the-queen-of-youth

You weren't born in the desert, but you died there. It was your favorite place, the way you could run for hours and never reach a road, the way you were exposed to the sun and the sky—you could never keep a secret in the desert, it felt like it was such an honest and open place, there was nowhere to hide anything. So you had to be like it, and you told the dry and dusty ground any and all remaining secrets that might have been hidden deep, wedged between your ribs and poking you every time you took a step. You told it everything, and you knew it was listening. That was your first visit, and you don't know how many endless days you sp

He’s a lost boy and she doesn’t know how much longer she can pretend to love him. Every part of him needs her, she feels like water after walking through a desert for days. She is his relief. He could have held the world in his hands, but he chose to hold her instead. She’s growing up much faster than she’d like, and he’s not the mystery he used to be. She used to hang on his every word, his touch was her drug—his drug was called Fairydust and she liked it just fine too— But she’s older now. She used to clap her hands to his beat every night because she believed in him, believed he would hi

Go, go, goddess, shake those hips, shake it ‘n scream— you’re preachin’ to a sold-out choir now, love dance, dance, diamond, step out, step and slide— all the boys had better beware now sex, sex, sugar, make us all moan, make us moan— sexy and you know it, girl don’t let anything stop you it’s rock and roll, baby

Caged bird, caged bird, won’t you sing me a song? Sing to me with that voice that’s the only one you know, the voice that’s kept you company through your lonely years. Where’d you learn to sing, love, how did you do it? Tell me, what did it; was it the day you decided to match your voice to an old song, or the night you got so lonely you let everything come out of your mouth? Smart girl, you lonely genius girl, how did you learn to read all by yourself? Did you imagine a father’s arms around you, warming you and helping you along? Tell me everything, my bird, tell me every story you’ve ever read, everyth

Oh, boy, I loved you and your slimy heart right from the beginning. I loved how your hair shone gold in even the lowest light and how your eyes turned black whenever someone did as much as mispronounce my name. We were friends, good, good friends. Spent every day lying next to each other in the dry grass and getting stoned, letting our words spiral up into each other and mix into a haze. We would just try to make each other laugh, and if that meant saying schnauzer over and over, so be it. You radiated summer from your oily skin. You were my heat, even if we never touched. We would just lie there together, and sometimes I'd yell your name

We were the reigning monarchs of summer. There was a wide open area behind my house, and I was only allowed out of the house for thirty minutes at thirteen years old. So I ran out, ran up the hill and climbed up our throne of an oak tree, waiting for him. Same time every day, same routine. His house was on the opposite side of the hill, and it was never too long before he came out after me. I'd drop out of the tree, slamming a hug into him like it'd been months and months since I'd last seen him, not twenty-four hours. He'd just absorb the hug and not give anything back, like the leech he was, but he'd smile at me. He wanted to have a si

You’re named after a Beatles song you’ve never heard. Is it funny or sad that you never will? Do you remember everything like I do, out where you are? I remember all our little girl things. We played Anne of Green Gables and when you wouldn’t let me be Anne I called you a maggot and you told your mom. We would swing in your backyard and kick our shoes into your neighbors’ yard so we could be secret agents and climb over the fence and down the rocks, cutting our legs and running from the friendly guard Chihuahua. We would write swearies onto your whiteboard so we could erase them, you wrote boner but neither of us

Daddy always says he’s got a bad disease. He says it creeps up on him at night, makes ‘im cry. Makes ‘im think of better days, when I wasn’t here. He says he thinks I’ll catch it too. He says mama had it. He tells me about it when he’s had one too many and he’s been sittin’ and staring at the ceiling. He says it’ll tear ‘im limb from limb someday.  Says it gets bad when the mist creeps in and covers the trees, gets worse when he sees an open road, and the worst of all is the desert. Daddy’s in love with the desert. He’ll say ‘girl, someday you’ll see the d

The ending was a simple four-word line of dialogue. I don't love you. That didn't really seem right to Jess. It wasn't anywhere near creative enough for him, not even creative enough for Jude. Jess wanted to rewrite that ending—but in order to do that, he'd have to change the past, and the only way to change the past would be to remember it. All of it. So he started from the beginning. He started trying to find his mom's old camera, it was probably buried under clothes and journals and paper, so much fucking paper—that always drove Jude crazy, that Jess couldn't keep his 'writing shit' contained. Maybe that was why Jude ende

we started out blinking and ended up not looking at each other (I would say that's funny, but it's not) rage, rage against the machine with me, we aren't popular but we aren't nothing, we ain't pretties but you certainly weren't an ugly flashforward and i've got your hand in mine for the last time Juliet's singing in a sink and Romeo's pulling her away and my thumb went in circles over your fingers like a dental drill gently now, one and two and three and four and i was planning on never letting go the beat to an electric song pumped through me, and my thumb kept circling around your hand tightly and when i let go, well it wasn't l