An Appalachian Goodbye

Last night,
I stood amongst former classmates and mentors
to celebrate the quiet movements of a poet.

I'm not sure if it was the death of a writer
or that anxiety of not knowing if you'll ever see
someone again,

but a student approached me.

I had never enjoyed his over-zealous
confidence
in his self.
His writing was good,
the kind of good that makes you appreciate
the stringing of words like beads,
but he knew it.

He approached me,
interrupting a long conversation
with two minds who had shaped my own,
and said, "are you still writing?"

my cheeks burned and i stuttered, "not really."

These two minds had never known my writing-
the lines that cover this blinking screen
or the ones that the professor we were remembering
had praised with red strokes,
fine criticism,
and honest weight.

the student paused.
"you're really good," he said,
and he knew it.

Sometimes it takes the overflow
of another's certainty
to realize power within yourself.

Beyonce Inspired

this life is going to be so full of goodness
that i won't be able to stop smiling.
feel that beat,
the pulse of certainty
not in a plan
but of a movement.

the curated life

at 23 i sit in a dimly lit wine bar
lifting a glass of champagne given to us on the house
by a manager of the attached grocery.
it's a new friend's birthday
and i, with three other couples,
laugh over how we've all come to be at this oak table
sipping complimentary drinks and nibbling at bread pudding.
at the same time my phone,
which i've kept purposely in my coat pocket,
is buzzing with talk of "barcelona in may"
and music festivals
and plane fares that cost more than i make in a month.
i stare at my wrist as i lift my glass to make yet another toast
and think about how many parts of me didn't exist in the past six months,
the past ten,
the past twelve.
these people were strangers,
my body was foreign,
income was a "what if,"
this place was not home.

we are not the final outcome of a life
but rather a collection of many.
a gallery of cocktails and bracelets and shared secrets and celebratory cups of coffee.
and this is all i strive for; the curated life.

A Series of Starts

Because you have to start somewhere or at least that's what I tell myself.


I bought myself carnations because I had to stop to smell something.

[His closet was curated with self-awarness. The realization that someone could be so sure of themselves, the realness of a human being to an outsider, it took her breath away.]

You can say it every night when you crawl into your bed, filthy with hungover bread crumbs and an aspirin bottle, but today you really mean it. You don't believe in love. Not the kind that is singular or capitalized, accentuated with paper announcements and dotted with public kisses. The only love that exists is between the ideal and the pain of not having. You feed it with melancholy melodies and pages and pages of words written by decades of alcoholics, sucking out the buzz with every line and calling it infatuation.

this is the nature of the
cyclical masochist:
we replace habits with other habits,
content to believe we're improving ourselves.

I'm always hesitant to write about someone so new because within a month or so everything will be covered with a different filter and those words I wrote just a few weeks earlier will seem vulgar or overly zealous, shameful and naive.

Inspire 2013 (or how I started running again)

stop putting off the happy
in place of comfort.
inspire yourself daily.

Summer 2013 To-Do

• Travel through Alaska
• Taste some crazy food
• Present a slideshow to The Rosary Society
• Party down with the Campbell, Ix, and O'Malley fams at the Grad Party
• Book plane ticket to visit Notre Dame and Marie
• See The Postal Service
• Eat at Albany Pump Station
• Serve on the SPAC Junior Committee
• Go to a lawn concert
• Sip a cocktail at the Confectionary
• Publish another article in Saratoga Living
• Have a "Redneck Weekend" with Lindsey
• Give Maggie a tour of my Siena Life
• See at least 1 Alive at 5 Show
• Cash in on a Free Movie Tuesday
• Visit the track; wear a hat
• Get a cone at the Snowman
• Go to a garage sale
• Build my own bike
• Visit Annie & Chelsea in Philly (July)
• Check out the Saratoga County Fair
• Listen to "Jazz in July"
• Walk to get my groceries
• Pass the Google Ad Words Exams
• Take the GRE
• Become Web Savvy via U Albany Classes
• Make a trip down the shore
• Have a Valley friends reunion
• White Water Rafting Trip with the Bon Bons
• Make more smoothies
• Go to the Troy Farmer's Market
• Climb a mountain
• Take a class at Tiger Trap Studio
• Help grandma set up an Etsy shop
• Get a NY Library Card
• Utilize Book Mooch
• Purchase a Kindle...maybe

Tuesday Pep Talk

please please darling, start every day anew