I need your hands to be calloused and your knees to be bruised.   I need to know that tears have marked your face and pain has smudged the rouge of your heart.     I need to know that you’ve seen hell, that you’ve lived there, and that you fought to get out.   I need to know that you do not covet comfort, stability, or permanence.   You need to hold the awareness in your soul that the deepest beauty only acquaints itself with wreckage and rubble. ...

Trinitie as I knew her is now gone.   There’s this whole other person beneath the surface that’s even more confused than before. There’s a certain symbolism in the X’s drawn in magic marker on her hands.   She’s in college now, she’s 19, and she has absolutely no idea who she is or what she believes anymore.   She used to have the list---you know the one.   It’s that list that everyone has containing what we will or will not accept in a mate.   That lis...

I recently started college, and although there are far too many similarities to high school for my taste, the differences are confounding.   I decided to attend, not only to achieve my aspirations, but because of a profound desire to be surrounded by the beautiful minds of the future.   I realize that it’s cliché for me to presume that all great minds would choose further academic education, or even that there would be any insightful students at all on campus, but I figure it’s a...

I’ll confess it was my New Year’s resolution to never speak to you again.   I’ll confess when I told my friends of this, they said I couldn’t do it.   I’ll even confess that they might be right.   Every movie I watch, every book I read, every song I hear, every conversation I have, reminds me of you.     I once heard someone say that you know love is real if you believe that no one on this planet could possibly love another as you do.   Yo...