I still exist. Consider me alive.

I think every morning that I will write something on this blog and I think every night that I should have. There are some things that are getting in the way, mostly great things.

1) I began teaching at Orem High School on Monday, Jan 14th. I made it through one week!
2) I am desperately trying to stay ahead of my students and learn about Mythology so that I can teach that as well as 11th grade English Honors
3) Trying to figure out Insurance
4) Dragging myself across the academic finish line by completing my last class online

Be that as it may, I know enough about myself to know that I need to make room for poetic exploration in my life. So here's what I have been writing recently. Here are the first two paragraphs of my novel. Yes, a novel. I've been wanting to write one for a long time and have been keeping a journal of my main character's traits and such. So tell me what you think.



"It was a dream. Turns out, her life was a dream. But not the one you wish for. The one you desperately want to wake up from but can’t convince your muscles to start working. The kind of dream that paralyzes you; the one you can’t quite put into words when the three girls that claim to be your friends try to get it out of you over Sunday morning breakfast. So you lie in bed and try your damndest to shake it off.

Frankie laid there, on her lumpy mattress with the comforter she hated, tears in her eyes. But not because she was sad, or even mad. Just tired. And the fact that she was crying and her alarm clock hadn’t even clicked to eight made her even more tired. She made note that she would end up crying twice today. At least. And this predetermined fact gave her a surprisingly potent semblance of hope for the day. For Tuesday.

She half-heartedly spilled her arm over to Joshua’s side of the bed, only to find it concave and cold. Then, in her mind she quickly compared the bed’s emptiness to her boyfriend’s common sense and found the strength to eek out a smile. The smile immediately faded as she thought, I’m funny. And I will die and no one will know it.

She didn’t have to work today. She dragged herself out of the tangled sheets and entered the bathroom. She untied her old work-out pants and sat on the toilet seat, like she had done every morning, her head in her hands. Partially because she hadn’t quite woken up yet. She had long-since foregone inspecting herself in the mirror, resigned to her skin’s imperfections and matted hair. It was like her favorite book, where the family drank from the fountain of youth and, as a result could never die. The mom threw away her mirror because she knew her body by heart. So did Frankie, but this was far from something she was proud of. She wiped and flushed, ran her hands under cold tap water and turned out the light, wondering why she loved this book so much.

She actually had time for breakfast this morning. This being opposite of the norm, she walked slowly into her small excuse of a kitchen, opening and closing the cupboards multiple times before reminding herself that she vowed to go grocery shopping today. Looking outside and seeing the snow-hidden cars in the parking lot was enough to convince Frankie to starve before opting to leave her heated apartment on 15th street. She grabbed the three pound, nearly empty bag of pretzels, the chocolate frosting from Joshua’s “Do Not Eat” shelf and plopped down on the loveseat.


(I'm open to suggestions)