I have been busy outgrowing the wars.
I apologize.
With the arrival of my conscience
I have been embracing the hectic and building a tree house with it.

Be careful now,
Some people will never ask to borrow your collarbone,
They’ll just take it and wave like little children do.
Those people just wanna leave you to witness the downfall,
So that they can watch from the sidelines and giggle I told you so’s to the popular table during middle school lunch.
They live for battles.
I'd teach you how to survive their sting, if you'd let me.

It’s funny how some of us never grow up,
And some of us never stop.

No matter how far I stretch my fingers, my hands will never be big enough to extend across 400 miles of graveyard to understand your secrets. Mom told me that when I first met you I looked around your face as though I had known the man beneath it. Previously. In a life that's not my own. I wish that meant something now. Goddammit, I wish that meant something now.

Rewind five weeks
And you'll find me sitting across from my favorite strangers and our sixth bottle of wine
After jumping from restaurant to restaurant,
Telling our secrets through questions only the bold and drunk could ask without flinching

Fast-forward to yesterday and you'll find
20 teenagers only three weeks away from becoming college students
Downing shots of vodka with oreo chasers,
Falling off swing sets and dancing in the ocean
In an effort to make life a little sweeter and summer last just a little longer.

Rewind four weeks and you'll witness a plane ride huddle
Where we clutched each other's hands and giggled out our inside jokes through teary goodbyes
Perhaps thinking that if we held on tight enough
We would never have to let go.

They're just my stories.
But maybe they'll change yours.

Know that much before you push away the nursery rhymes and let fate determine your future

Because, well, it's just so easy to fuck up a good thing.

So explore your truth.
I'll be waiting.

I am always waiting.
But you know that.

And memory?
I've learned that it's far too easy to hid there
With the people who let me.

But I know those people loved me.

I just loved them much longer.
I always do.
I've never been too lucky in terms of reciprocation
But I just can't bare to lose the part of myself they gave me.
So, I clutch on tighter.
Perhaps thinking that if I hold on tight enough
They will never let me go.

Fireworks of sunset slipped through your car windows as we spilled our lives to the music and the haze.
You, a girl cursed with the eyes of a woman, told me I was naïve about life because I still believed in it
It’s an image I hope to have forever etched into the inside of my eyelids
So that whenever I blink,
No matter what time of day,
I can always return to that moment

The suburbs, the alcohol, the wrong words, the loneliness
It can tackle a year and turn the smell of comfort into a warped sense of disillusion.

We’ll never escape this place
But with magic ice cream blends, half a bottle of rum, and a couple ping pong balls
We sure as hell can try.
And we will.

But if we look closely enough,
Past the clutter of lacrosse sticks, beer cans
Million dollar homes
And the dreams our parents forgot about in order to buy them,
We’ll notice how gorgeous the asphalt looks in August
And how beautiful this town can be once we remember all the birthday wishes that came true while we were busy catching butterflies
And all those times we locked hands with our neighbors during a game of Red Rover
Secretly hoping that the boy on the other team would race for one of our arms,
Knocking us off balance and breaking the monotony.

We sure did crash into our wishes.
Miscommunication knows no age.

Rules

First
Marry the springtime and
Swallow the fall
It may feel like it was winter once
But never worry,
Summer always cannonballs back into the gold of our eyes

Second
Remember the street you once adored
And the boys that chased your pigtails
Past the white house on Lenox Road
Just so they could hold your hand over lemonade and cookies

Third
Let your family laugh at how much you move like your father
And embrace the strangers in restaurants who say that you and your mother have the same face

Fourth
Forgive the boys in San Fransisco so that the whites of every man's eyes don't resemble that night

Fifth
Realize you'll never be original
You are the combination of everyone you've ever known,
Every experience you've ever had,
Every shitty night and incredible day you've thrived in
You are everything

Sixth
Drift
Your way through Europe with as many best friends as you can count with fingers
And in Paris,
Write a love letter to someone you've never loved
And send it to whoever needs to read it most
Like the homeless man outside the church on Sunday mornings
Or the little brother who knows that the eldest was just a first draft despite the shadow he created
Or to the three girls that danced and drank their way through four countries in two weeks with their elbows locked in yours

Seventh
Love them,
Love them with all your sins
As you convince yourself that you don't just write
You're a writer.
Let them write you

Eighth
May your life always be like Prague
And next Thanksgiving,
May nothing be missing but the turkey

My doors have been open since September.
I know this—
Because I can feel the weather changing on my bones.

It’s not winter,
But it feels like maybe it was once.
I know this—
Because the wind’s breath lingers on my neck
And in between my toes.

I’ll never let these people go.
I couldn't bear to lose the part of myself that loved them.

He held my hand, silently promising with his ten thousand ladies that our kisses meant something. His lips raced for comfort. I think they found it somewhere between my earlobe and collarbone—between the fear of letting anyone get too close, and the wish for someone to want to.

He kissed the thighs of the wounded with a gaze that made me wonder if men knew how to fake those eyes.

He lived on my favorite side of the seesaw and did almost everything with a joke and a smile. Around 2 a.m. he said he could feel my heartbeat. I wonder if by breakfast the next morning it was a lie.

Give me one small square of an afternoon for that patchwork quilt I wished we had when the grass welcomed our knees and the mosquitoes welcomed everything. Oh sir, I must ask, with a tree growing out of my chest—why me?

Floor it, Beautiful.
You’re too safe for car wrecks.
Bite those nails like Mommy told you not to.
Go tell someone off.
Let beautiful people take your breath away.
Stop settling.

The man with the pretty cheeks can’t help you now.
You are half-caught between Southern arms
And mommy’s firm grip.

You owe happy to that canoe on the lake that listened to your fears.
And the island near by that held your hand to get over them.

Like barbecue summers and graduation gowns
You buzz like last season’s flashlight face
And convenience store protégés
That vomit comedy and then days of silence
Followed up by comedy and more days of silence.
The two of you would be perfect if it weren’t for the quiet.

Keep the quiet.
You’re perfect.