I used to crawl under the covers of my bed, and stare out the window at the emerald tree tops and the hazy velvet sky with transportation shooting through it, smelling the smell of an airplane at night, of finding newness in the darkened sky. I wouldn't fall asleep for hours, but these were the good nights.

Mostly, my mind terrified me and monsters burst forth like they were escaping a jail. It was like the absence of sun made the cage all the weaker. I knew I would think of things like lonilness, sadness. I'd lay on the floor and imagine i were laying on a forest floor alone, and then i'd fall asleep and dream about the concrete storage warehouse-- my bed too high on top of boxes, so removed from my family. So I sought and I seek a way to keep these locked up. I watched I Love Lucy. I rearrange my room. I stare at a computer screen, my eyes drying and tiring. And when it finally got to be too much, I'd wander, crying, scared, alone. I was sure everyone had stopped breathing or evaporated into the stardust and it was just me, forever. I'd hide under my bed or stretch my arms to my parents bedroom, curling up against the door, my eyes shaking with tears.

i still haven't figured out how to get my mind to stop, to lay to sleep when i want it to. It comes alive with the shooting stars, it weilds swords and daggars, and when I try to get my body to rest, it rebels. I have no control.

i like being alone, but i don't like being left alone with my mind. it scares the crap out of me.

i went outside so gemma could potty. it was so cold my feet were burning on the cement of our steps to our house. the grass was white from the ice that had come. i brought a sweater but i shook it out. little feathers flew everywhere. later when i was about to go back inside, a tiny feather floated to the ground right in front of me.

when i was younger, my mind would often take over so that my eyes weren't really doing anything, you know? it was all my head, i was living entirely inside of there. and then later, i would open my eyes and see a really dark sky and realize there was no one around me and i was so ordinary and small and i would cry.

i still do this. every day. i want to stop so bad. i want to close my eyes and see the same thing, the same exact thing that i see when tehyre open. or something right in front of me, holding something i can reach out and hold. like diving in the sea while i'm standing on the dock.

please pelase please.

i got a package from china. it was a green envelope with chinese writings all over. inside was a huge white snowball in it. i unraveled it. it smelled like old flowers. inside was a tiny wooden bear. my dog wanted to bite the bear. i laughed a lot.

i listened to the singing of a pretty girl and stared at the pink and purple sky with the cars driving by, dissapearing into the green land.

we cannot live in a castle because we are not princesses. we are humbled peasents. we tell the world that, but our home is huge.

i came to my home when i still felt little even though i was the size i am now. it was surrounded by tall christmas trees. i think when i have my own home (which i think about as often as the second hand) i will plant christmas trees. one year my best friend and i made snowmen outside while watching people cut the trees and give us a little bit of money. i think i might give my trees away for free.

my home had an ark outside of it. the man who had lived here, who had died, who we have made up stories about, built an ark in his shack and so get it out he had to cut the shjack open. the ark was here when we looked at the house but when my mum decided she wanted it, it was gone.

the house was big. the bottom floor was a cave, like a grotto. it was all cement. we broke in. after we bought the house, it was summer, and i would play games and heat up hot dogs and if i had to use the toilet i had to walk across the street. we live across the street from a big lake called deep lake because they have never reached the bottom. they have toilets there, and a soda machine. i would take over little coins and buy me and my sister sugary drinks while my parents put walls up downstairs.

i remember when my room as done, after i picked out blue like the top of the sea for the carpets, and i sat in my closet with my knees under my chin and felt safe. we moved my stuff in. i had a big golden desk. i sat there and watched josie and the pussycats. i could see the driveway and people coming in and out and my grandmother fixed us dinner and brought us plates with various foods like we were rich and had cooks, and i awtched the pussycats sing and eat and i was happy, very happy.

in the summertime my family sit on our porch that hovers over the ground and build a fire and eat chocolate melted and watch the bats sink close to our heads and sing. we have a lake in our backyard that ducks live in. we weatching them grow from ducklings.

one fall my house burned. it caught on fire and my family escaped into a really dark night and we heard our animals that we could not yelping for their lives and it was very painful. and then we had to live in a tiny treehouse in my town, where it was only a short walk to the grocery store where i could buy sweet milk for our snow.

while we stayed in the tiny house, sharing rooms and anger, we built our house even bigger. i would come to visit the construction and wonder how we were ever going to fill it up. it seemed too big.

i'm not sure if it is, but it isn't a castle, but it also isn't a shack. and if we're peasents we don't look like peasents. either way, we'll never be royalty.

i found a bobby pin with rusted sea brine on it this morning. i used it to hold my braids to my head. it just broke in peices and my braids went tumbling down to the ground.

things i call/say to my dog, other than her name (gemma/gem)

1. little gem
2. gemski bear!
3. princess melane!
4. princess lady (pronounced more like... "pincuss luddy!"
5. gembear
4. little one
5. you're a princess, a princess of epic proportions!
6. amberlynn (when she's being annoying, on accident)
7. my little lovely lady
8. you silly girl!
9. my tiny baby
10. you are being way too goofy right now, way too goofy!
11. love ya bout times a million
12. you are way too pretty!

i love it when i pick my puppy up to hug her, and she collapses against me. she doesn't always do this, sometimes she stiffens, like all the squishy stuffy parts of her are hardening, and tugs her head to look at something )i dont know aht_ but when sometimes, she really lets me hold her and rock her and her soft, furry head nooks right underneath my chin. she relaces her ever muscle and vein into me and i melt with happiness and love.

sometimes i want to molt. and go somewhere i don't know. and stand, stark naked and cold in the middle of nothing. and breathe it all in.

i realized that i wasn't like the other owls early on. i noticed how my eyes wouldn't shut to the light, and i never asked "who?" i asked "why?" because i was always alone.

i never wanted to be like others. but i wanted to be like something. so i rooted like trees, or pretending to pop my head off like a daisy, or twinkling like the stars or smelling sweetly like basil. i played like fingers on the piano, burrowed like a field mouse and rotted like old wood. i burst like the warm air from a whale's blowhole hitting the cold hair and vaporizing, like breathe, like "i'm smoking!".

yeah i rode the rainbow for some time because i could because i'm lucky. but i'm still up in the morning, grinning so sweetly as the grass shakes off its shower and everyone else is sleeping, snoring their questions away.

then i saw something, so completely insane, i can't tell you what it is. you'll have to see it for yourself. it is what should be a sea of leaves, but it is dim, like old tv.

and now i know that i don't have to be like all the other nocturnal creatures. but i don't have to be like the daytime ones either, or the ones inbetween. my skin is like a map. i will read it softly to you, so you too, will know.

it's strange normally i like the roaring ravage of the vacuum on innocent carpet, i like the lines it leaves behind, but my mother has been screaming through maching for what feels like ages and i can feel my insides getting up in a tizzy.

the problem is,i start smiling and then i notice that not everyone is. some people are, but a lot of people are angry and sad. then i think they may know something i dno't, and i'm just wasting my time.

all the flowers around me grow different colors and lengths and smells, and some are dusty and some aren't and some are leaning more up and some are leaning more down.

each pile of pollen knows what it's doing, right?

and i am in a smear of dirt by myself and i will tread carefully and thoughtfully.

frivolous

i feel like i'm just standing in a crater in the moon. and everyone on earth and the other planets is yelling at me to come back, and i really do want to, but i'm too lazy. so i just sit down. and when i get bored, i stand back up.

my kitchen smells like vomit. my whole family is walking around with their noses stuck out, recalling bitter stomach acids. we are confused.

edit: we discovered it was cheese. strange.

i love the library. it is in the midddle of a tree party. the color brown doesn't exist because it is covered by velveteen rabbit moss. all of the leaves are yellow like a soft bruise. it doesn't end as far as can be seen there are tangles of tiny stalks of trees and braided branches. there is a huge dead stump that has come back to life just to celebrate. it smells like waking up for a brief moment and seeing the sky in a naked color it covers by the time everyone else gets up. it looks like somebody painted the walls of the world with a crowded happy forest. and my wooden library, full of new books, nests in the middle of it.

i wonder how many people are walking around thinking "i'm exactly who i want to be." i am.

i am throwing away all my calenders and clocks.

mairzy doats and doazy doats and liddle lamzy divey. akiddlee divy too, wood and you!

i saw a pony with all four feet on a lump of ground, looking down no less, and all the real horses were standing around nodding their heads.

umbrella tree.

tiny squirrel chair behind a wall of trees.

i thought i saw a statue of a bear that looked like a man or a man that looked like a bear.

i also love how i am dressed today.

the grass grows where it wants to and seeds are thrown where they need to be and the wind has been around forever, just like it is now, blowing hair back and dresses up. life is instinctual, and we all know what we're doing even when we scar and tear and give up.

the first time i wanted to so badly, like i was really hungry. someone was finally offering some food, even though it was underripe, i didn't care. and it hurt very badly, and i bled.

i liked for it to happen fast, for my hand to work like a some terrible tool that was moving too quickly. i liked to close my eyes and think about something else, sometimes disgusting, like kissing a smoker. mere minutes and it'd be over and i never knew how to other person felt.

with the second person, i taught and taught well. i was still a little clam, begging to be pried open, but one night, i opened all on my own. our voices were small and i was there, my feet firmly on the bed, my body naked and shearing. i felt like a sun was rising inside of me, like the spirit was hovering over my waters, urging every droplet to feel the touching of my own pleasure.

that was the last time.

with my bearded man, the man i love still, it became a chore, a pitied activity. his body didn't work like i recognized, like some great machine i had lost the manual too. i struggled to enjoy myself, sometimes hoarding great pains so he would think that it was beautiful. but it never was. and the more it happened, the more i hardened into a difficult plastic. he didn't want me, he wanted it in general. my skin toughened, like the skin of meat when left out in the cold. he touched me and i squealed, but my mind felt every fiery embrace like the first stab of a limitless murder. and he, he looked at like i were a piece of fruit, covered in fruit flies, and he was the biggest one, ready to finish me off.

things i dream about

flying, not successfully. i get up in the air and then i fall back down. whenever i get up, sometimes it's in space watching models, sometimes it's over the great wall (flying so close my feet can touch it) i'm almost always sure i'm going to drip down the air. sometimes i do.

babies growing inside me like weeds, or coming out of me and needing me. sometimes they are shaped like dragons, sometimes they are ugly and fat, sometimes they are sad and hungry. i dream of babies, everyone having babies, squirting them out like they're mustard in a squeezy containter.

my teeth crumbling like old breath in my mouth, my teeth chipping like a car accident, always my teeth. my teeth are like missing floorboards and in my dreams, they powder and break and fall out and it scares the hell out of me when i look in the mirror.

this boy who i went to work with who i loved for being kind and unhappy. he poisoned himself nightly. i don't think his girlfriend loved him, because she loved lying. i wanted to touch him and so the last night i was ever going to see him, as he was walking off into the night, i grabbed him and i pressed my breasts up against him. i could feel the pressure on them, like i were hugging a wall. he arms flittered against my back, like squirming insect legs until i let go and walked away. i keep dreaming me loves me back and holds me like i am his lying girlfriend. but i don't tell lies.

aliens or vicious attacks from foreigners where everyone i know is running around the the dusty roads and the houses are empty and there is danger coming down in mock lightning bolts. i dream of bombs and my fathers empty body getting bombed, and him flying towards me and landing on me with a dead kiss.

telephones not working. when i need someone because something bad has happened, i always have a plastic telephone in my trembling hand. and i dial and dial pressing the buttons, but i always get it wrong. i can't get hte number right. when i do, no one answers. or sometimes the phone stops working all together. i wander around a disaster scene, crying and trying to reach somebody and i can't. i never do, not even at the end. it is a tragedy, not a comedy.

i dream i mess up at work. i dream i do something so wrong, so stupid, because someone drove through my head too fast and all we have our dirt roads here, you know, so the dust will be settling for hours. i do something wrong and my bosses, big and scary, and glowering down at me, with fire in their cheekbones and they hate me for whatever i have done.

i don't know how to 'freshen up'

my little sister emerges from her bedroom like she spent the night with little birdies that know the secret so simple beauty. her face is soft and sweet and has no marks, like those incredible days when there just isn't a cloud in the sky. she always smells like she slept on a flower petal, or a lilypad.

i look like i spent the night on a wandering insect, who burrowed through hilly dirts and woke up in a dirty pub after one two many whiskies. i must sleep like a nightmare, tugging my blankets all over my face until it is ruddy and awake. my clothes hang off my shoulders and i look like i threw them on in a hurry, like i had a late night visitor who ransacked my body and left nothing for me. i wake up empty and tired and ugly.

then my sister prances about the room. she is like a grasshopper, and she is beautiful and she is always beautiful. she glows like she is made of lemonade, and she always feels like it's summer. she wakes up like it's june, and sleeps like it's august. she is so wonderful.

i am an old barn. i'm bound to collapse eventually, and the teenagers that have their drinking parties inside of me know this. i will fall, and if they are inside of me, i will kill them. so they stopped coming months ago. and now i am empty.

there is a man i know who gets sick for fun. he tricks his body into lying in bed with a stuffy nose like a ripe cherry. he asks me for help. sometimes he vanishes into the soft covers. he dreams of his dead dog, the one he is named after. then days later, his weakened hands hit by hard door and he is alive but not well. he is ill. his body creaks like a house settling, and he cries into his palms and the tears drip onto my bare feet. i want to hug him, but he stands in the corner where i can't reach him and begs for his body to deteriorate, like a pile of unused firewood. the worms crawl in and our of his eyes and he grins a grimace that i can't understand because my body is healthy and young and sprite. i am like a deer that dodged the rickety vehicle, swerving with the bleary-eyed driver, while he got smacked years ago, and lay dripping into nothingness in the cold, swampy ditch.

there is a girl i knew. she was little when i first met her and her glasses were as big as mine. we both walked around with full moons on our eyeballs, laughing at all we couldn't see. we jumped off of rooftops (okay, they were short rooftops) and walked down to a creek where we lived until we found human bones, half buried in the tiny rocks and dirt, and flew back home. we slept together every night. we weren't afraid of touching. we woke up early and walked with the sun, and yawned with the birds. we ate bottle caps and drank strawberry sodas and laughed so hard our food fell out of our mouth. we acted out scenes me made up, consisting of an injured women, and things changing, in every scene, something changed. she fell in love with a villain. he turned her hair black and her voice low. then she fell in love with a squishy man, like a sea creature without a face. he gave her a baby, put it inside her belly which swelled like a wave, ready to crash. she came to me and pushed on it and said she was saying goodbye and i needed to, too. i cried for three days. i couldn't even think of fishes or seaweed or baby crabs. then the baby died. she whispers to me dates that i should hold her hand, tells me she gets sad sometimes when she sees tiny feet. she won't give me an exact time or day so i never know where to find her, or even what to do with i do. she hangs out with pieces of glass and stone that she picked up from the beach, weathered and heavy and dusty i don't know how to talk to them. they sit in their wonderful mosaic, and my girl, who i've known since she was a girl, is hardening into one of them too. there is a gaping hole where her belly used to be. she sticks her hands inside of absentmindedly and digs around. it's a habit, she says, i'm not looking for anything. she woke me up today and said, "weekend! we're celebrating me." i don't know how to talk to her. she puts little shards of glass in her eyes to be like her friends. i am too soft and alive. i am too whole. i don't know if i can be there.

i'm up in the rafters and nobody told me when to ring the bell, but it's still my responsibility. my hands are wrapped about the knotty rope. it is dark all around me. nobody told me when! i am thinking, and my hands are cold and my fingers are tap dancing against the thick-skinned frays. i hesitate, my limbs jerk, my muscles twitch like a whiskery-nose. i don't know when to ring the bell. i don't know who is listening. i don't know what they want from me.

i don't know when to ring the bell.

--It's like being really really hungry and so thinking of all the different cookies and sweets you can eat and then having all of them in front of you at some wonderful, glittery party and being able to eat only one because after that, your stomach is full. i need to stretch it out, tug on it absentmindedly like leather. that's what all this is about.

it's also like lying in bed and your warm bladder filling up with nighttime urin and you mind urging you to stand and your eiderdown pressing you into the ground so coddleingly that you never want to get up but eventually your insides are bursting with waste that must be emptied, poured from a bucket into the moons soil. you feel much better afterwards.

--i want to be naked, but it is cold.

--i make mirrors, and i love looking in them so much, i cannot sell them even though they want to be traded.

--i could stare at my breasts for hours. mountain mama. they are so light and fluffy, they are like a pile of whipped cream but much smoother, much much smoother and pinker. my nipples react to the slight changes of temperature with different sorts of stances, stretching like flowerstems towards the sun. i press the leg of my glasses, like an overgrown insect, into the skin and it bounces, like a trampoline. my breasts are the softest color i've ever seen, so lovely and light to look at, like a pretty girl or a tadpole pond in the late evening. they yearn to be used to be pressed and gathered and nibbled. they are so kind in their yeilding to the word, so maginificant that they can be so delicate and yet never hide: here i am, like a constellation!

my nipples have bumps that gather and pucker, and i run my fingers over like braile in soft wood, reading the signs that they are telling me, communicating with the worries inside of me: saying, you have it all! give it go, let it float.

it is the children, the ones who would need to suckle, that know, blowing dandelion seeds to the sky, believing what i tell them that what they say will happen if they say it with enough fervor. the white tented stalks traipse along the wind, carrying a little boy and girls words, "i wish i could spend every day with you, every day with you."

and my breasts are taut and happy and they hear this with their pink, soft ears, and they think: you can! you can! you can.

- i look my animal and i put her in a cage and set her outside of my door, so her midnight yelps wouldn't wake me up. my guilt is overwelming me. then i saw the book he lent to me, the one about faith, and my guilt is down to my toes.

ode to my hair

it is feral. when i tie it up with black rubber bands, i feel as bad as when i feel bad caging my dog because it's like caging a lion.

i rinse it with mud, and it writhes with its oneness with the earth. then i dry it and it feathers, collapses over my shoulders like a tired child might do. when it dries, it dries upwards, like i were tearing it out in my dreams. and the pieces are like piggy tails and almost-red dry grass and i look in the mirror and say, "i look like i've been electrocuted!"

my sister laughs because her hair is like downward facing tail feathers, and it looks different every day and is the color of the clouds when sun shines through them.

mine is the color of brown mice, darting through the dark grass, trying to get out of the rain. it shouts at me, each strand comes to life, hurling itself away from my scalp singing songs to the concrete and the wooden panels on the floors, "take me! take me!" so when i tug, finally give in, the strands slide through my finger and land in a ring on the floor, in a pile of rings. they stay there until they are swept up and thrown outside and finally we live in a world that is just pieces of my hair that have escaped because they could not be tamed.

and that's not all. i have hair in other spots too, peeking from beneath the surface of my soil skin, lunging for air. it's this curly wild type everwhere except for under my arms. there is like a baby's new hair, or a man's old, balding both, it is happy to be where it is.

my hair is wild. it is the black in the zebra stripes. it terrifies me so lovlingly that i could not imagine living without it.

My skin is like a thin cotton sheet hanging on a summer line. I keep erupting in angered boils and heaping red spots and ballooning like something swollen. I wait for my girlhood to be pretty, and for the butterflies to pluck the tiny anthills off of my face. They won't come when I call.

I wonder if it's enough to know that, eventually, the planets will align.

Or maybe, they already are, and when they were thrown in the air like baseballs and stuck to the sticky atmospheric dome-vaulted sky, that's where they were supposed to be, where great god was aiming all along. And we stare and stare and stare because they look like the silly freckles on our next door neighbor, the one who forgot to comb her hair.

We're waiting and I guess we'll wait forever because they're sitting on their self, above the fireplace there, basking in the correctness of his and hers existance.

Yes?

I want to lay in the dirt and feel the earth lurch heavenly beneath me, and the green growing stark beside me and the clouds slugging across the sky, and be completely happy.

Instead I throw my legs up and ride my upside-down bicycle because I want to be somewhere new.

I've taken a liking to really tiny slugs. I want to save them all from our feet.

Whenever I draw, I just scratch and scratch the pencil into the paper and eventually there are no clear lines, and after I've drawn what I want to draw (most recently it was a wooded creature with knocking knees and a malignant head) I cover the whole paper in graphite marks. Nothing is clearly shaped or deigned and it's all a huge mess, and so I begin again.

Did you know that graphite has the same elemental makeup as diamonds?

This is me beginning again.