(you are reading this it makes me uncomfortable)

We drink champagne from tiny soda cans in black plastic bags and sit with our feet in the grass in a park. It is good to have friends.

I walk 25 blocks to the subway. The train is late as usual, so I pull Claudine from the front pocket of my backpack and thumb to Iron & Wine.

He bought me a green iPod nano for my birthday and I cried. Not because it is an iPod, but because of the reasons why. That he thought about me. That he invested money he does not have in making my commute that much more bearable. In my having access to music at all times.

Eight years ago someone else bought me an iPod, and I told him I could not would not keep it. I was afraid of how he would hold it over me, and he did hold it over me-- that I told him no. He followed me in my parents' navy blue caravan as I drove back to their house after last period; he bumped the nose of his car up against the back of mine as we drove down Midland, and in the rearview mirror I saw him laughing.

Eight years later and I say yes, I'm crying a little, I feel loved. So. Healing is not always planned.



After dinner I suck on a tangerine popsicle and point the fan at my feet to keep from melting. I left my favorite jar in the sink for two days and it grew enough mold that I decided to throw it out. I am sorry, environment. I will miss you, jar.

The thing that is special about me is me. If I ever have children I want them to know every day that they're a miracle. At the same time I want them to know that they will act like little shits at points in their life and they'll probably feel pretty shitty too sometimes and other people are for sure going to treat them like shit occasionally and that this, too, is part of the miracle. Because there is a chance that who knows how many years later all that shit will have fertilized one phenomenal garden. And that there will be music there.


When I am old I intend to dress in bright psychedelic dresses with wild updos and wear brown, rectangular glasses on a chain that wraps around my neck, and I will stand on my porch shaking a broom at kids walking by. Then we'll all have a good laugh and I'll invite them inside for lemonade, just like always, and they will tell me about the kids who are mean to them in school and the stories they're writing outside of it and I will say don't listen to them be yourself.

(I am perturbed by my ability to stop listening to myself, sometimes for months at a time)

I am perturbed by my ability to stop listening to myself, sometimes for months at a time. I am so easily invested in other voices that I can forget about my own. There is reason to believe I was meant to be a hermit.

In some ways I am more of one than I have ever been, though I am living with millions of people in New York City. The street outside is disgusting and grey. There is pigeon excrement everywhere, and pigeons threatening to excrete, and few people seem to care about much of anything, including littering. Three days ago as I sat on the subway on the long ride to work I watched a man toss a plastic bag out of the train as it opened its doors to new passengers. How the fuck is the world going to get better if people can't even be responsible for their own trash. Stick the bag in your pocket, for god's sake. There are trash cans immediately to either side of you no matter where you disembark the train. Throw it away then.

But no! Instant gratification! Any load is too much for me to bear! The world owes me perfection while it is reasonable for me to shit all over it. Just like a goddamn pigeon.

So I make my way to the apartment as quickly as possible and I close the doors and make believe that outside there are flowers and trees growing.


Of course I am painting in stark colors. Of course it is inevitable, were I to continue writing, that they would start to bleed together. Of course we all have bad days and of course there is goodness to this place and of course if someone litters it doesn't mean they are categorically bad and unworthy of love. Still. Don't throw trash on the ground.


Lately I have been feeling angry for the fact that you valued me less than the idea of conception, even though it's been years since I've though of it. You would have left me to labor while you gallivanted through emerald sheep-dotted fields with accents on and a fedora, or left me if I chose not to. At the time I thought my heart was big enough to understand but I see now that you were acting like a self-absorbed ass with a superiority complex and a strong mind twisted by misogyny. I wish you well and hope you are happy, always.

I remember when I allowed my anger. I said, "I need to go vent, now," and I walked outside and kicked the trash cans until my foot was bruised and the bins' sides were dented-- so much that the lids never quite fit again. I felt just fine afterward! Anger is energy! Bottle it up and what are you left with? Confusion and misdirection on the eve of turning 26.

But of course that's not the whole story. I have stopped believing that I have to do it all right now. I've been through a lot and I have a lot of competing visions in my mind and it's okay that it's taking some time to pick and plant my way to where I want to be. It is quite a relief, in fact, to know that seedlings need time in order to grow. That with soil, water, air, and light, they will.