Roads Less Traveled

She looked at me in her muddled state with eyes that had never been clearer, dark blue diamonds with storms beneath the surface. There were clouds of dialogue floating over every mind around us, and she sliced the sky with her words in only a whisper.

“I think every mind has a graveyard”, she said to me through the fog, “Some are just more decorated than others”

And above us the adults paused for a toast, raised their glass stems in the artificial air. And below us the children created scribbled worlds on paper with colored wax and pastel ink. All of them with graveyards tucked away, shrouded by background noise; not the static on the radio, just an easy-listening station.

“I wonder”, she said, “Who forgot to lay flowers on mine?”

It’s a complicated equation, one part afterthought and two parts unknown, a cocktail of a set-in-stone past and an uncertain future. For every momentary memorial, there’s two already buried memories, resurrected only in the corners of the mind.

For each one who chooses to take the scenic route down memory lane, there are two who opt for the last known exit off of life in the fast lane.

Sleepless Dreams

The haunting colors of a memory that separates life into before and after swirls around me, a reminder of how it feels to reminisce while the rest of the world sleeps. The above reverts from clear diamonds to coal, soot smeared across a churning sky. A suburban town between a tale of two cities, we’re caught in a starless fantasy. When we look up, we only see a void- and sometimes I wonder if the sky if just a mirror of below.

Somedays we worship the airplanes, thinking of all the separate lives in a capsule shooting through space. Other days we look to the highways, the endless blurs going anywhere but the in-between. All the while, sitting on the beside table, a harsh dose of alternate reality stares back at unblinking eyes.

It’s when the haze of night creeps over the greener grass to our side of the fence, when the muted world leaves nothing on the table, that the empty bedroom starts to hum and the streetlights begin to blur and it seems the walls turn into mirrors and the sky reflects the thoughts of all of us still stuck in a sleepless dream.

 

Liebster Award

Guess what? Yours truly has been nominated for a Liebster Award by the amazing Jenny Li! You should go check out her blog, http://insatiablebeforedeath.wordpress.com/  .So, the rules of the award are:

1. List 11 facts about yourself.
2. Answer the 11 questions the blogger who nominated you left.
3. Ask 11 new questions for those who you nominate.
4. Choose 11 bloggers with less than 200 followers to nominate.
5. Go to each blogger’s page and let them know about the award.
6. Thank the person who nominated you and link back to their blog.

So, 11 facts about myself….

1. I play lacrosse
2. I should be studying for exams right about now
3. Whenever a sad song comes on in the car, I look out the window and pretend I’m in a movie
4. I love all genres but country music. It should be a crime to commit country music.
5. I can lick my left elbow. Cause that gets you far in life.
6. I love big cities NYC, Paris, Munich…I love them all
7. Me, sarcastic? Nooo….
8. I feel most alive late at night
9. When telemarketers call, I pretend I don’t speak english. Sprechen Sie Deutsch? I think my biggest fear is a telemarketer who actually speaks german…
10. I want to be pope, just so I can change some things around this Vatican place. Like, the no shorts rule inside the Vatican? Do you know how much faster The Da Vinci Code would’ve been solved if they were a little more chill about that?
11. I have a strange sense of humor

So, on to Jenny’s questions:
1. What is your favorite YouTube video?
I love how they shoot the music videos for Lana Del Rey. Whether you love or hate her songs, the videos are genius. The monologue at the beginning of Ride is great, so I’d have to say that’s my favorite. Pompeii by Bastille is also really good.
2. Who is your favorite living author, and why?
My favorite living author…probably John Greene. The Fault in Our Stars was amazing. His books are the kind you can reread right after you finish them and not be bored.
3. What is the price of immortality?
The price of immortality is living, I think. Not living as in your heart is beating, but the other kind of living. Because since you don’t have a limited lifetime to do the things you want, you can just put them off and not really live.
4. What is the most recent book you did not finish?
The Vampire Diaries. It’s like every single Twilight knockoff and vampire cliché compressed into one huge book. Life is too short to read about predictable vampire love triangles.
5. If you could have one superpower, what would it be?
To snap my fingers and be able to go anywhere I wanted. Like, *poof* now I’m in London! That would be beyond cool.
6. What are five things you want to do before you die?
I want to live in New York City, publish something, drive through the night, spend more time exploring Europe, and spend an entire day in a big city, just by myself.
7. What is in your bottom right desk drawer?
My desk doesn’t have drawers, it has shelfs. On my bottom right shelf I have a science project I did back in middle school about genetics, a bunch of post it notes, and…a sock. I should probably go put that in the laundry basket.
8. What is the most useless piece of advice you have ever been given?
“Just use spellcheck”
9. If you could relive one moment of your life, which would it be?
That’s hard…probably seeing Paris at night. It was amazing, seeing the river, the subway, the city when everything was lit up.
10. What is your favorite soundtrack?
The soundtrack from Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist.
11. What would you most like to change about yourself?
Hmm…my vision. I have terrible eyesight.

So, for those of you who I’ve nominated, here are my questions for you:

1. What does human mean to you?
2. What song have you had on replay recently?
3. If you could give yourself a new middle name what would it be?
4. If you could only live in one city for the rest of your life, where would it be?
5. Who is your favorite youtuber?
6. What’s outside the nearest window?
7. If you could win a million dollars, would you?
8. What’s the last thing you copied and pasted?
9. What song do you think has the best lyrics?
10. What’s the best blog post you’ve ever written?
11. If you could make one law, what would it be?

And now, the bloggers/writers I’d like to nominate:

http://observantlefty.wordpress.com/

http://behindtheivory.wordpress.com/

http://katrycekay.wordpress.com/

http://poisonedredapple.wordpress.com/

Pawns of the Night

The day is bleeding into the edges of night, pastels seeping into the corners of the horizon line. In a few more minutes the rush of reality will become too bitter of a pill to swallow together, so we’ll mumble goodbyes while the sky still feels genuine and the streetlights can still slice through the haze. My feet are no longer glued to the sidewalk, legs lifting from the grass to run through the door before the sun can bleach the memories sickly sterile and the music fades from the drywall. While the rest of the world squeezes the sleep from their eyes and the washes the promise of night from their pores, we’ll crawl into cold beds, still sedated enough from the near darkness. The difference between us and them is their dreams begin at dark and ours only start to fade at dawn. All day we’ll pretend to harbor nothing more than the world’s ticking hands as we wait to become nothing more than pawns of an inky sky.

 

Stained Echos and Northern Skies

Suspended from a tight rope above an unsuspecting city, the clouds are silk up here but the sky is cutting and the moon is as piercing as the streetlights below, a faded glow of forgotten conversations, words mumbled underneath the iron poles, just shadows left as the night runs on. The show must go on, but there’s always an intermission to slip out backstage doors and whisper to whoever happens to slip the words into faded blue back pockets, “again”. That’s all that needs to escape from kneaded tongues, because when all that’s said is simple there’s more room to spin it around bodies like little invisible bandages, feet on the edge of waiting, one hand on the ladder that leads up to the silver string above sleeping concrete. ‘Again’

You know the feeling before the ground falls out from under your feet and all that’s left is a sparrows eye view of a sinking sky? That’s what it feels like, as sharp air and stinging church bells cut through the sky and something reminiscent of train horns fog the air; as the top of your barefoot is cast into the echo of light we call the moon. Maybe this is all just a breeze to the many, but to the huddled masses smattered across the night sky, teetering on a straining tightrope, it’s a hurricane among church bells and train cars. Our northern star is just an echo from above, but it’s the clearest light, waning on a shrinking sky as everything else expands from the heat below.

Invisible Shadows

Peeling paint underneath the pastel wallpaper, locking the car door the moment you see a ‘them’, a ‘them’ that’s somehow so separate from the ‘us’.

It’s all so sensible it can drive you insane.

There’s a beating in the ears as bare feet pass over frozen pavement, running over ice in nothing but jeans and the cardigan found crumpled on the stairwell. Clouds escaping dry lips as the sky darkens and the streetlights become warmer. Running from cream-colored siding, Audi’s with salt stains on the side, to boarded windows among concrete blocks scratching at the skyline. Heart stuck in the throat, eyes struggling to stay open as the mind races towards cracked sidewalks and discarded papers blowing under Brooklyn Bridge.

There’s no purity without pain, but I’ve always believed in shadows when no ones in the room.

Electric

Saw you on the corner of nowhere special and the imaginary, racing shadows with hands to your lips. We walked to the intersection of coincidence and fate, not wanting to let go, too scared to move past the yellow light. We were trapped in the best part of town in a place they call purgatory, free from the prying eyes if only for a moment. And the moments turned to hours as we reveled in the parallel universe we’d created. I’ve flipped though the torn pages that sit in the corner of my mind, a warped kind of dictionary, and it seems there’s only one word to describe it. No synonyms, no real definition but a memory.

Electric.

We painted ourselves the color of here, filled our minds with only the notion of now, cause the futures too uncertain and there’s no place I’d rather be.

Electric.

Neon signs in my mind, speeding through the red light as we gained momentum and nervously ignored the stop signs planted on either side of the road, neat lines of warning as we swerved to and from reality. Eager eyes, rabbit heart, the only sound the humming of something…what’s the word?

Electric.

Drafts

Little details burn your throat. She likes her coffee black and her red converse without socks and she’s never danced in the rain, but she’s sung in the snow. All the small brushstrokes making up her whole you’ll never need to, never want to recall again.

Some night not far from this one, when there’s nothing to say and everything is rushing through the tunnels of your spinning head, all the eager exclamations you never let slip off your tongue, all the words you let lay on your teeth, will swarm through you, a blizzard of the memories you wish you had.

The covers will be tossed aside to stare at an empty phone screen, artificial light filling the bedroom as you read through all the words you wanted to send, all the letters you second guessed and scattered.

If you ever want to know someone, take a look through the Drafts folder.

Stereo

Cloth seats and crumbling paint, singing along to your Katy Perry and my Lana Del Rey,

“If we don’t leave town now

We’re never gonna get out of here alive”

Speeding past the stationary figurines posing for their imagined camera. They’re a little narcissistic, but we’re more than a little idealist, a clashing mix of the colors we love and the choruses they hate.

We’re too loud when we’re on our own, too small in the empty buildings, but it’s never been more electric.

Store brand soda and loose change in the cup holder is our two-way ticket to the assured existence of, ‘one day’, and the wind weaving through my eyelashes and shouted promises from behind the glass as the tempo turns from wistful words and eyes turned downwards to exhilarated bursts and hands through my hair.

Cola bubbles on glossy lips and a world revolving just fast enough to keep the breathing fast.

Pink Staccato Night

It’s a pink staccato night, flourescent lights floating under a dull moon. The beat of glossy heels on decaying crosswalks in the most alive chapter of night keep my eyelashes intertwined for the slightest of seconds and my fingers dancing around the possibilities of doubt. It’s the most electric time of night, strappy heels linked around fingers, high notes shouted across dusty snow, little slices of mirror left in the gutter, reflecting all the words we forgot to pack in our plastic compacts.

Whispy clouds from grainy embers escape your painted smokestack lips as we sit on the curb, among others with aching feet and fiery dreams slowly melting into reality. It’s the kind of dark that we’ve been told to fear, the kind of neon signs we’ve been told to run from, and it only makes us more alive as we scatter from red doors. Our sight is flickering but our eyes are open wide, and the concrete among the shadows below neon lights has never felt more like home.