Used Balloons

I guess I had this grand vision of what it would mean to begin my last year at Mankato. The vision I had didn't include walking home from bars with Jake head-butting me. It didn't include realizing I had to begin to head-butt him back, because if I didn't, he'd continue until I was unconscious. It also didn't include Sven asking me every ten minutes if I wondered what would become of me. Not the smell of the entryway of our house. Not the mold problem we've had. I'm thankful we don't have mice anymore.

Even with the lists I've been trying to make, but abandoning, and reckoning a new one each time of the things that I'm certain I need to do before I can allow myself to move out of this odd-world-of-a-community. The vision didn't include forgetting to write the people that matter the most. It's come to the high point in the water where I need to tell myself that the alligators are not swimming in front of me anymore. They're not. It should be easier than it is. It shouldn't be a pity-party I'm having for myself.

I should be writing more. I should be working less. I should be able to balance work and school. I think I'm just worried that I'm going to forget something along the way, and it's going to end up being bigger of a deal than it needs to be.

Thorn to my house and all the hidden fees of living here. Rose to Jen for putting up with me, and the oddity of our schedules. Rose to Jake and letting others ask across barrooms at the tops of their voices, What the fuck is wrong with you guys? Last night he told me that he thinks he won't like not living with me. It's hard to imagine how I lasted here. By rights and by track records, and by everything I've written in the last half decade, I would've never thought that coming here would be permanent. I thought after a semester I'd be somewhere else. I never thought my sisters would still live in cold-denim Princeton, reading the Union Eagle talking about the Union Eagle. I thought I would've killed Kristin the moment I got here, but didn't. I thought I would've flown solo rather than join a fraternity and take advantage of them when they made me Vice President on a whim, and everyone who came into it the same time I did left. How was I supposed to last around here. How did I get a 4.0 last semester.

This blog is more or less for me than it is for anyone else. Maybe I could dedicate it to Paul Simon, or someone equally reverential. Maybe the candle I've lit on my desk that I stole from the 19 year-old who seems to think my roommate is everything when he'll just crush her. I can say though, I've written better poems here than I ever knew I would. I've finally finished a few of the titles and given serious thought, as opposed to drunken thought to my chap-book.