Dreams

Her night looks White and Black
The black being all she ever sees
The white being all she doesn't feel
She is a shell, you see
She makes herself empty
And makes herself whole
She makes herself pretty and shallow
She feels that she takes up more room than the grantite clouds
Overhead the tallest building

The gray all gone,
The lines straight,
And dark,
Fixed,
And suffocating

She shows him the white,
The empty,
The surreal,
Its all she's ever known

But he finds it sad.
Too sad for the way her heart is reaching up
He sees her differently,
So he turns her world inside out
He paints a picture
Where her dreams are
Black and White
And she can stamp the white
Where she wants

And it's okay for the rest of it to be black
For she is as lovely
as the tiny white stars

Her Cities

the girl in the blue dress,
she made her eyes into stars.
the girl had yellow hair
and she sat on clouds,
looking down.

imagining she could
tip toe on the tops
of mountains,
lick the sunbeams
off the her pointer finger,
and talk
the way the cobblestones do.

wanting to paint
each toenail
the color of the shore,
turn her smile into the ceilings
and her the curve of her neck
into the sounds of the fountains.
and finally breathe
the way the world does
when it falls asleep.

Developing Character/Indentity/just ideas i jotted down really not edited

Margaret sat in the cramped, fairly quiet cuibicle and let the passing workers drain her thoughts to a noisy kind of oblivion. She realized then not that she hated her job, and not that she was determined, as the women in the green pencil skirt next to her was, to get her work done, but that she had no idea if she loved what she was doing. Liked it even. What she did know, looking out at the ugly pigeons landing on building roofs, was that she would always choose the desk next to the window. Looking at the array of open documents on the computer in front of her, she could not pry her mind out of the farthest away regions of her head, where they often were lately. She felt as though the thoughts were not even in her body, but only connected by a sting to what she was really concious of. Looking at the women in the green next to her, she observed her wavy brown hair, all the slick shades intertwining with the almost frizzy curls. Margaret looked at the way the women held her hair in a loose bun, all the way at the top of her head. She had never seen someone wear thier hair like that before. She looked at the way the woman sat so still, without ever taking her eyes of the computer screen long enough to look at the people around her, and the way the womean held her pencil, with barely two fingers and the lightest touch. She wished she could hold her pencil like that. The next day Margaret wore her hair as high on her head as possible, and curled it with an iron the night before. She pretended this was what her hair was naturally like, and never took her eyes off her work. Only once, when the man who walks by at noon said hello. He told her he liked the color of her hair. She was blond, and she wished so dearly then that she had brown hair. But she had always been blonde. She wore her hair up and curly for the next three weeks. She smiled at the thought that she was like the brown haired women, she did not the people looking at her. Only the women had only wore her hair like that one day. And she hadn't seen her do it since. And now she began to notice the woman at the cublicle across from hers, whose hair was not curly at all. This woman was never silent, her eyes were always flitting around and her mouth always smiling. Margaret tried so hard to hold her pencil lightly in her hand. But when she saw the straight-haired woman frantically shaking her foot back and forth under the table, she slowley picked up the rythem. When she went to visit her mother, her mother had asked her questions. Like how are you doing, are you feeling better, how did you get your hair like that? Her answers were, good, and you? I am perfectly alright and, I've always worn it like that. She figured this wasn't a lie. When her sister joined them the questions for her were not questions at all, they were i'm so happy for you, that dress looks dashing on you, and a simple lovley kiss on the cheek. She noticed that her sister had a set of eyes she had never seen before. She studied them, the dark rims that gave her a look of maturity, even though Margaret was the older one. She looked and made sure she knew how to make her eyes even darker than that for work on Monday. She did this, except she wore her hair straight and heavy and long in front of her face. This day the women who wore the green pencil skirt complimented her on the color of her eyes, called them radiant. She didn't think they were radiant. After work she came to her apartment exaclty how she had left it. Bare, predictable and silent. It had probably been this silent in her apartment for a while, but she had just noticed. She thought of the calm, orderly way people handled themselves, and tried to do the same as she sat her bag down and slipped off her shoes. Even though she did realize there was no one there to notice how wonderfully put together she was and how she knew exactly how to handle things. Besides, there was nothing else left to do. Sure, there were a few messages on her machine, asking her to lunch, but she didn't feel like going. When these people smiled she knew they weren't her friends. They didn't even know her, they only knew Ben. She wondered if people said that about her. That that was all she was. She knew they didn't say that, because how could they know that that's all she was. Ben. Or his girlfriend, his partner, his wife. And she wondered how Ben could have loved her when she was nothing. Her laugh was always his, though a little too soon before. Her dress was always in accompany to his wallet, and when he asked her what color she perfered, she would smile and ask him to choose. Maybe that is exactly why he loved her. She thought, that she couldn't even remember how she used to wear her hair before he died, couldn't even go to the store and pick out a pair of shoes if she wanted too. The next day, she didn't fix her face at all, and when the man that came around at noon asked her if she was okay, with a hint of sarcasm in his voice and eyes trained on her hair, she just matched her laugh to his chuckle and met his eyes with a sparkle she knew so very well how to feign. But when she wrote her name down for him to call her she used the lightest hand possible, and when he bought her a dress the fifth night they went out, though tempted to choose green, she picked white.

Shadows

Sometimes a light plays with my head,
daintily showering a brilliant stream,
of firecrackers across my vision.

I always want to warn it of the omnipotent shadow,
looming behind the glitter, growing larger.
But I know this is the fight they play over me.
I try to cry, but the angels took my tears,
I try to scream, but the devils took my voice.
I want to run but they took my will to escape.

My flesh then aches for the words I can't depict,
and I close my eyes to tranquility.
It is quiet when I realize,
I emptied my delicate, lovely light.
The shadow illuminated on the wall,
seems to be genial, but I wonder.
How can I see the shadow, without the angel's light?
I bid it away then,
the jealous, formidable shadow,
and I bring the glitter assuredly back.

Only this time I realize,
that the light is the shadow,
and the shadow is the angels.

Alone

"And all i loved, i loved alone"
-Edgar Allan Poe

Vents

She learned from the vents of her heart, through the slits and windows, even doors.
She learned from the muffled sounds of nighttime and the breathless sounds of the following day.

She learned from every person who walked through that life, every time that heart eroded away,
Viens and eyes and beauty and brokeness that gave way to slits of light, and salt, and life.

She learned from heighted arguments thrown in aimless directions, she learned they were cries for help,
The glares of her mother, the glances of her father, prodding until they snaped branches off of her growing mind.

She learned, fighting through the blinds pulled down.

She learned from grasped hands and careful smiles, intringuing whispers and careful praises,
Sheer glass and thick clay, she learned from the desire, and the determination, and the dirt.

She learned from wrists and and collorbones, the round freckle on the smooth shoulder she could not find on herself,
Covered, gaping wounds and secrets she could not know, looming figure's she was not allowed to see.

Through the pretty, empty opening's she learned the most, shading her eyes to see that hidden farthest down,
She learned through the vents of her sister's heart.

Stuck

Do you ever feel like you have nothing to share, that you have no important ideas or insightful contributions to the world? But at the same time every one around you is sucking away your essence, the only thing you have, and your loosing your mind to try and be something different than there all fighting to take away from you? That really you haven't had any choice to say who you are or that you don't want to be part of everybody else. Maybe you want to be unique, loved, and special and flawless. And that the only way to get every one away is to pretend.