Cedar Hills Days

I didn't mean to make you believe in a reoccurring dream.
Because while you were working up the courage I was across the city
remembering this night last year.
I was with his family.
and I had just bought a new dress (I wore that dress yesterday, actually)
and just learned how out of place I was with the tight kids.

I watched the fireworks 

close enough to you to not need a blanket on my legs, 

but far enough that you had to repeat yourself too often.

It was like old times.

It was new times.

It was better.

We remembered all the old stories

and all the could have should have would have

I never told you how I wished you'd see me all those years.
How many jealous nights I spent on your phone number.

How I had wished for a recurrence of our little cameo.

and yet here we are

you wishing for another season

me wishing for a flat-line relationship

 I don't control the weather

and my heart makes rain clouds better than sun

So don't ask for me in July

I didn't know what to do.

Or how to tell you I was confused.

Unsure.

exhausted. vulnerable. strong.

but I hope our little running doesn't have a finish line.

Cause I might be walking right now
but I'm gonna need some distance when I'm running.

6/24/14

"this is divine. This is sublime." I'll say.
"good," you'll say "you deserve the best."
and I'll blush like I'm 14 again and you'll make me feel fourteen again but in the best way. and you'll understand that cheesecake bites taste good in every flavor and it doesn't count as coffee if it comes in a cone. People won't get what we're up to or why the sidewalk is just so funny. but we will.

because when you're happy nothing has to make sense to be right.

It's why there's no textbook, no curriculum no class on how to smile. There is no logic, no arithmetic, no algorithm on happiness. You can't bottle bubbly, no matter what the vineyards tell you. but somehow, somehow you'll pour a glass of bubbly every time I look at you. and the magicians best kept secret will be where you store all that bliss-but it won't really matter, as long as you crack it out on rainy days. as long as you share it always and always. as long as your expiration date is a figment of the future, the very distant future.

"let's dance" you'll say.
and there will be laughter in the air and sparklers burning all across the sky and my dress will twirl like I'm seven years old and it will be so happy. It will be a night we'll want to take a photograph but we won't have time between the songs to find a camera and you'll lay a kiss on my lips without touching my face and I'll blush like I'm fourteen again. A Polaroid worthy night. And we'll be so carefree.

 I'll probably wear your glasses because I think that's cute and my vision was too good for that sort of cute and you'll let me. You'll know how much I love it and you'll love me and you'll love me in your glasses and me with endless cheesecake bites and me with such a small music selection and terribly ranged singer me and happy happy happy me. and you'll be happy too.

and we'll deserve every heuristic the doctors try to give us on coming out of the clouds and they'll try to reduce the swelling but we won't ever want to shrink down to normal and they can't make us. Because all the sights worth looking at late in the night, when love is on our mind, find themselves high high high so we'll put ourselves on a kite and take off running.

We'll be so happy and we'll laugh when they want to make sense.

6/15/2014

All that time spent deliberating and the curl of your lip has nothing to show but a quiver.
I'm drowning in a sea of gravel and as hard as I reach for the horizon, the ocean keeps washing him away. They told us stories of sailboats and hard shelled fish to pass the time, not to peak our interest. Telling you to be whatever you like as long as they already have a cookie cutter mold for what you like, it's what'll get ya.
August is a dream we only wish for in December and December is a nightmare we only wish for when we're lonely.

The scariest monsters are the ones who hold our hearts at bedtime.

6/12/14

It's starting all over again.

I'm scared to write about real things.

Maybe it's because I said I was done blogging about it but yesterday was his birthday and he said he wanted to be buried in a cotton long sleeve tee and that was OUR THING. And maybe I need to get over it because every little thing we loved together can't be OUR THING. and music we discovered and memories about the big dipper and late night calls can't be OUR THING. Because tomorrow he'll wake up another day with a new glass of water on the desk and he'll never think twice about the the glass in the dishwasher. And when he points out the big dipper to a new set of arms I hope it ignites a different feeling in both their hearts. It's someone else's turn for our thing.

Maybe I'm scared because you all know it's me. Because I know it's you. Because every comment you or I make means a little more than I want it to.

Maybe I'm lacking the motivation to write about the incisions in my heart because this is a whole new group of people I have to lay my life on the emergency room table for. I don't know you and I care too much what you think of me. I'd just gotten comfortable in my seat when it was time to stand for the pledge and I pledge allegiance to my secrets every morning, it's my heart I forget to let stand.  So I guess I'm divided. and it's sure hard to write a bipolar confessional.

Maybe I'm just happy. Maybe I'm too happy. Maybe I don't want reality to bring me down from the city lights at 2am. Maybe I'm trying to forget all the misery in the dirt by clinging on to a helium balloon. Maybe the float is starting to sink and the string is starting to fray and I'm scared of what that's a metaphor for.

Maybe I'm too busy with one tree hill to write, or to listen to the stutter beneath my toes.
Maybe I'm too busy reorganizing my closet, but I've always had an obsession with reorganizing and redoing and reanalyzing the way my shirts hang when something much bigger is much more wrong.

Maybe I don't want to write real things because I'm deathly afraid of what I'm hiding from myself.

A little bit of repetition.

I want to believe I love pink peonies because of my own interest and not Blair Waldorf's, but I don't think I recognized them in my yard until season three. Either way I've been a fan ever since.
Yesterday my mother put beautiful blooms on the table and I thought of all the things that made me happy. You were on that list.

Last night I looked at you and my feet begged me to stay a few more memories. Glass slippers or not I know you would have let me. But we can't waste time sleeping through our numbered days.

Today I looked at you and saw a man I could hold onto. I looked at you but I didn't see much because the water in my eyes was moving my thoughts about tomorrow into yesterday and it only made the heartbreak worse. You gave me a token of appreciation and I thanked you with clammy hands and awkward hugs. You walked me out and I knew tomorrow could never be the end.

 I'm afraid to say I love you because I think I might mean it. and I'm awfully scared to find out.

You make orange juice feel fine around toothpaste and you make me believe in better people. I went around asking the world for second chances but you made it hard to screw up the first. The leaves in the backyard were only because I was nervous and I didn't know what to do with my hands. I waited for your approval and when your grandmother shook my hand I thought about the idea that two years is too long and we'll both be a different shade of sunburned when you get home.

I treated you badly sophomore year. I didn't believe my mom when she said the more awkward kids would grow up to be the ones you'd kill for. Sorry I wasn't a good friend. And Sorry I just called you awkward. (But, sorry, you were a little awkward.) Anyways,, I'd like to make up for it now. I'd like to tell you that you make Christmas lights shine in June and ice cream sound wonderful in December. You have me chasing bubbles like a 2nd grade summer afternoon and  bursting like we've been caught. You, my dear, are the only thing getting my curling iron turned on and my hair shampooed in the morning. I'm writing blog posts about the way tears filled my eyes when I thought about goodbye and how I refuse to think 10 days will end.
You walked me to the car and let the words fall out and I'm scared to mean it too. You've complimented my hair and my intelligence and my public speaking skills and the only time I've been tongue tied up at night was wondering how to find 'I Love You' in a sea of friendship and unspoken feelings.
I'm blinking and they're taking you and all the terrible things they did in the history of the world won't compare to how lonely the sunrise is without you. I'd like to hold your hand and tell you this dream is what we've been waiting for and take back all the times I ignored the inevitable and all the days I didn't run to you like I have been since the test of time washed away everyone but you. I've washed the walls so many times but you take more than water and soap to drive away. and I like that.

and I'm going to miss you.

6/1/2014

I have yet to rid myself of the sneaker tan lines the black and white ground gave me every day after school, but I've slept in smoke every night I had a curfew and although the majority of the laughs and text messages I receive leave for bigger lives and expensive scenery tomorrow, I think I'll be content.

I've had a long running with the sunset and every time I beg him to stay a little longer he throws another teasing smile and shuts the door lightly, promising he'll be back for the 8:00 showing in the evening.
I've told him every joke I could think of and every promising hope I could muster, but he still finds himself lost in colors I will never touch. I think he likes to be chased into the horizon and I'll keep letting my eyes play his favorite game because love was never about setting someone free.

I was told you can't hide beneath dreams but that's the only place they've never found me. And I look up at the shape shifting clouds solely to get away from the filing cabinets you built in middle of the street. It was a Wednesday when it rained and it was a Monday when it poured but that week never had enough sun for a rainbow.

Scratches were carved into cave walls so we would remember who they were; I wear the scrawlings on a chain around my neck to remember why they wanted to be remembered. Isn't that all we're begging the moon for anyways? A one night stand that lasts?