Gilded butterfly wings carry lies that cannot be overlooked simply because they are pretty. I can't let you get away with your lies just because we were once in love. You didn't win, I don't need to prove myself to you. I don't need to prove myself to anyone. I let you go back into the sky, with all of the gilded butterflies. All of you beautiful liars are one in the same. You all foster love and beauty, while really trying to spread a miasma of uncertainty and fear. I will not fear you. I will find certainty in myself. I will not be fostered in, my golden butterfly. I will be everything I want to be, and less what you want me to be. I leave you with loathing. You are too "busy" for my actually busy life. I need to free myself of the bonds that hold me. In just twenty months I will be gone from this place, love, and you will lose your reach on me for good. I will be well out of hand by then. I don't expect you to sit around waiting for me. I expect you to continue to accept me for who I am and continue to be my friend. You threw that away, though. You don't want me, so I don't need you. I can cast you aside and wait. You will miss me sometime, you will long for the friendship we had. By then, I will be long and a long time gone. There will be no chance then. That will be your punishment, gilded butterfly. You will lose the real butterfly to the crush on the wheels of time.

Love and always.
Bri

The secondary title to this is when felonies lose their fun.

I think I am losing my wild side...I don't want to go out and have a bonfire. I don't want to go out and cause mayhem. I would rather go out to a coffee joint and talk. I think I have realized that I am growing up. I realize that anything illegal I do now...will stay with me for the rest of my life. It can ruin school/work options in the future. God am I boring. I would rather be asleep at four AM then out playing with fire. I would rather be curled up with a good book and good music. Cuddled up in somebodies arm that understands that.

I go back to school Tuesday...to get ready for the grown up job and grown up world. In two years I move away from Redding. What then? Don't know yet...but I'm going to get there.

Anna stares at Nathan, leaning on her elbow. She wonders how hard it would be to leave while he slept. Would he even stir? Would he even care? She isn't so sure anymore. She loves Nathan, like a friend, like a lover. She isn't sure if this is forever love though.

If it was, she thinks staring at the arch of his brow, I wouldn't think like this at all.

She sighs and rolls over to face the wall. Nathan snuggles closer in his sleep. She puts an arm on his shoulder and pushes. It is too hot for that much contact. She puts her forehead against the cool surface of the wall. She feels tears catch in her throat.

It isn't over, but it feels like it should be. She isn't sure why she is there anymore. Is it comfort? Is it safety? The finances?

She feels a deep down fear of being alone. She feels the tremor in her stomach at the thought of being abandoned. She doesn't want to deal with this. Anna stands to pace the room. Nathan coughs in his sleep. He moves around and takes up her side of the bed.

She thinks about how she hates that. How she is alone in the night. She wants to feel something again. She knows though that tonight isn't the night. She has lost something. She isn't sure what. Anna contemplates for a second, trying to figure out what is missing. It feels like the answer is passion, and romance. She also feels like the answer is communication. They have some things right, but everything else is wrong.

She leaves the room to go sit on the balcony. She stares at the moon, praying that something starts to make sense. Anna hopes that she can figure out what is wrong with her, she can't ask for a better man. She cancels that thought. There must be better men out there.

The night passes again, and Anna is alone again. She is left thinking about what she lost and how to find it.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is a word worth? Somethings you just can't catch on film, and you can't describe. You need the words to tell the story. A million pictures to make one story. A thousand words for each of those pictures. That is a lot of math.

You can capture some emotion, but what else? Can you see the depth of sorrow? The pain of regret? The loss of innocents? You need the words for that. You can't feel the softness of my skin, you can't smell my coconut hair conditioner. Now that I wrote it, you can imagine it though. I will give pictures something though, you can hide more blemishes in pictures than you can words. You can use photoshop and cover up scars. You can widen the pupils so that someone thinks that the model is in love with them. You can change my tone, make me lose five pounds. Words show so much more. Simple choices in words and punctuation.

"I like that picture."
" I like that picture!"

I would like to see you.
I would love to see you.

Statements can be strengthened Or weakened. A photo can be edited. Messages come across. One thing about pictures, you can't erase them. You can burn them, but if you make a mistake there is no eraser. It is like life. No Eraser.

The heat kicked in, in an almost vindictive way. It seemed to say it had spared us up until now. It was one ten in the day time though, and eighty-seven at night. No way to stop it. If you killed someone, it would be blamed on the summer insanity. The heat so persistent it made you lose your mind.

I sit quietly, the heat doesn't bother me as much as most. I will admit that it is god awful hot, but other than that, I won't complain. It brings out shreds of need, want, and heat in me. I try to ignore them, but I want to quench myself. I don't know how though.

A sigh in the night. I can't sleep when it is this hot. I sit awake, stewing in my own juices, wanting it to cool down so that I don't feel like I am cooking. I hate that feeling. The stars shine brightly, telling me secrets. My mind can't hear them though, I am too tired, too confused to care. I want the heat to die down on me.

This is the heart of summer. The dried up fire time. It won't be long until we come out on the other side and it is frigid and I can't feel the summer heat in my heart anymore. I will long for the heat, for the passion, for the heart of my heart. The summer cooks me, but it brings out my flavor, a unique spice all its own.

I miss having someone to spend my long summer nights with though. I miss working through the heat, and letting the cool night kiss my skin. Until we meet again loveys, thank god for the passion of summer.

Briannan

Still awake
Lost in the words
Of far away authors
The sun rose
While I read
The night away

I thought
Of the wonderful night
I felt closer
To you than I had
In almost a year
Distance compacted

But then
I closed the book
And I was reading
To myself
Delirious
At 7:28 AM

Imagining you
Sharing a cigarette
With lonely me
While we laughed
About the day and night
We shared in discussion

All
too
soon
it
ended

I stare at the stars while knee deep in water. If there is a god, I never felt closer to him/her. This must be what true worship is like. The trees surrounding me like a temple, the sky is the chapel ceiling bringing me a sense of peace. I reach my arms toward the heavens. I don't think that I could be happier than in this moment.

I want nothing more than to touch the stars. I want them to rain down on me, even if it means oblivion. I want them all to be around me and inside me. I feel like I glow in the darkness, my flesh the same shade as the stars.

I see the moon over the city from the passenger seat of a motorcycle. I feel as if I am flying over it. I can look down. I imagine all of the things going on there; people loving, people dying, people living, people making love somewhere down there. I know that somewhere in the night there are amazing things happening. I can feel it in my blood.

I feel as if the ancients have never been closer to me than tonight. I have never felt freer or more beautiful. I have gone through so many phases of wonder and happiness. I played in the park, I stood in the lake, I talked until there was nothing left to say. I laughed more today than in the entirety of last week.

I am amazed and amazing. I am me and it feels like enough. I am what nature made of me. Love me for it, hate me for it. I don't care. I am the sky and the moon and the love in the air.

I had a beautiful night. I am truly lucky. Fortuna smiles on me at least for the moment.

I walk the streets of night alone, again. I have no one to keep me company, but the words of a song coming out of a cd player. I jump at a loud sound and know that it is nothing. I stand outside of the circle K smoking a cigarette and staring at the moon.

I haven't been back to the old spots since you left. I don't hang around schools even though it is summer. I go to the gas station, and if I want to go farther, I walk straight. No turns, I don't want to miss you more. I don't want the ache of my confidant to be locked in my chest.

I blink up at the stars as the smoke of my cigarette makes wreaths around my head. I call a number that no longer works and pretend your voice mail picked up.

"Hey, I miss you. I wondered if you wanted to walk with me?"

Then the operator tells me that the number I called is no longer in service, for the second time. It tells me to hang up and try a different number. Very sadly, I gaze at my phone for a second and then turn it off.

It is hard to think how I can't just call and ask for a walking buddy, or a friend, or anything from you anymore. It wells up in my chest and I start walking again. Tears roll down my cheek.

'Let it be,' I think.

I stare ahead, I'm going north. I can't help but smile a little bit at that. I'm going toward you. Only a few hundred more miles to walk.

There is no reason for apologies anymore. There is no more reason to try. The sum of our times together, could not out weigh the time apart. When we see each other, we say nothing, pretending that the other does not exist. I wait for you to say something to me, but it never comes. I still want to grab you by the hand and start running for the park. Yet, I refrain. I never do. I smile at nothing and keep on going. There is no love between us. There is no hate, there is nothing.

I am disdainful of the situation, but mending can not happen on just one side. So I smile and think of the good times and pretend you moved somewhere else. The girl who ignores me is not the person you were. You stand there. You don't laugh, you don't play, nothing. I don't see life in your eyes. I see it behind your lens, and that is it. Oh the times we had, the love we had. It isn't there anymore.

So I sing you a requiem. A funeral song. And I mourn what is now dead and buried between us. We made our beds, there is nothing we can do but lay in them and lie in them. For liars we are. Both of us pretend the other never existed.

I can still taste you, even when  we don't talk. We are still connected even when we hate each other. Never ever again will not last forever. I know that you can taste my mind as much as I can taste yours. when will we both take our heads out of our asses and say sorry. You know I have never liked him. He rubs me the wrong way. We sit at opposite corners both hurling the word immature. Can't we both take credit for being idiots. Your immature, I'm immature. Who actually gives a shit. I still love you, even with all of your baggage. I still wade through mine. I don't care what you have said. I dont care what you will say. We will say the same things. I love you, lets never fight again. Maybe this time we can actually pull it off. Maybe this time we won't start acting like we are 17. Eh, who am I kidding. This is all just a stupid pipe dream.

You and I were muses to each other once. We wrote the same dreams, but now....we can't even be in the same room. We were each other's knight in tin foil armor. We did things. We had adventures. We lived on opposite sides of town, and some how we were best friends for three years, when neither of us drove, we would ride the bus, we would walk. We always still managed to see eachother. Even when my eyes were too far apart. Or we both got grounded for the ketchup and vinegrette fight.

I will always remember, two girls sitting in a garage with a gas leak. writing a book about nothing and everything. The world was so beautiful then. I miss my soul mate. I miss the only woman who could make me cry worse than my mother could. I miss my writing partner, my sister, my secret keeper. I miss having a best friend. there have been none, but you.