We Were Promised Jet Packs

You know that it happens, we grow old.

Between diving into the espinaca dip and deep dishing on our agreed distaste for the dirty talk diction, an old friend and I caught up over my break. It was more refreshing than applying a heavy coat of Mango Burt's Bees. And DAS refreshing. She brought up some good points. One being, that I've changed. A lot. I know I have. The pseudo anklebiter that bounced from hookah bars to musicals, high on the organic energy of life is no mo. I wish that it could be enough. But it's not anymore. Not because it's too expensive, but because once replaced, it can never be reproduced. We get older and with each passing moon, we unconsciously fold the panorama of our adolescence into origami, filling canisters with these creatures of nostalgia until they brim over. It is only then that we wake to foreign temperaments and realize we have jettisoned these sacred vessels to the moon.

I was blessed with a semi-charmed pupilage, but I somehow convinced my fool of a élan vital that along with my diplomas, I had also graduated from that part of my life, mostly scar free. Right? Riiiiiii-ong. WHERE THE FUCK IS MY DIPLOMA PROVING THAT I WAS DONE, THAT I PASSED WITH PRETTY PASTEL COLORS? Nonexistent, apparently. We're knitted armor for our adult identities, yet when we come home, they unravel with the slightest grievance. For the family is too blunt an instrument to ever stay perfectly compact.

Yesterday's Parties

"I'll go for that, and smile when I
pick sand off myself in the shower.
It is the way Scotland looks to the South,
the way we enter friends' houses
to leave what we came with, or flick
the kettle's switch and wait.
This is where I want to live,
close to where the heart gives out,
ruined, perfected, an empty arch against the sky
where birds fly through instead of prayers
while in Hoy Sound the ferry's engines thrum
this life, this life, this life."
-Andrew Greig

-bits from the work

"Everything swirling, fast, so fast, that it dwelled on seeming ingenuine. We douse the fiery, inconsequential judgements we had consciously wrapped ourselves in. And it was just us, hanging on dearly to exonerated, sputtering utterances unfettered by the bud and the stars. Faces swam past our fishbowl swoon-diving, but we only had 16-year-old, swollen eyes for each other. Each minute the last minute."

"Heart-breaker waves, I long to love but can't. Sea salt teased my nose & tongue & eyes & I succumbed to blindness. Still, I strain my ears to make out the ocean's wanderings, of secrets whispered and lost in the unconsciousness of the waves. I've followed my nose to this spot of breadcrumb trails and sorry childhood beach days. I stay that way, slow dancing in the salty film, and this is where, finally, finally, you first find me."

"After your initial reaction to the shedding, lovelorn wallpaper, you want to reach out and touch something. But everything is immaturely competing for your attention, like three forgotten children high on the prospect of wonderfully indifferent, parental praise. And when the television deepens and eventually dulls their building block blues, their hopes drop into one rainbow on the floor."