I can't always talk like that. My world is too real. It's like taking pictures with the flash. If you don't use the flash, indoors, the pictures and colors are blurry. I hate using the flash. You can see everything.

I keep thinking, "Why are you unhappy?" There's that though, "If you're in love it ought to make you happy. You ought to laugh." It's true. So I keep thinking how I ought to be happy and what to do to get there.

First, my body is unsatisfactory. For so long I have felt like it was swollen. Like I had been beaten in the night and woken up bruised and large, my body bursting forth from my skin. It's better now, now that I wake up and run. I listen to a song about daylight and stare at the grass (which is covered in snow lately even though it's March) and use my legs until my body glistens like it's woken up in dew. I feel better, smaller, like somebody wrapped me up tight in a present and his hands are smoothing over mine. I want to feel like this forever.

I learned a Greek word and I keep writing it all over my body and the papers lying around my room. It means to be ripe. I want to be ripe. I dug myself a hole, laid in it, and let myself rot. Now I am crawling out and wishing to grow.

Then there's this other phrase, "It's Okay. It's better this way." I have to believe that to get out of the hole. I believe the hole was necessary. It's better to be crawling out of the hole.

I want to be beautiful. I am too alone. I don't understand why people don't want to call me, or see me, or laugh with me. I see people at work all the time and I think we get along. I talk to them, ask them, answer them. But nobody ever asks if I want to spend time with them. And I do. I come home and crawl back inside my whale of a house and curl up amongst the digested food and know exactly where all the trails inside of it lead. I want new trails.

SO I watch Skins. I watch it over and over. I write about it.

It's sad, really. I just want to fall asleep, and let things be organized.

I took a "test" once during a horrible nice. I described the color white as wonderful, calm, organized, beautiful. Then somebody told me, "That's how you feel about death."

Yeah.

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.