Untitled #5

You are the sleeve on my to-go coffee, you
Are the thing that keeps everything safe
And warm

If Taylor Swift Can't be Country, I Will

Say you'll remember me
Standing in my tight sweats
Staring at a hen's nest, babe
Pale lips and frozen cheeks
Say you'll see me again
Even if its just in your
Wildest dreams

Hey Lucifer

Did it hurt?
When you fell from heaven?

The Freaks Come Out at Night

My favorite American Horror Story Quotes thus far:

Season 1. Tate: Hi, I'm Tate. I'm dead. Wanna hookup?

Season 2. Kit: "They weren't humans, they were monsters.

                Sister Jude: "All monsters are human."

Season 3. Police officer: "Are you in charge here?"

                Fiona: "I'm Fiona Goode. I'm in charge everywhere."

Season 4. Girl: "Oh clown, you're so talented, please release us so we can tell the world."

American Horror Story & all its glorious creepiness is the television sensation that by its 4th season, is sweeping the fucking nation! I don't know what got me hooked. The sexy (& constantly inexplicably bent-over) maid in season one? Everything about Evan Peters? I think that... I've always been a huge proponent of all things dark & disturbing, & its really exciting to see that everyone else is, too. I also appreciate when something semi-scary can be a source of fashion inspo to the masses as well. The AHS fandom has sparked its own Mean Girls-esque catchphrase, "on Wednesdays we wear black."

& for most of us, this might be, "on most days we wear black, but on Wednesdays we DEFINITELY wear black." I chose to liven up this monochrome look by playing a lot with texture, because soft & smooth clothes comfort me when I'm sitting on the couch trying not to lose my fucking shit over Twisty the Clown. So I wore this silky silky silky UNIF Alexa romper, that gets tied up in the back with a gauzy, criss-crossed ribbon. Over that I threw a fur stole that I bought as a why-not purchase two years ago from a thrift store on the Eastside. Dirty hair and purple lipstick are optional. (But if you're gonna do dark lips, cyber lipstick by MAC is pretty much the answer to everything.)

UNIF Alexa romper

dollskill.com

urbanoutfitters.com
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You Spent Your Whole Morning Making Me Feel Better

Your bed, the epicenter of my certainty

My love is a miniature beast that sleeps wherever, whenever
A housecat that makes its human question who is master

I wake up to the fur of your face pressed against the back of my neck
You kiss me like the porcelain figurine that I am
You kiss the broken places that you've somehow held together


This will always be the year you knew you could never own me
This year is a photograph highlighting every freckle on my face-
A bowl of pastel valentine sweetheart candy messages
Twinkling matte, tiny hearts stamped with the words, "I'm yours"

And because I am yours, you know what I need
I am a houseplant that you invented, you happy scientist
You have decided it is your job to keep me living
You never told me this, but the knowledge of this breathtaking truth
Is the only thing I have ever felt in my bones
This is the only fact that is buried marrow-deep

Because you know what I need, you take me to get tacos and coffee
Somewhere on the East side you pull out my chair
As if we haven't already gone to eat together 563 times

We sit across from each other, and every time
We look at each other we laugh
Every third time I look at you, I wink
You wink back, and you weren't even able to do this
When I met you

Legends are Born in October

Or something to that effect
Tonight I walked home alone, down
The street and up the hill
And I thought

About the things that don't exist anymore

Command Form

A standing ovation to anyone
Whoever called me crazy, love
Is a fit I need the way I need vodka or whiskey-
Only ever straight up or on the rocks

I am living for the burn in my stomach
Bend me over
Make me cry

Light a candle in the center of my Empty


Separate bone from skin with my serrated
Edge phone calls
My throat whispers to my brain
Via old soup can, old wire
I've been popping all my speech bubbles like sores
Just to see what kind of green my disgust is

And my seismograph tongue creaks, connected
To my selectively mute esophagus

I am an umbrella opened in the hall
My heart is the mirror you can't stop breaking
I'm not the kind of daydream that will hold you on Christmas-
Eve, or otherwise

Radiant and Caffeinated Sigh

This is a dream about Harlem
This is me listening to Miles Davis on a cracked laptop
Breathing as still as a glass of water

Plastic aqua cup I took from your roommate
Three years ago
In the house that I read in, cooked in
The bedroom where I fell asleep during Lolita
Because there are nights that I can't handle
The feel of black and white

When I'm tired, I tend to see things:
My intentions, my trespasses against my throat
I bury my face in the grave
Of my hands, flashbacks of what I've forced down
Of what I've forced up

Of what I've forced with you

Let's talk about my hips, that you praise
Let's talk about your shoulders, ever perennial
Even when you didn't have to

Nine seasons to a sitcom
The soundtrack to our trembling
A fistful of sanity in my left hand
Gratitude in the other

The Essence of Being Cait Florez

I have spent a quarter of a century saying
"I understand."

How to Hotwire a Sleepy Heart

Raleigh: You don't love me anymore, do you?
Margot: I do, kind of. I can't explain right now.



Growing here, a rusting garden of wild ellipses
Exponential decay is coming up roses
Pear tree branches, olive tree branches
We could have been pastoral, if it weren't for all the blood


I slammed on the brakes of my soul
On the freeway of your burning chest, your old shirt

You still smell like three kinds of hard work, and
One singular desperation

My face, the placement of my face
American Sign Language for
I trust you

The Pit of my Stomach is Grey

My heart in a jar:
My heart in formaldehyde, my heart on Atlas' shoulder
As he shrugged, calloused fists balled up in his jean pockets


My heart in mercury, with temperatures and tensions rising
Tendons and diary pages ripping like a million battered hallways


I am editing our history


My laugh is a midnight folk song that betrays, that hails me as a warrior
Says I came out of blood and darkness to wolf:
To wolf at the moon, to speak in tongues and knives
To Morse code my intentions through a clack of heels


To lick the neck of regret and whisper
"There's no place like home"


To harvest beating hearts, hearts like tough steak
Hearts I could shove down my throat
Or mangle in the garbage disposal of my words
Hearts I could raise like lambs, hearts I could lead to the slaughter
But would never


My heart is drowning in a vase, Belgian style ale
Bubbles up like fear in my stomach
My heart is being observed
At the local hospital for unspeakable abnormalities


My heart is as removed from my body as anything else


My body has been memorized and works overtime
In the bordello of his subconscious
My kisses are gum he has swallowed that will take years to digest


His heart seeps white lies, bright as funeral flowers
His truths turn beige and seep into my carpet where I whispered
The words, "please don't", and took them back a summer later
"Please don't stop" became the heartbeat of a postcard-worthy reality


There is a taxidermied line caught in my throat
I'm not attracted to her, I'm not attracted to her
Two nights ago he slipped this in my ear
In the middle of a dark street, at a crossroads
Near a swing set


And now I'm looking for a way to destroy
Souvenir magnets on my fridge from his state
Of rain and grief

Ranty, Trashy, Nostalgic

"Teenage angst has paid off well, now I'm bored and old."

The above is the first line of "Serve the Servants" by Nirvana. This song isn't even on the same album as "Smells like Teen Spirit", but I had both stuck in my head while taking these pictures. The video for "Smells like Teen Spirit" features cheerleaders waving their pom poms (not a euphemism) around at a dingy show, cheering on this whole dirty grunge movement. & I used to be so into that.

In high school, I was totally into the whole heroin chic thing: skinny bod, pale lips, baggy clothes, big black eyes. This blog has nothing particularly to do with heroin chic, or even grunge, except that this outfit was styled with ZERO FUCKS in mind. At school during the day, I could dress anyway I damn pleased. & believe me, I did. (My best friend & I were credited with scandalously starting the whole leggings-as-pants style. Sorry not sorry.) This rebellious fuck-everyone style was due to the fact that I didn't work seven days a week like I do now. (I worked three or four at most; I have always had a job.) Sometimes I really really miss not having to be clean & polished every day. I miss being able to walk around being a disheveled hot mess.

I miss zero fucks outfits every day.

I WOKE UP LIKE THIS. A statement that will, and should, be plastered everywhere. "I woke up like this, flawless", a lyric from a Beyonce video featuring: plaid flannel, short messy hair, and graffiti'd walls in a grungy, moshy, dark room. Parallel universe, that type of thing. My only wish is that the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" possessed flawless choreography. We'll never achieve that dream, its hard to find, oh well, whatever, nevermind. 

Admittedly, the first time I wore this leotard I wore it with such majestic irony. "I woke up like this" across my chest, with a blue minskirt, heels, makeup.... Don't think I woke up like that. But I still gave zero fucks. Zero dolled up fucks. Maybe giving zero fucks is actually the key to being flawless.


So here's what I wore to take my outfit to spiritual Nirvana in 2014:
I WOKE UP LIKE THIS bodysuit by Burger & Friends www.burgerandfriends.com
Red Converse low-tops that I bought in seventh grade. No socks, laces untied.
Red tribal print skirt, American Apparel, then second-hand from Buffalo Exchange. Naturally.
"MAC red" red lipstick, applied with "cherry" red liner & then smeared & blotted by the mouth of two Fresh Squeezed IPAs. .....Naturally.

This is my dress. There are many like it but this one is mine. (The Dresswomans Creed)

If you asked me what my favorite colors are... Teal. Bright teal. And black. That's it.

But when Baby Cait was just a baby Cait, I was in love with the color red. My dream car was "a hot hot hot hot hot red convertible." And I loved this color so much I projected it on others. I used to tell people my dog's favorite color was red. She had a middle name and her own wardrobe- she could HAVE a favorite color. Also I used to eat peanut butter and jelly sammiches every day, but now can't even stand the smell of them. Maybe we just get burnt out on things, I don't know. But sometimes, I still need red. (Especially Red, the Taylor Swift album)*

I've never stopped loving red lipstick, and anything I can wear with it. So I'll throw on red accents. Anything with red in the pattern. I will mix. I will match. (Kind of.) 

I will glam it up a la 1940s and 50s. Anytime. Since forever ago until flying cars are a thing (still waiting on that one, science guys.) 

Clothes. Let's talk about how clothes are like life, because that's where my mind always goes. Into a metaphor. I can't even talk about a goddam dress, because I'm deep in the trenches of this rabbit hole right now. Maybe clothes aren't life, but clothes are people: 

And some clothes you outgrow. 

And some clothes are beautiful, but one day you look at them in the mirror and think, "this isn't me". 

Some clothes you just don't love. Even though you so badly wanted to.

And some clothes, you just lose on accident. 

But then there are old clothes. 

The ones you've had forever. Not new, or trendy. But worn-in just right. Simple, and real. Not fancy. Maybe it even gets thrown on the floor and forgotten about sometimes. Something so normal and second-nature that it lasts. 

This cherry dress is faded from being washed so much, from being loved so hard. Sometimes the zipper sticks. No dress is perfect. Some dresses you buy at Goodwill when you're a too-skinny teenager, and keep wearing every year, the dress trying to tell you its okay to have big boobs and a midsection that looks like it actually contains internal organs. 

Anyway,

This is my dress. I didn't wear it for a while. Because I forgot about it, or I thought it wouldn't fit. Or I had new clothes and didn't feel like I needed it. But I love it.

That's all I want for anyone. A vintage, classic love. That gets old, but doesn't get old. That grows old, but never gets boring. That even if the shine wears off, its comfortable. Beautiful. Real. Personal.

That should always be en vogue.

*not a joke

Change Your Life, Clean Your Room

I used to be able to do this: to wake up in the morning and have the power
To affirm, this is what is going to happen today
And who knows what will happen tonight
Because with ghastly pallor I used to connect the bones
Of collage-glued laughter, the after-life of the after-party or happy
To spend the night on the couch with a steak-flavored Sagittarius
Whose hair was a book I couldn't read, whose spine I would crack eventually

But this was before doctors and long-term fixes
Before health and stability killed the genies that used to
Trip over themselves to grant my death wishes

Now I've got a cassette tape on the table telling me I've got it all
Wrong, and a mirror I just cleaned telling me I am one-dimensional
Trapped inside of the mirror is a girl in a bow and a smock
Telling me seeing is believing

And I believe in God, but I've always been an atheist
When it comes to my own fucking body

My skin is still the softest pillow the United States has ever rested on
But my black coffee heart is the one reading the sheet music
To the pianist who lives in the pair of skinny arms that the masses want to steal

When I say I'm homesick I only mean I haven't been to the spa
Or to the hospital all year, I've been trying
To dance myself clean to the beat of my own ear drum
But I miss when mornings were quiet, and certain
And there are days when I am sure I would be happy
To be a hermit with a mailbox and a coffee pot

Still when someone says he or she eats their salad last
I say oh, how very French of you

Locker Room Speech

Katy Scarlet, you will wake up, you will not
Smother the screams of the your alarm clock, bury your face
Into the cemetery of your pillows

You cannot raise your heavy head, a wilted flower
Before the sunrise, aching for a sign
Aching to raise your hand, your voice
And ask the questions that claw the insides of your lungs

Do not cut out your heart and infect it with
The ripped-off legs of a thousand shivering ants

Stop night-maring all the time

There will come a time when the wasps will stop
Stinging into the places they crave to be
And you will stop screaming, and you will be able
To communicate with another heart

I promise you, you will be able to breathe
If you would just dissolve that cement in your chest

You are not some stray cat slut licking her wounds in the ER
You are not the dog with ribs poking through
You are not the ribs, Katy Scarlet, you are not
On a silver platter

You used to wake up every morning and run outside
With happy feet and hopeful gasps

And this was in the dead of winter
And the love you were in wasn't even amazing

Four Dollar Signs

Please don't worry about my future like I'm not

I still know which fork is which
I still eat with one hand in my lap
I still dab my lips with the napkin so as not to dirty the crystal

I know when to speak
And when I should speak only when spoken to

I don't chase the boys
And I am trying to be so straight
Look at me, I'm so hetero! no seriously
Look at me

My heart is caught in my throat and
My esophagus is a place where paper cuts
And postage stamps go to die

It's a little late to wait for marriage
But I am trying so hard to be made of  lace
And to sweep my fishnets under the rug

This isn't the lace I wanted at all

I am covered in spiderwebs
And dust

The C Word

C is for combat boots, regular ropers purchased from Salvation Army four years ago

C is for cut-off daisy dukes, that my best friend handmade me from vintage jeans and then dip-dyed herself

C is for cat eyes, because black eye shadow is a mask I can hide under and I won't stop the line there because I can't end a sentence in a preposition

C is for can't, because I can't 

C is for cutting my hair off because I have often said that I wouldn't know who I was if I didn't have long hair before I realized I didn't know who I was with long hair either, so I cut it all off 

C is for Charlie Kelly, KING OF THE RATS 

C is for contract, and commitment, and the way the future freaks me out and the only thing I can hope for is a better tomorrow because honestly two years ago I didn't think I would make it to today. Good job, baby Cait! Still tickin

C is for Coachella, and I feel like if home is where the heart is, Coachella should be a postcard picture of a ventricle. This is a half-joke 

C is for Catholic guilt. I feel guilty because I can't be physically and geographically THERE for the people I love. I feel left, but I know that I left and for that I feel guilty. I am who I am, I am crazy and beyond that. Things have been done to me, and I have done things, and then in turn things have happened to me that came with the territory. Bad things have happened to me and that's FINE but when bad things happen to good people, whatever. But when fucking SAINTS get fucked over, I feel guilty because I can't be there, and then double plus guilty (I've never given a THOROUGH reading to the book I just referenced - guilty again!) that I, guilty that I haven't... I just don't like when bad things happen to good people. I don't like when bad things happen to good girls

I'm tired of my last name and opening my own jars, pretty much the only entire reasons I want to get married but I do want to get married but mostly to a man or woman who is super rich and loves me and loves sex, but also knows how crazy and clingy I am so buys me my own house so I can day drink and read and keep all my clothes there and watch Always Sunny all day and not work, but we would still go on dates and sleep together sometimes

C is for crazy, for fucking crazy 

Oh and the floral kimono is Audrey's and its from the Buffalo Exchange, Austin TX location

kthxbye  

Drinking in 2012

A beautiful house
A beautiful house party
A beautiful house party with me upstairs half naked in a claw foot bathtub
With a bottle of whiskey all to myself
This goes way beyond middle class rockstar fancy
But that is who
And that is how
And that is why
I used to be

I Woke up Sucking on Lemon

I woke up hungry, which reminds me that I’m still alive

Hungry for oatmeal, or a hunk of red meat that I could tear

To bits in my mouth like a beaten heart

I woke up hungry for hand-holding

And I think holding hands is what separates us from the animals

I think holdings hands is what separates lust from love 

Love is blind, but lust is 20/20

I woke up this morning and ended up eating

Oatmeal out of a bowl that used to belong to a former lover

The way I would eat out of the palm of his hand

As if I were never feral, as if my killer alley cat days

And nights were a dream, were just something I saw in a movie

 

How now, years and months, days and hours later

How can I still crave to de domesticated?

I cry for lack of lap-sitting, hand-holding, all I want is to be pet

I am clawing at the door of everything I’ll never admit that I want 

I have put every acidic insult or moment

Of silence like a soft square in the middle of my tongue

I let it all dissolve and sink into my core

I go down with the ship, I go out with the bathwater

I am neither here nor there, and everyone that I want

To be there isn’t anywhere to be found

And it isn’t anybody’s fault - it’s just the way

Early morning underwater earthquakes work

Rushmore

Rosemary Cross: Do you think we're going to have sex?
Max Fischer: That's a kinda cheap way to put it.
Rosemary Cross: Not if you've ever fucked before, it isn't.

Left Arm

Home is nausea
Love is a headache
And a heart-attack sounds like the most
Exciting thing that could happen to me

On Why Now I'm Not Writing You Back

There's no casual way to say


I'm sorry we lost touch too
I know I was always one of the better letter writers of the twenty first century
In every thing I breathe love into, I am prolific
I like writing more than most so
An ink-stained heart-spill goes unanswered, and I do not have to
Wonder, and I know stamps are expensive
(Or maybe priceless, for what they are)
But the thing is, is that they're hard to remember


I used to keep a book of them next to my mirror
But its a mess down there on the carpet, and I don't know
What I can say to the boy I love without it being too much
And every time I write a four page SOS to K, everything
I've just penned has completely changed by the time I cross the T's
Or cross my heart and hope to


Its not nice of me to say I never noticed
Because I was too busy worrying about how there were only two of us


Besides K, besides myself there were only two of us
Out of all those people when we were thick as thieves
Like blood in the zip code of my lonely cola veins
There are many I would rather forget, and am coming close to
There are two I pray are either in jail or in the asylum of the state and of
Their ashtray broken promise broken synapse souls


There were only two I missed, and needed, and talked to, and liked
Two that weren't going to fuck or beat the life out of someone
Two that had something to say but kept silent when listening
Two that had a chance for a beautiful life and one of them fucking died


Nobody wants to talk about him
I don't
I don't think we ever did, back when I wanted to




And you can waltz back into my life to the tune of whatever
Bright Eyes song you want, you really can




And K is still perfect, she is an angel cut in half, filled with sugar
And sealed back up and I don't always know who I am
And now I have no idea who you are and there is no
Polite way to wonder to you
Whether he was the only one
Of us who was ever any good at all

I Should've Been Motherfucking Black Mamba

I only understand my life when its moving at the rate of any
Well-choreographed Quentin Tarantino fight scene




The action comes standard, the violence is extra
And sometimes the blood is necessary




Sometimes I will drag your heart through the desert like a dead body
I will bury your soul in the shallow grave of my mouth




My reputation precedes me, I can be more cotton-candy than razor-blade
I don't light my own cigarettes but I can pour my own poison




Yours too








I like the part where Uma Thurman spins around on the ground
Cutting everybody's feet off

The Best Thing

About me cutting you out of my life again
Is that now there's no one around to make me eat


(I convince myself that this is a win)

Seeing Red

I know that I’m a child who thinks she’s the only one with feelings

I know that I’m a child who thinks nothing else matters but her

It’s been slung at me from across midnight living rooms

Or from the passenger’s seat smack into the side of my face

I know we’re all lost

But you know how to read a map

And I don’t even know how to fake it

So I keep doing the dishes and wind-chiming in my own ear

“Tiny accomplishments are still accomplishments”

I’ve been eating food lately, normal amounts of actual solid food

I keep putting things inside myself as if to say, look

I'M A REAL GIRL

And I know no one likes a pity party

But just wait til you party with me

I know I’m a problem child, I know I’m just dysgraphic math

I know my imaginary numbers don’t help

The last matador I knew I challenged by asking

Can’t you just see the best in me? And fuck, maybe he did

And there just wasn't enough there 

I Really Am Not

Maxing out my full potential
Mine is a body born and bred for favor cruelty
Mine is a body made of bone, and steel, and porcelain
Concrete and straight white teeth


My spine is a skyscraper, my heart is a negotiations room
I only breathe to purr, to clear my throat
My claws have stopped clocking in


Sugar and spice is seeping its way in
I'll drown in it

Buying the Domain

And Brooklyn, okay, Brooklyn, is completely out of the question

The chambers of my heart have coat check, have valet
The wet insides of my lips, red carpet
This is champagne, the words coming out of my mouth
This is champagne

I have champagne taste, I taste like mints and sugar
Like pink glitter lip gloss I apply myself
I reapply myself


When the skyline washes her face, when her mascara runs
Far and away

I will be there taste-testing
I will be their test-taker
Because I take, and I take and I take
And I kill because I care, and I binge because I have so much
Making up for to do

The to-do list is finite, I promise
I never planned on so many calendars but I was raised
On the propaganda of meaningfulness
Verbal brochures of Disney purity

I could drink wine with fucking anyone

Not in Brooklyn though, oh God no not in Brooklyn

I will do what needs to be done
On some days, it is your body

I fall asleep deciding
My nose is in a book, my nose is a defining characteristic
I am all boobs and straight teeth
I am neither here nor there

I Solemnly Swear I Am Up to No Good

I was uncool before uncool was cool. Fantasy was one of my first favorite drugs. Way before shopping. I was the nerdy little girl who NEVER got in trouble at school unless it was for reading one of my books when I was supposed to be doing something else. Growing up I was way into LOTR. Sorry, "Lord of the Rings", in layman's terms. Then when I got a little older, and had already read and reread and watched and rewatched all of LOTR, I decided I could get into Harry Potter as well.

It makes sense that I fell in love with fantasy, with the opposite of reality. I was small and uncool, constantly getting picked on for being a "goodie two-shoes" and for wearing shoes from Payless Shoesource when everyone else had brand names. THEY LITERALLY CALLED ME GOODIE-PAYLESS SHOES. This nickname still haunts me. (Hmmm, I wonder why I became a snarky rebel bitch with a penchant for swanky clothes...?) It absolutely lit my hurt little heart on fire to read stories about good people defeating total jerks. I loved pretending to live in those worlds where money wasn't everything and good things happened to good people.  And yes, I need good to triumph over evil but I do love the Bellatrix that J.K. Rowling and Helena Bonham Carter created together. Because a midst the warm fuzzy feelings I get from fantasy, I can still go gaga over this batshit insane witch who is fully committed to pure evil and havoc. But anyway...

I appreciate that fantasy grew up with me. Because I am never going to outgrow my love of a sweet good versus evil plus magic story. I'm glad I don't (only) have to rely on Hot Topic for my fangirl shit now. God bless Blackmilk for making the slinky nylon minidress equivalent of an I LOVE HARRY POTTER body bumper sticker. It's definitely a little cooler. But still just uncool enough to be comfortable. 

Mischief managed.

Bellatrix Lestrange dress: Blackmilk clothing

Black quarter-sleeve cardigan: H&M

Opaque grey stockings: American Apparel 

Suddenly You've Won, Because You Told Me I was Worth Fighting For (or, Word Trophy)

I'm sorry for how uncomfortable I get when the answer
Isn't obvious, or easy


But I love the way you never let me go
In bed or otherwise
Because no one

Gets my hair rats-nest-tangled quite like you
And you hold my chin so firmly when we kiss
As if my cheeks are what you believe in, my lips exist
As every conviction you've ever had
Your calloused hands, my porcelain skin
That flushes lusty, harlequin candles
Whenever we are close

Because you know that all I am in love with
Is the romance of old film noirs
Darker than dripping alleyways, darker than
An airport's 4 am sky

And yes, you have been an antihero
And I have been a femme fatale
In my black dress, my whiskey
In my cigarettes and my hatred for men
Kissing you in the rain and making a plan just in case

And yes, maybe we had our hearts crossed behind our backs once

And I'm sorry for the love letters I never
Sent, even though I had the stamps and the time

I am a serpent, but the way you charm me...

Your voice desperate but calm, deep
As the ocean floor that can hardly be photographed
And maybe I choked on saying back what you told me
But I have my head above the water now
The blue inside my jewelry veins
Is the icy pacific, all broken seashells and salt
But we were born of the same cold
We are made of the same skeletal constellations

Come As You Are

We are born naked, wet, and screaming. That's nature. That's the human experience. That's being alive. So half naked, dripping wet with river water, and screaming and laughing at the top of my lungs.... felt like the most human way to spend any amount of my time. Not that time mattered. Not that any of us were busy checking phones or watches. 

I quickly realized that running around in a bra and cowboy boots was easily my new favorite hobby. Because fuck clothes. And fuck makeup. And fuck wifi. Fuck showers. Bring on beer and watermelon. Fuck the sound of cars and traffic and bring on frogs and crickets (sounds I honestly had forgotten about). 

I learned that porcupines are actually a lot bigger than I thought. I learned that turtles have zero interest in eating watermelon. I learned that longhorns stand really, really still, for like, ever. I learned how to pee outside again (something I definitely haven't done in years).

And yeah, the old adage goes that you learn something new everyday, but sometimes, that can mean you relearn something. Maybe something you lost a while back. Like peeing outside. Or like actually taking a fucking breath. I relearned how PERFECT everything is. Everything everywhere. Even me.

 That one true fact was realized while lying on a rock watching the sunset with someone who refuses to see my imperfections (although I don't know how). I relearned how quiet the whole universe can be, if I get to the right spot, and if I give it a chance. I relearned the existence of stillness, of absolute calmness. Something that's seemed impossible as of late.  I think as young adults we can get so accustomed to the feeling of being stressed. Its like I didn't even realize I was choking until I finally caught my breath, on top of that awesome rock. I think I got a little too used to letting people telling me what I am, what I'm not, and what they want me to be. 

And fuck that.

Life isn't that bad. Life isn't that hard. It's gonna have its moments, definitely. But think of the things that drive you absolutely crazy. Think of the things that really make you feel like shit. Maybe its a situation, or a person, or maybe even both. Try to decide if you truly need it, and if you need it more than you need to breathe. Because if you've ever thought "this is killing me", then it really might, given enough time. And the point of life isn't dying. The point of life is, I don't know... breathing. Dancing under the stars, laughing like crazy, jumping into water. Jumping headfirst into whatever you want and not letting every little negative voice keep you from being the happiest version of yourself. 

Love Happens in September

The soft opening of your mouth is the cul-de-sac where I grew up
I want to play outside until the street lights come on
I want to feel the sunburn of your fingernails digging into my back
Claw my clothes off with your vultured lust
Let me be the corpse that I feel like
You won't

Someone downstairs is listening to opera and I don't know why anyone does anything anymore

I want to buy wine from Target and I want to remember what its like to have a conversation
With anyone new
I want to stop bitching out on myself

Today is my recital
I am my own empty seat
I am my own swallowed tears, I am at the piano empty
Because I never wrote the screenplay
I wanted to do it before I died and the sun burning holes in my stockings
Reminds me of my mortality
I am worried, I don't have enough sunscreen
And I don't have enough time and I don't have enough hands to love you

The collective you, as if kisses were something
I could glue to the pages of my scrapbook
My venom is an open book but my heart is an open suitcase

My body is an hourglass that keeps running out on you
My heart is a habit that you keep trying to break

First Position

When I was younger all I wanted was to be the
Mechanical Doll in Act I of The Nutcracker
To be wound up, to move with music and dark silence
To be beautiful, magical, to dance in the middle of a Christmas party
As if I were freshly opened string lights, bright with fire,
Incapable of ever being broken

These days white teeth and slender arms make me everybody's
Favorite ballerina, and there are days when I question the relevance
Of every word that comes out of my hot wet mouth

A plaything needs a personality like a moose needs a hat rack

I keep trying to change myself into someone the grim reaper won't recognize
Change seems necessary for my face, my hair
If I cut off all my limbs I will have just as many excuses
My body is a long story and I don't want to talk about it

Age Difference

Werner Herzog's Nosferatu is playing this Friday at the theater
Last December




Still blossoming into the ever after alpha female
Or the metaphorical daughter that you had to watch over
You lit my cigarette

You're old enough to be my oak tree

But it was also the principal of things

You lit my cigarette
I didn't have a clue as to your current situation and I didn't care


Something about how I wanted Jared Leto to win

I used to drink old fashioned cokes in glass bottles
I used to wear red lipstick
I was old enough to be your two-day-old carnival goldfish

We never talked about Lolita

The Feline Fatale

"Now I mean, it just wasn't fair. Her dress fit so tight it almost split the seams. Too many chocolate malts. And she walked around on heels so high they looked like little stilts. She walked like a drunken cripple, staggering around the room. A glorious dizziness of flesh."  - charles bukowski

[VOICE OVER] 

January air is an envelope

Put the money inside

Leave your heart on my doorstep and

Those cigarettes in the trash

A mummy unwrapping is a bandage dress that

I'm not letting you in

You're taking my punchlines straight to the gut

Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no

Get the hell out of here's, no

Please don't ever leave me again's

An airport is a calendar

A tight skirt is me penciling you in

I've got a tight schedule but I need words

The road to hell is paved

With SOMETHING OLD AND SOMETHING

NEO-NOIR

January long-sleeves are a bookmark

A telephone booth is a place that

I SHOULDN'T BE CHANGING

A short fuse is a long skirt is my hips are

A film movement from the 1940s

Emphasis on the word movement

[DIALOGUE OVER THE CLINKING 

OF COFFEE CUPS AND TEASPOONS] 

Careful, my coffee

....

Your boobs didn't used to be so big

Because I was too skinny? 

A knock at the door

January is a dissenter

Is the twelfth angry man 

The only vote of NOT GUILTY

Now I can keep my food and my secrets down

Shaking me down like I know the score

I've been too hungry for answers, for a conclusion

Burning stomach on the back burner

Pancakes for dinner is either a distraction

Or exactly what we've been looking for

We'll have to see

If this is syrup or poison

[MUSIC, TRUMPETS MOSTLY. 

JAZZ. THE SOUND OF A DOOR 

CREAKING OPEN AND SLAMMING SHUT]

flower crown by Blue Velvet Vintage on the north loop drag in Austin, TX bluevelvetaustin.com

crop hoodie by American Apparel http://store.americanapparel.net/

pencil skirt by Forever 21 www.forever21.com

Dress Bare Don't Care

Confession: my go-to accessories for a tight bodycon mini-dress are nervousness and apprehension. Honestly, I've worn this dress with so many other things over it that its almost some kind of heavy-handed bullshit extended metaphor for the way I need to cover myself up... Or. Or that's exactly what it is. When where why and how do girls start hating their bodies? Why is everything a double standard? Or a double edge sword? Why am I suddenly convinced at 3 am on a Thursday that rhetorical questions are acceptable to use in my writing? 

Lets face it - girls are fucked up. I'm fucked up, & I'll be the first to admit it. Okay, maybe I was the last person to admit it, BUT STILL. I bought the Black Milk pills dress in some semblance of solidarity with all my other mentally unstable girls. (Not in support of some sort of recreational drug abuse free-for-all; not that I judge.) This dress came in the mail, & I hung it in my closet, & hung my head in shame with all of the mixed feelings that came in the mail right with it. As one of my favorite poets Meg Freitag once wrote, "I’m trying to get into self-love, but I keep confusing it with self-lust." Sometimes I think I'm ugly & that's natural for any woman & any HUMAN. Sometimes I think I'm pretty, & then immediately wonder if this is vain. Maybe, but probably not. I like when I'm fearless and self-certain. This lil number was meant to be worn by itself, so it felt strange that wearing it as such was a gutsy move. Because being body positive is a gutsy move. Nothing good comes easy. No adventure & no personal growth has ever come from the comfort zone. Buy a crazy bodycon print dress. & don't style it with anything. Style it with skin. Or maybe just solid opaque stockings underneath. A statement necklace, scarf, or jazzy shoes. A statement piece for people to stare at instead of the little flaws you think you have. It is my true belief that no one is flawed on the outside. Here's how I will always, always explain body image-its the exact same concept when you hear your voice played back to you in a video, or on your answering machine. Your jaw drops, and you immediately wonder, "is that what I sound like?" Now amplify that thought at the realization that when you look in the mirror & don't like what you see... that's not what you look like.

I'm always going to be crazy. We all have issues, and maybe relapses that come with those issues. Our minds are a little wonky, &are easily influenced by everything & everyone around us. I am both for & against my body. At the end of the day, my body is one of the few things that is mine & mine alone. On some days its a work of art. On no day is it something to be ashamed of. This blog could have been two sentences. It could have read, "Wear tight clothes. It's not slutty." I honestly, & FINALLY appreciate being a woman. I don't know how to make everyone else feel the same. But it may or may not involve wearing tight clothes. Try it. You'll like it. 

Dress by Black Milk Clothing: blackmilkclothing.com/