There's a blank space in her head, a small chunk of her memory and personality gone, and she picks at it with her musings and music, wanting and not wanting to know what was once there. She can't remember why it happened, and she has a gut feeling that she doesn't want to - that instead she should just barrel forward with her life and worry about the past later, and from a safely distant vantage point - but she also wants to embrace the unknown. This is the same tendancy that forces her to climb heights that frighten and read books knowing she'll have nightmares, a slightly massochistic trait.

The seat of the passenger van has crumbs of sand on it that are grinding into her skin. She does her best to ignore this.

She attempts sleep, but her eyes are feeling for the sky, constantly opening and searching the cloudy sapphire depths for answers. She secretly feels as if a certain wispy pattern will show her everything she's been looking for, alighting her imagination with thoughts of airborne wonders and impossibilities, but also explaining her life in a way that is gentle and simple.

A memory, a distraction, explodes into her conciousness, and for a moment she is wracked by indignation, fear, anger, and pain...but this is a regular thing, and just as she suspected, it passes, and it is just another second of recognition among many that have randomly gripped her for months now.

She can remember her last night on the beach: the waves were crooning with the voices of stones falling and leaves shaking, a sound that she could say with absolute certainty was the only tune that could penetrate straight to her heart. The brilliant yellow moon, hovering like a deity among insubstantial gray clouds and sharp stars, cast it's eerily irresistible glow out across the waters like a golden path laid out for the brave walker. She had gazed intently down it's length into the glowing darkness far beyond her sight, enchanted forever, and forever wondering what would happen if she followed it...surely death, but perhaps death was the ocean, and the ocean encompassed death, and those who were swallowed became a part of something majestic and enticing. The thought was tempting enough to draw her feet into the water and to toy with the meaning of true freedom.

The undertow tugged gently, knowing that the battle was already won, and that she would be back.

A Pink Glowing Lamp Post on a Snowy Day

Today there was a layer of snow draped elegantly over the world outside my window. Tufts of white spiraled from the cloudy sky, dancing onto the flurry-crowned flowerpots; bushes and tree limbs ached and groaned under heavy loads, bending almost double in an effort to rid themselves of the proof of winter's prowess. Somehow, all of this happened while I slept, transforming the world into something alien and beautiful and timeless -- and though the moment that sunlight hits ice to reflect into your soul is infinite, the chilly flakes will die quickly, and February will pass, and life will continue despite their absence. Despite my slumber, or their death, or my death, life will continue infinitely for a moment and then stretch forever, so far outreaching to extremes that a moment becomes completely negligible. A snow flake's life starts and ends so quickly; but within that consciousness, if there be such a thing blessed upon a crystallized whiff, was there a brief eternity? I think about my own life and the eventuality of death, and I feel as if I'll never end...but I also feel brief as well, stunted, already finished.

A snowflake is so small. Thousands have slapped my windshield with puny malice, a pitiful display of strength that is wiped away by a mechanical wiper. The particles that compose the frozen tendrils of water are smaller still; perhaps the amount of minuscule components tends towards infinity. And just as they are immeasurably small, so the universe is immeasurably gigantic. It is all so small and yet so big at the same time. Maybe that's what the true meaning of eternity is; existing in a moment, being small and mortal and alone, and yet in that moment also being joined by the grand multitude of the universe, magnificent and endless.

Somehow two months went by without writing. College looms, sleep is hard to find, and I've healed from all the mayhem that passed through my heart.

early morning storms

Time has a stutter. June, inconsequential and carefree, flew past me in a ceaseless blur, a torrent of seconds that I found impossible to slow. Fourth of July was something I had looked forward to in a nostalgic and pseudo-patriotic way, but of course, it wasn't what I'd expected. Then, the pulsating shock of July Ninth, and lately, every minute crawls by me, hanging on as long as possible and then lingering in my memory to make itself last beyond it's normal life span; looking only five days behind me is like gazing into eternity. Has it really been only ten days since my life flipped itself upside-down? I feel like a different person, as if within these ten days I've been born and grown all over again in some other person's body, then reminded of the shell that I belong to. My thoughts are full of significant emptiness; my consciousness tiptoes through my mind and shies away from the things that disrupt the quiet, like I'm avoiding metal in the Operation board game. It's difficult to fit into my own skin this way, and looking in the mirror, I barely recognize the stranger in front of me; or rather, I mistake her for a sister or my mother. I haven't lingered long enough in this body to really get used to it again, and yet, this week has been...infinite. I can't imagine where more time can be found, when it seems as if ten lifetimes are stretched behind me with memories and insights to fill several more. So much emotion and energy has been spent that I imagine my soul to be old and withered, but none the wiser for it's age and silence.

radiation sundrops

They're sprinkling down from the sky
to turn me in to something else
to make you different than you were
and brighten up our eyes with light.

They're pulling us from underground
our dead hands writhing for a touch
our dried tongues aching for a taste
to bring us back to lives we loved.

We're so excited, so relieved
to find the things we "really need"
but radiation makes you bleed
and sundrops hiss wherever they please.

We zombies scatter all around
and lurching through the streets of green
we question what we thought we knew;
now we know what life can do.