The End

I am nothing more than a mirror pressed against the pulse of my universe. I write what the hours whisper to me and what I have copied out of a silent face. I plagiarize the hunkered down eyebrows of my neighbor and the whistle of the train. Everything I produce is recycled from the dumpster filled with all the moments worthless to our minds but buried in our souls. I don't deserve credit for what has happened here.

For the past 8 months, I have come here once a day (usually) to explore the endangered emotions we hide in the forest of our eyes. Every night, I cut back the foliage and bare the echoes of the day. People sing my praises and decorate my self-esteem with emoticons and abbreviations, but they can't always grasp the demons roaring inside me. They try to cut them loose or stab them tight, but the only kryptonite my worst moments can find is a few seconds spent typing on a blank template and a few more spent copying the link to everyone I know.

This blog has seen my heartbreak, my triumph, my anguish, my solitude, my boredom, my regret, and primarily the suppression of all of the above. I can cower behind an imposing vocabulary to sound like I know what I mean, but I gaze at you the next morning to find my antithesis. My metaphors float around like plastic bags over a magnetic ocean, dragging into themselves and towering at the edge of delirium. My thoughts seem alien when articulated, as if defined by an elderly scholar and not the magazine.

Today, I say goodbye to pretending that I can put two fingers to my neck and feel vibrations that spell out through my foggy spirit. I bid the hopes of a beaten-down, facade-ridden writer farewell with the sun. I cross myself out to reject myself from the solution set, because I no longer fit into the original equation: I have morphed into an extraneous root. Hopefully, those roots can grow upward until they break into a green melody until the light from above. Hopefully, this stalk will sprout blooms and they will ripen with heat. Hopefully, those drying petals will fall away cleanly, and die without ripping in half.

I will miss this blog like a part of my body, and I will lose my way without my literary compass of the night. And, through my tears, I say to you, with all my heart: Good night.

Loop

So I didn't go hiking. The depths of the universe seemed just a smidgeon too immense today, and I was absolutely fine with forgoing the saturated smears of a landscape seen from far away in favor of the pastel blue of the sky and freshly painted yellow leaves fallen on the path. Me, K2, and M wandered around the edge of the lake in search of old beginnings and a few profile pictures. We stopped at every new angle, trying to force the beauty of a face into a tiny metal box with the tap of a screen. The glamour spilled out into more than a hundred photographs, at least fifty of which were photobombed and one of which was taken by a befuddled English teacher on top of a small hill.

About a third of the way around, they spied a log extending into the mirrored water that had shed its blue for the bright hills and clouds it could imitate instead. "Come on!" urged M, scrambling down a sandy slope. "Oh, come on, Chloe, I can do it with a medical boot!" boasted K2. Her descent was more of a clambering one. Perching at the edge of apprehension, I observed the entire ordeal via my lens. It seemed much more distant and much less immediately tempting that way. Fortunately for me, I had a legitimate excuse when an unpopular global teacher cornered us seconds later with a report of dangerous activity at the shore.

When we reached the playground at the other end of the walk, after trekking full circle through the thin forest, we leaped across monkey bars and hanging rings and landed on a wooden ledge, comparing shots, surrounded by a cluster of Snicker-bar-types; that is, we were surrounded by those of my friends who I don't get to see enough but can't help immersing myself in once I do. That would be C2, S, E, I, the whole lot. I gave me a wraparound vacuum hug as I narrowed the choices down to a final three. It was well-needed (thanks I!), because though I had spent the day full to the brim with friendship, I had tripped in a few spots over the easygoing proposition of true friendship as I lost the meaning of inside jokes, or dropped out of the conversations about this year's homeroom. Oh well. I guess hunting down a profile picture would make anyone a little anxious.

Love you all.

In Spirit

Once a year, the restless that have scratched at the barren walls of the fourth floor for months without stopping to breathe rush upstate and bask in the splendor of nature under a usually somewhat sunny sky. Picnic blankets litter the ground and suffocate the grass, but meanwhile kids are skipping around the lake, slapping a rubber ball with their foot as hard as possible, and climbing to the top of the mountain for a spectacular view. This is our Spirit Day. We bring lunch, we bring a camera, we bring a dollar for the ice cream, and not much else. We leave the weight of the physics exam behind between the concrete monsters of the city.

This year I'll be hiking that road with R and K3, intent upon reaching that blissful everything at the top. Colors will swirl beneath me like the work of a drug, toxic and mellifluous, beckoning me into their wake. If I can see the whole world, I can make sense of it and catalog it, stick it deep in a drawer and forget until reorganization. I can focus on the brightness in front of me. I can focus on the orb of promise held between the teeth of the god of the sun.

No Trump Queen

Tonight I lost at the card game I learned when I was only a few years above swaddling level and still tended to suck on bottle tops too long and color outside of the lines. They taught me out of our local Starbucks over a Venti Macchiato and a copy of the Times, and we used the same old deck with the missing corners from a million and one shuffles too many. Stuck on a cycle of learning, losing, and forgetting, it often fled to the outer regions of my mind in those Kindergarten years, along with long division and the state capitals. Now, once again, I'm on my downward streak. It's round 8 and my score is 29 out of a possible 126. Great Grandma Janet would be ashamed.

After a misunderstanding about a key and a long drive north, we ransacked her old apartment, scavenging for good value with our appraisal sheet and eye for color. We were supposed to mark everything we wanted off a long list printed in black and white, covered in dollar signs and numerals. Janet had been reduced to investments and dividends in a matter of months. As the others toured each familiar room like a haunted gallery, I opened every cabinet and peered inside, hoping to find a glimpse of the old woman who had left her breath on everything there. I found: a beautiful watch with a missing silver panel, ticking away with purpose, and two trophies. One was from Great Grandpa George, a certificate of his entry in an encyclopedia. The second was a small plastic sculpture of a hand holding a royal flush. "No Trump Queen - Janet." I asked if I could keep them, because they weren't on the sheet. So I took them home in a box and left them in the box and put the box under my bed until my furniture was delivered in a few days. I put her magic mastermind under the bed, and I put her skill with a deck under the bed, and as of Round 8 tonight, I lost everything there is to lose between a two of clubs and the coveted spade ace.

The Tap On The Head

My paternal grandmother has a long history of shakily snatching bits of food across the table and hoarding them on the edge of her plate like jewels, and then forgetting to put the cloth napkin on the table before she wheels away. But we love her, and she's just so sweet, and she always pays, so we end up dining together several times a month. Another habit: She finds the most delectable things to be the ones that have experienced the least exposure to sunshine and happiness, internal organs piled high in Italian pottery. We've seen it all come out from behind the black and white kitchen curtain, from oozing tripe dotted with dainty mushrooms to steaming elk smothered in a heavy sauce the color of the bottoms of my feet. Not tonight. Not tonight. It was not going to happen tonight without a fight.

The date itself posed some significant challenges to our shtick: It was a Monday, a holiday, and fifteen minutes before departure, so almost every reservation had been shuttered away and tending to the fire for days. We scrolled through dozens of Yelp entries, flipped past hundreds of Zagat blurbs, and skimmed the sleek website of the local slice pizzeria my grandma had suggested. (It had taken me long enough to get my mascara to work that I shot my mom a simmering warning shake of my head.) Eventually, we unearthed a local pasta treasure a couple seconds away, so we stuffed our heads inside our car, and held our noses in combat with the paint odor until we reached the door.

Unfortunately, my grandmother got stuck on the end of the conversation with nothing but her tap water and a dirty bowl of marinara sauce for company. I blissfully reconnected with my cousin, discussing everything from crazy science teachers to puppy photography to her recent life-threatening accident that removed her sense of smell, until I felt a small tap on my shoulder, near the base of my aching neck. I turned to Grandma, who had donned all black with a glowing garnet pendant as an accent piece and still looked colorful. She clutched my elbow intently and through her blinking eyes in the dim light, she smiled at me. It was then that I remembered just why we live so close to her, visit her all the time, never miss a birthday or holiday without dropping an oddly timed line. "Hi, Grandma," I smiled past the spaghetti. And I missed Great Grandma with what space was left in my stomach, and with all of my soul.

Captured

Photo walk. We walked around every undiscovered corner of our little neighborhood until the fading Hebrew awnings blended into one another and the graffiti on the walls collapsed into a heap of paint at our feet, and we imprisoned every moment into our phones, refusing to let them out of our retinas. In number 18, a woman boards a bicycle, donning her printed windbreaker with a sigh. In number 24, a man and his son fall off their skateboards, breaking their fall with one arm and clutching their yarmolkes with the other. In number 27, my own father pierces the lens, surrounded by a spectrum of spray paint over a dirty garage door a few blocks over. These are the pieces of our world.

And he, my own father, agreed to trek across the railroad tracks and through the superstore in search of the fragmented reality I haven't found in my bed watching Netflix. He agreed to sift through my inspiration, even in the face of insanity and, let's admit it, 10% colorblindness to his 4. He even managed to keep our dialogue blank and bubbly, like the expensive champagne brands that make everyone seem to laugh. We only argued once, about the appropriate distance to scurry into a six-lane avenue in search of a late bus. And twice, about the photograph emblazoned with a single word printed onto a sheet of old card stock: WOW! (That was the one I liked, and he found too ordinary. Strange. Usually I'm the one who can't see I've already squeezed enough magic out of my wizardly father to paint my name across the side of a building, in memorial of a mystical day.)

Sky With Diamonds

J's hair is an array of camouflage against the urban extravagance, the electricity of autumn bustle; specifically, the tips of her ebony hair went from black to white to blue and ended up every color of the mirror reflected in the shadows of her clothes. The contours of her black sweatshirt, black tights, combat boots look somehow straighter, as though she has sacrificed the youth of costume jewelry with its round edges in favor of a princess cut diamond, chopped away to remove the princess part. She is every bit the modern, artsy city girl. (In the car, she began to sing in Japanese to the skids of drunk drivers on every side of the intersection.)

She should be sunken! Recently, J condemned herself to my old school until college, refusing to accept the cards dealt to her as a brilliant young woman, refusing to take a test that threatened her safety net. After all, if she got into a specialized school, she is convinced she'd crack in a few seconds. If she didn't get in, it would only take one. She should be sunken! The layers of soft feathers cushioning her from her fear are as warm and deceiving as ever, even as the temperature melts into freezing. As Marianne Williamson once said, "Our greatest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure." There's something trapped inside my best friend, perhaps in a strangled binary, that is clawing at her uvula and gasping for light. There's something inside her that could destroy or save the world with a single chord of her electric guitar, with a single sweep of her charcoal pencil, with a single flip of her feet up and away over her head. She should be sunken! Because if she was sunken, she'd be driven to release those perfect demons and change everything.

Southern Oil

Slice a verdantly green tomato into slices just thick enough to keep the sopping juice off the scarred white of the cutting board. Douse them in flour from a Ziploc bag in an empty drawer, egg wash the color of an Easter bunny, and bread crumbs crunchy like the dust of traditional bones. Toss them in fragrant deli oil and watch the pops of fire escape the wok like birds whamming into glass before bouncing back into their stride. Salt; pepper; devour.

These morsels of contradictions are familiar to Southern tongues accustomed to warmth, butter, and colorblindness on the table, but strangers to city children with cravings for tartare and filet mignon and experimental casarece served thrice-priced. We know only the front, the show, the facade of extravagance over a blank reality. What else could be lost along with an accent?

My father fried them up and laid them on a beautifully pretentious platter. I had five, the brown of dirt but the taste of the earth swallowing my mouth into a cultural void. So sure, I couldn't stand the endless sun, the political foolishness, the religious expectations. I can, however, certainly stand the content reality of those who don't know what they are missing; blessed are the clueless.

Commuters

There is, for every city commuter aboard an exhausted mean of public transport coated in urine and coffee, a person who you've seen every day for as long as you can remember, eavesdropped on with dim ears as they chattered away to their actual buddies while you wish you had something better to waste time at. You could spout out steam about their favorite colors, favorite shirts, romantic lives, best friends, opinions on the mayor... anything, really, is encapsulated or imposed open our fragrant glimpses of their wafting souls. My such fellow is a young boy at my school: purple, his plaid button-down, not applicable, none yet, and independent. Sometimes, I want to fling myself across the car and latch onto his shoulders, guide him through the station and out onto the streets, through exams and intricate essays, confusing maps and catastrophic pop quizzes; I want to make sure he doesn't end up looking at those oblique tracks as an escape for the stress.

I spotted him this afternoon, inadvertently dozing on the graffiti-smothered window a few seconds before our stop. Staring at his forehead, I mouthed fiercely, "Wake up kid, it's gonna be okay. I know those days when you're like a working ant and your brain shrinks and shrinks as your sleeping time shrivels up in the early sun, but it gets better. Stay awake. Stay awake." Suddenly, he popped forward and shook his head out, as if trying to jostle my words out of his head in defiance. But he woke up, and went home.

Creamed

Award-winning caramel ice cream studded with bits of butter cookie that melt in your mouth like ice in hot chamomile tea is the perfect thing to lift your spirits after one of those days when the tears keep dripping from between your lashes but you don't know why or what color of clear they are. (Gold for the heroic tears between skintight suits posing around bulging muscles? Black for the despair-ridden tears of people who've had their souls scooped out, like that ice cream, and devoured by the void? Pink for the pathetic tears of a ditz who can't take the strains that come with applying exactly three coats of eyeliner every morning?) The tears from the sweet cold dessert, dramatic though it may sound, were perfectly colorless, joyful and true.

The suspended test scores dangling just a few finger-stretches out of reach, the high notes of a sea shanty I'm supposed to lead with pounding gusto, and the empty space that dances around me as I move through my space devoid of communication all gushed out of me and I was filled with a profound contentment. Suddenly, it was pointless to drown in anxiety when falling in was only a choice.

Footprints

There were thunder gray taps of soot lining the bathtub like a winter coat, and there were whispery white taps of dust dotting the third floor like snowflakes. It's clear the filthiest versions of my kitten morsels, formerly colored burnt orange and ivory but now a deafening charcoal shade, have invades the pristinely renovated house and laid siege to the cleanliness as much brute/cute force as they can muster. We thought it was coming from a leaky dye on an old futon cover, we thought in was coming from the inside of the floor where inconveniences go to die, and then we thought it was a crevice behind the basement furnace as dirty as J3's jokes. Now, we aren't sure.

There's so much left to learn about this cavernous space, hollow in the absence of bookshelves and our electric piano. There are so many tiny nooks and secrets to wedge between. If we are lucky, before long every hardwood masterpiece, mirrored closet and painted mistake with be snuggled under a coat of fresh footprints, and we'll get sooty and dusty and deafening just to feel the sure exhilaration of using the brand new showerhead.

Mismatch

The pajama drawer of everyone's mirrored bureau, antique wooden chest, and/or plastic Ikea dressër is a hodgepodge of various baggy shirts, college sweatpants, and flannel mistakes. It's the spot where left socks go to hide, and it houses all of the lost thoughts that felt claustrophobic inside your cluttered head. I know I'm not alone in that exasperated feeling that sweeps my body of any remaining stamina when I fling it open only to find that the 1992 tee is moth-eaten and the fleece polka-pants are covered in the omnipresent orange cat fluff. After fifteen tedious hours of frantic character development, exhaustive readings on an Indian emperor no one with a life has time to analyze, and quick meals between musky subway rides along a rickety track, the least karma could do is present me with something halfway decent.

The nightmares of ambiguity always escape from the pajama drawer and haunt with sleep with ALMOST-softs and MAYBE-nonflammables, so close to the pinnacle of comfortwear and yet so far from the catalog images reserved for rich, suburban wives who know how to mix a mimosa. Sometimes I like to fade into the haze, and release the tense obsession with always looking right. And then again, I like to sleep. Good night, everyone. Better blog tomorrow.

Engrained

Why does my devilishly hilarious science teacher, the one who offers Swedish fish on a whim but denies that the orange arrow on the board is in fact orange, have to extend his insanity over the first tests on our permanent high school transcripts? I had to ask him four times before I understood that yes, everything in the textbook was testable even if we didn't go over it in class, and yes, that included the mind-numblingly exhaustive description of the safety precautions taken by most modern skydivers, and yes, each question was worth a minimum of seven points, no partial or extra credit. His smile was vicious and bloodthirsty.

It's enough that the morals and déjà vu have pilfered all the common sense I had left so that I'm always left feeling a bit confused. Now I have to remember the notes I never even took in the first place? It doesn't seem possible that some self-respecting teacher with checked button-downs and glasses - glasses! - would squeeze my dry brain for sustenance while I lie dead from anxiety. It all comes down to the number out of 100, the potential we present for physics in general... Apparently if anyone gets 100 the test was too easy. I guess that would make the end goal for this course chasing our tails until we come just high enough to fall the farthest.

Wiped Clean

Usually, when my computer's battery has trickled to a drought and the screen goes a bright black what hurts your eyes, I plug it into a crusted-over, three prong socket and annihilate the power button with my thumb until the whirring picks up and everything is back, as if revealed form behind a curtain. It doesn't matter. But today, something was missing: My day was completely devoid of pain, sorrow, panic, bright blackness like the dead screen. A nagging feeling enveloped me, and I knew I should just charge the stupid thing, this little silver box that now holds my legacy at school, but there were only a few crackers left on the plate, and they looked lonely against the porcelain. (Then again, to me, crackers always look lonely.) Anyway, as soon as the omnipresent buzz of the motor dimmed and the screen faded away, the familiar catch in my chest and rushing in my head activated. I threw my hands onto the bed, tucked my chin into the folds of my tee, and panted fervently.

The power button seemed colder than usual, and then it took longer than usual to load the start screen. No rainbow wheel, no sliding blue bar along the top of the hinge; just an apple perching in the center of a gray mass. To my horror, after five minutes of processing, the desktop popped up through the center of the virtual nothingness, blank and iconless. The essay I'd worked tirelessly on all day had run away from home. Life as always, then; devastation when I'm left all alone in my pajamas on a Saturday, absolutely devoid.

The Routine

It's always the same color soap in the bathroom when I wash my hands exactly five minutes before our reservation at the closest purveyor of the fancified internal organs that my grandmother craves each day. Then it's always the same confusion about how to get there: The silver car, inherited from Grandma and covered in craters? In the shop. The old, blue padded wheelchair that may or may not have brake broken like bones? In the back. And finally, as always, we decide to escort an 79 year old woman with an entire entourage of Macy's blouses and mid-price crystal and gem necklaces through the city streets on a snazzily red motorized scooter seat.

We arrive at the restaurant and there is tremendous brouhaha over where is the scooter going? Does it fit at the table? Can we park it outside? Where's the key? And I've memorized every answer, encrypted it onto my muscle memory. We slide into old chairs and pore over the same menu that's graced the paper-covered table for at least five years. Me: Beet salad. Smoked gouda macaroni and cheese. Chocolate tart. After the menus go away, the walls come down; pleasantries cower in fear as the traditional politics and awkwardness flood the space. We put up levees and arms in front of our face, but everyone ends up getting yet. But then. like always, we climb back around and into that startling scarlet seat and left the scene of the crime. I love her.

Silver Chain

I have a charm bracelet adorned with figurines of grandeur, one for each production I've partaken in since I discovered that when I step onto a stage, something inside me sparks hot and I melt into my "atman" or essential self. (Thanks for the vocabulary, Mr. P.) There's a dainty silver snowflake for the fifth grade play - I was overwhelmed with the small song I zipped through as "Snow Angel," the coveted number of every blonde, skinny-jean-wearing girl I had become accustomed to, and overtaken for once. There's a cupcake for the failed production I jumped into for a week in North Carolina as we rummaged through my grandmother's disintegrating family portraits and forgotten birthday gifts - I can still recall the way the thrift store's gray cloak felt on my tiny shoulders as I swept through the Southern dust and pretended to live on the city streets. Imagine that.

Currently, the charm bracelet is in a small tupperware with the two newest charms jangling beside it. The box is tucked behind a ruler and an oilcloth in a hodgepodge closet half an hour from here, muffled by the folds of my lost winter jacket, thrown over the whole mess. At some point, my mother will pry apart two links in the chain and slip the memories on. That's when they will cease to be the yesterday and become the once upon a time. Once upon a time, this life will read, there breathed a girl named Chloe. And eventually, she learned how to live.

Eye Baggage

The recommended amount of sleep for adolescents is between ten and eleven hours. Ha. Ha. I'm lucky to nab seven from the clock, hoarding its seconds away in the past like a toddler's old Halloween candy that tastes like rubber. Each morning, a blaring iPiano trill jostles me out of blissful ignorance. I typically set the five minute timer two or three times before hauling my bones from beneath the duvet and stumbling into some jeans and a t-shirt. Still wilting, I wade into the bathroom and attack my hair until it temporarily sits still, and then I produce a purple tube of mascara, a concealer stick, and some waxy lip balm from a box; once my eyelashes are properly extended, teeth brushed, and chapped lips battled to the death, it comes time to cover up the purple circles under my eyes with infinite layers of tan cream until they fade into the already somewhat mystical paleness of my skin.

Haplessly I glide through school, yawning periodically and yearning for the flannel sheets of new home. Occasionally I subtly cover my eyes with my hand to protect the purple from escaping and earning a reputation. And yes, I've heard many a tale of a three a.m. English paper and an all-night search for the perfect image of Haydn, but never noticed anyone else disguising their deficit. In fact, I haven't noticed anyone else's exhaustion at all. Maybe it's all in my head. Or maybe it's all in my dreams.

Devour

On Tuesday nights, when my mother has strapped on dancing shoes and waltzed sweepingly onto a rough-and-tumble gymnasium floor for our favorite weekly spectacle, my father (usually) buys two fillets of summer flounder dusted in breadcrumbs and herbs, a greenly envious zucchini or two and a their savory friends, and on occasion an award-winning brownie spotted with nuts or caramel to tantalize throughout the evening. Today, however, he arrived home with nothing but a heavy bag weighted with folders and files and old newspapers with coffee stains, and quickly prepped a tray of conglomerate cheese, vegetables, and penne. It filled four medium bowls and could have overflowed into a fifth if there hadn't been a bedtime to cut it off.

As I munched my way through the chunks of cauliflower, my health teacher's blonded voice wafted back to me: "At the end of the day, just see if our power nap today helped you feel more rested or not." We were guided through a love meditation focusing on water washing away the tension in our muscles. I was unable to drift into oblivion, eyes pried open by the terror at my audition tomorrow that ventures one whole step too high. But suddenly, my eyelids began to sag like old plastic bags in the hands of an old street woman and all of the pain rushed out of me at once. And they say that my blog is food for thought. Think you've got it backwards there, pal.

Hunger

Since moving into our oversize house that hangs on our shoulders and bags at the seams, our pearly white cat, as pristine as snow before it hits the ground, hit the ground. The ground happened to be suffocated with layers of primordial dust and mysterious blue dye surrounding the tray that holds the potent food I present to him each day. His spirit brother from a camping trip to the attic, our old tom too wide to fit under the dresser without leaving a tail floundering near the floor, remained a lightly toasted golden brown, ooey and gooey and deliciously warm, with one patch of white on his neck. I think our tom is worried about the the little one; he has been disguised as yet another layer of this house, thrown over the original hardwood and forgotten.

They wait at the landing for me as I parade up the stairs bearing ceramic bowls from a discount superstore and metal spoons that melt in my hand, and then they wait at the threshold as I transfer the brown goo from the tin to their mouths. Sharp fangs have nothing to pierce, so they scrape the edge of the bowl, echoing a shriek into my inner ear. As they swallow, they have no reason to think that it is late, for they have slept all day, but I leave the tray and the dye and the cats behind, and I fade into the house, drifting away as though scraped off until translucent. My eyes close and my ears banish the meowing screams to reality as I escape.

A Place In The Choir

"All God's critters got a place in the choir, some sing lower, some sing higher, some sing out loud on the telephone wire, and some just clap their hands, or paws, or anything they got now." - Bill Staines

In Ancient Greece, even great philosophers, men of science, antique nerds with clay tablets instead of smart tablets, thought that music could cure disease. I happen to agree with them. A melody has the illiterate ability to penetrate every wall, break down every cancelled childhood heartache, repair the wounds from a stray alcoholic father or imprisoned mother, and jostle the dregs of inspiration back to the surface. Looking around today, as a few miscellaneous people braved the Sunday blues to sing and eat cookies in our newly-painted living room, I saw the pain drain from each's face in a different medium: years of loneliness spilled onto the floor and evaporated into the cacophonous air, the blood from the stabs of memory shards dripped off skin and disappeared, and our little family's anxiety about the small guest list dissolved at the first note of "Fire and Rain."

The cats chimed in for their part, wailing from the upper floors when we hit a trill or triplet, and bumbling through the forest of unfamiliar feet resting on the rug. The fatter one buried his face in the coffee cake and earned an exile by the window until the last grandparent closed the front door, joyfully an hour and a half behind schedule, to everyone's thrill. But as the people and the voices flowed through the house, the cats lost no pain. The only ones who get to shed their tension are the convoluted humans, the ones who know enough to be completely and totally unaware that anything has changed.

Dreamstate

Some aspirations become pickled with age and end up tasting like someone's grandmother's white socks from the 1980s that have turned a peculiar orange color. So we tuck them away in forgotten drawers that shut into the inner folds of a void, and then we instead buy stockings for our corporate dinner parties that no one wanted to go to. Some aspirations remain fresh and crisp in our refrigerator, but braces or a retainer tell us we can't devour them, much as we crave the sense of purpose they offered up. There is the rare aspiration, often the runt of the litter, that presents itself so many times at the end of the hall taunting us that we have no choice but to play tag according to its rules until we win. There is that rare aspiration that grows up.

For me, type 1: fashion design. Needles take too much blood. Type 2: writing. Surrounded by revolutionaries who always find the right words, the desire has been drained from me, leaving only a thin layer of condensation from over the years. Type 3, today: a band. An honest-to-god, people-will-listen band with a dorky name and too many violins. But, today, inserted into my mom's folk band as percussionist (via the cup song), the dreams were thin and worn and easily torn, disintegrating in my hand as I tried to pull them in. "Now," J5 instructed professionally, "just do that second part a little quieter, so it'll go over the strings. Balance. There ya go." I stared up at my mother, expectantly puckering up to her shining flute. "Twice, then the pickup."

My fingers rested precariously on the edge of the blue plastic cup. The hopes of my foot-tapping and soul-searching and song-singing seemed to become outdated, idiotic. But, with obligation one is a slave to their word, and I methodically began to tap and the surface of the cup. Instantly, the rhythm flowed into my hands as though injected by one of those oh-so-dangerous needles, infiltrating my floodgates and taking over my head, tugging at my bones to rock to and fro, and I felt, ever-so-slightly, the pick-up lift me off my feet and rise. Clutching the hand of my dream with one hand and my cup with the other, the three of us laughed and sung and then we grew up.

Old Nights

There was a tradition locked in a dusty and dank tome, pilfered by ever-changing responsibilities and warped by the immobile pillars of change: a dinner made entirely from prepared foods brought home from a world-famous Mediterranean store a few blocks from my old school. Flaky, burn-your-tongue pockets filled with lush mushrooms and spinach; fresh tear-aways of mozzarella tickled with a thin layer of salt; electric and eclectic pickled garlic to throw next to anything, letting potent flavor seep into the plate itself. These foods were, for me, an icon of indulgence, of release on a Friday evening after tensely being whittled away for five days. They became Pavlov's bell, and the power of association lured me into the trap of trying to fit too many bits of filo dough in my mouth at once whenever my old roommate anxiety began to coil around my neck.

I switched schools. We had no need for afternoon excursions downtown. There was no Friday release, instead replaced with a fat social studies textbook that had gorged itself on the bits of my sanity and an orange notebook open to the exact middle. Until, tonight, I arrived home to a suave father smiling as he slid tinfoil boxes into the new fridge for later. I had no problems waiting, so long as I got my fair share.

Familiar Face

There are those in the airtight hallway, filled with students held together by suction and a shared need for the global studies homework, whom are distinct and yet invisible to my eyes, verdant and yet opaque from clarity: there are those in the hallway who have become my hair-color people. This squadron of hodgepodge contemporaries probably have names in the yearbook, but to be they are unlabeled entities that exist within the realm of their unique characteristics - that boy always wearing a dark leather jacket, the girl with the flowing blonde hair and pink backpack. Unlike the people I see out in public, for whom I draw up fantastical possibilities and mathematical probabilities, I leave the stories of my hair-color people unpublished in a desk drawer.

Sometimes I know too much already. Words can dart between so-called private conversations where there is no room to catch them in, and I could tell you exactly what each of my friends thinks of "oh that guy" without thinking thrice. Sometimes the letters are forced in front of my eyes and I involuntarily cast aspersions onto the ones who cannot argue with me about it without being reported to a large man in a blue shirt (occasionally boasting a shiny badge). But it makes me wonder - whose frizzy haired blogging girl am I from day to day? And what do my undefined comrades think of "oh that girl?"

In The Bubble (Makeup for 9/25)

Last year, there was beneath our every plummet-point a loosely woven net to catch us. Though some fell through the gaps, screaming with no precision and all the anguish of young mind in the midst of a war, others clung to each strand of rope and hoisted themselves back onto the solid rock. But also, last year, there was above our every climb a ceiling, a place where the path stopped and the sky went up and there was no in between. You could stand on the very crux of a mountain and reach with both hands, but you would grasp only a bit of stray wind, and perhaps the lone insect. You see, we were provided with make-up work if we were in danger of failing, but the system couldn't contemplate an A+; literally, there were rules preventing it.

And now we are set loose into the wilds of a new walk, on a different island, with different views from every side and no clear compass. We follow the stars, if we can find them, and we look for the sunrise and crane our heads to pinpoint the exact center of the orb on the horizon before it becomes bright and a eyesore. The incline keeps getting steeper, but the road keeps winding up to an untouched place that lures us in with bush berries and praise you can pull right off the vine. The problem is, one step wrong and we will fall to the new net: a variety of angry waves, lapping at the shore and sky and devouring everything they find.

Odd One Young

I understand the ambiguity my dad felt in his footsteps on that first day his second skipped year. A senior at 15; a radical, a genius, a visionary they all called him. He integrated into the excellence washing over him, and as his pencil got shorter, his fingertips grew longer, stretching out into the depths of humanity with only a high standard as armor. My problem is this: I have only a fraction of that time to reach and explode with inches on all sides. I have one period everyday to pry open the souls of a few consistently bored ninth graders baring Spanish to English translation apps and t-shirts they grew into over borrowed summers. Sometimes they do not see me there. Sometimes they say that no sits in the third seat of the third row; they look over my head and call to an unseen comrade out of my league.

Everything was so different last year. I had C2, the vibrantly confident and somewhat tiny fluent Argentinian who surprisingly remembered my name. Even though we hardly conversed in the beginning, he set the precedent for a bright, worthy disciple for our elders to obtain, and they stopped thinking of me as "the frizzy hair seven" and started calling me by name. I had A, and I had A2, and A3, and they blanketed me in experience, advice, and dirty jokes I didn't understand. And now what do I have? I have a too tall cut-up, an underwear-boasting sports fan, and their contemporaries. My fingertips are stunted in their glove.

Hide and Seek

There is always just enough space in a shadow to hide a nightmare, and the nightmares only come when shadows blanket the world to the point of suffocation. Behind the corner of an abandoned building, there is an old darkness waiting to alight. Under the roof of a lonely train station, there is a new darkness anxious to claim a new disciple. They crawl between the cracks in this city and refuse to come out, they whisper strange words to a crowd that listens as a guilty pleasure. Sometimes it is better to feel the back of your neck elongate and freeze with dread than it is to feel the lukewarm water of everyday.

When the energy oozes out of me and my eyelids droop ominously: That's when they start to come. I can feel them pressing against my throat with heavy fingers, they strangle the prospects for tomorrow and lure me out the window, frantically searching for something to point out as the perpetrator of my insanity. I seem to draw a blank each time, unable to tear an unknown gaze from my skin. Paranoia: A lesson in how to stay awake.

Third Floor

It was bizarre to imitate my kitten, who squeezed into the floor today and emerged coated in black wax, and hide above everyone's heads as my mother served coffee and cleanliness to a few book group enthusiasts keen on vehemently discussing nonfiction. I had for company: a red couch covered in freezing cold pleather that swallowed me between its folds, a bottle of seltzer speeding towards room temperature every second, and my customary Safari tabs, Netflix and Facebook, red and blue. They caressed me as only abstract visions from solitude can, but none had hands warm enough to coax me into sleep.

I heard glimmers of conversation drift up the stairs and I'm sure the four of them heard echoes of showtunes sung slightly offkey drift down, but the solid facade of privacy persevered, even as I hid behind the kitchen counter clutching a cup until the party migrated into another room. Not that I'm not used to pretending like I am somewhere else - everyone needs a smiling mask in their collection, unblemished by the imperfections of teenage children, work, and everything else that disappears at night like light running over the horizon. It was simply bizarre to do it in my own home. And that is all.

All In Good Time

At precisely 4:07 p.m., the clouds seemed as dark as B flat piano key, the wind seemed as fierce as an grasslands predator mid-pounce, and my prospects seemed as dim as a fluorescent light bulb just turned on. But I got brighter, carried in the arms of the vigorous American folk dance, prevalent on the Eastern seaboard, known as "contra dance." (Look it up.) The exhilarating yet familiar throb of each move hitting my body - swing with your neighbor on the side, pull by through the blisters, dosido while spinning like a tornado, arms twisting wildly - was neon against the dull premise of the day. Faces swirled across my vision in a swarm, up and down the set and back, towards the cathartic band blasting from the top of the hall, and slowly they blurred into one huge smiling presence, there to catch me after the craziest of flourishes.

This coming from me, the girl who's never seen an elliptical and cowers under her blankets at the thought of a Sunday morning jog. This coming from me, the girl who can't stand the erosive noise of a rowing machine and gets her feet tangled in the endless straps. Regardless, today's movement sucked the pain out of my neck like a reversed vampire and sucked the darkness out of my mood like a vacuum. It magnified the profound belief in humanity held my so many ex-hippie heirs, the flower grandchildren. Most of all, it inspired the weight on my chest to get in shape, so it got up and ran away without so much as a "time me."

Grace The Stage

Apparently type A and type B personalities are two ends of the same yardstick. Meet type 1 and type 2: the theatre people, the ones that I have immersed myself in up to my eyes, the very definition of a stark double reality I have become accustomed to, everyone falling into their role and leaving me confusedly waiting backstage in the low red lights, being forced to listen to the provocative noises leaking out of the props closet.

Type 1: The stars. With their fancy Fifth Avenue coats and snakeskin clutches and impromptu renditions of old Broadway's greatest hits, they seem to live inside the spotlight, making home to its shadows and giving them all names. The explosive, incandescent glow that would make most people hide their eyes and suck in their stomachs only enhance their flawless complexion, their inanimate smiles. They have no need for sucking in stomachs.

Type 2: The crew. Instead of a mink coat the size of a small jaguar, something black from the North Face tossed nonchalantly over skinny jeans and a tee. Instead of snakeskin clutches, hiking backpacks chock full of coffee coupons and cough drops from years before. Instead of singing, they keep their voices (as magnificent as many are) tucked inside a pocket and only bring it out under a shower head. Why do they love the business? In school, back when the world could at least pretend life was fair, they led the school plays' red curtain from up to down each night for a week, a couple times a year. And they grew up and it dawned on the industry that they didn't believe in fur coats, and they were shoved into a pile of paperwork.

Where do I belong here? Am I, as some friends have claimed, an undiscovered type 1 with the potential to revolutionize the double standard in drama? Doubtful. Yet, am I, as I have often feared, too young to run from the impending type 2 wave over my head? Am I still locked inside the belief that I could follow the stage directions even without sturdy feet to take me? With my habitual fall audition looming, I look more like a deer in headlights than a Manhattan starlet in a spotlight. And the car isn't slowing down.

Vanishing Acts

It's always the same story with me, I know. Another dirty day thrown into the mesh hamper, left out for washing as soon as the pageviews break through the roof. I know I lose things, and scream at everyone until they magically appear, fresh and smelling of detergent. Today, it does not matter that you are buried under a mass of new jeans with avocado and blood stains on the right pant, because there's something I need to add to the mix: Panic. I lost my science notebook, which had my lab, which is 60% of my grade. And I panicked. I couldn't breathe, and all the colors started swirled around on overdrive, as though watered down and smeared across a palette. I remember, as I often do after these incidents, the feeling on my fingers of abrasion as I tore through whatever bag had sucked up my property this time. I remember, too, the alien sound of my screams that came inadvertently through the haze and wafting at me; wailing, sobbing, destroying the bonds between the silence and the air, ripping apart the space and reaching inside it, grasping at any glimmer of a green graph paper notebook. But it's gone. And I can't escape the abyss it has left in its wake.

Laboratory

The most stressful time of the week is the night before the laboratory period. My room ends up littered with bits of crumpled up paper and I have too many tabs open to see, like one of those rainy days when there are too many ominously charcoal clouds dancing above my head so they all blend into a great storm. I've never understood why there are two velocities, or why I should care that igneous rock is the one vomited out by fuming volcanoes. No one has ever baited me onto the hook that some people describe as the pull of curiosity. I don't understand tedious lectures that leave me, pen in hand, mouth open, gazing at the red hand of the clock as it tick, tick, ticks around the world.

Am I supposed to include the data tables? Or are they supposed to make home inside my right brain, pull up a chair and stay a while until they can't pay the rent? Am I supposed to write a page about the discovery of the metric system? Or would it be better to cut the feet off and scamper under my duvet and dream about it instead? Nothing makes sense to me now. It is as though someone has placed a large glass plane between me and the task at hand, and I can only scrape longingly at the image of something that should be tangible. That is, if I even belong here at all.

Assembly (Make-Up For 9/18)

450 of us, crowded into a two-tier auditorium littered with purple paraphernalia and embellished with hungry teachers who would give anything to walk out the back doors - the noise cacophonous, penetrating even the oldest administrators' ears, and threatening to stampede through the walls and leave us in a pile of dust - an endless flurry of seat-finding, as if an upholstered red seat that left pink fuzz on my white jeans could affect one's social standing for the rest of eternity: This, for those who have forgotten, is a typical assembly.

As per the usual here, where violinists wear horse costumes and for a major assignment someone presents a freshly printed copy of their rendering of "Romeo and Juliet" featuring donuts, there was no reason to hold the grand affair. A few reminders about rules in the hallway (that no one would bother with). A couple horror stories about muggers and truancy officers (which would metamorphize into urban legends that would linger like dusk until the end of the century). Most noticeably? Nothing new. The same speech as a year ago. And suddenly, the familiar words seem out of place, because their backdrop is so dramatically changed.

Braces

I got braces last week, and apparently I know nothing about the world. These small pieces of metal and a few dabs of glue are supposed to reorganize a skeleton and shock it into compliance; dental work always seems to conquer the England to its Rome, and destroy everything in the base line. They are minuscule when compared to the immensity of our bones, and still by using the powers of good form they are able to civilize a mess of enamel and plaque into an orderly smile. There must be something I am missing here, because the small can only spin the wheel together, and until then they must ride the tide. The braces at at a disadvantage of one; my right canine is rotated enough so that there wasn't even room. Lesson one in Mr. P's physical science class: when two forces oppose, the outcome will always be zero, positive, or negative. And we are hovering at around thirty to twenty-nine.

If a city of over-acheivers stood up with me and took a rickety subway rail to Zuccotti, we would spill out into the street in every direction and some of us would get run over my speeding taxis. But no one would burst from a Wall Street building to contest us. There aren't enough people in the world to rival the stigma of smallness. In order to start our war, we have to grow a little first.

Twelve Months Ago

The news has exploded and among the rubble is the body of a twelve-year-old girl who plunged off the side of one of the buildings that made up the backdrop she hated and landed in Florida with two things: a collection of broken bones and a collection of broken lullabies - "sweet dreams."

Rebecca Sedwick was apparently attacked viciously on social media, dented with harsh realities and speared with harsher lies until she gave in to the voracious temptation of escape, as so many do. She was less than a year younger than I; presumably entering seventh, to my eighth, grade; most noticeably, this young promise was beautiful, like a bottle of red nail polish dropped and cracked on the floor, coloring the bottoms of your feet instead of the tops. If she had learned how to fly, she wouldn't have hit the ground so hard on her way down. If she had only had time to grow those wings, with neon plumage and hollow bones, if someone had taken the time to carry her while she practiced the gentle swooping motion to follow the air current...

When I was five, there was someone there to shape my hand into holding a pencil and give me my very first long division problem while they drank overpriced coffee. When I was ten, there was someone to give me an Ibuprofen the morning of a test when my back was aching as though shot with compacted fear. And when I was twelve and a bit, there was some unknown senior on the second floor to give me directions to my locker. And then, when I was thirteen, there was someone to email me the Spanish homework while I was buried in alternative music and new textbooks. I don't remember her last name from the attendance list last year, but I do remember the green scarf she was wearing the first time I saw her, and how nice it looked with her hazelnut eyes. Rebecca never got to remember. She stopped at twelve.

Breath

I am ready to collapse under my purple sheets and hide, but I suppose that comes with toddlers' territory. Cast of characters: a two-year-old girl slicked down with tangible charisma and smiles, a three-year-old boy who is either on and explosively energetic or off and non responsive, and two weathered parents carrying tonnes of love and diapers. Needless to say, after searching for "the girl" (a statue in my grandparents' library) more than twenty times successively, playing pirate ships - "ON THE PIRATE SHIP, NOT ON THE SHARK BOAT!" - next to a tray covered in a collective of the most breakable pottery in the house, and falling asleep on the couch only to be awaken by a pillow thwacking against my head and an infectious giggle, I am not only thoroughly exhausted but also thoroughly intoxicated by the way my cousins didn't once stop to worry about the extreme darkness we drove off into after saying goodbye in pajamas.

I can't even pretend that I could take care of C and O alone; my sleep deficit would drown me first. Perhaps it is pretentious to even dream of chasing parenthood as though it is as automatic as adulthood. But then again, I was the only one who was willing to play catch for the millionth time. I was the first one to tickle their feet. Although I found solace in the remarkably calm dog whenever I lost it, I never let O out of my sight. I'd say I've got the makings of a loving guardian... just as soon as I purchase a couple hundred bottles of 5 Hour Energy. Good night.

Has Its Thorn

There is no situation in which a person receiving a brilliantly wrapped bouquet of roses would not be thrilled. No matter if the roses are red and a boyfriend has just swept onto the traditional knee bearing a velvety ring box; no matter if the roses are a light pink and the petals flutter around a woman in a white dress and exploded veil as though they are songbirds, echoing the violin's gentle march; no matter if the roses are yellow, or blue, or some other extravagant hue, presented to an A-lister at Broadway's backstage door - even if they are whisked away in a black limousine, you know they are smiling behind their sunglasses. So what do I do today, the last day of what has grown into an exhaustingly forced week at the back of the classroom? I cover myself in pink, blue, and white roses, on my hand-me-down skirt with the wrinkled hem, on my 99 cent purse, in my distinctly untamable hair.

I got exactly two compliments on the ensemble. There were both from L, an an honor. The first she gave me in an anything-but-deserted third floor hallway in front of the water fountain, wearing one of her signature dresses and bright orange tights. "Oh, I love your skirt! Actually - I love your whole outfit!" she cooed. I felt the happiness meter slide slowly from a three to a four. The second she gave me among the kind of insanity I've become use to bombarding me in our fourth floor hallway, wearing exactly the same thing (to no one's surprise). "I know I said it earlier but I have to say it again: I love your outfit. Meter: from a six to an eight. I could say the roses did it all on their own - it is Friday the thirteenth, after all, a good day to let loose and blame it all on the divine - but realistically, the roses didn't do anything except act as a catalyst for the customary kindness surrounding me, strewn against the familiar bits of insanity but always within a few feet. More than 220 of us in the same hallway. More than 220 chances to have your soul patched up for a day. There, in orange tights, stood mine. Again, I thanked her, and left, going towards my house but away from the people who have become my home.

Scales

It was a mistake to try to boost my self-esteem by signing up for advanced musical theory when I have never heard of an augmented triad, much less recognized three key signatures in three seconds flat. It was a mistake to even open the quiz packet while everyone around me reviewed major scales, and my eyebrows hurt from always looking concerned. It was a really big mistake to act pretentious and artsy this morning, harmonizing to my voice memos and tapping my foot on the side of the hallway, hair swept over one eye.

Some people wouldn't even call me a musician. What kind of musician doesn't know an A major scale by heart, so well that they can rattle it off like a snake, so well that they could write it with one hand while seductively flipping their hair with the other? What kind of musician wears blue cable knits in ninety degree September to avoid showing her somewhat slanted shoulders, while J5 and A flaunt bra straps and defined cheekbones until early winter (not that I have any idea how they can keep a tan so long) and look like goddesses doing it? What kind of musician doesn't own a single bottle of perfume, celebrity, designer, or otherwise, and in case of emergency walks through a cloud of air freshener?

Then again...

Since the month began, I've written or started writing eight songs. Since the month began, I've dared myself to wear a pair of super skinny jeans - and succeeded with flying colors, if the color is maroon and it was flying because I had thirty seconds to get to Physics. Since the month began, I've sung at home, on the subway platform, on the subway, in the middle of a Spanish exercise, outside the seventh grade hallway, in a stairwell, in a restaurant... the list goes on. So an ultimatum: Do I belong in advanced musical theory? Not by any means. But do I belong in music? I belong in music until I stop needing to.

The Return

Last year is not gone yet. It is intact, fully fledged, and deliciously vivid in my memory as the best year of my life. But calendar pages turn past June and into September and all of that pent-up enthusiasm melts into a school year sure to be dotted with meltdowns and covered in midnight studying. We, the classmates, have dispersed, and far from our mothership, we are alien and strange. Already I sit at the back of the room, avoiding any opportunity to embarrass myself in front of clean slates who might one day be friends. Already I doodle on the cover of my music binder through lectures. Already I eat lunch in the computer lab, madly typing away on my English assignment. Already bits of the old me have become woven into the new one again, stained and frayed at edges.

It was clear to me on the subway this afternoon that the flair and exuberance that had sprouted out of me a year ago is withering. M2, J2, and R had not cut their hair, or grown more than an inch or so, or bought a collection of blacks to tuck away in a closet, chasing after their alternative side. If I closed my eyes, I could remember the way it felt to be amongst the warmth in their voices, and I could pretend we all had the same schedules in the front pockets of our bookbags. "Look, watch this bottle of Gatorade. Even if we fall over, it won't - no really trust me!" "Oh yeah?" "Most definitely!" The aquamarine sugar water danced around the rim from the Upper East to Alphabet City to Chinatown, but never spilled - M2 is usually right about these things. I can still reach out and come within inches of remembering her birthday... but the exact date has gone with the rest of her, away from me.

In fifty years, I'll look back, and last year will still be the best of my life. E2 put it best: "You can't expect the same. Last year was special." Every second was laced with perfections: J3, dubbed the Majestical Tricorn, blurting out something about a rogue potato. (Inside joke.) D apologizing in advance of everything, citing the Latin room electrocution incident with a miles-wide grin. (Inside joke.) The day we all skipped class to cry in front of each other and a counselor's yellow notepad. (Inside joke.) Each face, emblazoned with a soon-to-be-signature laugh, staying with me until I die, young forever (inside my heart.)

Television

I watching too much television for my own good. I get sucked into the histrionics of love triangles and betrayal, the aftermath of parties that only happen during primetime, and the feel-good soundtrack that seems to play at the end of every episode, just before the tantalizing cliffhanger - a car crash? A law suit? A murder? It changes every time. But all the hours blend into each other, as I alternate between my Netflix tab and the five online stores I'm window-shopping at, and I forget things. I forget that I'll be gone for a good while in a few days, away from sneezy orange cat hair (of which not nearly enough is on my clothes) and internet connection (what a relief). I don't see why I don't spend the time looking for the items on the "Missing" list I've made, which keeps me from going to bed at night. It's easier to worry about someone's problems when they're stuck in a screen, wearing a character name, and not living inside you.

I lost my I.D., for which there is no replacement. Touche. I lost the only concrete piece of plastic I have that clearly states, in laminated ink, who I am. No one from my old school believes me when I ask if they've seen the latest of something - "You're the studious type." "Yeah, right. Now what books have you read recently?" And over and over again: "You've changed." If I could find the I.D. that gets me into my high school's parent college, it would prove to anyone who had the good sense to ask that I have the same name, the same face, the same ludicrous-or-not aversion to eyeliner. But a lesser mind.

I lost my lip balm, which I bought a week ago now. It was pink on the outside and creamy on the inside and smelled like artificial strawberries. Over the label you could find J2's DNA from when she licked it to spite me. It was making the crinkled bits at the corners of my mouth go away, and me stop biting them and creating cold sores and bloody teeth. I put it on to go dancing with my grandma - I put it on, and switched houses, and lost my lip balm, and stopped smelling like strawberries.

I lost my disposable cameras. Six of them, from the summer camp I went to a month ago. This is after I bought more than twenty dollars worth of merchandise for the sole purpose of creating a scrapbook adorned with Polaroid smiles, soon-to-be forgotten names but not the faces. Six cameras - you'd think I'd be able to find at least half of them. They are in one of three places. One: The tiny apartment with more boxes than you can fit in an elevator at once - so many nooks and crannies to hide in, but so little square footage to search. Two: The new house with practically nothing in it, the house that is supposedly ours now but retains wooden floors, and old stove, and the black hole that must have swallowed everything. Three: Gone.

I think I lost more. I think I lost my way somewhere, that being in a new place forced me to reevaluate who I am. Everyone around me now has so much motivation, but here I am wallowing on the keys of a computer my parents got me for Christmas so I could carry out my dreams and write. But what's on my server? A selfie I took for my Facebook profile. Spanish homework. The soundtrack to "Anything Goes." Actually, I think they meant EVERYTHING Goes - Away If You Let It. So learn from my mistake.

Quelf

My favorite board game is called Quelf. No one has ever asked me why it is called Quelf, and I don't want to start contemplating it now - it would ruin the spontaneity that draws me. Once a year, during my birthday season, I whine and complain until reluctantly, my parents put aside their land-owning games about 18th century France and sit down to be my pawns for an hour or so. They always forget how much they love every part of it - the hilarious routines, the outrageous quiz questions, and the mindbending rules that pile up in little blue card stacks. Sometimes they suggest I play it with friends - R, maybe, or K3? But I shy away from the idea. After all, what fun is losing your dignity if it's so hard to find afterwards?

Here I Am

Okay, okay, disclaimer: I can only do the daily blog thing during the year. All the pieces get jumbled up in summer, and I always start a puzzle at the corners. That said, let me continue with today's musing.

Yesterday during a lovely dinner at a family favorite restaurant that remembers us by unusual birthday songs and rewards us with free squash blossoms and sorbet, I awaited the moment I became a teenager apprehensively. 7:23 p.m. ticked closer and closer as we devoured salads and risotto, and I silently expected a fairy to burst from the bread bowl and wave a wand to change me, make me more mature, more responsible, OLDER. Five minutes. We ordered dessert. Three minutes. I refilled my typical house-fizzed seltzer glass. One minute. I didn't have time to keep time, counting seconds, as I was far to busy punching a hole in the universe with my finger, grinding into my napkin anxiously.

Just as I was about to grab my mother's injured wrist to examine her watch, the chefs appeared at our table holding my dessert on a large plate with "Happy Birthday" drizzled in swirly chocolate script. At the top of his lungs, the male chef bellowed, "Now listen up!" A hush fell over the restaurant, and my parents looked at each other with dazzled eyebrows; this had never, in 10 years, happened to us. "These people," the man continued, "are going to sing a birthday song you've never heard before. It's amazing."

Lightning speed! "Round?" "We need Chloe." "I take second part." And we were off. The lyrics are: We wish you a happy birthday, a joyous and celebrated birthday, to our dear Chloe, we wish you a long long life. After the crowd returned cheerily to their complimentary soup, I realized it 7:25 and no one had noticed. Exhaling, I let the mutterings that I must have missed something be drowned in chocolate syrup, and dug in.

Confession

I can't promise anything. Look at the way I've treated this blog. It's my last day of relative innocence - before to me every tire swing looks like a way to mess up my hair, every water park a need for cute swimwear. Teenage years are upon me and I can't promise that I'm going to be responsible. All I can promise is that when I become an adult in five years, I'll own a pair of high heels. What's that for a future, expectations you either crush under your feet or accelerate until someone's planning your campaign for president and/or Miss America? Narcissistic country of mine, congratulations - I've fallen into your trap.

Sleep

I've stopped dreaming. And, apparently, blogging, as I forgot last night. How can I show my virtual face? If I have stopped dreaming, there's nothing to look forward to when I close my eyes, but yet when it's warm and the covers are up to my nose I compulsively float away and force myself to subconsciously eliminate the possibility of finishing my chores. (Not that writing this is a chore... Exactly.) Anyway, I pray to any god that will hear me: Please let them forgive me and await today's blog.

Test

Pardon this, I am testing the blog.

Return/Looking Up

Here I am. And was, as of Sunday, so why have I been absentee? I'm watching with my cyberspace binoculars, and pageviews have been climbing. You knew I was back, and I was by no means busy. But there are so many things on my mind, and blogging (for me) is about narrowing down everything to what's important. But the missing DVD of my latest show, the first in which I had a lead? Devastating. The freak-out when a friend stayed at camp longer than expected? Humiliating. The excitement over the impending free summer? Astounding. But I think I know what I want to talk about.

I'm muddling my way through the remaining few days of not being a teenager. All my friends have immigrated over the border, I can pop a PG-13 movie in the machine - that's not the issue. The issue is this: Why, just as I'm about to get more responsibility, am I just freaking everyone out? My mother is currently hiding in her bedroom because we had a fight about where the paper towels were. Frankly, I think I stopped growing at 10. But like a building after construction finishes, there will always be new people, and new paint jobs (maybe I'll die my hair), and everything is going to get taller around me.

Official Blog Notice

Oh, dear. This frantic month I am afraid my "daily"updates have fallen behind, and now I am going off for two weeks. I pray that you, my loyal followers, do not forget me. I will return. And when I do, I fear that no one will be checking for new updates; let me give you a date. Check back here the evening of July 7. I'll be here. And in my new blog I will answer one question. If you have a question please comment below. I'll let this page fester for two weeks, and see you soon.

XOXO
Yours always,

Chloe Lev

Gallery

I went to friend's mother's organization's head's art show today. It was far away in more ways than one. The criteria for entrance into the program? Having cancer. I was disappointed when I heard, because I would love to get a little closer to the beautiful weavings and devastating photographs pinned to the wall of a Chinatown YMCA. They were not behind any glass, but they were behind a multi-year layer of struggle that I had no idea I was two steps away from. Three pieces: "Identity Theft" (losing herself with her hair), "Mammogram" (losing herself with her breasts), and "Quality of Life" (losing herself with her happiness.) She went to China thirteen years ago, to an orphanage, and found something. And kept it all.

Manicure

I've never had a real manicure done until today. It smelled like lavender and acetone and looked robin's eye blue and as glossy as a Red Delicious apple. A packed salon served as the backdrop for my first, including an acquaintance and her sister, as well as a group of six third graders who proudly looked through magazines for perfume samples, shooting now and then, "I found one! It's totes adorb, but too much pink." My massus found them sweet. I found them disheartening. Deadlines for growing up into a superficial American keep getting pushed forward, don't they? Heavens, I was getting a manicure.

Wasabi

My friend goes by Wasabi, through me at least. I asked her if she wanted to and she said yes. I don't think I've referred to her formally since. My other friend goes by Mouse, according to everyone, and I hold myself accountable - although it was an easy miracle, she's short and the common nickname for her proper title is Mickey. Alas, I am no nickname genius. I describe what I see, animate and otherwise, and occasionally I forget that my thought are only words and there are actual people hiding beside them. I miss my good friends S and M, but I don't get discouraged because I've met some great new people that walk, talk and are duplicates of real people but have a sprinkle of mere there, a bond. Same reason some know me as Chloster, ChloMo, Chlobear, Cookie. Bond, brand, duplicate - we all have too many dopplegangers to count.

Out of Body

I know the final is tomorrow, but I can't feel it. Like I've been underwater too long and my brain and eyes have gone numb. The calendar is winking at me from down the hall, but I just keep looking back to the computer screen. And toothbrush I'm chewing as I type these words. At least I've learned a lesson: Do what you need before you go diving in cold water, and get cold feet. It's also weird that after tomorrow everything will fade together into one heat wave, no one to see or talk to except the random strangers I'm shoved into an upstate bunk with. I'll miss everyone, and the swimming lessons. It's a thrill, to be numb, for a day.

To A Tee

Most people think golf is something old men enjoy on Sundays at the country club. (Most people are right.) However, it doesn't mean that golf isn't something teenage girls enjoy on Sundays at the beach in Queens. On Father's Days especially, it's important for x, y, and z to line up in the less-old-than-he-thinks man's favor. His shoulder is hurt, and I caught him wincing over his follow through. My mom, too, is burdened with an elbow condition so that the right arm to touch, hold, or hug is always the left, and without swinging. I am the new generation. I am the old man, or the old soul, or something that can inhabit the walls of a pitching wedge or 7 iron. I will become that haunt.

Terrify

I've never understood why everyone is obsessed with horror flicks and movie theater screams and recounting nightmares to an admiring crew until I became Netflix-obsessed with Pretty Little Liars - not a good idea for a pathologically plagued girl such as myself. Nevertheless, hardly a second passes without me wondering who just called Emily or where Aria is driving alone this time. It's almost comical, the aboutface that's made me stare at a screen all day. Will I sleep? Ah, insomnia is a curse. But the problem with lying awake in bed is that I might have to think about the fact that this morning my mom asked me if I still told complete strangers my grades (no). Actually, she didn't even ask, she assumed the answer was affirmative. I'm changing, and she can hardly see it. I can barely see it. I want a better mirror.

Kitten Eyes

There's the puppy dog face abound, but do we ever wonder where a kitten watches and how? While watching Downton Abbey with my mom, Merlin decided to creep up next to up but stopped purring when he saw the computer screen. Solemnly, he sat, and watched for a full episode. Nonresponsive to petting and coos, his ears perked slightly at Lady Mary and flattened at mention of Thomas (for good reason). I can rest assured that my kitten and his face have at least some good sense.

Discord

This blog is out of order, and so I am. No more is every day simply a few emotions to reflect back onto this page. Now posting is the last thing before I go to bed, sometimes too tired to remember. Why? It's the end of the year. I remember the first day of school waltzing into my Spanish class late and whispering to the eighth grader across the way, "Where's the main office?" They told me they had no idea. I convinced myself with letters and stories and pop quiz trips to the auditorium and room 251 that I would know by the end of seventh grade. That I would establish myself as one of those ancient statues the Greeks could no bring themselves to break down into Hellenistic trash; have a standing appointment at eleven for lunch, a place to go after the last day of school to celebrate. Yesterday was it. Some went to the beach, some to another beach, some to a candy store...

My blog is broken because I went home. Because I felt empty and there was nothing to reflect. I spent the afternoon scrolling further down on social media pages and looking at everyone else's smiles. I wondered where the future self I had written to in September has gone, and where I, the other future self, will go. (Somewhere, I hope.)

Beakers

I never understood before this year that there is something more to my relationship with science than sitting in a room... in a chair... and falling asleep and someone drones in the background about ENzymes and ANGIosperms. This has been my experience, until now. But the teacher who converted me is going off to learn more, and I'll be stuck in another room's chair learning less. It's weird, I guess; I'm usually so weepy, and this time I was the one dry-cheeked kid who awkwardly stood in awe of how incredible Ms. L is. She said this is why she became a teacher. It's why I became a student, too.

Voice

Isn't it funny that my voice died right after I needed it? I'm a stammering, throaty, hoarse mess on the phone; I can barely imagine what people think when they hear me scratching through the line. I've made too many phone calls today, and been too embarrassed to leave voicemails waiting in an invisible box. Isn't it funny that when I had my voice this weekend, there was a whirlwind of hope catching me up and dragging me off to Oz... People told me I was "a Disney princess," "going to be on Broadway," and I was crashing up...

But physics states it all: What goes up must come down. What goes into an invisible box must be taken out, but there is nothing but obligation keeping the recipient from walking away.

Four Poster

I have a new antique four poster bed sitting in the middle of an empty room with a warped floor and I am lying on it. For two years now it's been nesting in a southern storage unit, untouched and in the dark. The wood tightened a bit in the colder seasons yes, and relaxed in summer, but all in all nothing changed. Until my big-time mother maneuvered a truck all the way up the coast on three lane highways to our new house, and told some one-day workers where to place it. She didn't tell them to put it in the corner so they left it by the window, in the middle of an empty room. It's old, new, full of spirit, empty and alone, it's an oxymoron in a piece of furniture and I picked it from a handful of one to be my own. I couldn't reject myself.

Asterix *?$!@

When you are younger, you can hear everyone whispering in the background telling parents not to worry, that children go through a long phase where they simply feel the need to say everything that's been stuffed inside their throats when their mouths get covered to keep it in. It is natural, one says, to curse for attention, to curse to seem mature and cool. And then we move on, and people forget that those once repelled words and phrases ever bounced back. We don't remember that we ever assumed that woman swearing on the bench was crazy. The taboo has become acceptable because we, teh few who tried to fight, soon grew tired of interrupting every sentence. But a dress rehearsal? A lost scene change? And someone cursing? I'm too old to reprimand you and too young to try and guide you away, but you better not do that for my cousins. They are younger than attention-seeking pirates stumbling up school bus stairs. They are younger than covering the mouth for fear of release. They are an ear-covered, semi-swaddled, innocent, unbroken glass toddler pair. But soon enough, they won't be.

Green

Everybody is tinted green, but I must be a fluorescent lime. My jealousy is out of control. It seems like everybody around me knows just how to dance: time step, keeping everything under control and not losing track of minutes and hours and days spent vegetatively thinking, sprinkler, showering everyone with flirtatious remarks and witty smiles with perfect teeth, running man, getting out of a problem before they are buried alive. And I simply can't get the rhythms right. I have two left feet, and K3 makes sure I know it. It's probably a good thing. This way I won't enter a contest and lose.

Concert Dress

We call them, however it might sound, our blacks. Long black shirts, with no decals, no detail, no attempt at interest. Black skirts or pants, ankle length (or with black nylons). Black shoes, which I forgot, so I had to trudge onto the stage in my black socks. First period today was science with a side of fresh for torment substitute, who quizzed us relentlessly on a topic we never studied: the electromagnetic spectrum. At least I think that's what it's called. We learned, between trying to say each other's names during attendance and pointlessly flipping through our notes looking for answers, that black is the absence of light. But nothing can be truly black. A raincloud hovering ominously over a city - darkest gray. Me today - impending disaster, ready to snap... I snapped... but the absence of light is nonexistent in my life. There is, no matter what K3 says, ALWAYS hope.

Averages

In the end, the result of your high school experience comes down to the cold calculation of which way the wind is blowing via compass points; e.g. there are only 13 averages. Unlucky thirteen. You can get up to an A+, but only if you only stay above 97. You can get down to an F, but... I don't want to think about that. No matter how many friends you have, no matter your reviews in the school paper, no matter anything else that floats around in the ether there are thirteen distinct planets, from biggest to smallest, and if you run out of water on the farthest one from the sun, sucks for you I guess. You know what I need? A space shuttle, stat.

Tech

Today at rehearsal, there will be moving pieces throughout the stage, blocking my way and the light and one of the fire exits. (Oh well.) I won't be sure where to stand or what to do in the oddest set I've ever been a part of, yet another door on hinges spinning back and forth and looking for someone to bang into. It's like the walls have minds of their own, as though they want to undermine the entire show and turn us on our heads. I won't know where to stand, but I certainly will know where to be: beside everyone else, working to undermine the set back over itself again, and crack the whip in favor of an excellent performance.

Somewhere is Here

I heard in Art History class that the idea of a Muslim reflecting pool is that the reflection of the actual world representing the otherworldly heaven. A reflecting pool is manmade, but does the same apply to a lake? Because the lake I've spent the weekend in front of has shown me exactly the color blue of the sky, and the underwings of a bird, and the shape of the sun before it sets over the mountains. I was just wondering if that exactly is the otherworldly, if I am living in a state of perpetual perfection and I just don't know it. Things don't seem perfect at all. But maybe perfection doesn't exist and a bit of happiness at last is as good as it gets.

Hoarse

I have an intense fear of embarrassment, as do probably most people. My throat, still recovering from a sour soreness and then a slimy coat, is unwilling to hit the notes I'll need to tonight onstage. One more week until the show. The first real show I'll ever lead. One more week, and what if I still can't reach high E flat or low G? Regardless, tonight I'll step onstage and have to practice. And lose the lingering respect of anyone who will be watching. Tonight, my dreams will shine like mud. I hope, with all of my heart, that the vocal chords pull a miracle out of some back pocket and I can sit on them and wait until the end of my solo.

Tucked In

It's always so nice on Mondays, when our housekeeper stops by for her weekly cleaning of our tiny little apartment balanced on seven teetering ones below. She fixes the blankets I've tossed around in my sleep, thrown onto the floors and into the crack by the window. I crawl into bed that night and everything is so soft, like the inside of a silk thread cocooning a worm. Everything is secure, tucked into the sides of the frame.

This was a short blog. I'm tired. I'll go sleep now.

Erase Button

People deal with anger or feeling uncomfortable in as many ways as there are fish flopping in the sea's watery kingdoms. Some will crack jokes, to release the tension pushing their skin outward. Some will yell, or scream, to make everyone around them aware of their current state of being: fury. Others, like me, prefer to pretend we were never there. While everyone is giggling or screeching away the pain, we grab everything and scurry away, so when they come up to breathe we are not there to look in the eye. Perhaps one day this way of running away from the source will be my curse, but for now, I can be happy I escaped. This time.

Disaster on the Floor

I had all the remnant materials together to bake a beautiful cheesecake. I'd melted the butter in the microwave. Crushed the cookies in a bag. Poured the last bit of sugar from the canister. The cheese and milk sat in wait in the spotless new fridge. Until... I tapped the edge of the springform pan and everything fell onto the floor. I'm sorry, A. I used up everything too quickly. Everything is such a mess right now; I'll go clean up.

Prank Call

While watching Downton Abbey with my parents this evening, I received a call from a private number. Innocently, I paused the video and answered. "Hello?" I asked.

"YOUR LOVING GIVES ME DIABETES!"

After a brief banter, during which I accused the caller of being E2 and they denied it, I hung up the phone. My mother, amused by the situation, grabbed the phone from me when it rang again seconds later. Adopting an accent, she stuttering, "Hello?"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

And the line was disconnected. My dad complained that he wasn't getting any of the fun, so he took the phone... And this continued. Ah, how I love the reality of having occasionally ridiculous parents.

Inverse

I spotted an opposite today. It was on the drive home, at the one spot on the highway where a northern building looks southernmost and things are generally upside-down. There was a large black cloud covering half the sky, hanging over a brushed-gray sky. In the latter hung some small, wispy black ones, and above some wispy, small white ones. As different as can be, but made from the same part. It's almost the end of my first upper year. The strange thing is, though the colors are different, both skies, both floating worlds, are made from the same parts.

Recovery

The contra dance in my part of the city has so much electricity running through its people that you could power an entire third-world country. They are young, smart, and nice, as my dad puts it; these are the people that will take control of this dying art when its originals start to fade away. I danced as much as I possibly could, collecting compliments and introductions, and my hair flying in my face served as a sufficient shield against those who creeped me out more than the average human does. The midway break rolled around, and I was enjoying too many peanut butter cookies in the corner, my father approached me, a strained expression staining his face. When I asked what was wrong, he responded, "My shoulder is..." He winced as his words faded away, faded away. "I can't stay."

The remnants of the internal energy lingered on our sweaty skin as we walked the mile home in suddenly 40 degree weather. We were not cold. When I asked what was causing all of this trouble with each shoulder, he told me, "I don't heal as quickly anymore." Add two months onto this whole situation: I'll be a teenager. Add thirty and I'll be the caller behind the microphone at some dance that people think I'm too old for because I still am wearing fedoras long after the craze. Add that thirty and my father will be slowly disappearing into the background, fading away...

Subtract thirty, please.

Running

Waiting at the deli for J3's BLT to pop cleanly out of a thrice-used toaster, the rain picked up until it gushed in rivers down the hill towards the river. R was the first to notice. The first to throw off her backpack and hoist herself into the fray. She screamed, ran around for a few seconds, and returned as if she had just stepped out of a cabin shower. "Watch my stuff." I ditched my blue purse, my lunch bag, my wheelie, and opened the door. The wind was that of the Kalahari, with the moisture of the Marianas. My head was that of an action figure banged against the wall: a little bit looser than it was before. Without a backwards thought, I rushed out and laughed harder than I have. A woman stopped to stare at me under her spineless umbrella. I didn't care; all of the cigarette butts from the past few weeks were hurrying down the storm drains.

Yearbook

There are currently eight yearbooks on my shelf - not including the dusty, folded ones my mom forgot to get rid of or forgot she wanted to keep. They are in order of year, the first from my finger-painting days at age 4 (the earlier years they just gave us placemats with our picture on them) and the last from my sixth grade at age 11. Each has its own distinct theme; one is globally themed with maps on every page and red marks instead of name plaques, another is board game themed featuring a Game-of-Life-esque roll-and-move board on the inside cover. Today, I walked into my Wednesday club to discover that my seventh grade yearbook was off the presses. People were laughing at their photos, examining their friends', and reminiscing about the year. No. Wait. No one else was reminiscing. I couldn't help it. I could just see the bold red spine sitting on the shelf in a few weeks, waiting for its younger siblings to slowly file into place.

On The Roof

It was somewhat of a movie moment, when we all, the four of us, emerged into the juicy sunlight. Instinctively our hands flew to our brows and we laughed. Everything around us was radiant green or milky gray, the color of my eyes in that second before I burst into tears. But the lines... the lines were so sharp. The stiff sides of a building someone's grandfather was underpaid to build loomed on the right. To the left, an artificial hedge so that we wouldn't see the drooping awnings below. Any sign of weakness was eliminated, intimidating the tourists, rejuvenating the patriot, and wildly confusing me. "Take a picture," I giggled, holding out my camera to them. The burning, scorching, invasive sunlight pushed my borders until ironic tears burst upwards like geysers and I shut them out tight. I couldn't stop smiling. Downstairs, examining the pictures, I discovered the most peculiar thing: In every wrong picture, I fit right in with the world around me: the world over the edge, not the superficial garden, like a popular clique making your imperfections stick out and hiding their own with concealer or mascara or picturesque buildings in the exact place a real person can't open their eyes.

New Day (or Chain of Events pt. 2)

It's Monday. The start of a new week. And things are already resolving themselves. I was late for one class today, one that doesn't involve lessons. My grades are gradually pulling back up as if suspended from a wire. I have almost no homework, so I can't finish it late. I found my copy of To Kill A Mockingbird before I had time to hand over fifteen dollars cash for its replacement. I don't have to worry about singing because I have a cold... but only a cold, no fever, stomachache, dizziness... One GOOD thing, too, and it's like more waves. I finally feel like all of the poison has been pulled away, magnetically almost, and now it's time for Tuesday. And moving on.

Energize

I dropped the TV remote in front of a cabinet and the back of the battery pack jumped off, scattering the two boxes of energy to the winds. We got out flashlights and yardsticks and poked around under every piece of furniture, finding long gone cat toys and newspapers from January but no batteries anywhere. Eventually I had to open a new package and restock the supply before the TV noises became too obnoxious to bear. Annoyedly, we rummaged through closets on ladders to find some new ones, but in the end, the power was right there, only hiding. The power was behind a couple of doors but ready for immediate installation.

Chain of Events

Since 2:02 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon, an increasing number of bad things have been happening to me. The weirdest things, too, as though they were stolen from someone else's destiny and decoupaged onto my own. Arriving late for class, because I forgot I had anything to do, an end purpose. Bad grades, some of the worst I've ever received, for stupid things. Not finishing my homework until four hours after my usual, and sometimes forgetting parts altogether. Losing school materials and facing a steep fee. Not singing well at rehearsal, and having your directors notice it. Waking up this morning with a headache, nausea, stomach pain, and a rubbed raw sore throat that tea can't help, and then finding out I'm still required to go to school on Monday because I don't have a fever. One bad thing and it's like waves: The momentum of the crash flings some more water up, and then the only place to go is down again.

Songwriting

My friend L is an exceptional songwriter. And an exceptional editor. Which means her songs are great. But sometimes she inadvertently makes mine look like plastic bags floating in the wind that will someday choke a turtle: worthless. It's not that she says that - no, no, L is a joy. The problem is that she is really good at everything even when she says she isn't. So I used to be good at English - oh wait, L is better. I used to be good at acting - oh wait, L is better. I used to be a songwriter - oh wait, L is better. And I'm honestly proud of her. She's moved past my simple chord progressions and still doesn't see the originality in her taxi cab metaphors, and such.

But here I am. Just finished writing a song. Here's a quote: "I'm not gonna torment you, never want to hurt you, even if I did you'd still walk by free, me lonely. You've a right to hate me although it frustrates me, but I won't throw away the words you gave me. The past can't run away like some yesterday, I won't let it run away." I emailed that bit to another friend, E, and asked for advice. It's late. Almost no one is up. I really didn't expect anything. But suddenly, a message came through: "Keep it up!" I was stunned. And thrilled. And suddenly it didn't matter if L was better than me. It mattered that we had both managed to transform our pain into beauty, which sounds cliché but is one of the hardest things to master. Now that all of those tears, and frowns, and heads-being-banged-on-walls are on the page, I can rearrange them. Rearrange the letters in heads-being-banged-on-walls and you get: We all beg-and-bashed in song.

Walking In

I walked into art and there was everyone. I was late, like always, and you always discount the outlier when calculating the average, so I'm used to sliding around to my chair by the back row, quietly. Today, everyone was staring at me. No one spoke. I was almost positive they had just been talking about me. Silently, I slithered into my seat. I heard a few pestered whispers from somewhere to my right. Turned over my shoulder quickly; mouths were shut. I'll never know what they were saying. But I'll make myself not care if it's the last thing I do.

Blurry

Do you remember the way the world looks when you've just come out of a pool and the chlorine has clouded your vision? When you cry over something stupid and the liquid makes everything wobble? Do you remember the way the world looks when you are unconditionally happy, to the point that laughter and song and spilling out of your mouth, your ears - your eyes? They're not really that different when you think about it. In both cases you can't tell what's right in front of you and what's far away, and what's even there at all. In both cases you can barely remember how you got to where you are and how on Earth to get back. In both cases it's impossible to know what the world looks like to a normal person, someone a little less dislocated than us. Think of that: To that unstuck elbow joint, where are you? And who else is there? And do they honestly care if that thing in front of you is a person or a telephone pole? Not unless you walk into its waiting steel arms and bang your head. And forget everything.

"Can't you see that you lie to yourself? You can't see the world through a mirror. It won't be too late when the smoke clears, because I? I am still here." -Avril Lavigne, describing the life of one C Lev

Owl Pellet

The Owl Pellet Laboratory Exercise is a stereotype in public schools. With little funding, all you need is an owl pellet and a pair of tweezers and you're off. For those of you lucky, lucky ones who get lots of private funding, basically you pick through the remains of what an owl didn't want, couldn't stomach, had no way to deal with. It's been compacted into one "Forget It" bundle, and it's our job to find the "Save It" few. Looking through all of these bits of fur, shards of bone, scraps of plant, I couldn't seem to find anything worth saving. Looking through all of the risks I didn't want to take, chances I couldn't stomach, opportunities I had no way to deal with, there's so much I wanted. But now that it's all in the "Forget It" bundle I'm too tired to reclassify. And too scared.

Stripedy

I wore my striped socks today. No one could see them, because I pulled my black boots on over, but they were there, just as they had been for years on years. They are completely worn through. In fact, even now, lying on my bed with the blue curtains shut, I can see two of my left foot toes peeking out next to me. Many, many times before a stoop sale, my mom's gone through the sock drawer with me and stopped on these rainbow dusted ones: "Hey, aren't these ready to get rid of? Should I throw them away?" Before she could say anything else, I always grabbed the socks and yanked them back towards me. They remind me of a time before I knew what curse words meant, before I had gaping purple bags under my eyes, before I cared if people say my mismatched rainbow socks. I wore boots over, covered all of that old, wrinkled fabric. So maybe I am ready to throw them away, in the trash along with the one Barbie doll I owned, my chewed-up stuffed dog Sleepy, and the dress I wore to my fourth grade graduation. Goodbye, socks. (Hello, stockings.)

Falling Apart

It seems that I'm the only uncracked egg left in the carton. My mother sprained her arm. She bandaged it up herself with tan gauze and closed it first-aid style, as if she was back at camp and fell off a canoe onto a rock, and they lost their paddle, and... and this metaphor is getting longwinded, I'll move on. My father stretched his shoulder. He leaves it like normal and tries not to say anything about it to me, with little etchings of discomfort on his cheeks as if unable to erased. And me? I'm insanely fine. So here I am, feeling like I shouldn't be so serene. So here I am, feeling it is wrong to be happy. So here I am, half of me, away from the rest, not caring. Being happy is nice.

Cityscape

When my uncle came to town for the first time since entering our closely knit and widely spread family,  for my aunt's baby shower, he was surprised at three things: Number one. I was suddenly 5' 3'', a shocking revelation. I could feel him make a conscious choice, reluctantly, that from now on, he had to tilt his head down a little less and accept that I was catching up to him. Number two. Jewish families are weird. This was his first non-holiday interaction closely with the branches of his wife's family tree, and more than once, in a car or on the street, he said, "Are you sure?" to which we responded with a vigorous nod. Southern hospitality is instinctual, but Jewish advice is ironwill. Number three. My room had an incredible view of the entire skyline, left to right, up to down, with an indirect view of the bleeding sunsets. He walked in. It had enough floor space to fit a classroom art table, plus my bed, propped up against the window. I had never looked on it as anything more than a disappointment, a 4 foot subway car I had to crane my head to get into. But uncle W? "WOW!" he exclaimed. "Now this is city living! Almost nicer than a big house! I think I'd rather live here!" I looked around with his eyes. The blue paint on the walls was quaint. The cityscape out the window was amazing. I loved the city, and yearned for a bigger window, a larger zoom on my camera, and a balcony to walk out onto and scream whenever I needed to. I could settle for city. I could rely on city. I could be a part of the city, like a bead on a necklace: You could get me off, but not without removing everything in sight and splitting open the threads.

Sunshine

The park is so beautiful this time of year: The ground strewn with petals, sitting gently on the heads of winter's leaves, the trees the green of animation forests, lit by sunshine tinted by the waves of wind upon your face. There are just the right number of oaks to hide behind. There are just the right number of sticks to scratch notes into the dirt for anyone to find. There are just enough blades of grass that you will never finish counting them. You will never see where the dandelion seed goes as it blows away from you. You will never know exactly when the dirt turned so rich and dark, exactly when the sky fell open and showed its blue underbelly, exactly when the path turns into ground turns into forest and stone. Nothing is too many or too few, except the seconds spent in the calm. I could live in a park alone for days on end without remembering my identity, while still knowing who I am.