Motel 6

The curvature of life turns inward.

I wake up back to where I started: Georgia, two-week-old whiskey, unemployed.

In the Motel 6, we take the batteries out of the smoke detectors.

We build a fort in bed.

He pushes fingers still wet with camera chemicals inside of me and asks:

Is your body a political statement?

The curvature of life turns inward.

I wake up back to where I started: Highway 75, yellow American Spirits, aimless.

At the Roswell waterfall, we take the stones out of the river bed.

We build a dam on the shore.

She drags her feet through a pool of blood on the bridge and asks:

Is your heart still beating blue?

I miss the clear-eyed intensity of seventeen -- my determination to get exactly what I wanted.

Everything got hazy after that first year away -- the boundaries, the desires, the choices.

Now here I am a month out from twenty-one, sleeping in other people's beds for six days straight.

It's ten a.m. on a Tuesday morning and I'm in another boys' room. We eat donuts, drink watery coffee, make plans for a rental car and a fifteen hour drive from New York to Michigan.

Let's demand a car with a cassette player and listen to 'Rumors' the entire time.

We Google rent and employment rates in Hawaii, talk about Joan Didion -- making plans for two years from now.

I wonder how many of these schemes I'll build -- this new method for making choices. A year from now, I'll have a list of options.

Get a bar tending license,
smoke on the beach,
become a second grade teacher,
re-read every book from high school English.

When I'm ready, I'll just slide my fingers down the cool, slim page and pick a plan with my eyes closed.

San Francisco with Meredith, Honolulu with Dan, Boston with Erin.

Austin,
L.A.,
Atlanta.

Clinging to others, even as I let go.

Read my latest article here: Graduating Early

(Rookie)

When we were still in love, we used to buy a bag of Wonder bread at the Rite-Aid on Atlantic Avenue, and take it up to Bryant Park. Then we'd throw crumbs at the passerby's, laughing.

When NPR got too depressing, we'd lie with our backs pressed into the dirty carpet of his sixth floor walk-up, and sing in our goofiest, deepest voices.

The first story I ever told him was about my mother.

"When I was eight, I asked for a rosary to hang on my mirror. I was reading some novel about a deeply religious fifteen year old, who prayed every morning and evening in her prayer closet. I prepared a shrine in my bedroom closet, and then asked my mother for the rosary. She refused, saying Catholics had a much harder time getting into heaven than Protestants.

God, what a fucking mess.

So, I used pink pony beads and hid them under my pillow each night."

He laughed a lot at that, and the next day, he bought me a rosary on Fulton Street. We put each other to sleep that night, alternating between "Hail Mary, full of grace," and "Now I lay me down to sleep," the two chants of our childhoods.

"I wish I knew you when we were kids," he often whispered.

That was all the "I love you," I'd ever need.

I'm v. excited about my recent article on Thought Catalog. Check it out and let me know what you think! http://thoughtcatalog.com/mallory-brand/