I actually will celebrate Christmas with my family when I don’t believe in God, but I won’t go all out on a holiday that is carved out for Love? 

Sure, it’s a Hallmark creation used to make a profit, but isn’t that exactly what they did with Christmas? But on a much LARGER scale with religion in general, be that a monetary profit or one of power instead? 

This needs to be switched around. Because I don’t believe in God, but I do believe in Love. I came to this conclusion a bit too late this year, but from here on out, my friends and family won’t be getting gifts on Christmas, but instead, they’ll be showered with love on Valentine’s Day. 

And also, we need a music holiday, because who DOESN’T believe in music?!?!

All that glitters is gold.
At least that’s what they tell us
and so by default, it’s what we know.
When the clouds hang low
and grace our presence with the threat of snow,
we close our eyes to spite the sun -
now hiding behind storms misunderstood.
We wait for winter to pass
and hope it doesn’t last past March.
Because we know that there is greener scenery
in the next season’s grass.
Grab tightly. Think lightly.
Imagine that we’ve jumped ahead to
the dusk of June;
and even warmer still: July’s moon.
Michigan lakes
glisten in August.
Michigan hearts
swell in harvest.
Michigan hands turn black and
freeze in refrigeration
in the first month’s
wintry blast.

Michigan hearts…

beat slower…

with frigid lovers.

All that glitters is gold
unless those sparkling hearts turn cold,
then we’re just…

…say the skies turn black and everyone we know turn their backs.
As the rain crashes down to the sideways,
the ones who promised they’d love us walked away in disdain.
Say the puddles drown the streets and all that’s left are
the shoes on our feet,
soaking in ice cold desperation and we
can’t find our way back to salvation.

Say that rain makes it up to our waists,
bringing horror to our face when we realize
that we’ll have to swim to stay alive.
Knowing that the town is now in the
midst of a drown-out,
we paddle and paddle until we reach solid ground.

Say it doesn’t exist.
Say that we lose all fearlessness.
Say we panic as the water rises to our necks,
our legs cramp and we have no love left to grasp.

Say our immersed bodies now have
lost any sign of hope and all that’s left
is for us to say goodbye.
If we’re underwater, would we still cry?
If we did, would our teardrops carry the water over
to another city and drown out the next town?

Hypothetically speaking-
let’s just say the storm demolished us this way.
Who then? Who then would we blame?

For my new followers. Thought I would put a face to my text and share some love at the same time!

We’d learn how to say “no.”

We’d embrace our needs. Whether those were purely our own or the need to fulfill another’s.

We’d kiss more. Hold hands more.

What we wouldn’t do is run out to buy the next fucking iPhone. We wouldn’t care about shoes, video games and definitely not about student loans. We wouldn’t waste our money on television sets or SUVs. We’d give it away-simply hand out hundred dollar bills to anyone living on the street. We’d drink our favorite beer or wine, gather around our friends and sing “Don’t Stop Believin’” at the top of our lungs. Maybe we’d graffiti the city. Maybe we would fill an empty pool with tapioca balls and toss ourselves in. Perhaps we’d run naked, straight into the ocean, Lake Michigan or the creek in your neighbor’s back yard and make love in the filthy water.

Maybe we would live like we were nineteen again and know that the only guarantee of permanency is death.

Lately, I’ve been entranced with the reality. I’ve never been afraid of death, but instead found peace in the idea that when one door closes, another must open. However, this last year or so, I’ve been absolutely terrified of it. I would like to say that it’s just the thought of losing others that keeps me awake at night, but even the idea of my own death leaves me trembling.

All I keep asking myself is: if I were to die tomorrow, have I accomplished everything that I’ve dreamt up? Have I showed my friends and family how much I truly love them? Have I inspired anyone to reach beyond their fears and dive into a life that they’ve always desired? Have I spoken enough about the things that I love and stood strongly enough for the changes that I believe the world needs to see? Have I done anything for humanity or had all of my endeavors been in vain?

But mostly, was I happy or did I spend my life in misery, trying to please everyone else?

And then, if that weren’t enough to send my heart into shock, there is a haunting vision of losing anyone close to me. I can’t even put into words how deeply horrified I am of this. Because, the fact is, death follows and stalks our every move. Everything could change in an instant.

Everything could change in an instant and one day, it will.

Tonight, I’m going to make the best black bean soup I’ve eve made. I’m going to hug my dogs longer. I’ll sing sweeter and scream louder at band practice and prepare for what could be our last show ever. I’m going to unplug my husband’s computer afterwards so he cannot spend one more minute slaving away at work instead of locking lips with me.

Because death is throwing a party and you never know when you’ll receive your invitation.

She stopped the car. 1:02am the clock read as she glanced down to her dashboard. The city lights had faded from her rear view mirror and now only dark skies and rows of small blue lights filled her surroundings. The airport was the only place she could find any peace and quiet this time of night. While her friends pranced the busy streets downtown, she found herself buried in a complicated love affair. A love scandal that involved her, him and whoever he was sleeping with. Whether or not those girls actually did exist she wasn’t sure of, but it was unmistakably obvious that his heart didn’t belong to her.

Bouncing back, 5:17pm and her phone struck a chord. A blinking display of small typeface on the front of an outdated cell phone sent her heart racing. It had been a few weeks but seeing his name grace her screen made the passing days seem insignificant.
“How are you? I miss you. Meet me tonight at 7:30? Unless you’re busy”
He didn’t even give her time to breathe. For a second, she was thrown off by his alarming ability to skip over her response before he moved onto the next question. “He’s just eager to see me” she argued with her intuition, “He’s just excited.”
Without missing a beat, she agreed to see him. Why wouldn’t she? He only invaded her dreams nightly. So she closed her record books, shut down shop and made her way home to lace up for the let down.

Fifteen minutes ahead of schedule and she was thirty minutes earlier than her typical fashionably late arrival. 7:15pm and she was left with enough time to sip coffee and prepare in her car for the evening. Her stereo kept her company as she studied her reflection and fixed her hair. The more tousled, the better. The more it looked as if she didn’t care, the more aware of her that he was, and it only took her three years to figure this out.

7:19pm, startled, she looked to her right as someone opened the door to their vehicle. She chuckled to herself knowing that he was not the type to show up early.
7:26pm, she glanced up from her phone through her windshield at a shopping cart creeping near.
7:31pm, her attention whipped her head to the left as traffic zoomed by, wondering if one of those cars could be his.
7:32pm, she anxiously tapped her fingers on her center council, changed the stereo and looked up to see her blue eyes reflecting back at her from the mirror she left hanging down.
7:46pm, he swung up next to her, threw the car into park and shot a sly, close-lipped smile in her direction. Her toothy grin welcomed him into her car.

“Hey beautiful! I’m sorry that I’m late. Hope I didn’t keep you waiting.” he pleaded.
“Not at all” she lied through her teeth, “I just pulled up.”

10:33pm, she bumped his wrist and motioned to the door. As he leaned in, she whispered “This party is pretty lame, should we find something else to do?” He then turned and with the slightest touch, grazed his lips across her face and into her ear he whispered “I don’t care where we go, as long as I get to be with you.”

Her car pulled back into the parking lot where they abandoned his. 12:29am and while she still wondered where the time went, she apologized again for the disappointing gathering at her friend’s.

“You can follow me to my place if you’d like.” she offered with a twirl of her hair.

“That sounds great, but I should get running home. I’ve got to be up early in the morning.” he explained.

Before a dissatisfied “oh” could escape her mouth, she found herself melting in his embrace. The moment his lip’s met her’s, time and space became irrelevant and the shopping cart, the parking lot and the traffic had all evaporated. The only tangible reality she could grasp was him and her. For twenty four minutes of pure passion, even the car that they created a new world in that night seemed to break a sweat. The windows were covered in a sheer mask of fervant lust. Nothing could distract them from what the next movement would entail. Nothing could come between them until their ears perked up to a faint, muffled buzz; a quiet vibration that sung from his pocket. In one second flat, he reached for his phone and saw something that she would never muster up the courage to ask about.
He looked back up to her, eyes drilling into her’s with irises the size of the harvest moon and said “God, it was so good to see you tonight. We should do this again, soon!”
With one quick, swift move, he pet her hair, tapped her on the knee and jumped out of the passenger seat. All she could do was watch as he drove away. Between her heart and her thoughts, she was unsure of which raced faster. So she buckled her safety belt, moved the transmission into drive and she started back on the road that she came from.

Five minutes later, she stopped the car. 1:02am the clock read as she glanced down to her dashboard. Then it came. The emptiness underneath her breasts felt as if her lungs and her heart had been ripped from her chest. As she looked back up, the pools in her eyes blurred the runway lights. Rainbows of gold and blue lit up the black sky as her eyes danced from star to star. Then she knew. He was a better liar in reality then he was in her dreams and his harvest moon eyes would always drown out her summer blue’s.

Really though, what is music’s purpose if not to be the one tangible thing that we can always rely on to invoke emotion, create energy and move the spirit? We all cling to a different religion or none at all. We each have a different approach to art or none at all, but who on earth can say that there is not one type of music that they embrace? One genre or sound - even the music that the ocean waves create when they crash to the shore - that doesn’t build feeling or whisper peacefulness to them? Even the hearing impaired have learned to feel music and that could possibly reach light years beyond what we feel.

As Dashboard Confessional came up on Shuffle today, my first thought was not that my tastes no longer care for the music, but instead, I was immediately brought back to that seventeen, eighteen, nineteen year old me. The one that desperately reached for any kind of belonging, stability and identity. I find it so odd how you can forget such feelings so rapidly and maybe even completely until that one song, that one album, that one voice or band can bring you back in two seconds flat. In that moment, you transcend time and those last six or seven years have meant nothing at all.

Hearing that song is like seeing your best friend after ten years of not speaking and starting up exactly where you left off, without a flinch or a second thought.

Sweet nostalgia; bittersweet nostalgia. Music is both a blessing and a curse: a blessing because nothing in the world is better than it and a curse because nothing in the world will ever be better than it.

When I told you…

You emptied the medicine cabinet
with one swipe of resentment.
Laid your criticism on the bed
and I wrapped my body in the blanket.
The breakup had a heartbeat of it’s own.

I crushed a suitcase full of bones
and candy hearts
and watched as we fell apart
from inside out.
“I know it’s for the best,” I said
“I must do this on my own.”
“It’s not for the best,” he said
“I can’t do this on my own.”

Then there it was, I knew.
I should have told you.
They tried to warn you about me.
How you’d become a marionette in my romance.
How you’d play a puppet in my love scene.

I really love you, but
a performance isn’t worth performing
unless performed wholeheartedly.

I hope my life turns out to be
everything that my heart envisioned for me.

“They paved that sidewalk for a reason” he said
as I walked along the highway’s edge.
“You could die there, it’s not safe.
Your carelessness won’t get you out of this place
any faster if we lose you this way.”

He knew what I was running away from
while I only knew what I was running towards.
My flurried mind only emphasized
the future my heart longed for.
He didn’t try to hold me back, no,
just wanted to be sure I knew how to get
to where I wanted without breaking my neck.
He didn’t try to understand, just wanted
to be sure my hands kept warm
and told me he’d wait as long as he would need to
and protect me from the storm.
However, the clouds in my heart
were the only clouds that I worried about
and not even he could find an umbrella
large enough to shield my fragile form.

So I ran.
I kept running until my feet found dry land.

I’m not sure what became of him.
I didn’t even keep a rear view mirror to
watch him float away in the distance.
Every day, I wonder how many pieces
his heart shattered into
when I mumbled the earth crumbling words
“it’s me; I swear it’s not you”

I wonder how he found the strength to watch me walk away.
I wonder how he’s doing, if he’s okay.
I wonder if he found someone to mend the pain
that I caused him when I threw his love away.

How long did he wait?
Did he wait until he wasted away?
When I didn’t come back, was he washed away with the rain?
How long did he wait?

I couldn’t hear the ticking of the clock
when you started counting down the rotations of your watch.
The room blurred, the floor dropped out
and I could smell the sweet of your skin from across the table top.
Just in arms reach, you set out your hand for me.
When I thought my eyes would never move from
the home they made in your’s,
they fluttered down to see your offering.
My heart may have skipped one, two, maybe six beats,
and I wasn’t aware of the crimson that appeared on my cheeks
until I looked back up to your lips, upturned in a half-smile.

…oh, that half-smile…

then there I was, lost again
in your perfect grin, the shape of your lips-
I could imagine how it would feel to be moments away from them.
My mind catapulted to another time, a different place,
one where your warm hands fell upon my cool face.
As my bright eyes peered up to meet your soft gaze,
the breeze danced around us and
whispered all the words we wanted to say.
You gently pulled me in closer,
your arms expressed safety and
your intentions spoke strongly
as you lifted my chin, pressed to my lips-

and back to reality, I snapped.
How long had I been out like this?
I noticed his arm still outstretched on the table
waiting for me to place my hand in his.
As my blood pressure rose,
I reached out to join him in a world that I
had always hoped to know.
Join him in turning my mere daydreams into blissful reality.

And then I heard the words escape his mouth.
The words that would haunt my dreams
each time they invaded my sleep.
The words that would forever turn my enamored heart to stone-

“mine is broken, may I use your cell phone?”

As long as there is passion first. It’s a delicate balance you’ve got to master. Not that I am any expert on marriage after only a year, but as I’m watching this trend trickle down my group of friends, I’m learning that it is more important to have a meaningful, deep desire for your partner than a strong friendship.

However, that friendship is vital because passion always comes with a price.

Passion alone will kill you.

(i revisited a few of my old journal entries today from years back and my reflections lead me to write a new piece. this certainly does not mirror my current romantic scenario, but i was able to place my heart back into the past for this. it’s funny how after six years, a few relationships and a load of maturation, you can still feel that ache in your stomach that you once felt…like it was just yesterday.)

Weekend Bed/Weakened Bet

I came down from the sky again, tonight.
Just like the chilling water falling from the clouds-
I dropped to the pavement and melted into the ground.
I mistook your kindess for love, I know that now,
but I delved so deep into your heart,
the climb out is too agonizing for my hands to allow.

I don’t remember the night feeling this way-
as if lonliness and restlessness only came out to play
when my sheets are turned down.
You swallowed my heart whole and now
my head can’t find a way out of this town.

The moonlight snuck into my room, tonight.
But only to remind me that my dreams are still alive.
The soft beams haunted my smooth, fair skin,
reminding me that my heart remains your possession.

Yesterday, I felt I could take down the world
with you by my side.
Today, you employed your pride to destroy mine.

I suffocated on our weekend fling,
as we bounced from bed to bed
in attempts to keep these voids from emptying again.

You thought you could settle this
with a romantic goodbye kiss,
but not even the most passionate fix
could begin to clean up this mess.

Because it’s the truth in your eyes
that scream out the fact in this:
We’ll never escape the emptiness
we feel for a home that does not exist.

I’m so fucking lonely out here;
your soul is the only ghost that my heart fears.

©Jennifer Bartlett 2011

in both my ask box and on my post. I’m going to also post this on Facebook and by tomorrow evening, I’ll culminate everything and try to make some sense of it. Thank you, darlings.

If you’ve missed the post and would like to share your thoughts, follow this link. <3

What is it like to be you when you are in love?