So I write long posts, cry about it or something.

This is for all the families who think throwing money at problems solves more than attention ever could.
For the people who come out of rainstorms with dry hair and tight hoods.
The people who don't know how loud the stairs creak at night or what the bleachers look like full.
The boys who won't go to senior prom because 'there's no one to ask.'
The girls who don't get asked and won't admit it's killing them.

This is for you, my dear.

For all the kids who let machines eat their quarters to they could eat gumballs.
For the worker and the wife and the wastebasket sister.
This is for the shooting stars that never got wished on, because even in their dying breath,   their plea to be appreciated,   no one saw their beauty for useful.
For the student body officers and the lacrosse kids and the girls who fix their make-up in between classes.
The people who watch para-gliders in awe but never look up the phone number to the dream they promised to take out on a lunch date.

For the wounded and the winners and the wanting.
The people who think talking about the moon makes them deep.
This is for the page of the textbook that's never been seen and the world in the dictionary that's never been said.
The cap and gown gathering dust in the closet.
The restless, the relentless, the receiving.
This is for the blockbusters of the social world.
The scouts who put flags up too early in the morning
The grandmothers and the tea parties and the silly hats.
The PTSD and the cheaters caught cheating.
This is for the Saturday morning cartoon watchers and the Sunday evening comic readers, whichever you are, you're valid.

This is for the voices that were drowned out with the applause and the cashier who meets a thousand new people everyday but still goes home alone.

The world is spinning miracles. Seconds are falling like raindrops in Oregon and you have to catch them on your tongue for full effect. Windy days lead to warmer weather and whether or not you drive just to feel the caring safety of your seat belt is up to you. It's only trying to save your from the villains your mother once read to you about.

Because the Big Bad Wolf takes a detour every once in awhile but if you take the long way to grandma's house too many times, eventually he'll find you. and he's not as easy on the mind as he is on the eyes.

Questions with complex answers should not scare you out of living,  just scare you into existence.

God knows we need more people existing in this world.

Dance because it's beautiful.

I can see poetry in the way your body is moving and I hope you never stop brushing the keys to the harmony you're making.

I hope you don't give up your childish dreams because your technique wasn't taught by Martha herself and you'll never reach the skyline if you don't learn to pay for a ticket to get you out of Kansas.

I used to feel the symphonies echo inside my heart when the floor was asking for my creativity to fill it's lungs but that dream died when the best won the awards and the emotion didn't matter if you couldn't point your toes.


They didn't understand the melody never wanted pointed toes.

Do people use glove compartments?

This is for all the times you said you'd be right back with no real intention:

When you buy sushi in a box it looks like a glass top coffin, but that doesn't stop you from enjoying every bite. Isn't that sick and twisted? Isn't that wrong? We cry over a bunch of spilled milk when we're the ones pouring it on the counters.

Complaints fly around about the crappy service in this rickety old high school hangout but you haven't worked a day in your life. So I don't want to hear it. There's french fries and there's ketchup but there's also napkins: so stop complaining about the mess the football team made of your life and start cleaning up after your own dirty habits.

You claim you're headed down a road goin nowhere real fast and you've missed too many stops to make it right. But I don't believe you, cause sin city and the Mormon Mecca are in the same direction if you're coming from Salt Lake and there's an exit every 10 feet to remind you that Hell was never worth the gas money.

So stop messing with the radio and steering with your knees. You're never going to find the perfect song to jam to or that sweet spot to aim the air conditioner. You're killing time so you can claim the road ended before you did, like that's some real excuse. 

Post-Death (it's kinda a pun)

I ran a 5k for a dying mother.
I read a post about death holding a classmates hand.
I watched the dog die and the car sell.

I'm beginning to think death touches the horizon more often than does the sunset.

It's in every breath we take and every word we yell. It's hiding behind olly-olly-oxen-free and protecting the fragile from the dangerous. We wrap it with bows and flowers and double sided paper. We've given it countless metaphors and imaginary readings. It's motivation, inspiration it's activation.

Death is an extra hair tie on someone else's wrist. Death is losing your wallet in a New York City cab and still looking for it. When death stops by for dinner you vacuum the floors and make your finest meal. You'll buy a new dress for your date with death because you're hoping to get lucky. It's the way extra buttons are attached to the sweater, but you throw them away because you don't think it will hurt you.

It's in every breath we take, but it's in every breath we put out.

Fitzgerald made millions with his lies.

She's beautiful and she's tan and she's thin and she's a cheerleader.
and I wonder why I always wanted to be her because yesterday she told me her life has always been a mess and that God often chuckles when he throws her a bone because it's filled with more poison than she's ever known and it's supposed to be like an injection,
where they fill you with disease so you learn to fight off infection,
but you're still going to bruise at the seams with a scar that has no recollection    of the aches it put you through in your fragile state.

and when her heart opened up, mine closed. I can feel bad for myself for days but when I see tears un-cried in someone else's eyes I remember that breathing is beautiful,  

and I do it every day. 

I remember that walking on blistered feet means a pair of new shoes and I remember that the cherry tree in the back yard has been growing for years and still has nothing to show for it.


The earth has spun too many times for even the Einsteins of our generation to count and we're all still standing here with grounded heads instead of dizzy hearts. We pay for amusement parks to thrill us and haunted houses to chill us and fifty dollar steaks to fill us but do we realize we're living the American Dream just by the adventure we let our hands run away with in the sand box?



The beach is home to a million grains of sand and seashells to hold those grains together, but we often go to look out at the water we will never touch and the sun that runs away from us time and time again. We roll out our green towels and our classic Fitzgerald's and pretend we are enjoying the best the world can place at our fingertips but what about the snow in the caves where unseen echoes are spilling poetry from their fingertips and I remember, white waters and swimming fish but I can't forget the thrills and chills and fills that imagination and the skyline of reality painted on my heart when I used glasses with a prescription against the negatives.



I remember empty soda bottles that broke the night into a thousand firework shreds and the newspapers that claimed to teach living by a prescription and animation by addictions. 

and I can't tell you how to spell half the words I've written here but I know Google can do that for me and I'm sure I'll keep letting him because there are much better ways to waste this burning lifetime than a dictionary and a red pen. I remember learning that words weren't as important as the pictures they captured and I remember not understanding how you hung a conversation on the wall. But I tried desperately to find the right type of nail at Home Depot.


Thin and tan and beautiful and pom poms. That was the answer to all of life's hardest questions once upon a story book. And I guess it ended up being the cure if you had the right condition, but I never did listen and someone might have once told me about convictions and decisions and explained how a hospital bed and a cherry tree both gulp down remission but    all     I     remember     is death leading me on with a superstition about the beach,

and the meaning behind the words of a dogeared page in my over read Fitzgerald.

NELSON READ THIS CAUSE.

You're dancing and she's giggling and my heart.
                                                                                   is.
                                                                         breaking.

I hope you cherish those videos. I hope you never delete them. I hope you show them at her wedding so she knows she was loved and you were there and you were real.

It reminds me of the video we have of my father tickling me into giggle fits and I live to be reminded how happy we had the world in our former lives. 

I'm scared I'm not really over it like I thought I was.

I've never had my heart break quite like it does watching you interact with her. An maybe that's because you once told me you were in your thirties. An he was in his thirties. And ever since that day I've been counting down your days.

She only gets you for a few more years.

An she's laughing on the couch with no idea that there won't always be another goodnight kiss. She's letting you film with no idea that she'll watch an re-watch and she'll do everything desperately trying to remember the laugh her mother will only tell her about and the inspiration colleagues will tell her about and the moment you smiled only because she was smiling.

I'm scared she won't remember.

I'm scared she'll say she does when she doesn't. I'm scared she'll feel like she has to tell a memory every time they go around the table even though the only thing she remembers is feeling loved, and feeling paid attention to and maybe when she gets older she'll wish she paid better attention to you. and she'll wish she hadn't naively misunderstood and she'll wish little kids weren't so selfish and that they knew to tell you to STOP.

 and she'll wish you were here.

I'm scared her memories will be contorted. That they'll be manufactured by the stories others tell and often times, she'll need pictures to remind her exactly what you look like.

I'm scared she won't remember, or even know, the scar under your nose that you hate enough to cover with facial hair.

I'm scared she won't ever plan her dream wedding because the daddy daughter dance is just too difficult.

I'm scared she'll get into trouble in high school because all those studies are true
  and she needs a dad to show her how boys should treat her right.
         And to kick the ass of anyone who doesn't.
                   And to wipe away the tears when she still hangs out with the asshole and He

Breaks.     Her.      Heart.

I'm scared she'll know your favorite cake because her mother will always make it for your birthday, but she won't know if you like pepperoni on your pizza. And some days, that will be the breaking point.
I'm scared she'll forever root for the Lakers because that was your dream team and she'll take so much crap about it that she'll wonder if you still support them but she won't give in to all the people asking her if she can name 5 players because she can't.

She just knows what you liked. And she wants you to keep living.


I'm terrified that the only thing she will remember about your funeral is feeling like she was supposed to cry and all the pretty flowers she got to make bouquets out of after everything was done. That she'll only remember how hot of a day it was and how much she hated her mother for making her wear a long sleeve navy dress. That tears will stain the memory and she won't be able to make out what the words say when she goes back to remember.

I'm scared your time is ticking and she'll have to grow up wishing someone taught her how to jump start a car.

So take a video today. and take a video tomorrow too. And tell her that you love her over and over.

and then film it.

Because the clock is running dry and the handwriting in her journal will never convey the way you high fived her after she got her first strike bowling or the time you sat on the couch watching her try to cartwheel for an hour because "no daddy one more time, I know I can do it."

I'm scared she'll take a sucker punch to the gut, and I'm scared you won't leave enough evidence for her to remember.

A comment I never left.

I'm crying. And believing. I'm sympathetic on a large scale and empathetic on a small one. Every word you write is a gift from the Writing Gods and the passion Gods and the Gods who want everyone to know what it means to feel someone else's pain so strongly that you'd wipe away your happiness if it meant they could have theirs.

You ripped your heart from the curtains the world asked you to hold and the encasing broke. You let the blood run across our minds and fill our fears with hate. You made me sick for every pro-mia account I supported on tumblr because I thought that was the answer. You have broken glass and distored mirrors shining out of your eyes but they portray the perfect symphony. They scream the words we're all too scared to breathe but beg to hear. You make me a fraction stronger and an atmosphere tighter every time I let my self pity remember the real problems and the real hero's this world is offering me.

You are real and you are better than a barbie doll.