testing the waters, if anything's biting

Hello everybody.

I wish I could tell you great things that happen in my life, but I don't even know if anyone's listening and nothing noteworthy happens here. 

I could furnish my house with everything in my local antique store, if I could afford it. And if I had a house to furnish. 

and those are my thoughts for you today.

I know, enthralling.

Goodnight at 5pm. 

Traditional or Online Schooling? A Scholarship Essay

Both traditional schooling and online schooling have their benefits, but I believe traditional schooling is more beneficial. Although online school offers at-home convenience, attending a traditional school gives way to a more hands-on learning environment and social connections. For example, in seventh grade, I had a friend who left the school we went to and enrolled in cyber school. Her grades slumped a little the first year due to the adjustment and she found some concepts hard to grasp without physical examples or one-on-one connections with instructors.

Traditional schooling offers more learning opportunities; help sessions were often offered after hours at my high school, and most teachers were flexible with scheduling one-on-one appointments. Advocates for online schooling may argue that a quick e-mail to an instructor may do the same job, but that’s simply not true. Having a connection with a teacher in person allows the teacher to understand your struggles on a personal level; in traditional school, it’s less likely that you’ll be seen as just another e-mail in an inbox.

In addition to academic reasons, traditional school is more beneficial in the social way of things. Traditional schooling encourages involvement in clubs and activities, or at the very least, friendships. Friendships carry through when you fail a test or pass with flying colors; friendships sit with you at lunch every day and walk home from the bus stop after school. Online connections can also be made in cyber school, but tangible connection is also important, especially early on in education. Social interaction helps students develop communication skills and relationships that cannot be duplicated through the Internet. 

broken bits

I'm tired of saying the same things. 

I feel myself pulling away and holding on, my shoulders snapping out of place and my fingers turning red and white on your arms. I'm coping with the death of our togetherness, relearning how it was before--cold under a hundred blankets, my skin moving independently of my limbs and my mind is here to everyone else. 

To myself, I am broken into parts and these parts of me don't work together, don't congeal like my blood is supposed to (though even my blood is moving differently, slow in my fingers and too eager to fill my scrapes). And before I know it, I'm carved away and snapped apart and my hands are gripping your wrists while my body bleeds like a rewinding sponge and I can't remember how many fingers stem from each of my palms. 

I think you're reading my lifelines, tracing the wrinkles with the same fingertips that touched my nose and folded into the shape of my back as we'd walk along the sidewalk before my atoms separated. 

I'm afraid my parts are shuffled jigsaw pieces, flipped and misprinted and swept into the dustpan when I clean the house. I'll need your help to put myself back together, so please, lend me my hands and I'll screw them back into place and our knees will brush under the coffee table as we right-side the pieces and match up the colors again. 

counting to nineteen

all that's in my head is leaving songs
our feet tangled in each other
because neither of us wants to step away

as we lay in our quiet eye
the storm whispering behind the door,
scratching like a thirsty cat,
I try not to love you
so it stings a little less, you see

I fix on our opposite breathing-
you push in my stomach while I breathe it in
and shy away from my skin as I breathe out-

but every nineteen breaths
our lungs fall into rhythm
our breathing in tune
and all that's in my head is this leaving song
and for a moment I don't mind the stinging,

but it's starting to rain a little harder
so let's count to nineteen a little faster
and hum this part a little louder

july 19, 2012

I feel the same way I feel everyday.
Again I thought about taking a roundabout route home, through Boston or San Fransisco. Again I though about running a red light and again I felt the urge to tell someone a truth that would get me fired in an instant.

My fingers are not pretty. They're gnarled and awkward like snakeskin hanging from a wall, lumpy and scaly. They're bleeding. My fingers are bleeding and the blood tastes nothing like copper. It just tastes like the inside of a body would taste.

july 18, 2012

they tell me I worry too much,
that my heart will skip and shrivel too early,
that I'm losing sleep and sanity
and I worry they are right
my arms float out in front of me,
dead as sunken ships
barnacles sucking blood from my wooden body
stiff and rotting, anxious even in death
about the sponges and the sea they soak in--




Sometimes I drive and I think about driving past the place I'm going. Two miles after your house and I'd be a mile closer to the interstate, within reach of any state on the east coast. I could drive until any exit, even- or odd-numbered, or I could drive until I reached the end of the road.

But I hate pumping gas.

july 13, 2012

I am not magnificent. I am simple with warts for kneecaps, a tawny frog hopping along the wet streets and dodging the skin of bare tires screeching to avoid me. I am not magnificent. I am not an artist with a paintbrush between my teeth, pondering the yellows of a sunset or a bowl of fruit, the curves of a dream I had or of a lover's face. I am holding my head close to my chest, listening for a heartbeat.