I spent 17 years in a coma in New Jersey and I went to a high school where few people liked me got taller, still skinny, California, no kidding I now throw computers through windows for a living the future me called, I was instructed to fuck this they said you can go anywhere, he said Texas I flew there in August, straight A's in my pocket and I walked through entrance twenty-three into college Jennifer, oh how I miss my salad days where I can always find you drinking tapioca I fell apart for eighteen-year-old girls in general chemistry and black framed glasses whose parents came from China take pictures on your iphone, your phonetics are inviting the way you say those low front a's makes me think you're from Carolina Thursday night my life will open, and Friday I'll be mad hungover Saturday you'll close it back up, so give me shots of 151 three C's on three exams later you talked me down at lunch when I said I'd drop out and become a waiter I can't believe that it's October I feel old I feel younger than before I got here so who's around? just throw 'em down I'm trying to get over to Brown and brown out, that's ideal, no? how can I dance if I'm too sober? yeah she was a junior, and a don't wannabe k-pop dancer electrical engineer and late-night crossfaded romancer all these sophomores skewed my curve up and all these clubs, why did I sign up? and all these nights you helped me throw up I'm lucky I still had a bro up and why do all my functions blow up? and why do I refuse to grow up? and why didn't you ever show up? you never show up you fucked it all up

Lafayette, you called me? wine cellar, oh well I guess he's had his fix of red and gone on off to bed but we'll get house tickets, Calvin Harris wishing he was not a mess so we could get him up at nine for class you know I love the way that two within a double can make each other feel as though they didn't grow up all alone, but with a brother so where's my southern twin? I think I'm owed at least an evening long companion form a band, try to score a show off campus try to score the soundtrack of her life in c-major ballads my first time in Austin didn't go the way I wanted 50/50 nights on couches, wondering if I should have tried the cheap coffee and marijuana and if you're so inclined we could leap through puddles, neverminding post-break exam dates, internship applications you never have to lie, I know you won't be coming back after April and this year you burned and I'll stay lit and I will keep you alive late Thursday nights around an empty handle where I'll tell stories of your life as it was filtered through my eyes sweet Missouri

you'd never slept with anyone you'd spent the night with carbon-based reactions you liked the way the freshmen thought that I could understand them how many times do I need to show up drunk at your room at two AM? to convince you that I'm the mistake worth making that there's no point to waiting that we should be dating aren't we just so romantic? rolling, fighting, hooking up on the lawn beneath the Louisiana live oaks xx playing, we were crying, this is nineteen I'm going through a phase where every thirty-six days I hate them all I want to never try again, be one for one, what are the odds I want you to never doubt my motives though I admit I've never known them buy me flannel, three years later I'll still wear it say 'I love you', three years later I'll resent it and for a brisk November I felt like a Kennedy (John F Kennedy) conclusions written on your walls in post-it notes and memories of Korean parents from the 90s still is the night down in Texas, the back of our hands filled with x's I can't mess this up I'm juggling seven classes and trying to sort through my sister's collapses and you're blasting me for promiscuity in the recent past tense? I want to wait out the world alone from within your dorm room walls please walk me home, just spend the night, don't sleep at all and every time I wake up alone in your bed I'm not sure if my life is naive or lucky or charmed then your buzzing alarm puts to pause my pillow thoughts on who gave me authority to decide just who would fall for me? to forgo all formalities? to jump the hedges and run wild through Houston's streets

the worst news I've ever received in my lifetime we were standing together at the back of the food line you didn't want to tell me and I didn't want to know but the second that you did I'd never been more alone I remember that night, and I remember it vividly her story is riddled with wild inconsistencies she burned us alive in our broken relationship we were never even given the chance to go down with it I found you, you found me at eight in the morning we'd both killed 4lokos, your Korean eyes shining I know that we broke up just yesterday afternoon but that won't stop us from going back to my bedroom is Hospice too depressing? is For Emma still your favorite? does it matter what's playing when we wake to this bullshit? and the vagueries don't stop, and the wrists bleeding everywhere and the sick feeling that you'll still keep me awake in five years well it certainly feels like we missed out on something cause most people never find what we had by twenty undressing each other in George Bush State Park is as close as we'll come to knowing what we are I refuse to keep talking, I refuse to be friends and I refuse to believe this is how it should end I'll go out next weekend, tattooed on my hands in all caps: do not go home with her again

hey distractions, let me prove I'm right she's in Peru til June she's in my head most nights hey there summer trysts, let me decide if I'm okay with letting go if I'm not willing to arrive at the eventuality that in this universe it never was to be this snow-covered side of paradise from my high school daydreams where I would hurry through the night to crowded libraries where you had retroactively built yourself into the scene and there are noons I will spend in Katy pretending that I have a Mexican family and there are midnights that I will spend in Montrose drunk and wishing you were drunk and there with me but for the time being it's past a hundred every day you know this Texas heat gets everyone in different ways I will retreat from coed meets in all varieties and write a book about a girl I knew when I was sixteen I hear you sobbing in the hallway but tonight I cannot save you tomorrow it will be me and I will beg and plead you to I hear you crying in my bed but tonight I cannot save you tomorrow it will be me and I will try to drag you down into the rabbit hole of theories that I made for us

the hell I will, the rooftop's quite a deal it's been a while, I've been well, I've never been a heel I demand respect now, I am older, count the fucks I give and I spare all emotional expense now, care for no one it's a bitter time to tell 'em writings all I want from now on did you read it? never been to Stanford probably on album one course he likes her, course she likes him not a fan? mind if I try then? morning with Odd Future, falling met last weekend, official Thursday have you ever been to ACL alone? in a downpour? with a broken ipod? have you been trapped in an elevator stoned? gone straight home? and not woken up? Bangalore's in store for more October swan-songs with her roommates new tattoo's old news and fodder for post-sex afternoon daydream debates here's your senior year- I'm in it summer's what I fear- don't sweat it what's the cheapest beer? racked Frio what's your midterm score? not zero captivate me, make me want it Chinese wedding dress was on point 151 makes me vomit two years happened hope I won it I hope I won it and when the lights when out campus wide we lit candles, and wrapped ourselves in blankets and when the fire alarm went off on the roof we came out as couples, hushing, huddled up and when the cops came and pounded on his door we laughed, we did not understand and when he drove back to New York this time for good we cried we understood Sally's hedging, friends are splitting the tome of what excited me is thinning I have failed at my goal to forever be nineteen years-old and just how long will I have my eye on girls that are fluent in python? you're a true American, you're what I need and I'm sorry your parents would never want me we're just a Thanksgiving hail storm away from being forced to stay, and that's all I want today cause I am less young than I've ever been and my best month is now behind me so let's be cute as long as we like what we see in the mirror of where you lived in year three

the new year rang in in New York in a new bar, in an old part of the East Village and the bartender could not stand to be in her place of work when 2013 finished there were student deaths in the air and all I could think of were their parents there were university cultural despairs over fairness and frankly I couldn't have cared less I had never taken LSD then, and I know now, when you're in it you cannot swim but he tried, and I could never imagine how beautiful the ocean must have looked to him people like us, they think we're cute, and I do too and when you're bothered I know it's the real you people like you are well-dressed South Bay lighthouses that I crashed into and now the numbers that had once given me comfort look like my enemy but I've sunk too many pleasant life plans into this well-adjusted half of me we never made it to South Padre, and now it seems we never will in many ways the Texas Coast has always felt impossible and there's a realization that I was mistaken to end it cause you weren't as visibly shaken as I was beside me at his candlelight service and I was so god damn nervous and you were crying but wordless the final week that everyone was around my wrists were open my veins were open and I bled colors all the way to Fort Worth and back again and I was grasping at something

you were in Seattle for a summer jaunt in coding cracking into new haunts, not deciding if we had it in us not to fuck up so we fucked and up I went in two dimensions walking seven miles back and singing Modest Mouse alongside Lake Sammamish I was in New Haven for a summer jaunt in lying breaking into hew hearts, not deciding if I had it in me not to give up so I rode to Rye each friday afternoon to smoke some weed while staring clear across the Sound at daisy's room don't scream at me I'd like to be the only one who isn't crazy yelling in Manhattan streets at 1:30 last train's at 1:53 there's vomit on my sperrys and those kids won't stop berating me we were in New Hampshire for a lox and bagel weekend where the lawyers keep their cabins back behind a wife and children so I drank the beers and wrote upstairs where pieces of a fiction that unfolded in my lap began unfolding out the window why are you the only one who doesn't want to be at this god damn symposium can we go run for bars? I'm trying to make sense of what to think of you we'll live in George Washington's quarters dinner's ready, you look lovely darling

and he was your grandfather's Kanye take statistical mechanics, take drugs, eat in the servery every day there's a roof out the window, there are South Americans smoking spliff after spliff after spliff after spliff and I love it whatcha doing next year kid? next Friday night? and tomorrow? because this wry side of paradise will die within you so be in it and write it down I'm smiling, faded, dripping red sangria take me to the taqueria late nights at La Tapatilla downing eight buck margaritas drowning, where does next year take this story doesn't end just different twenty-one is awful, makes no difference, I'm immortal I'm the only one who isn't eighteen buy a violin while blackout, crawl into a dream emerge from within an erotic Chinese fantasy just to see that Houston's where I now call home but Austin's where I halloween I'll play my face off, sing the song I can't go wrong, I can't go wrong I'm likely wrong, I played it wrong don't know what I'm set up to want and I spare all emotional expense now, care for no one that's what I say, right? that's right, that's how it is, no ands or ifs and if you make me out to be a freshman once more I promise I'll show you all the tricks that I thought that I had known before and I will kick in the door, and I will kick through the world and I will realize in time there's nothing to be done for her so let's have Christmas in September cheers to a night we won't remember and take the greatest snapchat ever taken and then forget to send it (shit)

I broke up with my most recent ex-girlfriend the first Monday back (she gets a mention in here at the end cause I'm an asshole like that) and my best friend got back from Shanghai and his hair was long past his ears he'd only been gone six months but we both know that he had been gone three years and I guess that I'm tearing the fourth wall to pieces cause this one's the most recent, man it all feels so recent I got into seven of eight grad schools I applied to I got into my friend's ex, who screams when she rides you I got four-hundred kids drunk for free at four AM I got four-hundred dollars in parking tickets by the end and my veins are still open, and I'm still bleeding colors all over California, but Texas is my mother the first girl I asked out for Valentine's Day now lives in the Mission and the second girl I asked will in seven years mother my children and with both I listened to Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix in my car and when they knew the words to Lasso, well it broke my damn heart so what does that mean? is there no greater plan? did I make this all up? do I not understand? and am I where I am because in January of my senior year Elodie invited me to a French party and I talked to a Japanese girl and had coffees and brunches, and took shots and made out while my future self screamed at me 'don't fuck this up now' but I just can't shake this damn feeling of survivor guilt cause I sure didn't earn this and I do not deserve her I do not deserve her, I do not deserve her, I do not deserve her, I do not deserve her I didn't go to my own graduation I didn't want some big goodbye moment and my dorm room was empty but I didn't feel lonely I read Murakami in bed while the sun arced up slowly and illuminated the cinderblock walls I remembered staring at my first day in August 2011 when I was seventeen, and everything was exciting and my posters weren't ripped, and my macbook was shining I miss that kid sometimes, he's a sweet one and he doesn't yet know that he'll meet so much death, love, drugs and fucking but he doesn't care, he's not thinking about it he's just glad to be out of New Jersey and shouting on late nights with his head out of the window down 59 with the West U streetlights guiding all the rides back to Greenbriar but he won, and he set me up good, and I'm thankful the future's been kind I may have peaked but I'm stable I saw Jennifer in January, on the day she moved to Portland and now we've both seen the world, and aced the interview, and become corporate but I'll always remember the joy of not knowing and the thrill of it all out before me blink four times, it's over