the vulnerable practice of

cinching and swallowing and disagreeing on who’s who in it. 

letting her tags brand me with each letter

spelling out on my flesh: i am your best

friend. this is my memoir of loving things deeply and leaving them,

prying pasts like leeches.

flowerpower comes home three weeks later with a c+ and

cusses loudly like a god that no teacher would care that the project filled her.

she grabs me and swings us around on the breaking wooden porch 

letting it dig into my feet. ground me, i want to plead.

let me be grounded. let me stay.

she points to the ocean. you see that? 

you see it?

you know it’s all there is?

It snowed, heavy. The kind of snow that covers the earth and leaves roads slick and me wondering if summer has ever actually happened and if it will ever happen again. I am a summer person. I tell this to my friends and family; I live by the beach, I am a summer person. Cause and effect. I wasn’t born here but the water, it’s so encompassing. Despite my attempts to meander into fall or spring, this life, this town, that godforsaken warm weather season has seeped into my veins.

My beach is a dirty beach. Last summer the sand was covered in cicadas, littered like clothes on a bedroom floor. When they all washed away, it was still dirty. The scents of sex and day-old perfume linger in the air all seasons. The water is filled with sewage and assorted waste from the nuclear plant down the street. Warnings are posted on every tree to "swim at your own risk" and I always swear I’ll never go in but still somehow I find myself wading up to my shoulders on a rare July day when it’s too hot to do anything else. I like to go so far out that I’m only a little blip of light, that the water soaks through the cutoff patterns of my jean shorts, curling them up and tattooing them onto my skin. I always have a farmer's tan in summer, no matter how consciously I try not to. That water is frozen over now and the path is unshoveled. I feel oppressed. I feel safe. I want to go back and keep inching toward the sun.

I had a teacher once who said I burned like a Southern girl’s first winter North. I think about her constantly, about those words and how my state won’t get claimed by the North or the South, how nobody wants the middle. Because of this, I have spent the eighteen years of my life trying to sway to one side of things, trying to corral myself. I am a summer person. I walk towards the big star. I wonder if when my old teacher looks up, she remembers me. My family listens to my findings and they tell me to go outside, clear my head for a while. The snow is fun, they say. I remember I am three in a family of five. A perfect middle. Passion, my teacher told me, is a burning that takes the shape of ice.

So: it snowed, heavy, and will snow again in a day, but while the roofs on my street melt into the first drops of this season’s baywater, I will at least try. I go out, letting the shoveled piles swallow me up. Farther, farther into the distance and suddenly I am nothing but a tiny blip. The snow melts through my leggings, freezing them onto my legs, and I think about what it might take to crawl out of this perfect dragging rhythm I have. Would anyone really notice? Would anyone really care?

I've built my whole life around constructs. I know this because on Saturday, I wore my first crop top for senior pictures and told myself this is momentous. I paired it with black jeans and a blazer and waited for someone in my immediate family to call me the w word but they didn't. All I got was a tense and silent ride to a beach I could have walked to anyway. My aunt does call me a republican though, and I think about that a lot. I am not that. I am not a republican. Sometimes, however, I am that word, the w one. I’ve given up trying to reclaim that word, so it sticks to me like a scarlet letter, the reason I can’t babysit the board members’ kids. Blame it on my blatant disregard of the fingertip rule that started when I was twelve, blame it on my love of beautiful things, but I think it’s just that fundamental wrongness people seem to find in me and my mind and my age. Sometimes, by the way, I am that. Sometimes I am my age, I am eighteen. Sometimes I wear beautiful clothes and look sophisticated, sometimes I do normal things like get senior pictures taken and wonder if I’m beautiful. I eat soft serve ice cream with my best friend and her mother who is an almost famous photographer and talk about my town and the weird names I give to places. I have a magic fridge store. I have a stab station. I have a crop top.

My second outfit was a short plaid skirt and a t-shirt and tights. I got home and was looked at like an alien. Sometimes I am fourteen again, looking into windows that I can afford but not buy from in a shop in a city that’s been “shrouded in sin” since before my conception. I was taken to the city when I turned fourteen. My mom thought I’d hate it but I didn’t. So sometimes I am that, sometimes I’m generally disappointing as a person. It is so hard to live in my body, in my world. You didn’t hear that from me, but oh my God, please believe it. It’s so hard.

And my senior pictures are probably amazing, they are probably masterfully taken and edited and I am so lucky that I know someone who is so good at capturing things. I can’t help but ask myself though--when I see them will I know who she captured? I never recognize myself in pictures. I’ve always seemed to go missing. I am not myself trying to be the person my parents want me to be. I don’t know how to be myself in the things I do alone. When I get home, I get yelled at for spending money on photographs of myself and I am a narcissist because I can look at myself preserved like that for a period of time and two hours later, someone slips a brownie under my door but I don’t eat it and I don’t come outside. I know it isn’t the killer, it’s just the one who left and came back. They always come back, don’t they? I go for a walk around midnight and don’t take my phone.

On Sunday I’m not eighteen or beautiful. I wake up in the clothes I went out in and don’t change out of them and my mother is still back but she’s hiding and my father is working to afford something that won’t complete him and I begin to wonder if Saturday even happened. But it did. My friend is back at college and I know this because she texts differently at college then she does when she’s home. My brother says he is starving to death and there’s no food in the house. God damn it!, I want to shout and I want to leave but I don’t because he’s a kid and my sister’s a kid and I’m not, so I fish a flannel out of my closet and send them to friends’ houses to beg for snacks while I walk to the store. It is the only moment I will ever get to be alone. I buy bread and apples and fill out the FAFSA on my phone in the frozen dinners aisle. Sometimes I am thirty-six and doing this, most days I am thirty-six and I have a twelve and ten year old and I am dying of some unknown disease that turns out your insides and wrinkles up your face prematurely. I have done absolutely nothing productive since the summer and I will probably never be selfish like that again.

The cashier flirts with me and makes obscure references to my shirt. I say “how are you?” and he says “it’s another day in paradise.” And he says this to probably everyone who asks, but I want him to know I’m in love with him because he said it to me. I want to ask him how he got over not being the person he wanted. I want to ask him if maybe we can hang out. But he is eighteen and I don’t remember that I’m not actually thirty-six. I wonder if he has only ever been one age or if he doesn’t believe in constructs. I want to scream ARE YOU LIKE ME but I don’t want to scare people so I leave. A boy scout walks up to me and begs me to buy popcorn so he can go camping. He is freezing and alone and four and I am freezing and alone and aging rapidly and I’m so damn done so I overdraft for him. I wonder if this is how it is, if I will always be this terrible product of what I’ve come from. I wonder if my skin will fall off before I stop giving myself up for people. I get home and the kids aren’t back yet so I let myself stand in the shower for fifteen minutes and I pull on my crop top again and run my hands through my hair, wishing I’d preserved the curls I had earlier for just a little extra time. I wonder if it’s okay to miss so much you’ve never had. I wonder if it ever goes away.

but if jesus is still

awake i wonder if he'd tell me

at what age

he disconnected his

gmail from his dad's

and if it came out of a place of

anger or if he just turned eighteen

one day and decided to

change his password.

but if he stays up late like i do, i'm

already feeling this sense

it's

probably not the latter.

when i was nine years old i

crashed my grandmother's laptop.

do you think she remembers this

every time

she searches for youtube?

probably not, but i do.

i've written the same ghost

story book over and over again, it's

the one 

i'd steal from the scholastic

book fair and hide; it's

the childhood bible

that i never picked up.

have my parents ever thought that maybe

their child is mad at them?

is everyone's heavenly daddy

immune to this, am i 

the system error? is my father's

hallowed name restored?

i have been thinking this

in every different brain in this body

for months, i cannot

close my eyes to sleep 

without seeing a hand coming to pluck me from this

hell and drop me into another one.

when i was nine years old i

let my friend run me over

on my new bike.

does she think of this when she

wins races now at college?

i still care.

it still lives in my mind,

a feeling of fire and tangling of

legs.

and if god didn't 

leave his son i wonder if things

would have turned out different for every other

kid in the brown green earth,

because if you can't even get the attention of your

dad as some sub-human

sub-god 

person thing

then what the

living hell am i supposed to do

when all mine cares about is my

geometry grade and 

old gmail

and the search history i've

deleted hours ago?

i hope i can still find it

sometime after this, if it can't

seem to dig itself into a grave.

they say once you do something it will 

always be out there so i've

grown up hoping

everything is forever.

that my best friend never dies. that

my grandmother never dies.

that my childhood bike can

decompose into the earth 

and see me again someday. someday, maybe...

when i was nine i found a dead cat on the walkway near my house.

does god plan this when he makes the animals?

i'm sure he probably does.

i ask maya if she has to leave and she says that i should know by now: no matter where she goes she’ll be gone

and the whole thing flings me like a car careening off the key bridge.

today i miss her different than when she’s gone-home in ohio, i miss her more because of all the extra hours.

i calculated from my house to wisconsin and it’s a whole new distance than before.

i ask maya what does it feel like to miss me and she says that missing isn’t a feeling she can explain. i ask maya if maybe it just feels like lost but i don’t think she gets what i’m trying to say.

maya’s much smarter than i am though so i guess i should trust her, plus

i think i’m becoming a burden so if nothing i’m shushed now,

and i’m scared that my best friend’s sitting in wisconsin but i’m home thinking there might be something wrong in me

but i’ll never admit that because it might make her feel like leaving. i think more than anything

i want maya to see the world.

if it makes any difference, rather, i think i am getting sadder because i haven’t really left bed since that virgin margarita

and on the car ride home i told blake that was the first time i’d eaten all day and i asked if she’d sing at my burial.

she said if the need’s there she’ll try and show but singing at a birthday seems far more preferable.

blake has a beautiful singing voice, i think i’d love to hear it.

i’m holding out for that.

i ask maya when she’s getting back to ohio not that it matters but i happen to know that

her blue room makes me feel good because it’s lighter than mine and 

i remember when i met her i googled everything about her because she was my first friend i’d ever made

from a different state and something about that made me feel scared that there is this great beyond,

that everything’s so so much bigger than my one tiny county. to ohio i look like a drop of water in the ocean off the key bridge.

to her family i am just one of her camp friends.

to her classmates back home, i do not exist. sometimes i wish i did, but right now it’s comforting to know that no matter what happens

there’s a group in ohio who simply won’t see everything i get wrong.

i ask maya when’s she’s getting back. i want to come see her. i want to take an amtrak and go far away from my home.

she sends me pictures of wisconsin so i think it might be a long time from now.

i ask maya what it feels like to be invisible and she says i’d probably know better than she would but

if she ever finds out she’ll be sure to clue me in.

i think that maya is not the type of girl to be invisible like i am.

and you can’t tell me i’m not because the car horns don’t count and the beach men don’t count

when they yell about my body and even that is an intense thing about me,

how my shape is, it rolls up and down like a seawave in a sandstorm,

like i’m enveloping a car that careened off the key bridge. (there’s someone screaming inside it if you care to hear them)

i am so loud that it makes it hard to look at but maya is the type of girl that is nice and calm and easy to notice.

maya is going to change the world and i can’t wait to see it.

my best friend is going to do so much and that is something i’m holding out to see, if only to prove for a moment i knew her.

i ask maya if she’s still awake in wisconsin and don’t get anything back.

now comes the quiet.

when your best friend goes to bed it feels like the world’s stopped just for you.

maya is the type of girl who goes to bed real early and then she wakes up real early

so she can wake up her friends who are sad.

maya sets alarms and i think about that a lot, how she’s got enough motivation for both of us.

i think about what her alarms might sound like, if they’re nice ones or if they’re that awful blaring iphone default.

i am trying to go to bed, i am trying, but i feel so bad that i might just wait until morning. in this moment

i can’t think of any one person who would be proud of that.

maya’s gone off to wisconsin and suddenly i feel a little like i’m trying to stay afloat after dropping from the key bridge.

but if i hold out till morning maybe i’ll get to see the sun before anyone in ohio or wisconsin,

maybe if i hold out i’ll hear the bells on the key bridge miles and miles from here.

maybe if i hold out just a little longer i can be the one to wake up maya. i wonder if that’d make her smile.

i wonder if she wouldn’t be worried because i’m so good at hiding.

i wonder if it’d help her see that the world is so big but there’s always me and ohio.

and when maya gets back i think i’ll try and drive out to see her,

i think it’s time i see the world too.

i think i’ll go through the night and make it by the time she’d wake me.

in ages when she gets back (cause maya’s gone to wisconsin),

that’s what i’m holding out for.

i’m holding out for that.

Tell me a fun fact!"

"Well, what should I say?"

- I'll admit it right now: I'm not an artist.

- I'll tell you how my hand sculpture broke and since that day my eyes have sat glazed and fixated on the idea of a certain institution that won't accept me without unless I wear a costume made of latex and lies, and

- I'll tell you how I left acting because I realized I couldn't keep up with the character I'd adopted and that I quit music because I realized it's a rich kid's sport I'd never win without real training.

- I'll tell you I'm unintelligent. I'll tell you about the fundamentalism ingrained in me from knowing too many real-life Duggars and Plaths,

- going to church in a place where they told me the world was ending,

- and the folks who just like niceness are directed to burn under the devil's sheets.

            Yes, I fight over misogyny that I've been the one to tell myself.

                I have to remind her, "be decent!"

            Yes, I try so hard to get better but I don't know if I can.

And it all makes her so ashamed, but aware, but if nothing else in about less than a year

                               it'll be a hell of a college essay.

"A ten paragraph statement."

"About anything I choose?"

I am sick of my world not being comfy with me. I am sick of being the outlier. 

The higher education, go on get higher,

go on get higher and I still can't stray from their bodies

that sit on the sidewalk and wait for their next move to come in tongues

with a small side of fries, please.

They beg of Him and him and he.

And the way that one of the three texts makes me scream, the way that I have to

figure out what I'll say to the pastor, "your son is a creep,"

feels like a plea, am I crying for help or for him?

I can't even ask hushedly when

my friends condone a patriarchal society and embrace the males that I once loved

and once loved me enough to do regrettable things, but

"Boys Will Be Boys And He Will Be One Of Them!"

My head will stay down, I won't open my mouth again. I won't try to warn 

my (ex?) very best friend of it and the way that he got in my head. His name even rhymes with a drug.

But the car that I drive out of this place in will run off of stories from women who survived

times in their life

when they weren't sure of anything but desire to up and get the hell comfortable

past the state lines.

             (My car will be red. Red like a crucifix.

                      Red like a bloodied cross,

                           red like a car crash.

              Red like how I imagine my voice sounds when I scream out

      this next phrase. Headphone users afterwards might need hearing aids...)

"Let's review your extracurriculars."

"Can I leave the church without leaving religion?"

Am I going to Heaven or Hell?

                        I've been told I'm going to a socialist camp,

            I've been told I'll be among the first taken to the barracks when martial law kicks in

but they don't ever answer my question.

    God is clear, God is clear, God is clear.

So the fact of the matter is that I may or may not be burning as I stand here anyway,

I ask myself if a thousand years more could make any difference and shudder at the thought that it could.

I am not the change I wish to see in the world. My family is not proud of me.

My friends have all left me, they preferred when I wasn't a hypocrite.

    God is clear, God is clear, God is clear.

I was fun when I condemned feminism and handed over my body to the old men in power.

I was fun when I paraded around in my homemade Donald Trump mask and talked about becoming king of the world.

Those tapes are deleted. Those friends have stopped calling.

And this is a program I don't want to get into, this is not an interview I wanted to have.

I've seen your people and they'd never accept me, 

look at my history for yourself and don't try to put a triangular peg into any other hole than which it belongs in.

    "Riddle me this now, what color is God?"

"Anything else you'd like us to know?"

"I don't think so."

            - Do you ever wonder what I feel like?

People lay me out like it's biology class. They dissect my insecurities and take apart my brain just to see what's wrong with it.

They scour at the discrepancies and things I'm still trying to fix.

            - Some dreams are best left as they are.

Yes, I've dreamed of this moment, of talking to you. I've dreamed of showing off this school's shirt at graduation, of saying "see, I could always fit in, you just wouldn't have me!"

I've dreamed of coming and finding out I was everything like you.

No matter what you might say to deceive me, I see that I'm not.

            - This is not what I want for myself. I deserve something better where I can fall in

and I need somewhere where the people aren't screaming

and I am so sick and tired of being nearly near fake.

And everything I write makes me sound fourteen years old again.

I'm hesitant to use the words broke girl but is that what I am?

The first time it happened, I was thirteen and I watched the votes tally and the church leaders scream

and was the world ending? I don't think I knew

but as I fell asleep, listening to the folks on the phone, as they got quiet and calm and then much later, happy,

                     I said a simple prayer.

God, don't let the world end over something like this.

          Don't let the world end when I still haven't seen it.

That's all it comes down to. This is the end. I need to go to a place where I can fit in.

Where the world feels intact, where I can quietly sit.

Where the world keeps on twirling. Where I too can spin.

I am too old             to feel             like this            again.

    The age old adages have come back to haunt me.

    Knives are like words from my ex best friend’s throat.

                                         And she lured me in, snakelike

                                         until I couldn’t see

                                         anything.

Not anything

at all

anymore.

Did you see the lights flicker?                Oh, but the stars shine

just for you.

It’s all an illusion,           it’s a game.       They feed me propaganda

and I spit it back for a grade

/in perfect unison/

I’m starting to agree I’m something punk rock

sorta vibe. I’m starting to hurt my ears just so I can’t hear what’s inside.

I’m starting to agree my anger is justified,

my breath of fresh air, electrified; all the wrong reasons, intensified;

glorified;

and they think me petrified           but the level I’m on made the pastors cry.

I can’t see the surface.                                               If I scream will my voice still be amplified?

That’s why:

I spit it into rough syllables, scream it in decibels

            /past a thousand/

write it in legible chalk on the ground and let                             people look and look past it

                                cause it might make someone uncomfortable.

                                     I haven’t been this way in ages

         been angry in enough to spit words and fill pages and

say everything I been holding back for fear of the rage might make someone afraid

                                                                             and not like what I have to say 

but screw it.

I’d rather have no friends and get all my words out then a party of friends

and an ache in my mouth                                         from keeping shut and quitting.

I ask my friends why I’m special to them and they chime back in eulogy,

list my awards in chronology like I am now their trophy wife.

               Rather, the real life 

               Trophy Mistress, Best Friend Resistance Part II (to you)

I’ve lived the way they make me say hello at parties.

It makes me uncomfortable.

Man, I’m singing now too, join me in my debut and we’ll put skulls on the cover and call it

anger. 

“Your writing is beautiful.”

“If it is then I haven’t done my job.”

I don’t recognize the ghostwriter I had last year

who occupied time trying for flowery language people’d call correct and only remember for a day.

I can’t say it that way, I can only make sounds             My voice is garbled and unsure of itself.

(but here’s verse one.)

And now my hair’s all messed up and I’m thinking of shaving it

and my parents say I’m a train wreck just waiting to happen

but at least this image tattoos itself into y’all’s brains and it makes into a double.

(I really need braces--imagine if they were affordable.)

I question everything, the people on the street are in my head again,

the sun is a knife and it cuts through my skin again

and let’s let people see things I’ve tramp stamped to my skeleton,.

I long to make them understand but once you’ve past the age it’s not something you’ll

taste again. I’m glad for their sake, then.

I’d hate to make anyone uncomfortable.

Besides, seventeen tastes too much like bile.

The earth is a sphere.

This class is, sadly, flat.

You find no contrast.

Her hair flips again,

your lips flap out of context.

Another Wednesday.

To you: Birds are real.

Birds are real. Birds are real. Birds

are real. Birds are real.

"Trump won, idiots!"

But you are the idiot.

How the turn tables.

A Karen, a boy.

Asks for the teacher--frequent.

A Karen. A boy.

I'd be remiss if

I didn't point out the good:

"THE GOOD" TBA

If the world was flat,

would I push you off the side?

No body no crime.

"Harvard brainwashes!"

Someone's spicy. Whatever,

more space for the rest.

If my business

isn't the government's,

then why is it yours?

I listen to Lorde.

My friend listens to Dodie.

You listen to Q.

*your brother passes*

Whoever's brother just passed,

your mom's a Karen.

You didn't say that.

I'll just pretend you didn't.

Wash my ears with soap.

Today's a good day.

It's Women's History Month.

I beg you sit down.

You like The Office

and giving fans a bad rep.

Pam wouldn't approve.

Aunt B and Tay Swift

are honorary gen z's.

You're the opposite.

I play four square with

a ball printed like the earth.

I see it, I laugh.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Footnotes

dssdsgfdssdsg what an odd year

ALSO (because there are a lot of new faces who I don't know and won't know my humor) this is all satire. Mostly fake. Some funny. All not serious. Do I have a crazy flat earther in my class? Yes. Would I push him off the side of the Earth if it was in fact flat? *pauses a certain song from the Evermore album* No. No I would not. Would I write him onto snl? Well...maybe. Yes. But that's a whole new ball game and we don't do "missed opportunities" in this house. Also I have his mom as a teacher and she doesn't seem like a Karen, that was a parody of,,,,,well, you know.

...but I had to make some bad jokes for the occasion.

...

Being first is not always the best. I mean, can you imagine having as many impeachments as you do ex wives? And just like the ex-wives once did, the majority of the country is longing for a divorce.

Hey, at least we figured it out faster than they did! (Hey, we don't get those hefty divorce stimulus checks?)

Ivana commented to People magazine on the presidential loss, saying, "I just want this whole thing to be over." Later, reporters debated whether or not that was the first time she's made that sort of remark about her ex-husband.

On January 16, 2020, U.S. president Donald J. Trump was impeached for the first time, for abuse of power and obstruction of justice. However, Trump continues to prove that one of anything is never enough for him. On January 13th of this year, just three days until the one year anniversary of his first...it happened again. This time it was as consequence to Trump egging on the domestic terrorists at the Capitol the week prior. His remarks, reminiscent of an over enthusiastic soccer parent's, told rioters that he loved them, and they were very special. The definition of "special" in this statement was never clarified, but it smelled like snowflakes, shiny pickup truck exhaust, and that one CVS in your area where nobody wears a mask.

I wonder if Melania's jealous--after all, that's one heck of a vow renewal.

I wonder if the kids are jealous--after all, their dad didn't care nearly as much during their custody battles!

Let’s see ma’am now where should I start--

my sister is the sunshine of the family.

We orbit around her like drunk bees waiting for a drop of pollen or a joke, saying nothing.

I sit still and silent with clenched teeth until I’ve got bloody red gums from smiling in too many planned photographs,

I change the color of my hair like it’s in the witness protection program.

And I guess I’m all used to this sort of thing by now so I’ll tell you how

every night when my family goes to sleep I’m still up with a book on account of

I don’t wanna leave but I’m wanting to get out.

I stick my fingers in the edges and slam it shut till all we see is--

I’m sorry younger me, but what the hell is freedom? Is it something you buy in a tricolored popsicle at the fair

    or has consumerism not grabbed you by the cup size yet and asked your name and number?

    How young are we talking here?

    Yes ma’am I think I stopped growing around twelve or thirteen and my mind feels like it’s stuck there

    but the point is I’m done, done,

    now all I gotta do is wait slowly for my body to deteriorate

and fall to the ground up and down quick like a climax chart.

Yes ma’am I believe in a God not on my accord though cause I been raised in a church

and sure I seen them comedians that come in and make gentle jokes about being a Home Schooled Kid Like Me

but that ain’t exactly what I’m going for here see I think just by nature I may be a bit edgier.

Am I outrunning stereotypes yet?

(That was a joke ma’am you can laugh.)

Now how long exactly have I wanted black hair? Has it been long because nah it can’t’ve been

    do you have that in your notes, ma’am? Do you have in your notes how I can’t seem to do nothing permanent

    or that my favorite color’s red but I wear more blue? Do you have in your notes how I hold books like security blankets,

    how my mom and dad are real successful and my brother he’s good at math and I’m just not no matter how hard I work? 

    You been writing down that I’m sad? Or why? What you put down there in your notes, is it my favorite art or poems

    is it terror dreams is it the recurring one about baby Rosemary crashing out of my arms like a fish flopping for life on the art class floor

    cause my arms ain’t strong enough to hold up an act anymore?

Things are crashing, ma’am, they crashing real hard.

Planets are coming out of alignment but Pluto here’s just a stubborn one, huh?

And she don’t want to revolve around the sun no more, huh?

And it’s been about an hour so I should probably take a sucker and get the hell out so you can see the next messed up kid, huh?

But when my family’s all sleep y’all think about me still up reading.

I’ll stick my fingers in the edges of the pages and slam em real tight.

Now all you can see is the red.