*coughs quietly* (10.30.17)

Someone turned on the rewind and reflect button in my brain. This is the only reason I can think I'm up at three in the morning when I have work at eight tomorrow. In a way I can't remember since high school, I have become overcome with the desire to look critically at key points and decipher the changes. I'm sure it's the birthday possibly meeting with my trauma for the umpteenth time.

Oh well!

A Look Back:

Name: Hunter
Age:18
Hair color: green
Number of tattoos: almost 1
Love life: Kinda dating maybe?
Job: Professional Kid Companion

I had just graduated high school, I had just quit my part time job at Old Navy to pursue school. I later realized gas and books cost money, so I started babysitting for coin. I also had just gotten my first tattoo, chopped all my hair off, and gotten my first boyfriend. I was so scared and excited for the future. The later it got into the year the more I realized school was hard for me. I didn't come by it easy, and my mental health was suffering. It was also around this time I started birth control, and my monthly menstrual cycle went from seven days of hell to four days of mild discomfort. This was also my first interaction with making doctors appointments.

Name: Hunter
Age: 19
Hair color: silver
Number of tattoos: 3
Love life: Tumultuously in love
Job: Sometimes bookseller

Figuring out school wasn't going to work, I flunked out of one of my only semesters of school. Hands down this is the most shameful thing I've done. I felt like I wasn't good enough and that I was a loser and a failure. That started to show more at home, and in my budding relationship. I learned you can't be insecure of yourself if you're going to love someone else, and gods do I love him. I also learned that no matter what I want, sometimes friendships just don't work. It made me appreciate the friends I have even more. I had just picked up a part time seasonal cashiering job with the bookstore I had wanted to work in since I was eight. All while I spent a week crashing at peoples houses and sleeping in my car. I gained a better understanding of the work behind love, and I lost a chunk of my bumper. I got a promotion and soon realized how much work being a 'grown up' was going to take. My mental health took another dive, but I had a great support system to fall into. I lost family, in so many different ways. I held onto so many stupid grudges that I wish I could have let go of sooner.

Name: Hunter (sometimes sister, and sometimes Bunny)
Age: 20
Hair color: Faded pinky-red
Number of tattoos: TBA
Love life: Happy and counting
Job: Head Cashier, Author

I now dive into the unknown again. Two years feels much larger in my head. I go back to poems and stories and journal entries from this time, and it's like reading in a different persons voice. I was jaded and I absolutely thought I knew everything. I was incorrect, I hardly know anything. While life at twenty is very different from what I had imagined, I'm excited to see what it brings. Who knows, maybe I'll have some life changing revelation. Maybe my book will hit the NYT bestsellers list immediately! Or maybe I'll have worked my way up the book selling chain.

All I know is that I'm wishing you and myself best wishes.

..// Jukebox \\..

Rewind on Spotify

Hurts Like Scabs (4.17.17)

You walk into a pitch dark room,
The only light from the open door you came through.
The stale scent of stagnant water hits you first,
Then a tang, like metal, sinks inside your nostrils.
The air is tangible and cold, still it is too dark for you to see.
You recognize the ground is concrete
At the same time you realize you've lost your shoes.
The chill sets deeper in your bones,
You notice you're without your clothes
Completely exposed to this endless dark room.
Through the 'you' shaped shadow you see a pile
Dead center in the room.
Every cell screams for you to stand still.
The grit from the floor digs into the souls of your feet,
Still you push forward into the shadows.
With a creak and a snap, the door closes behind you,
As you knew it would.
So there you stand in the pitch,
Shade coalesces into bonds,
The already cloying air clots further,
You can feel it like memory foam sandwiching you still.
Nakedness, cold fear, and alone.
Wetness rolls down the side of the hollow of your cheek
You're crying-
You didn't even know.

I N D I S P E N S A B L E (12.29.16)

A kiss to my Third Eye and your world becomes clear.
Here we are clean, washed free of remorse and fear.
Held in arms like mountains, infinity stretches within my reach.

Around us a green haze, colors mix and dilate.
Like pupils, we grow, we learn.
From each other and from life, forever intertwined.

This moment is a micro cosmos.
Stars, so impossibly vivid, blink in my vision.
I can't tell if it's the on-coming headache, or actually a nebula.

Our hands interlaced, like the strings on my old leather boots.
These hands will take me just as far.
Gently tugging me along, lifting me up the same way.

I polish your ring with a kiss,
You are the king here.
How I love to watch you rule.

We seal the moment with a kiss,
Two speaking parts sacrificing the same thing,
So that the other could breath.

You are indispensable to me.

Walk With the Sun, Love With the Moon. (11.16.16)

She is a wildflower,
Sprouting where nothing dares to grow.
The sun light flits over her garden,
That grows on the side of highway 66.

Her eyes shimmer like gold dust in a California river,
Given the chance she'd rather be panning for minerals
Then pining over missed chances.

Because to her there is nothing quite like the air,
Mixed with starlit woods.
Something about the dead of night
Makes her feel alive.

In-between the In-between (11.16.16)

Find me in the middle place,
Between closed doors
Above cracked window panes.

A liminal space for you and I.
Carve out time to see you smile,
Look alive, the sun is going on.

Borderlands,
An unclaimed wild for you and I to share.
Jealousy holds no sway.

My jealousy is pushing you away.