It's a watery grave in those eyes of yours

"All I ever really wanted was to be lost in the vastness of your hug. All my heart ever ached for was a warm, tight, squishy, normal embrace with you. The kind that you get lost in, but at the same time you feel found. I just wanted to be loved by you and I never thought that was an extraordinary dream." Silence is all that follows. Soft, sad silence swirling in the space between the two of us.
"It's funny, really, that I even cared at all as much as I could, for as long as I did. You'd think after so long of being lonely in your company I would just let go. Move on. Forget about it. But I'm not like that. I don't easily forget people. I don't let go when the kite still flies high and beautiful in the wind of my mind. I don't just 'move on' the way you always have. You know why? Despite all my flaws and faults and issues--I care. I care more than most humans care for all the 'little things' because they aren't little to me. They are the big things to me. You are the biggest thing to me that I've ever had and you never even realized how special that is. You don't get it." The next few words were heavy for me, difficult to release, but they were essential and that is why they followed.
"I love you. This isn't some dumb crush or fickle fantasy. I really, really love you. But I have to be fair to myself. After so long of loving something that may not even be a possibility, I'm going to free myself and be kind to myself and know that letting you go may be the best thing I've done for myself since meeting you." Tears stained my cheeks as the final birds began to fly from my heaving chest.
"Gosh, I love you, you dummy. I love you so much and I don't think you'll ever understand why or how much and that breaks my heart.
You have no clue."

Hurt

It hurts me.
I know it's real.
Somehow I feel it and I know it's real and then I don't even know why.
Why is it real?
Why can I feel It?
I wish sometimes I could just walk away and forget all about you just to avoid this confusing pain. I wish so hard, I crunch my eyes up and squish the years away fighting to let you go, because I love you.
And I don't even know why.
Then I look out the window and you know what I see? A figure out there, between the ridges of the white wood, chasing fences. Never ceasing, always moving. Where to? I don't know.
I used to think it was you because through the thickness of the fog really it could look like anyone. But now I see it. Now I understand.
I see what it really is and it's incredible.
Past the tears and pain and all this heaping hurt--I see me, alone, chasing an idea about me and you that runs along the fences like a mad beast.
Somehow I thought if I caught it and held it long and soft enough in my arms it would settle and push against my chest until it was calm and sweet and all the jagged parts of it melted away into what it really was or rather what it was always supposed to be.
I thought that I could save it and help it along its way, together, as equals.
But I don't know if that is ever meant to happen now. I don't know what to do, waist deep amidst the grief and misery of almost losing you. How can that even be? Grieving a living person? Can the dead still walk and talk and love each other, even in this life? Yes. They can. One can love a thousand sunsets and be alive without a heart beat, while one can see no hope in the glittering multitude of stars and be dead with that heavy drum thrum-thrumming within them. It's true.
I still look at you through glittering eyes and watch the clumsy, fervent way my heart falls over you, over your blue eyes, the slip and push of your glasses along your nose, your whole being begging to be loved.
I see everything.
And I still want you.
It's tragic and astounding all at once.
Kind of like life itself.
That's it.
My love for you is life itself and someday soon life is going to want me back and where our love will be I do not care to know.
They say life exists here and now and that is what mattered when it came to us. There never was a here there was always only a there. What a tragic waste.
If I could say one last thing before I leave it would be only this, "There won't always be an 'us', you know. Someday you might miss it. Maybe."
Maybe.
-k.p.

11/24/16
8:24pm

Paperbacks & Postcards

"An Education"
You don't need scores of people looking at you admiringly to feel beautiful.
You don't need Chanel no. 5 lingering on your skin and heels that click only on the ballroom floor next to the empty bottles of champagne to know the good life.
Here, right here, in this moment, feeling the gentle thrum of life vibrating within you--that is it. Loving things. reading books. letting music penetrate your soul, kissing, taking a moment from your jar of time to watch the sunrise or the sunset and if you're extremely lucky, both of them in one day. Life is simple. Life is to love.
Yes, I have felt loneliness. I know its touch like the familiarity of a comb through my hair in the morning. I know it by name, just it is knows me by my own and it is nothing more than neglecting the things that are beautiful and wondrous and meaningful; forgetting the people you love. It is nothing more than ingratitude for the wondrous life you have been given. I won't pretend I have never been this way for I have. I have forgotten. I have neglected. I have wondered, "Why me?" and even, "Why not me? Where is my fair share of love and life in this world? Why am I alone?" But truth is, I am not alone. I am lonely by my own doing. I haven't known true loss until I have found something that is worth loving more than anything and the key to finding that is knowing that you already have that. I know that I do. Oh, I know that beyond anything in this confusing and beguiling world.
Think of your favorite coffee mug. Your key chain. Your pillow. Think of the things that bring you comfort and the little things with which you bear your soul into. For me, it's paperbacks and postcards. It's useless coasters, pens, my watch, my beautiful headphones, the "clack-clack" in the heels I wear or the orange juice I consume more than air and, gosh, the stars that I dare call my own--they all are more meaningful than I could ever explain. Then there are things that are invaluable and precious beyond comprehension--my mother, my father, my four sisters and two brothers. My God, my twin sister, my friends (though they may be few) and this world. This riveting, riveting world.
It isn't until I've experience what little powerful and painful things I have in this life that I have realized with deep gratitude that there is something that gives us a gift, or rather someone. He looks at you when the time is right and with his hands held out to you places something heavy and dark into your hands. For a long time you don't understand what it is and so it sits on the shelf within you, weighing and perplexing and it watches you until one day the clock sings the perfect song and suddenly this gift that is within you, always beside you--it is nothing like you ever remember meeting, but somehow you've known it all your life. Yet, it isn't until this moment, here and now, that you realize you've never understood it, only now you do. Now you do. The small darkness, the heavy perplexity is pain and it isn't until now that I realize, this too, is a gift.
Not the best you'll ever get and undoubtedly not the prettiest, but undeniably the most important of all.
This I know.

-k. pauline benson

november 7, 2016
9:31pm
monday
"An Education" (part i)

It's the sound that arrests my soul

Rain.
Sleep.
Breathing.

Turned pages.
Skate blades on ice.
Crackling embers.

Crisp Leaves.
Symphonic crickets.
Wind chimes.

Distant thunder.
Wrapping paper.
Skipped stones.

Butter on bread.
Clinking glass.
The ocean at night.

A good kiss.
Rustling trees.
Pensive silence.

The way your name rolls of my tongue--effortlessly, purposefully, deliciously and beyond any discription I could know.

-k.p.

3:20am

A Thought, Virginia Woolf

"You never should have let me listen to your heart beating. In all the seriousness I can muster, I can remember the way it beats with perfect clarity. The rush when I put my ear against your chest like a shell and oh how I could hear the vastness of every ocean when I did. So beautiful. The pounding of a deep, chaotic drum thrum-thrumming against me. Though it entrances me, it disturbs me also. It vexes me because it beating that way reminds me that you are human even though you treat me as though you are not. It reminds me there is an innocence existing within you, collapsing and rising like a fallen star that even you cannot find the strength to name or acknowledge and what a tragedy you are--to have a bit of universe inside you and not know its name. To be a star and not know it. To be alone with your chaotic beating, never to be dancing.
But it's that innocence within you that makes me want to start everything over and pull the record back to where the song was soft and delicate and exciting; pull the record backwards to where the song of just your heart is beating and let the needle snag there forever. Always rising and falling, rising and falling. I'd be a happy woman, content with a shell against my ear and a pounding I can never be rid of. What a sensation that would be."
-k.p.

Redflag

You were the only redflag
the only redflag that I could never hold
I could never raise for my own.
You were the only redflag that burned the scarlet blue
and draped from my heart
instead of flew.
Love is a one-way street
running away from me
but you are the only redflag
that I want
the only redflag I need.

-k.p.

11/2/16
1:44am

i've got a plan

i've got a better plan--
let's fall in love
and let this be what it should've been if
i held your hand that one night
forever ago
with you
and me
and regretful
nothing.

-k.p.

11/1/16

dreams that I dare call my own

"She started writing notes and keeping them under her pillow, and then she started writing them on her pillowcase, hoping they would help her have better dreams. And if she couldn't sleep, she could just read them and be reminded of something so stunningly beautiful that her heart would swell and her bones would sigh and for just one second, the world would not seem like it was going to crush her."
-Emily Brontë

Pumpkin Pickin'

There are many joys to be felt on a rainy day such as today when the air smells sweet and soft and the humans within it cozy and happy.
But none of those joys can compete with the effortless joy of pumpkin picking with the people you love.
Not even one.
-k.p.
October 24, 2016

Don't You

Don't you want to know why I loved you? Don't you find yourself curious at all as to why on earth me, as a human, as a beating heart, would latch my soul to yours when there are so many others I could linger on?
Don't you at least care at all? Even if it's only curiosity?
Don't you want to know everything?
Don't you want me?
Don't you love me? Even a little?
-k.p.

10/18/16
2:45pm
Tuesday

Rach

I called my sister today
hoping to hear her voice.
All I heard was a stranger that didn't feel a thing like her.
I was lost in looking for her, desperately needing her by my side
but she isn't. 
She is far away
and sometimes I feel her close, I feel as though I hear her from the other side of my phone calls to her.
Sometimes I don't feel so alone.
Sometimes. 
Then my heart sings for her,
aches like an unbelievable aching
and it's moments like those that I start
to wonder
when did the rain become a storm
and when did having her gone
turn from missing her achingly
to needing her
desperately?

10/07/16
11:52pm
Friday night

This is a problem

"This is a problem." He said to me as if it were all very obvious and I was simply missing a heavy truth purposefully.
He sighed and then held my hand as he said, "Yes. Your problem is you have a singer's heart inside a drummer's body. You want what isn't meant for you and you're unhappy about it. But that won't do at all."
He stepped closer and said ever so quietly, "The only way to fix yourself is to learn to love what you really are even if it is different from the rest. You must know that you're still worth something valuable even if there isn't anyone else on earth like you."
Then he left me standing there without a clue as to what any of what he just dropped inside me meant. Not one clue.
And yet, something inside me knew and that made me laugh thinking about how stupid this heart of mine can be. It made laugh and cry at how far a person can go to find themself. I don't remember why he told me what he did, but I remember how it made me feel and that has made all the difference today. All in the world.

"On the Run"

I feel as though we've broken up and this is the beginning of the worst part of it all. This is the part where I come out from your place, barefoot, tear stained, all my useless pocessions cupped in my arms disastrously and then I'm leaving you just as your coming after me to yell somemore. I throw all my worthless stuff in the car and allow my eyes to flicker up to your apartment just to remember one last time (in case I forget) where I've left the most valuable piece of me.
I shove the door closed, adjust the mirror to better sights and don't look back.
Almost.

-k.p.
"On the Run" 2016
10:06am, Wednesday, October 5th

Whoever

Whoever said that art does not make sense has never made art for themself.
Art does make sense.
It makes sense of the riddle.
The anguish.
The pain and
yellow stained light inside the heart.
The long roads wet with waiting endlessly and wanting.
The ink spilled on the night of our souls.
Art spoils the reality we see blindly
and makes what is essential, truthfully what cannot be seen,
visible. 
Art does make sense.
It creates the only sense my soul can connect to, the only sense it knows
like an old friend I sit and sip warm tea with. 
Art disturbs me because
it is the only thing that seems to distort, to pull and tug at every possibility and plane without ceasing.
But really, art reveals every last thing about yourself, all the beauty
and the quiet music humming within you constantly.
Even the ugly bits it pulls from you.
Art, true art, reveals it all. It has the divine right to make sense within us--divine, godly, powerful sense
inside us all.
That is what real art does. It beckons us home within ourselves, sometimes,
only with the truly
special art,
without us even knowing it.
-k.p.b.
Oct. 3. 2016. 8.49pm.

Night Changes: part i

Catch me smiling
without me knowing it and
            you've captured my heart
            unraveling at the seams,
                                     happily.

Catch a smile curl about
my lips when
I'm not watching anyone
       or feeling the world around me existing,
just feeling
my own world of happy thoughts
                                    existing;
        happy dreams about life,
about picking the stray strings of myself on the bed I sit
on now,
just feeling
about
                                    you.

-k.p.

3:02am
9-18-16 (for you, "birthday brat"--happy birthday.)

How Do I Love You?

How do I love you?
Oh, this way and that way.
Oh, happily. Perhaps
I may elaborate by

demonstration? Like
this, and
like this and

                no more words now

-m.o.

Felicity
(pg.55)
2016

Chaos

The calm before the storm is just as unsettling and overwhelming as the chaos within it. Sometimes, within the most worthy and untelling occasions life can bring, even more so.

9/11/16 3:58pm Sunday

There was a little voice

There was a little voice inside of me
It did not frighten me to hear it;
I was lost
And it found me.
These are the words it said,
"Paint little one. Paint."

...

And I listened.

-k.p.

12:09pm September 7th, 2017

Human

You will soon be free.
It tells me quietly, as if I haven't got a clue what it means.
But I do.
I have tasted freedom and I know enough of it to love the careful way it sits on my tongue and astonishes me. It rests within my chest quiet as a kitten and silent as the stars and it is riveting as it is potent and I know exactly where it comes from, the little beast without a name.
I know what freedom tastes like and I want it.
I desire it more than almost any other sensation these days and I will tell the voice that whispers within me right now,
"I am already free. Truth, light, love--they are all the same. Once the world decides what will make you happy, you have already missed it. I am happy now because I am in love. I am in love with you, little voice, for even you denote there is a God. You denote, along with a multitudinous amounts of other dazzling sensations in this universe, that there is not only in fact a God above us all, but a Father within us all, loving us, giving us a name and letting us belong to Him."
And I finish resolutely, "No, I know what you are little voice and I am not frightened. I am inspired and I will take you down to the depths of my soul and help you understand that I am already free. I am free because I love you. I am free because I love God. And I am set free because I love him too, the one that may or may not be making a ruin of me. I love the one who may not even love me back, but I can let go of him too. I am free because I know I can let go and I will. I know it. Freedom is given to those who can make it within themselves. Truly."

-kpb

  8/27/16
   10:51pm

Anne *spelled with an 'e'

"Dear old world,
you are very lovely and I am glad
to be alive in you."
-Anne Shirley
L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, pg. 332, p.3

Finished 8/8 2016, evening of cloudy stars beneath my chairless writing desk

stargazing

she still looks up at the sky
during the day
as if it were night and full of glittering
listening stars.
even in the day she is caught in a sleeping map of stars
even when there's sunlight
she is stargazing.
Always.
-k.p.

Mouth of Babes

A little girl with tight braids and a messy smattering of bangs across her forehead comes running up to him with a look of sincere contemplation on her face.
She looks at me then back at him and smiles widely, definite mischief tugging at the corner of those little lips.
She then squeaks excitedly, "Is she your girlfriend?" and giggles like a lunatic--or rather a little kid drunk off of too much soda.
Without a moments hesitation and without a glance at me, he replies simply, "Yes she is."
My eyes flicker to him quickly and away from the curious accuser. Did those words truly come out of his mouth? I wonder. My heart raced as he said it and I'm probably captured with a look of awestruck on my face. It was so strange to hear those words out loud, alive in reality.
The braided beauty looks at him deeper and squeaks even louder, "Is she REALLY?"
He laughs for a moment and smiles. "No, not really."
My heart sighs and lifts all at once.
Little does he know how much I want those words to be true, the former I mean. How I want to see that look of mischief on his face one more time before I tell him I love him too.
What a precipice I know we're on and someday soon, if we're not careful, one of us will fall and hopefully if I'm lucky enough--though luck really as nothing to do with it--I'll fall into him or he into I and all will be there.
The stark truth and all.
"I love you too." I'll say. And he'll say it too.

// written for a night of fire and food and happy people ; for good company and an itch to inch closer to someone who makes my heart race just by looking at me and my heart melt just by living and laughing and existing. Ha. For foolish dreams and a silly proclivity for falling in love with you. Truly.
7|27|2016
Vic, Bridger, and I surrounded by a bonfire and a wonderful family.
Thank you always dear friends.

"You're gonna be okay kid. You're gonna be okay."

There's so much blockage of emotions right now my heart can't seem to take it.
There's a grey wall and I'm trying to jump it.
Try and try and still it's hurts like hell every time when I can't make it. I can't make the jump.
Cry and cry and suddenly I'm all alone again wishing so fiercely I wasn't. The wall simply gets bigger.
Look.
I want stars where there are bruises and kisses where I breathe.
I feel myself letting go of everything and the only thing left I see is me reaching for you.
Reaching.
Never touching.
Always arriving at an almost.
Ugh.
Sheesh.
Wow.
I surprise myself because I just want to kiss you and brush my fingers across your cheek like I would if I were brave enough to tell you I love you, like I would if I were brave enough to sit alone with you in your car and run my hands through your hair and up your chest to where your beating heart is.
But I'm stained.
My thoughts are scarlet on my hands and I don't know what to think.
Somehow I always end up thinking about you and never fixing me.
Well, damn.
What now?
What do I do when all I want is you and not me? What can you do when your hands reach for something white while they're red and wet and dripping all over?
Nothing.
But wish.
And wait.
But I'll be okay. I always am.

Jonquils

Your words stick in my heart
like little white flowers clinging to my red hair.

They are quiet and lovely
and bold.
If I ever have one bad dream of you I remember those little flowers; I smell the sweetness on my breath
and imagine it's a kiss from your soft lips that taste like
the rush of summer and the slap of spring.

Simple and sweet.
Just how I need you.

-k.p.

Summer Plans

Est. July 14, 2016
•To not fall apart
•To find love and all its precepts
•Books...lots of books
•Finish "Anne of Green Gables" before August's end
•Cry a little less
•kiss?
•Listen to the wind
•Meteor Shower: August 11th
•Deep clean my room
•Write every single day
•Get to Oregon
•Save money
•be happy
•Write Ray ❤
•Read poetry every night
•Run

That you are here—that life exists

O Me! O Life!
By Walt Whitman

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

                                       Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

Source: Leaves of Grass (1892)
Posted: Tuesday July 12th 2016 1:32pm

j bellion

and then I saw it
the glint of understanding in his eyes when they closed for just a moment
then opened ever so slowly
seemingly soaking in every sound
and shutter around him.
just listening
not talking or moving at all.
he could hear it when our voices were calling out his name and
singing every word of his songs.
his songs
that were our songs.
i could see it clear as day, strong as night--
the artist had seen his work and finally realized they did too.
his piece was now a masterpiece simply because we were touched and he could feel that meant something.
something great.
he could see his work and smile knowing we saw it too.
it is a smile that only an artist that has never tired of hearing his name cheered from a crowd of people, all there for him, his work and his mind, knowing deep down he has worked every moment of his life for this moment right now
in the crowd
swirling in the smoke and sweat and music
the small atmosphere of ecstacy and understanding.
he is found.
he is finally heard.
what a beautiful
blissful smile to behold
(eyes closed, cheeks ridged, soul glowing softly from beneath his clothes and from his eyes as they open and look at us illuminated by his light--looking at all he's done).
-k.p.

For 11:00pm wishing it was 1:00am and you were here kissing me deeply and making this racing heart of mine pound the way it did when I saw him and heard his voice sing so beautifully, honestly, and purely. All the things my heart denies sometimes.
For missing you darling and wishing I could see you every day of my life.
Thanks to you kid, these songs make some sense and penatrate my heart more deeply than an ocean of tears ever could.

pink skies

Calm my beating heart
Let it wrestle with the fearsome winds and speak softly with the stars above as if it were truly brave.
Calm my beating heart
And let it lay beside the pink skies in the morning clouds that are soft and gentle and lovely.
Oh how I'd sing ever so sweetly to those soft pink skies knowing you were always beside me
Watching from beneath them.
If I could tangle my hand in yours and watch the way your dark eyes chase away my demons happily
And dance ever so slowly with my angels.
Nothing but quiet and a steady beating from our chests.
There is little I would require to be truly happy.
Truly, truly.
If you knew what heavy torbillion you cause within me when you're near
If you knew the frantic way with which my restless eyes search for you in every crowd, there is nothing you would not want to know about me.
They say that if we could hear every part of every persons story there isn't a single person we would not love.
I believe that now, beneath pink skies, helplessly loving you.
Needing your warmth beside me, within me.
I need your beating heart to calm the pounding one within me.
Calm my beating heart
Let it rest beside you with an open morning sky, blush from the way you look at me and the way I smile back.
Calm my beating heart
Or let yours race as fiercely as my own.
Kiss me slowly beneath pink skies and I promise I'll never let go of you. I'll gladly listen to your stories and fall helpless for the way you listen to mine as if they mean more to you than the entire world.
Calm my beating heart beneath soft pink skies
Or tell me you love me.
After all I think they are the same--
pink skies
And my beating heart.
They both rise and fall for you
Rise and fall just for you.

-k.p.b.
{For meeting you and wishing that it happened all the more sooner than today. Wishing already that we were friends and telling each other everything. For you, whoever you are or whoever you might be someday, I wrote this for you. I wrote this because I met you and I think I've been waiting all my life to. I think someday, when it's right, I will read this to you, with my heart beating madly, and someday when it's right, this will belong to you and always will. For you, whoever you are. I wrote this for you.}

Human

"I'm not depressed." I say.
"I kept my light on when I sleep so I don't see my shadows look so still.
I read the same book because I find something new I love everytime.
I curl up within myself on the tramp because it's cold outside.
I look at the stars to feel less alone. To think.
I drink hot tea to keep me warm.
I cry to feel alive.
The headphones stay on because they hold me together.
They keep me human.
They understand.
There's so much shit I wish I knew but I don't.
I just don't know a whole lot.
I pray and I pray and I still feel alone a lot, even when I'm not.
I cry. I curl up within myself alone outside not because I'm depressed or need pills.
Because I miss you.
I damn wish you were here and I can't take the hole I feel sometimes instead of feeling you next to me. I take that I miss you and there seems to be nothing I can do about it.
I want pink skies. I want to sleep. I want to feel alive without me missing you.
So. You think I'm sad? No.
I'm just alone.
I'm just alone and thinking."
And then they're quiet.
And I keep staring up at the stars who are louder than they'll ever be.
Still missing everything about you--
even the messy bits.
-k.p.

My Mind.

The Cynic In Me

You know, there's more to life than getting your first kiss.
There is.
But not much more after that.

-Kiersten Benson, The Cynic In Me (page 38)

Ends of the Earth

Drifting like the tail of a dandelion on a summer breeze
I'm denying I even think of you all, let alone during all the hours of the sun and even more so the stars.
You're making a ruin out of me.
You're soaking my thoughts with the sweet saturation of your beauty.
Like a knife in the woods the hunger for you is like the rabbit that scurries far away from me the closer I get to it.
You are a brooch snagged to my sweater I never remember buying but fall fondly over anyway.
What are you phantom of my heart? What shore of intentions do you wash upon?
Where can I turn to hide away from you, forget where we met and how it made me feel.
Inside.
Outside.
Soaking wet.
Wet with you.
I'm constantly torn between wishing I could forget everything about you
and needing to know every possible thing about you.
You make me forget who I am.

Nirvana melodies

She holds herself as if she were broken.
She holds herself as if the world is cold and always has been, always will be. As if the moon is always shining and she'll always be sad and different.
She'll be all alone forever.
Her pale hands are small around her arms that are wrapped around her tiny body like the embrace of the lover she never had but hopes someday she will.
Someday she will.
But her light flickers still.
Flickers still.
It takes me away, takes me far away, the sight of her alone and unwrapped like the gift that was given too early for Christmas forgotten on the sidewalk of Summer.
It takes me away the beauty of her and the silent abandon she carries like her torch illuminating all her purple scars across her beautiful body like a galaxy of stars, worlds without end upon her. Within her, inside the gentle tomb of her skin.
It take me away how senseless this world can be to see so many others, so much pretty and grace around them constantly and not see her--far above them all, home, somehere, in the clouds. Far, far above them like starlight.
-k.p

June 28, 2016
"Nirvana" by: Drew Danburry
Sitting on an old orange porch feeling the wave of beautiful rain dust cover me and cover all my senses delicately.
(Oh to be alive and know it!)

Watch Me

I felt you sit next to me you're body's warmth suddenly beckoning my own and it was strange the sudden rush that came with you rustling like autumn leaves within me, rustling against my pale bones.
You were there and it was lovely and terrifying all at once. I could feel you watching me, only tossing guesses at the pond of my mind as to what you were thinking. Then it came--the pounding. The rush. Your smell. Your eyes I had not dared to look at yet. The time. It all came rushing back, like the smell of something hidden, something unnamed from your childhood; how you reeked of nostalgia. Reeked. But I loved it. The rush within me traveling through my veins, invading every thought with you. I remembered everything it seemed like.
But then I didn't love it. Something shifted and the pounding in my neck and wrists turned to my heart that suddenly beat like a deep and wild drum. In a different rush, I became delirious, half mad from wanting you so close, close enough to hear the deepness in your voice and feel it, and somehow not wanting you in sight at all. Not your smell. Your eyes. Your smile. You terrified me. In one rush, one invasion of my heart, my senses were overrun by the sudden presence your body and soul brought and it was unsettling and maddening and all too much. Swiftly I began to come undone. The strings around me pulled loose.
With a bound of nervous energy I took flight to the bathroom and only there conversed with myself as to how I must win this psychotic battle within me. How I must  surpass the person surpassing my wild heart. But how must I do it? How? I yelled in my heart. I stared at the flames in my eyes like they were handsome demons. But goodness, what had come over me? Did I have no shame? No. I had only bravery left. With a thorough washing of my hands and the gentle cool the chilled water left with me, I came back, I sat down and I said, "Hello."
And I was free.

-k.p.
Written for Sunday 19th, 2016

"First Day of Summer"

I'll cross my legs
and braid the flowers hair.
I'll count to them all
the reasons I love you and name the places
I wonder where you are.
I'll talk to the flowers,
just us alone,
and I'll pretend I don't picture them as you
and there I'll promise to see the world a little less cruel.
I'll be happy
there with the flowers
and I won't have to wonder with them
what I do about you.
About all the things
I wish I knew.
-k.p.
06/20/16
"First Day of Summer"

a thought: part ii

...

you can drive all night
looking for the answers in the pouring rain
wanna find
piece of mind
looking for the answers

-c.d.

windows

Ha.
You know what's funny?
I pin things.
Thoughts, intentions, dreams
(Many of them about you).
I tape them to my dirty window
and I hold my breath
as I see you walking by outside
below it and
as I see your figure stroll on by turning from pink and yellow
to purple and black from the setting sun
I pretend you're watching my every move wondering what on earth I could possibly think to do next, your beautiful eyes following mine as if they're curious to know everything about me,
to see the shiny gears turning inside my head.
But as I look harder
outside my window
wiping away the gross film across it,
I see that it isn't you that is there
and you aren't watching me at all.
In the insipid dream they call reality
you are far away
washing your thoughts upon the windows of other people
clearing away the film that plagues their glass
and their minds.
No, it isn't you
out there
watching me.
It's something dark and thin, stretched along the pavement like taffy.
It's silent.
Is it a mark? A puddle?
No. It's a shadow.
My own stretching weary with the sun
and fading like the moon every day of the month.
Stretching
stretching
gone.
Still, perhaps, wishing you were there
watching my dreams pop from the garden of my mind
and grow, grow
all for you.

-k.p.

Thursday 5:42PM 
June 16, 2016

nessun dorma

I can't wait to be in love.
To see a man's eyes fall into mine as if they always have.
As if I am home to them.
As if I am beautiful,
familiar, wanted,
I am worth everything.
To know I am loved by one look in someone's eyes.
To feel as though when my lips meet another's there is music playing--
Puccini singing
an opera in my heart!
Oh what a feeling I shall have someday
to be in love
and know it!

-k.p.
June 15, 2016
1:51PM
Weds.
{After watching the new favorite movie: "The Mirror Has Two Faces" (1996) and listening to the exquisitely beautiful opera piece: "Turandot / Act: 'Nessun Dorma'" by: Giacomo Puccini, Luciano Pavarotti}

A sickness.

Sometimes I want to fall in love so badly it makes me sick.
Sick of you. Sick of reaching in my corrupted mind for a hand that doesn't belong to me.
Sick of watching films and wishing almost every girl in them was me. Wishing I had a somebody to fight for, cry over, kiss and hold onto whenever I felt like it, which surely would be always. Sick of waiting.
Sick of pretending this doesn't drive me insane, being alone in this way.  I'm so happy for the life I have--the kind of happiness you don't get sick of. But does that mean this post makes that vain? Am I a liar, even to myself?
Truth is I miss a lot of things. I miss the way it was when I hear an old song I used to know. Now it's just music riddled with a distant memory. It's distorted. Confused. Like my lonely heart. I want it back the way it was. Simple. Clear. Beautifully painful. There lies my cupidity.
Am I selfish to write the things I do when all I really want is a heart that wants to keep mine the way I would want to keep theirs? Am I selfish to want more? To want a Tony? A James? A William? Someone to get lost in. It's like this-- I cry myself to sleep hoping to feeling better, only hurting myself by focusing on who or what I don't have, but I honestly feel some part of me can't help it and I never like to blame things on not being in control of my actions--I believe most of the time one is. But it gets tricky when it comes to matters of the heart. Doesn't it? Very tricky.  I like to think the heart is the center of ourselves, the very core of who we are, but how can that be if it truly is one of the only things we can't really control? We can bridle it. We can try to tame the beautiful beast within it, but is it truly possible? I don't know. Life is supposed to be the one uncontrollable aspect of nature...so does that make the real core of life, our own life, our very own hearts?
I really don't know a whole lot.
I just see and believe. I watch things and I try to listen, but sometimes it isn't easy--to pay attention. But this life has little to offers in terms of solid unchangeable knowledge. Everything changes. People grow older. Moons come and go. The sun falls and rises like a steady pattern of breathing, each day bringing different light. Dreams evolve. People die, leave, walk away or come home at last. But what happens to the heart? Where does it go when these changes come? What happens to a fragile creature when it burns and in the end crumbles into beautiful crystals of ash? Surely it rises. It begins again. And again.
So this feeling will pass, this utter loneliness within me that is selfish and ugly and unfair,  but only after I rise from it. In order for a phoenix to be born again it must burn and collapse it's past self into the ashes it created. Then and only then does it rise, reborn, made anew in a baptism of fire and soot--one side beautiful and one side seemingly ugly. I find both the halves equally pleasing, they both create a new bird and I know that will come for me one day.
One day when I'm less lonely.
Less confused and sad and happy.
One day when I'm loved as wholly as I know I am capable of loving.
One day little bird, you will fly.
-k.p.

6/13/2016

leo tolstoy

"As long as there is life there is happiness."
-truth

your beautiful

love your beautiful.
embrace messy hair and
a bedraggled braid and
frizzy rain do's.

see the crinkles in your
lips when you smile
and count the freckles on
your arms with care.

name them like stars
in the dark sky.

believe in a different kind of beautiful
for when you do
the world begins to
believe in you too.

-k.p.

I've decided

I've decided something today. I watched a movie that I thought, at first, I liked very much. The girl was happy, much happier than most people I know and her smile was bigger than all the pretty girls with smiles like toothaches and sour lemons. She was pretty, but she was cute. She wasn't like other girls in movies with long legs and blonde hair and perfectly ridged cheeks. She was real. She was exceptionally ordinary. Deeply, deeply quirky, too. I loved everything about her, even the "ugly" way with which she cried for surely it was beautiful and real, exhausting to watch--as crying ought to be. But as this movie came to an end and as the love I was certain would prevail did not my heart began to shake just a little. Tears flowed down my cheeks, not for the reasons other humans might've let them flow down their own cheeks, but for a thousand different reasons all involving the never ending valve of emotion that is my confusing and beguiling heart. I cried for missing my sister so achingly as I heard a song that reminded me of her in the film. There were tears of self-pity, of the love I did not possess but ached so greatly to have, even one as painful and heart wrenching as the one seen before me. I half sobbed silently to myself, cheek turned from the screen as I could no longer bear the emotions stirring within me fiercely. It was all too much--missing things. A sister. Dignity. Half of my heart. It just seemed part mad of me to be crying at all, but once I did I couldn't seem to stop. I later cried in the car over the terrible state of severe pain my mother is constantly in and how she bears it too well for someone so beautiful and wonderful and kind. She is so kind. She only deserves peace and comfort in this world. Every good thing should have her lovely name on it.
But as I cried over a great many things I came to a raw realization within myself. It may seem simple, but I don't care. The realization was this: I am hopelessly, irrevocably, desperately living with an open, bleeding and healing heart--constantly. My life is a finite search for love that sometimes feels infinite, ceaseless and never ending. But the great truth is I find love everyday and every moment I do I can feel more fiercely and more decidedly than before.
I've decided to be happy and patient with the love I have now, even if it isn't the one I'm still searching for. It is still beautiful and this life along with it. Even when fears rattle within me, fears of not being enough, of not being enough to make someone stay and say, "I love you" forever. I still have hope for a love that is searching for me as diligently and sweetly as I am searching for it. I know someday I'll find it, even if the people in the film never did (not really).
I'm thankful for crying and missing things today. It reminds me I am beautifully and tragically human. It reminds me I am strong because I can feel things, not because I try not to. What a wonderful adventure I'm on. I'm enjoying every second, even when I'm hurting. How sweet this life really is.

-k.p.

12:57AM
June 7, 2016
Tuesday

art.

I guess I never really talk about my art which is kind of bizarre because it is such a significant part of me. It is indefinitely, inseparably, undeniably a large piece to the never ending puzzle of my soul. I cannot deny that I am extremely critical of it, but as of late, very much less so. I don't really see the value in critiquing my art so harshly I can rarely ever enjoy what it really is--an opening of my heart. I am trying a new goal--as of today, June 6th, 2016--to draw every single day. It can be a scratch on a crumpled napkin, a dump of ink on a scrap of post-it-note, an actual sketch in my sketchbook or a fullblown work of art! The details of what it is doesn't really matter, what matters is where it is coming from. Is it art? Is it practice? It doesn't matter if it doesn't come from the heart. So I will scrawl, scratch, dump, press and practice the pen across the paper, every moment getting better when I do so and every moment opening a corner of my heart like a turning page. That is most important. Truly, truly. 
-k.p.
est. June 6, 2016
3:12PM
Monday

My "smile" for the love of art.
September 2015

"You live and you die just for love!"

I don't want eventual.
I don't want someone else
or someone new.
I want burning fire;
to love is to burn
to be set a blaze and roast away the
feelings of
despair and loneliness.
I don't want another face
or a different smell.
I want familiar
to be home in the arms
of someone I know.
Is it wrong to want someone to share
to care about
to be loved
to be loved?
Oh what a feeling to
be loved!
I don't want 3 a.m.
or noon
I just want you
always.
What's so wrong with that?

-k.p.

May 26, 2016

Just Listen.

"Above the Clouds of Pompeii"
Bear's Den

We built our home out on the slopes
Pompeii beneath, she lay above
How she haunted our home
How she haunted our home

You were a god in my eyes
Above the clouds, above the skies
You were a god in my eyes
You were a god

You took me walking through the town
Showed me the statues underground
Said just don't they look in peace
Sometimes I wish that was me

I was the son you always had
Tugging at your coat while you were sad
I was the son you always had
I was the son you always had

Oh please, just don't cry
Hold your head up high
She would want you to
She would want you to

Just don't cry
Hold your head up high
She would want you to
She would want you to

You said stay in the car and wait
There's just some things I have to say
Don't you know I miss her, too
I miss her just as much as you

So my father and my son
As you end what she's begun
You'll lie patient by her side
With roses red come lilies white

I was too young to understand
The flowers slipping from your hands
I was too young to understand
I was too young to understand

I was too young to understand
The flowers sleeping in her hands
I was too young to understand
I was too young to understand

Don't cry
Hold your head up high
She would want you to
She would want you to

Please, just don't cry
Hold your head up high
She would want you to
She would want you to

And just don't cry
Hold your head up high
She would want you to
She would want you to

Please, just don't cry
Hold your head up high
She would want you to
She would want you to

Why I woke this Morning

"Il mondo..."

There was a soft song coming from the sheets of my grey and white bedding that is oh so beautiful. I was exasperated with the wanting to hear another person next to me that found this song as ridiculous and enchanting as I do and so Jimmy Fontana was awake in my bed, almost underneath my pillow and singing his heart out in the early hours of the morning.
It was sweet to hear his voice but even more so to imagine waking someone up this way--Jimmy singing his song and I placing the device of it on the stomach of my lover only to see his eyes slowly peel awake at such a commotion. Then to his confusion as to what and why an Italian man is singing into his chest, I will laugh myself into merriment for such an opportunity as this--to be alive and loving someone enough to wake them up just to be awake and happy with me.
What a dream I have to hold on to. (As surely I mean to accomplish someday.)
I am now going to create a playlist of all the songs that make me feel love passionately and I must admit I am ever so pleasantly exasperated to be alive and almost in love right now.

"Oh, il mondo..."
Thanks Jimmy. You're a real slice.

-k.p.

May 30th 2016
9:06AM
Monday Morning birds are chirping and there are blueberry skies ahead of me.
"Il Mondo" by: Jimmy Fontana (Singles Collection) << the very best.

c.d.

My heart is like a scratched vinyl
stuck on the song of you.

-k.p.

Jackie & Wilson

Someone to care
someone to share
lonely hours and moments of despair
to be loved, to be loved
oh what a feeling to be loved

Someone to kiss
someone to miss
when you're away
to hear, from each day
to be loved( to be loved)
to be loved (to be loved)
oh what a feeling to be loved

Some wish to be a king or a queen
some wish for fortune and fame
but to be, truly, truly, truly loved is
more than all of these things

Someone to kiss
someone to miss
when you're away to hear, from each day
to be loved, to be loved, to be loved
oh what a feeling to be loved
to be loved (to be loved)
to be loved (to be loved)
oh baby, what a feeling
to be loved

-j.w. 

band aids

I go through triple a batteries like band aids

because when my world feels cold 

and I lay down with my hands still cold against my chest

and the sounds around me no longer make music from their melodies

that's when they come on 

the soft cushions like a soft kiss against my ears.

A rush of music 

a tug of something inside of me finally ripping at the sadness.

 It's always there to elucidate the pain.

 Make it real. Make it some how less. 
Tape of the melodic music holds me together
wraps around me tightly like the arms of God. 
How can that be?
I wonder too much as I pull the headphones closer
and hold the music tighter
feeling somehow safe.

-k.p.b. 

3:23AM
Tues. 
2016

Hurts So Good

Do you ever just get so excited to be alive and to feel such warmth radiating within you it's almost too much to take in at once? Are there thoughts that you run to that make your heart race happily and your mind dance itself into passionate twirls, spools of ribbons twisting around your heart and soul and rib-cage? I feel so excited right now. I don't even know why, and yet I know exactly why. My dreams are so beautiful. This life, breathing, waking up from a sleep just to feel that this life is infinitely better than most dreams you've been trapped in before. I feel this palpable anticipation, this utter wanting of the sweet arrival of a dream that I know I will have. How is that possible? How can I really know if a dream I've dreamed so long, so hard in my life, is coming for certain? I guess, no, I know, God is watching over me. I know He hears my prayers and feels the vibration of a song my heart displays every day. He hears my pleas and wants to help me, always. He knows what is best, but for once I feel as though I can receive something I want that is in unison with what He also wants for me. What a wondrous and incandescent feeling this is. I feel as though I'll see my dearest twin sister soon enough. I feel as though I will find love and love will find me and I have this sudden innate optimism for life and the wonders it will bring me. All at once, I feel infinite.
I am so in love right now, it could be sickening to those who don't understand it as I do.
I'm so happy. So, so unbelievably happy on this ordinary day filled with extraordinary miracles and emotions. Thank you God, for this beautiful life, for my precious family and wonderful earth with which I am inseparably apart of. Thank you, always. How I love you so.

-kiersten p. benson

If you ever want to be in love...

I can't stop this overwhelming desire to kiss your face and steal every piece of you with my innocent and lonely hands. I want to steal your hiding places, your favorite songs and simple smile. I want to scrape away the pains you feel. I want to toss your darkest memories to the hungry wind and peel away the scars you think have become you. I'm not waiting, I'm just saying if you ever want to be in love, I'll come around and warm your cold lonely hands out of their confusion. All I feel is the warmth your heart brings me. I want to feel it all the time, to press my beating heart against yours and watch the way they chase each other into beautiful madness. I can't get over you, James Dean. I don't understand where the ceaseless thoughts about you come from and why they can never leave me, but I do know they make me happy, even when they make me sad. Even when they hurt me, I'm happy.

You don't even understand the willingness I have to fall in love with you and let you be in love, if you want to. I could hold your hand forever, in this moment, happily plagued by the thought of you.
You are beautiful.
You are wonderful.
You're a dream I can't wake up from.
I haven't even kissed you before and I know how happy I could be with you. I don't need much to be inspired--the world inspires me just by existing. Kind of like you.
I know I'm quiet. I know I don't say as much as I ought to. I know I stare at the thoughts I wish I could say long enough to keep them silent. I know I'm a terrible wallflower petrified by the thoughts I wish more than breathing I could let escape me. But if you could hear the things I'm too afraid to say, if you could feel the way my heart races when I think about you let alone see your face, there's no way you couldn't understand that I love you. I love you purely, innocently, whole-heartedly. Some may wonder how that can be. How can I love the boy who is miles away probably drifting his thoughts upon tides of other girls, other places? Different faces that don't at all resemble my own? I guess I believe in a better world. I guess I believe in a love that deserves someone special, someone who watches and understands, listens, more than they speak words or breathe air. I guess I'm seeking for a love that is seeking for me too.

Is it true? 

Can two hands really find each other through the dark empty air between them? 

Can love really be mine someday? 

I truly believe that what Rumi said is true, "What you are seeking for is seeking for you too." So can it be? Can I seek someone truly and purely and hard enough that they will do just the same for me? These are the things I think of when I'm driving in the car and the sun is soft and rosy in my hair and cheeks, and the world seems soft and slow and sleepy all around. Birds sing and my heart sighs softly with them as thoughts like these begin to pillow my everyday thinking. 

Today I fell asleep on a thin grey couch that was long and narrow even for my tiny bones. I was as asleep in house that is not my own as I could be (which of course was not at all). As I slept and let the echo of a nostalgic song rumble within me, a thought so gentle overwhelmed me: I imagine I'm actually asleep for real on this very grey couch, eyes shut into a daydream of a world I do not know, a better world where I am not hurt and lonely, and suddenly he is there rumbling my foreign world into reality, where he kisses my cheek, slips his arms around me tightly like a letter threatening an escape to the fierce wind, and he wakes me up to a feeling of peacefully being wanted. Then it hits me--this is what love is like. It's like the act of falling asleep and waking up are the same process. It's like the fine line between reality and dreaming is disintegrated and the act of breathing is shared between someone other than yourself. 

But I'm a head of myself, as usual. Just seeking for a day that has not come, not yet anyway. 

I guess the point of this post is an invitation really to you, James Dean. If you ever wanna be in love, if you ever want to know what unconditional love could be like, if you ever want to be woken up on a thin grey couch while you dream of a better world, just find me. Say my name softly. Sing my favorite song in the kitchen to yourself. Kiss my cheek and I'm already there. It's that simple and that courageous. What do I honestly know about being in love other than it's truly the only thing my heart yearns for and simply cannot live without? What do I honestly know, except that I love you?
What do wallflowers really know?
-k.p.b. 

(Inspired by: "If You Ever Want to Be in Love" by: James Bay; "Just Hold On, W'e're Going Home" by: Drake)

tunnel songs

He spoke a step above a whisper. The girl's eyes were wide with curiosity as his soft, but powerful words escaped him without restraint.
"They say there are songs out there that are so beautiful you cannot hear them through your ears. They say songs of that sort just drift through your bones like a tunnel. They echo. They scrape against your bones in a delightful manner and nestle themselves within the walls of your heart. Then you find yourself singing that song for weeks upon weeks, whistling it when before you weren't even a whistler. Do you believe it?"
He turned his dark eyes to the girl still fiddling with her long and tangled braid, as if to find her weeping by his prophetic revelation. Instead he grabbed her hand for a moment, ceasing her incessant fiddling and watched her sad posture depress into a heap of elegiac fabric. The tops of her eyelids were shiny like the gloss of black on her long, long eyelashes. Her cheeks were red. Something wasn't right.
"Well?" He half shouted in the dark.
Her slim shoulders slumped ever so slightly as no reply wandered from her lips.
He sighed.
"Look, " he began quiet, quiet as a bird before the sun has stretched, "I know you understand what I'm talking about. I've seen it within you before. When you think no one is watching you turn your headphones on and wake up your whole disposition--your bones, your braid, your face, everything--with a song. You walk around for hours, sometimes retracing the tracks of your mind you thought were empty and you listen. God only knows what you listen for, but I can see it in the scrunch of your eyes closing, in the slow of your breath and the stolen moment of drifting out of reality to some far and wild place. Sometimes you bite your lip, maybe to remind yourself of pain, to remember you're still alive. I don't know. Other times you're eyes are wide open looking far past whatever material is before them. You cry. You smile. You let the folds of your face fall into the face that is really yours. Your real, real face. I see you when you think no one is watching and you look like rain is falling on your face every moment you turn those blue headphones on. You look like you're actually living. Is that not what you live for, rainy girl? Can you not hear the music I am speaking of?"
He could see her posture shift from angry to sad to nothing at all. She wasn't happy, she wasn't sad. Perhaps she is both? The boy did not know.
Suddenly, a slight shift. A smile. Her eyes were no longer on the floor but falling into his deeply.
Her voice was scratchy for a moment, bruised on the first few words she whispered, but jumbled into sweetness as the words escaped, "Do you really think I'm pretty?"
The boy was red. His heart beat louder than the words that tumbled from him, probably much louder than he meant, "What? Didn't you hear what I just said?"
Her cheeks were ridged from her smile tugging harder at her lips.
"Sure I did." she replied softly. "You said you watch me when I listen to my music. Who would do that if they thought I was ugly? No one watches a human for that long if they think they're ugly. It just doesn't happen unless you're insane. Are you insane boy?"
He couldn't stop his heart from racing, but he couldn't answer her question either. If he answered or if he remained silent he was revealing something he didn't want to within himself.
He coughed.
He rubbed his nose.
The girl liked it when he rubbed his nose.
"Look, girl. I recognize a believer when I see one and you, " he blushed again as his eyes scrambled away from her, "are a firm believer in something. I can feel it. You reek of it. Won't you tell me what you believe in?"
His words were desperate. As if he'd been waiting to hear her speak all his life. As if she decided not to tell him whatever it is he was looking for, he would die. A part of him would die if this girl didn't speak about herself, about him. About something from her jungle of a mind.
He waited.
His heart raced on still.
She trembled. Something slipped from within herself. A tear choked itself from the weeds of her eyelashes, but she didn't move her small hand to wipe it away. She just let it drip and slide and puddle on her lips. She didn't move until the boys lips rang soft and small against her cheek, her ear, her hair. Slowly he slipped his gentle hand into her hair and tucked it snug behind her ears as he'd always wanted to do.
She smiled through her tears, making rain upon her beautiful face.
Her heart pounded too. It was quick as butterfly wings and the sound of summer on the grass.
"You want to know my secrets? You want to know what makes me find my tunnel songs?"
He fell close to her as she spoke, not wanting to miss a minute of her soul peaking from within her chest. It glowed. How it glowed so brilliantly when she talked he didn't know whether to shield it his from his dark eyes or simply go with it.
His heart still raced madly.
He simply went with it.
She didn't even see it when she talked. All she saw was the rain.
"When I'm lonely, I turn to one song. One song that doesn't make me 'feel better' or block out the feelings of loneliness, but rather explodes all the feelings I felt too numb to feel before I began listening to it. I listen to one song that is soft and fierce and honest. It is sad as it is happy. Somehow both at the same time. I listen to it fall into my eardrums and trickle down my ribs until it reaches my heart. Then I stop. I turn it as loud as I can allow myself in that moment and I just listen to it while I can feel it. I can feel it so badly it almost hurts. But it doesn't. It feels...clean. Simple. Marvelously alive."
The boy was quiet as he dare asked, "What is it? What do you feel?"
She sniffled for a moment, fiddling with her braid once more. Her eyes were almost closed again and how the boy wished she wouldn't--wouldn't stop, wouldn't close those precious eyes, wouldn't look down at the ground as if she wasn't worthy of looking up.
He also wished so fiercely she wouldn't feel so sad all the time. He could see it when she was asleep, her head bumping softly against his shoulder in the car. The look of pained sleeping tortured him. When the wrinkles on your face are drawn from sadness more than joy, that is when he knew you didn't sleep like most people do. That is what he saw when she slept. When she slept she looked like a heavy weight was being conflicted in her mind rather than the dreams of peace that should be flooding behind her closed eye lids. She should look younger when she slept, but she didn't. She looked alone.
The girls fingers were devouring a piece of paper he didn't even notice was there before. It was in shreds on the floor. It looked like petals from a flower; a little girl deciding if a boy loved her or not.
His fingers tangled up in hers. She stopped her fiddling once more.
"I'm sorry." She whispered through the tears that fell on her lap. "I don't know how to stop."
He pulled her head into his chest and allowed her to hear the sound of his racing heartbeat. It was the bravest thing he'd ever done.
She could feel it too.
"You want to know what I feel when I hear a tunnel song?" They were quiet. The boy could only stare at the girl in a wide complexity of emotions. She had to pull herself away from the distraction of his enthralling heartbeat as she finished softly, "I feel like this."
In her surge of bravery, she sat up and looked at him for a moment, both blushing in a rosy cloud hovering all around them. Her teeth sank into her lip in innocent nervousness as she placed her pale hand over his loud metronome and fell softly and sweetly in love with the way her heart plummeted into her stomach and flew back up into her chest like a wild song bird as she felt it. She felt the reason for his living.
It was her.
The boy felt brave.
"What's the name of that song you listen to? Your tunnel song?" He whispered it perfectly quiet and loud.
She was a little afraid, but not of him and not enough to stop the words that were already coming from within her, "My deepest secret is--it isn't one song. My tunnel song is whatever song holds the most truth for me at the time I am listening to it. It's the song that is the most honest and the most beautiful to me. It's the song that hurts me while it heals me."
Suddenly the boy understood.
It was like a reckoning of childhood and sleeping, only he was fully awake while it happened, understanding her. She was still a mystery in many ways, but the greatest thing about this moment was the boy feeling like he understood her perfectly in some small or huge way.
one.
two.
three heartbeats.
She was alive.
Without a thought of what would happen if she didn't hear him, without a care if he should live or die if he said it, the boy's voice grew from his heart and echoed through his throat as he exclaimed,
"If you're lonely, lonelier than you can ever bear, wake me. I don't care where you are. I don't care what time it is, what is making you sad, who is there, who isn't there--wake me. I want to hear you. I want to hear everything about you."
In some small way, between the beginning of the boy speaking and the end of all his words, the girl thought she heard him say, "I love you."
She was right.

...
(part I)

-k.p.b.

2:47p.m.
may 12th, 2016
thursday


*my "tunnel song": Wake Me by: Bleachers (as of right now, in this moment of time)

"All I Want Is Freedom...And You Always Beside Me."

I want to be painting!
I wish to be writing right now
expressing
writings from the heart
and no where else.
I want to be chewing on the
disturbing thought of
reality
and insipid notions of what life
ought to be
in the eyes of those who deem themselves most worthy
of favoring us with their opinion.
I wish to be far away in a place
my eyes can feast upon and digest
the interest of others
and the euphoria of a culture or a few
made new to my eyes.

I wish to be daring
bold
and unafraid!
I wish for wings that
could taste the bitter wind of rain
and snow
and unharvested secrets.
I wish no more to be left alone
with the loneliness of myself
stuck
afraid
empty of life
and found wanting.

I wish to hold your hand
dear friend
and little else
a part from
painting
writing
reading
life
and music.

That is all I wish.
That is all my heart calls for on this
insipid moment of
essay writing
and unchallenging
patterns of thought.

That is all I want.
Happiness.

-k.p.b.
April 25, 2016
3:03PM

My Mother

If I know what love is it's because of you. 

If I've stopped to taste the beauty of a flower or the stars or the rain, 

it's because I once saw you do the same. 

If I've fallen asleep with a smile and a dream of what my wondrous life could be, it's because you told me how. 

If you've ever wondered if you're perfect

If you're beautiful

Or exquisite beyond words, 

It's because I've written this poem and only now told you just how true it is. 

You are lovely. 

You are beautiful and exquisite beyond words. 

You are kind. 

You are my mother and that will always make me sing. 

If I know how to sing

How to love

How to live

It's because of you. 

-k.p.b.