love's the only place that i don't want to go

steve and i share a mutual hate of our long distance

i'm standing in the air
i'm smelling early spring
your smile is everywhere
you're haunting everything

the tail lights never end
rain drops on your car seat
we held our kiss too long
i can't believe you're gone

i am invincible
when you're next to me
i'm trying to wrap my head around
where i want to be 

love's the only thing that i know
but love's the only place that i don't want to go

you put on that song
you showed over the phone
i danced like i had never
heard it when i was alone

we read from history books
in last-ditch libraries
you sweep me away
i dream of sailing seas

love's the only thing that i know
but love's the only place that i don't want to go

i can swear your here
when i wear your hand-me-down
is it harder to let go
or harder to hold on

i couldn't love you more
but i couldn't care less
my dress is on the floor
my life is a mess 

love's the only thing that i know
so love's the only place that i don't want to go

i'm standing in the air 
i'm smelling early spring
i'm asking you to stay 
i'm trying anything

raining on the steps
we're so soaking wet
i hope i don't forget
you were the sweetest end.

I'm your favorite because I am in love

The results are in. My English class voted my poem as the best in the class. Here is my edited version:

Our Parents Keep Telling Us to Grow Up

Lying flat
on our backs staring at my ceiling satisfied
us more

than anything. In my high school bedroom
listening to Say Anything on my CD player
thinking we owned the town and talking about how


sweaty your hands were. Sounds like our love
story. Football towns
in the Upper Peninsula weren't ready


for our forces. Nowhere
provided the alternate
paths we craved.

Maybe not ending up at UW-Marinette
or with babies or as a hairstylist or in Green Bay like everyone else
was our only goal


Until I grew up,
I didn't realize how much cold
air I wanted to breathe or how


fast I forgot my sister's voice
and why calling Kalamazoo "home" caused my parents
to correct me. When I grew up,


we were both on our backs
exhausted with the burdens of growing up
that held us back. Knowing

that nobody but
us would know that living eight hours away from home seemed glamorous as highschoolers, but was harder than it seemed---and made it difficult to admit to people that we almost broke up my freshman year because I couldn’t handle long distance---after everyone talked about how “cool” we were for doing it.

Autumn Leaves

Authors note: This poem was originally written as a song about a long distance relationship I share with my boyfriend. It's about the nostalgic feeling of hurt because I'm so far away from him. We've only experienced the fall season together through short visits. However, the leaves remind me that I'm one season closer to seeing him again. In my song, I wrote "The leaves make sounds of memories that I can't remember, but we'll make more when we can." The nostalgia of not having very few fall memories together brings pain, but also a hope that if we can make it through this distance, we can make it through everything.

Trees outside my window grow

And nobody notices but they provide

Shade caught in their 

Leaves

Fall down in autumn

But spring brings them back to shade

The summer heat

The girl inside that window

Grows and nobody notices

But she only holds the love he wants

Miles apart are spent

Sharing the times my hair tickled

Your cheek or sparklers at dusk when the light 

Revolved around me

Or they’re spent silently

Remembering your face so

Patient on the pillow when I counted

Hours on the clock, and on my fingers, before you left

Before the summer ground

Can miss the leaves, autumn drops

Its shade from branches

It’s how I know I’ll see you again. The seasons.

My heart hates the fall; everyone says the distance is necessity

but they've never left our football town. The fall leaves

Trees so stripped of summer and all its

Smell of you and taste of your cold popsicle mouth

But I begin to see clearly

Through the branches to the

Sunlit sky knowing I’m another

Season­­­­­­­­­­ closer to you.

The leaves are consistent and I rely on their promises

Of you picking me up and spinning me so beautifully like a summer sparkler

A light around you

Like the

Rings in every tree another

Year in the trunk is­­­­­­­­

One more for us

Lake of the Clouds in the Porcupine Mountains

Suction from black mud sticks and pulls at the grooves in my sandals. Underfoot, a summer rain captured in hot puddles gives us a flailing dance.

Sunlight beneath shadows of the old growth forest beams on the dead pine needles like a flashlight.

Nothing but out breath is hard, is heard. Leaves fall softly and we tread lightly. We are strangers in our own land.

Climbing the Lake of the Clouds in places we never complained about.

Reaching rocks so high and big, every upward pull sends elevation screaming to our ears.

Who needs friends.

No girlfriend deserves to see this

Inside dark walls, a girl

hides between broken shades

and witnesses

Two boys with guns, no

fists, beating with rage

and fury into the skull

of another.

Who knew the library held

such youth? The numbers

fell underneath tables.

One by one, done

and the security

cameras, like my eyes,

captured it, witnessed it

all. In silent motion

they grabbed his long hair

and pulled it up to punch

another victim in their list.

The kid who wore Nike, the girl

who said “Yes.” I believe

in God. They killed her right

away. I turned into a woman

that day. My eyes saw violence

in a new way. The boys who read books made their idols and

the boys who didn’t were

their own.

Columbine wasn’t

a place to die, but my eyes took it in

like another page in a history book.  

I saw a man from Sangren

Walking home, I saw a man from Sangren walk
outside the steel construction fence and down
the hill in front of me.

What is his name? Dirty boots, black jeans, and a black sweatshirt with
an Igloo cooler strapped to his back. Did it hold a sandwich
his wife made him?

He fashioned a makeshift
backpack using red tie downs I saw my dad use
to reel in the boat a few years back. Did he have
a hard life? A milk jug, half-filled with water and attached

to a ripped white T-shirt
was fashioned as a purse that swung on his shoulder
hitting his side each step of the way. Did he chug the lukewarm water until his
stomach hurt sometimes? The way

he walked made me feel bad. As if each ounce
of pride left him as he saw students stare
at his dirty clothes and white hardhat. I wanted

to talk to him. What is his name? I missed
my chance. He was young, though. One of the mildest
winters on record kept him that way.

Maybe I'll meet him next
Monday: the man
I saw from Sangren.  

What happens on Academy Street

           which means: a fictional retelling of an actual event, you could call it a legend.

            

           Courtney, Meredith and I are squatting in Meredith’s room. Actually, I’m squatting and they’re sitting on her bed. I just got home from a 10-hour workday at the newspaper. Naturally, I’m scarfing down cereal at 11 p.m.

We started talking about how gross our downstairs bathroom was. We have a cricket problem.

“Meredith, we need to clean our bathroom,” I laughed. “I found a dead cricket in there and I haven’t picked it up for two weeks.”

“I haven’t put it down in two weeks,” Courtney said.

“I haven’t put you down in two weeks and maybe I should, you jerk. The crickets in the bathroom have rigor mortis. They look like this.” I managed to contort my arms and face to fashion myself as rigor mortis cricket.

“Meredith, give me a good quote I can sent o Miguel on Skype,” Courtney said.

Miguel is her boyfriend. Fifty percent of their conversation happens, I swear, on Skype.

“Guys, look. LOOK.” Moving my cereal, I straighten out my legs, curl my hands, and draw my arms in like I’m trying to hide my armpit sweat. I do my best to copy the cricket I found in the bathroom.

Courtney starting laughing so hard she frickin’ cried.

“I can’t believe you moved your bowl for that,” she said.

By this point, we were all cracking up. I almost peed.

“Yeah, I did,” and copied what the cricket looked like for the third time.

Later, we were looking at Youtube videos of Stuff Nobody Says. Things like “please touch my computer screen.”

Courtney says, “Hey Erin, can you impersonate that cricket again?”