Throes

"Jen, you need to get yourself a man"

With a breakfast taco in my right hand and a kolache in my left, the promise of a high-cholesterol breakfast sent me bouncing through the cafeteria in elation. I was glad to share this moment of gastronomical bliss when I was stopped by a friendly wave from across the room. I thought about doing the wave-as-you-walk-away-and-smile, but I wanted to share the love. We exchanged how are you?'s and I inquired after his lady friend. After a brief chat, during which time I was made privy to all the woes and throes of love, I said goodbye and made my exit. My back was turned, my feet moving forward, my mouth salivating as the breakfast taco pulsed in my hand, and then I heard him call out after me.

"Jen,yourselfgetman"

Pause. Turn. Give semi-hateful look.

"Sorry, I didn't catch that."

"I said, you need to get yourself a man."

"Oh."

A Note to Adam

To prove my love, I would drink a gallon of fixer

The taste would make me cringe, a feeling I knew when I was not with you

To prove my love, I would expose a roll of perfect film

A crime comparable to murder, something I committed that one time you didn't call me back

To prove my love, I would smash a vintage Leica camera to pieces

The same thing you did to my heart when you cancelled dinner the other night

Just take my picture

Develop our love

Expose your heart

Don't leave me in the darkroom

these words were inspired by my dearest Collin Phillips

Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks

my dreams are made of fear and hope. on nights when you can play connect-the-dots with the stars, hope puts on a play while i sleep. but, i guess hope gets tired after a while and so do the stars. fear takes his turn and the sky isn't so bright.

it's foggy out there, i'll be sleeping with fear tonight.

20

I am.

This birthday makes me want to wear high heels. It makes me want to buy a suitcase that doesn't have hello kitty on it and put on mascara. Watching Mad Men, in combination with this birthday, makes me want to smoke a cigarette at a party and seduce Don from across the room as thick smoke is released from my perfectly pouted red lips.

But, when I fall asleep and dream a strange late-night-snack-induced dream about pizza, eighteen-wheelers and baby seals, my mind will be wiped clean. I will wake up having forgotten that I am a year older. I will go on wearing ballet flats and no make-up and bumbling around proudly sporting cartoon themed luggage.

Dear Margo,

Boys are turned off by girls who cannot control their eyelids.

Dear Ben,

I just want you to be depressed again. Your success and happiness are bringing me down.

Bdelygmia

bdelygmia, n.

1. A litany of abuse-- a series of critical epithets, descriptions, or attributes

"From the very beginning— from the first moment, I may almost say— of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form the groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry."

-Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice

Your pearly white smile broadens and I am reminded of an equine muzzle. I want to stick a carrot in your mouth so that it might match your hair. Those eyes are like vacuums into which souls and intelligence are sucked, never to escape again. But none of this really matters because I don’t know you at all. He, on the other hand, I do know. Or at least I used to. He is blind to your mulish qualities, but rather finds you appealing like a phlegmatic mail-order doll—after all, you share the same purpose. His booming voice dulls the senses of those within earshot; fortunately you were dulled long before his pedestrian existence intertwined with yours. It must be nice for you to have a reason to straighten your hair in the morning and he a reason to pop his teeth back in.