Road Trip: Everything Looks Better Framed By A Car Window

road trip: everything looks better framed by a car window

don't lie to me if you're putting the dog to sleep

i know what you're doing. you think that you can protect me from the tragedy, the inevitable spiral i will go through until i hit the ground and sit there clawing at it, ripping up the flowers from last year's graves. the only thing we are capable of giving is death, i remember saying to you, and now i am killing the lilies you planted to make it look less like the entire yard was dying. in my head this happens in an instant but when i look outside the flowers already dead, from thirst and heat. it's the middle of summer, no rain for weeks and nothing can grow without water even if there is a body decomposing underneath the earth. we cannot afford to water the plants we have grown. what did you say? about how there is beauty in the destruction of things. now i remember why you love me. the car engine starts and you are trying to talk me out of going by not talking at all so i am talking for you: and i call out don't leave yet i know what you're doing. i can see you carrying her out to the car and this isn't the reaction you wanted, you were hoping to be quiet but now you have to take me along. now that i've seen the blankets and the unwashed sheets there's no going back. not for all the flowers in the world. don't you dare lie to me and say that's not what you were doing. i know you better than that. i have to persuade you that closure is better than a lie, a hook slipping into place when you clasp that chain around my neck i know that i am difficult at the best of times and dangerous at worst but if i am to bear the weight of this one more time let me see the tragedy unfold and let me watch it with my own eyes. there will be a peace in knowing there was nothing we could do. you sigh and shut the car door behind me. i cradle her head in my lap and on the way back we buy more flowers for the garden. we can't be sure that these will live either but anything is better than nothing. you won't look at me and i tell you it's not your fault. i had to know and i'm sorry that you thought this could go any other way. besides, how did you think you could hide it from me? i would've known when you brought home the body. at least this way we can bury the guilt together.

synonyms for destruction:

girl 
pretty face but sad eyes 
and you know she’s going to ruin you 
gently, but it hurts 
the way she tears you apart and 
picks out every thread 
as careful as when she sews you back together 
smile lopsided and wrong down to your bones. 
destruction does not come fast, is not easy. 
is quiet and gentle, pulling you apart the way the world ends- 
a collapse inward, broken doll 
on joints that could not stand 
folding, paper with edges creased 
and a note that says 
"i love you" left on the bedside table while you sleep. happiness like a corrosion, spreading through your veins.

love defined

storge• /ˈstɔːɡɪ/ noun, Greek: Στοργή (familial loyalty)

1. your brother likes to tease you about everything relentlessly but the one day someone else says something is the day when he stands up and punches that boy’s lights out because “no one gets to talk about her like that” and he just smiles when you ask him what happened after he comes home with a black eye. 2. when you come out to your family accidentally in the check out line of a Meijers your mom just laughs (and for god’s sake you were twelve and you didn’t know a thing except that you were pretty sure you liked everyone and not just boys) but she still took you to church on Sundays and said “what did you think i was going to do? you’re my daughter, you idiot. i love you.” 3. the only one in your family who knew what you were saying half the time was your father because you both spoke sign language and could yell at each other across the room saying “KANGAROO!” and start laughing while everyone else looked on. you made a habit of trying to learn new languages together until you could both speak in German and French too but the only words of Gaelic you spoke were the ones you said every day- mo gaol orst, tha gaol agam orst. 4. family is not what you think it is and neither is love. both are what you make it and both are worth fighting for

philia• /ˈfɪliə/ noun, Greek: Φιλιάς (friendship)

1. there is a divot in the road up ahead and it’s caught all the rain that fell while you were walking through this quiet neighborhood with your bare feet, sneakers in one hand and Emily’s shoes in the other. 2. she has green flip flops that match the green trees and it’s the last day but also a beginning, the start of another road that you walk down when you turn the corner. 3. you are barefoot and you splash through every puddle, every crack and you walk down the middle of the road together. this could be sad but instead you talk about conjugating French verbs and how there is a way to say you, me, us, we, together, forever with no strings attached. 4. Alyssa said if you ever needed to talk to someone that she’d always be there, don’t worry about it because that’s what friends do, right? and the thought of that makes you want to cry because who ever knew how much it meant to have someone who would be there.

eros• /ɛɹɒs/ noun, Greek: ἔρως (romantic love)

1. what arrows struck the hearts of men and caused them to feel a love like this? what arrows and what bow, what reason could there be to inflict us with this strange and bitter wonder if not to make us feel alive? 2. had you known how fast and how hard that you would fall im not sure you would’ve made the same decision but i am sure that you would have believed in and made the same love. 3. open your mouth and swallow them down like sugar and blueberries that turn your tongue purple but your lips red like kisses. you are a pair of hands begging to be held and a pair of lips waiting to be kissed and kissed and kissed until you are dizzy and the world is made of shining colours. 4. there are epics and poems and songs and movies and books and thousands of words written to describe this love and yet the story can be told over and over and over again without us ever tiring of it.

agape• /əˈɡeɪp/ noun, Greek: ἀγάπη (selfless love)

1. selfless love of one person for another (especially love of a spiritual means) 2. love that knows no body or no boundaries. love that can give and give and give until there is nothing left but everything, because there can always be more. 3. you couldn’t begin to understand how to love like this because to love like this is to be god but you can try because heaven knows that we can be good when we want to. 4. this is what was meant to be known as love.

/lʌv/ EXPLAINED :: @cityskylinesofimaginaryplaces

we dance among the stars.

lithium is the third to last element expelled before a star goes supernova and can be found in all of us. somewhere a star exploded and its elements, the molecules that make it up, rushed out into the great gaping abyss until they were put to use making us. someone once told me that all matter has existed since the beginning of everything, not just time because time is something we constructed, but everything. i think it was in my seventh grade science classroom and now i can remember it, first hour with coffee and bleary eyes even that young and hearing someone say: you have been a part of something before you were something and you will be a part of something after you’ve been something matter can never be created or destroyed it simply is. how it felt to know that the parts do not add up to a whole even if the whole cannot remember where all of its parts have been. i think it was comforting, the idea that everything i was was something before me and after me there would continue to be something of me that was once a part of me and the subsequent conversation later when i said sorry to a chair after bumping into it and my mother said what are you afraid of hurting its feelings? it’s not alive and i said it is alive because we’re all made of molecules and the molecules that make up that chair could’ve been part of someone i bet you were a chair once how would you feel if someone ran into you and didn’t say sorry? and she just laughed at me and said kid sometimes i wonder about you and ruffled my hair so i just laughed too and didn’t tell her that i thought it was beautiful, that the chair could be alive and still not because it was made of molecules and people and dust, lithium, real stardust or what could’ve been, only it didn’t know it.

for sharp-edged women, made of thorns, points and needles:

you have been broken, beaten and abused to become who you are.

your eyes are tired from always searching, never daring to stop looking for where the next attack will come from. you sleep with one eye open.

scars are your badges, medals of honour you wear to remind yourself not that you let someone do that to you but that you survived. there is no greater challenge than this-

to live in a world of softened, loving people and to be what you have made yourself. a creature of hard edges, claws, teeth biting and words cutting like knives.

you are difficult to love, and maybe, you do not want to be loved.

it is enough to stand on your own two feet in the shelter you have created, safe in the knowledge that no one and no thing can hurt you unless you let it.

and you won’t let it.

no one comes close enough to even touch your points and if they do once, they never do again. you are wild and free and self contained all in one; you are your cage, your door, and the key to open it.

if someone looked close enough they could see brambles weaving through your hair, claws like knives instead of fingernails, razors hidden behind your throat and the iron that runs through your body instead of bone.

you are fire and ice, clawing your way from underneath the dirt and falling from the skies.

everything you have, you have had to fight for, and everything you have you deserve.

you make and remake the world in your own image, shaping your daughters to be strong, hard, guarded and full of wit- something you wish someone had done for you.

no one told you that the world would break you, your heart and bones and mind, and no one ever warned you of the dangers of pretty green-eyed girls and dark haired boys who slit their wrists in the name of love. you have lost friends and love that way, and once, almost, yourself.

and you wish someone had told you that edges are not something to be scared of, that you could stand on a precipice and not fall off. brambles guard the castle holding everything you love (and when you love, you love fiercely, the sun chasing the moon and dying to give it breath) and needles are what you sew yourself back together with.

for the women who are strong- you understand.