The act of being small.

I lay in the middle of the street, my eyes wide open and staring at the wide expanse of stars set against the navy blue. The sound of a party, with music blasting through-out my block, makes the air around me vibrate from a few houses away. I can feel the concrete pulsing beneath layer of clothing separating my bare self and the ground. Every once in awhile, a silhouetted insect will float through my vision. The trees are inky black against the canvas before me. The street lights are absolute. The moon is vaguely surrounded by filmy white clouds and it stands as a bright orb in the middle of nothingness - a light in the darkness, something to strive towards.

I barely take up a fraction of the street. I barely take up a fraction of anything, for that matter. I am so utterly small and insignificant. We all are. Our actions, in ten years, will not matter for better or for worse. There will be others with our thought processes and others still with our woes. Our ideas are not unique or original, ever. They were all someone else's, somewhere else, first. It's beautiful. I want to scream, to sing, to laugh, to cry, to tell the world how small and tiny everything we do is. I want them to understand how lovely that is. I want to whisper the words to the wind and have them repeated in Times New Roman on the petals of some flower somewhere or spelled in the constellations. It's okay, it's okay - don't worry, none of this matters. Enjoy yourself.

The art of being terribly alive and therefore terribly small is beautiful. The freedom that comes with that knowledge is even better.

The heart nebula.

She lost herself the first time they kissed.
She took all of her heart that was still hers and slipped it in his pockets.
“Be careful,” She warned him. “It’s all I have left.”

- The Lovely Things

At any occasion, I'll be ready for The Funeral. (P. III)

Its like something you see in a film or hear someone else describe. I think we are trained by what we see on screens and read in books, how to feel about death. To scream and shout and cry and then with some kind words we have an epiphany and everything is ok again. But a million words never properly describe it. That awful conflict of pain and confusion deep in our chest. You pick up a book or go online but it doesn't make any sense. It literally does not make sense. ... How wasn't she here any more? Why was everything else still there? Why didn't the earth sigh or the table bend? There are so many little things that make a person who they are, it seemed impossible for them all to be gone. I find it so hard to think about death. I think for such a common occurance in the world it is the hardest thing to understand.

- My friend and darling older sister, Anna.

I'm coming up only to shove you down, I'm coming up only to show you wrong. (The Funeral Pt. II)

In death, people bring food. It scatters the kitchen table and friends and family shove it at you. "Eat," they say. "You need to eat. You need to remember to eat."
Platters upon platters upon platters scatter the kitchen table. Eight bags of chips. A box of Mountain Dew. A box of pastries. A tupperware container of home-baked cookies, still crumbly enough to fall apart in your fingers. A platter of fruit. Cheese and crackers. Food doesn't numb the pain, the reality of the situation. It makes addled brains clearer and stumbled thoughts organize themselves under the pretense of you are okay, you are prepared to deal with this. You are taking care of yourself.
I'd prefer not to feel. No thank you, I'm not hungry.

"This is all normal." They say, and I stare at the rain bouncing off the surface of the previously glass smooth rain. When I woke up this morning, the sun was shining brightly. Within hours it began to thunder. It beats down hard against the Earth. Cleansing, or it would be, if I were feeling. No thank you. "Not wanting to move, not wanting to eat, not wanting to shower. This is all normal. Everything you're feeling is normal."
Nothing about this is normal, I think, but I'll keep that to myself. This is the tragic movie scene that projects across a large white screen in a dark room. The actors don't really feel it, so why should I? (But I do and it aches.) This is something you read about in the newspaper. This doesn't really happen to you and your family, not in your boring lives in Somewhere Suburbia, America. Your life is not tragic and you could have it worse. But this is happening. This is tragic. This is happening to me and my family and my body is aching with the stress that my mind can't handle quite yet.

It's hard to understand why somebody would do this. Why somebody would take the beautiful aching freedom of life into their own hands and end it. It's hard to understand why we aren't good enough, why all of the wonderful things around us aren't good enough to keep people alive and hopeful and happy. They don't. They don't see the glitter in the sky or the magnificent colors floating around in the air. Their lives are black and white and now they are non existent by their own hands. 
I wasn't done with you, yet. You didn't get to see yet. You are gone now. Now what do I do?

The Funeral.

People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

- Abraham Lincoln

1. The smell of used bookstores
2. Soda in glass bottles
3. Grassy fields under mid-evening sun
4. Sunny days with big white clouds
5. Kittens
6. Rainbows
7. Rainbow lollipops
8. Mixed tape
9. Vintage bicycles
10. Riding bicycles in skirts and heels
11. Cookie Monster
12. The Mad Hatter
13. The Doors
14. The Beatles
15. Turning the last page of a good book
16. Laying underneath the stars
17. Listening to the perfect music at the perfect moment
18. Long talks late at night
19. Getting home at two AM
20. Not coming home at all
21. Blue Raspberry jolly ranchers
22. Tie dyeing
23. Taking photographs of my friends
24. Disposable cameras
25. Listening to new music
26. Finding amazing bands that are local
27. Reading stranger's blogs
28. Listening to other people
29. Dancing to pop music
30. Looking at good art
31. Going to galleries in little towns
32. Bottle caps
33. Boys in sweatervests
34. Boys who read
35. Boys who wear big glases
36. Boys who look like Buddy Holly
37. Wing tipped shoes
38. Vintage clocks
39. The smell of antique stores
40. Ladies with parasols
41. Pearl necklaces
42. Yellow smiley faces
43. A freshly sharpened pencil
44. A box of crayons
45. Laughing until my stomach hurts
46. Cooking for my family
47. Wearing a bathingsuit in the summertime
48. Being teased by the person I like
49. Making lists
50. Being so tired I don't think at night
51. Harry Potter
52. Glitter
53. Reading poetry. Anybody's poetry
54. Playing with cameras
55. The way hands look after tie-dying
56. Pigtails.
57. Plaid
58. Nirvana
59. The word 'joyful.'
60. The word 'melancholy.'

What makes you smile?

The glitter in the sky.

The last firework scattered across the sky in fading sparkles and we, scattered across the lake - separate and yet together, watched with baited breath as the fireworks died off. That's it, that's it, that's it (and that's alright.)

"They look like stars." I whisper, eyes half shut with the surreality - even more than the consistent surreality that addles our brains - of the situation. This isn't real, but it is and it's one of those legitimate 'existential' moments. I reach out and pick at the grass absently. "They're beautiful."

And they are.