and i don't wanna use capital letters.

I just wanna wear my favorite torn up, safety pinned jeans, paint my nails black, chew up my fingers, listen to Finch and Dashboard Confessional (on a mixtape in my cassette player, of course), and write shitty poetry about loneliness and the enormity of beauty in the world. Anybody up for filched peppermint schnapps and seltzers? A few clove cigarettes? A Godard film? Meet me in the Old North Cemetery on Pantry Road in Sudbury. Wear a scarf, bring a camera, don't be alarmed when I show up sixteen.

Maybe afterwards we can do 95 on Rt. 2 with all the windows down and the music so loud we can't hear our laughter cracking out of us.

Okay, okay, and then you quote Rimbaud or Baudelaire or Rilke, and I'll quote Salinger, and we'll think we have everything all figured out, and we'll know that we finally found someone who really sees us for all of the other people's words we've memorized. That's what makes up a person, right?

Paint me a train station, cover me in subway tokens, tear open another hour, kiss me like there will never be another me or you or us or kiss or love or warmth or now. We have nothing but time, ennui, and the gaping maw of youth in which to fall. Do I feel alive because I am or because of the caffeine still coating our mouths? You are a cafe Americano and I've taken enough years of French to understand what that means.

This is not a Tarantino movie. It is not a coming of age novel. No amount of curse words or carousels will give us what we need on rainy nights in January, but we can do it all anyway: hire prostitutes just to talk about growing up too fast, watch sunsets until our eyes mirror the fading red ball on the horizon, plaster ourselves to the walls of social outings, feel things like they've never been felt before by anyone and scream them into ourselves until we really believe them.   

Tales from the Copy Room

"Why do you guys treat me different?"
"We don't treat you different."
"Yeah you do. I swear one time and I get kicked out. Other kids swear every five seconds and they never get kicked out."
"That's not true."
"Whatever. I'm just here until I get accepted at Voke."
"Well, they're not going to accept you with this kind 'a record."
"I don't have any kind 'a record. I have better grades than anyone else in that fucking room."
"What about a discipline record? You don't think that counts?"
"You wanna know where SPED kids go? You wanna know where they go?"
"No."
"You wanna know? They don't go nowhere. They go nowhere. None of those kids in that room are going nowhere."
*Silence.*
"I can't wait until lunch."
"You can't go to lunch until Mr. X talks to you."
"I don't fucking care. I hate him. He's mad slow. He talks slow. He's a fucking asshole."
"That's not true."
"It is true. I hate all 'a you teachers. You're fucking retarded. You think we're the retards, but we're not. You put us in that room all together and you just wait for us to fucking drop out. Well fine, I'll drop out. If you want, you can expel me, but I'm not doing this shit anymore."
"You can't go to lunch until you talk to Mr. X. He said you have to stay here."
"Well I'm definitely going to lunch, because I haven't eaten anything except those frickin' tater tots and a banana."
"Did you see the doctor about your nose?"
"No I didn't."
"When's that appointment?"
"I don't care. Don't talk to me."