Don't you understand? I am brilliant. I am funny. I am talented. I am beautiful. I am understanding. I am forgiving. I am easy-going. You would be LUCKY to have me.

But you don't understand that, I guess. And it's your loss if you don't!

God, let this be done already. Let it end. All of it.

I am overwhelmed. I think I will be quitting The Envoy next semester whether or not I'm leaving NYC. I did it once so I have nothing to prove. I know I can do it. I was a damn good editor, but now, I need a semester to myself.

I just need time to process EVERYTHING. How can I work like this?

I don't even know if I want to go away next semester. I don't know what I want anymore. To sleep. That's all I really want. To sleep until I'm free.

A Work In Progress

I am seesaw

I am sway

Am black,

Am white,

But never gray.

I am fly,

But I am land

On the margins

Of somewhere

Nowhere

Sunk in sand.

I am seesaw,

I am swing.

I am plummet,

Backslide,

Nose dive.

I am spring.

I am plunge

But,

I am fly.

I am hello

To be goodbye.

I am soar

I am persist

But,

I am cease

To be desist.

I am be

To be become

I am add

But never sum.

I am Dare

I am Defy

But,

I am bear

To fail to try.

I am shout

But also stutter

I am falter

Sometimes flutter

I am seesaw,

I am shift.

Here not there,

And,

There not here,

I am

I am

Am I?

I am breathe,

I am exist

Or perhaps,

I am Imagine

Spawn of Wish.

I seem solid

But

I am seem

I am neither here

Nor there

Merely muscle

Made of dream.

I've swallowed the butterflies I was trying to catch. They are fluttering about in my intestines, tickling me from within.

Here's to hoping I don't throw up.

My mind is a see-saw

I'm really beginning to think something is wrong with me. My mind is a see-saw, going from high to low and back again in a manner of seconds.

Really. Truly. It's like those "Test Your Strength" games at carnivals. You hit a button with a sledgehammer and a red light goes zooming up, indicating your physical fortitude. Then, just as quickly, the red light drops and vanishes.

I am so hopeful right now...but also SO SCARED to hope...

There are possibilities, REAL possibilities to do something I WANT to do without being stopped by circumstances beyond my control. But while those possibilities elate me, they also make me so nervous that I can barely function. I find myself staring at the ceiling. Looking at myself in the mirror and trying to read my own thoughts. What do my eyes say? Why do they look so afraid?

I've been let down in the past. WHY should now be any different? Jesus doesn't love me. The Buddha doesn't love me. Allah doesn't love me.

When I look in the mirror, I see anger. Anger in mere anticipation of things not working out again. Anger at Fate's cruelty. Anger at whomever decided it would be fun to tease me AGAIN, to give me the idea that FOR ONCE, something might work out the way I want it to.

Every time this happens, every time I hope for something, I devote myself to hoping. I pour myself into my dreams and then they are crushed.

Not just now, but in high school too...how HARD did I work to be rejected from my dream schools? I justified my rejections by going to a school that would give me money for study abroad, but now, that too, isn't going as planned.

I have one final plan. One final possibility has surfaced. Maybe this will be the one to save me, to make me strong and determined again. But maybe, like the others, it too will fall through. And that kills me. Just kills me.

The Untouchable

It's like chasing butterflies that no one else sees.

You are grabbing at air. Nothing is tangible. Golden Possibilities flutter before you, and are gone.

You are getting dizzy now. Running in a circle with a net. Does no one else see them? Are you crazy? Are you selfish? Are you mad? Are you running for something or from something?

You are huffing and puffing and panting and screaming and sprinting and swinging your net, and your hair has poofed out to the size of a beehive, but something tells you you're so close, too close, you can feel their presence. See a light.

You just know. You know they are there, suspended in air like droplets of water vapor. Invisible. Impalpable. Everywhere.

You reach out, slowly, slowly, cautiously... and--there!

Yet, as you open your hands, only your palms are revealed, sweaty and starving for luck.

Can you not BE what you're after?

You could be The Untouchable. Become the reverie you are trying to catch.

You could be within sight but not reach. A fuzzy voice at the other end of the line. A collection of pixels on a computer screen.

You could be the one they're waiting for. An invisible butterfly.

Third Person Blues

She stares at the screen, unsure of what to say. Words escape her, these days. She's escaped herself, too. Maybe she's in a notebook somewhere. Or, perhaps she's skulking around on this blog...somewhere, anywhere?

She can only hope she'll find herself sandwiched between the punctuation marks. Maybe she's in there indeed, adorned with ambiguous symbolism, but whole and intact nonetheless.

Queer, even the writer cannot find her! No amount of deconstruction can reveal what carefully placed ellipses disguise. The rules of the English language say that they will only ever be three dots...