broken lights on the freeway

i'm a plane ride away from senior year. the pictures on my walls are staring at me and i feel like it wasn't too long ago that i cried in the car on the way to the airport, that first august. text message from kenzie: "my section reminds me of us as freshmen." remembering that time i tried to sift the cheese powder out of my failed easy mac. remembering the first time we all met. remembering sitting in the study room and falling alseep, nose first, into the adventures of tom sayer. remembering watching the sophomores coming back at 2am on a tuesday and thinking they were crazy. remembering screaming and running down the halls of lewis when we beat michigan state. remembering backstreet boys dance parties with cat in that same hallway. remembering the wonder of the first football game and the first time at the dining hall and the first snowfall where i got so excited i almost broke the lamp. the first everything. it's funny how it all flies by like nothing and then out of nowhere it's time for the last this, the last that.

in the moment i feel like nothing is different, like i've learned nothing, but in an instant i realize that everything is different and i've learned so much. and still, some things remain the same. but i guess what i'm trying to say, after all my standard nostalgia, is that hopefully we did not peak at 21 and that these four years were the best it's ever gonna get. but damn, they've sure been amazing so far and i wouldn't trade it for anything. all of it.

i know nobody could ever fill your shoes

in the dark, on the phone
you tell me the names of your brothers
and your favorite colors: i'm learning you

and when it snows again
we'll take a walk outside
and search the sky like children do
i'll say to you

no way november we'll say our goodbye
when it comes to december it's obvious why
no one wants to be alone at christmas time
and come january we're frozen inside
making new resolution a hundred times
february, won't you be my valentine?

and we'll both be safe 'till st. patrick's day.

my future in your hands

i think my favorite thing about you and me are the quiet parts that no one else knows about, the parts where we have to stop talking because you already know what i mean, the parts where you make me a bagel or buy me dollar frozen lemonades, the parts where we are very very tired and fall asleep just like that, the parts where i wake up and you're still there.

a loose bolt of a complete machine

i think the best part of music and lyrics is this:

a) when the notes reach out and tug your heartstrings and you're not sure exactly why the combination of this guitar riff and that cymbal crash make you want to run and dance and cry your eyes out at the same time.

b) when you're not really sure what a lyric means, and you can't grasp it all the way, but somehow it manages to say exactly what you can't.



for example:

imperfect boys with their perfect ploys. nobody wants to hear you sing about tragedy. i used to waste my time dreaming of being alive, now i only waste it dreaming of you. i wanna scream i love you from the top of my lungs. get new passports and get get get get out now. i can't explain a thing. i want everything to change and stay the same. these words are all i have, so i'll write them. change will come, oh change will come. stuck on a little hot mess. dear gravity, you held me down in a starless city. long live the car crash hearts. fix me in 45. me and you, setting in a honeymoon (if i woke up next to you, if i woke up next to you). i'm not going home alone, 'cause i don't do too well on my own. i set my clocks early 'cause i know i'm always late. i'm no good at math and besides, the dollar is down. but there's a light on in chicago, and i know i should be home. i'm addicted to the way i feel when i think of you. tonight i'm writing you a million miles away. i could write it better than you ever felt it.





(since when am i such an emokid? oh wait. hah.)

and all that i can feel is how long ever after is

sometimes when i turn back and look at old pictures and read what i've written i think about who i was and who i've been lately and all those things that me at thirteen, me at sixteen, me at eighteen said i wanted but was never quite sure i would have. and yet - i think it's safe to say that you are everything i have ever wanted, and somewhere out there you had been there all along.