trippy

i had a dream with you in it last night

with you and a dog and some red shag carpet

i don't know exactly what was going on

but we were together.

.

.

it was a nice dream.

hello takes a summer

if we could go back and start again

with hello

how are you

my name is

.

hello takes a summer

and maybe a year.

.

.

if we could go back and start again

two months would be gone

before you even

knew

my name.

.

.

.

i like ice cream.

i ride my bike.

the greatest mistake you can make in life is to continually be afraid you will make one.

-Elbert Hubbard

the surfact project (64)

Do you wear your seatbelt in the car?

.

once i didn't wear my seatbelt and-

$j!+

.

yeah, that happened.

.

and ever since the accident,

i've wondered if maybe it wouldn't have been better

if we had been going a little faster

or been hit a little harder

and life had stopped in that ultra week of happiness

of graduation

of culmination

of reputation

and congratulation

instead of crumpling like it did

into a $j!+show that's worse

than the dent in Brendan's bumper.

speak soft.

just because she tells you

you aren't worth anything

doesn't mean

you have to listen.

.

.

whisper i am powerful.

i can't be an atheist.

you know how sometimes

you get a strand of hair stuck in the back of your throat

that's literally impossible to swallow.

you could try a thousand times

but that stupid, tickly hair still wouldn't go down.

it's really annoying

but it's easier to just fish it out of your mouth

and throw it away.

.

don't tell me this has never happened to you.

.

.

but life isn't like that.

you can't fish out your problems from the back of your mind

and just throw them away.

you can't take an idea you don't like - but it's true

and pretend it never happened.

sometimes you have to sit there and struggle

until you swallow it.

all small and insignificant.

just imagine a small insignificant insecet. you know, like an ant.

mhmm.

and there are so many of them, you know?

yeah.

like if you step on one, meh. not a big deal.

right.

well, to someone out there,

like God. God's out there.

i bet it's like we're a big ant farm

mmm.

we're all small and insignificant.

yes.

and maybe...

.

.

but God doesn't step on us.

the man with the eternal childhood - two drabbles and three-quarters of 275 words

The man in the sparkly pajamas ran laps around the high school track. His walkman was broken and he had only the freshman lacrosse game on the turf to entertain him. He watched the goalie block a terrible corner shot. He smiled. He used to play goalie.

The man ran a total of seven laps. He always meant to do eight, but he could never quite finish. He took a huge gulp of Vitamin Water, which the magazines told him was trendier than Gatorade.

The man had not stopped watching freshman lacrosse games since he graduated twenty-five years ago. He arrived every Monday afternoon and ran laps around the track. Funny how, no matter how many times he came, each lap was the same length.

The man wiped the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve. He glanced up at the bleachers and recognized a man in a light blue button-down who was dividing his time between a laptop on his knees and the players on the field. The pajama man waved enthusiastically and yelled as loud as he could. "How are you, Danny?" he bellowed. "Is that your son out there?"

The man in the stands looked up, squinting at the sun. "Harold?" he asked, running down the bleacher steps to greet him. "By God, it's been years! What have you been doing with yourself since high school?"

"I've been running," said Harold quietly. "Really I have."

He shuffled his feet and looked down at his toes.

"I wanted to run like the rest of you did. But I just couldn't go away."

the surface project (65)

In the past week have you cried?

.

can we please relive

this year of our lives

over and over and over again

.

i'm scared of the world

and the rest of my life

you know i'm not myself

without you

.

.

can we please relive

those four times that i cried

over and over and over again

the surface project (83)

Has anyone told you forever and then left?

.

it turns out that everyone goes away

and that's really all there is to it