#blakelseywrites

honestly I never expected you to become something special but you did and I tried to hold it all inside,  use my teeth as a barrier  to hold the way I felt about you behind my tongue, but I let it spill and drip around our feet like honey, like those whiskey shots staining our lips and burning the corners of my mouth into a smile. you didn't feel the same but part of me thought you were  halving your words in half saving the bad bits for me keeping the good bits for you. you were drunk and I was almost drunk and when someone asked you  what exactly it is you that you like about me you breathed out words that sounded so effortless I wondered if your barrier forgot how to do its job "because she's wonderful," you said. you waited a moment before continuing. like you realized you said it out loud.  "because she just completely gets it. how could you not like her?" there wasn't much to say and I wondered  in that moment if you were answering the question  or talking to yourself. I think I'll always hope it was the second one even though I told you my feelings were gone. I think I'll always hope you'd met me first. I think I'll always be spilling myself around you

august unfolds himself in a bundle of confusion and new beginnings. slow motion heartbeats. orphan daydreams. dripping honey. the sun bursting bright because it knows summer is deflating into the way it sets. knowing the sun is the last feeling of summer before fall folds her up in cardboard boxes growing cobwebs until next year. and we unzip our august luggage, crack it open, remember everything we packed and how euphoric it feels to stand unfazed in the same season one year later.

I fumble through dry pages that feel like skeleton bones. Skeleton bones they are: touched others before touching me. Dried to a crisp because they circled the earth before finding me. Streets, and stoplights, and cars honking at the girl who does not wait for anyone. I cross the street, gliding between the push and pull of Giovanni's room and the apartment building. Buzzers sound, doors slam, and keys click until we are all back in the living, basking in the city lights that flow through the windows that show and tell secrets. And there the three of us are: passing it along. Our vision and thoughts warp together, as if we are peeking through an ethereal lens. We are walking the streets of Philadelphia, laughter shaking our fragile frames. There is a woman across the street, and I cannot see her face but her feet look like deer hooves. Her shoes look like they are squeezing her entire being into the front of the high-heels as she traipses over the pure lines painting the pavement. Laughter erupts from our beings: flawed focus and punctured perspective.  We are walking miles back and forth: through the garden, through upscale restaurants and bars with high noses. With you beside me and him across from me,   the keys begin to rattle, buzzers sound, doors click and I find my way back to the marshmallow after the light shapes the room.

I have come here with intentions of stomping every part of myself into the concrete I call home. Sweat, tears, fury, exasperating joy packed into the bricks that I could walk my way to blindfolded. There is a part of my heart that is breaking, as I call this last day, first day: beginning is to end as heart is to here; but I press forward, to see everything beyond these four walls that hold the secrets we've all learned.

I look for you in every Black Honda Fit. Nervous you will show up on these streets I have declared mine.  Nervous because I do not want you here. You have become a game of Jacks in my adult life. Except I want out.  I have tossed you into the air  with no intention of picking you back up.  I will no longer fall, trip, or find myself in the jagged pieces I so powerfully left behind.

I walked down the sidewalk I used to walk down all of the time tonight. It was around the same time I normally passed through that part of town. I had a flashback. A flashback that I was walking to my car and you walked right by me, like you always did. Before I knew you, before you knew me, before we collided. I walked down the sidewalk I used to pass you on tonight and you weren't there. Our collision ended before it barely started.

I think that I convinced myself that I could breathe through you blowing your cigarette smoke in my direction. It became a game  for me, to see how long I could  close my lungs off around you.  The girl who had never touched a cigarette in her life started holding yours. Stealing puffs in and stealing herself. I thought that holding this accessory in my hand might have convinced you that I was bad-ass or mysterious, but it turns out there is nothing bad-ass about breaking our trust with the air and the minute you broke the trust with me was the minute I realized that. So I will no longer be the dog-ears to the book you cannot finish. You narcissistic asshole. This is what goodbye looks like, and you do not deserve anything more than to hear from someone else whispering that I am gone.

Early in May, someone told me to describe myself and I was sick and tired of repeating who I am and what I do or want to do. Later that day, I came home and wrote the following down in my notebook. describe yourself: 1. i like the smell of ocean towns and the way the salty breeze sticks to the hairs on my arms. i also like how committed the shore and waves are to one another, as the waves always come back after they leave. 2. i like to observe strangers and their unique features and within those features, wonder what they’ve been through. i wonder why a specific name makes them cringe or smile and if they like to be up at 7 am or 2 am. 3. i couldn’t even begin to give anyone a solid answer on my musical collection and tastes if they asked. it’s about as indecisive as i am. 4. i spend more time writing than i do speaking, and the same goes for reading. there’s a part of me that enjoys getting lost in places that aren’t real, and that never will be.  5. i experienced the death of a really good friend when i was a sophomore in high school and it shook me from my core. i never knew how to look at death before then. in my sophomore year of college, a friend and close coworker took his own life. i didn’t know where to go from there.  6. my mom and dad got divorced when i was six months old. my life has always been pretty interesting. i ended up with a step-mom who mostly sucks and a step-dad who is awesome and really guided me growing up.  7. it is interesting to me how much love i have stored up inside of me. waiting for one person but already there for many.  8. there’s something about the dark hours of the night that inspire me to the point of insomnia, but i’ll never stop loving the greeting of the sun very early in the day when i’ve gone to bed early.  9. it breaks my heart to know there are people who have never seen the ocean. there’s something about the waves that speak to my skin and i’ve never been more happy near the salt and sand.  10. elderly couples who still grocery shop together and argue about what cereal they’re getting that week make me smile so big and make me wonder if i'm really made for one person and if so, maybe one day i’ll be with someone who will make me eat frosted flakes for a week even though i hate them.