If I could give up my check for you right now, I just might.

So economic recessions am I right?

Nothing burns a warm hole in a conversation quite like the one that got away,

or the one that we wish did. 

However, 

I wish that people paid attention to the fact that you were always scarce. 

Safe places may be scarce, 

but places that look like them are not. 

Coming home to a lover, you tell them you're tired,

and they seem to forget that anything was wrong at all.

A few hours earlier, I took a trip to the unemployment office 

and I noticed that as usual no one looked happy,

and I didn't expect them to. 

People never seem to be happy when they need things,

or especially when other people do. 

Or even more especially when things that people need are asked for from other people. 

I didn't expect that I would ever get to the front of the line, because quite frankly,

this is the worst line to be at the front of. 

No one really looks at you the same after you ask them for their thoughts,

as though they wouldn't have a million more made up within the next hour. 

I'm good at being vulnerable with myself, and my own circumstances,

but that kind of vulnerability with someone else just never sat right with me.

We grow up being told to stay quiet, but are met with such shock when our thoughts are loud.

I should have written a broad farewell to my pride. 

It's funny how no one ever speaks in these lines.

I can hear what they want to say, because we all want to say the same things. 

Needing things has gone so far down the totem pole that it's what we look for in a partner. 

People tend to pursue everyone who won't pursue them,

strictly because they have no responsibility to them.

I would imagine this is the most self-deprecating line of people that there's ever been.

Seeing that it never ends,

I'm quite curious to see where the people who need help actually go to for love.

I almost pity the workers at the desks, 

but they wouldn't have jobs if the sky wasn't this gray all of the time.

Mind you, 

I hate co-dependency just as much as everyone in this place,

but having to grovel will teach you. 

People will hold up anyone who won't notice that they need it so that they don't look needy either.

The thing is, ego doesn't stop humanity from being weak.

People are feeble things, really. 

People in this line have had their backs broken 

for the sake of someone else going after what it takes to fix theirs,

taking from others what it takes to put bread on their table. 

However, those people still have friends,

and still even speak to those that they chose to disassemble.

People who break others pull people into this line without looking back,

and anyone supporting the people stuck here hold them up too.

I always found it almost funny how people could watch people they know be tossed here,

yet befriend closely those whose who put us here. 

I suppose I'm lucky that my needs are rooted in circumstance,

but unlucky to have been here before too. 

Thin mints are pretentious and overrated.

So fish can't ride bicycles, 

and as deceiving as they look and disappointing as it is, 

I will never have the privilege to hug a cloud. 

However, I was always astounded at the fact that these are the things I'm designed to focus on. 

Obviously, my focal isn't focused on

our gilled-up friends and their lack of efficient means of transportation, 

or the fact that a nebulus ball of fluff will never be my lover, 

but rather how the universe decided to designate my limitations. 

I'm also curious about what makes something a limitation to begin with. 

Actually, come to think of it,

you know who never has this problem?

Girl Scouts. 

I have never met one SINGLE girl scout who didn't know that they deserved the world,

and that they could OBTAIN that world as well. 

Girl Scouts somehoen have the same confidence as mediocre caucasian men going through a mid-life crisis trying to find a way around change. 

A girl scout has no limits, and knows NO BOUNDARIES. 

They tell you the cookies are fifteen dollars a box, 

and she finds it reasonable of me pay that much because she sees no limitations in my wallet either. 

I bought the cookies, of course because why the hell wouldn't I; they have everything I shouldn't have in them.

However, both my wallet and I have very strict limits and boundaries, 

so why can we find it so easy to break them down for other people, 

and never because we truly want to break them?

I fully acknowledged that this little girl was a hussler at best,

yet for some reason I signed my soul and livelihood for a simple box of coconut samoas.

I have a lot of questions for everyone who says that people can do anything, 

but find themselves doing absolutely nothing when it really matters. 

For the overwhelming majority of the population,

everything seems to matter more.

Something about everyday life makes people in power seem small. 

Maybe that's why we're always so anxious.

I could give all of my samoas out and then leave nothing for myself, 

just for someone else to buy a different box of the same thing,

and then keep all of them for themselves.

None of this exists for a girl scout. 

The inequality of humanity that they MIGHT understand when they're older

is what puts a lid on how people treat each other. 

I hope that those little girls never open their eyes, 

as selfish as that might be. 

I wish that they could live a life without ever knowing 

that my pockets had nothing else to give them,

and that other people, with more to give simply won't. 

I think that if there were more girl scouts the world would be better, 

not because of the moral code that they're raised in because I think that much of them could use a lesson on when proper snark is appropriate,

but I wish there were more people who just believed in other people. 

I'd buy all the thin mints they wanted me to if it could thin out 

those with deeper pockets in them to give,

but who never learned how to.

The converse too

If I could have parts of the past versions of myself back, 

I wonder which I would take. 

I think that people molding themselves intentionally is why we have dictators and tyrants,

also goth phases.

I think that by wanting to show someone who you are so bad,

we put on display the person who we think they might want and forget ourselves in the process.

The fine line between an identity crisis and a pair of mom jeans is simple-

one side is unsure while the other would like to mask the fact that they are too.

I went through some drawers in my high school bedroom, 

and I spent a concerning amount of hours wondering how I didn't care so much.

Not in the compassionate age, but rather in who I was. 

In every brightly colored dress that I would wear tackily with combat boots,

I saw that I never had to try to be happy,

and that with the shifts in my mind and my chest that I stopped conveying,

none of that changed. 

A new age of mom jeans (which are shockingly not jeans that my mother would wear)

seemed to have kicked aside the freedom that being a miserable teenager can provide. 

No, I don't believe that clothes are the key to some third eye that makes you special,

but I do give a nod to the people that we were when people were looking, 

but simultaneously weren't because we weren't looking for them,

tried to be whatever their intuition told them to be. 

We looked for us.

Not being able to hop onto trends,

or assimilate with how cool people like to think they are was a gift. 

At 18 I think I might have returned it with everything else I thought I wouldn't need for college, 

but fortunately people are a bit too busy buying air force one's for them to notice me behind them, as per usual, and as per tradition. 

Nothing they could have said

A lot of the time, 

I wonder what it felt like to be an actor in a silent film. 

I ponder what it was like to be able to speak freely, and have people curious about your thoughts,

what it was like to actually be able to speak them at all.

Things always seem to pique interest when no one knows what's going on beneath them.

Women and the mystery that they're supposedly meant to have,

cups of coffee, and she silently wondering how many she'd had for the morning. 

However, I also questioned how frustrating it was. 

I may have the ability to speak and possibly be heard if anyone glanced my way, 

yet they may have some answers that they would never be able to let you in on.

They can catch the killer in a film noir, and we may never even know that one existed. 

I wonder if they ever wanted to be known for something other than the way that life seems to be from the outside.

I also wonder if they know that looking out from the inside burns just as much of a fire. 

It was in their boiling blood

So for the majority of the population, 

they see what they want and obnoxiously pluck it

from the unsuspecting tree that they will always ignore. 

For me personally, I haven't yet so harshly yearned for such things in this tenacity. 

I for some reason never learned to act on selfish impulses alone. 

Not because I've never had the impulses themselves 

because what kind of person would I be 

without the twinkling sense of disregard for others?

Perhaps I've never acted on them because I like all of this torture. 

That burning in my throat watching all that I could love 

stay perpetually caught up in a tree, 

growing and thriving while I take walks surrounded in it,

 this black spring air not yet warm enough to give life,

but very much cold enough to take mine, 

and bitter enough for me to let it. 

There are so many ways for your heart to get what it wants. 

But unfortunately, waiting for what you want to be perfectly ripe 

at the exact momet you stand beneath the tree 

just in time for it to fall directly into your hands on a good hair day is actually really hard. 

And even so, for some reason, when I have no clue what I want,

no one else does either, so I'm always a bit stuck.

But then, every once in a while, 

I'll find this one flowering tree with just this one blossom 

that just looked so ready to fall and so I waited. 

I let each petal grow in the love of the sun and the rain,

and eventually, I would nurture it with mine as well. 

But as per usual, nature's plan and mine don't coincide as his perfect petals

wrap and intertwine themselves with a perfectly straightened out stem that

I'd have never been able to give him if I'd downed the chlorophyll myself.

And God knows that I very well would have.

But each and every time that this happens, I realize that she can give him so much more

simply because they live in the same place and time, on the same wavelength,

their hearts beat in rhythm with each other and they're of the same kind. 

The fluidity of her blood now runs through his veins frantically

like the fire that would burn their tree.

Such as the spirit of their love will find its way to my lungs 

and he will flow through the open air and into someone else

who can breathe him in without being infected by his rapidly spreading, charming moss

which would prove to be even more contagious. 

Unfortunately,

I've long relinquished my roots for stalky legs. 

For an eternity, I begged for the tree to take me back into her warm embrace, 

but I suppose this was her plan.

Don't get me wrong,

the legs are beautiful, 

but all of a sudden I've forgotten what to do with them.

I've been walking for an excruciating while,

perhaps the best thing that I can do with the dying breath of that once looming tree

that caved into my whims as I did to his is to revel in her ashes and not use them at all.

I will let my body fall silent in his and her memory until I myself feel ready enough 

to find him,

or forget about him entirely. 

Human Dignity + Compassion = Peace. 

It was really hot, but I'm glad that I have no sweat glands.

As much of a person in the life business that I've tried to become,

I really can't deny that I feel like there's been such an extreme death.

Like, I can't just check my phone for things that you'll never say to me,

and I should really stop jumping every time that it rings because

waiting for your heart to start up again is like waiting for a drop

of my sanity in this world of hurt and numbed out feelings

that I wouldn't dare come close to touching anymore. 

Somehow in the midst of a drought you created a pool of toxic waste 

and maybe it was my fault because I was the one who felt anything in the first place,

but you left it there until it was the rotting mess of substance that still lives in my body because believe it or not,

some of us still need to drink in order to stay alive

in the midst of all of this chaos of a societal desert. 

I gave you the last of any water that I would ever get and 

you put it to use but the thing was, 

it was all for you-

a fact that made you happier than I ever could have. 

For some reason,

I was waiting for so long for that surprise factor. 

With you I was spontaneous in my kindness, 

somehow I never felt the need to hold back,

and I didn't even care enough to notice that my

eyelids were starting to feel like sandpaper 

as I wouldn't see you for the mirage that you are

until long after it was too late to save myself. 

You know, I had always admired armadillos, 

however, 

I kind of wish that I hadn't become the shell of myself that I saw everytime

I would gladly inhale dust. or slowly down this

eerie black pool that I had left to drown my abandoned sorrows in. 

I've been swimming in it for so long I stopped bothering to look at the tainted hue of my skin because I'm fairly certain that I've permanentally altered it beyond reapir. 

And after finally calling after you one last time before you found your oasis,

I have the overwhelming urge to allow everything in my to dry out.

Who knows? 

Maybe I'll meet a very nice cowboy

with an affinity for taxadermy and I'll be forever memorialized as a teddy bear. 

And after a while of having been abandoned in this open range,

I thought that then would be the time to embrace

the optimism that I knew would never matter.

And I suppose that from the absence of you 

will allow me to refurnish the home of my mind and I will never know 

how you repaired yours, if you ever needed to at all.

I like to think that you did,

but like I said,

I'll never know. 

Human Dignity + Compassion = Peace. 

To all ye who enter... Her

Now that sounds really physical and graphic, 

but I'm telling you right now; it's not. 

You will spot her in a common place whether it be your dreams or a crowded corridor,

and something about her will catch your eye before she had the chance to hide.

You might tell her hey, but most of your time is absorbed

in silently asmiring what could be considered yours,

but won't be until you see more of her. 

So you go aout peeling her petals back, 

and she's not saying no, 

but you'll never get that flat-out yes until you ask for it.

But that feeling of being able to be a bud amongst nothing else began to aid her in

her quest of finding herself, 

and somehow she starts to think that you too,

could be the missing part of herself that she was so close to finding. 

And for two split and fleeting seconds, you were. 

You entered her life, but once you got the memo that 

she would of course allow you into her mind and body, you let her leave you there.

And she was crying, just trying, to keep you close but you couldn't stay any longer. 

I would like to explain to you what you should have done before infiltrating what you didn't think could be a sacred place, 

but will prove to be your only safe haven when everyone else leaves.

I would like you to know that after you leave her,

she will never let you back in because

she will push you so far from her without so much as touching you. 

I would like you to know that these small details matter, but telling you about them

won't because you've already started on your path and you'll never see the consequences in your stopping. 

Human Dignity + Compassion = Peace.