Tomorrow, I will worry about the future.
But today, I wallow in the past.

Tomorrow, I will be 16 and trying to remember
if the derivative of arcsin is one over
square-root-of-one-minus-u-squared
or square-root-of-u-squared-minus-one.

for so long, i’ve crossed the same streets
i’ve smiled and waved to the same people in the hallways
i’ve thought the same thoughts
i’ve loved the same love
but i’ve outgrown my attachment to comfort and my warmth for the familiar sidewalks

Pause, and capture me how I am now:
wrap me up in the minute we just lived:

make me your mosquito in amber –
ephemeral in life, eternal in death.

Freeze and pin me to your little brother’s trifold –
turn me into grade-school, spelling-test vocab:

This is the real world

With limited freedom, and lots of things to fear

Where you can’t get away from the truth

This is where violence lives, and people follow you

Where guns are triggered at any time or place

Being young is hard;

 often feeling all alone.

 Your hair is a mess

 and your face is

breaking out.

 Being young is hard.

You aren’t quite sure of your friends,

 you’re stressed out;

As children everything is pure

Endless and pure

As you age you notice the stars

Burnt out memories light years away

Only if you can see them

Past your city lights and suburbs.

In their memory we keep living on

I have not changed at all.

It is not true that

I have changed for the better from experience.

It is genuine when I say that

I have not tried to apologize for my past wrongdoings.

I am false when I claim that

I was once told that we must take adventures to know where we truly belong, meaning that we have to search to find the perfect place for ourselves. I do not necessarily agree or disagree with this statement.

Place: noun, defined as a portion of space available or designated for or being used by someone; i.e. one’s spot at the table, or if you think like me, one’s place in this world.

Some of us haven’t quite found a place

We wander with suitcases full of self-doubt and worry

We flit from person to person seeking acceptance

We run from place to place

searching for a passion where we can direct the never ending flow of time

Aria pointed at the little flower on her ankle with a short, chubby finger and asked her mother in her unpracticed, fragmented English about what it was. “Pretty,” she said, her ‘r’ little too rounded and her voice broken up by her childish laughter.

There was a time when innocence meant nothing to me.

She was a veil over the childhood I had

And took for granted,

And when she was stripped I wanted her back.

She was pillaged in the basement

of an old friend’s house.

Dear Me,

You lose in the end.

In the end, you cry for 6 months and spend sleepless nights wondering why you weren’t enough.

In the end, your bedsheets become tissues for your tears and your pillow becomes a microphone.

when you click your heels and wish for home, where exactly is it that you go? i packed away all my ambition in manilla envelopes of faded dreams and sent them away to coral reefs so schools of fish a generation after me could learn from my mistakes.

She stood in front of a mirror

Clean and sober thinking about how she feels taller than her own reflection

Then she took an injection

I remember Pauline Miller. Before she moved,

She lived in an understated, light green, box of house

on Raldoph Avenue.

She lived there for a long time.

she is four years old

toddling around

on wooden floors

like a spinning top,

too short to reach the cabinets or

see above the sink,

clambering atop

countertops

to reach her

pink plastic glasses

Age is just a number

We all start out at one

But someone’s first year

Is another’s seventh

Their neighbor’s eleventh

My fifteenth

You ruffled dress.

You lip glossed, 

clean tongued, classy individual.

Alone to my thoughts, to my terrors,

Wishing upon days we were careless,

Remembering a time, 

Like a nursery rhyme,

Where our greatest fears were that of the fearless.

When I was a little girl,

I wanted to be a princess,

then a vet,

then a president.

I know many girls who at my age

shared those dreams.

The ones I look at now and think

What was I thinking?

Those aren’t possible!