Crammed into Perfume Boxes.

I keep all of my old memories

in perfume boxes,

piled high in my closet

a pink floral print box

and a red quilted one

full of old notes,

passed back and forth in 7th grade history class

because our teacher was decrepit,

her hair was see through, and she always wore the same blue lab coat

every single day,

I'm sure everyone had a teacher like this,

ours was named Ms. Tobias

and could never tell when we were passing notes

or cheating on her weekly history exams

I have old letters in decorated envelopes

and empty boxes of Runts candies, those were my favorite

unfinished diaries, because I would always start one and after a week abandon it

and notebooks with lyrics scribbled in the margins

collections of twigs, rocks and feathers gathered in Astoria park

movie tickets and old photos that say Fujifilm on the back

I miss those days before digital cameras were big

when you would have to go to CVS to develop pictures

off your disposable cameras,

what they looked like would always be a surprise

and they would last forever

I sealed up my boxes before I left to college,

they still smelled

like a mixture of the park

mixed with Axe body spray, and Mike and Ikes

the smell of middle school and nostalgia

I think I'm ready to open them back up again

because the years are flying by

and damn, do I feel old.

Snowcones & Eden

Things were so much better in middle school

when Astoria Park was like Eden

because in my Eden

the boys are cute,

with awkward middle school haircuts,

band tees and skate shoes

in my Eden water balloon fights

are regular entertainment

and the rocky shores of the East River

littered with disintegrating porn magazines,

soda cans, and empty 25 cent bags of chips,

became our "spot"

a place to hang out, to have first kisses

on those warm spring days

all we needed was a one dollar slice of pizza

maybe a snow cone

if when you're a freshman in college, the conventional date

is a movie, maybe dinner

then, it was sharing a snowcone

an ongoing battle of who'd get to eat the red and blue parts

a game of caution, as to not let the rainbow drips

stain your shirt

playful pushing and pulling

holding hands even when in competition,

a balancing act

it was impossible to ever finish the whole thing

in the flirty, innocent tug o war

it would end up on the sidewalk, or in the grass

all the colors melting into a purple pool

but it was ok,

because kisses always tasted better after a snowcone

a chemical, icy-sweet taste

that I can still almost feel

because my nostalgia is bordering on synesthetic.

As I Eat an Apple in Prison...

Fireworks are going off inside of my cheeks right now, 

literally I look like my face is on fire

thats what my Art History 

midterm just did to me

not because it was extremely 

difficult or anything

but because my body's pigments react weird to stress

usually during a test, or anything 

anxiety producing

like when I had to do a whole presentation, in Spanish class

in the 8th grade about Matadors and their clothing

or when I had to give my AP Lit class a 30 minute lecture

about how love always equals death in One Hundred Years of Solitude

in the middle of speaking red blotches would form on my chest

like alternate maps of the earth

sometimes my stressed produced Russian looking masses, 

sometimes South American, 

who knows, but all my girl friends who would make fun of me 

eventually got these wretched "spots" too

anyhow

the Art History is over, over, over

onto other unfortunate happenings of my life today:

as I was taking the 10 minute part of my test

the part that I have been studying for a whole week for

the part that has rendered my life utterly banal

I was using a mechanical pencil,

or as we called them in our elementary school days,

a "lead pencil", only the coolest kids had lead pencils, 

not me, I had to find them on the floor, 

scooping them up and putting them in my bag

to mix with all the pencil shavings that would explode out of my 

cheap 25 cent sharpener

oh, the plight of children 

anyhow, I was writing the date of some Rembrandt painting

when my pencil point broke, the tip shooting into my eye

it got caught in my eyelashes 

thank god for mascara,

I knew those 5 or so layers would come in handy one day:my saviour from blindness

on another note, I am eating a green apple in prison right now, 

hoping my crunchy munching isn't bothering anyone, oh well

my new main concern is figuring out

why can't I bite into an apple without successively 

hitting my nose on it quite hard

and I feel like I'm the only person suffering from this

last week my nose ached for days from eating a massive apple

I should just give up and settle on more tame fruits, like grapefruit

boy, do I love grapefruit sprinkled with 2 Splendas

or slice my apples and carry around plastic utensils

I also have an odd love for plastic utensils, literally

I guess my quandary can finally be over now

The other day I read on AOL news some middle school kid got detention

for wittily responding to an "innocent statement": "push it in farther", with Michael Scott's 

famed phrase, "that's what she said"

what is the world coming to,

when I was in middle school kids would run around calling each other 

gaylords

I miss those days.