Like all your other dolls, they do.

he smells of stale perfume and broken promises
she rustles with moonlight and forgotten dreams

he wakes up next to strangers and leaves with his love
she puts on her shoes and greets the night like morning

his smile tempts and keeps hearts racing
her eyes whisper truths and swallow tears

in the background she watched (and he noticed)
it was a sad day in Hell when even his smile couldn't tempt her
it was his words that rang in her head and broke her chest
(still, even his words won't make him stay)
he never filled the space in her sheets (but she took his heat anyway)

now he smells of crumpled letters and stained cheeks
now she rustles with his love and silent hopes

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart*

*i carry your heart with me
by e.e. cummings

Leave me in the cold with water damage, embedded in the rain.

There are one-hundred, sixty-nine books in my room.**

One-thousand, eight-hundred, twenty-eight books in my house.

One-thousand, four-hundred, forty-two books if you don't count the picture books; one-thousand, four-hundred, thirty-four if you don't include the library books; one-thousand, four-hundred, twenty-five not counting the ones that are borrowed; and one-thousand, four-hundred, twenty-three if you count out the ones that are stolen.

I'm going away to college soon. The idea of picking which books to bring and which books to leave behind is more terrifying to me than anything else.

Sometimes I think I'll miss them more than my friends or family.

Maybe that's the scariest idea of all.

P.S. Writer's block is a bitch. And so is counting books.
*173 as of 3/30
*178 as of 3/31

The streetlights hang above while we dance below.

the Wind has always been better than me.
Always knowing how to be all the things I can never get right.

He plays with my hair the way no one else does. He gives me the sweetest kisses in the world, so beautiful they make me almost want to cry.

the Wind kisses the way no one else can.

He can whistle, unlike me, even when I've always wished I could. the Wind sings me to sleep at night when there are too many nightmares and not enough moonlight or cold sheets.

He makes the trees speak, when they've always been so silent before.

the Wind's a tease.

He flips at my hair and the pages of my books, especially when I write about him, like he's embarrassed to be mentioned.

I like that the Wind is shy, like me. How even if he's cold, he's also gentle.

It makes me just the teeniest bit sad that no one will ever love him the way I do.

But maybe it's okay 
to keep the Wind 

all to myself.

Do not go lost into that mute sky.

She takes his hand, this innocent, simple creature and they walk into the dark night where barely any dare travel. It is cool; a light breeze slides under the hair at the back of his neck. It is not unpleasant. Not yet.

"Where are we going?" he wonders. But she just lifts a finger to her lips.
"Silence," is her only response.

He doesn't understand her. She never asked him to before now.

He is incandescent and full of gold. She is vague and full of charcoal. They are oppositions to one another. Yet he finds it in himself to trust her and she, him. That is why she has taken his hand. That is why he does not turn back. His fingers fit easily in the spaces of hers. Comfortable.

Deeper into the night they go. Where the black is ink and the shadows are light. She has told him little of what awaits them, only that she has to show him. He has wondered what is in her dark hours for so long. He can barely hold in his excitement.

But there is apprehension, also. She is so important, so beautiful to him. He worries at the horrors they may face. Horrors of her own mind's creation. She sees his worry and does not try to reassure him. She does smile at him, small and quiet. There is little she can honestly do.

And she does want honesty. Oh, she has never wanted it so in her life. She has been content, but he has stirred her. Mixed up her insides and taken some for himself. She can't bare to let him away for long, knowing he has those parts of her.

She wants him to understand the other parts he does not yet hold before he can take more.

Soon their walking has led to their destination. They have arrived and what he finds there, in this place of her own design, is frightening. More frightening than he can begin to comprehend. But she stays with him, holding his hand. She wants him to understand. She wants him to know.

He tries. It is not easy, but he is earnest.
Eventually, he does.

And when it is over and the nightmares have all been met, they depart. Back to the light, back to his day. He understands her now in ways he never has. They have grown together, grafted branches twisting and gnarled.  Just before they arrive at morning, she turns to him with words burning her tongue.

"Thank you for the stars," she whispers.

"You deserve them," he replies.

The little things are what make you awfully interesting.

The Moon has always been my kind of guy.
He's a bit far away. There's that expanse of space, where it's just a vacuum. It sucks away at everything, except for his light, and it makes the distance okay.

Then I remember, maybe the Moon isn't my kind of guy, since his light isn't his own.

He steals from the Sun, who was never really my type. He was always too bright and hot.
Then I took another look, and I couldn't get enough of him. My eyes are damaged now from staring in longing at his too-bright face. The Sun is even further away than the Moon, however, and that's a distance I've come to loathe.

It makes me self-conscious.

What if there's no way for us to cross that distance?
What if one day the Sun remembers that iron is what will kill him and that I'm made up of 0.0004% iron?
What if he realizes that for me to live, a star had to die?
What if that star was his old lover?
What if he loved that star more than he's ever loved me?

Maybe I've over-estimated my ability to cross space with my Sun.
Maybe he could never forgive me for being a star killer.
Maybe I haven't spent enough time at space camp.
Maybe the Earth is too pretty for me to compete with.
Maybe there's just no way someone so bright could love someone as dim as me.

And before I knew it, my Sun was gone, taking all my worries away with him.
And I was left with just the Moon.

I guess 0.0004% was just too much iron for him to handle.

That's enough social interaction for one day.

Let's get something straight before we do anything else:

I am going to disappoint you.

There are eight drafts on my blog and not one is good enough.
They're all too personal, too boring, too plain, too ridiculous. I can't post that, that's about my dad. I can't post this, because if I do, she might take it offensively and we're already fighting. But then again, who gives a shit, might as well, because I haven't gotten the chance to apologize yet and I know I'm going to keep screwing up so might as well add to the things I need to say sorry for. I won't post the list of things that piss me off, because it swears too much and I'm trying not to scare off everyone with how many times I might say "fuck" in one post.

So instead of trying to make myself post anything like that, I'm just going to write shit.

This is where the whole disappointment thing comes in. Because here's a confession: I'm not some lost, tortured soul. I'm not really poetic. I'm just some insomniac girl who loves fluffy things too much, laughs at butts, and tries to be full of good intentions. My life is full of my cat watching me brush my teeth, my dog farting and then wagging her tail until you pet her, and my family making fun of me because really, we're all a bunch of insensitive assholes.

Forgive me if I take after them.

My blood and my bones don't get along, which is probably due to the fact that my blood is intent on harm and my bones just want peace. My brain likes to plot and dream and doesn't make sense more often than not and my heart has been missing since I was twelve. It likes to pop back in every now and then, just to let me know what its plans are, but I can never convince it to come home.

I'm going away to college soon and I can't help but hope it at least follows me there.

The doctors like to speculate about what might be wrong with me, but they don't really know. I've given up on trying. I hate the way the hospital smells and all those white walls give me a headache. Plus my veins hate the doctors and needles hate me.

This whole thing is rambling and like I said, it's shit, but maybe I just need to write it somewhere.
Maybe someone can relate.

All I know is that my dog snoring makes me think of how he used to laugh at me for snoring and how he told me to go fuck myself yesterday. And how that hurts even worse, because last week she told me, "Fuck you."
Who can really blame them, though?

I think I take after my family more than I'd like to admit.

Do forgive me if I said fuck more than was comfortable. I wasn't joking when I warned that I had a swearing problem.

I guess I should write something worth-while now, but all I feel like doing is curling up in a towel on my bathroom floor and sleeping.

If you read this, hope you like being disappointed.

It's what I'm good at.

Bearing the holes in the soles of her shoes.

PART ONE
IT BEGINS
            , 1995, 9:16 A.M.

A baby is born, c-section because she had a fever and they were worried.
Her body is red and she is crying, covered in blood.
Her mother holds her, glad to finally have her child after the nine months and six hour labor.
She is glad she is not blue, like her brother.
She is glad she is there, in her arms.
The baby won't walk for at least another year.
The baby won't talk for at least six months after that.
She is a bundle of potential, finally in the world.
She exists.

PART TWO
BEFORE AND AFTER
March 3, 2013, 11:39 P.M.

A girl sits in the dark, hiding from the nightmares.
Her hair is dark and unruly, like her father's.
Her nose is small and round, like her mother's.
She looks at her bony wrists and her tiny hands, crippled and wrinkled just at seventeen.
The joints aching like an old woman's, and no one seems to notice.
She doesn't know where they came from.
Her days are slowly deteriorating, she can feel it.
Like the acid eating away at her bitter insides.
She's already escaped death a few times now.
She knows it's only a matter of time.
She waits.

PART THREE
IT COMES TOGETHER; IT FALLS APART
January 18, 2020, 7:34 A.M.

A body lies broken, cold and dead on the ground.
It is pale and silent, covered in blood.
The time of death is recorded after it is discovered her heart is quiet.
The accident is reported with diagrams indicating her collapsed lungs.
It is counted as a tragedy, the life ending so soon, at just 24.
The funeral is full of mourners, as it should be.
It is a closed casket, her body too mangled even for viewing in that false, plastic perfection.
Her mother cries. Her father doesn't say a word.
Her brother retreats further inside himself.
People move on, living their lives.
She has left behind only memories.
She ceases.