June '13.

I have the emotion to write poetry, really, I do. I have the vocabulary and I have the knowledge, at least I seem to think I do, which is all that really mattered anyway. I lack the phrasing. I lack the metaphors. I know enough about good poetry to recognize it and be jealous of the author, but I don't know enough to actually write it myself, I end up trying something like this until I inevitably get frustrated. The words necessary to capture you elude me, and it's frustrating, but I'll keep trying, because I really do know enough about poetry that I should be able to write it well by now.

I think it's funny that last November I hadn't done Ballet in five weeks and I almost quit, but now I have three toenails falling off and more blisters than I would prefer because I was just the lead in Snow White. I think it's funny that a year ago, I was thinking about how two years previous to that I had my first kiss and since then I had fallen in and out of love with someone new. I was wrong, of course, I was still so very deep in the trenches of World War Mitchell a year ago from right now. I know I really am free now, though, because every other week the same thought floats to the top of my mind that says, "Remember when we were in love?" It's not accompanied by feelings of sadness, either. It's not accompanied by much, really. It's just accompanied with some lines of songs and seven digits that are as persistent as the sun. But it's no point, really. Where we used to struggle to stop talking to each other, we now struggle to continue. We can't have a lasting conversation to save, well, anything, really. This isn't to say that there are hard feelings between us. This isn't to say we don't care. This is just to say that we've truly moved on. It shouldn't be allowed to move on as far as we have, because we've moved on so much that we've almost moved back in, and isn't that a disaster waiting to happen.

The problem is, I'm waiting for love. I'm waking up and telling myself that I have more than enough love to supply a third world country, and then I'm going to sleep telling myself that maybe the sun will bring more opportunities. I can't keep living based on the sun, guys, because it's Summer and I'd much rather have the starlight in my eyes. But that isn't the problem here. The problem is, I'm waiting for love, and love doesn't come to those who wait for it. Love sneaks up unexpected, when you're too busy splashing around in the ocean, when you're too busy buying otter pops from the local neighborhood kids, when you're too busy doing your online classes because you're too good of a student not to. It's not that I'm not doing those things, but I never let my back be fully turned in case Love decides to make a visit and I might miss it if I'm not watching out for it. I know this isn't how love operates, but I also don't know this at all. Who am I to say that's how it happens? I know She Will Be Loved, I know it forwards and back, but when will I Be Loved?

Boys go on missions. I go to Target. C'est la vie.
~laura elizabeth