she made her mind up.

it’s off to sleep now
to dream about the book she just put down.

you’ll see, when she smiles, you’ll love her.

The occasion of owls and a demi-luge fog.

Even God has nodded off

And won’t be taking prayers til ten.

Ad interim, you put them on.

As if your wants could keep you warm.

As if. You say your shibboleths.

You thumb your beads. You scry the glass.

Night creeps to its precipice

And the broken rim of reason breaks

Again. An obsidian sky betrays you.

Every serrate shadow flays you.

Soon enough, the crow will caw.

The cock will crow. The door will close.

(He isn’t coming back, you know.)

And so wee, wet hours of grief relent.

In thirty years you might forget

Precisely how tonight’s pain felt.

And in whose black house you dwelt.

i went to new york recently for advertising week 2010. i had never been to the big apple before, and i had several ideas of what i might find there. i was sad to be leaving my “home” for an entire week; strangely enough, i got a nice taste of what “home” really means in a city of millions, all while walking the dimly lit cobblestone streets of the meatpacking district and and the cracked sidewalks of brooklyn.

two dear girlfriends of mine live in new york. one is a former roommate, now married and working as a nanny, living in a modest apartment in brooklyn where she has been for two months now. the other, a year-long resident of the financial district, recently quit her job on wall street to work in the music business, with a sound knowledge of posh pubs and the subway system.

it had been a long time since i had been with girlfriends, and the gravity of that fact only set in once i started telling jokes and realized my friends were finishing the punchlines. one friend and i stayed up talking for hours on her couch about friends as family, our lives as roommates with six other girls, and how the mere act of coming home to those girls could make a bad day vanish. we laughed over red wine and pizza in the crowded corner of a cash-only hole-in-the-wall, and laughing that hard is a pastime we used to enjoy with each other that hasn’t been a recurring one since we both became adults.

the other friend and i stood barefoot at a chappo show in union square, hoovering cheap drinks before  purchasing a lighter and burning through several cloves while making the journey to club 675. she and i, both career-driven workaholics for the past year, have seen each other sparingly. we caught each other up on major life changes that we had waited to share in person, took the train back to soho, and laid on a king-sized bed in bathrobes eating pillow chocolates and listening to new music in the dark. right before we went to sleep, she reached her hand across the bed and tapped me on the shoulder.

“hey, ems?”

“what’s up?”

“thanks for being my person.”

i saw a lot of famous people in new york, shared cocktails with advertising’s elite, and visited some of the most exclusive venues the city has to offer.

and the pieces of new york that dazzled me most were those conversations. they breathed life back into me and reminded me of who i was before life got nuts. they reminded me that there are people out there who actually know me. i think i’d forgotten that.

it’s ironic that in a city where there is no dearth of experience, my favorite ones were those that brought me back to texas. maybe that means i’m not cut out for city life. that’s okay. you can drop the city; i’d rather just have “life” for now.

every day, i feel differently about graduation. something changes with each morning, and some mornings are more ominous than others.

on this day, the worst part about graduating is that i don’t have time to do the simple ordinary things one ought to be able to do when undergoing a monumental life change. i spend every spare minute of my day that isn’t filled with meaningless schoolwork or incessant emailing trying to figure out how to scientifically bend the time-space continuum to bypass me. i want to create some sort of kink in it that i can live in for a while, and i only want to take about 10 people with me. only a few places would be there:

a balcony overlooking elmwood, peppered with christmas lights and a velvet rope and chairs waiting to overhear truth;

a room with three twin-sized beds and a guitar, with the blankets already turned down;

a stretch of road that only takes you to the capitol at nighttime, where the sprinklers are always on;

zilker park that puts three days in september on repeat;

the draughthouse pub in the summertime;

a backyard overlooking the skyline with a tree that smells like yellow fruit loops;

a sauna of a living room with an out-of-tune piano and bowls of chocolate candies;

pluckers, and it’s always sunday afternoon, the group of people growing and shrinking with the day;

a hammock, consistently accompanied with chacos, stars, and city and colour, but free from hard decisions or heartache;

a pizza parlour on a thursday night;

a small, quiet couch made for three, with hot tea and hand-holding and blankets on the ground;

a windowless lab at four in the morning, filled with brains overflowing with ideas, furiously typing and writing and telling sharp jokes, with a due date that never actually comes;

a two-story house on the north side of campus, with a loud puppy and a fenced yard and a constant stream of arrested development;

concrete tennis courts in the middle of a city park;

campus buildings, hotel swimming pools, and whataburger;

“the point”, with warm coca-cola and plastic cups;

the corner of olive and branch, after a cookout and before a dance party;

stephen pyles;

the austin stone.

the streets connecting them would be those that i’ve mercilessly eroded with either my tires or bare feet – the roads i drive without even realizing it, turning onto them so assuredly that i feel as if i’m headed home. they would have the same streetlights, placed in the same spots, and they would still turn red at exactly the moment when you want to stop and think for a minute.

it would be a big kink.

i know that next semester, when you are all gone, i will be headed back to my house after work or the gym or a trip to the grocery store, and without even realizing it i will turn onto one of your streets, park in front of your house, turn my headlights off and the radio down, and sit, pretending for a moment that i could run up the sidewalk, turn the doorknob, run upstairs and find the people i love all in one space, talking or singing or typing in silence. you will glance up, smile, hug me tightly, offer me a seat or bed or square of floor, and we will tell jokes and stories and triumphs of our day, and we will be able to reach out and touch each other, erupt in laughter for no reason, and stare at the ceiling, content.

i will never get enough of loving you. i’m addicted to it. and if i could, i would run upstairs to you all for the rest of my life.

so after we’re all gone, and you’re in your bed one night after a difficult day, just go downstairs. i will be there, barefoot and smiling, waiting to talk and listen and stroke your hair.

forever.

i think it’s because a heart knows true value more than any logical thought ever will.

at least, mine certainly seems to think that it does.

i want to write an introspective piece on everything i’ve learned since i’ve been here, and i will when i am in a more introspective mood; in that regard, there is much to tell. however, i am feeling extrospective today, which is why i will write you a different “what i’ve learned” piece.

a.) everyone in this city is beautiful. not “texas beautiful”, which, in my opinion, is a unique kind of beauty – wholesome, unaltered, natural, and wild. no, everyone in this city is “GQ beautiful”. i saw a couple last night at a rooftop party that may or may not have been on their way to shoot the magazine’s cover.

b.) there are a lot of rooftop parties. stereotypes of miami are similar to stereotypes of vegas in that they’re exceptionally accurate. i have been here for seven days and layed out at four rooftop pools. they’re like cockroaches. relaxing, breathtaking cockroaches.

c.) the people i work with go hard, both in the office and outside of it.

d.) cp+b is everything it’s cracked up to be. it might be a better workplace than google.

e.) queso is nowhere to be found. this is possibly the most pressing of all points. i fear for my gastromoical future.

i am currently at my desk, where i have been every day since my arrival, surrounded by more copy than i care to admit i’ve written in two days. if anytihng, this place will create in me a better writer than i could have ever imagined possible. praise Him.

this from my head. more later from my heart.

the magic of going home is feeling familiarity and comfort in a place where you know every crevice. when i was 21, my parents moved out of our neighborhood and into a new one, 20 minutes away. going home now doesn’t hold the same sense of security.

there is a place i know that feels more like home to me than dfw, so much so that i often forget it is not where i grew up. i love it because its drive reminds me of excitement about what was around the corner: a warm bed, a place to be with so many of the most important people in my life at once, and anxiety about what will happen there each day. the sense of place is so strong there, as is my sense of belonging within it. stepping foot into a dingy karaoke bar feels like walking into my home. it’s as if i should be able to drive down the street and be at the house i grew up in, because so much of my family is in that town. i will always love it and feel at home there.

places are what make me feel. the people that are connected to them obviously play a huge role in that, but i love to feel safe at home, and that is part of why i am scared to leave austin. i am about to go to a new city, one i have never visited, to live for a while.  i have no bed there yet, and when i do, i am well aware that there will be no one there to tuck me in or wait anxiously for me to get up so we can go have adventures. there are no back roads that i know, no backyards or porches. there is no microphone waiting for me on a sawdust-laden chair.

i have seen people close to me depart on these kinds of life-changing experiences and come back feeling lonely and confused. i know that i will be lonely while i am there, and it is due largely to the fact that i have developed a strong sense of place to the city i live in because my heart lives here, inside the hearts of several people. i am excited for the opportunity, but honestly, i am more excited that i will most likely be coming back to austin. i know i can’t hold on to it forever, but i just don’t know how to replace place.