How serene is the melody of the cool girl that I never was;

jaded

and how

Kristin was the first one to command me

to leave the back of the bus

simply

because I was not cool enough take up the seating room-

(In my corner of the world

that was how you determined coolness in those days)

But my pretty face,

my precocious nature

fuelled in my later years,

my womanly breasts

against my little girl body, and how

it was her boyfriend who took a kiss

from my lips

underneath the bleachers

in Jr. High.

(Am I still ugly and un-cool to you?)

He certainly didn't seem to think so.

Was it my mothers fountains

foaming

that brought tragedy to our door

the seizures of March

-airlifted-

-three week hospital stay-

or the rape in July

-bloody fingertips-

-betrayed-

I can never be sure

but today,

two years after

the first day of my senior year

I'm whispering

memories on my paper again

and how I broke all of the porcelain statues;

the figurines

and how all of the poems

make no sense

anymore.

I sold all of my award winning photographs at a garage sale

where

a wonderful women asked my name

thinking that one day I might be famous

and in her hand she was holding an original piece

of cold hard cash

if in her mind

everything worked out for me

I could have been something

but I think

that I'd rather be nothing right now.

I've always been a little strange

attracted to the blue light

of the stage

and how I wanted so badly to make them laugh

but instead only made them cry.

I was tragic

in those days when Tommy had a crush on me

and in the oppression

from that women who truly was thinking only of herself

Morgan and I rebelled

skipping

around the stage

and acting like idiots

just to let our hate for her out

in a calm and orderly fashion.

I don't know now if I could ever get back on that stage

reenter my high school

long enough to say farewell to all the people who truly mattered

skipping over the nametags

the labels

that always kept me silent,

or how

while crying

I cut all of my hair off

rewriting

the present course of my life

long enough

to finally wish to walk in the sunlight

let it burn

my milky skin

bronze

and finally be normal

in all of their eyes.

I played games

while crying,

lying,

and trying

to make it in that little house

questioning

and complaining

comparing myself to a rose

and how

each season I am meant to wither

only to bloom again

more powerful then before.

But no one listened

and the line

went dead-

so I went away.

Long hours away from home;

long hours away from myself.

How many years did I wish to be normal

to be

satisfied with myself

whole

intact

and not so scattered

across this map

this continent where, if you look close enough

can show you the slow beat of my heart

if you are open to search for it

somewhere beyond us both.

I tell you know

that I have leaned on no one

to get where I am

that if you find my verses beautiful

then you must know

that I have been writing long before I thought I was anything

and long after I knew that I was nothing.

You should know that I am in no way

simple

and in no way

normal;

that I have never been

(but who is really?)

Have I said to much?

Have I expressed to little?

Has the sweetness of that little girl with the faded journal

with the golden etched angels in the corners

shifted so far away from me that I can no longer see her.

Have all of the boys;

the cruel boys

that I have laid my kisses upon

crept so heartlessly into my soul

that polluted forever will it be.

I cannot tell you;

but I do know

that it has been traveling the path to that cool girl;

that girl that has never been

that has hurt me the most.