Creative joooces

In the Spring of 2003, while I was a freshman in college, I took a Creative Writing class. I've been busy rearranging, reorganizing things in my parent's basement and happened to come across my notebook from that class. It contains all the assignments I handed in and the teacher's comments. Reading through them it was like being jettisoned back to a (seemingly) MUCH younger (and angrier) me :)... I decided, however, that I'd post some of the better stuff, for the "heck" of it. Maybe it'll serve as an inspiration for me to attempt to be creative again...or a reminder why I shouldn't! :)

Me (18 years, when I wrote the following) and my roommate Julie, Grand Canyon

1: North Dakota
It's a screen where the cats come in
a hole?
an Oedipus
open up and let me in
to spy
a bee under the sheets

Seeing Shanna

Red sweaters should be worn to hang loosely around
the vocal chords of my Spanish Rosa.
Like the imprints left in her ears
by the remnants of expressionless jewelry, that
send my mind into cascading memories of baited fishhooks.
I wanted to fill those holes up with pieces of myself,
so I could go where ever she goes.
My eyes prickle, sting, from the _________ of what may be,
((can I please be like you?! Can I PLEASE be like you!))
I want to rip my throat from its casing and throw it
haphazardly at speeding traffic, kick and scream
at the shards of grass under my toes.
It's always sunny when I say goodbye.
In my head my subconscious screams at the auto-pilot,
rattling cement trucks between my temples:
((can I someday be like you?!))
I'm putty in the sculpture's hands. Mold me before I slip right through.

She got married without me.

I was born born a bastard, now what sort of
birth is that? What do I owe a woman who dropped
her baggage to become a sprinter?
Too bad about genetics, now I'm
a runner too. But, She was already a
lap ahead. She got married
in June, fat with another
'il-legit' who will be a runner, just like me.
See, I didn't have a magic ticket,
it got lost with the forgotten birthday
cards buried in mountains of wrapping paper.
So I stopped running and I sat
amongst the cards I'd accumulated
and I read each one until I
had memorized them all. Because
those cards weren't made by accident.

Longing for a man who has my name.

I was sitting with my back rigidly pressed against the cool stone fireplace; trying to hide it dizzy patterns. He was lying on his stomach behind the rose splattered couch, facing me. The cheese curd carpet left dimples in the back of my thighs, it matched the indents left on his arms, this made me smile. My legs were folded 'Indian Style,' a fortress before my body. I rested my chin in my hands too excited to realize my elbows were staining my knees red. His arms were folded casually in front of his chest, his chin rested on his tanned forearm. I wanted to count his freckles.

The 'Real World, Las Vegas' electrified its sex on the TV. We were ignoring it. He was telling me, with extensive detail, about his ex-wife, his life as an actor in California. He melted me the way any beautiful, mysterious 28 year-old would. I sat and listened and tried to read ten million things into what he was saying.

I began to pick at the fading red paint on the large toenail of my left foot. Pick-pick-pick. It's a nervous habit. I picked at it until I had started a steep gauge straight into my 18 year-old aspiring source of emotion. There was no turning around now. I had no choice but to rip it all off. My toe began to bleed, the remains of the blood crusted and stayed, smirking at me for weeks.

He never even noticed.

***Please keep in mind I was 18 when I wrote these!!!****