here's my name and brain to process.

this__incentive @ 2005-03-13T20:28:00

2005-03-14T04:29:50Z

i am overwhelmed by words. there are days that go by without the sound of human voices. i am living in silence, i am waiting to be swallowed whole. i sleep, ignore the phone, become too warm, wake up with chills. what is it that makes me want to put my head down and cry into my palms. what is it that makes me want to fold up my heart, bury myself in the ground, stop breathing. i will live in silence.

there is a point at which one becomes a ghost that slides in and out of doorways, of consciousness, of focus. selfishly, sometimes she loves him only to save herself. love will keep us alive. perhaps it is out of guilt, perhaps an enigma; love, she will never understand. still, love is the voice that calls her out of darkness, love is what pulls her out of the tomb she has buried herself in. despair is a depth unmeasured by man; love can only reach so far.

i miss him.
i miss him.
i miss him.

merry christmas.

2004-12-25T00:27:33Z

If

You want to do it right: you take the vicodin first, swallow the humiliation second. Show up at his house but don't look him in the eye because you already know what may happen if you do. Ignore the powdery sulfur taste on the back of your throat. Ignore the hospital wrist bands you still haven't removed, ignore that he says you're pretty, ignore your heart beats and your butterflies.

Stare at him across the room for two hours: are you talking? maybe, but you can't tell, your limbs are floating from the things in your blood and your mouth is moving in ways you didn't know how -

Then

When you say good-bye, swallow it down next to the embarrassment with a one-way hug; try to memorize the lines and creases in his back and the crumples his shirt makes against the nape of his neck. It's been so long since your body felt this close to another body. Don't hold on too long; Don't let your flesh shake too much against his; Don't ask him to stay but when you accidentally do try not to bite your fingers too hard; this is the only way you know how -

you watch him leave.

If

You want to do it right: you call him up and explain it logically, say it simply. You say: I love you, but this isn't working. You stumble out a few more words, clack out a few more syllables. You say: This is better, it's better this way, it makes sense for me and you this way

Try not to think of the vacations or the times when he wrapped you up all nice in your sheets and whispered You're my beautiful girl. Try not to think of the nights you spent sneaking out of your house and into his. Try not to think of the plans and the secrets. Try not to think that you've made a mistake, because darling: it's better this way. Try not to think of anything. You aren't anything.

Then

You don't say good-bye, because you don't know how -

you watch him leave.

(try not to be confused about which good-bye is tearing you apart more)

And

Hit the vicodin.
Hit the hydrocodone.
Hit the bottle, hit the bag.
Hit the wall like you used to, over over over, knuckles red like they used to

Feel your stomach twist and tie up in knots
Feel the hole in your heart divide itself up in three

Feel bitter and rough
Feel raw and lonely
Feel like you should be
(know you aren't numb anymore)

everything in it's right place? everything in it's right place
stomachs and hearts and heads and hands
easy living

Then again there's a good chance you won't.

2004-12-24T09:33:49Z

This much I'm certain of: it doesn't happen immediately. You'll finish and that will be that, until a moment will come, maybe in a month, maybe a year, maybe even several years. You'll be sick or feeling troubled or deeply in love or quietly uncertain or even content for the first time in your life. It won't matter. Out of the blue, beyond any cause you can trace, you'll suddenly realize things are not how you perceived them to be at all. For some reason, you will no longer be the person you believed you once were. You'll detect slow and subtle shifts going on all around you, more importantly shifts in you. Worse, you'll realize it's always been shifting, like a shimmer of sorts, a vast shimmer, only dark like a room. But you won't understand why or how. You'll have forgotten what granted you this awareness in the first place.
Old shelters- television, magazines, movies- won't protect you anymore. You might try scribbling in a journal, on a napkin, maybe even in the margins of books. That's when you'll discover you no longer trust the very walls you always took for granted. Even the hallways you've walked a hundred times will feel longer, much longer, and the shadows, any shadow at all, will suddenly seem deeper, much, much deeper.
You might try then, as I did, to find a sky so full of stars it will blind you again. Only no sky can blind you now. Even with all that iridescent magic up there, your eye will no longer linger on the light, it will no longer trace constellations. You'll care only about the darkness and you'll watch it for hours, for days, maybe even for years, trying in vain to believe you're some kind of indispensable, universe-appointed sentinel, as if just by looking you could actually keep it all at bay. It will get so bad you'll be afraid to look away.
Then no matter where you are, in a crowded restaurant or on some desolate street or even in the comforts of your own home, you'll watch yourself dismantle every assurance you ever lived by. You'll stand aside as a great complexity intrudes, tearing apart, piece by piece, all of your carefully conceived denials, whether deliberate or unconscious. And then for better or worse you'll turn, unable to resist, thought try to resist you still will, fighting with everything you've got not to face the thing you most dread, what is now, what will be, what has always come before, the creature you truly are, the creature we all are, buried in the nameless black of a name.
And then the nightmares will begin.

you just wont be around to see my face.

2004-12-23T09:53:24Z

i wrote you a letter. it sat on my desk for a long time, and today i cleared it away with the rest of the junk thats been piling up recently.

i would have sent it. i should have.

i believe this is the happiest dejection ive ever experienced. the mornings are slow, the nights brief and donning a retractable clasp. i could wear my heart in a locket, but id rather just let this all slip by, and hope that i remember it at this time, next year.

its kind of like that feeling you get when you finally realize that youre parents arent immortal. that sudden shock followed by a strange feeling that sort of, overwhelms you. the same feeling you get when you think about the entire concept of infiniti. its hard to grasp, but eventually you have to. you have to come to terms with it, because it will never be different. that feeling you get when you realize you will never have back what you had. the distance is too much. and there is lack of interest tipping one side of the scale. you will never be friends forever. you will probably never be friends. yeah, its kind of like that.

so, if this does end up being my last form of communication with you, please believe that things are good with me, and even when theyre not, they will be soon enough. and i will believe the same about you.

12/12/03

2004-12-13T07:36:40Z

What a mess you’ve made of your pretty head
I can’t believe they’ve left me here all alone with you again
And I’ve blurred the line between excuses and lies
Didn’t realize you could still make me want to cry
And it’s all a waste of my endless time
Memories I can’t get back
And conversations I’m trying to forget
This will be the last talk
This will be the last song
This will be the last apology
Hate myself for making you hate me
I hope to god you remember everything
Kept the pieces of things I wrote for you
It’s just not right and I just can’t love you
Can’t believe that you made it sound so true
Awful things that you think I did to you
Memories that you made up in your head
It’s just not right and I can’t go on like this
I’m ashamed of who I tried to be
...
Sick and tired of all these boring worked up feelings
I wish you’d let me be

their making a mess of me

2004-12-10T02:01:25Z

everything strange magnetizes and surfaces at the same time of every month/year. i am the negative and the strangeness is the positive. i am the lightbulb and the strangeness is the moth. i am velcro and the strangeness is...the other side of the velcro. you get the idea.

people spill their guts to me. they reveal everything that one can reveal just as easily to a wall, a cat, a mute. i am neutral. i am switzerland. they are the holden caulfields and i am their sunny the hooker. they are the jay gatsbys and i am their nick carraway.

i have found, lately, some really incredible people. either they have been in hiding for a while or i have. it doesnt matter.

december,
its been a long time coming.

dont trust the profits, their visions are fudged.

2004-12-09T05:22:38Z

i like that i can lock you out. because when i give you the option, and you dont take it up, that is what hurts the most. and i keep trying to tell you, indirectly (because i am completely disgustingly awkward and as much as i crave some kind of confrontation, i am far too cowardly to induce it) but i was never as eloquent as you, and i never will be. i always swan to those who are outstanding, radiant, because i am comfortable in someone elses shadow. despite your brilliance, even more obvious when in my presence, for a little while there i thought we had something (even if i was only a device to you.) now i am ashamed for ever being so foolish. now, this just acts as a reminder that such delusions [which, i am beginning to believe, is what our friendship always was in your eyes] need to cease.

i am finished with opening myself up to people. because i let people in so easily - i have never known anything much in the way of friendship, what i have known has always perished within my grasp because i am so desperate to preserve those rare moments of closeness. however, i hold on too tightly.

our conversation now folds as effortlessly as it once thrived. there is no point in me extending out my words to you anymore, because they fall short of what they are supposed to mean - not by lack of effort on my behalf, but what seems a forced inability, (or is it ignorance, perhaps?) to understand.

i cant blame you.

in many ways, i suppose i should thank you.

if we get lucky we'll be dead by dawn.

2004-12-07T02:47:28Z

i say, "why are you raking up the colorful leaves? they make your lawn pretty"
he says, "my mom says the leaves cover up all the fall flowers"
"well its not fall anymore, its winter now."

sean confessed to me earlier this week that he misses me and our nightly rituals of laying out underneath the stars and talking incessantly about unimportant happy things. "you used to spend every waking minute with me, youre fucking replacing me, emily, and i cant tell you how much it hurts"
it breaks my heart to hear him talk so openly about his emotions because without denial you hurt even more, its just something i can not describe but i am sure you understand. i wanted to grab him by his hands and tell him what he was doing was so wrong,
i wish i had that kind of courage.

i remember in june when we were sitting on my roof and i cried into my hands and told him that i hated myself for allowing myself to love someone so much that i felt heavier than gravity when it was all over. he hugged me and i cried into his neck because i didnt want him to see my face because i was so ashamed of admitting everything outloud. i cried and cried and shook to my core and when i stopped long enough to hear the world around me, i heard him sobbing into my shirt. he told me that even if i think no one feels the same way as i did at that moment, it was completely untrue because he loved abby as badly as i loved ------------. we cried and cried til 2am and fell asleep to making promises of finding strength together.

we laid in his massive pile of leaves and he told me about plum and appled colored flowers that are growing in the green belt behind his house and how he saw two tiny pale yellow butterflies and one orange and black medium sized one that morning.

i spent the entire day with that wonderful boy watching scenery change. hes my wonder fucking wall and saves me with his charming and delightful aura and and good graces. to be completely honest, i havent felt connected to everything in a long time and i am just falling back into place where happiness is and it feels good. the sun is fading and the cold air makes my lungs feel lighter. even when life is getting messer, and it leaves me with a feeling that i have just missed out on a memory that could very well save my life from crumbling and crashing into gravity. the people who are so warm and loving and good to my girl heart are finding life and loving it all at once and it makes me so fucking incredibly happy for them.
theyre changing and their discoveries are becoming bigger and bigger and beyond our own backyards that it scares me. i am praying to the sky that whatever it is they find in their lives, it leaves them happier and lighter and plenty full of love.

all my wishful thinking is coming undone at the words that spill from his lips sometimes. my color of the day is blue. i cant think of an adjective to put infront of blue to convey the sort of emotions i am feeling, so i am leaving it at that. earlier this week sean and i were laying underneath some trees in his backyard contrasting life to bare branches against a raspberry orange swirly sky. he tells me that its all in my mind and it very well could be true, he says that i dont live well enough into the moment. he says i should be happy until i have something to mourn about and even then i shouldnt dwell on things like heartbreak because we all will get a long nicely, eventually, if we let our hearts heal right. i believe him because he was laying closely to me and his shoulder touched mine and he spoke into my hair and made me feel warm even in the cold.

and then, while we were laying underneath trees it started to sprinkle in this way that made everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. the rain falling on the few leaves that were left sounded like water on paper and the colors were leaking together like a painting and everything felt blue.

take a walk on the wild side

2004-12-06T19:58:38Z

i keep having these dreams where i am exsisting in an alternative universe where the opening scene shows a handful of lovers locked behind bars and then we floated in this clear sky with clouds bluer than the ocean. we were tied with red scarves to black umbrellas, red because its the biggest sign for hope. and we drifted higher and higher than clouds. something like a supernova was going to happen, we could all feel it inside circulating like blood and our pulse had never been faster. we were never wearing clothing that had shapes and designs on them, we were full of color. blues, greens, reds, orange, plum. things become blurry, and it always feels like its going to rain the morning after but it never does. cold winds and foggy nights.

i always wake up from reoccuring dreams like that with my belly hurting. i have a sneaky feeling that i am happy and laughing so hard i just wake up with my sides hurting, but i never remember that part. maybe i am just wishing for things to end up that way. smiling and smiling and smiling with a nice song playing in the background like credits are rolling in a sappy never going to happen sort of film. daydreamer 80%. i could say 90%, but i think lately, ive been failing myself. everything is overflowing and too much as of lately.

this__incentive @ 2004-12-05T22:05:00

2004-12-06T06:07:19Z

somebody told me that you know youre happy and that your life is going pretty well when you see a shooting star and you cant think of anything to wish for; (his contentedness was always short-lived.) i think that the same goes for rainbows that are not in pieces or without or faded; you know that

id stop in the middle of canyon view, id stand in the middle of the busiest intersection, just to wonder at the sight of such a display of varying wavelengths. those red ones, theyre the shortest; and that vertigo color, yeah, it has the longest wavelength. and toward which end of it do we run if it spans the sky completely? you go one way and ill go another and well reconvine to share stories of our findings.

the breaths we are taking are getting slower, deeper. oh, this is why i live for distance. get me out of those confining halls that creep in ever closer, tearing at the tissue of my lungs, and put me on the wetted winter roads. in the mist that follows a downpour, put twelve miles ahead of me and tell me to run it, to run it all.

we read sylvia plath, over tea, and he reads aloud the lines he likes, comparing them to me and winter. it is always white air between us. words and words, like fallen leaves spilling from the trees outside, our mouths correlate. dialogue in different letters.

we dont always know where were going, but well get there

2004-12-04T20:54:24Z

its kind of like reaching for doors in the dark that you dont know are open or closed.
even though i reach for the same door every night i always seem to get it wrong.

dry heaving

2004-11-29T00:48:16Z

nothing is new. everything is a repeat copy copy copy of everything thats happened before.
this is the irony of sin- we learn from our mistakes and then fall to them easier than we did before.

black hole. fly paper. vacuum.

everything in my head empties out and buzzes with vacancy and i dont react i just get colder and harder so that next time, i will react even less. i carve myself into a stone statue for the times when i need it. when i want it.

stone has no pulse. no breath. no tear ducts.

eyes wide open and common sense slipping from me like red silk out of white hands. sin seduces me like the snake in the garden. he says "eat of me" and i do as he says without a word. eyes wide open. i eat his fruit and bear it later. time will always repeat itself and we will always be oblivious to its repititions.

clockwork. day in. day out.

sin's sweet sickening spell clouds my eyes and ties my hands behind my back. i ignore my Rescuer but He still comes. i crucify Him with my ignorance and He kisses the smoke out of my eyes. i refuse to look Him in the face but He unties the ropes that bind me. somehow, He is always a bigger Savior than i am a sinner.
1st peter 1: 3-5

this__incentive @ 2004-11-28T09:42:00

2004-11-28T17:42:47Z

and she tells herself its okay, everybody makes mistakes.

i know these trainwrecks happen all the time

2004-11-26T23:22:20Z

soft breaths,
in. up. out, down. clips of light, shutter snaps. before planes and folding chairs, green walls, i would lie on the bed, arms and legs out, reaching for the warmth. large infinite windows casting light squares on my body. i watch my chest rise and fall, in. up. out, down.

every day, it clenches my chest, grips me inside, and pushes out until im an empty shell. they get worse with the years. i used to have dreams that i was on the floor with an invisible weight on my chest, pushing down. they arent dreams anymore - theyre spontaneous bursts of enormous weight that crush me for a split second - and i have to remind myself that im still half here.
in. up. out, down,
soft breaths.

what if i cant make myself leave?

2004-11-24T01:07:34Z

entering the ranks of clinging and lust-devoured. sometimes, like tonight, doubt and instability erode at my mock of a restful heart. today reality creeps its way into my blinded mind and its for the best. in love words are too strong, too premature. in lust, infatuation blinks appropriately. i know myself well enough to know some of this infatuation births from a previously hollow and unoccupied heart, who sat waiting, bur-like, for a pant leg to tangle onto. anxiety explodes when my insides see the hills and mountains turned into vast great, brown plains. plain browns. scary when smiles only grow from one field. i can understand losing yourself to maintain the bliss. i wish i knew for certain, i wish i knew my heart was safe. hours and minutes spent wishing we were in the car, driving away from this city, and i could watch him bite his lip while humming to c.w.

when you go away heavens a distance not a place

2004-11-23T02:44:52Z

please...

come home.

dont come near me.

2004-11-23T01:29:05Z

its three thirty-four in the morning, and the color of my skin begins to melt into the blinking lights. you drink the atomsphere in shots and cough after your third hard swallow. my heart beats in rhythm with the rain beating down on the asphault, any faster and my chest may burst open. the world has turned into a blurry painting, the scene is drenched with fear and hatred. the sound of the rain reminds me of a war drum raising the spirits of many soldiers as they brace for the bloody end. as i turn around the lights no longer blink in the distance. my heart fluttering faster; my chest is tight and i hold it in. you are drunk and im not behind the wheel anymore, and like those soldiers painted in fear and hatred, i stand silent with the impossible thoughts of victory pounding in my head. and with one last hard swallow the slippery asphault grinds into every inch of my body. and the once bright lights that pulsated in my skin faded to a dim flicker as you stumbled out of the car unaware. always unaware.

its better not knowing sometimes.

and before it gets so cold
that the rain turns to snow
theres just a couple things
id like to know
like how could you do nothing
and say, i'm doing my best
how could you take almost everything
and then come back for the rest
how could you beg me to stay
reach out your hands and plead
and then pack up your eyes and run away
as soon as i agreed

sick

2004-11-20T17:07:20Z

the voice settles into a soothing tone: something a mind could sift into. the wallpaper dangles off the walls as if they are hairs on a head; they are split at the ends, and no one minds the deterioration. the voice starts up again and mellows out, slowly, and we patiently hear it become obscure. silence rings at its fiercest pitch (most awkwardly as it can) and our heads droop down so that our eyes are at level with our feet. none of us can speak now. it is silence we have, it is silence we know, and that is all we can presently bestow.

i draw a circle with my finger in the air.
this is what the spherical bubble down my throat looks like. it forces my jaws open, my tongue down, the slow urgency of sickness. something froths like sea foam around my mouth. little molecules cry.

the morning is regurgitating pellets of blood into bundled tissues, into sinks with toothpaste. i do not move now, theres an understated shame in the aftermath. choking is such an overreaction. loving you is a cynical exercise, wanting that vulnerability, that layeredness, to find it ending with a 4am wake up call. to find it ending.

this__incentive @ 2004-11-19T22:24:00

2004-11-20T06:36:58Z

things that made me smile today:
.sleeping for over 12 hours
.getting to school on time
.finishing my art project
.starting my new art project
.talking about college in the library second period
.mr burke third period
.mr benoit fourth period
.spice girls fourth period
.receiving an ovation for the journal i wrote in fifth period today
.poking jacks neck with pencils sixth period
.the drive to the bank with my dad after school
.eating subway with jack joey and danny
.playing 007 with the fore-mentioned
.watching my brother and dad assemble my ceiling fan
.hanging out with chelsea
.talking to bret
.the smell of patrick as he walked into goldmine
.self-checkout at albertsons
.my house with chelsea
.eating dinner with my mom and chelsea
.seeing ryans parents at dinner
.calling ryan at dinner to tell him that were sitting across from his parents
.spying on the hunky waiter at dinner
.eating the super good bread at dinner
.eating a frozen peach for dessert
.waking up at 4 in the morning and wondering when i even fell asleep
.seeing your number on my caller ID

theres no reassurance now.

2004-11-19T00:40:50Z

chairs will be dusty, in a vacant room, pouring their prescence into eachother, and we will lure ourselves in because of that pleasureable scent that we know is poison, like what we have, like what we know. the squealing and screeching door will be open wide, as we will be on our tippy-toes dancing in like drunken fools: unaware of the danger, with misleading sight, and such weary navigation. there is no way we will soil our clothes with dust. we will take our hands and dirty them instead, sit down for frail small talk, wipe the grime off our hands and onto eachother, seeing as we sacrifice vital parts to inanimate objects.

we are too fatigued to endure this now, so we let time do the deeds.

muddy terrains, handwritten words, and irritability. ive taken habit in falling asleep at 1 in the morning, and alas, been craving the major elements that got me into this mess altogether.

im fond of illusions, but mostly, i just miss my best friend.

oh yeah.
thanks to whoever burglarized my car last night. i really appreciate it. asshole.

communication is a problem. everything sounds like static.

2004-11-18T00:50:21Z

"Oh how foolish, how pathetic. She is laughing on the way back, and he. He saying: I think we both found something we didn't expect to find, and she thinking: yes, you my vulnerable flesh, and me your tearing rending young strange idealism which I would tender and nourish to keep from all the pretty sexy girls that will wear your sharpness to a dull, flat, bored edge".
- The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

his hands shake violently, orange juice falls in droplets to the table and i just keep smiling and clearing my throat; stumble around the kitchen opening drawers. i ask questions with long complicated answers so that i can listen to him speak into the receiver and laugh in all of the necessary places.

you make no sense at all.

i woke up today and the sky was murky dishwater. unclean and vague. i drove to school staring at signs just to force some color to nestle itself into my eyelids.
it was the perfect day to talk in a quiet room, but now my head and my body are sulking and screaming and splitting apart-
alone in a quiet room, where sunlight spills through the bent blinds ruining darkness.
i stay silent.
i enjoyed today even though everyone didnt feel right or nice.

but you want to fuck whoever you want

2004-11-12T23:48:39Z

i feed on those surprises
those fucking midnight visits
the after your workshifts the
randomized i-need-to-see-yous,
like you ate those
strawberry puffs outside
the 711 the nice black man
nodded his head
acknowledged
everyone acknowledged us
then, everyone, you

a sudden doorbell chime
keeps me up through
every hour and i never
hear it i never hear it
i never hear it

i never can convince myself that
i got the grade, made the
cut, touched the very top of
the wall and its dusty from
rare occaision but my hands
they're clean and

i cant explain
i cant explain myself
or why i needed to hurt me
with the subject line up there
or why i need to lie to myself
with things you say you dont mean

but you dont say you dont mean them,
anymore. they just cancel out, now:
wednesday isnt right because
thursday is what it really is but
what if wednesday and thursday
are working together in secret?
trenchcoats, sunglasses, bruised fruit
and a couple of empty PBRs, wanted
to trick me
and i bet they caught me,
maybe on film, my nightmare
pants around ankles
my surprised eyebrows
gilted, guilted
(i had worn makeup to
be enough)

i want to cancel myself out
i dont want to feel for you in the dark
when you like to sleep alone

now shes feeling more alone, than she ever has before.

2004-11-12T04:10:55Z

up the stairs to her apartment
she is balled up on the couch
her mom and dad went down to Charlotte
theyre not home to find us out
and we drive

even heroes have the right to bleed

2004-11-11T20:09:33Z

the only thing i could feel were the sound waves, cutting through my skin to vibrations deep in my chest. the smoke was curling up lazily through the cracks in the floor through the crowd while lights sparked, blinding & crisp & clean. then the key changed along with the shifting of weight from foot to foot in an arabasque on the floor. what should have been repetitive transformed into something charming and genuine. the center spotlight wiped everything away, leaving calm and serene eyes that have never known anything other than intimacy. he handed away bits of himself for posterity while orange blended into blues and greens. the silence wasnt more awkward than endearing: are you all right? these are the important things.
sometimes i get this feeling in the back of my throat when its all in a bad way, a hitch in breathing accompanied by a skipped beat, no rests or measure bars as everything careens to some inevitable conclusion. a breathtaking crescendo leaving nothing but a gloriously defiant cacophony defying intricate architecture, wiping out barriers, molecules, obstacles into this pure sweetness mixed with this moistness on cheeks. seven minutes of brilliant non-existance.
i saw this girl with long red hair who was crying. maybe i was, too. when youre in something really beautiful, its never really black and white. we learned these emotions in preschool as we adapted ourselves to expressions and nuances to an abstraction - or something like it. two sides of a coin, two edges of a sword tinged with the bittersweet. there arent any real stories about photobooths or the skritching of a cigarette against cold pavement to mingle with glass hearts. will tomorrow be enough?
an old phoenix was reborn, at first unrecognized over the dull roar, until were hoarsely delirious. he came back after the last goodbye for another arrangement of familiar notes that have been etched and worn in like an old leather glove. the melody draped comfortably over his shoulders until the last strain fades gently like a mirage.

promise.

what i am to you, is not real.

2004-11-11T05:43:03Z

sometimes, youll turn on the sink, the rubber band around your wrist gets wet.
thats how they break, you know?
the elasticity gets sour; it rips apart the next time you pull.

i slept too long so i brought leftovers up to my room.
i fumbled around in the dark for the lamp switch, found it, nothing.

ive been reduced to eating in the dark.