Burning eyelids

Head down.

Eyes closed.

Sleeping with an awake mind.
Sleeping, but only to the point where I can still hear what's going on around me.

I've been sleeping for the better part of the past month and I don't think I'll be very awake until May 28th.

I really haven't been trying to miss class.
I haven't been trying to miss my brother either, but he's 5,099 miles away and I can't help it.
I can't help it.

At this point I'm scared of waking up.

I don't fit into Creative Writing 2 and I'm anything but creatively advanced.
I haven't been inspired lately and I've run out of things to say.

I've run out of boys to kiss and tell about.
I've run out of sob stories.
Of rants.
Of poems I don't even understand the meaning of.
I've run out of self-love and I think my writing ability went with it.

The sunny days are burning my skin and making my heart burn for something new.
Something to wake me up.
To remind me why I need to figure out my future.
To remind me that I have a future outside of high school love and high school hate.

I need something to wake me up.
Because the alarm clock ringing in my ears has blended into the white noise that teen angst has embedded in my ear drums.

I stopped paying attention.

Until now.

Chronic

I think this is the first doctors appointment I'm excited about
I finally get to rip these stupid tonsils out and end the chronic pain
But to me it's not chronic
I stopped noticing how much it hurt to swallow
Because it hurts a whole lot more to watch my friends go through things I don't know how to help them with
It hurts more to fall in unreciprocated love
It hurts more to see my best friend cry
It hurts

Illness is nothing compared to heartbreak
And I would take tonsillitis over and over again if it meant I could end everyone else's pain

Your pain has always cut me deeper than my own
These tears were never for me

Happy Valley

I didn't show up to school the next day

I told my mom I was sick

But I think we're all sick with something

Everyone was grieving and I was at home in yoga pants watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians

For some reason their stupid dramatic lives helped me escape for a few hours and all I felt was fake

Fake

Fake

Fake

And that felt better than facing the halls of students trying not to cry

Because we're all sick with something

Someone, please find a cure

There are a bunch of suggested remedies out there, but we've yet to find one that's a cure-all

We need a cure-all

Because I don't think happy valley can handle so much sadness

They'll have to rename it

Someone, please find a cure

speak now or forever hold your peace

if you don't say it now, they wont hear you

they've got things to do and places to be and they've never needed your hand in theirs

you're just a person

a person who doesn't have a place to be or a thing to do

you spend so much damn time following other people that you don't even know why you carry around maps

but somewhere near the end of may you'll be alone without a footstep to follow and you'll be thankful for the maps in your hand

you drew them for 12 years because they told you to and the early ones are covered in crayon and the more recent ones are done in black ink

you'll need all of them combined to get you anywhere

and at some point you'll look up from the maps you drew and realize the world isn't as flat as it looks on paper and people aren't as mean as they seem in movies and someone's gonna love you in a way that Nicholas Sparks could never tell in 300 pages

but you won't see it unless you look up

and they won't hear what you have to say unless you speak up

fire insurance not included

I could write a novel about the reason that goodbye was the wrong choice

But I get it

I knew that sparks weren't enough to keep the fire lit

We needed lighter fluid or flint and steel or just a better stack of firewood

BUT I WASN'T PAYING ATTENTION WHEN WE BUILT FIRES AT GIRLS CAMP

I think I was in my cabin screaming because there was a mouse

But shouldn't boys have an innate ability to build fires?

I guess if my plan was to leave it to you then I have no chance at staying warm through the night

Because you weren't prepared, boyscout, and you let me down

But I get it

I knew that learning how to be happy on my own would be good for me and I've proved myself right this time

I'll go back to life without you and I'll forget about the fire you started in my fingertips

It singed my hair and the smell made me sick but I forgot because your eyes were a perfect shade of blue 

The kind of blue that reminds me of Mondays in June

The kind that meant sunburns and open windows in the nighttime and dropped snowcones left to melt

Your smell worked it's way through the fibers of my clothes and it's gonna take more than a rinse cycle to get rid of it

And you smell like campfire and disappointment and every shooting star that just turned out to be a cruel piece of burning rock for little girls to waste their breath on at night

And this time I was a little girl with the naive notion that wishes on stars actually make it past the panes of my window

I just don't remember wishing for blue eyes to break my heart

It's time

I guess it's time.

I've hidden behind a dark silhouette for long enough.
A silhouette of a girl with a much better nose than me and I realize it's stupid, but I resent it.

And I hate goodbyes.
but this won't be one
because I'm not interested in doing things I don't like if I don't have to.

I'll be honest and say that before this year, writing wasn't my escape, but rather my prison.
And my only inspiration came from old, dusty books from the history section of the library because I was never inspired to write, I just needed an A.

So thank you, Nelson.
You showed me a Paris filled with laughter ending in tears, late nights filled with words that only ever made it to the drafts file, and a place that I never want to leave.

So I'm not leaving.

I'll stay here with my trust issues that stemmed from daddy issues, random music taste that ranges from hard core rap that swears every other word to country (why do people hate on country?), obnoxious laugh that seems to present itself in the most inappropriate of times, and my strange personality that usually sends boys running for the hills. (And I've never been much of a runner so I never chase after them.)

Here's to the first semester of my last year of high school.

Actually, here's to creative writing for showing me more of myself than a close-up mirror ever could.

Thanks for coming on this ride of self-discovery.

A ride that ended in Paris.

xoxo

Emma Fruehan

tear-stained memories

I remember the address of my last house

the phone number

the neighbors

the way I loved the smell of the new carpet in the basement

the day my dad moved out

crying when my mom took the paintings off the walls

not getting to say goodbye to a ten year chapter of my life

I remember breaking into tears as I walked to his car

how I was all ready to go

how I told him I just couldn't do it

not being ready to face it

I remember how embarrassed I was of that car

looking away as I passed people I knew while driving it

the way the driver side window wouldn't roll back up

the musty smell of the twenty two year old carpet

the chipped paint

the rust

the dents

how I called it Phyllis

crying when I had to say goodbye to it

I remember October 8th

hugging you tighter than I ever have

wishing we had more time

resenting Salt Lake City airport for every goodbye

I remember to count the tears

because I'll give them to someone one day

in the form of my heart