Something about that winter air rolling in
& all my exes telling me they love me again.
Boys I chased in the summer,
Hoping they would turn into men.
Boys I chased
So I wouldnt be caught,
Passive aggressive heart breaker that I am;
Scared,
Yet wanting so badly to connect.

I remember my third grade teacher
Telling me that her father only drank water
& he never had any cavities.
I remember Mickey Mouse on my lunchbox
& weird things my dad packed inside;
Dark rye bread,
Exotic cheeses.
I remember finding a gummy bear in the dirt
& eating it.
A neighbor girl who stole my Prince Eric doll
& left many barbies heartbroken for awhile.
I remember a doll & a dog named Molly.
I remember
falling and scraping my knee,
& wondering if I should cry or not;
& that being the last time I could choose.
I remember moments
With no real meaning
But what they mean to me
& to those I tell.

I feel so much like fire

I can be harsh & hot,

Rash & wild,

Loud & bright,

Vibrant & strong,

But I can be quiet.

I can be warm.

I can project silhouttes

Of romantic scenes & dreams.

I can burn for a purpose.

I can dance before your eyes

& make you want to come in-

But not too close.

I love an expressive face.

I remember this
silly depression creeping in
when I have hours
& see them bent on the ground with my anxiety
& a voice in my head
which I'm not really sure is my own says:
why can't you just fucking do it
do what you're supposed to
why can't you
do what responsible people do;
water your plants
pay your bills
leave early
meet deadlines
look like the walking dead in line
waiting for normal shit
why can't you
do what you're supposed to
but then I start to get defensive
I say I'm young &
I've made it farther than some.
My love would pay all bills
& cross off all to dos
if that's how you measure success.

I love writing because it's passive aggressively romantic,
just like me.
I'm telling you, but I'm not really saying it.
You're reading my words in your head.
You're doing it right now
& I love you for that.

Petty emotions are hard to let go of,
We like to hold hands sometimes,
& though it feels good at the time,
It's never meant to last.
If it does for you,
Then come on, you're forcing it
& the point youre trying to make.
I know it's seductive at first,
But
Real love
Adapts
Evolves
Moves.
Real love does not sit,
Sunken in the past is no place for it.
Real love might even watch you leave
If it means making you happy.
Real love speaks for itself,
It says with a special kind of chemistry in my skin
Your stories, your reactions,
Your touch, the way you move,
The everything about you,
Craves presence in my life.
Even if sometimes that means
Disrupted days
& not always the same page,
There is something about the way you are existing in this world
That makes me want to watch how it plays out.

There are things I could be doing,
but I distract & herd my thoughts
off a cliff into a glowing box that I stare at.
I ask selfish questions.
I sigh quickly for the world's pain
& then focus on my own.
I could be doing things
but I stare & sit & think about these things.
My curiosity curls upwards like smoke
& sends signals that are blurry & beautiful;
like this time in my life.
Sometimes sitting & thinking will pull at the corners of my eyes.
I get tired of the company of my mind.
I make it swim in simple,
make it act on impulse,
instead of trudging through the swamps of patient loneliness,
of self discovery,
of quiet & uneventful,
though the stirring in my heart becomes loud.
It's hard to face still silence,
to turn the glowing boxes off,
to leave it just to
the electricity of my thoughts that light up where I let them.

.Laura Curren. 

In these moments
I feel lost and hopeless,
I feel the need for arms telling me it's okay,
I feel the need for a hold to escape my reality,
A touch so intense I forget where I am.

I want so badly

to spread these feelings

over someone else,

To know what it's about,

What I am for all

& none to see,

What I am to you

& what I am to me.

I want to give that to you

but I am lonely and I am restless,

Kind yet reckless,

& scared of my potential;

My mind is the only fence I create,

& I'm so lucky that's the case,

So lucky I knew what love was

before it was ever a word in my world,

to translate word to thought,

to action,

to state of being,

& that's why

to me, and my world

life is worth living!

But
these moments
when I don't know
what to do
or who to see,
or how exactly to be me....
These moments
when I search not for resolution,
but feeling,
feeling connected,
feeling close,
When I can't do anything but hold myself,
my breath,
my hopes,
these moments,
are just for me.

You don't wanna think.
You wanna drink,
You wanna smoke,
You wanna do coke,
You want my legs around your back.
You wanna call me past midnight
& see if that's alright,
But I don't answer you,
I don't make it happen
Though we both know
It feels like forgetting pain,
It feels
Better than expected
& after
Never the same.

These are not the stories I will tell my children or grandchildren....Maybe when they're older...like the age I am now. I'm 26? What, no way.

I have been wading in options, bored, heart broken, bored. I have been too open and vulnerable, too callous, too flighty, too flakey, too anaytical, not analytical enough. All of these mistakes are collecting into walls around my heart. Naked Miley Cyrus riding a wrecking ball knows whats up when she talks about Liam knocking all that down. (Sorry that's just where my mind went for a second.)

All this makes me sound shallow, overly fixated on sex, and I am to an extent, but at the core of me, I want romance. I don't mean in a classic way, being courted I guess. I just want to be taken away by storm. The issues with stormy whirlwind romances though are that they can end just as abruptly. The last relationship I had was an exciting tornado that came into my life and disappeared. Call me? No.

Maybe what I really want is the love that starts slow at the roots....then one day shakes my branches and shows me what was blooming all along...shows me more metaphors to think of and write down. I read something the other day though that kind of awakened something in me. It said something along the lines of "Often times people ask for what they want in a mate... they say I want them to be smart, funny, honest, loving...etc. But rarely do we say I want to give this person this, I want to be this for/with this person, share this with them." And it made me think of how selfish I've been. I think this is the struggle of being 26. I still want to have fun, to go out, to be thrilled and excited, to be teased by mixed messages and feelings....yet I want someone I can rely on and you know, actually talk to about real things. Half of my friends are already getting married, the other half are going to drug filled music festivals and losing shit (I went to EDC too, and lost my phone...)

My vision for the future, though blurry, still tells me I will be happy, I will be okay. Facebook and all of it's wonderful sugary surface perception of things makes me feel somehow not caught up. I'm just floating along though. I don't feel 26. I don't feel like I have to get married or have babies anytime soon. I am a pretty kickass babysitter though, so I feel happy for people around me that do want these things. I've just always sort of been in the pull between things...that's just me. I'm an outgoing introvert. A selectively social clown. Passive aggressive. Sensitive and harsh. Maybe these mistakes that I think are collecting into bricks around me are just leading up to a higher view. I can keep going and make things better. I can get to where I want to stop and look and everything before just makes the view more beautiful. I can write and write and write and hope that someone hears me.

The look in your eyes 
is a vacation 
a postcard;
it's not real.
But I escape
in fleeting highs,
I let you sink in for a time.
I know I won't stay here
because if I start to
you're already packed 
& a world away.