AP Week.

My hands smell like roast beef and that jacket I stole from you in 9th grade computer tech still smells like risks I never took and flirting I never picked up on.

We've drawn ourselves in a circle of fire

 but somehow I ended up on the inside 

alone 

and you don't know that it's okay to pour water on something that was never supposed to last through the night.

I'm too tired to make conversation and too worn out to feel alone.

 Come sit with me and drink in this thing they call beautiful. 

Come sit with me and trace the stars with the tips of pencils that were never meant to fit our backpacks.

 I'm sitting in a cold room learning about plagiarism and I wonder if you can be arrested for stealing the lines from my veins and not using quotation marks. 

There are 17 kids in my English class. 14 that regularly show up. 

That's a disappointment I've learned to find consistent.

Which makes it much easier to hold.

Rocking chairs, pendulums, my stability :

Things that swing. Back and forth like a wave on a roller coaster in spinning hamster wheel.

forgetting where the cycle starts and how the triggers came to be.

A starting gun.

Every track meet another starting gun.

and sometimes you take off running but most of the time it's just me.

and I get to the finish line alone and wonder why you only run half the races.
Why you never cared about taking places.
Why you won't fill in the spaces.

You think I look like a slob because I haven't gotten ready all week.
I think I'm making strides in my confidence by not caring what you think.
If you want to see who your real friends are, take off the make-up and watch who still wants to be seen with you in the halls.
It might surprise you.
And all the boys you were kinda flirting with will run and you'll realize how much better off you are loving yourself than waiting around for someone to do it for you.
I wish I could make a metaphor out of the way this week has treated me.
It'd probably win me the poetic Olympics

But for now all I've got is a stream of thoughts and emotions that can't come out of my fingertips just because they've got a soft landing place below.
I wish you could see how many colors my mind can make out of the word stress and how deliciously appealing procrastination feels on the shoulders of a 4.0

I've got 99 cents in my pockets but the world is out of pennies to make up the difference.
Karma said she'd help but then she found out I've been screwing with happiness.
She never liked that
.
Jealousy was just a word to talk about the cheerleaders
then you made it about everything else.
Happiness and an open arms approach to society.
You made a goal in my mind and I took steps toward the ribbon.

and maybe this post is too long
but I don't feel any better about the world so maybe it wasn't long enough.
We're writing to save ourselves.
I just hope I never find out from what.

I hope you sleep well tonight.