I went to the beach today and had to stop and take a picture of this. It was pretty awesome.

I am so utterly done with feeling unstable. This is getting in the way of me functioning academically and socially and, while it's not putting a strain on my relationships with others, it's making me feel guilty for forcing my issues on them by simply being around.

Oh my dear god, I'm going to 'splode.

The last time I got a good night's sleep was a weekend because then, regardless of how many times I woke up during the night, I could make up for it by just sleeping longer.

Now, I approach going to sleep with skepticism, because I know that, even if I fall asleep quickly, I'm going to be awake by six or seven.

This morning it was four AM.

My dream last night was strange, as my dreams often are. In one part, we ended up somehow in some weird bazaar and someone was tailing us and being antagonistic and we accidentally killed one of them, but only in self defense, and then it turned out they were some foreign government's operatives that we were at war with. So they hated Americans and for some reason this particular squad was ruthless. So we ran around and into the desert and hid under things and kept running and somehow ended up in a very pretty library mostly occupied by English majors somewhere in Fisher Bennett (??) and they were trying to hide us, except the place they had to hide us was a giant purple refrigerator and NONE of us could fit in there, except a little boy who was a freshman when I was a senior and is STILL little, who could somehow fit into the crisper. And of course once we got to the library, we knew that the whoevertheywere were still chasing us and would kill us once they found us, but we started socializing and people started falling in love with each other (as people often do) and it was wonderful and exciting.

And then at some point it started to snow out the window, big huge flakes this size of quarters and then like, three inches across and you could see all of their crystalline structures and they were beautiful.

And now there is snow in New England. And it is beautiful.

It's strange to see how people memorialize the dead in the age of the internet.

A boy I know passed away this morning due to complications from a five story fall off of one of the dormitories. The reasons behind the fall are unclear. He fell on a Saturday morning, and his family has issued a statement that they don't believe it was a suicide.

I didn't know him well. But I did know him. He was in a studio I took this semester, and he was close to some of my friends. That said, the hardest part of this for me is watching my friends go through losing someone close to them.

He has a Facebook page, like most people our age, and his wall is filled with posts from people who miss him, who barely knew him, who knew him very well. I'm not sure how I feel about people leaving messages to a dead boy on an internet profile, but I'm reassured by the fact that it's one more outlet for these people to seek comfort.

There's a post on there from his little sister to let everyone know that her big brother had died. After she wrote those details, she wrote a message for her brother, letting him know how much she'd miss him, and starting the flood of posts to a boy who will never get to read them. There's nothing practical accomplished by posting these messages. He's not going to get them, and it's almost impersonal. But there is something comforting in seeing people coping with the loss of a friend. Cliché as it may be, it's reassuring to know that, no matter what happens in life, there are always those that will miss you and will have to manufacture a coping method to deal with your loss.

So I guess this is my way of coping.

I didn't know you well, and my impression of you will be forever encapsulated in a semester of sitting across the table from you in 3-d design. You disregarded the assignment, and built whatever the fuck you wanted to build, regardless of whether it did or not. It usually didn't.

So I guess this is my Rest in Peace.


Death sets a thing significant
The eye had hurried by,
Except a perished creature
Entreat us tenderly

To ponder little workmanships
In crayon or in wool,
With “This was last her fingers did,”
Industrious until

The thimble weighed too heavy,
The stitches stopped themselves,
And then ’t was put among the dust
Upon the closet shelves.

A book I have, a friend gave,
Whose pencil, here and there,
Had notched the place that pleased him,—
At rest his fingers are.

Now, when I read, I read not,
For interrupting tears
Obliterate the etchings
Too costly for repairs.

Eventually, I will function at a level I will be happy with. I just might need some help getting there.

Written last February.

I write you poems in sticky notes on my computer's desktop
hoping that some day,
I will have the courage to turn them into paper.
I draw pictures of you in my head
that suffer the same fate as my poetry
because they will never look quite the way I want them to
and I won't be able to draw the contours that i draw my hand across,
the line of your jaw will never be quite right
and i cannot put you in soft focus the way i want to,
the way you look when you lie only three inches from my face.
And though I know we've fallen in love
I cannot say I love you until I fall just a little bit deeper
Not until I'm certain that I won't spook you into throwing me off your back
Because I won't watch your dust clouds dance away from me
as I lie flat in the dirt.
So I cannot write you a love poem
Not with words,
So I try to write it in kisses upon your back
hoping that somewhere you'll understand my metaphor
and maybe compose a verse or two on my body
In words that I can understand.
I'm not asking for much, no sonnets or pantoums for this artist
I'll be happy with only a haiku written in the space between my fingers or where your lips pause on my forehead,
passing me a dream through skin and bone that I can save for another night,
Fall asleep in my own bed, alone but for my blankets,
listening to the couple in the apartment above scream at each other in muffled comic book speech bubbles that drip with spite,
and instead of thinking that it's my parents replaying out their drama above my head,
I'll fall asleep all the faster because I know you're waiting in my head,
with a kiss in your hand and a poem on your lips.