my dreams remind me of an ocean

We were waiting in line to go on a water slide when he first told me he wanted to marry me. We’d been in the water for hours, wrinkly like we’d been together for sixty-five years. His eyes were wide as my bikini clung to my skin, like he hadn’t seen me in much less before, when he said those words: “I’m going to marry you someday.”

I wanted to run away so fast that the lifeguard blew his whistle. We were only seventeen. That’s not the kind of thing you can say to a girl who loves you. That’s not the kind of thing that can be put back.

I smiled, but I’m not sure it made its way to my eyes. I didn’t want to go on the slide anymore. My stomach was already flopping around in my abdomen.

A cross hangs on the wall, right between the line of blow-up Letter People and a bulletin board full of finger paintings. A man hangs there, blood blowing from his hands, caked into his hair. I’m surprised the same people who banned books in the library asked for this to be hung here. It could be traumatizing for a kindergartner, but we’ve all grown up around bodies like these, and no one bothers to look for too long. It watches us as we play, as we learn to share and count to one hundred. It follows us as we age, as we learn algebra, physics, The Great Gatsby, until we are old enough to hang one for ourselves, until we are the ones showing corpses to kindergartners and saying they are beautiful.

you don’t believe that i have baggage,
because i don’t wheel it behind me,
opening it up and handing out
bits like party favors. 

i hide mine close to my person,
secured with zipper after zipper.

if i let it free, i imagine
it would consume the entire room,
and would never fit back inside,
and you’ll never get it all off your walls,
or off your mind
or out of your hair.

you have your own burdens.
you don’t need mine caked to your skin.

This March, I’ve decided to post a new piece of writing here every day. I’ve been wanting to do something like this for a long time, and I’m excited to be sharing more writing with you lovely people!

My wonderful and talented friends Nadia and Patty are joining me in this endeavor as well, and you should check out their blogs. And if you’re feeling up to the challenge and want to participate, send me an ask and let me know! Let’s be friends!

i feel our potential energy in my bones.

you are a hypnic jerk,
a falling sensation.

you are the paint
i use to plaster on a smile,
and the reason
i don’t always need it.

pull the parts i hide
from my chest,
hold them in your palms,
and tell me you are home.

You are chocolate-covered espresso beans,
And pages read by flashlight in the middle of the night.
On some days, we’re Lucky Charms marshmallows,
Bass beating in your chest cavity at a rock concert.
But sometimes we’re the smell of wet paint,
The feeling in your feet before you fall down the stairs,
The interminable pod race in Phantom Menace.
And that’s okay.
You tell me that without drops,
A roller coaster is just a track.

You grab my laptop, hold it behind your back, and say,
‘Kenzie, get off Tumblr;
Let’s go outside.’

We are Holden Caulfield gallivanting around New York City,
Scoffing, complaining that the lights are too bright.
The blinking red hands shout at us, begging us to stop,
But we run through the intersection as cars slam on their brakes,
Our laughs grotesque and cold.
Sometimes I wish we could just enjoy things
Instead of mercilessly picking them apart.

We are the jump-kick of justice,
Handcuffing criminals and kissing while police read them their rights.
People assume that you’re the hero and I’m your trusty sidekick,
But I know you see us as equals, partenaires dans le crime.
I get tangled up in your cape, trying not to fall behind.

You keep me on my toes, caffeinated into the night.

(This poem is a response to the 20 Little Poetry Projects writing exercise. Although it does not contain all 20, many remain intact.)

(Photo by my super talented friend Ella.)

I remember when Adeline was still here, when her house smelled of saltwater taffy and the leather of her riding saddle. Her hair, more raspberry blonde than strawberry, whipped through the wind as she stood at the top of the hill we loved to climb in mid-July, when it was covered in little blue flowers. We’d stay up there all day and fall asleep on a blanket in the dewy grass after reading Hemingway or Woolf by the light of a jar of fireflies.

Sometimes our hands would touch, or she’d kiss my cheek, or we’d lay almost overlapping looking at the stars. I realize now I lived for those times, for the flush on my cheeks before she moved away. I loved her before I knew what love was.

Of course, it’s easy to remember things through a beautiful haze that wasn’t there. I’ve blocked out the boys she’d sometimes bring up to the hill, the way she’d drag them into the forest and leave me to read alone. I’d forgotten the scars I saw when she wore a two-piece bathing suit, between when she uncrossed her arms from her stomach and when she made the plunge into the water.

I can even forget the towel bar, the yellow bruises on her neck that couldn’t quite be covered with makeup, the blue flowers I insisted on putting in her hands, if I drink enough cheap wine and am far enough away from that town, that hill, that night. I can forget that I never told her that I loved her, that maybe if she felt loved, she would have stayed.

I can sometimes forget, but I’ll never stop remembering.

Our fingertips are caked with powdered nacho cheese as we pile on sixth floor lobby’s couches, still wearing dresses from the ball. Too tired to keep dancing but too excited to sleep, we wait limbo, eating snacks and trying not to count the hours until we have to go home again. Exhausted witches and wizards trickle out of the elevators in various states of inebriation, and as they walk past, we ask, “Do you want some Doritos?” Some shrug us off, but most eagerly join our circle, and for a time, we pass around the bag, forgetting we’re strangers.

(Author’s Note: I wrote this about an experience I had at Leakycon, a Harry Potter convention that took place this year in Chicago. It’s for a flash-fiction contest for attendees of the convention. If you like it, you can go vote for it by clicking the heart here.)

UPDATE: This won the contest, and I received a Kindle for it! Eep!

She looked at me with those warm brown eyes, the color of hot chocolate when I dump in five or six scoops of powder instead of two. Her lips quivered, the way they did she was cold, or in this case, lonely. They probably no longer tasted like her cinnamon lip gloss, but like vodka and menthol cigarette smoke and the saliva of another boy, and when I thought of her tasting like that, I couldn’t even look at her.

That night, I felt like destroying something beautiful. I wanted to yell at her until her mascara smeared down her cheeks; I wanted to make her feel the ice that was paralyzing my chest. Because one lapse in judgment, ten seconds, could undo months of forehead kisses and stuffed animals won at theme parks and the things done sneakily under bedsheets.

But in the end, when she started crying and my voice felt hoarse, I didn’t feel powerful. I just felt emptier than when I’d started, and like a dick to boot. I could barely hear her apologies and pleas through my pulse pounding in my ears.

Finally, I got up off of her bed and simply walked out the door. I didn’t grab my favorite sweatshirt or my Kickass DVD or even the ring with the little diamond in it that I’d saved up all summer to get her. Those things would always make me think of her anyways, and they’d probably end up in my trash can after a week or two.

We hadn’t been friends before we started dating, so I got the luxury of not even considering being friends after. She left me a couple of voicemails and text messages, but I deleted them without hearing what she had to say. Even though I was ignoring them, they stopped far before I felt they should have.

I saw her in the grocery store about two months after that night. By that point, my mind had made her into a monster, and a horrific one at that. But when I saw her, she was just wearing a hoodie and picking out breakfast cereals, and I couldn’t hate her. I just couldn’t.

When she noticed me, she gave me a small, sad smile with the left side of her lips, that seemed to say, “I’m still sorry I was a bitch and hurt you like that.” I shrugged my shoulders and gave her a little smile that I meant to say, “Hey, it happens. I’m ok.”

And then I walked towards the pop tarts, she walked towards the oatmeal, and I never saw her again.

Disclaimer: This is already published in two publications. Plagiarize it and die. (No but really, please please don’t plagiarize it.)

Title: Ewoks, Homosexual Stimulation, and Captain Picard
Fandoms: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dollhouse
Rating: M
Pairing(s)/Character(s): Topher Brink/Andrew Wells
Summary: Topher Brink and Andrew Wells meet at Comic-Con, and sparks begin to fly. Andrew’s totally smitten, but Topher refuses to accept that he’s not straight. Will Andrew be able to get Topher to open up before they have to go back to their separate lives? Basically, if you like adorable, nerdy boy slash, this is the fic you should be reading.

Read the first chapter here! If you like it, please add it to your favorites or something, because I probably won’t post about it after this.

Crushes on strangers
Love poems are too creepy
Will write them haikus

I had this idea after trying to write a poem for a boy I admire from afar. Writing a long, love poem type deal felt borderline stalker-ish, but I was inspired by this one thing in particular about him and didn’t want to let it go. I realized that writing three lines felt much less weird than writing twenty, and I’d still captured what I saw in him in that little glimpse of like.

I wrote about five of these haikus (because they’re addictive once you start trying them out) and will be posting them throughout the next week. I hope you guys enjoy them.

And if you want to take a crack at writing your own, romantic or platonic, tag them #haikus for strangers and I’ll check them out. :)