Garden Party

You sit there and tell me who I am, but she sounds unfamiliar. I see that you have been looking for me in all our secret places and you fail to find me every time. I wish I knew how to speak, I wish I knew how to reach out with these spaghetti arms. I wish I knew how to run around searching for myself with these splinters I have got for legs. You look for me in the places I told you that mattered to me and the places where we made eternal memories. You search high and low, by the orange street lights and the greener grass. In all the nicest places, better places.

I wish I had a breath to spare to tell you that is not where you must look. To tell you our secret spots were where I had my meet firmly on the ground. I must tell you I could have never lost myself when you anchored me down so well. I must spare you a breath, be it my last, but darling you must know- you were not the one who lost me. I got too high on my own expectations and lost my mind. You have to know that you cannot find me where the grass is greener or by the tulip gardens, my mind is way too cynical to be hiding out in such wonderful places.?

Try looking in the poetic things, in the lies writers tell and all the memories poets make up. Try looking for the pieces of my mind scattered in raindrops and painted across rainbows. Darling, us writers, we have long ago claimed these things our own. We lie about why it rains and add colors to rainbows. We tell lies and fall for them ourselves. So, do not be too alarmed to discover cold raindrops depress me. Try looking for my pieces in cookie jars high up on shelves I cannot reach. Or maybe by the bath tub I never had, but you know the one I write depressing stories about. Maybe there is where a few pieces lay drowning; proverbial lungs filling up with water in their own made believe bubble bath. Look for me in the poetic things, in the make believe worlds I construct. Darling, writers are not real people.

I do not suppose you have searched for me in the rebellious acts of adolescents. You took me for sweet, so how could you even reckon to look in the disturbances. A girl like me must be by the swing singing the sweetest tunes. Darling, I do not sing for I sound like a thousand dying mammals. Try me in the battle cries and in the burning flags, for all writers are revolutionaries. Poets hate institutions; poets keep dropping out of school because they see behind the curtains. Remember darling, writers tell lies like you breathe oxygen and so they see behind the smoke and mirrors. Things are never what they seem; gifts are down payments on our souls and education is just an investment in mechanical brains. Try to find me in messy birthday notes left by neglectful parents and printed in bold on the banners of freedom fighters. There you might find a few pieces.?

Try looking for me lying across the horizon, as close to the sun I would ever dare be. Darling, find me in all the metaphors, the only way I know how to speak. Remember when I told you monsters were real? Try looking for me in their evil layers, because there really still are monsters at twenty, just not under your bed. Maybe if you cracked the codes I spoke in you could find all of me before I dried up. I wish to give you clues to help you decrypt my twisted mind, but you have taken so long already that my mouth is clamed shut. Look for me lying across the horizon, and in the permanent stains on your favorite shirt. I have hidden a few pieces in the pages of the bible I keep in my bottom drawer. You could find a few pieces in the fairytales I pretend to live in. who could have guessed that glass slippers made really good metaphors for captivity. So, maybe I am held up in the highlighted paragraphs. Look for me there.

And from all these peculiar places collect my conscious piece by piece; make me whole again. Plant me in your back yard, one piece next to another. It is an irony filled joke; you bury me to help save my life. What a sadistic mad man I have made of you. Do not forget to water me every day, and sit by my side and read Atticus to me. Do not forget to put on One Direction to help fix my spirits. Hire me a gardener to take out the weeds so that I do not find a way to get caught up with the wrong crowd again. Darling, I am counting on your dedication to my cause because as lost as I am, it is a miracle you found even this much. Keep the smoke out of my lungs; I have a terrible habit of losing my mind with every high. Keep watering me until my legs become harder and arms firmer so that I can throw myself that garden party we always spoke of. You know I never liked flowers, but tulips, in the language of flowers mean perfect love. And I have never loved myself like this before.