Dearest friends, a change.

This blog has sadly been defunct for awhile–life happens, you know? Shit gets in the way. Given the times & climes though, I’ve been thinking more about writing again. No promises that it’s going to be a steady thing (I’m trying this new thing called, don’t make promises you can’t keep), but I’m going to try. (And, I have a few friends to blame/thank? who have asked me to start writing here again.)

However. This blog belongs to my high school / college-aged self. Very much so. So I’m turning over a new leaf, in honor of my professional lady self/being a grown-ass woman now. You can find me at:

https://amylizwritesblog.wordpress.com/

Nothing up yet, but I’ve had a few new ideas brewing.

Thank you all for reading, always. I never thought I would have *gulp* 700 followers on a blog (literally, HOW), or people who liked my writing enough to ask me to keep going.

Onwards, as my boss says!

Unleavened

Love, you catch me by my shoestring,
remind of me all my undone laces,

trip me up in the 5 am dark.
There’s so much in the telling, the re-

telling, of how I undid you,
like letting my hair down in the secret

of a five foot closet, making love 
like we were trying to wake the sun, 

who let us make our own light in cherry red silence,
heat filling embered skin. 

Fiction in the gold cracks between your fingernails,
I searched the library for your biography,

the space you should have been dusty, I
ran to the bookstore–

sold out, like our memories. The moon rose
honey-warm, braiding us

back together, we rise like bread. 

Congratulations, you’re an adult. So what?

You are an adult. Congratulations, you’ve crossed that magical finish line by simply turning another year older. You’re 18, you’re legal, you’re probably about to go to college. Do you have any concept of what it means to be an adult? I didn’t. Not at 18, not growing up in the small “all-American village”, in a middle-class white family in America. I went to school from 8-3, did sports until 5, did homework, hung out with friends. Parents cooked me dinner, paid our mortgage, utilities, groceries, kept up our house, worked 5 days a week, insisted on family dinners. I was 18, but I was still a child. 

You are an adult. Congratulations, you’re no longer now a teenager. Twenty. The word that is heavy with connotations of adulthood, from an America that perhaps no longer exists. The American dream: to be on the fast track to a career, dating someone seriously, starting to think about settling down and raising a family. “To be in your twenties”–it implies a sort of independence and a transition into the “real world”. 

You are an adult. Congratulations, you’re 22 and have just graduated college. Post-grad life. You’re a 20-something in a society struggling with finances, with employment, with overqualified people working at underpaying jobs. So you’ve got your BA. Congratulations, so do thousands of other 20-somethings who are pouring out of the floodgates of colleges all around the USA. Everyone has a college degree these days. Holy shit, you think. What the hell am I doing with my life? Chances are, you’ve moved back in with your parents. You’re job hunting, working a minimum wage job on the side, watching all your younger friends return to college–to parties, to friendships, to classes, to stability. Maybe that’s what you miss most of all: the stability. This is not every 20-something post-grad, but it’s a reality for many. This is the reality for this new generation of 20-something year old Americans. Society says we should be settling down, getting paid, getting married, having children. The American dream trundles on in the subconscious of our society. I think it’s time to create our own reality. 

I have two years left of college, for which I am incredibly thankful. I need the time. My father once said that college buys you time, more than anything else. But I also have a lot of older friends, who I’ve watched make the transition–or who are currently making the transition–to what I jokingly call the “glamour of post-grad life”. It’s damn hard, these days. There are the rare success stories, that everyone gripes about, secretly wishing they were that lucky success story, but it doesn’t seem to be very common. We are fighting our way upstream. I hate to sound bleak, but here it is. We need to be more patient with ourselves. We are 20-somethings. The world is our oyster; we are still so young. Horizons are still opening up and spreading out for us. We are mobile, we aren’t in a fixed career yet, we have that freedom to choose, to walk away from what everyone thinks we should be doing. So what if you’re a 20-something and single? You haven’t failed in a duty, expectation, or social norm. Twenty years old and that’s all I’ve ever known, and there are days when I don’t know if I could fit another person into my 21st century feminist mayhem of a life. Live up the single life. You’ll find someone, but you’ll find that someone when it’s right for you, not when you feel like you should be finding them, because society tilts its nosy head and asks why you aren’t in a long-term relationship with a ring on your finger yet. Hold up there. So what if you’re a 20-something and haven’t found a job yet? Money is good. Money is excellent and money drives most of our decisions and actions in this society. Yeah, yeah. The Class of 2012 graduated 4 months ago. Goddamn if you’ve found a job in four months. My father, 20 years ago, with a PhD. searched for over a year, before finding employment. It’s tough. You gotta fight. And you will, because you’re a millennial. We grew up with gadgets. We’re resourceful. We bounce from change to change like we’re switching lanes on an open highway. We’re adaptive, we’re entitled and maybe a little narcissistic sometimes, but we know what we want. We know what we think we deserve and we know we’re going to get it. Who can slam a little positive outlook? The trend for millenials has suggested a more liberal worldview, an emphasis on being a team-player, and a more global outlook. Hello Skype, Facebook, Twitter: you’ve connected the globe. We message with people halfway across the world. We learn to depend on others. We’re millennials. We’ll figure it out. We’ll make our own jobs if we have to. So what if you don’t have your shit together? I bought a book called “Adulting: How to Become a Grown-Up in 468 Easy(ish) Steps” by Kelly Williams Brown. (It’s a phenomenal book, I highly recommend it.) Brown titles one chapter “Fake It Til You Make It”, which I think is pretty accurate. No one really has their shit together, some are just better at faking it than others. I am the consummate “has her shit together” girl and had a complete meltdown last week in my bed because I was suddenly super terrified about never getting an internship and burning out into nothing. I told a friend earlier this week that I’m pretty sure my life is in a constant state of chaos and mayhem. I do a pretty good job of keeping the chaos and mayhem secret from everyone else. I’m just better at faking my shit. That’s all it is. 

If society says that if you’re a 20-something and need to be on a career path, seriously dating, and thinking about settling down with all your shit together, society needs to a) take a good hard look at the reality surrounding us in 2013, and b) go fuck itself really hard, because that’s not how this works anymore. We’re redefining adulthood, what it means to be an adult, what it means to be a man or a woman, and what we can do with a college degree. In the 1980’s, when a lot of our parents were entering college, the average college enrollment was about 12,000. This year, the estimation was a little under 22,000. (Statista.com) That’s almost doubled in numbers. (Granted, yes, we also do have a bigger population than in 1980, but the trend has definitely shifted towards the “graduate high school, enter college, that’s just what everyone does” mindset, in middle-class, white America.) So many of us don’t know the first thing about banking, buying a car, signing a mortgage, taking out loans for various things–actually, many of us, myself included, don’t even have a credit score–paying bills, doing our taxes, etc. All the things that as “adults”, we’re supposed to know how to do. Of course, I’m generalizing. My parents were sticklers about me managing my own bank account and managing bills. I do, however, still go run and whine to my dad every April about taxes. 

We’re adults trying to figure out how to be adults, what that even means. We’re getting there, but the world isn’t making it easy right now. Not one single person has the right answer or even an answer. So dear 20-somethings of the world, please stop beating yourself up. Please don’t feel like you should be somewhere you’re not, like you’re failing because you’ve moved back home, and are trying to figure out what’s next. And please don’t think this is forever, because, dear 20-somethings? I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you, but we’re the next generation. We’ve got this world in our hands and we’re gonna shake things up.

Lock & Key

So here we go again–
opened you up and tried to match
your parts with mine, like zipping up
a child’s winter jacket:
ours was broken. Like I knew
which key went in your lock,
like we were trying to enter the wrong house,
alarms blaring. 

So here we go again–
unfinished, as if you were the last missing piece
in the dinosaur jigsaw puzzle my nephew gave me
for Christmas last year, the piece that rolled
under the couch and got eaten by our resident mice–
I never found you.

So here we go again–
unsmiling, as if you forgot the punch line to me,
what made me funny–stand out
to you, so you repeated it to every person you knew.
I wore thin,
like your gray sweater that I wore to bed,
because I wanted you close to my skin when I slept,
even if you were oceans away.

So here we go again–
and you look like you’re trying to remember my name,
but I know you wore it on your finger 
for a year or five, before you gave
it back to me, and I had to relearn
how it sounded in my mouth all over again.
I closed up for awhile, 
didn’t let anyone see the way I worked,
and I know you changed
your locks, because I stopped by last week,
to give back the sweater I found under the bed.
But a blonde answered the door
when my key jammed, and I left 
it there for you,
so I could catch the next train home,
to finish the jungle jigsaw I started
the night you didn’t laugh at my joke.

So here we go again–
and the mice are whispering under my floral couch,
the one you hated because secretly,
it reminded you of all the flowers
you never gave me.
And your key is rattling in my lock,
but your box of things is outside the door.
You never thought that my locks
could change too.

Trails Home

I shred my fingers in absolution,  because if I leave
you a trail of DNA, maybe you’ll find your way
back to me, Every fingerprint is unique:
would you still remember mine?
I have never fought
to make anything so permanent as I tried
to make us, your name in every war cry. 

I made my confession, forgive me,
I couldn’t hold my peace. But my days
are lonely without someone to whisper to, brother-
close. So here’s my penance-
I step into an echo now, when I call your name.
No one answers back. We’re growing up, I’m getting lost
in the million faces of your city.

All my friends call us elastic, like rubber
bands  springing back together
after being stretched apart. But I never wanted
to be this far away from you. It’s like I’m missing
a second heartbeat, it’s like I’m always missing,
missing you. 

 

Love Poem

Love poem,
written backwards right to left,
filed into the edges of your teeth,
tattooed on the ridge of your spine.
It shows in the filth
under your fingernails, proof we tried
to plant something lasting,
Miry, like we never got our solid
ground.

Love poem,
Braille bumps in steel,
because you never learned how to be soft;
I thought I could teach you to look
with your hands, but Braille rises instead
like goosebumps: my skin,
every time you tried to read me. Sight left you
blind.

Love poem,
war paint streaked down your parley flag.
I sent no messenger, came alone
to capture your castle, to set my flag
above yours. All’s fair in love.
And war: your love poem in the drums.
Battle is joined, my love, our armies have forgotten
speech.

Love poem,
sewn into your shroud, with stitches
like tears, like tiny seed pearls.
Carved into the granite,
your tombstone as unyielding as you, implacable,
eternal, like the words you promised,
like love was a white dress and I was queen for a
day.

Interlude

Rain falling like it’s a street performer,
tapping a syncopated line, one
flashy burst and lots of flair, like two
people at a subway stop, duetting with empty hats. Three
big raindrops eyedropper onto the windshield, four
more make a tiny river, direction downstream. Two
rainbows today, like God was promising twice,
but there’s rain forecasted for the next three
days. I don’t know what we’re waiting for.

Three boats sail past, like water-borne gulls, winging
to the safety of earthbound harbor. Against the window, the rain is spitting up,
three-month old baby, colicky, displeased.
Four days ago, we sensed the storm,
foreboding, like a blister about to pop, it was
too quiet. They say that good things come in
threes, but has the flood come to water or to drown?
Four days from now, this may be what we waited for.

Measuring the rainwater, counting
inches, like we’re counting liquid hope,
like we can hold it in our hands. One
to four inches, the weatherman says, with a black-suited shrug,
his pencil taps a rhythmic measure, waiting,
like us, for something sky-big to wash it all clean.
 

Brave

This is the summer
I learned that bravery tastes like fear,
bad Friday nights in the back of your throat,
ashen deserts rising, sixteen
vibrating strings humming underneath your skin,
warships tossing on the seas of your stomach.

This is the summer
I learned courage is quiet,
unsure shadows quivering in huffs
and puffs of Bad Wolf Doubt. He’s
always ready to knock your house down.
But mine is made of brick, quivering courage 
setting sail to speak.

 

City Love

I close my eyes and dream of lights. 

A fortuneteller once told me I would live in London and Tokyo. I was seventeen, at my senior prom, and had never lived in a city or lived abroad. How unlikely, I thought.

I close my eyes and walk in a city.

I’m in New York for the first time and I can’t look fast enough. Sensory overload hums through my veins in a blur of colors, noises, images, sounds, and something in me accepts the challenge. I can’t stop smiling. I’m so alive. The noise of this City is changing into an electric song that hums and thrums in my veins, something provocative and provoking and foreign. 

“I’m a New York girl,” I said to a friend after visiting Boston. “I think it’s because I know I could get too comfortable in Boston. I could get complacent in Boston. New York will never let me be complacent. I may never be perfectly comfortable in New York, there’s always going to be something new and different and challenging and hard, and I need that. I love that. I work best like that.” 

I close my eyes and am riding the train.

How many hours did I spend staring out the windows of a bus or a train my exchange year? It made me love bus stations ad train stations and airports. The coming and going, the anticipation of reunions with people you love and the sorrow of having to say goodbye. We are so very human in these places, all going different places, on separate paths, but sit together and our worlds intersect for that plane, train, or bus ride. I memorized the way the dust settled on bus windows, the graffiti on the train.

I can still recite the S21 line into Hamburg in my head. If I started at Aumühle, I’d pass Wohltorf, Reinbek, then Bergedorf; “Allermöhe, Mittlerer Landweg, Billwerder-Moorfleet”, Rothensburgsort, Berliner Tor,” the tinny voice would announce over the loudspeaker, and then it was the Hauptbahnhof, the main train station into the second largest city in Germany. And I was back home. I knew that train station like the back of my hand. One night, a large group of my friends and I were out at a club in December, and were freezing, so we rode one of the trains to the end of the line and back, just to warm up. We stood on the platform, laughing and joking in German, just teenagers out on the weekend. I knew my favorite clubs, bummed cigarettes off guys in exchange for five minutes conversation and the lighter I always had in my pocket, learned how to hold my liquor there. But I never forgot how small I was in that city, nor how much I loved it, with its expanse of water and swans gliding proudly around the Inneralster, or the way the sun glinted off the green copper roofs that pronounced Hamburg’s prosperity, and I was proud to be part of the Hansestadt Hamburg, to carry a piece of it with me in my heart. 

I close my eyes and I am gone.

I’m not sure where I am, but I’m speaking a different language, the sun is shining, I’m surrounded by strangers on my way to meet friends, and I can’t stop smiling.. I’m a tiny cell in the beating heart of a city. I’m rubbing shoulders with people I’ve never met and fighting my way up to the front of a bar for one more round, I’m having an animated discussion over the local fare, I’m studying a map. I’m frustrated, confused, and lost, I don’t understand a goddamn word anyone is saying, I am on my own here. 

But I am on my own here. It’s up to me to work it out. It*s up to me to be the person I want to be in this new place that doesn’t give a single damn about the woman I used to be before I came, with hands outstretched and wide, eager eyes. I will learn the language, I will ask for help, I will carry dictionaries and maps and goodwill in my hands, and I’ll remember that a simple smile goes a long way.

And everything will be okay. 

I close my eyes and I’ve found a city love.

Spring Break

I keep trying to do work, trying to honestly convince myself that I’m going to get things accomplished. I stood in the English department hallway today, staring at pictures of Oxford and London and Prague and beautiful, faraway places that I don’t have the money to travel to right now. In her journals, Plath is talking about stifling under the weight of teaching. She writes “More & more I realize how I must stop teaching & devote myself to writing.” A friend wrote to me, postcripting at the bottom: “I worry about you. It sounds as if you are craving another adventure.” How can one not stifle when every day is more of the same–rising too early in the morning, praying for caffeinated rejuvenation, up the hill to class, down the hill to home, sit in a coffee shop and read, read, write, analyze, flip papers mindlessly, go home, go to sleep, all the same torturous routines, all the same people and places day in and day out. 

I have wasted God-knows-how much time this week scribbling away, on bits of paper, my journal when I have it to hand, the computer, miscellaneous thoughts. The best things I’ve written I can’t share–too soon, too small, too raw. I dream of publishing–Sylvia and I, I’m learning as I read her work. Verse has been pouring from circumstance, from heart, from this hard and beautiful year with all its small tragedies and let-downs and failures. 

I cannot wait for the spring holidays. I want to sit down by the lake, right by the edge of the water in a sundress and let the sun kiss every part of me, for hours and hours. I want to fall asleep by the water, halfway through a good book, and then wake up to finish it, to drowse when I please, in the lazy late afternoon sun. I want to see my high school English teacher and my history teacher. I want to see my family and eat real food again. I want to drown in my writing, in words, to be absolutely swept away. All the little beautiful things I struggle to remember here. 

Only a week now, just one more week of textbooks and deadlines and responsibilities and then I’m free, caution just a kiss blown into the wind now.