It was a clear night tonight. I looked at Jupiter, its moons and clouds through a telescope, and then a cropped portion of our moon, as clear as if it were under a microscope.
One hour later I noticed it was hanging about 8 extended palms width to the right of where it had been. My teacher saw me and asked if I had noticed it's dramatic repositioning. I said yes, it's incredible how fast we're moving. He agreed, and I said...No wonder I'm nauseous.
No laughter. Then I thought, was it even a joke?

This will be hard to express. I wasn't even thinking about her, but as I was walking towards the stairs which ascend to the parking lot, I heard a girl's yell, loud and high behind me: "Mom?!" which immediately plucks a very taut string within me, followed by a concerned, "Why is she leaving??" A phrase which creschendoed towards hysteria.
The girl may have been on the phone, or more likely she posed the question to herself, but either way the words she chose resonated physically in my body, in a similar way that religious fervor hits you, "Yes, that is how I feel about this imperceptible metaphysical thing, and you just said it accidentally."
Why is she leaving? Why is she leaving? There are scenes you play out that aren't literal, you aren't in LaGrande, but the scenes happen reflexively when you need her. They are scenes of emotion given the form of a vague, I want to say vaporous, mirage. As you see the life leave her, with addled futility you wonder why did she leave. What happened in that moment where she was there and then she wasn't, and why couldn't she have stayed.
A feeling so similar, and perhaps just as simple as the confusion, and yes even resentment, that I perceived this girl to be feeling as her Mother drove away without her. It's not rational, or fair, but it's pointless to deny a feeling that will weaken you whether or not you choose to express it.
The girl had run up the stairs ahead of me in concert with her frantic query. I said, maybe slightly aloud or only mentally at the back of her head, "You won't find her." It was true that she didn't find her. She fled the lot, descending the stairs which were the ones I was still ascending, divided by an iron rail. I saw her face for the first time, which was an overwrought mask, but I felt as though mine was strangely calm even though I cried when I got to my car.

I have very few photos of myself from the ages of 15-18, and in those I have seen I'm uncharacteristically grinning (because that's what you did in photos then).
I also had very little self-awareness during that time in relation to the way I must have looked in moments of rest, but I recently found a long forgotten letter from my high school boyfriend/only friend from 16-18, suggesting a repining demeanor:
"Dear Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,"
He had inherited his parent's record collection.
I don't remember very much anymore.

20 minutes before your shift ends, a student comes in with a series of 3 scholarship application questions, each one limited to 250 words. His problem is that he has too much to say, and he wants an objective reader to tell him what he should cut.
Question 1:
Define your career goals and educational plan to get there:
OK, this part about how you grew up in Uganda in a caste system and medical care is scarce and unsanitary...you can keep that...
Describing in detail how your mother and brother died because the practitioner didn't wash his hands...
you might not have room for that until the last paragraph...where I think you should summarize it briefly in the context of why obtaining a nursing degree to instate hygienic practice in your own traditional medicine practice in Uganda is of personal importance to you.
And all of these statistics about deaths caused in Uganda from easily preventable medical malpractice...you don't really have room for them. You'll just have to say something like...many deaths can be prevented through basic hygienic practices.
Question 2:
Describe something that has impacted you in the last 10 years, and what you learned from that experience.
OK, you can keep this part about Joseph Kony killing everybody in your village, but when you say that you and your three sisters escaped only because your village believed you had a spiritualistic leopard double...this is really interesting, but leaves the reader wanting more information than you have room to answer. You could say something like...My three sisters and I were the only survivors, and the entire village was burned down...and this part, about how your step-father sold his house in the neighboring village and disappeared, leaving you and your sisters alone to take shelter in a hog house for a week....will have to be condensed to something like... we found ourselves homeless. And then when you say that you found out your grandmother was alive, and after traveling for two weeks to find her she suffered a heart attack and died because she thought you and your sisters were ghosts, and then you talk about how you buried her....I think, for the sake of condensing, something like...We found ourselves homeless and without any family after our grandmother, who was our only living relative, died of a heart attack when she saw us in her village, as she believed we were dead. It's a lot to say in one sentence, we can retool it, but you get the idea...does that make sense? OK, this section about you washing your sister, who is so thin and who has a mysterious skin condition, and how you didn't know how you would care for them, or where you would turn, and how alone you felt...you will have to summarize it somehow...you definitely have a lot to say, here, but something like...maybe....we were totally alone, and without resources. And then you talk about how you began volunteering with UNICEF for the free lunches, and not eating them so you could bring them back to your sisters, but then you began to really love volunteering....that's good, but could be worded a little differently...like, I turned to UNICEF for help, and then realized that I found deep satisfaction through volunteering....and then all of this section about how you learned some useful skills, and that you had a passion for helping people...that's all on point. Keep that.
And you don't quite get to question 3, because you've started crying, you apologize profusely to the student. You have been wanting to tell him how strong you think he is, how sorry you are this happened to him, or anyone. But you don't say any of it, because it's not your place to suggest to somebody like him that you are in any place to understand enough to feel sorry. And your shift is over now, and your replacement is there to read question number 3. You feel like you are the scum of the earth because you have somehow turned this into your sadness. With each suggestion, he would tell you he was grateful for your help, but you were nauseous because you didn't want to tell him to cut any of it. Afterward, you wanted to call somebody to talk to because you're crying in your car and you want somebody to commiserate that shit is so fucked up, but you force yourself to realize that your pain is infinitely puny- having to tell somebody else how to edit their hell into 250 words, you can handle that if he can. It's been an hour, though, and you're still crying. You think about how you just wished you had made more eye contact with the student. You google image search Joseph Kony and you seethe at his image to direct some of this. You think about how it's not your place to feel this mad when the student didn't seem angry at all- he only talked about how lucky he felt. It's not your place to feel any of it, you feel like shit right now because you're even writing about it, but you felt a great necessity to record it, so you did.

Die trying.
Try dying.

Fuck trying.
Try fucking.

I wonder about my relationship with flattery.
I am intentionally impotent at accepting hollow compliments from disengaged, and sometimes delusional parties.
Yet, I do very much like to be told that I am attractive by the party that I hope will find me attractive.
I think this is a loosely universal framework that I'm gesturing at, here.
This is also universal, I think: that the tragedy is that it becomes increasingly clear that the need for flattery is a desire, a construct, that I will have to give up with age.
And- even if it weren't the actual case that I become less attractive by the month, it is certainly the case that within a long-term, paced relationship, the necessity for flattery fades. What purpose does it serve? You've been wooed.
You must now reconcile the reality of the unconquerable you with the conquered you. It, apparently, needs no affirmation.
And now you set to the impossible task of never wanting it.

I dreamed that I was part of a posse. They were a collection of disparate stereotypes gleaned from a recent sitcom binge.
An accidental death was committed by my compatriot: a deviant, erotic engagement gone awry; and though I had nothing to do with it, I was asked to guard, with my life, a harvested piece of the deceased.
This friend had a maniacal attachment to the accidental victim--in fact he seemed like a generalized psychopath, a la unhinged undercover cop--so I accepted it primarily out of fear.
It was a brain stem in a recycled cottage cheese container. I tucked it away in my purse while questions were asked by officials, but the problem was that the lid was unfitted to the tub. It sloshed and spilled around in my purse, and when I finally escaped to the bathroom to readjust the container, I examined the contents. I was repulsed, but clinically tried to deduce whether the stem was male or female, as my cohort was notoriously bisexual.

I love music.

I am trying very hard.

I have a very vivid memory of being babysat around the age of 4.
I'm sitting on the floor of my room sobbing. This wasn't abnormal, I was unnaturally attached to my mother until about age 5, and I felt like I would die every time she left me behind. There's a name for this developmental hiccup, but I forget it now.
Anyways, this memory is vivid because I don't want my mother at this moment, I want my father. I want him to come home so badly that I felt like I would die. It's strange the way your memory can retain that kind of emotional flashbulb on the muscle level.
I've thought about telling him this memory, but I don't think it would translate. Or maybe it would and he would cry, and I now hate it when he does that.

After having an (almost) accidental orgasm in my astronomy class exactly when a star exploded into a supernova on the projector screen in front of me, I considered the possibility that my life is even more of a bawdy comedy than I give it credit for.

Crossed legs & denim+All I ever think about is ***

If I am paying attention, more makes me despair, more makes me elated, and more makes me want more more more.

And then I allow the thing in that hits me in the back of the throat like cold metal that liquefies on contact. Molten, it flows down to my guts where it once again becomes solid and heavy.

Me running, arriving ragged in supplication to a calm, reposed form who expects everything and gives nothing.
Imposed image acting as a metaphor for the whole gd atrocity.

Burn it.

Feather ribcage.
(Faux) pearl spine.
Railroad spike clavicle.
Brass drawer-pull hips.
Mango sliver muscles.
Coffee straw veins.

I had a dream that my sister told me she was feeling better.

2) I traced a direct map of "humor as defense mechanism" within two hours....I couldn't be sad anymore so I decided, almost consciously, that it was so awful that it was absurdly funny. I thought of it as a comedy sketch.

Just overheard:
"Damn these beautiful non-functioning eyes of mine."
I am so alienated from my own image, these days.

Every day I: drank 6 beers, at least, but more; ate at Pizza Hut for almost every break fast (which happened around 2 PM); trod the town like a dog off a leash, sniffing for dresses to sell, and equally, for memories. I cried all the time.