The patriotic soul of an American is brave, loyal,  and dedicated to never ignore that in America they are free to be who they want. The thing is that this has been almost fully destroyed by people who want to destroy the ability in this country to be free, more worried about making money than the working class. Throughout the years, corruption and people who do not represent the true American have found their way into our political systems, silencing the voices of people who care about our country, from the very start, people who have exploited others to be rich and wealthy. And today America is in an almost fascist state, on the brink of having one leader. America is unrecognizable from the Declaration of Independence. Democracy is being ruined as I type this. Still, people around the nation are rising up to the rich who are choosing money over the people. The brave people who are standing up to the evil wealthy are the ones who are the true American souls, standing for what this country was made to be.

for old times' sake

is such a pretty sentiment

like

let's do it

for the love

that used to be here

for the memories that used to be young

let's do it for the time

when the little things meant i love you

for the time when the things we forgot

were the things we thought we would always remember

so for old times' sake

could we sit under the old fig tree

one last time

holding hands as we laughed

as if there was nothing in the world

except you and me

for old times' sake

could we go and walk in the bamboo forest

skipping in the lowlight of the day

half shadowed by the trees

that are still, somehow, green

for old times' sake

could we—

remember those nameless

beautiful

tiny

acts

of

love

For a businesswoman, she is very kind. She is the winter giving her hand to autumn as they trade places. Autumn stands back and watches Winter do her work, covering Autumn's leaves and grass until everything is white, white, white. Winter walks quickly and with purpose, a silver pocket watch dangling from her pocket. She wears pants with a sports jacket and is never late. If anything, she is always early. Earlier than expected and earlier than preferred. She doesn't like the sun, but she likes making people cold just so they can be warm inside. She would rather have people watch her from inside than trample her work under her boots. She loves watching people have a kiss underneath the trees, raining down the fluffy flakes of her tears and laughter. She prefers coffee over tea but will drink tea if it is black and un-sweetened, just like her coffee. We're not trying to make Winter sound like a rock with a brain; we are merely telling the truth. Truth is that Winter is cold, and Winter is cold because there is not a woman for her. She evaporates and melts if she is paired with summer. She is too different from fall, for she destroys it. Spring always wants the front stage, and pops flowers through her blanket of cold white. To exist with someone the same as her is a luxury. Mud season will turn her dirty and slushy. How about stick season? There's already a song about it. They just forgot to mention how sticks and snow seem to go together. 

I was in love with him once. I think.

He was in love with me, though, and I knew it. He wrote me poems and copied out lyrics from songs he thought felt like me, or us, or him. He gave me rainbow earrings and a lesbian flag to match his trans one. He applauded when I got a lead in the spring show and I comforted him when, later in the year, he auditioned for something and received a role with two lines and no name. I thought it might be a fun experience for him anyways - the shows I've been in with only a few lines and a name that never gets told were good fun and kick-started my love of the stage. love, i hate to say it, but sometimes you need a few little roles to get a few big ones. 

He ended up quitting the show. That, perhaps, was the beginning.

I remember thinking, what is he going to do if he gets the same kind of part in the school show? because we'd met doing the fall play and school theater was kind of our thing. I didn't want him to quit just because he didn't like his role, but at the same time I kind of wanted to see what would happen if he did.

After a summer of highs and lows, of festivals (I excitedly invited him to one; he arrived late and left early, leaving me with my family but still alone) and melting ice cream, of lakes and forests and sleep away camps (I had the best time of my life but all he could talk about was how much better his time at his camp was because he went for three weeks and I only went for one), of sunny days and rainy ones too. I went months without seeing him and I didn't want to admit that I was almost relieved. But I was.

By this point, we had been together for over six months and a lot of the time, just the thought of seeing him made me seethingly mad. Occasionally I would have conversations with him about my anger; he would apologize for anything he'd done and promise to always love me; I would feel this rush of why did I do that why was I mad at him I love him he's perfect he loves me and I would apologize and apologize and a few days later I'd be mad again. It got solved for him. Never for me.

I didn't realize until the beginning of the next school year that the reason for all this was that he thought everything revolved around him. Of course, the breaking point was that it didn't.

This year, I wasn't in any of his classes. It honestly didn't matter that much to me - we still sat next to each other in chorus and lunch and his locker was right near mine. Plus, I was still struggling with this constant annoyance towards him. One of my other good friends and I ended up in basically the same schedule, and we would pass notes and they would offer advice, the most shocking to me being break up. But I didn't want to break up - at least not at first.

And then he started to be mean.

Not to me. Never to me. To my friends. Especially to the one mentioned above, the shortest, the silliest, and the one with the worst mental health. He knew this, of course, but it didn't stop him from calling them names, from telling them they wouldn't win anything, they wouldn't ever be a success, they were stupid, they were everything he thought about himself but worse. He was bullying them while others bullied him, their voices coming out twisted and harsh from his mouth as he pressed all of his problems onto someone else. I heard about it every day and I felt like I couldn't do anything.

He called my other friend shallow. Spoiled. He said she was a little brat who didn't know anything about surviving in the real world. He told me not to be friends with her anymore. He would make fun of people's sexualities, their identities, always telling us he was teasing, always making us feel bad for presenting ourselves the way we did. For someone who changed his name twice and wore flag pins on his jackets, he was never very supportive. 

He told me he had an eating disorder very soon after I met him, and I always made sure to have mac 'n' cheese, one of his only safe foods, at my house when he came over. In return, he would take our food at lunch without asking, his lunchbox open and full to the brim with his own. Except he never wanted any of the things we'd bring in that were meant to be taken. My friend made Korean songpyeon* by hand. sorry, I have an eating disorder, he said. He wasn't at all sorry.

He had a fight with his friend in August. They didn't speak anymore, they had their separate groups, and it was okay. In September he sent her a message: two paragraphs detailing exactly why he hated her, making her cry and forcing a lot of us to spend a few days in the guidance counselor's office comforting her while he continually told us not to go.

He made me feel uncomfortable in public, with the raucous laughter, the dancing, the standing in the middle of doorways, aisles, the talking over me about something different as I spoke to the cashier, the i'm sorry, i'm not good with social situations and the proceeding to loudly embarrass me as if there were not other people in the room, the mall, the school, the world.

I didn't want to say that I couldn't believe it because I could, and I felt like an accomplice to it. I was dating him. He told me he loved me and then turned around and told my friends they weren't good enough. 

I couldn't take it anymore. I broke up with him.

He did not take it well. He hasn't spoken to me since and has been slowly cutting off all of his friends, using words like hateful and pressure when they've done nothing to him except continue being friends with me. When he does have to talk to one of us, it comes out in sharp, harsh sentences like waves against rocks. I don't care. I am unburdened from him. My friend group has tightened our threads to one another. Everything feels lighter now, stepping through the world without him attached to me. I think I've moved on. It feels good; I genuinely hope he has too.

I apologized when we broke up. I wished him well. It clearly didn't mean anything to him then and it doesn't now, exactly one month later. I see him in the hallways now and I cannot help but feel empathetic towards this boy at the lockers, one above and to the right of mine, who has cut all of his friends away from him with a blunt knife. I tried to talk to him the other day and got a blue metal door slammed in my face. I won't try it again; this was not meant as an apology.

*songpyeon are semi-sweet Korean rice cakes. they are delicious :D but i am definitely not Korean, so don't ask me if you want to know more about them lol

Sometimes I wonder

If you remember

That night?

It was dark and light all at once

Fire lit

A volleyball we couldn’t see

A game we couldn’t play

People I didn’t know

I could be with 

Like that.

And when I tell you this,

I don’t know who I’m talking to,

But it was a gift,

That marshmallow you roasted for me,

The game you let me join,

The stories you told.

I don’t know if the magic

Was sparkling in the air

Where you could feel it too,

Probably not

But it sure was

Stitched in my heart

That night.

The night I found new friends

Joy

Laughter

Endless

Happiness

You gave me the gift

Of a memory

Untainted

Forever.

My brain is a jumble of words 

a puzzle of thoughts and feelings that I struggle to put together  

a tangle of ideas that never reach my tongue 

I used to wish for a filing system

to organize the mess of concepts that I don't know how to explain

but I've long come to peace, that that's not in the cards

Even my letters get mixed up 

(I can't spell to save my life) 

Because even though I know

i before e except after c,

I still can't spell "greif" 

and although I'm 15 

I was still unaware  "percive" had an e

But I still write poetry,

in notes to my friends too long to be called "little" 

and come up with metaphors in my head

because even though I don't understand what my words mean,

maybe someone out there can

and maybe they will tell me really how you spell "belive" 

From past friends

or mild acquaintances

there will be times where I am not only acknowledged

but appreciated

it makes me happy

makes me content

makes me feel more comfortable around people who I've grown up with

my non-related "siblings"

when they make me feel like I can be appreciated

when I can be seen

when I'm not invisible

unseen

when I can be a solid human being

when my classmates who aren't my friends talk to me

that is what real happiness is for me

when I'm treated like a classmate and not a stranger

when I'm appreciated

when I can have fun and be myself around other people

not worry too much about what people think

that's real happiness

it's a rare thing

it comes in small doses

small interactions

it's not a myth

it's real

I'm real.

I only knew her for a couple months. But the way she spoke to me, the way we talked on the phone, it wasn’t hard to grow attached. Or maybe it was that she wanted me to grow attached, so my tears could entertain her when it all ended in a bloodbath. Though it’s been a while, I don’t think I’ll ever know what was real and what wasn’t. Was she just reeling me in so she could trash me just as fast? Or what if it was real and she had good intentions? I chose to believe the first one, for it was better to have someone to blame instead of myself. After the emotional rollercoaster that took a year’s worth of saline to overcome, I hadn’t expected more. Yet she contacted me one last time, and it angered me. After all, how dare she do all of this to me and pretend nothing happened? Then I found out what she’d told my friends, the way she’d victimized herself. Although I know her truthfully now, I still find myself missing the affection and endearment I felt, but then ridiculing myself for grieving something that was probably never real.