And where in the world was me?

Been a bit.

I'm in college. I'm four hours away from the last place I called home. I currently know three people by name. I've eaten gobs of spinach at every meal and today I worked ahead of my math class.

I think I'm happy. So far, sure.

I don't really know what else to say for now. Except, maybe, bye. For a bit. Bit longer. Maybe.

I'm a Big Fat Hypocrite but Hang On a Sec

I never ever thought I'd be that kind of desperate.

I've had this...thing, I guess. Long story, short novel. I spent two years bleeding over it until I was completely dried out and loved every second. I recently read it over and-

Well, I'm still in love with it, but I know it's gonna stay hidden in my computer until the end of time. It's not something that would ever get published. Maybe looked at a bit (it already has), and maybe even some good feedback (which, again, I've already got), but nothing further. My poor pages would stay locked up within myself unless I made some serious compromise.

And you know damn well I'm not rational enough to do that.

I've read about other edgy-type girls striking out. Getting famous by going out on their own way with Tumblr poetry and pretty-faced words. I hope I'm not Tumblr poetry. I hope I'm not the "crazy bitch", as I've been called by actual Tumblr poetry (Hi E! you cunt). I hope I'm something better, something that could one day make enough money off of my typing that I would never bother with public opinion ever again.

But that's not today.

So, I thought I might as well at least let that story be out there. Amazon, hand drawn cover, cryptic-like nom de plume (still wanna keep an air of mystery, I guess. Only thing worth interest outta me anymore.).

I don't know who likes reading all this, and I don't really even know if anybody is reading this, but here it goes anyway: I have a pinch of my self-published heart out for sale, both digital and in print.

Here are the links. Make something of me, please.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07D5K8F98

And in paperback.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1982935456

From a humble, semi-psychotic high school graduate, thank you.

"Anyways, how's your week going?" (Prose)

I am now just shamelessly promoting my YouTube channel.

https://youtu.be/lNxeZlvIbPE

Anyways, how's your week going?

Like I’ve said, I’m really not that interesting.

Days are the same. Days blend. I can measure the mundanity out by what Big Trouble I had or what book I was reading. But here, for posterity, I’ll try listing it through:

School. Dark-sky drives to the institution and back. There’s not much to say about that.

Work. I can do a lot of that, most weeks. Feet like rocks for the build-up, tumble-down savings I’ve managed to muster. Work after school and on the weekends. I don’t work every day.

Books. My great sustenance. This whole existence is so easily pacified by Vonnegut and an iced coffee. I have a paperback in my backpack, purse, and car. It’s my stubborn will to create something material that I keep and display every book I’ve ever consumed. Of course I point out my titles.

I guess, if you’re wondering, I write things, too.

But I get my breakouts, sometimes. I’ll be walking to my car after an aching shift or eating outside when I catch a breeze under a pink air and simply be in love. God, that is what I love-atmosphere. No Romeo could ever sweep me up from it. 

To some greater extent, that is why I live. I smile at the drivel and continue on because I know, know well, the great common pleasures of the Earth. Of her fragile blossoms, of her cool tears. These fragments of truth have lived a thousand times over, and will just as starkly be reborn again.

And, I think, so will we.

"'Member Me, Sweetie?" (Poem)

I think they time out breakups-

Call it the night before, the morning after.

We were always flipped, ended so-

We had our morning before, our night after.

Because I hit him in the afternoon,

Bit the muscles in my cheeks and whispered into the phone.

The old boy hung up so quick.

I went home and scrubbed my mouth, my skin, my eyes.

I was only fourteen but did an excellent job of washing myself free of him.

Spent the weekend playing music and I was over it by Monday.

And he was the adult (20)

And he should’ve dropped the whole damn thing.

So why is he texting four years later?

All Right v. Alright

Let's go with this- I'm alright (all right?). Google says alright is not really a word, but acceptable. All right means the same thing. I guess alright invokes a touch of casualness in the written form that you wouldn't hear. I can just see this James Dean boy holding a match against the wind, brushing off concerns for his mind like that: "Yeah, I'm alright." Whichever, yeah. I'm alright/all right.

I've got plans, baby. More plans than I'll confess to the Internet. Maybe a priest, but not to you. And I want more coffee than I've already had.

Does any of this make sense? No? Good. Like I've said, that's not what I wanted outta this. It feels nice to have a little corner tucked away to bitch and spew whatever I so desire. And oh, my, my, do I have things to say.

I'm available wherever I am sold. Work, school, family events where I have to smile wide and try to remember who this person is that thinks my hair is permed.  But here, here I am not. Here is the public diary of a secret bitch. Open my heart and behold its black ooze. Sometimes I can even exhale evil spirits.

But really, I'm alright.

Envy is Truly a Horrid Bitch

Hi.

I've had a bit of a block. I think. I don't know. I watch that fucking vertical line blink in and out on the screen. Seriously, fuck that thing. I always feel like it's waiting for something that I can't do.

High school is almost over. I'm never going to see just about anybody from there ever again. It's this frantic, last-chance phase. People are hooking up, getting in fights, finally going to see that one movie or talk to that one kid. I'm not a part of any of it.

I feel like the ghost of someone who died a year or two ago, in that social sense. Maybe in that full sense, I don't know. I see people I used to drink with and giggle about the weekends and they won't even give me a glance to show that I'm still a person to them. What is it about me that has turned everyone away?

I must sound like I need some help. Well let me tell you- I'm fine. I'm just sick of seeing all these people beaming in FaceBook posts to a hundred heart-studded comments wishing them luck at their universities, fully funded a la pocket de Daddy.

Maybe it's because I didn't go to prom. I didn't go because it was too expensive, mostly. The other part is that I thought prom would just make it worse- puffy-faced girl in an overly modest dress and not enough makeup, hoping someone will talk to her and make her night. Yeah, no fucking thanks.

Okay, maybe I do need help. Maybe I can't run on only food, water, words, the occasional good sleep. Maybe I need that human interaction after all.

It's not like I don't talk to anybody. I think I have friends. It's just the fucking teenage angst social anxiety insecure self loathing shit. I can't even really articulate what's going on with me. Funny, I'm supposed to be the writer and I don't have any words. Ha.

I'm sure I'm fine.

"I'd like to think so." (Short Story)

I got a really cool opportunity to write a story for Pretty Sick Bitch, a YouTube channel centered around horror stories. I haven't had a lot of experience in the practice of writing stories specifically intended to elicit fear, so I was excited to give it a go. Her accent and production gives a certain classiness to the narrative that I find quite thrilling, so be sure to check it out at the link below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqArVriwDzY&t=17s

I'd like to think so.

By Zoe Rose

At eighteen, I consider myself tentatively lucky to still have a great-grandparent. 91 and just only now starting to disappear behind the thicket of dementia, my mother’s mother’s mother is held in my family much like the beautiful antique platter we once had- treasured, requires the most careful of handling, only seen at Christmas.

Not that it was always like this. Maw, as we seven youngest group of descendants call her, she used to be so, well, here. Aged, yes, but she refused to let anybody be able to call her an old lady. I spent elementary summers in quiet awe of how much she was able to at her age, all on her own, while the four others I had known went so quietly into the ground that I can hardly even recall that they were once more than just a figure in the frames on the wall.

Too many errands ran and dinners cooked and nights spent to really pick apart the specific memories of Maw before now. And I was too young to be able to get anything but the essence of things from then. The accumulation of time stretches out like a landscape, blurred and somewhat consistent, peppered by the rare oddity or importance.

But there is one.

I can’t remember how specifically old I was, but it had to’ve been when I was still young and small enough to have been comfortably sleeping on Maw’s loveseat in her living room. An overstuffed structure held together by cool, plastic-y leather, I usually would find myself up with the sun almost directly following saying goodnight. For some reason, on some night, I had been pulled back to consciousness by a very loud, chug-a-lug type of noise.

I do remember keeping my eyes closed for a long time. I figured I’d fall back asleep if I mimed like I actually still was. Eventually the noise became piercing, all-around, too much to ignore. I sat up.

Pushed up against the wall on the other end of the couch was a large, matching chair. It usually sat vacant, but not then. I had opened my eyes to a man sitting there- pants and shoes and an old-man belly visible through a tan shirt- and he didn’t seem one bit out of place with the scene. The prickle of fear that I’d have had nowadays went unfelt then. I was not scared. In my child-mind, he looked even natural to be there.

Most of his face was covered by a great opaque mask that stretched from nearly over his eyes to past his chin. From it ran a long tube that snaked off his knees and onto the floor.

We stayed like that for a while. Even in the Ohio dark, I could see him well enough to make out a struggle in the rise and fall of his chest as he took in air. My mind was so unbothered by the presence of The Man with No Face that I could even conjure up sympathy for him. An asthmatic since kindergarten, I knew what it was like to not be able to take that simple function for granted. I can remember most sharply how bad I felt that this stranger had to live with that loud mask.

But I never said a word or made a motion, and neither did he. I blinked at him. I think he blinked at me. Then, after some time, I squirmed back down onto the couch and fell asleep.

In the daylight, eating pancakes with my brother and Maw and waiting for my mother to come take us all to the movies, the incident felt like nothing more than a really silly dream. I knew how my brother and cousins would laugh- Ha ha ha, a man in the chair. And ha ha ha, he had a mask. The adults would say I was making things up again. I’d get another lesson in truths versus not-truths, and I already knew well enough.

So I had a secret. I once saw a man in Maw’s chair and I was almost proud to have never even whispered it at sleepovers. And after so long of not calling that night back to tell to others, it became far and enough away that I very nearly forgot it happened.

It wasn’t until I was something like sixteen years old when I thought about it again. Maw had finally agreed to move into an assisted living and put her home of about sixty years on the market, and I had come up north to help my grandma and mom clean everything out while Maw settled into a place where (much to our relief) she would never be alone like she had since 1989.

Something about rummaging through an old basement- curling newspapers nestled into the corners of a ripped pool table- inspired such a nostalgia within my mother that she got talking of the times when she was “my age”.

And my age then happened to be the same approximate time within my mother’s life that she had seen her grandma go a widow and herself lose someone that, she admitted with this little pull in her voice, that she cared about very much.

He was a photographer for a local paper. Good one too- almost won the Pulitzer for capturing a “Terror on the Mad River!”. Mom likes photography. Mom is like her grandfather.

And he had a whole life before the bad time, something wholly different than what I had seen. I don’t know if I really believe in God, or monsters, or a world past this, but I’m sure, I’m sure, that we all leave an imprint- an electrical little pulse that grabs hold of what’s around and tells others that dammit, we were, once.

But it didn’t really matter how he lived. This man with the camera, searing the history of Dayton in a fearless bulb- Beatles Here Today!, Mayor Elected, Man Captured- marching only forward, always forward, to an early, choked death. The man who captured everything forever, his own true history lost.

“It went so quick,” She said to his box of negatives on the broken wicker chair in the corner, “At the point he was at, the doctor just sent him home. He had this big, loud breathing machine to keep him comfortable, but that was it. We were all there. Grandma had left the room for a few moments, and that was when he went.”

And you wanna know where? Do you really, really want to?

Because I think you already do.

"Sapphire's Lament" (Short Play)

I'd written a couple of short plays to submit to a festival something like two months ago...this ended up being one of the many I didn't send and I never heard back, anyways (though I'm not sad or anything- I have a 10-minute play being produced in August). I know it's pretty rough, but I kinda like being able to clearly point at something and say: "Now that needs to be worked on."

Sapphire's Lament

By Zoe Rose

Lights up to SAPPHIRE and GOLDIE, in GOLDIE's dining room. Of the three chairs, one is vacant- CHRIS paces up and down stage right, talking on the phone with his dealer. It's evident that he's high and trying too hard to sound street-impressive for the girls.

CHRIS: For $40 man, I want it loud. I wanna smell it from the car, you get me?...when you coming up?...aight, aight...half an hour man? Better be worth waitin'...aight, I'm trustin' you...

CHRIS hangs up. He turns back to the girls.

GOLDIE: You got it taken care of, babe?

CHRIS (while crossing to sit in the chair next to GOLDIE): I've got all that shit settled for you, baby.

CHRIS and GOLDIE kiss. It's obvious that SAPPHIRE is uncomfortable.

GOLDIE (re: SAPPHIRE): Saph, you don't gotta squirm like that. You ever seen two people in love?

SAPPHIRE smiles, embarrassed.

SAPPHIRE: Sorry. Not used to you with a boy.

CHRIS: That's cuz she's a good girl- only warming up to a real man.

CHRIS wraps an arm around GOLDIE's waist as she laughs.

Goldie's told me you two are the same. Goldie's told me-

GOLDIE clamps a hand over CHRIS's mouth and laughs again. She may be high, too.

GOLDIE: Just a few things.

GOLDIE winks at SAPPHIRE reassuringly. GOLDIE takes her hand off of CHRIS's mouth as he jokingly bites it.

GOLDIE (re: CHRIS): Baby, you wanna get us something to drink? I got cups out on the counter.

CHRIS: Sure, princess.

CHRIS exits stage left where the kitchen would be. GOLDIE turns to SAPPHIRE, smiling in self-satisfaction. SAPPHIRE doesn't seem so pleased.

SAPPHIRE: All you told me was that you met a guy. What's it been, a couple weeks? Maybe a month?

GOLDIE: I like him. Don't you?

SAPPHIRE: He's got this way about him...

GOLDIE: Jesus, give him a chance! He's been here five minutes and you're already thinking up why I should ditch him. Are you just jealous?

SAPPHIRE: Don't be silly. I'm looking out for you. Guys who act all tough never back it up.

GOLDIE (low, almost flirtatiously): You know something, sugar-girl? You'll always be my bestest friend...my, well, my favorite friend. You get me?

SAPPHIRE (relenting): Yeah Goldie, I get it...

CHRIS enters stage left with three red cups. He puts them in the middle of the table as he sits down. The girls each take a cup. SAPPHIRE sniffs the content, her face twisting into a brief grimace.

SAPPHIRE: Little strong to be mixing with pot, don't you think?

CHRIS: It's just for while we wait.

GOLDIE uses her index finger to tip the bottom of SAPPHIRE's cup up, and SAPPHIRE, understanding her cue, drinks.

GOLDIE (re: CHRIS): She's not usually like this, I swear. I think she's trying to feel you out. She's a very protective friend. And sensitive. She wants to be a poet.

CHRIS: Really?

SAPPHIRE shrugs. She takes another drink.

GOLDIE: She wrote a poem about me. Got it put in a magazine and everything.

CHRIS: So you two gotta be real close, yeah?

SAPPHIRE: We've known each other...what, ten years now? Since elementary?

GOLDIE: We've done a lot together.

CHRIS smiles in understanding at this.

CHRIS: Oh, I see! So y'all practice kissing with each other?

SAPPHIRE shrinks back in discomfort, while GOLDIE nods eagerly.

That's cute.

GOLDIE: You wanna see?

SAPPHIRE: Goldie!

GOLDIE: Come on Sapphie, what's the problem? You've always wanted to before.

SAPPHIRE: It was just us before. It was a private thing. Is that why you wanted me to come over? To put on a show for your little boyfriend?

GOLDIE: Calm down, honey...come here.

GOLDIE leans toward SAPPHIRE. CHRIS watches intently. Suddenly, SAPPHIRE springs out of her chair.

SAPPHIRE: Don't kiss me. Please.

GOLDIE: Why? What's the matter?

SAPPHIRE: Because if you kiss me I know I'll kiss you back. And it's not gonna be for him, it'd be for me. Goldie, did you even read the poem? Did you? It was my way of telling you that- oh, God...

CHRIS suddenly gets up, grateful for any excuse to leave the room, and crosses stage right.

CHRIS (re: GOLDIE): Babe, my boy's here. I'm gonna meet him out front.

GOLDIE: I'll be out in a second.

CHRIS exits stage right. GOLDIE slowly gets up out of her chair and sighs.

Of course I did. It's pretty, it's a poem, and I didn't understand any of it. Sapph, I love you, but I'm not like you. You've always been so wrapped up in yourself, always wondering and worrying and thinking- thinking all the goddamn time. I finally found someone that I can have something real with, and you can't even be happy for me. I'm sorry, sweetie, but I'm just...not that way. Not really. And you know what? I can be happy for myself here. I can be happy with some stupid boy and community college and probably a family real soon like how our Mama's were. I'm happy to be like our Mamas. And you're not. You want that college up North and I know it and good luck and all the best and everything else...I'm going outside.

GOLDIE turns and exits stage right. SAPPHIRE crosses to center stage, looks offstage right, and squeezes her eyes shut. She tips her face up to the sky and recites like a prayer.

SAPPHIRE:

And I'm just tryna get back to those happy times-

Balmy nights, neon lights,

Dark wash jeans stitched skin-tight.

Back to those days-

14, fake ID

Bad-bred chicks flirtin' almost mean.

The Daytona dreams!

And oh my god,

Where-is-she?!

It's all gone, isn't it?

Everything to pot and Hell,

all falls to shit.

And when we go too, I can't tell.

I hope- oh, for your sake honey- I hope soon.

SAPPHIRE manages a smile.

On Something "Horrible"

I've decided that tomorrow I'll hide for the majority of the day in the library. It's not unpleasant; a cool, dark place to concentrate on work and filled with old books to take home (they're purging their collection in anticipation of a complete remodeling). I'm actually quite excited at this prospect, of spending three or four solid hours in the library.

I'm doing this because my school has decided to put on a "mock DUI event" the week before prom. By 9am they'll have all the juniors and seniors gathered up onto the bleachers and ready for the show. They've been bolstering it on the announcements these past five days- opening act will be a quadriplegic whispering of the night she was thrown from a truck, followed by a mother who lost a whole pair of twins to a day-drinker, and then, for the grandest act this Central Floridian school has seen since the last bomb threat, two students will drive junk cars across the football field into a head-on collision. 

It's supposed to be a secret, but we all know- a semisweet leadership girl who lost the school election has been given the absolute honor to die tomorrow. She'll be pulled out of the twisted metal and shattered by a helicopter, the ripped tule of her prom dress flying out in the wind around her lifeless body, and won't be seen again until Monday.

They have a beautiful memorial planned for her. They'll set up a stand with roses and her senior photo in the cafeteria, something her friends will have the solemn task of posing with for their Snapchat stories. But, don't worry, she won't sacrifice too much of her life. Someone has agreed to take over her streaks while she stays home and lets everyone contemplate her loss.

It's guaranteed that people will cry. Girls have been joking they won't even bother with mascara beforehand. Girls and boys will cry over this, girls and boys to whom the worst thing that's ever happened is failing algebra or a speeding ticket. Girls and boys who will nod this all away when the bell rings and text at stoplights on their way home.

Attendance mandatory.

This, however, won't be happening for me. I would just skip school outright, but I know that my dad will get on me about it and then I won't get anything done. Show up for Spanish in the morning and a bit of macro in the afternoon. Library for all the rest.

I have a family member who really did die like that. I have another family member who was struck in the street by a drunk-driver and had all his talents and independence dashed out of him. And yeah, they didn't get to come back after a three-day weekend. You know what they got? Not the roses, not the memorial. Not a locally-trending hashtag campaign. The only place their names still exist are engraved on a weed-covered rock and on their door in an assisted living facility. 

The best way for me to get through tomorrow would be to choose not to speak. If I open my mouth for a hello, this really might come out instead. And if I contradict, if I refute something that we really put a lot of time in it and why don't you just be respectful and sit this one through, my last few weeks of high school will be difficult indeed. And it's already been difficult.

So I'll just shut my mouth and stay somewhere on the complete opposite side of campus and hope to God that I won't be able to hear the helicopters, hear the screeching, hear the collision, hear the screams, have to have any idea of what it was real-life like for them on the nights that they were called to be a tragedy.

"You Take Me Out" (Prose)

Really fun couple of paragraphs I wrote back during a depressive couple of weeks in the fall. I'm okay, I promise.

You Take Me Out

Okay, so I know it’s desperation sinking in, not any genuine sort of pull. Does that make my breathing any less painful? Really? Tears cool my contacts and slip down to salt my cheeks. I have no idea why I’m sitting here, waiting like this.

I have a book. I could read. I still have some time left of my youth to be that pretty intellectual with her book and coffee, waiting for the approach. They’re too cool for what I am, though, and my dark thoughts and twists are actually a genuine malignance. I could get someone to put their...thing in me, sure, but it’ll only get lonelier once they shrug their pants back on and walk out the room.

I think my finger is about to rot off. I think that mole gets darker every day and I debate whether or not it counts as a suicide to just ignore it. I think, I wait, I sit. Not much else left to do for a fat-faced hysteric.

Walk by, say hi. I'm all that's left of me. 

I'm Just Gonna Do It

New plan.

Fuck thinking about it. Fuck feeling bad all the time. It's time for me to put my nose to the grindstone (? I'm sure that's a figure of speech but it feels clunky) and get going.

I can make as much money as I want to. I can be as successful as I dream. It's not for the Universe to be throwing opportunities at me- I'm on this land to be chasing after it.

Email all and often enough to have my contact name burned into their inbox. Think and type for as long as it takes to put something down that's any good. Scrape at my soul until I feel sick. It's doable.

And I'll do it. I'll do it. I'll do it.

I'm feeling better.

"Thoughts from One of those Girl-Types that Disappear" (Short Story)

Wrote this a while back, got a bunch of indifferent replies, made it into a shit-short, yay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MAnAFvflbo&t=25s

Thoughts from One of those Girl-Types that Disappear

I know exactly how you could kidnap me.

I work at a grocery store- lit like a grave, gorging families that shuffle over linoleum and dust. My feet always hurt and my hands stay dirty no matter how much soap or scrubbing I commit. But that’s all I’ll say about the misery. My woes of minimum wage, I’ve learned, find no sympathy with an older or perhaps more wealthy crowd.

Carts, sun, perpetual collection. Walk an old woman out like you’re supposed to and get rewarded with endless laps around the lot looking for corporate property. But though my feet stay on its track, (no matter how much they wanna just walk right off, right around the corner and never come back again) I let my mind wander whichever way it likes.

And I’ve been thinking.

There are a couple things you can get away with here. Somewhere along my time bagging- between the triple bagged in paper for the wine please don’t mind all the wine and oh no I forgot my totes op here they are why don’t you just go ahead and take my stuff out of the plastic and repack everything and I’ll wait outside for you- I always have the same contemplation of robbing a cashier.

I don’t mean anything personal; I mean robbing the company stuff, that is. The Man, the abuser. I would never think to take 80-year-old Darlene’s purse when she goes on break, oh no no. No, I think of the cash in the drawer one could so easily take and be gone.

And it’d be so easy. All you’d need to do is tell them to give it to you. We’ve been told to obey, even if there isn’t a weapon. They just never know; they won’t take that liability. They make too much money to really care about a couple hundred, anyway.

You could come through the lane, buying a small item that’d need one of the paper bags. Come early in the morning, right at opening. Slip the cashier a note, typed, and remind her to stay quiet. It’d look just like she was giving you cash back.

You’d wear a disguise. Nothing crazy, of course. Simple, insignificant. Something to let you blend back into the static as you’d walk away. Preferably, with me.

And I’d be bagging it. That’s the most important thing, that’s what excites me, the bagging. Helping you rob the store, helping you out to your car like I’ve been trained. Maybe I’d come back in a little while afterwards, tears slipping down my ruddy cheeks as I shook Sir, Sir, there wasn’t anything more I could do. Or, maybe, I’d be your captive across state lines, a figure in the backseat as the sirens wailed behind you.

I think about that the most. You couldn’t rob the store if you wanted to get away with me, the police would be too quick on your trail, but it’d be even easier to steal me, their dedicated little first-job girl, than their profits.

Come at night. Haggard soccer moms are always the last ones out, bag of chicken in hand and a creased frown, but the parking lot stays almost entirely empty. Come in on a scooter. We have to go out after the scooters; nobody would bat an eye.

Buy something small, maybe, or, if you’d want to, go all out and get everything you’d need: trash bags, the little coiled ropes by the front, bleach, a knife. Make me watch you purchase it, make me bag up and organize my own weapons. Give me that first thrill of fear as you smile and the cashier can’t think of anything other than her own dinner.

Park out at the furthest spot, in the back corner. Our cameras only extend to the third row. The lot is so still in the dark, anyways. Most nights it’s just me and the lonely rattle of cage on pavement for hours on end. Because nobody wants to be out in this area without the sunlight and public to protect them. They fear the dark, the bogeyman snatcher. They fear exactly this. But I’m right behind you, wheeling down farther and farther than I’d ever wish to be following.

Don’t make it obvious with a van. I’d expect something a little more discrete from you, something a little smarter than that. I know how you’d toy with me.

And you’d tell me to set your things in the trunk. And you’d tell me to put them far back, the witch in the oven. And as I reached in deeper into the aged leather, you’d rise up from that scooter and loom, phantom shadow, right behind me. I’ll keep what happens next strictly in my imagination, a beastly little detail I’ll turn over later when it’s dark and quiet and just me again.

Why would you want me? I’m not the most beautiful thing to set upon, but I am young. I know how it is we must wreck through you, yeah? New-minted women are a fickle thing. Winking at the construction man as we pass on the street, horrified at the thought he’d peep in through the window later.

And maybe I am. Maybe I know what I wore that red lip for. Maybe I know you think a school girl in ballet flats dancing past you in traffic makes you lose control. Maybe I’m trying to bait the monster; maybe I really am as wholly twisted as you are. But I’ll never digress. That kind of confession I’ll always smile to myself as your torture, a little withholding against your zip-ties and pacing about the motel room.

Kill me, keep me, whatever. I’d never know much of a difference. Perhaps one tired night you’d be too loose with me, slip a little and forget to check how tight I’m tied to the bed. I’d finally break that one rope around my wrist I’d been working on all week, and kill you. Stab you, screaming for help, while you sleep.

I’d come back out into the world covered in your blood and ready for my 20/20 tell-all. It wouldn’t be just a legal murder, sweetie, I’d be a goddamn hero. Memoirs and meeting with celebrities and not even one more shift in Hell.

But I could never really know how it’d end. Maybe I die by your hand, or by accident, or you die by my hand, or in prison. Or maybe we sit there in wherever, holding each other captive until the end of time. Either way, in any way, I’m sure it’d be a real nightmare.

I close tomorrow night.

       

Green Everywhere!

The grey-and-green look after it rains. God, I could live in that. Not when it's sunny; the brightness is almost nauseating to me, like a mockery to my searching eyes. When it rains a little- not gushing down. A little rain to coax the brightness out of the leaves and keep the sky dark. That's how I like it.

It's a shame the sun's gotta be peeking through the veil like this. I'm playing some lo fi "Get High" mix on my other tab (with just the most charming thumbnail of a red-eyed Bart Simpson clutching a photoshopped bong). It's almost a nice little setup indeed.

Saturday I was almost hit by a car chasing another car, who stole a phone over a Craigslist deal. Today I considered announcing to people with a taste of dramatic flair that: "My life almost ended because two men valued a cellphone over other's lives." That's a bit much, even for me. Funny though, that is the truth. The boiled-down essence of the incident was just that. And it's not even in the news.

I think my moment of success and prideful smiles is just about over now. I got an article published on me- called "A Talented Writer" right in the title. Tweeted about it and got six likes. Someone told me I should've sent a better picture to the editor. They're not wrong.

I'll do that soon- take some nice photos. I can't email teachers and editors with Robbie Rotten as my profile picture forever. My senior one looks approximately good, but I wouldn't be able to say it was me. I want something artsy, of course. I want to be laying back on a beach in a flannel and a cigar between my teeth, the cunning near-vixen that plots for blood.

Well, that's not me either. And I haven't heard back on any of the things I've been practically choking on in wait- communications both gone dead and I feel like a nuisance if I keep emailing to "check in". But fuck it, I'll keep "checking in". I know they all must be busy but damn, I'm someone too.

And I'll keep writing. If I can just push myself across town on a Wednesday, I could be up on a stage and have maybe even twenty people applaud me. If I can get myself up an hour earlier every morning, I could get more down and out and ready to edit. And if I can make myself be more disciplined- throw everything in and be ready for a true heartbreak like losing the earth- I might actually go somewhere.

Because I don't think this is working.

There's These Big Globs of Dust Right Now

I seriously am amazed at just how much stuff eighteen years can accumulate across two rooms. I've hardly been alive long enough to have the autonomy of choosing my own things to have, and yet there's all these stacks of glitter pots and a big painted box that I don't have the memory of origin.

I'm still trying to sell off the old clothes and things. I've resolved to take it all in one go- whatever they won't take I'll simply dump off at a Goodwill. Do my best to not go in and browse the books; can't promise anything.

I think I'll spend my whole break cleaning out, working on a little play I already hate, and attacking the clustered mosquito bites on my ankles until they crack and bleed and probably scar a little. There's not much else to do. Work, yeah. Schoolwork, of-fucking-course. The movies look dull and I'm sure the only thing the people inviting me out have planned is to get into a lot of trouble.

I used to be like that. Relished in it- Florida girl swaying with a red cup out on a balmy night, stuck talking to an old loser-boy I got no interest in but too outta my mind to have really cared. That's been exhausted for me, though. So many incidents you can have like that before you just get consumed.

I got Leonard Cohen spinning out in my background. I like that old, croaky-mad voice. Gonna get me through cleaning, maybe get me through the rest of my list.

I have a lot to do.

Here's to More

Work is fine. School is okay. I have a car. I got into an accident last month, but it's all fine (Driving? Can't sleep at night knowing you have to put your life in your hands in the dark to get to school? You just gotta wait wait wait. Never risk getting from the parking lot to road if you have any question about that truck going 45 and getting bigger from up the horizon your way.).

I'm trying to make a routine of things. Between the work and resisting the urges to leave school early just because I can now, there's all these I dunno, I suppose "abscesses of time" if that makes any sense. I honestly wish there was no time in between anything anymore because I just have no idea what to do.

It was a little weird over winter break. I sat parked out by an empty volleyball field and asked myself Where should I go where should I go for about half an hour (I didn't really just admit that God). I had a lot of adjustments to make over winter break.

But now it's spring break and I know exactly what I'm going to do. Plan, check, routine, consistence. I've been chasing opportunities from there here-and-there less sporadically now that I've got a free period at school. And here's the kicker- something actually came out of it.

Actual email from an editor. The biggest feedback I've ever had up until this month is the standard, cut-copy rejection notice, never mind an entire email that said, all-caps, "YOU HAVE A GIFT!".

And I'm not exaggerating. Perhaps a bit egotistical, but this is the straight truth. He did say that. I wish I could take it and really feel that back, but I don't know. That's putting more stock into my pretentions than I'm comfortable with.

It'll seem like I'm adding more onto that- the pretentions- to say that this was not something I spent any more than an afternoon on. I flip between hints of pride and abject self-loathing each time I look at my name and my language and myself on there.

Not going to let myself think there'll be any more to it. Waiting to hear back on one other thing but I think I'll get through it best to say "it won't" even though I actually take whole showers just hoping about it.

We'll see.