lookatyouall

I can tell when you're upset. Don't worry, it's subtle, psychic. But I can tell. All your words float and repeat in my head many of you - all of you a cloud-pool of silver slivers of truth stuck cycling through my neurons I can tell when you're upset but it makes me more sure because it helps me figure from where these slivers came These words have kept me from crying These words have enflamed my pressure points These words have hit my soft jelly center These words have sparked my blood These words have reduced my spirit These words have hit like a hammer These words have kept me from abandoning These words have rang like ancient ghosts sh

Once Joanie stepped onto the roof, she paused for five long seconds before she walked slowly and deliberately to the railing on the roof to drink her root beer, as she did every day when she got off from work. The roof of her apartment had the most beautiful skyline she had seen in her life, and so she had lived in that apartment for the last ten years, despite the fact that she had enough money to move somewhere without the ceaseless noise, weekly maintenance issues, and break-ins every few years. And every day she counts down every five minutes in her mind during her last hour of work, drives home, grabs a root beer, and goes up to the roof

You've got to stop doing that. Seriously, it's getting dangerous. I could die, you know. (It's sick how I can sense your presence in a room. It's positively sickening. And once I finally see you, my eyes automatically stick to you, despite how much I don't want to want to. Still, though, it makes more sense than my eyes darting back and forth toward you and away from you, back and forth, unable to restrain myself, looking like the pathetic freak that I am. And you start to walk past me, and there is a moment when the entire human population is deprived. They are all starved, blank, empty homeless children. There is a moment where the angle

He is the resident gay boy, picking out all the girl's prom dresses and being the go-to when the latest pop video comes out. And she is the woman who is the modern mother, still making warm chocolate chip cookies on a chilly afternoon and having the laundry out of the high-tech dryer before dinner. And they are the family of five from North Carolina, wholesome as apple pie, whatever that's supposed to mean. And you are the outcast, focusing your entire identity around the vague fact that you're "weird". And he is the lover of video games nobody thinks to discuss, let alone play, with him, the one who stays up nights defeating dragons and

You are simple and shallow and small-minded and self-absorbed and empty. And yet, you are perfect. You are complex and beautiful and extravagant and lovely. Seeing you laugh makes me want to cry at the beauty of it. The utter joy displayed full-force. The way your hair cascades as you toss your head back. You will be immortalized in my writing, time and time again, my dear. You will be painted the glorious angel, the defeating devil, the misunderstood soul, the common woman, the evil housewife, the caring friend, the shallow socialite, the unspoken savior. And you shall never know it.