Fall Break

We were passing white nights under black skies, and the air froze as lungs expanded, leaving open mouths wide, heads turned to heavens searching for starlight to illuminate the vacant spaces linking our teeth. There are no goodbyes between the half hours around midnight and the layers of 2 a.m. slumber, blue ivory feet sticking to frosted concrete. Winter consumed Lady Fall while night leapt from behind the streetlamp, catching us without headlights on a winding road. Let’s get lost, you said, let’s get lost; let’s find the stars again. But, honestly, I might run away with Orion if you can’t find a more dazzling belt. I’ve always been mesmerized by open sunroofs, night air caught mid-breath, and the prospect of losing our way exactly where we meant to be. I tried to tell you, but when I said goodnight, my voice turned to whispers and the sun dipped behind the trees. I tried to tell you; I found the starlight between my teeth. I told you we don’t have cliffs where I come from, just flat fields and these rolling hills, trying so hard to build up to a wave big enough to earn my suicide. These canyons you brought to me, wrapped up in paper, cuts of land you carved with the groove of your hands, are begging me to be the one who discovers flight. I always knew I’d jump, but I never dreamed it would be off the owl’s eyelashes, from the tips of her talons. She promised to watch over you while I slept backbone to drywall, and I promised to teach you how to fly. I only wish we could both have hollow bones.

Daddy's work shirt was my art smock...

Tomorrow I'll be seeing my dad for the first time this week. My parents aren't divorced or anything, he works the night shift at Toyota--Body Weld department--so I don't see him much at all. It's almost like living in a house all on my own these days with my mom at work or class until nine or ten in the evening and my dad leaving for work at 4. I get home and he's just left and my mom won't be home for a few more hours.

I make dinner for myself.
I wash dishes.
I do my laundry.
I kind of miss my dad a lot.

I remember when I was six, my teacher, Ms. Reedy told me I looked blue when we were getting ready for story time on the reading carpet. She called my dad and he was so upset that he had to get up so early in
the morning to come and get me. When he got to my school, though, he took one look at me and practically carried me home. I had caught the flu for the first time. I think it was the first time I really got to
stay home and bond with my dad. Nowadays whenever my dad and I go out it's usually on errands for my
mom. We think the same way, me and my dad, so, naturally we're completely incompetent in WalMart. I was hoping I would get a chance to go grocery shopping with him again this weekend, but between
Chicken Chow Mein night with Sara and Madi and a visit to Centre, I don't think it's gonna work out.

*sigh*

Sometimes I forget how much I really love my dad. He's the one I inherited my artist-brain from so a lot of times our personalities just meld and I forget how influential he actually was to my writing. Not that my mom wasn't, my dad was just a huge chunk of where I found a love for books, music and movies. I'll go tomorrow to Southland Bowling Lanes to see my dad bowling in a charity tournament with his work. It'll only be about twenty or thirty minutes, but at least I'll get to say I saw him this week at all.

11/12

Good morning all. I hope you've slept well. Today begins another day in the life of a high school senior. Woo.

This morning I discovered six things:
1. Toothpaste is not to be swallowed in large amounts.
2. If you sleep with your hand under the pillow, it might turn blue by morning.
3. If you're going to drive down Springhill Drive at 8 a.m., it's a good idea to have sunglasses.
4. Just because you've been dating someone for four months, doesn't mean they'll take the initiative and be the first one to say, "good morning".
5. Scarves make everything better.
6. Google is the worst place to look for news.

Big news in Grobania (even if I'm a few days late):
Josh Groban's new website is up and running!!!

Ah, another day.
Good morning world, I hope you survive the day.

She Was Day Once

I met night on a subway train

moving east from 42nd, searching
for a lost coin underneath the plastic
seats. She was wrapped in sheets
and fur skin coats, discarded
scraps of blue jeans.

Her eyes were white like star blood
and she whispered galaxy lullabies
saying Orion had left her
in the half hour folds around midnight.

She is a single mother of the moon.

The Milky Way was strung
on the shrunken skin of her left wrist,
clanging against the rings of Saturn
and reflecting Pluto’s blue against her bones.

“There’s no wealth for the night,”
she said, gritty fingernails
scraping against graffiti floor,
“There’s no money for the stars.”

Memorandum

She waits on a star map,

spread across the floor, pinning
blue string in the shapes of
new constellations.

With each drive of the pin
into corkboard she bows her head
in silent prayer.

“I’m mapping out eternity,”
she says, “So we’ll always
have someplace to go.”

There is a sapphire spider
web wrapped around her fingers
and she pulls it into a ladder,
a cradle, a loop knot and
back out again.

“When the string ends,”
she whispers, pushing down
another pin, “that’s where
heaven is.”