I am in no way a romance novel.

If the snow had any integrity at all then in would blow open my door, stretch itself thin to reach me and be my white out. It would Freeze my eyelids shut and pause me instantly in my sleeping position. Sneaky and stone cold. To the roof, To the roof, To the ROOF Matilda!

I don't give a fuck, let it freeze. I'm bone weary of trying to feel what I'm supposed to be feeling, and I will have no business pretending I do. I'm not dead for Pete's sake! I'm just a little sad. I'm not vapid! I'm adjusting! I still have my two feet and my blue eyeballs and my teeth. I still laugh when prompted and sometimes when not. I feel fantastic! At least I'm not a vegetable! Perhaps you may have an opinion and perhaps you don't, but frankly dears, I don't give a damn.

For now I am blank, then,

for snow.

for me.

Fresh and clean, wobbly whatever.

If north highland could be my clean sheets, then I would have no trouble knowing that I'm slept in, so slightly, but mostly just written on.

Over and Over, I think maybe I'm a sonnet, and over, or page 223 of a romance novel, the part where she falls eternally in love and then slaps herself in the milky white big busted dumb founded face and walks herself home instead.

Hell no. I am in no way a romance novel.

Kids should be out sledding but they're not, they should be traipsing through the butter, tipping the pristine where it rarely surfaces, But they aren't. Kids can't help it. They pounce at the mere mention of anything still. They can't stand the idea of sterile. They organize their armies and cry at things to rust them. Shut up Jessy, That is a gross and biased accusation. My Apologies. Rather, Its wearing and being worn. Personalization rather than consumption.

Today I will most likely embroider my initials on the sidewalk, but I'd change them, because I don't particularly like my initials. Though my last name would stay the same.

It's winter, and I'm not denying it.

Fear creeps at you, not with you.

j

dogfire.

Can't I get out when its not really that fast, a duck and roll, and chain link fence, and switcheroo.

It is strange that we crave the things that hurt us.

When logic fails my words take over and put me where I have been and always will be.

Chickenshit.

Give me my money back.

j

It's winter.

Its winter and I'm not denying it. So much around me is dying while so much else is being born. I've loved you. I've lost you. I know you. I knew you. I believed in this and that, and I've all but abandoned it now. I feel so full of new and old right now that I am nothing but a transition. I thought I was Marilyn but maybe I'm Jackie.

Nothing ever stands.

It's winter and I'm not denying it. I could try to guild myself in business and costume but I think I'm at peace with just being sad for the time being. There. I said it. I'm sad.

I'm not dying, I'm sad. I'm not worthless, I just miss you. I'm not hopeless, but I sleep a lot later that I used to, I write a lot more, I drink a lot more, I smile a little less, I drink slightly more and to a point. I laugh a little harder than i need to just to make sure It doesn't show.

Does it show?

I'll accept it, but it still hurts. I know you're not gone, I know you're not away, but I feel the need to mourn for the things that will never happen again. Matter of fact, i think I've always mourned the little things.

You're perfect, he said, but you're not perfect for me.

How fond does my heart have to grow before you stop being absent?

They both agreed.

I took a walk today. It was cold. It's cold and I'm not above it, It's winter and im not denying it. I walk and have walked this road a lot. I knows me better than I know it i think. But it most likely fashions me a traitor to the east side that I've been spending so much tread on. "oh, highland, its not you its me, I'm just so busy, I'm just not ready for commitment"

"bullshit"

it slings back.

I'll make it up to you baby. Let me walk a couple blocks, I was gone and I'm not denying it. One more to Amsterdam ave. I'm sorry and I mean it. Almost to Virginia and you're warming up to me. If I get to ponce you're mine and you can deny it. Don't lie, I know you missed me.

be honest.

do you miss me?

I've walked here often and before. Though previously I've walked to remember, and now I walk to get away. Away from everything I've known and everything I've wanted, and from all memories of you. Well, not entirely. I can't deny it, I like the memories, but they hurt.

If i keep walking I'll maybe sweat out the loss, and breathe out the ache.

It a dull ache that cant quite transform to a roar. Its the cold that tenses my shoulders enough to hunch them forward just a bit, and push my hands deep enough into my fleece. It's dull, Its so very dull.

If i keep walking I'll get warm.

If i keep walking I'll sweat it out.

If i keep walking I'll come full stop.

It's getting dark now but I don't mind because the christmas lights are up this month.

Its getting cold now, but I don't notice because my mind is buzzing and I'm almost home.

My fingers are going numb on the right where I'm clasping the phone to my ear for company.

It's winter and I can't deny it.

Post Shower.

I just took a shower. I just took the longest shower of my life. That was the best goddamn shower I've ever taken. Hot water ran down the top of my head like an egg cracks, easy and slow. I swear in sank through my skull and ran straight down through my neck and spine and made It's way to my knee caps where it flooded them and nearly knocked me over from the force, but stood me up tall with a jerk instead. When it reached my feet in soaked through the arches and down the drain where it had always intended to be and I knew it.

Sometimes I cant help but need to close my eyes and breathe deeply. I fear that If I don't, I will be too overwhelmed by all the life around me and just bottle up and explode! There is nothing I want more than life, there is nothing I do better.

The conflict is the meaty part of life. The struggle is the skeleton. Laughter is merely the skin and I'm drowning in it.

I'm so fucking busy, I'm so fucking happy. I love getting my hands dirty, tiring and toiling and complaining and fighting to be alert at times. It's redeeming.

Though I know I will inevitably return to the thoughts that parade around as fear late at night, but also call themselves "research", I don't care, I'm happy in this moment.


I wonder, is all we are to smoke drink fight and fuck? Are we just a mass of merry go rounds spinning at a velocity our brains aren't capable of catching? Should I be satisfied or get satisfied?

I take comfort in that no one else really has a clue either, even if they say they do, even if they write books or coach lives or hold offices, they're lying. We're all lying. you're all a bunch of fuckin liars, everyone one of ya. ps. I love you all, and I cant help it.

It just started raining. I think it will take me a while to get used to the idea of rain not being foreboding or anxious. It never rains in Texas. When it does it makes me think that god is trying to sell me something. Somehow though, In my house, right now, where its freezing and two thirds sleeping, the rain is non threatening. Instead it lulls me, clams me, talks to me even. I'm sitting here cold and achy in my bed, snuggling beneath the cotton that's swallowing me up and I'm thinking about how fragile I am. I'm a slave to my body in fact. To its pain and its hunger and its temperature and its desires, I am at it's mercy. I can't get a damn thing done without being interrupted by something my body needs everyday. You'd think I'd be mad at it, but instead I just coddle it. I feed it and rest it and clothe it and so on. Why, I'm just a big baby.

That's what I am, a baby. And so are you. A baby, scrambling around to find something to justify calling ourselves significant. Unique.

Stop. You already are. I believe you without all the bad press.

Whatever your reasons, I like talking to people who are comfortable enough with themselves to talk about things that they actually care about.

j

I need to write just to write

Do you ever brush your own skin just because no one else will? Do you ever feel like everyone in the room knows something you don't? Does anyone know what I'm talking about? I take a certain amount of comfort in realizing and somewhat hoping that everyone else shares in these particular moments. Times in which you just feel so defeated despite all your heroism, times in which your chest thirsts for the feel of another pressed against it, and times in which your own logic doesn't seem to make sense in its context.

The absolute value of life is that which you can conjure. Passion makes life worth living. Art makes life worth living. Laughter.

The feel of hands on my cheeks makes life worth living, even if they are only my own.

Does the fear of the clamor in the other room reveal anything to me? Does the constant drone of inevitability weigh on me? Am I a product of everything else and nothing unto myself?

not today.

Today I feel so god damned jealous, and I don't even know why. Life can be so utterly frustrating, and it can be so intensely satisfying simultaneously.

Pleasure and pain pleasure and pain...all we are is pleasure and pain...she sang softly to her son.

We are all the worst versions of ourselves, and hopefully most days, we are the best.

Take my money and my family and my friends and my home, my heart my sight my limbs my bones, but please god please leave me my passion.

leave me my passion.

La Dee Da

I feel like I should compile this list, and i dont know where else to do it:

Most influential and moving song lyrics that I have come across in the recent past...as I think of them in no particular order, and not necessarily synonymous with the quality of the song and/or artist(i guess just lyrics that have meant something to me):

"We’re just a million little god’s causin rain storms turnin’ every good thing to rust.I guess we'll just have to adjust."-arcade fire

"its a bittersweet symphony this life" -the verve

"louder than sirens louder than bells sweeter than heaven and hotter than hell"-flo and the machine

"all the roads we have to walk are winding and all the lights that lead us there are blinding"-oasis

"lover, you should have come over."-jeff buckley

"this is how it works youre young until youre not, you love until you dont, you try until you cant, you laugh until you cry, you cry until you laugh and everyone must breathe until theyre dyin breath"-regina

"I cant take my eyes of you, I cant take my mind off you"-damien rice

"I'm never gonna know you now but im gonna love you anyhow"-elliot smith

"we were sixteen maybe less, maybe a little more"-iron and wine

"you plant a rose and if the rose comes up youre thankful to god and if it doesnt you cuss em'...But, oh, what a beautiful thing when you sing...Hear all them bells ringing out in the street, Hammer strikes the metal and it makes me believe"-ryan adams

"It's you heart, its in your art your beauty, even in this world of lies theres purity you got innocence in you eyes, even in this world of lies youre still hopeful very sexy very sexy"-jb but better as mph

"oh my my, oh hell yes, honey put on that party dress"-tp

"Gravity is working against me,And gravity wants to bring me down...Oh twice as much aint twice as good,And can't sustain like a one half could, It's wanting more, That's gonna send me to my knees"-jm

"come pick me up take me out fuck me up and steal my records, screw all my friends behind my back, with a smile on your face and then do it again"-ryan adams

"if heaven and hell decide that they both are satisfied, illuminate the no's on their vacancy signs, if theres no one beside you when your soul embarks, then i will follow you into the dark"-death cab for cutie

The entirety of "fake plastic trees" by radiohead, most notably " i cant help but feelin' i could blow through the ceilin'"...and most of that album...all of that album.

what lyrics have stuck with you guys?

Pardon the mess, I'm remodeling.

Is it wrong to want more than this? Wait, not more, different.

I want to construct and be consumed, To build and rebuild, to not be at a loss for words.

I want to lift your grimy fingertips off my skin and have to you look right back at me the same way im looking at you.

I want to be satiated and challenged.

I want to have sex, and not be held accountable.

I want to feel like life is more than a series of wanting and gaining and pining.

I need to feel that ive done my part, but have given to myself in the process.

I want to stay up until five am. I want freedom.

I want to admit when im lonely and not expect some kind of bullshit sympathy, I just want to feel it, and admit it, fully. Im lonely. There.

I think im going to have to find my own way, or make it. I'll make it.

What the fuck is so wrong with being honest anyways? Im so frustrated all the time with what is and isn't acceptable to say, im just so fucking tired of it, i think i could bottle up and explode. I know that its not admirable and i know its seems im a quitter,selfish,unrealistic. What the hell is wrong with me? Is anything wrong with me?

Am i that person who sucks life from others and breathes nothing in return. Have i no output?

Im sure you'll all have something to say about me.
Im sure ive already said plenty of it myself.

Introvert, Extrovert, Lazy, Megalomaniac, Insecure, Overly Secure, Honest, Unapologetic, small, simple, yearning, temperamental, emotional, doomed, a square in a round peg.

But right now im just dark.
Im just a deep green with flecks of olive.
Im some kind of glowing otherwise.

How strange and how beautiful.
How tragic and not.

Sometimes i want nothing to do with life.
Sometimes i want all over me.

Im sure id love to say something else that makes sense, but i dont really care enough right now.

yours,

the impostor.

sincerely,

the scam artist.

love,

baggy jeans, a bra, and everything bitter.

That's what little girls are made of.

j