You would think he would know what that day was seeing as his father is in the military. Maybe not. It didn't really matter to me.

"They have to be from somewhere." he mused, leaning over me.

I wish that was me those gunshots were for. I don't want to do this anymore.

"Wake up, babe."

I stayed silent. Any utterance of words would bring the day moments, inevitable minutes, closer. I wanted to hide from it and wasn't ready to accept my defeat.

"Babe, wake up now."

No.

He shooked me by the shoulder.

"No. Leave me here."

He crawled up in the bed beside me and dug an elbow into the pillow, resting his head in one hand, stroking my side from my ribs to my waist with the other.

"I just don't want to do it anymore."

"Do what, babe?" he said.

I rolled over into his chest and smelled the dark chocolate cologne I bought him. I inhaled deeply and sighed.

"What don't you want to do anymore?"

"Any of this. School."

"Babe nobody wants to go to class. And that's not such a good thing for a future professor, now is it?"

The future wasn't on my mind as much as finding some way, any way out of the present. All those days ahead of me, months, years, those were days I couldn't keep up. Days where I was always going to be behind because let's face it, intelligence doesn't always get you places. And for what, so I could be miserable. Why not cut the misery short? Brevity is always better in terms of misery.

He rubbed his nose against mine. He didn't understand. I thought about telling him. Everything is grey to the point where I can't tell the difference anymore. I just wanna make it black and I don't know what to do. Say it, come on, say it. He's right there, staring at you just say it. Moment of silence, moment of truth, let's go.

He kissed my head. "You have your meeting still today?"

The moment passed me by. "Yes," I said in a defeated tone. I should have said something. I could have said something. I know the words for all those concepts, definitions too. But just when the time comes to for that sort of thing, no moment is ever right. And even when you do reach the right moment, some gust of heavy, stubborn wind comes and sits on your chest blowing against it so even if you could gather the breath to speak the words, you would have to scream them.

I gave in to his proddings. I got up. I put on my shoes, and dragged my way back across campus to change, to shower, and to continue yesterday. Somehow I know tomorrow will be yesterday too, and all of them after that.

I'm going to post at least once a week until break and then once I hit break I'm gonna be all over the place. I'm just trying to get things to slow down right now and get this semester out of the way.

Here is what is new with me just to catch you up if you're interested:
1. Quit soccer.
2. Talked to coach about going back to soccer after the season.
3. Began dating the guy I talked to all summer. Still with him.
4. Broke computer.
5. Mom had a few surgeries.
6. Sick for three months.
7. Started seeing a counselor at the university.
8. Stopped drinking almost entirely- minus last night.
9. Became a tutor for the university in ethics, history, and english.
10. Became a tutor/campus guide for two Japanese students twice a week.
11. Started working as an assistant again for the Dean of the Honors Program like I did last year.
12. Stopped taking naps.
13. Stopped eating desert.
14. Decided to change my second major from history to philosophy.
15. Saw the Christmas Carol last night!

So I have three huge papers due this week and some other things but this year started off fairly badly and is getting so much better. I have done a lot of fun things- haven't written as much but I think that sometimes you have to live a little so that you have something to write about later.

I am starting another short story. I just wrote one if you haven't checked it out yet feel free to do so. I hope I haven't lost all my readers. I'm gonna have to be a better friend on here and be more present after I get some things out of the way.

Hope you are all having wonderful Sundays.

To Kill a Mockingbird

              There’s something that doesn’t add up with all these equations, a song that just doesn’t sing. It’s a black mockingbird, hung dead over a doorway. Don’t kiss under it. It’s not mistletoe.
              These theorems and hypotheses and steeples and holiday decorations- they don’t speak. There’s no God in them, no scientific or profound truth in them. There’s only people- in science, and religion and everything else. God isn’t a white dove. God isn’t hiding behind a nimbostratus cloud. It’s just a dove. It’s just a cloud. There’s no tune these people are singing to. It’s all just words- empty words, nothing beyond themselves because somebody stole their eyes. That’s when they shot the songbird.

----

Lollipop

            I want a lollipop. I want a red lollipop full of swirls and a stick as long as my arm. The colors should spin like a merry-go-round, or the spokes on a bike, round and round until I’m dizzy from head to toe. When I hold it up it should stick out like a red kite on a blue sky line, shaping clouds of white elephants chasing circus peanuts. It should exist forever and never run out of licks. It should be everything I want it to be.

            But I wake and I open my eyes and it’s only a sucker. It cracks when I bite it, like grinding rock against rock. It sticks to my lips and to my jeans when I drop it- and I always drop it. The taste dulls. Fields of cherries become watered down, flooded out. I want a lollipop but he gave me a sucker, sticky and now fuzzy, cracking and dissolving until one day it will only be a soggy stick.

            She hated his calloused hands. I loved them. They felt like sandpaper. I’d crawl into his lap at night and trace my fingers along his, twigs on tree stumps. It was quiet and calm, like the naps Mother made me take after school when she wouldn’t let me outside to “roll in the mud like some pig.” But Daddy wasn’t like that. He didn’t pay me much mind and just let me sit there. Every once in a while he’d ruffle the curls on my head, like he sometimes did with our mutt Burt’s ears. I liked Burt. Mom said he smelled but he wagged his tail a lot and sometimes when he was close enough it would sweep picture frames off the coffee table. Daddy and I would laugh on rainy days when he would dart in between Mother’s legs and leave Burt-sized paw prints all over the floor. She would chase after him like an angry babysitter or the cat from Tom and Jerry.

I have no special place,
a ghost without a home.
A vagabond, a wanderer,
a lost soul made to roam.
No solace under a great oak tree,
no freedom among the radiant wildflowers.
I have a broken mirror,
an empty hallway,
a vacant lot where I stand,
steam sizzling off busted black concrete,
burning flat feet
and urging them on.
Sanctuary is the broken air in my lungs,
the tired treading of restless feet.
Sanctuary is not buried or plotted,
but ashen, blackened, and scattered to the winds.

Ok so this was an experiment. I looked up the titles of a bunch of Vertical Horizon songs, wrote them down on a list in an order, and tried to write an entire piece just going from thought to thought and title to title. It was sort of spontaneous.
---

A note to you.

I'm clearly not everything you want. I understand that. You're the best I have ever had. To me you were always really more of a god, something that was never tangible no matter how hard I gripped your hands or securely held your arms or long I kept your lips. No shackle proved strong enough and that's ok because I'm still here. And you're not. And I've learned that that's ok because you fleetingly change like a muse and more than anything you're a shooting star, the one that leaves all the other stars behind; and as terrible as that is to feel, it's a terrible beauty because that fact that you're shooting through my life like a bullet or some sort of canon ball designed to leave the foundations as they are but completely useless in function, is what makes you beautiful. It's rooted in your nature and unraveling that thread from all the others to keep you will destroy just what I'm fighting so hard to keep.

So this is my resignation. An understanding resignation devoid of bitterness but a resignation all the same. Goodbye again. As much as you are a woman and strong and independent this really is the story of a girl who will never grow old or change and that's fine. Once you catch wildlife and catch it the beauty of the freedom it once held dwindles and all you have left is a crushed soul. And as much as I love that soaring, racing, stubbornly independent wildlife, capturing and imprisoning it is too vile for me. So while I'm tempted I'm going to do this to save me from myself.

Doing this, I realize I'll never know all of you. There are going to be frontiers I have not explored, moments I won't ever know with this angel without wings. And I'm barely breathing, drawing hesitant breaths but unable to drag myself down in my steps and keep me in this familiar place. Walking away is so much harder to do than being left behind because it's voluntary but I have to give you back on this grey sky morning where nothing shines and nothing darkens, the sky caught between darkness and light and indecision. But here it is, my heart in my hand, as I leave this miracle. I was lucky to have a chance but I'll be unfortunate if I stick around.

So here I am, taking this powerful, long, graceful blackbird and sending it up, myself shackled here to the ground. She's so high as I return to my sunrays and saturdays. She soaks underwater in the diffraction of light and all the different hues, watching me with regret as I trudge back across an empty marsh to a place where it's dry. It's neither of our faults. I just need something ordinary and need something extraordinary. I'm normal and you are anything but simple which is so strange because the things I love about you are why we can't be together.

When you cry, I normally stand there, watching as the world falls down with your sorrows but only you are untouchable by falling bricks and cracked concrete. I get struck and I bruise. I get cut and I scar. These differences won't go away no matter how you say you'll change. I've never asked you to. We'll just rest forever in that echo of what used to be. I clearly can't have you as you are and I don't want you to be anything else. So here is where I leave you, where I take my hand in my heart and leave this other world to return back to reality. Maybe I didn't know it at the time but I could never survive forever in your world, beyond you there is nothing to sustain me and I'd rather not be this parasite. Thank you for the odd moments and the untouchable days. Something tells me you will find everything you want and I hope to find something that I need. Yours truly.

You'll sit down by yourself and think about the times you've pushed and shoved me and what good friends we might have been. And then you're gonna sigh a little, and maybe even cry a little but one of these days you're gonna love me.

One of my favorite songs as a little girl. Not exactly the kind of song most little girls pick out but I like the contemplative tone of it.

So reading the Kite Runner. Page one. Very promising since my friend recommended it. I need a book that gives me a new lease on life anyways. I watched Rent the other day for the millionth time. That usually does it. It's a little more cutting edge than I am. My life is lacking in the controversy department.

My roommates this year are going to take care of that though. Teammates who are obnoxious and loud and strip me of my shy side. A couple of people have mentioned that they are going to corrupt me but I know I'm safe in the respect that I won't do anything overly stupid and I revel in the fact that I am going to do some stupid things. All the best stories in life come from the stupid things.

Going to do some writing once my mother leaves. I'm house-sitting and she stopped by. I generally try not to write around people. It's a solitary sort of thing for me. The actual act of it is anyways. The less soliary part of it is of course sharing  it with you guys.

And so it goes I suppose. Look Dr. Seuss AND Vonnegut in one sentence lol. Anyways, off to read some of this book and wait out the mother-daughter battle of what are you wearing-what are you doing tonight which will inevitably occur. Lovely day to all. Once again thank you for sticking around for my bouts of writing and my sabbaticals as well as my decent writing and the occasional disappointment. It really does mean something to me.