everything except the last thing

The world is kind of shitty sometimes so I'm just going to tell you a story about nice bus drivers in a small town.

I've come to count on buses being late. I know this isn't a particularly sound habit. It's cynical. Today, I learned that it can also be destructive.

Not the kind of destructive that has you digging your fingernails into the soft skin of your inner arm on a night that sort of makes you want to stop existing. No, this is a simpler destructive. A 'there will be blisters on my feet today because these are not walking shoes and I just missed my bus' type of destructive.

Spoiler: I missed my bus today. Twice.

The first time, I could have hastened down an icy hill and caught the bus at a different stop but I decided to walk to work. I got there one minute late but no one noticed.

The second time was slightly more eventful. I was at school, editing a poster for my theatre performance next month. I left the building with plenty of time to catch my bus, according to the computer I was working on. When I stepped outside the building and checked my phone, however, I found out that it was 4:10, not 4:03. My bus was leaving. Needless to say, I was not on it.

I ran anyway. I hoped it would be late leaving. It wasn't.

There was another bus sitting at the station so I stepped on and asked the driver where the closest stop to my house was. I was semi-relieved to find that I wouldn't have to wait half an hour or walk all the way home. The bus driver asked me if I had wanted to get on the other bus and I said yes and he asked if I wanted to connect to the other bus if possible and I said that would be great. Then I sat down in my usual spot.

When we were approaching the mall, the driver made an announcement. He said that he had called the other bus driver and they were waiting for me at the next stop and that I could get off and transfer. And I just sat there, letting it wash over me that he had called the other driver and asked him to wait for me. That an entire bus full of people were waiting for me so that I could get home. Just another anonymous teenage girl who missed her bus.

So I'm sitting here thinking about losing my best friend and how sometimes a terribly broken person will go into a school and murder other human beings and how we're quickly destroying our earthly habitat and things seem pretty fucking bleak a lot of the time. But then there are my bus drivers who get me to school and work and back every day--Harold and Frank and the two whose names I don't know from today. Kind people who will wait at the mall for five minutes so that a stranger can get home. It doesn't erase all the grief but it makes it slightly more bearable.

"I'm not saying that everything is survivable. Just that everything except the last thing is."*

*from Paper Towns by John Green

in the snow

somehow
it seems like time has slowed
or stopped.
the loudest voice
is a whisper.
somehow
walking home through the falling snow
forgiveness is in reach.
wanting peace with myself
trumps the urge to self loathe.
somehow
the sharpest words
thrown through my mind
decide the scars aren't worth my time
every stupid thing said or done--
hurts caused by my carelessness--
fade to gray.

snowflakes brush my cheeks
plant tiny wet kisses on my flushed face
reassurance that the world spins on,
out of my view.

fingers whisper

Put your hands against my rib-cage,
Pull me closer into you,
Blur the lines,
Turn out the lights,
Your fingers whisper
what is true.

bedroom windows, part three

It's been too long since that night. Too long since I opened my eyes to her sleeping right next to me, not remembering where I was and very suddenly realizing that I didn't care.

Partly because I can't remember every detail, I won't chronicle it all. In a way, I just need to finish this story before it slips away irrevocably.

I remember the struggle to leave the bed. I remember not wanting to fight her, wanting to surrender and stay there forever. But my dad was picking me up and I had a window to sneak out of. A window that I did not particularly want to climb through again.

I was crossing my fingers that she would tell me to leave through the front door. It wasn't a school night, we hadn't done anything wrong and I had a feeling my presence in her room that morning was anything but a secret from her mom. But Niki insisted with her eyes and then climbed out the window ahead of me.

Passing her my bag as I stepped onto the desk chair, I glanced back at her bedroom door, now ajar. Someone had pushed it open that morning and we were hoping it was one of her dogs. Halfway out the window, I heard the smashing sound and my body tensed. I wasn't sure what I had knocked off the windowsill and broken but I was positive that footsteps were rapidly coming down the hall and that her mom's voice was cheerily calling out good morning.

As Niki's face turned bright red, it occurred to me  that it's sometimes easier to sneak in than out. Doing things by the light of the moon feels stealthy and badass but once the sun had come up, all the rebellion guilt and clumsiness splattered across my body like a thick layer of paint.

Niki was so embarrassed but I didn't want to melt into a muddle of invisibility. I wanted to laugh at the absurdity of my life. Her mom was giving us the benefit of the doubt and seemed genuinely pleased to see me there, awkwardly loitering outside of her daughter's bedroom window, a window I had obviously just failed to escape through. I stood there, leaning against the side of the house as I was offered breakfast, coffee, fruit or maybe pancakes and declined it all as Niki muttered, "You couldn't just let me have this one teenagery thing, Mom."

I pleaded my departure and eventually fled, smiling at the vindication of getting caught. There's something so pure and satisfying about the suspense ending, the worst thing happening, having it not be that terrible. There's something to be said about a mother who is endlessly hospitable to a teenager who just climbed out a window rather than exit through the front door.

It was the end of my summer, officially. The best night and the most eventful morning, one of those momentous occasions that reaffirms my "no regrets" philosophy. If the opportunity presented itself again, I would seize it. Next time, though--given the choice--I'd take breakfast.

Breathless

Your fingers trace 

snowflake patterns on my skin,

never the same one twice.

I curl towards your touch

and away reflexively--

An exhale to match the inhale.

But my breath is far from even;

My focus out of tune.

You've taken all my sanity;

I'm breathless thanks to you.

bedroom windows, part two

If I had taken the time to imagine the first time I would sneak into a girl's window, I doubt it would have looked like this.

I doubt I would have imagined myself standing at a locked window, waiting for Niki to break into her own house through another entrance because she forgot her key. Yet I did stand outside that locked window. And I did wait, smiling to myself about what I was about to do. Even after the light turned on in her bedroom, I stood outside her window, watching the shadows dance across the shades as Niki moved around her room, throwing her possessions around in a last ditch attempt at tidying.

Finally, she opened the window and smiled a mischievous grin at me, her coconspirator. But there was a tentative edge to that smile that made my stomach tense momentarily. I stepped onto the plastic deck chair that we had positioned underneath her window. Holding my breath and thinking stealthy thoughts, I pulled myself off the moonlit chair and onto the window sill. Then came the awkwardness of my legs but Niki was right there on the other side so I slid into her arms and she maneuvered me into the bedroom.

I kind of cleaned up, in case this happened, she said, sheepish and I wanted to take that sheepishness in my hands and hold it close. I wanted to hold every part of her close but I collapsed onto her bed and settled for squeezing the stuffies I'd left in her care months previously.

The events that followed displayed all of the splendid awkwardnesses that one can expect from teenagers illicitly occupying each others bedrooms. There was the moment when her brother stood outside the door and I shoved a pillow in my face to muffle the giggles I couldn't contain. There was the familiar feeI of the pajamas I wore, ones I'd seen Niki wear at sleepover after sleepover, none of which had taken place in her bedroom. There was the fact that I flossed my teeth but didn't brush, as Niki's brother remained in the kitchen making eggs. We set an alarm for my departure the next morning and then fell into bed, exhausted with our supposed rebellion.

I can't describe accurately enough the feeling of lying in Niki's dark bedroom, our limbs a tangled mess of each other and even if I could, I can't say I'd want to. I remember the moonlight and my eyes refusing to stay open and our bodies so close and molded to the other's that we were like Lego, slowly becoming one whole. There was warmth, sometimes too much, and I kept throwing the covers off and then dragging them back on. As I said, I can't describe it perfectly but I can say that if I could chose one moment from my summer to go back to and live in forever, it would be that one and I would spend the rest of eternity wrapped in her pale arms. I wish I could have stayed awake longer to appreciate it but my body refused to cooperate and sleep washed over me like a drug.

bedroom windows, part one

It wasn't as if I planned it like this. If I had planed to be sneaking out of Niki's bedroom window at 8:30 on a Saturday morning, I would have stuck a toothbrush in my pocket when I left home. Like the best deranged plans, this one was spur of the moment.
I hesitate by the window, looking back and forth from the chair waiting for me against the wall and my pajama clad friend. She looks at me expectantly and then sighs a little and hops onto the chair herself. Niki is out the window before I can calculate the improbability of my circumstances. Glancing back at the slightly open door, hoping no one wanders in, I step onto the desk chair and propel myself onto the window sill.
***
The night previously, I had expected to be home by 10:30. I had a ride and everything. My friend dropped me off in town and I left most of my stuff stashed in her car. I thought I was coming back for it. I set off to meet Niki, throwing on my red cape as I walked. I can't say what made me want to wear it. It was one of those random things.
When I imagine myself walking up to her, I'm sure it's way more badass in my mind. I pulled my hood up so that from behind you could only see the bottom half of my black skinny jeans, the red hooded cloak covering the rest of my frame. The cloak blew slightly open in the wind as I half skipped up to Niki. She smiled at me and then at my cape and I wanted her to stare at me for decades and also for her to never look at me again. It was like being frozen in a spotlight and I only moved when she decided to release me.
We started to walk in the only real direction worth walking and our hands found each other magnetically. Her touch made my palm tingle gently. Moving through the quiet streets with Niki at my side--our fingers intertwined, both reaching and relaxed, like ivy on an English country home--I had a surreal feeling of being  completely present, like I was in the exact right place at the exact right time. My happiness at being alive with her at that precise second must have radiated from my body in waves.
If it were a dream, we would have glided through town for an endless amount of time, provoking smiles and pausing traffic, as every person tried to figure out what was so right about us and how they could copy it. Our glow was inimitable and imperfect.
But in reality, there was deep fried sushi to eat and texts to be sent. There were friends to console and dark train tracks to walk down. There were iPods to give away and goodbyes to be whispered. There were hugs to be hugged and benches to be loitered on. It was a different sort of gliding around town that took place that Friday evening.
At what I thought was near the end of our night together, Niki sat on a bus bench and I sat on her. We appeared to wait for a bus that had stopped running hours ago as we both put off our inevitable separation. I kept troubleshooting the moment I would have to leave her and delaying it and waiting for her to tell me to come over to her house and knowing that she wouldn't. But it hurt to keep drawing out the end when I knew I couldn't put it off indefinitely so I texted my dad for a ride and when he said sure and asked where I was, I looked into her eyes and said what I promised myself I wouldn't: "Could I sneak in your bedroom window tonight?"