Special: a heart with no armour

Arrows pierce a heart with no armor,
fire burns and blazes it,
your  powerful hammer crushes it to the sallow grass;
it is doomed to immortal love.

Sometimes when I am sitting without activity, everything that's about to change clogs in my heart like metal, and I sink to the bottom of the abyss. I think about things like Kate hating my lying, crazy ass, I think about Katie and Renee, I think about Hannah and her poor family right now, I think about Schultz curled in bed in some swanky Madison apartment, alone and missing us terribly, college, Taylor and Kelly, Taylor without Kelly, Finley being angry, things like that.

If you know me at all, I could go on.

I could tell you about the lingering gaze of Mrs. Parks on the beebalm when she found the news from us, that it wasn't her home anymore, and it was like she wanted to cling to that plant. Like it were home, instead. I could tell you how hoarse my mother was with disbelief and general disbelief from my sisters' stupidity, too. So many things like that, I could tell you.


But the thing is, I talk about them all the time to people I Trust. People like Finley.

And today all I wanted from sunrise to sunset was Finley, and I didn't get him. I didn't get him at all. I got him cranky, and cheered him up. I got him remorseful about WASTING that money on me (Remind me why the fuck I allowed him to do that? Oh yeah, that's right. Because I'm an idiot). I got him talking to everybody about characters when my mine had been done since fucking snow-time.

Nope, not him at all.

And then I'm seriously begging him to come back, seriously grovelling because I can't sit in my basement hugging his picture and whatever I find from Katie another night, wishing they were there and he sighs--like I were some stubborn, spoiled child--and says, "It's late, Pay." He goes on to explain that this would be a waste of his time.

I start to cry. Quiet, deadly Payton tears.

"What is it?" he snaps, "what's wrong?"

"If I have to tell you again," I stammer, tears making rivers down my cheekbones, "then there's no point."

"Pay--Pay! You tell me what's wrong!" he says, grabbing my arm and pulling me back into my seat as I pick up my bag and make to leave. He pulls me hard. Like, it hurts.

Great. Now I don't get Finley, either. Now he's just pissed.

I wish I had even my phone charger, but he has that too. I'm isolated. All I want is to not be by myself, surrounded by thinking, right now. I'm frightened by change. I'm really, really scared of my future.

And there's no one there to listen.


Here, Paper written with words from my friend;
here, picture with a frozen smile not made for me
come into my arms
be a balm unto my fear, as no one else notices tonight
who notices a single star,
unless if it is falling?