and everything depends upon how near you sleep to me

and so here i am. hum hum humming at work in last friday's dress, chairdancing to crescendos crashing through my headphones. last night i sat on a front porch ledge, legs crossed carefully with the phone balanced between shoulder and ear - it seems that i am listening my way through life. i've got a feeling (ooh, ooh) that tonight's gonna be a good night. we're picking you up in ten, be ready. meeting people and falling over backs of couches and hey, how've you been, i haven't seen you in forever! clear vodka and cloudy eyes. tan lines and summer skin. baseball games in the afternoon and shotgun wars and laughing the whole way home. i want to eat an ice cream cone and spin around in the sun. home is where the beach is where the heart is. salt water spray as the wind squeezes your eyes shut; i can almost taste it again. don't even have to pretend to smile. the beatles said it best: i want to hold your hand. i'm happy just to dance with you. and just in case you didn't know, ps: i love you. songs are poems set to music. poems are words and words are what i do best, except when words can't even come close and then you know i've got it bad. im all yours, baby, signed sealed delivered like a stevie wonder postage stamp. cheesefest 2009. just tell me we'll never get used to it.

but in these rhymes i'm without a fear

i'm not sure of too many things in life but i do know this: i will always believe in you.

remember what you told me

they say your past always comes back to haunt you. well, here i am psyching myself out again because that's what always happens, right now. i get freaked and think this is all too good to be true and something has to go wrong soon 'cause nothing has yet and god, why can't i just tell my brain to shut up? i'm happy, dammit. i wouldn't ask for anything different and it's all just so good so why can't i just calm down and take this thing, which is so real, for what it is?

and i was doing so much better. maybe this is just an off week for me. everyone has their days, you know? maybe my "day" is a whole fricking week. i don't know. maybe i just want reassurance but how much more reassurance can i really get? it's all up to me on this one, really. i just have to trust and not be afraid for the worst. this is just a bad morning. the rest of the day will be better. i have to believe that.

just to be with you, just to be with you

let's run away. let's paint the sky. there's a clock outside my window that keeps spinning and spinning but the minutes tick by so slowly. the walls of my cubicle are as gray as the sky. (do you dream in black and white or in technicolor?) i want more than these flourescent bulbs overhead. let's light an old kerosene lamp and sit on the beach under the stars. let's stare at city lights until we get dizzy. some places glow brighter when you see them from the satellites. let's run through the grass with bare feet. let's kiss until our lips are red and let's sing until our throats are sore. let's go cliff diving. let's let life pump through our veins.

faith and desire and the swing of your hips

so i remember a long time ago i was sitting here staring at this white box with its blinking cursor, unable to come up with any words for how horrible and empty and sad i was feeling at the time. just now i was sitting here staring at the same white box and i am at a loss for words again but not because i'm sad - instead it's because i can't come up with any words that would accurately convey how happy i am, how i feel like i can do anything or be anything, how i want to cry every time i think about you and this and everything because i just can't keep it in. how i just wrote the longest run-on sentence ever and really don't care. how much it means to me when i wake up shaking in the middle of the night and you're there to tell me it's okay. how you want what i want and vice versa. how nothing i could say could even come close to how much the real thing means.

wanna write her name in the sky

i want to tell the world. i want to tell every single little person i know but right now it's like we have this grand secret that only we know, and we can catch each other's eyes across the room and grin and know exactly what each of us is thinking. i whisper it into my clenched hands and then set it free, as though it can permeate the air, lingering, so i can breathe it right back in. let's count our freckles like constellations. let's be explorers on an adventure, mapping each other out like uncharted continents. i make wishes on stars, on lucky pennies, on clocks when they click to 11:11, shutting my eyes tight even though it doesn't matter what i wish for anymore. i want to climb mountains or sit on my roof or ride my bike with no handlebars. sometimes i pedal so fast that the wind whips through my hair and i fling my arms out and pretend like i'm flying. there is nothing more that i need. i've got it all.

'cause it's nine in the afternoon

...your eyes are the size of the moon.




tell me a secret. tell me a story. or better yet, don't say anything at all. any word that could drip from our lips would say so much less than what it really means. you say you don't deserve me and i say i don't deserve you but really, who deserves anyone in this world? all anyone could ever ask for is to find perfection in two imperfect halves of one imperfect whole. i could have gone my whole life and never found you but somehow i did. i never want to forget how i felt the very first time i saw you, way back when nothing could ever have even happened between us. somewhere deep down, i knew since that day. it took me a little while to come to my senses but nobody could ever know how glad i am that i did.

you can never say never

i feel like i'm getting older and younger at the same time. one half of me could watch lightning bugs and fireworks forever and never get tired of it; the other half just wants to finish school already and get out there and see the whole wide world. one half of me just wants to graduate and the other half tears up just thinking about it. i long for both the future and the past. writing my name in sparklers takes me back to when i was four years old in el salvador on christmas eve. nochebuena and the dress-up kit i got that year. costa rica and all the christmas parties at siba's house. waiting on the worn red carpet on the stairs every christmas morning. waking aly up at 1pm to do puzzles. y2k. that one new year's where the power went out and my brother and i slept in the trundle bed and made as much noise as two kids could make when the clock turned twelve. hermit crab races on the beach. roller skates in the driveway and the ice cream man.

and still - here i am, hoping and wishing and laughing and loving and finally having some semblance of the life teenagers usually have in high school. i guess i really did get to be a starving college student. i miss the beach more than usual. i miss the way the sky looks in front of my house at dusk. i miss running around the block and flopping down underneath the tree with the red flowers, with the branches that sweep the ground. it's funny how i never thought i loved that place until i left it. i miss my dad's dinners and "good morning sunshine" from my mom and guitar hero with my brother. but at the same time i know that even though i miss it, this is where i want to be. i'm sitting here in my room typing while the smell of firework smoke wafts through my window. my heart and my eyes are way too full with way too much. maybe the reason i have to cry is because everything is spilling over 'cause it doesn't fit inside me.

i'm scared of the future. but at the same time, i'm not scared at all. i guess my life plan is just different than everyone else's because i don't know where or what i'm going to be ("when i grow up...") - but somehow, i can keep the faith that the people i love will never leave me. as long as i have someone by my side, that is all i really need.

baby can you hear the message i am sending?

love me like the world is ending.