more than nothing, less than something

Emma, eighteen I write here when i feel like it

[childishnotions]

"You" could mean anyone or no one; it's meant the latter for longer than I care to admit. I wish I could scrub away my skin under the hot water, take off the layer of embarrassment that has settled into my pores.

I know death is coming. She visits me in my nightmares, her crackling fire hair burning into ashes on the ground. We are walking down a long hallway; I can't keep up. Slow down, I say, but she doesn't look back and she is out of sight when I lie down on the ground and look at the star ceiling.

The sadness is not acute any longer, it is natural, it fits into my ribcage where I thought my lungs were.

The flames from the sun burn my skin from ninety million miles away and yet feel the same as a candle flame on my palm. Your palm is warm as sunlight, but it will take much longer than eight minutes for you to touch my skin.

What am I waiting for?

[childishnotions]

The sun is just a far off star And you are just a collection of blood and bones. If you can't get up in the morning, don't; Walk in cemeteries and cry over the people you never knew And will never know. You drink too much coffee and make your hands shake, Write poetry when you are meant to be writing papers about the Russian orthodox church, But even Rasputin doesn't know why you can't concentrate. Behind the wall of this desk there is a boy with eyes as blue as the sky, Much brighter than any eyes you have seen before. Your own eyes are tired and sad, reflecting what is hiding behind them. It's Friday and you are sad; Tomorrow it will be Saturday and you will still be sad, And the paper cuts on your hands will take more than hours to heal.

[childishnotions]

I am preoccupied with the notion of stars; I want to find a way to put the stars in my eyes and in my mouth, hold them in the palm of my hand. The closest I have gotten to a star is the sunburn on my lips and the lighter between my fingers; I fear this is the closest I may get.

[childishnotions]

There is ink in my skin that I put there myself, Not with needles but with ballpoint pens; I would have stuck myself with needles if I could get my hands on them, Homemade acupuncture.

I use my heart like a pincushion anyway, Stick in remnants of who I used to be, Sharp as glass and slick as blood, I am either fire or salt, never both.

My eyes are shallow pools of brown water, I poured them out to drown myself, But I couldn't even manage that.

[childishnotions]

You hope there is melted gold,     a glowing soul,     a light somewhere beneath your bones, though every time you've cut yourself open you have only seen something dull and red and frightening

[childishnotions]

every cigarette i light burns bright as a star, and countless stars will touch my lips before i see you again

[childishnotions]

i want to believe in soulmates, that there is someone with hands that fit perfectly into mine, but my head reminds me that i was not created by Hans Christian Andersen and there is no way out for me.

[childishnotions]

writing is safer, somehow because my pen cannot stutter like my lips do, and words get stuck in throats, not fingertips, can't stumble on paper trails of blue lines because writing is definite and clear and no one can tell if i am crying or laughing through written words alone 

[childishnotions]

Addiction to     materials and     breaths, to     sunshine and     lipstick, Sorry I can't be who you want, Sorry I can't tremble   like she did, Sorry my skin is pale and my eyes red-rimmed, Sorry the sky isn't quite as blue    as the ocean at your feet, Sorry for things I can't control,    your mother's death, your       brother's despair, your headaches,       my skin. Apologies mean nothing, not       much more than a snap of your       fingers and a touch of lips to       skin that doesn't deserve them.

[childishnotions]

Conch shell skin and rosebud eyes, lemon drops and back door watermelon. Skinned knees and broken bikes, anticipation of things still to come. Smashed mirrors and butterfly wings, flooded houses, night lights, countertops over my head, sitting alone and comforted by the silence, being altogether more and less than I meant to be.

[childishnotions]

If I put my hands against a globe, stretch my fingers across continents and oceans, I can touch more than I could ever hope to with plane tickets and hiking boots.

[childishnotions]

1. Someone is speaking low and rough, and you hear but you do not listen, let the words run over you like water from the tap, cool and clear.

2. You stand in subways and kitchens, and do not respond when people call your name, act surprised when they tap you on the shoulder, claim you didn't hear.

3. Sit in class, pay attention, take notes. Draw on the margins of your notebooks, pictures of sunsets and mountains and cities, pictures of boys with green eyes, pictures of veins and suns, pictures of people who do not listen. Think that you are not engraved into anything strong, that you can be brushed away like a stray hair. 

4. Think that  you don't care, wonder when you stopped, wonder if you'll start again.

5. Stare at people who understand, who give a damn, think of yourself as removed from them, separated, on the other side of a wide, wide river.

6. Can't decide if you are happy or sad, consider that you are neither, consider your apathy and the ache in your head, consider the future and what it is no longer holding.

7. Wonder absently if embarrassment and apathy are emotions. Acknowledge that if they aren't, you have no emotion at all.

8. Here are voices again, spitting questions about the future, droning and empty.

[childishnotions]

sorry an insincere little word that means much less than I need it to 

[childishnotions]

if i die young, don't let them stand and talk about heaven or hell, or bless me with cold hands, don't disrespect me that way, don't let them talk about my purity, serenity, or the completion of years of prayer and piousness, don't cry for me, don't cry over my body, because i will not be there, i will not be in that empty shell, i will be in the  warm blue sky, and the hum of the city air, not in the candles on the altar or in the incense or ropes or rosaries or angels, i will not be in that coffin, i will be free 

[childishnotions]

I am sections of a citrus fruit That someone has separated And squeezed the life out of. 

[childishnotions]

You claimed you must be "inspired" to write, must feel a tugging on your soul, an itching in your fingers. I laughed and called bullshit, told you to find inspiration in the folds of your clothing and the ridges on your fingers, in the crosshatching on the ceiling tiles, in the way your tongue feels against your teeth, in the tree branch veins breaking across your skin, in the grainy feel of winter, in the smell of the perfume your mother used to wear, in the wallpaper, in the sheets, in guitar strings and sharp-smelling grass, in rice pearls and wire rings, in mason jars and empty plastic bags, in torn magazine pages, in dried-up pens, in empty notebooks, in your eyes, and mine. The world is made of words, you simply need to learn how to take them.

[childishnotions]

The man at church says he feels sorry for those who do not have God, because they are flopping around like a fish out of water.

But I am not a fish, I am a girl, and I may be lost, and alone, and I may not have an immediate purpose printed across my forehead, but I am human and I am living and, for now, that is enough.